The Barsoom Project

Max ran a modified zig-zag pattern through the ruins. He stopped, heaving for breath. Max turned and ran his fingers over one of the blocks. Hard, cold, carved. The layers of ice prevented his fingers from actually touching the carving. He saw glyphs and pictographs portraying strangely shaped creatures, some of which looked like the result of an obscene, and surely fatal, mating of human and pachyderm.

They were oddly hypnotic. He wanted to spend more time studying them, but a whisper from across the path pulled him back to his mission.

Yarnall motioned with his war club. Bowles had moved on ahead, maneuvering to a piece of masonry within ten yards of the line of naked Eskimos.

Max was twenty yards away. From here the men and women appeared listless; they stood as if in a deep trance or drugged state. Their hair fluttered in the wind, and they stared straight ahead toward the low opening.

He could see a little into the room now. There was no door, just an arch formed by stone slabs that seemed almost haphazardly thrown about, by earthquake or tidal wave or long ages under water. Certainly, no living force could move blocks so massive…?

Deep within the recesses of the alcove, lights flickered and shapes moved. When the wind ceased howling for even a few moments, he heard screams that turned his stomach.

Bowles was right. No one could leave a friend to such ministrations, regardless of the risk.

They were heroes!

He checked both sides and joined Yarnall. Yarnall slapped him on the shoulder and, crouching, ran up to join Bowles.

Bowles was flattened out against the wall… heh. Well, the stout actor was certainly trying to flatten himself. Watching, waiting. He showed Max a sickly smile. Max read fear and hope and a touch of genuine heroism in that smile. Bowles motioned Yarnall over to the other side of the divide. Both took aim at the headless thing And it turned to face them. Max almost screamed.

It was brownish, with skin that folded over and over itself like an old overcoat, cracked and blistered, moving like sheaths of heavy leather. It had no head, but it had a face. The face was set into its belly. It was heavy and bovine, leaden-jowled, with bright little eyes the shape and size of almonds.

It was utterly evil, almost an abstraction of malevolence. Slits for eyes, and a mouth that looked like the teeth within it had chewed their way to the surface, leaving the lips raw and tattered, the incisors sharp and encrusted with red and brown filth.

It was the face of a Yeti, and it snarled at them, and opened its mouth for a scream Bowles threw his spear. It missed and clattered on the far side.

Yarnall began firing.

The first two shots seemed to have no effect at all. But the third drove the beast to its knees. The fourth knocked its bowed legs from beneath it. It flopped back onto its massive, gnarled shoulders.

Bowles motioned them back, and dashed out, and pulled one of the naked men out of the line. The others stood cowed, afraid to move, or too numb from cold…

Or something.

But the instant that Bowles grabbed Mik-luk, the Eskimo grabbed him back. His mouth opened hugely. In less than a second it had expanded to the size of a kitchen oven. He screamed like a dying wind.

Bowles’s scream was quite a lot louder as he tried to tear himself loose. Max started out from his hiding place, and saw shadows emerging from the depths of those odd, disquieting angles.

Bowles screamed, “Get back! Get back! He’s already-”

That was all that he had time to say before the others were on him, all of the naked, frozen men. Bowles went down, their nails and teeth savaging him.

A second Amartoq stepped out in front of Yarnall. The Guardsman was too close to get his rifle up. The torn, lipless mouth set in its stomach-face snarled, and it wrenched the rifle from his hands and bent it into a “U” shape. Yarnall was frozen for a moment, and only Bowles’s screams roused him from his shock.

From Bowles they heard a last inarticulate cry as the light within the alcove brightened, and Robin Bowles was dragged inside.

Yarnall scrambled back, tripped and fell. Max looked at the Guardsman’s face. The fear there was not an act. The sight of the beast advancing on him was as intimidating as anything that Max could imagine, though by now his imagination had turned wild and crazy.

But Max was in motion, moving forward, swinging the usik. He brought it down with a thump, squarely between the monstrous shoulders.

He felt the thump. It startled him. The beast grunted with pain. Other shapes, other forms emerged from the shadows, hissing curses. He swung the club backhand across the thing’s face, and howled victory as he saw the damage.

It screamed again, covered its maimed face, and staggered back. Max scooped up Yarnall, shoulder under armpit. “Come on, we’ve got to get Bowles.”

“No! No, Max!” Yarnall had found his feet. “He was right. We need a unified plan. Otherwise we’re just going to get picked apart.”