Hive

“Sure enough,” St. Ours said. “Sure enough. Only this time it was worse, savvy? They had all these rocks they found up there, but real flat with weird carvings on ‘em like hieroglyphics or some of that Egyptian gobbledegook. They was acting damn freaky, hoarding those rocks, getting really scary about ‘em. So one day, I was over at their shack and I says to ‘em, I ast ‘em what in Christ were those rocks about? They said they were artifacts from some ancient civilization, wouldn’t let me touch ‘em. Said once you touched ‘em, your mind went one drop at a time and something else filled it. What? I ast ‘em. But they wouldn’t say, just grinning and staring like a couple pitch-and-throw carnie dolls. Two days later, yessir, two days later, hand in hand they wandered off into a blizzard, left a note that they was following the ‘old voices from under the mountain.’ Jesus Christ. But that just goes to show you the kind of horseshitty things that happen down here.”

“I believe it,” Meiner said.

Hayes pushed his plate away, wondering why they had to choose him as their totem pole to dance around. “Listen, you guys, I was there when Lind dropped his deck. None of you were, only me. He didn’t try to slit his wrists or anything like that, he just had a bad time of it is all.”

They listened intently, nodded, then Rutkowski got that conspiratorial look in his eyes and said, “Slit both his wrists, that’s what they’re saying. Probably would’ve made a go of his throat if there were time.”

“I don’t like it,” St. Ours said.

“Listen - “ Hayes attempted, but they shut him off like a leaky tap.

“I don’t like the idea of three more months up here with a crazy man,” Rutkowski said. “They better lock his ass up. That’s all I gotta say on the matter.”

Meiner said, “It ain’t that crazy shit you got to worry about, it’s what Gates brought back here. Jesus and Mary, go out there and look at that one he’s defrosting . . . it’ll make you want to piss down your leg. Looks like some kind of crazy gray cucumber with these yellow worms growing out of the top of its head and big, staring red eyes at the end of each one . . . nothing that looks like that thing can be up to any good. Believe you me.”

Gradually, as the shit got deeper and it got difficult to find leg room or draw a breath with the stink, they moved off and Lind was pretty much forgotten. Now it was just the mummies and how word had it they weren’t even from this planet. Ghost stories and campfire tales and those three big, seasoned men trying to out-do one another, scaring the shit out of each other in the process.

Hayes ignored it all and sipped his soup, listened to the wind trying to strip Targa House off the frozen tundra as it did day after day, reaching and clawing and howling like something hungry come down out of the mountains to the west.

“Join you?” a voice said.

Hayes looked up and it was Doc Sharkey, the station’s physician, a short pretty redhead with bright blue eyes. She was the only woman in camp and all the men were saying how she was too heavy for their liking, but by spring they’d all be trying to get into her pants.

Thing was, she wasn’t heavy, not in Hayes’ worldview. She was wide in the hips, nicely rounded in that way he’d always found blatantly sexual. No, the men kept their distance (at least for the time being) because she intimidated them. It wasn’t anything she actually said or did, but her face more than anything. Those upturned Nordic eyes of hers gave her a cold, detached look that was enhanced by her mouth which had a sort of cruel lilt to it.

Hayes liked her right away when he met her and the reason for that was downright silly and he didn’t even like to admit it to himself: she reminded him of Carla Jean Rasper from the third grade, his first serious crush. Same hair, same eyes, same mouth. When he’d first caught sight of Sharkey, he’d been instantly transported back to grade school, speechless and stupid just like he’d been around Carla Jean. Good Morning, little schoolgirl . . .

“Earth to Jimmy Hayes . . . what’s your frequency?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, Doc, sit down. Please do,” Hayes said.

What’s your frequency? He liked that. Hadn’t that nut who attacked Dan Rather on his way to CBS that time said something like that? Sure. What’s your frequency, Kenneth? REM had done a song by the same name.

Sharkey sat down and Hayes found himself staring into her eyes a little too long. He wasn’t married, but she was. Her husband was an anthropologist on a grant somewhere in Borneo studying monkey semen or something like that.

“How goes it?” Sharkey asked, pouring some dressing on her salad.

Hayes laughed without meaning to do so. “Well, I been thinking that they better take a chance and send a plane down here before all these people go completely mad.”