Existential
It was supposed to be just another mission...
Buried deep in the rugged Alaskan wilderness lies a secret that could alter the future of mankind–a secret that billionaire Elizabeth Grey has invested millions in solving. When the dig goes silent and all attempts at making contact fail, an elite team of battle-hardened military contractors are brought in led by former Marine Max Ahlgren, a warrior haunted by his past. The mission: to make contact and rescue a team of scientists and engineers working on the secretive “archeological” project.
Once on the ground, the team discovers the grizzly truth that this is no ordinary rescue mission. In what was supposed to be an easy payday, Max and his men find themselves in the fight of their lives against a nightmarish enemy like nothing they have ever seen. The mission becomes a struggle for survival as the world’s greatest soldiers encounter the universe’s ultimate terror in a battle that puts all of humanity at stake.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Illustration Copyright © 2017 Ryan Aslesen
Cover layout by Deranged Doctor Design
www.derangeddoctordesign.com
Book design and production by BookBaby
Editing by: Tyler Mathis
Leigh Hogan
Ashley Davis
Existential
Copyright © 2018 Ryan Aslesen.
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
ISBN (Ebook Edition): 978-1-54391-958-5
ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-54391-959-2
www.ryanaslesen.com
To my father, thank you for being there to pick me up when I fell, and for teaching me not to be afraid of the dark.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
A Final Note
About Author
A lot of work goes into writing a book and this book is no exception. I couldn’t have done it without the help of a lot of talented people. I first would like to thank my writing coach and developmental editor, Tyler Mathis, a fellow Marine and brother-in-arms, for being my constant guide on this journey and helping me achieve one of my life dreams. Tyler this book wouldn’t have become what it has without your professional guidance and expertise.
I would also like to thank the rest of my editorial team that helped me sharpen and improve my manuscript. Leigh Hogan for all the time and energy put into copy editing my manuscript and helping me make it the best it could be. Ashley Davis for the excellent line edit and improvements to my manuscript. And Laura Wilkinson for the final proofreading of my work. I also wish to thank Garrett Cook for the creative input and suggestions that gave my manuscript the extra edge I was looking for. Any mistakes or shortcomings that remain in this book are mine and mine alone.
A book isn’t complete without a cover and I want to thank Kim and Darja with Deranged Doctor Design for the final cover design and marketing materials. I appreciate your patience with me during the design and review process. If I am your typical customer, I don’t envy your job.
Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my beautiful and brilliant wife, Amy. You gave me the courage and support to go through with this project. What started as some scribbled notes on a legal pad has become so much more because of your encouragement and unwavering belief in me. I also want to say thank you to my two wonderful sons, Darien and Mason. Darien for listening to my rambling ideas in the car and always being supportive and making me feel hip and cool when I’m not. Mason for reawakening my imagination and showing me what it means to be a kid again. I apologize for any time this project took away from you guys. You were the motivation to keep pushing on when I thought about giving up. I hope this book, as humble of accomplishment it is, inspires you to pursue your dreams.
I’m absolutely convinced. . .There has been and is an existing presence, an ET presence [on Earth].
-Robert T. Bigelow
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
It was the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. A discovery that could alter the course of humanity and perhaps even the evolution of the species, and Greg Ramone had signed on to be a part of it. Yet, as he practically sprinted from Research Pod 1 into the unseasonably warm chill of the Alaskan wilderness, a greater motive hurried his step through Base Camp.
A brilliant ray of sunshine slanted into his eyes from just over the tree line, only to be extinguished a moment later behind the leading edge of a flat gray cloud spanning most of the heavens, with no end in sight. The scene made him think of the overworked cliché, “If you’re tired of the weather here, wait five minutes,” though it didn’t appear as if the gray sheet would be moving out anytime soon.
He consulted his titanium sports watch: four eighteen p.m. It would be full-on dark in less than an hour. Around Base Camp, automated lights atop towering aluminum poles illuminated in response to the dying daylight. In the background, the generators hummed, straining to keep the camp lit and heated, a constant reminder of man’s intrusion into an otherwise pristine wilderness.
Even though emotions of any sort seemed frowned upon within the Greytech empire, Greg couldn’t help but feel as if he’d been blithely oblivious when he’d jumped at the opportunity to join this expedition, more than happy to fly to Alaska on Dr. Lawrence’s white coattails. He needed to gain field experience, anything to gain an edge while writing his doctoral dissertation in biochemistry. It would look great on his résumé, provided the fruits of this project were ever revealed. He had signed a strict non-disclosure agreement, forbidding him from revealing any details of the expedition or its findings.
The money was good as well. Despite having been on the project for a little over a month, other researchers still considered him an outsider. The project excited him, like most of the scientists on staff. Everyone had their reasons for being there, but all wanted to somehow capitalize on being a part of this truly revolutionary discovery.
