Siren Song

Unknown Futures

David Black's breathing came in broken gasps. In the furthest corner of the cave he laid across jagged rocks, burdened by broken ribs and fingers throbbing red in the dark. The taste of blood burned stark in his mouth; joyful, husky laughter echoed in his ears.

Broken fingers and dying breath left limited options for Black beyond tapping the recorder to life. A final testament to the life he lived too arrogantly seemed necessary if only to pass the time. He could send it back to base even if there was no one to save him afterwards. They needed to hear it and he needed to be heard. With a cracked knuckle he tapped the screen on the forearm of his shredded suit. The cold was seeping under his skin and he would likely die of exposure if not for the monsters preying on them.

In the softest whisper he began, "I don't know who will ever hear this, but if it's my family or my brothers on base, this is David Black. I'm sure it'll be impossible for you to find me alive and this is just my goodbye and apology for my failings. I know Corporals Jacob Myrlling and Connor Clarke are dead. I saw their hearts in the snow. Corporal Erik Hughes is most likely also dead. I couldn't see it, but I heard enough.

"Please," his voice broke and sobs infested his words. "For the love of God, do not enter these caves. Do not go to the waters below. Get off this mountain and abandon this research, please. This place is cursed. God this place is hell!

"If you do not leave...we are all going to die and it is all my fault for finding them." He hesitated, scared to be heard and terrified to hear them coming, and choked down the sobs.

"They're like birds somehow. They're like giant birds but they're also...like our-"

Black's transmission ended and his transmitter fell to the ground. A well-placed rock collided with the send button and a creature long-believed to be deceased was responsible for snapping his neck and draining the blood. She scraped away his flesh and lapped it up from her claw-like nails. She always saved the entrails for last and gnawed on his liver and heart. Human lungs were fun to play with before eating, so she blew air in until the stretched tissue could whistle the air out no more. She possessed the essence of evil incarnate. There was no pity.

His body eaten to her satisfaction, she curled her clawed fingers under his arms and dragged the carcass to a growing pile of deteriorating bones. At last, Corporal Black could lay by his comrades in a mountain of everlasting loyalty neighbored by decay.

In the strangest lilt of whispered hisses and slurring mumbles the feathered creature skulked from her cave into the pitch and blizzard of her mountainside. A flesh-scoring cry resonated through the ice and rock and many soldiers experienced their worst nightmares that night. Her cry was met with a hundred replies of curiosity, excitement, malice, hunger, lust, hate, and need. The sirens were awake and eager for the foolishness of the human pests. Nothing pleased the female brood more than the ignorant strength of men. In the youth of the season's hunt, the huntresses prepared for a gory celebration by combing hair, practicing song, and spreading the good word of deaths to come.

~ ~ ~

"No!" I thrashed awake under his covers. In a cold sweat with images of dying people still in his eyes, Kalle forced himself to remember reality.

The base is real. Janie did not blast her brains against their headboard. Those were dreams; Mum and Dad are not being institutionalized or burned alive. Cameron is asleep on the bunk above; he was not crucified on the peak of these godforsaken mountains.

"But maybe we are inevitably godforsaken."

"Kalle?" The whispered question came from Dakota in the next bunk. "Why did you say that?"