The Siberian Incident 2 Read online

  He had only sung the first few lines of “Rainbow Demon” when he fell fast asleep. Outside, the wind howled as the arctic winds whipped small grains of ice against the canvas of their tent, but Maddock felt warm and quickly drifted off.

  ***

  “Maddock! Maddock!” An urgent whisper jolted Maddock out of his peaceful sleep. He assumed it was time for him to take watch, and in truth, he was feeling somewhat rested. He quickly realized that only about 45 minutes had passed since he’d fallen asleep.

  “What’s going on?” Maddock asked, barely seeing his breath in the pitch blackness of the tent.

  Next to him, the Russian slept soundly. He could hear his deep breaths taking the sub-zero air into his lungs and breathing it out. Then he became aware of something else. The sound of footsteps crunching in the snow. It was something that walked on two legs, he heard it crunching through the crust of the snow with purpose. With each step, it grew louder and came closer. He then heard another one, whatever it was, they both crunched through the snow and came toward the tent.

  As Maddock picked up his rifle and took it off safety, a massive burst of white light nearly blinded him as Scott hit the power button of a large Mag-Lite flashlight. Maddock saw the enormous form silhouetted outside of the tent for one second before clawed hands tore through the canvas. His eyes had just focused long enough to see the Russian pilot’s squinting eyes turn wide with horror as he was snatched out of the tent.

  Maddock opened fire on whatever was attached to the gigantic fur-covered arms that then tore through the tent. He fired with purpose, pulling the trigger twice. The M4 unleashed two three-round rapid-fire bursts. Scott too, now fired at the furred beast with his M4, his gun on full-auto, in seconds the magazine was empty. As Scott dumped the magazine and reached for another, massive furry arms encircled him. The flashlight was now on the ground illuminating the scene with a stark white beam casting dark shadows onto the creatures that now invaded their shelter.

  Maddock continued firing three-round bursts, aiming carefully at the monster that now held Scott in its arms. Maddock smelled a strong odor of piss and wet fur, like the smell of some wild creature as the beast let out a very inhuman roar. Maddock aimed his weapon at the beast’s head, but the light was poor above the beast’s waist, and he could not ensure that he would not hit Scott if he pulled the trigger.

  Beyond the tent, terrified screams echoed into the forest, along with the sound of ripping and tearing. Those sounds almost instantly stopped, and Maddock felt hard bone and muscle under wet fur impact with him. The collision knocked the M4 out of his hands. He felt claws digging into his flesh as the super-humanly strong creature held him in its grip. Maddock heard Scott scream as the older man fought to free himself from the creature’s grasp in an attempt to help his nephew.

  Then he felt himself fall to the forest floor, he impacted the snow hard on his side, knocking the breath from his lungs. Struggling to breathe, Maddock could hear beastly roaring and the impact of bodies as two combatants fought to gain the upper hand.

  As he finally sucked air into his lungs, which came with a tortured gasp, he looked over. He saw Scott laying in the snow, massive amounts of blood were spattered around him, too much for a human to lose. Scott had to be dead.

  Maddock crawled to his gun. It stuck up out of the white ground, the barrel still steaming from the contact with the frozen snow. He heard the howls of the creatures and frantic footsteps fading off into the distance.

  “Maddock!” Scott said to him in a voice uncharacteristically strong for someone on the verge of death.

  Maddock looked back, the beam of the flashlight now illuminated Scott’s face. He lay in the snow with a look of terror on his face. Blood all around him, he struggled to get up out of the snow.

  “No, Scott, stay down!” Maddock ordered.

  “I need to get out of this bloody snow!” Scott insisted.

  Scott stood. Maddock looked at him with his jaw wide.

  “How are you not dead?” Maddock questioned.

  “What? This? This isn’t my blood,” Scott said, suddenly realizing what Maddock thought had happened to him.

  “ Sasha, where is he?” Maddock asked.

