Cold

1.
COLD.
Dead trees reach for the sky, their black limbs scream out against the frozen wasteland. Above, there is no sun. The sky is dead. Below, snow stands three inches deep, spanning several hundred miles in any direction. The guardians of this land, the innumerable oaks of Titan’s forest, tower over a company of ninety-three.
Ninety three Q9 assault rifles hang from the shoulders of ninety men and three women, dressed entirely in black. The only splash of color is the yellow stripe encompassing the left shoulder of each uniform. Ninety-three pairs of thick rubber boots leave ninety-three sets of diamond tracks in the tightly packed snow. They move fluidly across the land, between trees and over hills, creating a deadly Rorschach, visible only to the lone eagle that flies over ahead �" and to the hunted, who watch in silence.

Jason Delgado leads his men forward. From the front of the company, he sees only the realm of trees without end. Once a troop of one hundred, they had lost six men to frostbite and one to public execution �" Bachman, he had pulled the trigger himself.

The snow was comforting. Two thousand miles away, pampered men wore pinstripe suits and smoked cigars while their trophy wives pranced about in long, dragging dresses, undoubtedly cut from designer silk. They would take their place together at a long table among countless other chaps in expensive suits and white gloves. Always the white gloves when the “whose who” met together.

Jason nearly vomited in his mouth. There wasn’t a single callous to be found beneath those gloves. Not one of them had worked a day in their life. They were the elite. They occupied the sky-bound towers of Olympus, whose vast windows looked out over the Atlantean Sea to the West, and the three thousand miles of urban jungle, made up of foundries, warehouses, factories, and the like. This was Lower Olympus. Here, a man worked long days slinging steel and moving lumber. When the whistle blew and he was relieved, he arrived home in time to kiss his wife goodbye before she began her walk to clock-in for the night shift. Labor was life.
Deep in the frozen east, the shame of what lay behind him diminished. Shame was a distraction. Pain was a distraction. Distraction always lay in hiding, waiting for his chance to catch you in his sights, unaware �"but Jason refused to be caught.

This is why, for the last six miles, he gave no indication that he knew his soldiers were being followed. As they entered a spacious clearing, he motioned to his second-in-command, Luke Meleager. The rapid, silent speech of the hand said one thing, “come quietly.” Meleager had followed Jason for three years. Many times in their pursuit of The Hunted, or The Deimos as they were properly known, Meleager had trusted Jason with his life. Today would be no exception. Meleager appeared swiftly beside him.

Speaking in hushed tones, eyes never leaving the forest ahead of him, Jason spoke: “Luke, my eyes count sixty. We have five minutes.” As quickly as Meleager had appeared, he vanished. Jason knew what would happen. Without turning around, he could see it in his mind: in his typical shadowy way, Luke appears next to Artemis. He subtly takes her hand, folding his index finger inside of their palms as he does. Artemis nods. Luke releases her hand and she repeats the sign to her sister next to her. Within two minutes, the entire company would have the message. The translation was simple, one index finger meant “Imminent attack.”

Four minutes and fifty-four seconds later, the howling began. The simultaneous schlick-kah! Of ninety three rifles being charged was their answer. The screaming Deimos exploded from the trees, their grey skin looking as if it were stretched too tight across their bones, their piercing yellow eyes sick with malice. Wearing an assortment of khaki pants, overalls, and torn dresses, the creatures brought an ironic sense of humanity to the battlefield, but the universal lack of hair and the long, bony fingers and thick, claw-like nails protruding from them stifled the effect. Cracks of thunder from Delgado’s soldiers blasted through the forest, sending burning lead into the bodies of the Hunted, but these creatures were fast, and they moved in packs. Jason knew their movements, and he also knew how deceptively clever they could be. After all, they were hungry.

Fifty yards away something caught Jason’s attention. Three Deimos dropped down on top of one another, forming a small heap on the ground. They lay their motionless, as if dead �"and yet, something was wrong. Two of his men, Stewart and Del Rio edge toward the pile of should-be corpses. Jason knew exactly what was about to happen. He sprinted as fast as he could towards the men, fighting desperately to scream out over the roar of battle, but he was too late. As they came within a few feet of the fallen, the three creatures leapt to their feet with lightning reflexes. In a single, fluid movement, one of the creatures immediately snapped Del Rio’s neck and threw him over his shoulder. It broke for the tree line. Stewart reared back, but he wasn’t fast enough, nor was he smart enough, to avoid the other two creatures. Stewart found one arm caught in the grip of either creature as his hands are torn from his rifle, and his arms are violently yanked backwards. There is an audible pop as they both rip out of socket. Stewart cannot scream, his mouth is open; his face is contorted in agony and fear; but no sound escapes. The Deimos pick the man up by his legs. Stewart’s arms and torso hang limp, dragging in the snow.

