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Back Beneath the Dark Ice Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. BENEATH THE DARK ICE
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Acknowledgements
  6. Prologue
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-one
  28. Twenty-two
  29. Twenty-three
  30. Twenty-four
  31. Twenty-five
  32. Twenty-six
  33. Twenty-seven
  34. Twenty-eight
  35. Twenty-nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-one
  38. Thirty-two
  39. Epilogue
  40. One
  41. Two
  42. Three

“Not this time. I can move at twice the speed of all of you, and I can rejoin you very quickly, but only by myself.” He moved nearer to Aimee, removed his cracked and dented helmet and wiped sweat from his forehead before whispering to her, “I’ll be OK; they’ll need you to lead them.” Alex pulled his comm unit and headset from the helmet and stuffed it into a pocket. He dropped the helmet to the ground and disappeared into the dark like a wraith.

In the darkness Alex moved swiftly and lightly; he could hear and see almost everything around him, and what he couldn’t see, he could sense. The grinding was continuing and he needed to see how the creature was going to force its way through the first narrowing it was about to encounter. He also wanted to place one of his last grenades in its path and perhaps encourage it to change its mind and stop following them.

Alex blended back into a tiny alcove in the wall of the cave and watched the leviathan approach. He was astounded at how it laboriously pulled itself forward, dragging its giant shell behind it. It was colder than its surroundings and gave off a slight green glow. Its two tentacle clubs waved out in front of it like insect feelers probing the way ahead and maybe even tasting the air for chemical traces of the small humans it hoped to devour.

At the first junction, Alex could see that it was going to have trouble forcing its gigantic form into the slightly smaller cave. Though the cave itself was still large enough to drive a couple of eighteen-wheel rigs through, it was going to be an impossible squeeze for the giant cephalopod.

The two waving tentacle clubs were feeling the junction and assessing its size. The creature halted and seemed to be ruminating over its next step. Good, thought Alex, it’s too small, isn’t it? If it tried to drag its way into the smaller cave it may at the least slow down its progress so much that they could leave the creature long behind them.

Then there came a liquid sucking sound from the creature and Alex watched in dismay as the giant slowly pulled itself free from its shell. Mucous flooded down around it and Alex could smell sea salt, decayed meat and dozens of other unidentifiable odours that emanated from the beast’s soft body. Just like a hermit crab it could obviously move in and out of the shell at will—that explained how it was able to pursue them into smaller caves.