  Scott’s shaking hand grabbed hold of the flashlight and pointed it in the direction of the blood trail. His eviscerated torso lay to their right, his legs to their left and a steaming gut pile that only moments ago had been contained within his body sat roughly ten feet in front of him. The two men failed to identify the Russian’s head, which had been shredded and crashed into a red splotch in the snow.

  Scott paused, then answered Maddock’s question, “He’s there, there and there.”

  Scott illuminated each pile of the man’s body with the flashlight as he said it.

  “I thought you said these things were friendly!” Maddock hissed, trying to keep his voice down to avoid a return of the monsters who attacked them.

  “I don’t…I think we got rescued by some of them.”

  “What, they tore Sasha apart like a claymore, and you think they rescued us? From what?”

  “Whatever ripped through our tent, it had me, it was crushing me and digging into my flesh with its claws. Something knocked me out of its arms. It didn’t drop me, it was forced to let go of me.”

  “What the hell would have done that? That thing had me too, I’m bleeding from where its claws ripped through my parka. I couldn’t get away, then it dropped me too,” Maddock questioned

  “I don’t know, something forced it to let me go,” Scott said, quietly staring ahead.

  “Ok, I need you right now, Scott. I don’t know what just happened, and I’m pretty sure something is trying to kill us, but if we don’t keep our heads, there are a hundred other things that will kill us out here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it, Maddock. Okay,” Scott said, seemingly brushing off the panic and terror.

  “Ok, what the hell was that?” Maddock asked.

  Scott pointed the flashlight down into the snow, gigantic footprints with impossibly long strides led through the woods in the direction that their attackers had fled.

  “Yetis,” was Scott’s only answer as he eyed the footprints entranced by the size and imprints of claws in the snow. Whatever had attacked them had a primate’s feet, and it walked in the snow with no boots or footwear of any kind.

  “No,” Maddock said, then suddenly realizing that Scott wasn’t joking, and it seemed like the only answer that might be plausible, he muttered, “Fuck me,” in his gravely voice.

  “We can’t stay here, we’ll need to get on the skis,” Scott said with a dull monotone.

  “Right, let’s get to that facility. The quicker we finish this mission, the faster we can get the hell out of here. Get those skis on and turn off that flashlight. Put on the NVGs. Let me find some duct tape, both of our parkas were ripped by those things’ claws,” Maddock answered.

  Maddock gathered their belongings. Scott slowly began to regain his senses and quietly picked up his gear and turned off the Mag Light. He grabbed a pair of night-vision goggles from his pack and switched them on. The blackness of the frigid night was replaced by a glowing green, and he could now see everything.

  Scott began strapping on his skis, adjusting the bindings to his cold weather boots. He turned on the light of an electronic GPS watch he wore. A filter on the watch allowed him to see the screen perfectly while wearing the NVGs. The waypoints through the forest to the facility that might have answers to what just had happened were programmed into it. A total of 28.3 kilometers, just over 17 miles a daunting distance and more attackers could be anywhere along the route.

  “What if we run into those things again?” Scott said after kicking through the snow on his skis for only about 10 meters.

  “We gotta take the chance, we leave, and we might run into them, we stay here, and they’ll come back to find us,” Maddock answered as he finished taping up the holes in his jacket.

  A light snow began to fall as t
hey glided away from their former camp and into the woods. They left behind the shredded tent. Sasha’s body and the evidence of his slaughter by the mysterious creatures began to fade away as his corpse and the eviscerated parts of what was once his body were buried in the increasingly deep white powder.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Invasive Species

  THEY FOLLOWED WHAT was probably an ancient animal trail through the thick forest, the green glow of the night vision equipment lighting their way through the pitch-black trees. The goggles were dual IR and thermal. This allowed them to more clearly see animals along the way. When they heard something bound into the woods, it only took a tap of a button on the side of the device to see that a deer had been kicked up as they glided through the forest on their skis. The IR mode made it much easier to navigate along the narrow trail. Deer and small animal tracks were the only signs of life for the five kilometers they’d skied from their campsite.