A horn weakly beeped, failing to trump the guttural grumble of a powerful diesel engine. Greg was startled from his reverie and jerked to a stop. A massive orange wheel-loader trundled by with a shipping container on its forks. Its driver, who wore the standard silver-gray jumpsuit of a Greytech employee, shot him a face full of annoyance as the machine passed. In the other direction, an ATV passed with a uniformed Greytech employee in front and a researcher in back.
Greg finally had a clear path across the wide, muddy track that passed for a main street. He crossed and turned uphill, head
ed east, ever mindful of being observed and recorded by the dozens of security cameras placed atop the light poles around camp.
Greytech’s top-secret Base Camp stretched east to west for over a half-kilometer along the south bank of a marshy stream that flowed down from Boundary Peak 171, a four thousand-meter mountain that neatly bisected the border between Alaska and the Yukon Territory. The glacier that created the valley had receded since the last Ice Age. Only a fraction of it remained at the head of the valley, high up the slope of Peak 171. A grid of pre-fab research buildings and dormitories comprised the eastern end of Base Camp, closest to the dig site. The west end of camp housed logistics: equipment storage, maintenance and fueling facilities, a diesel-powered generating station, and a cluster of helicopter pads adjacent to several stacks of metal shipping containers that had been flown in, packed to bursting with vehicles, provisions, and sensitive monitoring and research equipment. Science for profit at its most grandiose. The CEO and majority owner of Greytech, Ms. Elizabeth Grey, had spared no expense in her quest to unlock the mysteries of the alien craft.
As it should be.
Greg walked up the gentle slope into the gathering twilight. He still considered himself an idealist, and certain aspects of Greytech’s culture bothered him, despite the hefty sum on his contract. The company had taken the vanguard in solar R&D, but this operation was anything but green. A pall of diesel fumes hung over the valley at all hours of the day and night. Greytech’s scientists were a different breed from the academicians he had grown accustomed to at Stanford. These were brilliant men, of course, but their loyalties lay with Greytech. They made all their discoveries in the interests of Elizabeth Grey and her bottom line. The way of corporate science, he realized. Though he had never witnessed unethical behavior by any Greytech researcher, something about the atmosphere in Base Camp smacked of callousness and moral disregard.
An alien object, buried half in the glacier and half in the mountain, served as the entire reason this remote valley had been transformed into such a hive of activity. Not yet a doctor of biochemistry, only a research assistant, Greg had been kept in the dark regarding the happenings at the dig site. But today, he’d assisted Dr. Lawrence in examining some data samples of the organic life that had been found aboard the ship—a black organic substance that the head researcher, Dr. Jung, suspected might be sentient.
At this moment, Greg couldn’t have given a shit less about the substance, sentient or not. He had work to do, yes—a perfunctory check of some ambient radiation sensors just south of the camp. The true purpose of his hike, however, was to make a simple phone call. Only nothing was simple about communications from the camp. First off, the NDA he had signed strictly forbade contact with the outside world. Second, cell phones were useless a hundred miles from the nearest signal tower.
He hoped instead to raise Elana on the satellite phone burning a hole in his pocket. A fellow doctoral student had artfully secreted the phone within a shipment of highly sensitive equipment that had arrived from the university that morning. Greg’s career would be over before it started if he were caught making even this innocuous call to his girlfriend back in Palo Alto. However, there were things about the project that were starting to bother him. The more the company seemed to uncover, the less communicative the doctors became, and the fewer questions they would answer. He was feeling alone. Lonely enough to violate the NDA.
He needed to hear Elana’s voice—a task that necessitated this trek into the woods. The handful of personnel trusted enough to carry sat phones found they were useless within the valley and around the dig site. Even Greytech’s satellite communication technology, light years more advanced than any cell phone, had patchy reception when sending and receiving transmissions. Additional IT men had flown in this morning to analyze the problem and fix it, or so he’d heard in the mess hall.
Greg came to the camp’s eastern perimeter and felt a knot of nervousness form in his stomach as he approached the security checkpoint. It was manned by a Greytech security guard cradling an assault rifle and appearing alert for the surveillance cameras. All of his gear—helmet, body armor, weapons—was camouflaged in a pattern of white, green, and gray. Faceless behind polarized goggles, the security man said nothing as he scanned the barcode on Greg’s ID badge before waving him through the perimeter.
Headlights bore down on Greg from up the hill as a dump truck whined its way downgrade with a load of dirt from the dig site. He stepped off the road and cut south, first through leafless scrub and then into a stand of towering firs. He switched on an LED flashlight and picked his way between the trunks. The wind picked up slightly as bad weather moved in, but from the reports he’d seen, he had a couple of hours before things really turned to shit, though around here one never knew. He made his way diagonally up the ridge, skirting drifts of snow that hadn’t melted since the last storm three days ago. It had been piss warm since then, thirteen degrees Celsius for the high yesterday, which was downright sweltering for Alaska in early November.
