Search Party

We find Adams and Lee crumpled in the snow at the foot of the glacier. Their footprints have already been covered by the blizzard, but it wasn't hard to locate them.

“Christ, they're dead,” says Collins. He's kneeling next to them, checking pulses and pupil dilation. I'm not sure why he bothers, it's clear from the way they lie and the crimson stain on the ice at roughly head height. I wipe the blood away. There's a shadowy object frozen behind it.

“Do you see this?” I ask. “There's something in the ice, it's huge.”

Collins squints. “A boulder?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “There's no way it's a boulder, look at those twisting shapes there.” The object did indeed have a great deal of tentacles, corkscrewing into the dense blue ice.

“Holy shit, that's a creature? Something prehistoric, or something?”

“Got to be.”

“This is fucked up. Rob and Scott killed each other next to this thing?”

I shrug, letting him know his guess is as good as mine.

Collins is staring directly at the creature when he sees a subtle movement, like the flicker of an eyeball.

“Did you see that?” he asks, agitated. “What the hell was that?”

“Is it alive?” I ask.

“There's no way” he says, pushing his face right up to the ice and shielding his vision from the sun. “It's beautiful.”

“How so?” I ask.

Wok.

He just hit his head against the wall of ice, as hard as he could. His face doesn't seem to register any pain, nothing but wonder for the object in the glacier.

“It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen,” he says. I nod in response.

Wok.

“I need to be closer,” he says. I nod again.

Wok.

Wok.

Wok.

WOK. He splits his own head wide apart and his brain spills down the cold wall as his body crumples. The shadow in the ice ripples and writhes.

I turn and head back to camp to gather a new search party. The snow covers my footprints as I leave.