An Alphabet Story XLIV
The Last Three Days: When silence cracks, it does not echo...it devours.
A low groan of the steel shutters made Dr. Keller’s stomach pitch; the Arctic wind outside clawed at the metal walls as if it, too, wanted entry.
Breathing frost into his scarf, he crouched near the generator, its hum strangely syncopated, like a failing heartbeat.
Clutching his journal, he scribbled: ‘Day 87. Last of the team gone. Something else in here with me.’
Drip…the water pipes leaked even though the whole place was frozen, and he dared not look too closely at what color the “water” had turned.
Every step in the corridor sounded doubled, the echo carrying heavier, wetter footfalls than his own.
Flakes of skin, translucent and curling, clung to the grated floor like snow that bled when stepped on.
Gulping air that stank faintly of copper and ozone, he checked the lab door, bolted it, and whispered, “Three more days, just three.”
His reflection in the glass wall twitched half a beat behind him, tilting its head in an angle his own neck could never bend.
Inside the freezer, the samples rattled as if knocking to be let out, the stench seeping despite sealed cases.
Just when his nerves steadied, a whisper slithered through the vent: You are already mine.
Keller smashed the vent shut with his boot, his ears ringing with a screech too shrill for the human throat.
Looking at his hands, he realized his knuckles were split, but not from kicking metal…he hadn’t even touched it.
Midnight came and the generator faltered, plunging the corridors into gulps of black where shapes unfurled, too tall for the ceiling, too thin for bone.
Nails scraped from inside the sealed freezer now, carving shapes he recognized as crude diagrams of his own face.
Overcome by terror, he injected himself with the last of the stimulants; the needle burned like acid, his veins lighting with cold fire.
Panic made him hallucinate…or maybe not…when his dead colleagues shuffled past, their mouths opening like torn envelopes spilling soundless screams.
Questioning his sanity didn’t matter anymore; survival was a countdown, each hour scraped raw from his mind.
Rats should not exist in the Arctic, yet one scuttled across the mess hall table with human teeth set in its jaw, chittering his name.
Something slammed the main door at dawn, rhythmic, as if practicing the beat of his pulse.
Three days passed in minutes and years both; when the lock finally disengaged, the klaxon’s shriek sounded like freedom itself.
Unbolting the door with trembling hands, Keller staggered into the snow, lungs filling with air sharp as razors.
Vast white tundra stretched, glittering under weak sun, but the relief cracked instantly when he saw black shapes dotting the horizon.
Waves of them, crawling, walking, writhing, dozens…hundreds…of the same thing that stalked him inside.
Xenogenesis, his mind offered numbly, recalling the word he once jotted in theoretical margins, never meant to be lived.
Yawning maws tilted skyward, the creatures shrieked in unison, the sound tearing clouds apart like fragile paper.
Zigzagging nowhere to run, Keller realized the facility had been his coffin…
but stepping outside was his hell.
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