Upon reaching the first sensor atop the ridge, Greg found it reading the same as it had the previous two days. He would have been cursing if not for the phone. Greg looked to make sure no one had followed him, then pulled the phone out and consulted the screen. He frowned, no signal. Stowing the phone, he jogged to the top of the next ridge. He checked it again and smiled. Not one bar, but two!
He dialed Elana’s number in Palo Alto. She would be home from class by now, likely indulging in a glass or two of pinot noir before she cooked dinner for herself. Better be just her, anyway. His smile didn’t waver though he worried at times. She was devastatingly attractive, after all, and they weren’t quite married yet.
“Come on,” Greg urged as he awaited connection with Elana’s phone. After an interminable time—roughly fifteen seconds or so—he heard a ring, followed by two more. “Shit, be available...” Apprehensive, he bounced on the balls of his feet and stared down into the mud at an odd grouping of puddles. What the heck? A click drew his attention back to the phone. “Hey, hon, it’s me!”
The reply came after a moment of lag. “Greg!” Elana’s voice echoed a bit, but the connection was better than he’d hoped for. “Oh my god! Oh, hon, I miss you so much!”
They’d been separated for over a month which was the most time they had spent apart since their engagement. She sounded ecstatic to hear his voice, just as he’d been until the odd puddles formed a footprint.
Six toes?
Indeed, two smaller toes graced either side of the footprint in the mud, with four longer toes between. Greg concluded this impression had come from the right foot, though he found the very idea absurd since this alleged footprint appeared to be just shy of a meter long, not counting the two triangular impressions driven straight down into the muck directly behind the heel.
Avian? Talons? What the fuck am I seeing here?
He stood dumbstruck with the phone at his ear. Elana had become a warble, like Charlie Brown’s teacher, the voice Greg loved reduced to a bleating trombone. He crouched and moved forward. Another track in a patch of slush, the left foot, lay about two meters beyond the first. The bipedal creature, certainly no mere animal, had slipped a bit here. There were no triangular marks behind the heel but the nails—claws—on its front toes had dug deep into the snow to find traction.
Greg followed the tracks as Elana nattered on, something about the absurdity of her best friend doing her Master’s thesis in philosophy on the works of Sartre. The fourth and fifth footprints he discovered showed the prominent marks of two talons emanating from the heel. In making the sixth footprint, the creature’s front claws had sliced right through a fir root over two inches in diameter just by treading upon it.
“I mean, Sartre? Nobody takes him seriously anymore. She’ll be laughed right out of the department! I told her she should—”
The anatomical details of the footprints had piqued his interest to the point where all other instincts and thoughts shut down. Havin
g grown up in suburbia and not in the woods, he failed to consider the most pressing question presented by his find: when had the tracks been made? Had he have known, he would have abandoned Elana, Sartre, and the sat phone and would have gotten the hell out of there.
“You’re awfully quiet, Doctor Ramone.” Elana laughed. “How’s it going up there? I know, it’s all hush-hush; a simple well or poorly will suffice.”
When something nearby snapped, Greg felt like screaming at the phone, the distracting device dulling survival instincts he never knew he possessed. In that instant, when he first comprehended the danger, he dropped the phone to his side, Elana still squawking.
Greg hadn’t heard the grizzly coming. He’d just known something would be there when he turned. Muscles in the bear’s shoulders bunched and relaxed in metronomic rhythm as the golden-brown beast ran on all fours straight for him. He pissed slightly in his Gore-Tex trousers and opened his mouth to scream, though no sound came from his throat. Elana. The bear closed upon him in a flash, within arm’s reach.
Greg had thought upon sighting the bear that his life was over. Instead, he whirled around and watched the bear run on into the underbrush, moving quietly despite its size and speed. He gazed down. One of the bear’s paws had tracked next to one of the gargantuan footprints.
“Can you hear me all right?”
Bewildered by the phone and Elana’s voice, so incongruous in his primal surroundings, it took Greg a few seconds to seek out the phone. “Yeah, uh, everything’s great, hon.”
He again felt a presence nearby and scanned the dimming landscape amongst the firs. Elana’s voice continued making inquiries through the receiver. Every pore on his body had turned to gooseflesh. He was alone, standing atop a ridge in the vast wilds of Alaska. Alone and, yet, not alone. The creature’s tracks, the bear...
It all made sense. Walk or run? He knew—at least he’d heard—one should stay calm and move slowly when escaping an apex predator. Couldn’t the fucking thing smell fear? It would sure as shit smell the mess he’d made in his pants.