The Spawning Read Online Free PDF

for the journey. As he climbed into the cab with Special Ed—Ed Tavares—the Human Resources guy, and Horn, a mechanic, he saw that Frye’s Sno-Cat was already heading off down the flagged ice road at a good clip.
    â€œWhy the hell were they flying a helicopter around?” Coyle wanted to know.
    â€œI’m sure they had their reasons,” Special Ed said, diplomatic as only Special Ed could be. He was leader of the Mass Casualty Team.
    Working the shift and bringing the ‘Cat around, Horn just laughed. “Yeah, I just bet they do. Goddamn Colony. Way I’m hearing it, it’s a goddamn freakshow over there. Those boys are up to something, but you just try and find out what.”
    â€œThere’s no mystery to Colony Station,” Special Ed said.
    But said no more on the subject.
    By the end of February, the planes stopped flying. Everything was grounded including helicopters. No Sprytes or Sno-Cats coming in from the deep-field projects. No tourists or journalists or other DVs, distinguished visitors. Nobody but essential personnel. The winds tended to blow and the snow tended to fly and what illumination there was, was grainy more often than not.
    This time of year, the sun did not really rise. It hovered over the ice for a few hours casting a dim light before giving up the ghost and sinking from sight. Another week and it would be gone entirely. Not exactly prime flying conditions, particularly for a helicopter.
    Outside of the ‘Cat, the world was hazy and white and surreal. Sometimes the winds would gust up to thirty miles an hour and then just drop away and it would look like they were driving through one of those glass paperweights that you shook to make a tiny blizzard. Just suspended snowflakes drifting back down to the frozen hardpack.
    The whole way to the crash site everyone was a little on edge and when they got that way, they started picking at each other.
    Not Special Ed, of course.
    He was the HR guy and he went out of his way to make people happy, which often got him in reams of trouble. Promising this one something and promising someone else the same thing and then having to lie and swindle his way out. It was commonly known he had no backbone and nothing swinging between his legs. He was a company man all the way, always trying to smooth things over between the NSF and the station personnel. He took shit from both ends and tried to keep everyone smiling which was simply impossible.
    Coyle knew he meant well, but sometimes it was hard not to think of him as a weasel. All of which had gotten him the name of “Special Ed,” because, boy, he was special, all right.
    Right then, Horn was saying how Colony Station was run by the CIA and those spooks were playing around with nukes and germ warfare agents, threatening the whole goddamn continent and the free world in general. They were smuggling Middle Eastern terrorists down there, he said, so they could torture them in private, testing experimental laxatives on them.
    All of which made Special Ed bristle because that was dangerous talk and wouldn’t look good in his reports and to a guy like him reports were everything.
    â€œThey’re just involved in some delicate research at Colony,” he said. “The station is staffed by some very bright people. I’ve been there. There’s nothing strange about the place.”
    â€œAh, they’re running black ops out of there. Ask anyone,” Horn said. “Goddamn spooks.”
    â€œThat’s ridiculous,” Special Ed said.
    Special Ed didn’t like Horn, Coyle knew.
    He didn’t like many at Clime. But he put up with them and volunteered as the camp whipping boy just to keep things chugging along.
    After one particularly ugly incident the week before when Gut—a.k.a. Natalie Gutman, a lady who was nearly as feminine as her nickname—gave Special Ed the mother of all ass-chewings in the Galley right in front of everyone,