Isolated

Isolated-


" It's loose."

Trevor looked up from his magazine with a start.

" What?... When?... How?"

He had been relaxing with his feet perched on the desk in the control center, enjoying an article on the treasure trove of resources being uncovered by the receding icecaps when Gary had burst in. He now swung his feet off the desk and let them fall while simultaneously swiveling in his chair to face the security monitors.

There were 4 screens each with a view of different parts of the compound. But the one that Trevor was interested in was the monitor that displayed the Lab. This was where they had decided to leave the bodies until their replacements arrived in a few days and they could better determine what to do with them. But now, instead of two bodies, there was only Anne, lying motionless in her eternal sleep on one of the labs' work tables.

"Shit ! " Trevor spat, "I only turned away not even ten minutes ago. Have you seen it or which way it went?" he asked.

" No," replied Gary , " I was just coming back from the can and I noticed it was awful cold in the corridor, so I went to go check it out. I got round the corner and saw that the lab door was hanging wide open and so was the outside door."

Trevor felt his blood go cold, and realized that they would have to figure out where the thing that used to be Alex had gone. Maybe it had escaped into the frozen wastes of northern Canada, or maybe it was still lurking around inside. Either way, they would have to find it before it found them. Trevor wasn't willing to take any chances with it, especially after seeing what it did to Anne.

" We have to find it." he said somberly to Gary. " We have replacements showing up in two days and it's gonna be hard enough to explain everything even if we have both bodies, and we can't very well show them Anne and say ' The thing that did this is still lurking around here somewhere. Have a good three months !'"

Gary just nodded his head. Most of the color had drained from his face and his eyes had taken on the glassiness of fear. He had been the one to experience first hand the more graphic episodes of this trial, and he had held together surprisingly well. But eventually everyone can reach their breaking point, Trevor just wondered how long until Gary reached his.

" I aint going nowhere without something to defend myself with."


" Fair enough," said Trevor, " but this is just a research facility. The closest thing we have to a weapon is the tranq gun ,and we've already used that up remember ?" 

It was only yesterday that everything had gone to shit, and since then things had been on a constant downward spiral. When Alex hadn't shown up for breakfast, the rest of the crew became somewhat alarmed considering the fact that Alex was invariably the first one up. It was Anne that had gone to check on him, and when a few moments later Gary and Trevor heard her voice coming from Alex' quarters, in a tone that was bordering on panic, they too rushed in to see what was the matter.
What they saw lying on the cot was Alex, but in a state that none of them could reasonably explain. He looked sick...beyond sick. He lay there amid his sweat drenched sheets with his eyes partially open exposing the rolled up whites beneath. The skin around his eyes had become puffy and blackened and his mouth hung agape as he gasped for breath with a stomach turning raspiness. Around his head and neck were the dried and flaking remnants of a major vomit spree that must have taken place the previous night. That in and of itself was bad enough, but anyone who knew what a fanatically hygenic person Alex was would be shocked to see him lying in his own upchuck, regardless of how sick he was. But what was perhaps the most frightening of all was the fact that nobody could account for this sudden turn of events or even begin to diagnose what the problem could be.

Since she was the only one with any degree of medical training, it had been Anne who decided to take care of him. So, while she tended to Alex as best she could with the compounds' meager medical supplies, Trevor had gone to call in an emergency evacuation. But as luck would have it, an intense Arctic storm from the previous night had knocked out their communication tower. Despite the fact that the relief crew was most likely en route, Trevor realized that they couldn't really wait, so he and Gary were in the process of suiting up to go make an attempt at repairs when they heard Anne scream.

Racing back to the room, they saw that Alex had somehow overcome his incapacity, risen from his bed and cornered Anne. The most unsettling part of it was that he looked just as ill, but now instead of a slack expression, he wore the grin of an idiot as he just stood there swaying on his feet staring at Anne and drooling all over himself, all the while that lunatic grin on his face.

Gary had tried to get its' attention which only resulted in the thing striking out and pinning Annes' face against the wall with its' hand. It was then that Trevor remembered that he had been holding the tranq gun in preparation for he and Garys' trip outside. In a flash he decided to use it, disregarding the fact that the dosage could be near fatal to a human.

