Uncertain Harbor

One Week Later

Everyone was silent. There were no attempts by the hired juvenile minded delinquents on board to grope at or verbally harass me at all today.

While it was a much-needed reprieve, the reality of what it took to make it so was scary. The men for once instead of looking at me, stood all about the ship with guns at the ready, even as they stared outward at the choppy waves all around us as if in search for a boogeyman of some kind.

Everything was unearthly still except for the ship and the floating ice chunks that we were making passage through. The headland of Antarctica was up ahead, but there was so much ice about that it seemed as if we were already amongst the landmass.

Icebergs drifted by us like small islands and reasons for the choice of ship we were on became clearer. It wasn’t an old trawler rather it was an old icebreaker ship and it was doing plenty of that right now.

Though warmly dressed I felt chills sweep up and down my spine almost constantly. A sense of thick foreboding was all about the place to the point that it made even breathing feel awful. Like somehow simply breathing and existing in this place was a useless exercise because we were all living on borrowed time.

I glanced about at the deck of the ship that was strewn with technical antenna arrays and gadgetry that was all the result of my nightly technician dinner companions hard at work for once. This was their element and truly it looked as if somebody had thrown a tech warehouse up and on the spot with the sheer plethora of items littered about everywhere.

I was on the bridge near the Captain and behind me I heard the lead tech guys say, “We’re past the usual checkpoint. No signs of activity, engine heat, or anything. It’s quiet.”

The Captain looked to the CIA stooge in charge who now sported a smile that was about a mile wide. The man gave me the absolute creeps.

“Well, now, looks like our intel was right! Their defense system is down. All right, Captain take us in.”

In? In where?

The Captain gave orders for more speed and to my consternation, we headed straight for the imposing icy landmass that lay ahead. Surely the plan wasn’t to run aground!

What appeared to be thick ice, though broke easily apart and looking over the side, I beheld that the ice actually wasn’t all that thick. The ship kept smashing through the thin ice and then we were swerving around a rocky headland.

For all the world, it would seem that we should have beached the ship on the rocks, but instead rocky ice laden promontories rose up on either side to the point that the view of the ocean behind us became out of sight. We must be going up a river or a channel of some kind.

Why was the ice so thin?

An hour later I got my first clue as the ice had all but disappeared and I was indeed staring at the channel of a deep river. A river that had tree-lined slopes to either side of it.

What I was seeing was surely impossible and yet my eyes were recording what they were just the same. In places here and there within the river I saw the water boiling, hot springs were causing the water to melt it seemed and for the atmospheric air temperature to be considerably warmer.

Just then the ship came out of the narrow high sided channel that we had been in for over an hour and I gasped at the huge bay of open water that lay ahead with mountains to either side of it that were as green as could be. The vegetation that was everywhere one could look was lush, even tropical looking almost.

“How is this possible?” I asked of no one in particular.

The Captain answered, “Welcome to Eden. You may well be the first Russian to see this place, at least we can hope so.”

As he said that I didn’t miss the dark look given to me by the CIA dude. Must have a thing against Russians, only I really wasn’t Russian, rather I was an American and yet I seemed to have none of the rights of one.

The Captain went on, “What we’re floating along into right now is a jolly old caldera of a mostly sunken volcano.”

I glanced sharply at him and he said, “Yes, it’s a fairly active one at that.”

I looked around with new eyes and trepidation at this place that truly was a bit of molten hell scabbed over with a veneer of water and earth. All that said it was beautiful.

A veritable Eden in the midst of a frozen wasteland to be sure.

Out across the placid waters of a very warm bay we continued to travel. It was best not to overly think about why the water about the ship was so warm. My attention was gained by a technician who was almost begging as he said, “We have to send a message letting them know that the way is open!”

The man in charge of the expedition, to which the technician was making his plea, reached out his hand as I watched and grasped the technician by the throat to then gutturally say, “Absolutely no communication of any kind will be sent! We have our orders! What do you want to do - open the door wide so that the filthy Russians and who knows who else can come in here and get in our way. This is our discovery and our victory alone! I’ll do worse than just kill anyone who disobeys me.”

He let go of the shaking man who stumbled away quickly his face ashen. I turned my gaze away from the scene and did my best to keep as low a profile as I could.