Jason Delgado runs furiously towards the scene, his left hand cross-drawing the revolver from the holster that hangs just beneath his right hip. The pearl-grip .45 magnetizes to his palm. Reflex overrides thought, he fires at the fleeing beasts. Three shots in, one of the beasts fall to the ground, the blood from its hairless head colors the snow red. The remaining creature begins to run faster. Jason fires two more rounds. One grazes the creature’s side, but it remains un-phased, beating its feet against the icy terrain. By now, Stewart has come to and is pleading desperately for help. “He knows what comes next,” Jason whispered to himself. Dropping to one knee, Jason holds his sidearm in both hands, carefully aiming his last round. Exhaling, he squeezes the trigger, sending the bullet across the clearing, and into the skull of Rodney Stewart, a man who has just been spared the horror of being eaten alive. Jason could only hope that Del Rio had not survived the encounter.

They would devour him, nonetheless, but for Del Rio’s sake, Jason prayed that death would claim him first.

These were the Deimos. Cold, calculating, cannibal, they had once been human, but their humanity was long gone. They were the Hunted, and Jason Delgado’s life served one purpose: the hunt.

2.
The fighting had ceased. They had lost Del Rio, Stewart, Carter and Sing. Their names would be added to a never-ending list of casualties and their next of kin would be notified. Capitol Olympus would etch their names into the wall that separated the elite’s city from the world of the common man. The wall served as a memorial to the fallen, but a blasphemy to the living.
If he ever made it back, Jason would personally tear down that wall.

Mentally turning his attention from the chaos of the life behind him back to the present took such a strenuous effort that he almost heard the gears grinding together in an effort to catch traction.

He wasn’t okay.

No.

He was sick.

For all that could be observed of him, Jason Delgado stood 6’2,” slender, like a man built for cross-country. When he ran, his legs exploded like pistons, hammering away at the ground. His long arms were quick and agile, and capable of snapping with the quickness of a poised cobra. He spoke with elegance, was loved by his troops, he even had a young lady under his command who had worked feverishly to gain his attention.

His electric blue eyes blazed in a way that demanded attention. His “barely-there,” close-cut hair spoke of professionalism and utility. He was intelligent, sharp as a razor, and yet.. in his mind, it was as if another force entirely had begun to slow him down, rob him of his soul.

Every night he dreamed of the capitol. He dreamed of the trial. He dreamed of Maria. He dreamed of his sweet daughter, Elathyne. He dreamed of the moment that ripped them both from his hands. The dream never changed. The scenes ran start to finish, but in a reversed sequential order of how they actually happened. Then he heard the exploding thunder of his .45 as his eyes shot open, and there he was, alone in his tent, a long way from home.

He was sick, and it had become worse.

