Animosity : Chapter 3 : Cold, Alone, Alive

We’ve finally come to the edge of the woods. Of the forty-five men we started with, only 6 remain. I’m not even sure what happened to most of them. We’ve lost most of our food and millions of dollars in equipment along the way. Everyone is panicked. I’ve never seen plant life like this before. It’s like every single leaf and rock in that forest is alive.

Cold

Plants seem to have taken over every inch of this planet that isn’t covered in ice. Even the oceans are covered with what looks like algae and seaweed, painting the sky a beautiful greenish-turquoise color. From orbit the planet looks like Pangaea –the way Earth looked billions of years ago. It has one enormous supercontinent that covers about thirty percent of the planet. An immense glacier the size of a large country connects directly to that continent in several spots and traces downward to the southern pole. The rest is covered by an ocean that we can’t find the bottom of with our instruments –most likely because of the dense plant life.

The landmass is covered by the punishingly dense jungle we just escaped. The edge of it is a half kilometer away from us now but everyone is still anxious to move farther. Our crew gave up our mission long ago in favor of basic survival, so our next step is anyone’s guess. We lost contact with the landing site days ago and the jungle seems like the only way back. I’m not really sure what else I’m supposed to be writing in this log, so I’ll go with my mission objectives. It would be like re-living the trauma to write about the other events.

I was supposed to assist the senior Science Team in collecting samples while we worked our way towards a clearing in the southeast where the Orbit Team has found possible signs of life. Sadly, most of the samples I’ve taken are completely useless without the equipment we lost, but some have already shown remarkable physical reactions. One of them has continued to grow inside the sealed specimen bag I placed it in. It has nearly doubled in size and developed a peculiar bud –even in an air-tight container. Another specimen I took has completely consumed the swab with a black coating that I swear is moving. The bottom of the BioRepel-treated bottle is even beginning to show black spots. I’ve never seen any organism this small resist the BioRepel treatment on my specimen bottles before.

Major Colissa is entirely responsible for my continued existence. She took charge over the soldiers and scientists as soon as everything ‘went to shit’ — as she puts it — and Colonel Williams was killed. Following her orders has been key in our survival. I only hope she knows what we should do next.

We’re setting camp for the night now. I pray that this will be my first peaceful night of rest, but Lord knows what kind of threats await us out here on the ice tonight.

–END LOG M2.13–
–04:51:13 18.11.2321–
–DR. MARTINE DEPALO–
–JUNIOR BIOLOGIST–

Nadine Colissa sat in her spacious tent. It had previously been shared with two other officers before they were killed on their way here. The sun had only set a few minutes ago but her breath was already changing to vapor as soon as it left her lips. She wasn’t fond of the other officers, but their extra warmth would be welcome right now. It was going to be a long night.

The communication technology they were using was able to transmit from Beijing to Los Angeles with perfect clarity and minimal delay, but they lost all contact with the base only a couple kilometers into the jungle. Colonel Williams ordered them all to continue without contact with the base. At that time, she ordered the science team and two lieutenants to keep logs and attempt to upload them to the ship in orbit. They had yet to make a connection.

She had no idea what she was doing. The officers weren’t briefed on anything like the resistance they met in there. Men were pulled away in complete silence at night. Every morning, a couple more people who were checked in the night before went missing. During the day the plants and soil beneath them would move and injure them. In one encounter an extremely large tree fell between their ranks abruptly, separating five members from the rest of the group. She could hear screams and gunfire as she tried to climb back over the massive blockage to help them. When she finally made it over, there was nothing left but smashed equipment and pools of blood smeared across the soil as if the bodies were dragged away.

The horrific memories of those days felt like they might stop her heart. The fear of the moment had left her, but the memory forged new fears that followed her past the tree line. She looked down at her trembling hands and wished it was hypothermia. Colissa was a professional soldier before she began working for the Arc Technologies Security Force. The appalling casualties of war were no stranger to her, but this was a far cry from South America. Fighting the most brutal battles against human targets on Earth with natural laws she understood was preferable to whatever she was fighting here.

Despite her will, Colissa couldn’t keep a log. She would look back at each day’s events and see only blurs of blood spatter, vines cracking like whips, men’s throats being slashed out of thin air, and jagged crevasses opening beneath them. Having the correct to response to the dangers didn’t stop her from questioning her sanity. The survivors of today were the ones that affirmed her order the second day of the mission: “The instant you sense danger, run as fast as you can and never look back”.

Of a platoon of soldiers and an eight man science team, only four soldiers, one medic, and one kid fresh out of the university remained. Their mission was FUBAR and there was little chance of them surviving at all. The only way back to base that she knew of was through the jungle they had barely survived. On top of all that, they certainly weren’t prepared to endure the freezing cold of the glacier for long. They were paying the heavy price of short term safety.

Colissa laid awake the entire night, shivering under her sleeping bag. A digital photo remained open on her HUD, but even thoughts of her children back home couldn’t keep her warm or ease her mind that night.

Alone

“Listen up!” Major Colissa shouted to the shivering five that huddled together in front of her. Their lips were blue and their eyes shone the deep red of men that hadn’t slept in a month. “We have successfully made contact with the orbit team. They are triangulating our position as we speak and are preparing to send a shuttle to pick us up.” The five all sighed weakly in unison. Tears welled up in Martine’s eyes.

