Mutant mountain

   The arrow pierced exactly between its two eyes. The creature shrieked in the most awful way and then it collapsed, making the ground beneath it tremble. It tried to breath for a few seconds, but then it all stopped, his belly going still fast. Archer came down and checked the body. He was dead. Gunman approached too and congratulated Archer for his handling of the situation. The creature had come out of nowhere but they had been prepared. Doctor arrived with Bio, both women, and as one checked the state of the humans, the other checked the body of the collapses animal. It wasn’t uncommon for them to wander out of the highlands that were their home but this one had seemed particularly vicious. He had been drooling ever since they had seen him come into their lands and his eyes were red.

 The four of them decided to go back to the research facility to change clothes and have some food. In the facility there were only five people, all identifiable by their profession and not by their real name. This was because the agency that hired them didn’t wanted them to risk their personal lives for any task at hand so they call themselves whatever they were. Archer was an archer and gunman a very skilled shooter. Those two were the security team in the group. Then there was Bio, who was a biologist dedicated to preserve the last few animals that lived in this region. And there was Doctor, who tended the wounded people. The fifth one, and the one that hadn’t come out when the gigantic boar attacked, was Vet. He was key but was very strange.

 When they came back to base, a rather small house with a lab on its basement, they noticed Vet wasn’t there. He normally took long strolls all over the place but as his destination always changed, it was impossible to know where he was. Any way, the team went back to pick up the body of the big boar but found out there were only bones there and they also seemed to be decaying. It was very strange and uncommon for this to happen. Coming back again to the base, they found Vet and had a very heated discussion about how he was never there when needed. The women demanded for him to be always available but the men had decided not to say a word.

 Vet apologized and explained to them why he had left. He wasn’t walking around or anything. He had actually stayed behind because he had seen a group of birds flying in an uncommon pattern. He knew it was strange so he tried to follow them with his binoculars but it wasn’t necessary. The birds landed not very far and as fast as he saw them, he realized something wasn’t right. The birds were bigger than normal, even surpassing the height of Pet’s knees. They had red-blooded eyes and very black feathers that appeared to shine with every move they made. And then they heard him coming and two of them attempted to attack. Vet ran like crazy and found shelter in the forest where he stayed until they had left.

 The team was amazed by the story but the women were still upset that he had missed the opportunity to check the boar’s body in order to know what was happening to him. Vet told them that it appeared to be a contagious disease but it was strange that it passed from one species to the next, with the same results: the infected animal seemed to be bigger, with red-blooded eyes and very aggressive. He suggested that they needed a live specimen or at least to have a well preserved body at hand. But then they explained to him what had happened to the boar they had left in the hills. Vet had no idea what to do or how to proceed. He told the team that they had to really think their plan through, as they had no idea if humans could be infected by whatever the animals had.

 After agreeing they needed rest in order to think straight in the morning, the team decided to have the rest of the day off. The men were really happy about it and the women realized they could use some rest after a very strenuous day. The man took off their shoes and jackets and decided to repair their weapons and clean them. Arrow by arrow, bullet by bullet. The truth was that the security team consisted of very efficient guys but that were not really useful for much else. They were big and muscular and tall but they didn’t have much in their heads. Maybe they were a stereotype but at least they could be funny when they wanted, telling jokes and anecdotes about their lives.

 The girls decided to do different things: Doctor decided to clean her equipment and then have a shower with hot water, which they had to heat themselves in the kitchen. It had come as not surprise to them as the base was very far from any trace of civilization. On the other hand, Bio decided to check on a small fragment of bone she had been able to take from the decaying corpse of the boar. The fragment was now bone but she was confident she could achieve something by testing it with everything she had at hand. Bio was a very skillful woman and loved a good challenge when it presented itself to her.

 Vet just took off his clothes and tried to get some sleep. It was the afternoon but he wanted to rest. He had various reasons for this but mainly because he felt that, in the next few days, he wouldn’t be able to relax as much as he was in that moment. And also because he had been having problems sleeping. He had always had those problems but now they seemed to be getting worse. For the last two nights, he hadn’t been able to sleep at all, instead guarding the base and letting Arrow or Gunman sleep. He would often use this wasted time to think about his mission there and about his decisions in life. He had been wrong to take the job. But there’s was nothing he could do now. It was too late.

