The Thing 2: Infection✔️

Chapter 03: Dronning Maud

"Hold it!" he called, moving forward, gun ready. "Identify yourself!"

There was something wrong with the movement he glimpsed through the mist. It was far too small, almost like an animal or something. He thought he might just be seeing someone's head, their body blocked by a mound of snow, but then it was gone. Blake finished getting up out of the depression and search the immediate area.

But there was nothing.

"Shit," he muttered, wondering if he'd just seen nothing or maybe it was the snow or it was just his stressed mind playing tricks on him. God knew this place was stressful enough. He was shivering very badly now, the chill eating into him. He made a beeline for the open doorway he'd passed earlier. The storm was worsening and he'd have to start spending even less time outdoors. As soon as he stepped into an empty room, he noticed several things. The first was that the room had been hit by a fire at some point, as all the wood was warped and twisted. The second was that there was a flare set atop the only piece of furniture in the room: a big, wooden crate.

It was still burning.

They had a twenty minute lifespan, which meant that whoever had set it was very likely still around here. Someone from Alpha Team, he hoped. Blake moved past the flare and into a corridor. It veered left, then right. He passed a door that was very firmly locked and briefly considered shooting the lock off. Opting to not make any more noise than was necessary, he moved on, following the corridor as it twisted right again, then left once more. Here was another door. It was, thankfully, unlocked.

Blake opened it up and stopped dead in his tracks as he surveyed the room he'd come to. It was some kind of work area. Directly ahead of him was an L-shaped desk with a sparking computer set up atop it. In the chair wedged into the desk area, a man in a gray thermal suit sat, still partially frozen, his neck and his wrists sliced open violently. Shelves, desks and crates occupied the peripheral of the room. Several heavily mutilated corpses lay scattered across the floor. One man had his head removed, another, his stomach hollowed out.

Frozen blood was everywhere.

Blake spied movement in the far left corner of the room. He raised his weapon and saw someone was crouching among some crates.

"Identify yourself!" he snapped, approaching, but lowered his gun as he saw it was a black man wearing Special Forces cold weather gear.

"It's Carter," he replied, his speech slightly slurred. He seemed to be having trouble focusing.

"What happened?" Blake asked, taking in the gory state of the room.

"They attacked us. These...things. I thought they was part of the...the...wait a minute," he muttered, staring harder at Blake now. "You aren't Captain Pierce...who are you?!" he snapped. "How'd you get here?" he asked.

"My name is Blake. I'm the Captain of Delta Team. We were sent to investigate an American outpost three miles south of here. I received a distress call from Pierce and came as back up...you need medical attention," Blake replied, seeing that the man was bleeding from his stomach.

"Yeah...I saw a kit on the wall, behind you. Was going to get to it...ugh, god, it hurts," he muttered. "Lost some blood."

Blake turned and spied the emergency medical kit on the wall next to the door he'd come through. Perfect. He went over to it, tore it off the wall and hurried over the Carter. Cracking it open, he took off his gloves and snapped on some medical gloves, suddenly remembering about the apparent infection going around.

"So what happened?" Blake asked as he studied the wounds. It looked like some kind of animal had clawed through his coat and into his stomach.

"These things, they attacked us...we split up. Pierce, Pace and Williams went ahead, deeper into the base. Me and Cruz were checking out this portion. Right about the time the lights came back on, I'm guessing Pace fixed the generator, they-agh!"