The scenery is losing its color. It looks like the landscape has been carved out of lead. In the shiny places it could be lit from within by ancient deadly radiations.
Everything has been monochrome for some time, the flat charcoal of the water broken only by white ice, that of the land only by white snow. But as my infection worsens, the rare spots of color are being sapped from the world. In the bare, brief daylight we passed within a couple hundred meters of a small nameless island, interchangeable with so many others in this blasted icescape. There appeared to be thin reeds growing where the twin greys of water and land met, reeds should have been a pale, drained yellow. They had become grey like everything else.
It’s just me and Corning now. Our party was decimated on Fell Island, at the base camp of the Sixth Expedition. When their radio went silent in the depths of October, our party of nine men—not the Seventh Expedition but a nameless rescue operation—was sent to follow their path. Our ship, the Corvid, was anchored off the ice pack. We’d walked three hours to reach the camp. The Sixth Expedition’s ship, the Hercules, was half-crushed in pack ice as we walked past it, eyes on the shore and the few cabins we could see. A half-slaughtered bowhead whale, nearly as long as the boat, lay near the Hercules.
Ashore, we nine found the chaotic scene as we crested the first rise. To our horror, we found corpses of men and entire sled dog teams, wild tangles of tracks in the snow, and flags torn down by the wind. The whale on the ice seemed to have been caught by the Expedition, with bloodied harpoons near the neatly carved body. The other casualties, men and dogs, had been torn to shreds by something different, something savage.
The camp was built alee to a towering rock face, slicked with thick veins of ice in the frigid Arctic air. The bodies we found were terrifying enough, the snow blood red in a wide swath, but the most awful things were the drag marks. Whatever had set upon the Sixth Expedition had dragged at least some of the men to the rock, where the marks ended. We rescuers realized that the men had been taken up the sheer cliff. Blood, frozen to the rock, trailed up out of sight.
Immediately, we sent our radio man Petersson to contact our base in northern Norway. The rest of us counted the bodies, of which we could account for nineteen; the Expedition we had been sent to find and assist consisted of sixty men. Forty-one were missing. I can’t have been the only one wondering how many of those missing men had been dragged up the sheer rocks. I could only speculate about what could possibly have done such a thing.
We arranged a patrol of five to fan out around the apparently abandoned camp, of which I was one. Petersson, Corning, and two others remained at base to investigate and inventory what remained at the camp. It was a long trek back to the Corvid. They would scavenge usable supplies. We patrolmen carried rifles from the armory in the camp, which thankfully had not been raided. Rifles in one hand and powerful lanterns in the other, we searched for clues. We did not expect to find survivors.
Beyond the bloodied snow, all footprints disappeared within a hundred meters of the camp. We circumnavigated, never losing sight of the cabins and tents in the faint Arctic light, but found no escaping prints. One strange thing we noted was that all of the tracks were human, none animal. The footprints ran crazily in all directions.
The sun was low as we met back in the central cabin. Night was falling after the briefest light, and the temperature fell even lower, with wind off the icepack picking up. The mercury of the cabin thermometer dangled low between -50 and -55 degrees Celsius. We shared our findings—or rather, our lack of them. There were forty-one missing men and no sign of any of them. There had been no fresh prints on the snowy ice as we’d approached from our ship, and we’d encountered no other boats since leaving Norwegian waters, so we quickly ruled out a raid by hostile parties. We’d all assumed that the blood had been spilled by wolves or polar bears—both known to attack camps—but there were no pawprints to be found. The Expedition hadn’t been decimated by predators.
Petersson sent an updated transmission on the shortwave, explaining the mystery of Fell Island as best as possible. Base pressured for further details, but there were simply none to give. We nine resolved to stand a watch through the night and into the next day. Doubtful as we were that anyone would arrive, we needed to give the missing men time to reappear. We launched flares into the darkness, hoping to signal to any stragglers.
I wish I could say that we did not see any of them.
Now I lay—‘convalescing,’ as Corning so optimistically put it—in the belly of the Corvid. We are making full speed to the nearest port, a day away, but I fear that I may not survive even such a short trip.
Our hopes of finding survivors began to fade as the night wore on. The camp was in deep shadow even at two o’clock in the afternoon and pitch black by four. We worked by torchlight assessing the supplies. We found a freezer cabin where lines of hunted hares and ermine hung, some skinned, alongside flanks of beef and pork brought from Base. Six months worth of tinned food still sat unspoiled in the pantry, and there was stacked blubber from the bowhead on the ice. There was a barrel of oil for lanterns, all of which burned bright. Their yellow light flickered and wavered in the cold night winds.
We supplemented the swinging yellow lamplight with a fire. With a lack of options for burial, we dragged the sled dogs to the pyre and threw them on. The smell of melting ice then burning fur was thick. By the towering firelight, we moved the corpses of the men into the freezer cabin and laid them alongside the animals they’d hunted.
We assigned shifts by lots. I drew a long straw for sleep. Corning, Petersson, and I bedded down alongside Walsh, while the remainder of the crew circulated through the camp swinging lanterns, watching for the return of any Expedition members. If we failed to find anyone, we resolved to depart the camp at eight the next morning and cross the ice to the waiting Corvid. Petersson sent one final message to Base, and we lay down to sleep.