 Somehow, Vet fell asleep pretty fast and had a nice dreamless nap for several hours until someone woke him up very late at night. It was Doctor and she seemed very scared. He sat on his bed and realized they were all there, in the bedroom. True, they all shared the space but it was a weird scene because they all stare at the stairs and no one was asleep. He stood up and realized that they had put some sort of big plank on the space of the stairs. And that something was pushing from downstairs. The banging was scary but whatever was downstairs was not strong enough. Vet turned around and looked through the window and saw nothing, except the blackness of the night.

 He told everyone that maybe they could escape jumping from the window. It wasn’t that high and it was better than staying there and wait for death or whatever was going to happen. They agreed, so the girls went through the window first. Bio fell landed nicely but Doctor apparently smashed her ankles against the ground and had serious problems walking. Bio helped her up and they waited for Gunman to jump and join them. Arrow, who had foot on the plank in order to prevent the beast from entering the floor, told Vet that he had to go first and that he would run just after him. They needed to be ready down there in order to catch him to avoid hitting his face against the ground. Vet nodded and jumped, landing in a rather weird way but with no injuries.

 They only had a minute to organize in order to catch Arrow, who landed almost perfectly flat on their hands. They saw the room fill up with noises and shadows but the men pressed on in order to run downhill, towards the river. For transport, they had a small boat there that could take them downstream to the house of the forest ranger that had a car to take them to civilization. The walk, or rather run, towards the boat was very erratic and difficult, as two people helped Doctor walk and then Gunman decided to take her on his back. They run without rest and without looking back until they finally reached the small pier.

 The river was enraged and the boat wasn’t there. There was only a piece of rope hanging from the pier. Then, it seconds, Vet told them they should keep running downhill until they were able to escape or loose them. But the sound of the animals, a combination of buzzing and shrieking and growling, was nearer and neared. It didn’t seem to them that the animals got tired, different to them who were already having difficulties breathing. After a long run, they arrived to a point where they could see big rocks on the river. They could jump on them to go across and then run downhill to the ranger. Arrow jumped first. The rocks were slippery but he made it. Bio went second and then Vet.

 But when the turn came for Gunman and Doctor, the man slipped and hit his behind against the rocks. The women stood up on the big rock as she could and helped the man up but it was too late. The animals were there and the members of the team on the other side of the river saw their companions being attacked by pecks and feet and paws. They decided to keep on running and not to watch. They ran for several hours until they reached the small house were the park ranger lived. But he wasn’t there. He was behind his cabin, dead on the ground. The body had no eyes and had been bitten all over.

They had no way out…

Strange Antarctica

   Someone had killed Doctor Pong. And however it was, had not cared about cleaning afterwards. The blood coming from the good doctor’s body had already frozen, formed a pretty disturbing picture for anyone who went into the storage room. He was lying there, eyes open, against the wall opposite to the door. It was windowless room and the killer had known that. It was obvious he had known where to look for the doctor, who was probably hiding, as the storage room was fool of brooms and buckets, not really what he used in his experiments.

 The strangest part of it all was the method the killer had used: an arrow. He had pointed it right between the eyebrows and had nailed just that spot. Of course, the distance was quite short so the shot may have not been that difficult to do but it looked scary all the same. The arrow was long and had pierced the skull all the way to the back, touching the wall behind the head with the metal tip. The body still had the expression of fear the doctor had experienced in his last moments and the weather helped it to get preserved for a long time, which made the job of checking the scene, much more ominous than usual.

 The crime had occurred in what it’s known as Queen Maud Land. Although Antarctica is in the practice a free land, Norway claims this portion of the continent. The mountains look like razor blades and the snow appears to be whiter than in any other part of this land. And there, in Troll station, Mr. Georg Pong had died from an arrow to the head. The media, of course, had a feast with the whole “murder on Antartica” story. And to be frank, it did seem ridiculous than someone had been so skilled to kill someone and then escape without a lot of means to do it. And they hadn’t been able to catch him or her.