With such prejudice against Russians as that man possessed it was a wonder that I still didn’t have a bullet in the back of my head. That said, it might be coming any moment now.

Silently I waited, but no bullet came. We were growing close to the other side of the bay and with interest my eyes took in the sight of buildings be present. Abandoned looking buildings.

The closer we got though I changed that observation to destroyed buildings over that of them simply being vacant. It looked like giants had been at play, it was just simply hard to define the damage seen in any other manner of context.

The place, town, city whatever you wanted to call it was completely broke up. There were armored vehicles of a sort that I had never seen with their gun turrets completely twisted off and hurled into the sides of buildings. Planes of alien looking design lay tossed about like broken up Lego blocks and any number of other riffraff of items that could only be described as futuristic were strewn across the ground or sticking out of buildings.

The ship made way for an open docking spot along the wharf. It had been a while since the carnage that could be viewed everywhere had occurred as even now the jungle like forest was beginning to take over as the trees were starting to grow in places that they hadn’t been intentionally planted.

There was a general loss of order to everything one looked at and one could imagine how different this place may have appeared at one point than it did now by glimpses of the vestiges of glory still on display here and there of a very clearly advanced society. The ship sloughed sideways in the water and as it did a partial shriek of fright made its way out of me before I could cut it off.

I gripped a hold of the railing even as half of the crew less quick in their response ended up on their backs. In horror, I watched as the body of something absolutely huge darkened the water on the port side of the ship even as alarm bells rang out everywhere.

An intercom buzzed, “We’re taking on water Captain!”

Without hesitation the CIA man said, “Beach the ship.”

I stared at the man incredulously even as the Captain took the con and steered the ship accordingly. We abruptly picked up speed and surging forward it was suddenly like we were nothing more than a bath toy grasped by a child at play as all forward motion was abruptly halted.

I crashed forward into the railing and not wanting to look but drawn to do so by both the screams of others and the shrieking of metal being torn apart I looked to the rear of the ship. A creature unlike any other lay behind us and I screamed right along with all the others.

Half giant squid and half metallic robot from hell it rose up out of the water of the bay behind us as it firmly latched onto the ship in both a biological and metallic way. Alien looking arms plucked away at any human figure that was within reach, while metal arms of a matching order crumpled into the very hull of the ship with a force unimaginable.

Men were swept off their feet and sent hurling towards the great beak of the beast that chomped away like it was some kind of binge eating zombie that had no natural order of balance to its appetite. The sheer gore of what I was beholding was more than I could truly even comprehend as blood splattered everywhere as man after man disappeared into the clacking jaws of a beast hard to define other than nightmarish.

Who and why had anyone ever made such a monster as this. While one great eye seemed of biological origin the other was clearly mechanical in appearance and came off as a greatly oversized telephoto lens.

Some men were beginning to recover and as they did, they started to open fire upon the monster seemingly gobbling up the rear of the ship and anyone that stood in its path. Bullets pinged off steel, robotic components even as others sank into organic flesh and as they did the creature wailed demonically.

The ship was abruptly shook back and forth and then suddenly it was let go. Out of the monster's grasp the ship surged full speed ahead and I watched as the water boiled up behind us as the monster began pursuit of us once more.

In shock of all that was happening, I turned my head and screamed all over again as I took in the eminence of our arrival into the docking slip. The ship jerked again as it was grabbed from behind, but all that did was slightly lessen the degree of the ship’s momentum crashing forward into the wharf.

I was thrown from the railing and dizzily I felt myself rolling across the deck and then I was falling. Somehow I landed on my feet on the deck directly below and unprepared for the impact I rolled over several times.

Gaining my footing I looked in terror to see a long armed tentacle grasp a man, but ten feet away from me and rip him backward through the air. With a scream he went flying towards the snapping beak of a monster not easily satisfied.

Instinctively, I fell to my hands on the deck and as I did I felt the wash of air as a tentacle came up empty for me. Adrenaline pumping I launched myself up and off the deck and in the opposite direction of the monster even as explosions shook the deck plates beneath me and sent fire frothing up out of cabin hatchways and port holes.

The ship was entirely doomed and seeing an open spot in the railing I did something incredibly stupid, but seemingly wise in the moment, I jumped. Flailing through the air I landed down in a hard jostled pile of flesh that did not quite feel like my own.

