The Spawning Read Online Free PDF Page A

and then? Who could say?
    â€œThat Locke is one crazy sonofabitch,” Frye said.
    Coyle laughed. “Locke believes in UFOs and Atlantis and the faces on Mars. He’s nuts.”
    â€œHe said those stones are some kind of beacon. Beacon? I says. Sure, they found ‘em in Beacon Valley. He missed the joke. Guy don’t have no sense of humor. Beacon, he says,
a
beacon. Hell you mean? I says. Beacon, like an antenna or something, he says. Beacon for something, aliens or some shit. I don’t know. Guy talks so fast I can’t understand him sometimes. But he says that’s what happened to those limies at Hobb. They got scooped up by something and taken to Venus or one of them places to get their asses probed. He also says there’s a team up at Kharkov and that they’re drilling down to that lake again.”
    Coyle had heard that one, too.
    Some kind of hush-hush thing going on.
    Kharkov had been a Soviet installation back in the sixties and seventies and then they handed it over to the Americans after they kicked communism to the curb and were trying to cut their budget. They still operated Vostok and a few others, but Kharkov belonged to the Americans now. At least, it had until that crazy business five years ago. It had been abandoned since. Now, maybe, it was up and running again. But why with winter coming on? Things like that made Coyle almost believe some of the rumors circulating.
    Twelve years on the Ice and sometimes he felt like he didn’t have a clue, that things were happening in the shadows that he couldn’t even guess at. Or want to.
    Frye said, “Locke says it’s gonna be just like that winter five years ago. Field camps. People disappearing. It ain’t gonna be good, says he. Those beakers are stirring things up down here, melting out those standing stones and exploring that lake. It’s been quiet for awhile and now it’s about to get real
loud.
Least, that’s what Locke is saying.” Frye laughed. “You should’ve seen that little monkeyskull in the lounge this morning, Nicky. He was going on and on about that stuff and I was telling him his mother should’ve kept her legs closed, but everyone else was listening. Even the beakers. Think it was Jesus coming to preach at a tent meeting and not that comic book nerd.”
    Coyle didn’t say anymore about it.
    Listening to the wind howling around the hut, he felt something sink inside him like a stone. You could try and talk sense and rationalize things as much as you wanted, he knew, but the fact remained: twenty-five people had disappeared into thin air at Hobb and that was just plain disturbing.
    â€œLong freaky winter,” Frye said. “Who knows? Maybe Locke’s right.”
    And then, throughout the camp, a siren began to shrill.

5
    R IGHT AWAY COYLE THOUGHT it was another drill, but then Hopper, the manager at Clime, came over the intercom: “THIS IS NOT A DRILL! REPEAT! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! MASS CASUALTY TEAMS REPORT TO YOUR STATIONS! REPEAT! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”
    Shit.
    Coyle and Frye came bolting out of the shack into the semi-darkness, confused and stumbling, wondering what the hell was going on. The siren was sounding all over camp like an air raid warning. The ANG pilots from the C-130 were outside, wanting to know what was going on. People were scurrying around like ants, slipping on the ice and pouring out of buildings and Jamesway huts and sheds. Everyone was looking for fire or an explosion, some hint that the shit had hit the fan.
    But there was nothing.
    Everything looked fine.
    Then Hopper came back over the loudspeaker saying that a helicopter from nearby Colony Station had crashed out on the ice. He didn’t have any casualty figures or details, only that it had happened and Casualty Teams were being scrambled.
    It was no drill.
    Coyle formed up with his group, began quickly loading medical equipment and stretchers onto one of the Sno-Cats