 Norway’s government took almost a week to send two detectives: Nora Fröm and Erik Stavanger. They were both specialized in strange crime scenes but this one was by far the strangest one. On the boat from South Africa, both agents discussed how they were going to approach the investigation. They had seen several pictures taken by the scientist that had found Dr. Pong and they all pointed out to a chase inside and outside the complex. They were only a few buildings in the small compound so it wasn’t going to take very long.

 At arrival, they had to join a group of scientists that greeted them on to some snowmobiles. The journey to the facility was long and cold, during which the scientists discussed the real utility of being there. The man was already dead and the attackers had to be really far by now, if not dead. The government had wanted to show action but what the two detectives could actually do about the case wasn’t much. They had agreed that their prime concern would be to know everything about how it happened more than trying to actually catch someone. That was very difficult and, anyway, if they tracked the killer’s first steps, maybe they could investigate where he or she came from.

 The station was a small group of red containers overlooking the continental ice sheet. It was very small and not many people lived there during the year. The normal number was around nine but Dr. Pong had been alone the day he died. Ellie Warren, a friend and fellow scientist, was waiting there for them. She gave them a tour of the facility and led them to the storage room where the doctor’s body was still laying. She told them that no one had spent a night since the day of the events, in order to avoid contaminating the scene. Only the group that found him had touched some things but they had been kind enough to point everything out in a report.

 When entering the storage room, both Nora and Erik trembled. The man’s was looking at them, there on the frame of the door. It was strange how an empty body could seem so alive. They then started taking pictures with a special camera and asked Ellie to tell everyone they were going to comb the scene so they needed the station to be closed to any visitors. She nodded and disappeared, talking to a walkie-talkie. The duo took pictures of every single centimeter of the body. They didn’t dare to move it, afraid that the action would break the stream of frozen blood coming out of his forehead.

 It was an eerie sight, to see such brutality but at the same time, realizing how careful the killer actually was. They found no hairs around the body, nor the killer’s weapon. Only the arrow was still inside the doctor’s skull and they decided it was best to remove it only when they had finished doing everything else. The corpse was wearing the jacket normally used for the outside, so that indicated the doctor was outside when he was attacked or that he went out during a persecution. That wasn’t clear but he must have been outside at some point that day.

 When they checked the records of the day, doctor Pong had noted several things on his log. He had apparently been working on some ice sheet tubes they had extracted earlier that month from a field not very far from the station. The detectives, of course, had no idea what it all meant, but they realized he had worked on that during the day. The last thing he noted though was far more interesting than everything else: he had written, “The heating system seems to be malfunctioning. It’s freezing inside. I have to go out and check the heater”.

 The detectives put on their jackets and asked Ellie about the heather and she joined them to it. It was located in a shed outside, about ten meters from the main entrance. There, they found that the door to the shed was open but nothing else pointed to the murder. Ellie checked the heater and told them everything was ok, which they already knew because the temperature inside the station was very pleasant. When back inside, Ellie told them she had to leave because she was needed in another station but that she would be back in a few hours. She reminded the detectives that it was summer in Antarctica, so eternal daylight was the norm. She showed them a couple of bed they could sleep if they needed to. She said goodbye and left in her snowmobile.

 The duo continued the investigations but, as expected, they weren’t going anywhere with all of it. They had found hairs in the lab and other rooms but that was probably Ellie’s or some other scientist that had been there before. She explained the doctor was alone when he was killed because all the other scientists had been called to another base as a great discovery had been made and the transmission from a Russian base could only be received in the other station. He decided to stay behind for a day and just wait for them to return and tell them the news.

 After checking every single part of the base, which was the size a of a single person’s apartment, they decided to eat something. The food looked like the ones they gave to astronauts and it taste just as they expected it to taste, so they continued their work rather fast. As Nora checked the doctor’s computer, Erik checked the storage room and the body once more.

