Kill Switch by Jonathan Maberry Read Free Book Online Page B

to go home,” he said.

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    THE VINSON MASSIF
    THE SENTINEL RANGE OF THE ELLSWORTH MOUNTAINS
    ANTARCTICA
    AUGUST 19, 10:25 P.M.
    I heard Bunny’s sharp intake of breath.
    I heard Top softly murmur, “God in heaven.”
    Then something moved in the darkness. We crouched, weapons ready, barrels following line of sight, fingers lying nervously along the curves of our trigger guards.
    Inside the chamber, a dozen yards away, we could hear something. It wasn’t footsteps. Not exactly. This was a soft, almost furtive sound. A shift and scrape as if whatever moved in there did not move well. Or was unable to move well.
    â€œNV,” I said very quietly and we all flipped down the night-vision devices on our helmets. The world of snow white and midnight black instantly transformed to an infinitely stranger world of greens and grays.
    The thing in the darkness was at the very outside range of total clarity. It moved and swayed with a broken rhythm, obscured by rows of stacked supplies.
    â€œWhat the fuck…?” breathed Bunny.
    The thing moved toward us, a huge, weird shape that was in no way human. Pale and strange, it shuffled steadily toward the open door, but we only caught glimpses of it as it passed behind one stack of crates and then another. The abattoir stink of the place was awful and it seemed to intensify as this creature advanced on us.
    â€œGot to be a polar bear,” whispered Bunny.
    â€œWrong continent,” said Top.
    Their voices were hushed. They were talking because they were scared, and that was weird. These guys were pros, recruited to the DMS from the top SpecOps teams in the country. They don’t run off at the mouth to relieve stress. Not them.
    Except they were.
    â€œCut the chatter,” I snapped, and from the way they stiffened I knew that it wasn’t my rebuke that hit them—but the realization that they were breaking their own training. Each of them would have fried a junior team member for making that kind of error. So … why had they?
    The thing in the darkness was behind the closest set of crates now. In a few seconds it would shuffle into view. I could feel fear dumping about a pint of adrenaline into my bloodstream.
    And then the creature moved into our line of sight.
    In the glow of the night vision it was green and unnatural, though I knew that it was really white. Not the vital white of an Alaskan polar bear, or the pure white of a gull’s breast. No, this was a sickly hue and I knew that even with the NV goggles. This was a pallor that had never been touched by sunlight, even the cold light here at the frozen bottom of the world. This was a mushroom white, a sickly and abandoned paleness that could only have acquired that shade in a place of total darkness. It provoked in me an antagonism born of repugnance and I nearly shot it right there and then.
    The creature was as tall as Bunny—six and a half feet or more—with a grotesquely fat body and eyes that were nothing more than useless slits in its hideous face.
    I heard a sound. A short, humorless laugh of surprise and disgust. Could have been Top, or Bunny. Or me.
    â€œIt’s a goddamn penguin …” said Bunny, his voice filled with surprise and wonder.
    A penguin?
    Sure it was.
    In a way.
    The problem is that it was too big. Way too goddamn big. Massive. Twice the size of the Emperor penguins and bigger than the prehistoric penguins I saw in a diorama at the Smithsonian. The wings were stubby and useless as if it no longer flew even through the water. The beak was pale and translucent; the body was blubbery and awkward. It waddled toward us and we gave ground, though we kept our guns on the thing. Crazy as it sounds, I was scared of it. The sight of it was triggering reactions that were way down in my lizard brain—miles from where rational thought could laugh off instinctive reactions.
    The penguin shambled past us through the airlock but then