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Back Beneath the Dark Ice
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

Aimee turned around and quickly kissed Alex on the side of his mouth and then said, “Don’t you dare be long.” With that she grabbed the rope and disappeared up through the hole as if by a conjuror’s rope trick. In a few seconds the rope came back down and Matt wasted no time in grabbing hold; he turned briefly and gave Alex the thumbs-up and he too disappeared up through the hole. Matt looked older. Alex remembered when he first saw Matt and how young he seemed. Now he looked hollow, weary with loss. Alex turned back into the darkness. Monica, Tank, Johnson; all of them gone. He felt little sorrow. As a HAWC he was trained to ignore physical and emotional trauma. But he was still human; there should have been more. What else was changing inside him?

Alex shook his head to clear his mind and opened his senses to the underground. He could feel the enormous malicious presence lurking nearby. He could sense hunger, strength, anger and an eons-old intelligence. This was not a creature that deserved to roam the earth today; it was a thing of myths and nightmares—a creature of darkness and brutality.

The rope dropped back down. Alex seized it as the ground shook beneath his feet.

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It was a tight squeeze and Alex was thankful the water had smoothed the edges and made them slippery—though his tolerance of pain was much greater than an ordinary person’s, he didn’t relish the idea of being dragged over iron-hard jagged ice with a naked upper body. It took four men to haul Alex out of the ice hole. The glare from the light on the ice and snow brought tears of irritation to his eyes but the air was cool and clear even with the faint odour of thermite. As well as Lieutenant O’Riordan and the other soldiers who pulled him out, there were six other military men on the ice loosely cradling either ice axes or M16s. Aimee and Matt stood off to the side, covered in army-issue blankets. They had refused to be winched back to the surface until Alex was out and safe.

The ice was thickening up again now, and was already another few feet higher than when the rescue team had started to widen Alex’s hole. The mist of humidity had dropped to the ice; the refreeze had begun.

O’Riordan walked quickly up to Alex and shook his hand. “Good to see you, sir. Incoming transmission for you.” O’Riordan handed Alex his radio.

“Arcadian, I knew you’d make it.”

At the edge of the melted pit a mound broke open and the muzzle of the M98 lifted out of the snow.