 Some hours had pass when Nora called Erik, saying she had found something. Many of the other cases they had solved were all about love and envy and how to combine that with the thirst for revenge and so on. She builds up on that and decided to look for secret folders or hidden archives in the doctor’s computer and Norma had found just that. It was an invisible folder and had only five pictures. When the couple saw them, they couldn’t help feeling surprised at them.

 Each and every one of those pictures showed a younger Ellie Warren, with longer hair and a certain glow to her, fully naked on five different poses. It was obvious she was aware of the photographer but the pictures were certainly not new as the women in the pictures looked in her twenties, or even younger, and doctor Warren was at least fifty years old. Why would Pong have those pictures in his laptop? Had he known her before she became a scientist? Was he the photographer? Both Nora and Erik were baffled at the pictures but couldn’t make sense of them. Where them even meaningful to they investigation?

 Then, an explosion was heard outside the station. Nora and Erik ran out to see the heater shed had burst into flames and some of the pieces were burning on the snow, others already freezing. Why had that happened? And then Nora grabbed Erik’s arm. She knew exactly what had happened. It was Ellie. She had been the only one of them to actually enter the shed. It had been working fine with them but it had failed when Pong had been killed. And now it had exploded.

 Their conclusion was that Ellie had done the same thing that day. They decided to check with the nearest station, where the scientists had gone to check on the news. The radio wasn’t working very well but it was confirmed Ellie had not been there with them. According to the person in charge, she had stayed behind with Pong. So there.... It had to be her. She was the killer. But why? And where was she now. The man said she wasn’t there today either.

 Nora was looking at the screen and then noticed Erik wasn’t talking. And he actually wasn’t breathing anymore. He fell to the floor, with an arrow on his head. Nora had no time to be scared as she saw Ellie holding a crossbow.

- Couldn’t leave you here with the evidence. Sorry.

Murderer

   I stepped in the boat and sat inside. It was not a big space and it all smell like fish but, given the circumstances, I didn’t thought I should say or do anything about those two things. Little things, might I add, compared to the situation at hand. Onboard came the man that had been pointing at me with his gun all along but then the other one, the one that seemed less likely to shoot at any given opportunity, told him to step out of there and let him do it. There was no one else that could help me and it was too dark too distinguish anything more than the water, the boat and the armed man that had stepped out and disappeared.

 The man I was with had turned the engine and we were traveling fast. The sea was calm and there seemed to be no fishing boats or ferries that could see us. It was almost as if it was meant to be that way and, of course for me, that wasn’t so good.

 After what seemed liked an hour of journey into the open sea, the man stopped the engine and looked straight at my eyes. It was unsettling, as he was one of those people with very bright eyes that make you feel uncomfortable when you look directly at them. I had always wondered if they knew they made people feel that uneasy.

-       Did you really do it?

 There it was. It had been obvious; from the moment they had kidnapped me in my home that he wanted to ask that question so bad. Right then, he seemed eager to know the truth behind all of this, probably the truth about why he was with me right in the middle of the ocean, where no one will ever hear us talk or say the most amazing of truths. I could almost tell he was sweating, the stains beneath his armpits growing, his upper lip trembling at my sight.

-       What is that I apparently did?

 The man snored a bit, smile and kind of laughing. He was nervous. It was so obvious: his hand trembled when he wiped off his sweat and his smile wasn’t the one of a man that feels safe or sure about anything anymore. Maybe, after all, the wrong man had stepped in the boat with me.

-       We were hired.

-       I assumed as much

-       You killed a family.

-       Yes.

 The man seemed to tremble once more, due to my “confession”. To be honest, I’ve never really hidden anything about what I’ve done. I’ve made my peace with it all, specially then, when I seemed so close to death. Why lie to him when he was obviously so eager to know the truth, so eager to think he knew or that he understood what his task was all about.

-       And you say it like that? So… So cool and casual? Are you crazy?