I dreamed of vast whiteness stretching to the practical point of infinity in all directions, of trudging through knee-deep snows casting only the faintest shadows. In my dream I saw a vague line of charcoal grey, some titanic mountains in the far distance half-obscured by the blowing snows. I wondered if I would ever reach them. I would not, for screaming awoke me in the dead of night.
The sun, which rises only low in the sky and soon will no longer crest the horizon at all, is only visible for about an hour a day, and for the entirety of our journey has been buried in heavy washes of grey cloud. Even the sun feels dim and unfriendly. Now that the skies have finally cleared—although they remain colorless—the very touch of the beams coming through the cabin porthole burns my skin like a strong acid.
We all awoke with a start. Our crewmates screamed. Had whatever had befallen the Sixth Expedition returned? We exploded out the door, pulling our heavy coats and hats on but leaving gloves off as we all clutched our rifles.
Outside was horror. It was all I could do to hold my rifle with fingers that were already near-frozen. We four sleepers stood in shock, unable to process the scene in the camp.
Rifle shots rang out, barely audible among the screaming. A small army ran through the camp. In the lantern light, it was hard at first to see what was happening. They were moving so fast, so unnaturally quick and agile, and they were everywhere!
My rifle nearly slid out of my numb hands as I struggled to raise it. Parkins, one of the men who had unluckily drawn first watch, managed to bring one of the attackers down with a shot to the torso. The man fell nearly at my feet. He wore the same clothing as the corpses we’d found. He was one of the members of the Sixth Expedition!
Strangely, there was no blood. There was a ragged hole torn in his clothing and flesh beneath, but he did not bleed. The man’s face was alabaster white, almost blending with the snow. His eyes were orbs of mother of pearl, open but unfocused, darting around in what I thought must be death throes. His mouth dangled open, gasping, and his teeth were grown horrendously long and sharp! His jaw bristled with fangs! Despite the company-issued clothing he wore, the animalistic creature on the snow bore no resemblance to a man.
Then, unbelievably, the thing struggled back to its feet and leapt away into the fray!
I finally managed to raise my rifle. I thought to fire into the madness raging around us, but the men were barely distinguishable from each other. I didn’t want to shoot one of our few crewmen. Two of my colleagues, Kitson and Comeau, were down. Kitson had been cleanly decapitated in a spray of blood, and Comeau was struggling against one of the raiders. The man—the thing, for it was no longer a man—was tearing at Comeau’s head and neck, flailing its arms wildly.
I leveled my rifle and shot the raider as I’d always been taught: shoot for the heart, and my bullet struck true in the center of the thing’s chest. It seized and toppled dead off Comeau. I ran to my fallen shipmate, staring at the monstrous thing, which had once been human. To my horror, Comeau’s eyes were glazing over as the beast’s had, and although his neck and head had been shredded, he began to rise!
His blank eyes, those horrible orbs, fell upon me as he leapt to his feet. I saw his teeth were already elongating, stretching into ghastly fangs, their enamel cracking and falling away as he lunged for me!
Suddenly, he was stopped. I looked down and saw he had been stabbed in his heart with a long pike, one of the whaling harpoons. Corning held the far end of the wooden handle. Comeau slumped and fell dead, collapsing over the body of the thing that had killed him. The harpoon slid out, slick with blood, and Corning met my eyes. Amidst the horror, we nodded at each other.
We saw Walsh fall, and one of the things—vampires, my mind latched onto—dragged him bleeding and screaming up the rock wall. Others followed it, and the bloodied snow of the camp began to clear. Corning and I, back-to-back, approached one of the vampires that was sniffing at the corpse of a shipmate. Clark, I believe. I shot the thing, missing its heart and blowing a hole where its left arm met the body. The arm dangled, not bleeding, and the horrid creature rose from Clark’s body. Again, Corning’made short work of it with the harpoon.
More of the vampires scurried up the rock face, leaving only a handful still dashing about in the camp. I shot at another. It pinwheeled under the force of the bullet but kept going. Shoot the heart, I thought, marrying my rifle training with the stake to the heart of legend.
There remained only two of the things by then. Their damage done, our crew and friends slaughtered, they made for the rock face. Corning threw his harpoon like a spear, and it caught one of them in the leg, bringing it down, while the other fled, scrambling impossibly up the sheer wall. Lost in the night, it escaped.
I raised my rifle at the thing that lay howling in the bloody snow and fired my final round. It flailed and thrashed so that my round missed, sending a puff of red powder into the air just beside the monster. The harpoon, embedded in its leg, waved back and forth above it.
There were no harpoons left, so I selected a pike tipped with a barbed metal spear-tip and made my way to the thing. It looked at me, gnashing its horrible teeth and gutturally growling, hate in its blank eyes. I raised the pike over my head to deliver the killing blow.
Then the vampire struck out at me, its horrid fangs sinking into the soft flesh of my calf above my fur boot.
The sun has mercifully set and the cabin of the Corvid is dark again. The lantern, swinging as we crest and fall with the waves, provides the only light. I know in my mind that the light is yellow, burning whale oil, but it appears as a silvery glimmer in my colorless world.
