The Glaciermen #24: Polar

Early access prepublication manuscripts of "The Glaciermen"

Hey there, Dear Readers,

Before we get into it today, I have a warning for you: this story was inspired by an utterly terrifying nightmare I had last year.

While I’m firmly against gratuity for gratuity’ sake, and I definitely do not write anything that couldn’t be shown in a regular movie theater, sometimes a story must go where it must go.

My goal ever since that nightmare has been to capture the thrilling, terrifying, and even disturbing feelings that I woke up with that fateful dawn before hunching over a desk and scribbling down as much detail as I could before the sun could rise and burn away the memory of it. To do that well, I must honor the choices and consequences the characters face—regardless of where it takes them.

The point is, sometimes this tale gets dark, and this segment is a pivotal moment in Lee’s life, so be forewarned. Your emotions may get tangled by the end of this one.

(Here’s the previous segment if you missed it, and the first chapter and index, if you’re new).

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Polar

Recap: Lee was about to take down the bulltooth, finally getting a stroke of good luck, but something got the jump on him, something that could send him flying and knock him unconscious…

Pain. Hot coals burning across his chest. A piercing metronome of lancing agony in his temple with every heartbeat. Breaths coming in and out like a rasp. One leg numb, the other an aching mass of bruised tissue. Something hard poking against his stomach.

Lee awoke, finding himself not for the first time in an unfamiliar place in excruciating pain. Slumped on his side, head bent backward at an awkward angle, he blinked past the sharp ache in his brain, taking in his new surroundings. He was looking at a ceiling of stone, and for a moment he was hopeful that he was back in Aguta’s chamber. But he wasn’t. He was in a cave, yes, but this one was craggy, damp, and dim, nothing like Aguta’s storeroom. The sound of dripping water somewhere echoed through the narrow cavern. Low orange light found its way into the space somewhere above and behind Lee. It must have been dusk, then. There was a smell, a rancid, rotten smell like meat long gone bad, but mixed in with it was a fresher stink, like that of copper twinged with sweet decay. And a sound, a crunching, suckling sound—and it was close by.

The pain and stiffness made it arduous, but Lee managed to straighten his neck and look toward the sound. Deeper into the cave, though it was hard to see in the dim light and Lee’s vision was still a little blurry, he could make out the brown and red carcass of the bulltooth, or at least what was left of it. Next to it was the source of the sound—the white cloud from earlier. Lee blinked a few times and shook his head, trying to clear his vision and inadvertently sending new tendrils of pain through his tender brain. No, it wasn’t a cloud, obviously, but it was huge and white, and certainly moving. At its side were three smaller white masses, too. Lee was suddenly alert, and afraid, and his body tensed painfully, but he dared not let out any sound from the pain.

The large white shape shifted, pulling something red out of the side of the carcass. The red part was covered in gore, dripping blood onto the stone floor of the cave. Then in the dim light, a pair of eyes glinted amongst the redness, and a crack opened up in it, dropping a chunk of flush next to the smaller white blobs and revealing a dark hollow filled with a dozen sharp white points. It was a head, Lee realized, eyes widening as his fear amped up another level, the head of a polar bear. And he was in its den.

He was watching a mother bear feeding her cubs the last of the main course. And I’m next up on the menu for dessert, he thought.

Despite terror at the idea of looking anywhere but the bears, the pain in Lee’s body forced his gaze away. He surveyed himself. He had been dragged and dumped, and it looked like it. He couldn’t move his left arm. One of his legs, the numb one, was awkwardly jammed under the other, which was missing a moccasin and felt like a solid brick of aching bruise. The air was cold against his exposed toes, but he didn’t feel it, because he was too busy staring in disbelief at his chest. The parka had been shredded. Four huge gashes crossed from his left shoulder down to the bottom of his ribcage. The rips in the sealskin were crusted with sticky brown on the fringes, and at the base of these miniature valleys across his chest, thick congealed blood blocked Lee’s view of the wounds themselves.

