Hive by Tim Curran

Author:Tim Curran
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Elder Signs Press
Published: 2009-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

28

“Tell me again why I’m doing this,” Cutchen said.

“For the good of humanity,” Hayes told him. “What more reason do you need?”

Maybe Cutchen needed some reassurance here, some encouragement, but Hayes didn’t really have a lot to offer up in that department. Why were they going up to Vradaz Outpost, the abandoned Russian camp? Even he wasn’t sure, not really. But something bad, something truly terrible had happened there and he felt it was important that they find out what. Maybe they’d find nothing but a snowed-in empty camp, but Hayes was thinking there had to be evidence of what came down. If even some of what Nikolai Kolich said was true, then the outpost had undergone pretty much the same sort of shit that Kharkhov Station was currently undergoing.

Hayes could remember very well what Kolich had said.

Vradaz was a summer post and they were coring, struck into a cave or chasm or something. Yes. Then . . . I remember things got funny after that.

And didn’t that just sound familiar?

“Storm’s picking up pretty good out there,” Sharkey said.

Hayes worked the stick of the SnoCat, pressing in the clutch, and bringing it up to high gear as they came over a rise and moved across a barren ice plain. He figured they’d make Vradaz in thirty or forty minutes if the storm didn’t swallow them alive. They were plunging through Condition Two weather, sheets of wind-driven snow blasting the SnoCat and making it tremble. It was dark out, of course, and the only lights came from the ‘Cat itself. All you could see in the high beams was the white, uneven tundra broken occasionally by knobs of black rock and the swirling, blowing snow.

“You’re not going to get us lost are you?” Cutchen said.

“No, I don’t think so. I have a roll of kite twine on the back of the ‘Cat and I tied the other end to Targa House.” He glanced out his window at the huge rectangular mirror out there. “Shit . . . must have run out of string.”

“Ha, ha, you so funny,” Cutchen said.

“Relax. GPS knows the way and I took a bearing on Vradaz before we left. If we get lost, the beacon from Kharkhov will bring us back home.”

“If worse comes to worse,” Sharkey said, “we can gather up some wood and start a signal fire.”

“Boy, you guys are good. I’ll book you in Vegas when we get back . . . unless we don’t get back.” Cutchen thought about that a moment. “You think these Old Ones have much of a sense of humor, Hayes?”

“Yeah, I think they do. Look-it all the gags they’ve pulled on us. They’re some really silly bastards, you get to know ‘em.”

The SnoCat began to jump and lurch as it passed over a field of sastrugi, frozen ridges of snow and ice that looked like waves heading ashore at a beach. Except these never moved and they were tough as granite. But the SnoCat handled them just fine,

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