Twice now, when the dream ended, he held that very same revolver, hammer cocked backwards with a live shell loaded. It was only a matter of time before..
*click* *click* *krrrrrrgh*
The gears in his brain scream at him. How far had they walked? Where were they? He had no idea.
Eighty-eight soldiers now followed Delgado’s lead. Their mission had been simple, “Search and Destroy,” which translated into, “eliminate the man-eaters from the face of the planet.”
“Meleager!” Jason said.
Luke appeared at once, always fading in and fading out in a way where one was never quite sure where he materialized from. “Sir.” He said.
“I need our map.” Jason said.
Luke withdrew the folded square of paper from the breast pocket on the left side of his black uniform. Within seconds, he had marked their precise location on the map. “We’re close to the heart, Jason. We’re almost there.”
“And then we go home.” Jason said.
Luke’s face lit up at this. He knew the shear impossibility of ever returning to Olympus, but hope.. hope needed no needle, and yet left it’s victims bashfully addicted.
“And then we go home.” Luke said.
The carrier that Jason and his company had deployed from was long gone. It was a simple ‘stop and drop’ mission for them. Jason was to radio in when the mission was complete. This was two weeks ago. One week ago, they had lost all radio equipment when Munez’s throat was gashed open before he was dragged away by three of the Deimos. The radio equipment was designed to send a long-range burst transmission that would cut across the air-waves to the nearest pole, and then be relayed to the nearest Olympus operating base.
Unfortunately, this radio was being carried by Munez, who was violently murdered and carried away, radio equipment and all. His last act of valor was to feed a family of four, leaving behind a widow and two daughters in the process.
“Jason..” Luke’s voice trailed off as he spoke the man’s name.
“What is it?” Jason said.
“Captain, we’re not far from where the X went down.. the one from two years ago, remember?” Luke said.
Jason remembered. It had been a tragedy �"one of the research gyros surveying this area had suffered mechanical damage due to the frequent subzero temperatures. The top propeller locked up and the team of nine scientists plummeted to their death. No effort had been made to reclaim the bodies. Realistically, no one expected there to “be” any bodies left, being this close to the Demios.
“You know what that means, right?” Luke said.
Jason had no idea what Luke meant. Jason heard his precious daughter screaming his name as he watched her die. This was all he saw.
“Of course I do, Luke. You think it’s worth the risk?” Jason said. He couldn’t let on what was happening in his mind.
Luke quickly filled in the gaps, perhaps unknowingly aware of the frailty of Jason’s current mental faculties.
“Yes, I think it’s worth sending out a patrol to recover any working radio units.” Luke said.
Ahh yes, this was good. Working radios meant a ride home. If they lived.
Who would he send? Luke had to go, he had enough technical savvy to know good radios from bad. Jason had to go, he wouldn’t trust the safety of such a small team without being physically present. Artemis.. could go. The young lady with the blazing red hair.. the grey eyes. The eyes he often caught staring his direction. Oh yes, she could go.
Jason noticed the slow-creeping tide of darkness sliding smoothly over the trees. The birds no longer sang. The last bit of daylight was being strangled from behind the dead sky, and night would soon overtake them.
“Very good, Luke. You, Artemis, and I will leave in thirty minutes. The men will make camp. Wesley is in charge. Make it so.” Jason said. The young man said “yes sir,” but in the nanoseconds before Jason could turn to look the man in his eyes, he was gone. As always, there was no trace of him. But Jason knew Luke would be working with a special kind of fever to fulfill his orders.
They would leave in thirty minutes.
3.