  The snow had subsided, and they were making better time on the packed crust of icy white crystals covering the forest floor. Scott’s heart rate was near 170. He had activated the exercise function of the watch, and his heart rate was displayed in the left-hand corner of the watch’s face. It also showed the distance and time to the next waypoint as well as an arrow pointing him toward it.

  Maddock was still on his tail, seemingly unfazed by the skiing or Scott’s pace. Scott felt the old man nearly skiing on top of the backs of his skis. He turned his head back and couldn’t hear his great uncle’s breathing like he could his own. Scott had the idea that Maddock wasn’t even challenged by this pace, which was much faster than he was used to. The old guy might have been in his 60’s, but he still trained like a warrior.

  Scott was about to slow down and tell Maddock that he couldn’t keep up the pace when his uncle mercifully whispered to him to stop. Scott’s chest heaved as he attempted to hold in his heavy breath. His uncle’s heartrate seemed barely elevated as he motioned for Scott to turn on the thermal mode of his goggles.

  Scott pushed the button, and for a brief second, the googles dimmed as they changed modes, a feature he set as, without it, a bright flash occurred as the googles switched modes. Although slightly faster, the dimming mode allowed him to refocus much faster.

  Maddock pointed down at the snow, Scott saw large footprints. Maddock pointed off into the woods, and Scott saw a giant orange blob out in the distance of the thick forest.

  Maddock put his hand next to the tracks in the snow. They seemed to lead in the direction of the glowing blob that now moved and appeared to move closer toward them.

  “It’s a cat!” He said, putting his hand in the imprint of the giant paw.

  “We’re too far north…” Scott’s quiet whisper was cutoff by Maddock.

  “That’s what you said before, but this is a cat’s paw. Is that a Siberian tiger?” He said quietly and cautiously as the glowing orange figure again moved slowly toward them.

  “It can’t be, unless…”

  “This is bigger than any big cat track I’ve ever seen,” Maddock said.

  He’d been deployed to Africa on numerous missions and was knowledgeable about the size and identification of feline tracks.

  Scott pointed his rifle in the direction of the heat source. He switched his goggles back to IR to see if it cleared up the image and offered any better view, identifying the mysterious beast in the woods.

  “Don’t shoot it, they’re endangered. It will be an international incident if we kill a Siberian tiger,” Maddock said, his breath barely escaping his mouth.

  Scott’s voice now quivered as he whispered as loudly as he dared, “This thing is huge, does that look like it could be a tiger? It looks like the size of a horse that can’t be…”

  Scott was cut off by the sound of something drawing air into a massive pair of lungs and then letting out a low guttural growl.

  “That’s not a horse,” Maddock whispered, now terrified for his life, he too slowly raised his M4. Scott heard a barely audible click as his safety came off, and it reminded Scott to do the same.

  Another guttural growl as the beast began moving through the trees toward them. Scott started backing up, his skis making a swishing sound. The back of his skis clipped Maddock’s ski tips, and he fell to the ground. The beast now began bounding at them.

  Scott had one second, he hit the light switch on his M4, and the high lumen white beam exploded into the woods. Scott attempted to point his rifle at the creature that now closed on them fast. He was too scared to take a shot because of Maddock’s previous warning and the fact that he could not see if his rifle was, in fact, pointed away from his uncle. He looked up and saw recoil quiver through Maddock’s body. He heard the report of a three-round burst.

  A hot shell sizzled in front of him, and another fell down into his hood. The hot brass casing stuck between his thermal sweatshirt and his neck burning his flesh and causing searing pain. He fought the urge to scream from both the terror of the beast that approached them and the pain of the metal now burning his skin.

  “What…the…hell?” Scott heard from his uncle.

  He fought to get under his layers to remove the shell that had now burned his neck.

  “What, what is it?” Maddock had spoken in a regular voice, and Scott asked his question with the same volume. Maddock was obviously not thinking about anything except the monster he had obviously killed. He nearly struck Scott in the face with his ski tips as he turned off the trail to shuffle toward it on his skis.

  Scott got up from his prone position and tossed the now cold .223 casing into the snow.