I am feverish. My body burns, as if a flame far brighter than the whaling lantern has been lit within me. Corning cut my boot off and examined the wound from the vampire, which showed ugly black clotting and dark veins radiating from the bite. Infection, I knew, but it proved not to be the usual variety.
As the Corvid turned under steam power out of the bay, abandoning the dead Sixth Expedition and the Hercules, Corning returned to the cabin below deck. In his hand, he held his heavy sealing knife. He stared at my wound. Our eyes met, and we both knew what he must do.
When the creature bit me, I dropped the pike in shock and pain. I reached down and wrenched at the thing by its hair, but it would not let go. It grunted and snorted as its fangs sunk deep into my flesh. Suddenly, the pike—retrieved by Corning—was in its chest, and it died. The fangs loosened, and I was able to pull myself away.
Corning and I fled, the only survivors. I could not walk, so he supported me with an arm under mine, limping on three legs onto the ice. We managed to retrieve a lantern and another pike for defense before we made for our ship. A cone of light surrounded us as we followed our own footprints out across the frozen bay to the waiting Corvid.
Exhausted, we had to stop twice, but we made it to the ship in full darkness. We could hear, from the reaches surrounding us on all sides, the horrible shrieking and grunting of the vampires. Though we could catch our breath, we could not relax. As soon as we were able, we resumed moving. We staggered past the husk of the Hercules and the half-stripped bowhead whale and pressed on.
The pain in my leg was enormous, all-encompassing. It became my world. I was barely aware that we were making any progress. Flowers of brilliant pain bloomed behind my screwed-shut eyes, my breath hissed through my teeth. My limbs tingled as if electricity coursed through them, and the world in darkness pinwheeled around me. Corning was spectacular, making sure we kept moving despite my deteriorating condition. Many times I nearly fell, but my reliable shipmate caught me. We kept on.
We never saw any vampires during our flight, but we knew they harried us from a distance. I wondered how much, if any, of their humanity remained. Especially since I’d been bitten. I knew one had to destroy the heart. The only other bit of folklore I knew was that, if bitten, you became a vampire yourself.
Certainly, they showed no outward signs of compassion or mercy, just rabid, feral hunger. As I swam in the overwhelming pain and fear, I dreaded what my own future held. My entire body ached and throbbed, as if my bones were both extending horribly and being crushed. I felt feverish despite the bitter cold of the Arctic night. My mouth hurt, my teeth—my fangs, I thought and tried to push the idea away—felt as if they were stretching.
Somehow, Corning was able to get me aboard the ship. He laid me on the first bunk inside the below-deck cabin. He started the engine, and with a great creak and groan, the Corvid pulled free of the ice growing around it. We were underway.
The knife in Corning’s hand wavers in my vision. He is standing at the end of the bunk staring at my bitten leg, and I know what he is planning. I see him staring at the wound, the knife turning loosely, nervously in his hand. He looks me in the eyes. I see fear of what he feels he has to do and of what I am becoming.
He thinks that if he cuts off my leg, he can stop the spread. It is too late. It is like he moves slowly, murkily, as if through the water beneath us. By comparison, my movements are much faster. Fast, like the running, shrieking vampires from the camp on Fell Island. That place is far behind us now, but the effects of the vampire bite are not.
My hand shoots out so fast he cannot elude it. I grab him by his wrist. His face twists into a pained grimace, and the knife falls from his hand, clattering uselessly to the cabin floor. I see my gnarled hand, blackened and clawed, and see blood running from where I grasp him. My teeth hurt, and I can taste my own blood in my mouth—they have elongated into the fangs I saw flashing against the necks of my former shipmates. They have torn my tongue and gums.
Corning’s face turns from pained to terrified as I bare my fangs. His eyes plead with me, and I hear his high-pitched scream over the sea winds and the thrum of the Corvid’s engine. His face is fading into unrecognizable shapes as my vision dissolves. Doubtless, my eyes are the clouded grey of the vampire.
I have no need to see, I can smell his blood. I know exactly where to strike his neck. I tighten my fist, hearing the bones in his wrist crack and grind together.
“Please,” he whimpers. I barely understand the word. Language is falling away from me. I hear the rush of his blood through his veins, and the metallic scent fills my nostrils. It’s spilling onto my clawed hand. It is the call of the wild, primal and undeniable.
With the speed only vampires possess, I coil myself like a venomous serpent and spring off the bunk. The last thing I see is Corning fall under me, the rush of his blood overwhelming me as it courses into my mouth, sprays across my face. We roll to the floor, and his hand quavers near the handle of the fallen knife. He cannot find it.
I drink. I feel the pitch and roll of the ship in the sea. We are heading home in the endless black Arctic night.
Nathan Poole Shannon is an emerging writer of strange and the macabre. Creepy and weird stories, whether they be modern or historically set, are his specialty. From crawling shadows to cryptic specters, he is only beginning to share with the world. He lives in Ottawa, Canada, with his spouse and a small menagerie of pets who are decidedly not creepy- but from time to time, inspire something that is.
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