The first shot hit squarely in the back of the thing, but it didn't seem to notice much, perhaps it was too driven by purpose because it moved in almost instintively for Annes' neck and tore out a great chunk of flesh with it's teeth.Anne stopped squirming and went limp as blood spewed from the wound in her neck. At least she hadn't suffered much. Gary, for his part was too shocked to react at all. He just stood there, transfixed by the gory horror show in front of him. He only seemed to register the barest form of comprehension right up to the point when the thing grabbed him.

By this point, Trevor had loaded the second to last dart into the chamber and squeezed off a shot. The dart went wild and only succeeded in knocking out one of the flourescent tubes hanging overhead. Realizing that this was his final chance to do anything, Trevor loaded the final dart, determined to use the gun as a club if it came to that. The dart hit the blood soaked thing that was Alex in the side of the neck and the effect was almost immediate, which was fortunate for Gary since the thing had been mere inces from taking a bite out of him.

Afterwards, as Trevor transported Annes' corpse and Alex' body to the lab, Gary just sat there stunned, smoking a cigarette and staring into space. He had regained his composure considerably by the time Trevor was done. Trevor wasn't sure if he recovered quickly from this kind of thing, or if Gary just had a secret supply of happy pills, but either way he was grateful. They both needed to keep their composure to get through the next few days.

They passed through the night without anything happening and the whole situation began to take on a dreamy fictional quality, unless they gazed at the security monitors and saw the two bodies laid out on the research tables.

And now there was only one.

" There's a chainsaw out in the quonset." offered Gary attempting to solve the weapon dilemma.

Trevor gagged a little at the thought of having to use a chainsaw as a defensive tool, but realized that it could mean the difference between life or death. " Did you wanna go grab it or should I? " he asked.

" You go. I'll hold down the fort, so to speak."

" I'll just be a tick, hold tight." Trevor said.

The frigid north wind cut through Trevors' parka as soon as he stepped out the door. Had the thing come this way? With the blustery air, it was hard to tell. Any tracks left would have drifted over five minutes after being made. He braced against the gale and made it to the quonset where the ski-doos and other mechanical bric-a-brac was kept and found the chainsaw. Again, he was struck by the image of using it on a human (or something human-like), and had to choke back the bile rising in his throat.

When he returned to the main compound, he was immediately struck by the feeling in the air. Something had changed in the short time he was gone. Changed for the worse.

Sure enough, as he walked in the door of the monitor room, he saw Gary transfixed by something out of sight. " Gary?" he whispered, instantly cautious. Taking another step that afforded a clearer view of the room, he saw the object of Garys' attention. It was the thing that had been Alex staring at him and again swaying on its' feet, grinning.

"Shit!" Trevor spat as he set the chainsaw down to get better leverage on the pull cord.

Hearing the curse, Gary snapped out of his reverie and attempted to punch the thing but his fist was caught mid-air and a ferocious bite was taken from his arm for the effort. Behind him, Trevor had started the saw on its' first pull. If nothing else, Trevor thought, at least the facility always had top notch equipment.
Startled by the noise , the thing released Garys' arm and regarded Trevor with an innocent fascination. But it was short lived. Moments later its' face disappeared in a fountain of gristle, bone and blood as Trevor swung the saw upwards in a clumsy attempt at decapitation. The end result was the same, anyways. with most of its' head gone, the thing that was Alex slumped to the floor, twitched once and was still.

" My fucking arm ! " Gary moaned looking at the gnarled flesh. It looked bad but at least it wasn't gushing. As long as Trevor could keep him from going into shock, he might make it the next couple of days.

" Come on, man. Let's get you down to the lab and get that cleaned out and wrapped up." said Trevor, trying his best to sound calm, which he most certainly was not.

In the lab , under the bright lights, Trevor realized for the first time what a mess Gary was. He looked as though he had just come from a slaughterhouse tour gone horribly wrong, pale-faced and covered in gore. It was shortly after this thought that he realized also that he probably looked the same. He opened a bottle of peroxide and began pouring it directly into the wound.Gary winced a little, but like everything else, he took it like a man.

"Say, you don't think that thing was contagious do you ? " Gary asked hopefully.

Behind them, almost as if on cue, the body that had been Annes' opened its' eyes.