Despite the pain of landing on the dock hard I surged up to my feet and ran forward with the ready knowledge that surely I had simply jumped from the frying pan and into the fire. I ran along with several others to the shelter of a partially standing warehouse looking building about one hundred feet or so away.

Behind us the ship exploded and glancing back, I saw the monster dip beneath the waves apparently satiated with the level of destruction that it had wrecked. Glancing around as my lungs worked hard to handle my paranoia of the moment I counted exactly ten men of which sad to say one of them was the CIA dude.

The Captain was nowhere to be seen and inwardly I mourned his loss for decent man or not he had stood in the way of a lot of bad things occurring to me and for that I would be forever grateful. In general the men about me seemed to be as shaken up as I was by the rapid change of events.

Regaining control the leader barked out, “Let’s move! A disturbance like that will likely attract other things to come here!”

Other things! The fear of what that could mean drove me up to my feet and had me running along right after the others.

We ran from building to building heading steadily inland towards the crest of a hill that had the largest of the buildings in the settlement located on it. It was anyone’s guess at this moment whether that was the right thing to do or not.

Glancing back, I screamed and abruptly began to run faster as I passed by several of the others. They in turn looked back and as they did, they brought up their weapons and started to fire at a pack of seven or more entirely Jurassic looking Raptor like dinosaurs.

The Raptors scattered from view abruptly and we came to a stop as the men of the group made a defensive circle and whether I wanted it or not I was at the very center of it. Slowly then we moved forward all of us breathing hard as every man’s finger was pressed lightly to the trigger and ready to fire at anything that moved.

It was clear that no one present had anywhere close to the ammo or ordinance needed to survive in this place for very long. Expecting to be attacked at any moment we made our way into a city square of sorts and it was here that the Raptors showed their face again, but again bullets sent them ducking out of view.

The level of intelligence that I saw within their actions was horrifying. They were playing with us.

Then suddenly I watched all their heads swivel to the one side and then immediately they were all off and running away from us. I looked in the direction that they had gazed upon in an even greater expectation of some newfound horror, but instead I beheld a three tracked armored personnel carrier.

It came to a fast-paced halt in front of us and warily the guns of those around me turned towards the new threat. A loudspeaker sounded out words that were in German, “Place your weapons on the ground and proceed forward into the Citadel.”

Catching my breath I interpreted the message to the CIA guy and after a moment of hesitation he did as ordered. Even more reluctantly the rest of the survivors, followed his example.

Slowly we walked forward toward the structure of steel and concrete up ahead of us that was located on the brow of a hill even as three of the tracked gun platforms now took up positions all around us. The gates of a very battered looking Citadel opened up ahead of our approach even as a tattered Nazi flag hung above it in barely recognizable shreds.

There was literally no doubt left in my mind. This place was hell.

Very mindful of the gazes of unseen eyes upon me that boded ill, I walked forward with the trepidation of all that was likely to befall me soon weighing heavily upon my soul. What I didn’t know though, was that there were two sources of visual inspection taking place.

One viewpoint was from the perspective of a calculated potential of what was to be gained by the use of me, while the other perspective saw a more human side of me and contemplated the worthwhileness of fighting to acquire me.

As we passed through the gates of the Citadel they began to clang metallically shut behind us. No matter how many monsters may exist beyond these walls I had the feeling that we had just entered the belly of the real beast.

*********

Far away the secondary observer of the events taking place in the abandoned settlement closed his weathered monocular telescope as he debated upon what to do. Even though he was no longer looking at the vision of exotic female glory he had been a moment before the imagery of her was still alive within his mind.

He’d never seen a girl with blonde hair before. She had a lot of it too, along with a body that begged to be possessed by a man and bring forth his children.

Slowly, as he waited among the trees he debated on what his options were. Entering the Citadel was no easy endeavor, but for a girl like that it was worth trying surely, especially when he knew what would happen to her if he didn’t liberate her from the clutches of the men that remained from the time before.

He had no illusions about what was motivating him. He wanted her intensely for his own and yet was that worth the risk of trying to save her. One thing was for sure. If he didn’t try they would soon destroy her, even as they had to so many others before her.