The Thing 2: Infection✔️

Chapter 02: Outpost 31

Blake was still mulling over the curiosities he'd encountered so far as the chopper shot through the dismal weather conditions over the frozen seventh continent. He hadn't come up with anything new, so he turned to the others.

"Did any of you see anything weird after you got down here?" he asked. "Anything out of the ordinary at all?"

"I didn't. I just got here about an hour ago," North said.

"Me too," Burrows replied. "Besides the whole being shoved on a helicopter and flown down to Antarctica, and the mention of an alien."

"What about you?" Blake asked, turning his attention to Weldon, who had remained unusually silent so far.

"I got here three days ago," Weldon replied finally. "I got dropped off at somewhere else, they called it Strata Station. It was big and right next to an airfield. It looked all brand new. They were still building a lot of it. A lot of it was underground."

"What did they want with you?" Blake asked, frowning.

"I don't know, really. They had me look over a few guys, run some tests on them. Normal tests, nothing strange, I guess. They seemed perfectly healthy," Weldon replied.

"Who were these guys? Special Forces?"

"Maybe...I'm not sure. They did seem like soldiers, definitely. Maybe SEALs or even Black Ops." He shrugged. "I couldn't be sure. No one ever told me anything, just asked me to do these tests, checking their blood, their health, their organs."

"Huh," Blake muttered.

Stranger still.

The pilot gave out the five minute warning.

"All right, focus up, people. We'll be sticking together for this op, I don't want anyone going off on their own. We're looking for survivors but there's a good chance we'll find none. What Whitley really wants is information. So prioritize anything that might hold it: papers, computers, documents of any kind. Any questions?"

There were none.

Blake nodded and sat back, trying to calm himself, to shove these confused concerns from his mind. But he'd only had a minute before his radio crackled to life.

"Captain Blake? It's Whitley. What's the situation? Over."

Blake sighed and retrieved his radio. He glanced out the window as something caught his eye and realized they'd arrived. The helicopter was banking over the remains of Outpost Thirty One. Blake frowned. "Not good, over," he said into the radio.

"Have you found anything? Over."

"No. We haven't landed yet, Colonel. But I can confirm that the base is basically gone. FUBAR. Looks like massive explosives damage and..." he paused, spying a toppled communications antenna, "the transmitter's down." He sighed. "Finding anything here will be like searching for a needle in a haystack, over," he muttered.

"Understood. Keep your team together and get inside. Remember, its forty below out there. I'll try to have the chopper back to you within an hour, it's needed elsewhere. Unfortunately, it looks like there's a bad storm headed our way. Over."

"Fantastic...we'll do a sweep and report back, Colonel. Over."

"Affirmative. Out."

The chopper was coming in for a landing now.

As soon as they were down, Blake stood up and moved to the door. He opened it up, immediately letting in a swirl of snow and wind.

"Go! Go!"