About the time the midday sun began its westerly descent, I came upon the first burrow, the hole’s opening as wide as a manhole cover. I peered over the edge to gauge its depths, but the shaft angled away after the first forty feet. Deciding I wanted nothing to do with yet another imaginary creature, I continued on.

The flies became swirling black clouds. Removing the vinyl hood, I fashioned eyeholes and covered my face with the mask. I swatted insects from my wrapped wounds and wiped at the sweat that was dripping into my eyes.

Bleached bones littered the plain. The burrows increased in number, their occupants remaining out of sight.

My mind wandered.

Suppose the impossible. Assume for a moment I’m not frozen. What kind of cataclysm could have melted the Antarctic ice sheet? Climate change? Polar shift?

Wait, what if that asteroid struck the South Pole? That might explain the lack of ice, but what about these creatures? For species like this to evolve … we’re talking tens of thousands, maybe millions of years. There’s no way I could I have remained frozen that long … is there?

What about Andria? The others? What happened to them? Could they still be frozen?

What could have caused GOLEM to fail? Could a celestial impact have shut down the computer? Could it have been sabotaged?

Walking with my head down, I didn’t see the creature until I was nearly upon it.

Partially buried in the sand, I had mistaken it from afar as a dune. Now, as I circled the monstrosity, inspecting the beached animal’s lifeless tentacles, I estimated the squid’s carcass to be in excess of one hundred and fifty feet, its weight topping sixty tons when wet.

The giant cephalopod had not been wet for some time, its rotting remains shriveling flat in the hot sun. The stench was overpowering, attracting swarms of flies that kept me from examining the animal more closely, but from what I could see, there were neither wounds nor indicators of disease. Either the mammoth sea creature had been caught in a wave and was beached, or it had died at sea and was left onshore with the last high tide.

Could the tide wash up this far inland? The thought gave me pause. Using the binoculars, I turned my attention back to the ocean.

“Aw, hell.”

Despite having trekked a good five miles over the last few hours, I remained only a few hundred yards from the relentless tide’s waterline, which was flooding the burrows, inviting the inhabitants to venture forth. As the sea again receded, powder-blue crabs emerged from their holes, each crustacean as large as a Honda Civic.

Securing the binoculars inside a zippered pocket, I set off on a jog.