-     I’m not mentally unstable, although the fact that I’ve killed makes me very likely to have one of those fancy disorders every murderer seems to have these days.

-       How many more?

 I couldn’t contain a smirk when he asked this. Not only because I knew it would make him tremble again, but also because people were always like that, wanting the morbid little details of how I had done something or the other. It was so typical of every single person in the world to apparently feel disgusted and scared but deep down, been utterly interested in what I had to say about all the corpses I’ve created. They sometimes seem even more interested that I was when I did what I did.

-       I don’t know. I’d rather not count.

-       The people that hired told me you raped their…

-       No. That’s not true.

 The man appeared to want to leap over me but he contained himself. Apparently he thought that I was denying the truth and that made him even more frustrated and confused but the truth was, and still is, that I never raped anyone. I’ve heard the stories, on the news and so on. They said I was ruthless but then they began to say I raped people and that’s just incorrect. If I had any more feelings I would be hurt.

-       They said…

-       You trust too much on your clients. Never thought for a second they could be lying?

-       I talked with them and…

-     Oh yes, because people are incapable of lying when they hire a hitman. Is that what you are because you seem pretty bad at this?

 There. Shaking like a leaf. I know he’s scared of me, thinking I’m some kind of animal, a beast that has to be put down. But the fun thing is that he knows or feels he cannot contain me for long and, most curiously, he seems to think I’m not guilty of this all. Because, why else would he be asking all these questions? Then again, it might be only that he’s fucking scared and he’s just stalling, avoiding the killing.

-       Are you going to kill me anytime soon?

-       Shut up.

-       It was you who began the interrogation.

 The man seemed to be thinking. I bet he was trying to decide what to do next. Maybe he thought that I might be more valuable dead than alive. The police were looking for me, that’s for sure, and I had a reward sign on my head. Apparently he wasn’t as stupid as he looked, thinking of the best way to profit properly from this assignment. He could even surrender me to the police and collect the money all by himself, leaving the other idiot to mend for himself, thinking I was dead.

-       You killed many people.

-       I know.

-       And you don’t regret it?

-       No. Why should I?

-       You’re not sorry? Not even for one of those murders?

 I looked at him carefully, trying to decide what to say. There was something more in all of this, something that had eluded me from the start. The moment they had taken me from my home it had been all about the other guy, the tall one. He had threatened me, put a bag on my head, and pointed the gun straight to my heart. This guy I was with had only driven us to the dock and then had decided to kill me, at the very last minute. And then, it became clear.

-       Don’t tell me that I killed your wife or brother?

 The man went crazy when I said those words. He threw himself at me and started punching me all over: on the face, the chest, the stomach and the head. My hands were still tight behind my back so there wasn’t much I could do except moving violently, in order not only to drive him away but also to make the boat turn sideways to escape swimming. He couldn’t chase me through the ocean.

 But nothing of the sort happened. He just stopped beating the fuck outta me and decided to breath heavily, as far as he could from me. It hurt; I’m not going to say it didn’t. But there was no damage that he could do that would really hurt me. I was beyond all of that at that point. He could have stabbed me and I wouldn’t have cared at all. My lips were cracked, bleeding and all my body was numb from his punches but I wasn’t bad enough to look at him from my corners and smile.

-       Predictable.

-       Shut up…

-    You know, even if you do kill me, nothing is going to bring anyone back? It won’t happen.

-       Shut up!

-       The dead are done. Believe me, I know.

 Then, the guy pulled out the gun and pointed at me. He no longer trembled but he was still sweaty and his eyes were wide open, as if he wanted to be sure of what he was doing. I cleaned my face a bit from my blood without breaking the link between our eyes. Maybe he was going to kill me, maybe this was it for me but it didn’t matter. He was one more of my victims and that was enough for me. So I laughed.

 The bullet pierced right through my brain, coming out the other end and falling in the water. The man pushed my body to the water and left. He knew my body was going to be found and that everyone would know a murderer was now dead. And no one would be interested in knowing who killed me because I deserved it. But, in the end, I knew that just before the end he had been mine and that was all worth it.