Martine wasn’t what she would describe as Security Force material. His cleanly-shaven pale skin was unmarred and unblemished, making him look even younger than he was. His conservative haircut with a side part reminded Colissa of pictures she’d seen of her grandfather’s generation. He was average height and weight, but seemed to have very little muscle. It all would be excusable if he had any street smarts at all. He was good at following orders, but he was incapable of detecting danger until it was already in his face. He would zone out and just stare at a tree or an insect while they were moving through the jungle, even after several men had been killed in the days before. How he managed to survive this long baffled her.

“However,” she continued, “we have some problems. The Orbit Team has detected strange geological activity beneath us ever since we sent them our position. They aren’t sure if it’s just normal behavior for this part of the planet or if an event is on its way. They advise extreme caution and say that we should sit tight right here until they come get us.” Martine raised his hand eagerly.

She nodded to him, “Go ahead.”

“Did they say anything about the data that we sent?” Martine asked.

“They haven’t analyzed anything yet… which I’m glad for since they should be focusing on getting us the fuck out of here, don’t you think?” she snapped. Martine stiffened his posture and sealed his lips. This was the way the Major preferred him. She resumed her briefing, “Any other concerns? Or are we all ready to pack up and get off this hellhole?” When the five were silent, she waved them off and they returned to their tents.

Major Colissa worked hard to disguise her pessimism with bravado. She was relieved that the team had real hope now and not some illusory assurance she would have had to give them otherwise. Motivation and bold speeches were never her strength, especially when they were packed with military-grade deception. In the privacy of her tent she allowed a small smile to cross her chapped lips and her stomach settled for the first time since she left base. She laid down on her sleeping bag for a moment and unintentionally drifted into a light sleep.

Colissa was jarred awake by a blaring shriek that tore through the silence of her tent. An enormous shadow fell over her through the thin cloth walls. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed her rifle and pointed it through the flap of her tent, her head following soon after. Splitting the center of their campsite was an immense cliff of ice and wood. An enormous root seemed to come from a large tree at the edge of the jungle. It had risen instantly from beneath the ground, breaking apart the ice beneath them in a violent burst. She could see two tents and two bodies at the foot of the newly-formed cliff. They weren’t moving.

“What the hell is that!?” Martine shouted from behind her.

She turned to him. “Run! Now!” she screamed to him as she lowered her weapon. They broke away from the camp and ran fast as they could across the flat reflective ice. The ground beneath them was shaking violently and they stumbled the entire distance. Martine turned back for only a moment as he ran, just in time to see one of the soldiers emerge from his tent only to be killed by a large sheet of ice that fell from the top of the cliff.

Martine gagged at the sight, lost his footing and fell. Colissa turned to gather him by grabbing his wrist and pulled him so quickly that he couldn’t get his feet under him to run. She dragged him along the ice for a few hundred feet, away from the disaster that was once their camp. When the tremors in the glacier finally stopped she collapsed, breathing rapidly and letting the ice on the ground cool her forehead as she knelt upon it. She laughed hysterically in desperation.

Martine sat up on the ice, wide-eyed and numb from being dragged across the ice. He stared into the distance at the enormous roots of the tree and the ice that continued to fall from atop them. He couldn’t feel his wrist aching in the intense cold. After a few moments, he saw the tiny dot that was the last of their tents fall over the edge.

Alive

Martine was still entranced inside the wide empty space of the carrier ship. He stared at the ceiling, barely blinking. The Major was sitting across from him and a few seats down. This carrier was normally used to transport up to a hundred people, so the presence of only two loudly echoed the madness of losing forty-three human beings in a matter of days.

Martine’s mind was a still image picture show. All he could see were mental photographs of each and every person he saw die repeating in an endless loop. He knew a couple of them, but most were men and women he had just met at the start of the mission. It seemed each time he started to get to know one of them, they were torn away within a few hours.

He was broken from his trance only for a moment when Colissa snored loudly. She was a frightening woman with a very masculine way about her, but sleeping across from him she looked peaceful. Her snore didn’t detract much from her beautiful features. She was probably in her forties, but she was in better shape than any of the gymnasts he used to flirt with back at the university. Her dark hair fell down over her, shading her eyes and grazing her shoulders. Her lips moved slightly as she slept as if she were whispering to herself. He couldn’t help but wonder how she acted when she was off-duty. Did she order her kids back home around the way she did with him?

She snorted loudly and her face grimaced as if she tasted something unpleasant. If he wasn’t strapped in across from her, Martine would have considered waking her. He decided it was probably best to let her sleep. She hadn’t had the opportunity in nearly a week. Soon enough, his mind went back to the images. He wondered if they were going to stick with him for life. Each picture was as vivid as if he were still there staring at them.

There was one image in his mind that he went back to most of all, despite his efforts to expunge it. He never mentioned it because he was certain he was insane if he gave it credence. This planet was extremely rich in oxygen and panicked breathing had its way of making people euphoric. On top of that, it wouldn’t be unheard of for the plants around them to produce spores that could make him hallucinate. The rationalizations were like limp arms pressing on a boulder, futile.

Concept for the Refinery in the Felni town.