  “You killed it? You killed a Siberian tiger?” Scott said, dealing with the dread of killing an endangered species. The Russian government would have a field day with that sort of propaganda if Scott and Maddock were captured or killed. American idiots invade their country and kill endangered species before the poachers were killed by glorious Spetznaz commandos.

  “No, I did not kill a Siberian tiger,” Maddock said cautiously approaching the amber-colored beast which lay on its side, bleeding into the snow.

  “What is it then?” Scott asked, perplexed as to what other kinds of feline would be in a Siberian woods.

  “It’s a smilodon,” Maddock proclaimed, “Look at this.”

  Scott shuffled over to the lifeless creature that now lay in the snow. Massive banana sized fangs stuck out of its mouth as blood poured from its open jaw. This was no Siberian tiger. This was a saber-toothed cat.

  “That’s no Siberian tiger. That’s an invasive species. It doesn’t belong in this time period,” Maddock said, staring at the giant cat in disbelief.

  “Yeah, that’s definitely not a Siberian tiger. That’s a Jurassic Tiger,” Scott said, sidestepping on his skis around the colossal cat’s body, which was partially buried in the deep snow.

  “Pleistocene tiger,” Maddock corrected.

  “What?”

  “Pleistocene, these things lived during the Pleistocene era, not the Jurassic period.”

  “Ok,” Scott said, not really listening or comprehending Maddock’s words, “My grandpa saw these.”

  “You never mentioned that, want to tell me everything he saw? Werewolves, too, maybe?”

  “Grandpa said that the yetis never killed anything, they were friendly, even protective. It was all tigers that killed the dead people he saw. The yetis protected Colin and him,” Scott said, still seeming to be in a state of shock.

  “Well, the things that killed Sasha weren’t tigers. If I were going to describe them, I would say they were, some kind of man or man-beast. It was a hominid,” Maddock said.

  “Dude, what is a hominid? I have an accounting degree, I took physics and chem for my natural science credits, I don’t know any of this.”

  “Alright, man, look, you should read some books. The thing that attacked us in the tent was like a human, but it was over seven feet tall, like close to eight, and it was covered in this rope-like fur.”

 
“Yeah, it was like a walking ghillie suit,” Scott said in a monotone voice.

  “Yes, it was like that, its fur was like layered dreadlocks, and it stunk like the worst rotten fish stink and wet dog fur. They had claws and fangs, I thought they were maybe some kind of gorilla or monkey, but their face was…”

  “Disturbingly human.”

  “Yes!” Maddock said.

  “So, yeah, that’s what attacked us, what does that have to do with this thing?” Scott questioned.

  “You said it before Jurassic, like Jurassic Park,” Maddock said.

  “But Pleistocene park instead?” Scott attempted a joke.

  “Exactly!” Maddock said to a surprised Scott.

  “What?” Scott said, bewildered.

  “The smilodon is from the Pleistocene era, maybe this thing has come back from that time as well?”

  “I don’t know, that seems insane.”

  “This facility we’re going to? That’s a Vechnozelenaya Technology building?” Maddock asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then we should find some answers when we get there,” Maddock said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Vechnozelenaya Technology Building 4

  MADDOCK PROPOSED THAT Scott lead with his goggles in IR mode and Maddock would follow watching for other creatures in thermal. Despite the sub-zero weather, he could see the heat rising off Scott’s parka and from his own skin. He was drenched in sweat from skiing too quickly and from the encounter with the saber-toothed tiger.

  Maddock felt terrible shooting the animal and leaving it lay in the snow. They could have never moved the entire cat, however. Even the fur would have been well over 100 lbs. Maddock had considered taking one of the tusks, but even that would have easily been another 10 pounds, weight he did not need in his pack right now. Scott had assured him that first of all, they did not hunt this creature, it hunted them, and it was killed in self-defense. Then secondly, the animal would provide food to some creature, whether that be birds, or worms, it didn’t matter. How they were going to get out of Russia was a concern right now, doing it with a half-ton of prehistoric cat made the logistics impossible.