​Very little starlight crept through the interminable mist that hung over the frozen wasteland. Silence clawed at him. Thoughts screamed at him. “DADDY! DADDY HELP!! MOMMY NO!”
“STOP IT!”
He screamed at the ghosts which never left him, the demons which afforded him no peace. Every word from his daughter forced an invisible knife deeper into his soul. His sanity bled out on the snow around him.
“MOMMY NO! NO NO NO!! DADDY HELP!! AHHHHH!!” Her voice gave way to shrieks of pain.
Jason flew up the stairs two at a time, rage flooding through his veins, his gun drawn, prepared to rip away the life of whoever dared to touch his family. Arriving at the landing atop the stairs, he lowered his shoulder and aimed directly at the thin, brown wooden door to Elathyne’s room. He charged. He reduced the door to splinters as his body flew through the thin paneling.
The horror awaiting Jason burned a permanent image onto the man’s eyes, like a branding iron upon his soul.
Brown hair covered the green shag carpet of the long, narrow room. Six year old Elathyne cowered in the corner. Drenched in bood, she tried to cover her face with her frail arms. Shrieking in terror and pain, her arms were covered with long gashes and the indentions of teeth. Directly in front of her stood Mariah, the love of Jason’s life. Her brown hair had fallen out almost entirely. Her skin had begun to pale. Her eyes had shifted to the color of midnight, black and soul-less. Fresh blood ran from her mouth. Pieces of skin extruded from between her teeth. He attention had been diverted from the innocent child, her child, by the screaming man waving a gun.
“MARIAH!” Jason screamed.
Mariah slowly shifted her gaze back to the girl.
When Mariah spoke, her words were chains dragging across a gravel road. Deep within, there was a hint of humanity. But she had gone mad.
“Jason.” She spoke only his name.
“Mariah stop. That’s our baby girl! Don’t hurt her, baby. Don’t.. don’t make me stop you.” Jason said.
“Yes.. our girl. Our perfect.. little.. angel.” The chains continued to drag. A perverse hunger crept into her voice as her full attention locked onto Elathyne once more.
Elathyne stopped crying, her mouth simply hung open in terror. She was in shock. Four hours ago, Mommy was brushing her long brown hair as she sat in the tall black stool in front of her mother’s vanity. She made a joke about Timmy from school picking his nose and they both laughed. Mommy hugged her, and she leapt off the stool and walked across the landing to her room. Why was Mommy hurting her?
A guttural snarl crept out of Mariah’s throat.
Sunlight from the window directly behind her cast a demented shadow-image of the woman and her victim.
“I’m.. hungry. Jason. I’m.. sooo.. hungry.” Mariah said.
“Mariah, I can help you! You’re sick! There are others just like you, you’re not the only one.” Jason said. His pleading fell on deaf ears.
Mariah began to lip her lips, her eyes fixed on the small girl.
“Jason”
“Stop it Mariah! Stop!” Jason said. He lined up the iron sights of his .45. If he missed… he couldn’t miss.
“I’m.”
“Daddyyyyy!!” Elathyne screamed anew.
“sooo..”
“It’s okay baby girl, don’t be scared.” Jason tried to whisper to his daughter, hoping furiously that his entire family would not be stolen from him on the same day.
“HUNGRY!!”
Mariah leapt for the girl. His daughter screamed. Four consecutive explosions shook the room. Glass shattered. The kinetic energy of the rounds Jason fired altered Mariah’s trajectory mid-lunge. She crashed through the window into the arms of gravity, who threw her mercilessly down into the small garden below. Sprinting for his daughter, Jason covered the fifteen feet in what looked like a single stride. Sweeping her into his arms, he pressed his cheek against hers as she wept bitterly.
“I’m so sorry, baby girl. I’m so sorry.” Tears streamed from his eyes.
Jason would rush his daughter to the hospital only to lose her three hours later.
Doctors would tell him that the blood loss, in addition to the trauma of seeing her mother shot dead in front of her following the brutal assault, simply proved too much for the little girl.
He would spend that night in a drunken haze, his gun never far out of reach, loaded with a single bullet. He would spend the next morning throwing up violently.
The cold wind slapped him in the face. He was back in the tundra. Ice and snow surrounded him.
Artemis was somewhere nearby, scouting the area. Luke was extracting the radios from the X. But he was not alone.
His earlier outburst had echoed through the woods, reaching the ears of one whom Jason would rather have not awoken.
​Visions of his bleeding daughter swam across his vision. Her screams shattered his eardrums. The memory became so vivid that it dulled the senses. He no longer saw the snow around him. No longer heard the tell-tale sounds of his death approaching. Jason Delgado had left the building.
Fourteen feet tall, weighing in a 600lbs, a white behemoth charged through the Titan’s Forrest. In her wake, nothing stood. She had been disturbed.
Jason fell to his knees, hands pushing into the snow in front of him as he wept.
“I couldn’t save you.. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t save you.” Jason’s tears began to melt the snow in a small semi-circle beneath his chin. For months, he had fought this back, but the dam had broken, and the emotional rip tide had carried him away.
She smelt the man.
Hands and feet worked in unison to propel this great beast across the frozen tundra.
She saw him, sixty yards away, head down in the snow.
Fifty yards now.
Fourty.
Thirty.
The vision changed. Mariah froze. His daughter’s words pierced the air, “Daddy behind you!”
With an almost divine grace, Jason snapped back to forest as he heard heavy footfalls accompanied by fierce breathing. He rolled to his feet, gun already drawn, and he froze.
Twenty yards. The man saw her. She stopped running. She rose up on her hind-legs and released a roar that chilled the blood in Jason Delgado’s veins.
Twenty yards in front of him stood the largest creature he had ever seen.
Pure white, as if it had emerged from the very snow itself, stood an Arctic Knight, a rare breed of hyper-territorial bears bent on protecting their turf from any intruders.
Claws stretching three inches from the bear’s paw, razor sharp and at the ready, Jason knew he was in danger.
He turned to run, sprinting east towards the transport vessel where Luke should be waiting with the salvaged radios. And Artemis.. would be somewhere.
The bear pursued.
The monster quickly gained on Jason as fear began to flood through his body.
He turned back and fired three times, sending the rounds straight into the bear’s chest each time. She became angrier at this. She ran faster. Jason slowed down just long enough to fire another salvo of lead when the Arctic Knight’s claws lanced his uniform, broke the skin beneath, and cracked two ribs before launching his body eight feet away like a rag doll.

Author's Note

This is awesome.