Oh, it's not too bad, Lee told himself, failing to believe his own lie.

As gingerly as he could, with his working right arm, he undid the fastenings of the front panels, intending to open the parka and see the extent of the damage. He started to peel back one of the panels, pulling ever so gingerly, but it was crusted to his chest, and even the slightest amount of pressure caused fiery pain. But he had to see. The last three days had been too much for it all to be for nothing. He had to know how bad it was—to know if he had a chance. If he could hope.

So he gritted his teeth, then fiercely grabbed hold of the left panel of the parka, and pulled. Hard. The pain was instant agony as the stiff seal leather tore away from his chest, taking the congealed layer of blood with it. Four deep red fissures diagonally crossed his chest, and in the moment before fresh blood began trickling out of them, Lee thought he could see the white of his ribs in a few spots. Then came the pain, unbearable, searing, immense pain. Lee let go of the parka as it washed over him, the front panel falling closed again against his wounds, and cried out in agony as his whole existence became pure torment for several seconds.

When the pain lessened enough to let the fear back in, Lee slammed his hand over his mouth and clenched his jaw tightly to cut off the scream, nostrils flaring intensely as air sucked in and out through his nose. It took every ounce of his willpower to hold back sobs. His eyes watered as a few tears leaked out regardless. He blinked them away and glanced at the bear. It was looking directly at him, a chunk of flesh hanging from its mouth mid-bite. It huffed curiously, then snapped up the meat and swallowed it before beginning to saunter over toward Lee. Thankfully, the cubs did not follow. Lee held his breath, but his heart was pounding furiously and each thump added to the burning pain of his wounds. He clenched his jaw muscles harder, struggling to stifle crying or another shout.

The bear shuffled closer until its gore-coated head was just inches away from his torso. It was massive, as if a minivan had grown white fur and powerful, terrifying limbs. The bear sniffed around Lee, curious at the sudden unexpected noise which had come from this little lump. Lee pinched his nose tightly and clenched even harder, jaw muscles straining with effort. The bear nudged his leg roughly with its nose, sending a new wave of fire through Lee’s body. He held back another shout by clenching his jaw as hard as he could. Tears poured from his eyes. He felt one of his molars crack, but he did not relent. If he let it go, even for an instant, a cry would escape his lips and that would be the end. After a few sniffs and what felt like an eternity, when Lee felt as if he could hold it in no longer, the bear deemed him uninteresting again and went back over to the bulltooth to finish its meal.

Lee relaxed his jaw, the cracked tooth a new ache he could add to the list of his pain. He dared not let himself breathe all at once, so he slowly let his breath hiss quietly out of his nose like a leaking tire. He lay there in renewed agony for several minutes, unable to manage anything beyond waiting for the terror and pain to diminish. After a while, if he held perfectly still, the pain was manageable enough to think.

That was too close. And stupid. Why would I think to do that in the first place? What would Aguta say? Idiot!

It had been a mistake to attempt removing his parka. Though he knew little about wounds, Lee was smart enough to realize that the thick sealskin parka had saved his life, absorbing most of the damage from the clawing swipe of the polar bear, and it was probably continuing to save it by forming a rudimentary bandage, though he had just messed that up a bit, for sure. It didn’t actually cover the entirety of the wounds—he could see them through the tears as a matter of fact—but it was definitely still helping to slow the bleeding.

And what was that poking into his stomach? With his good arm, he felt around his waist. It was the handle of the ice pick, jabbing up from his belt. He shifted it out of the way.

Time to think, he thought. Agh! This freaking pain… think, think, idiot! Make yourself think better. Make yourself feel better… no. There’s no way I can make that work. Plus, I only ever used it to warm myself. This is different.

Lee bit his lip, holding back another yell as a gust of breeze blew past his exposed wounds and sent another wave of pain washing across his chest.

Wind… that means I’m close to the cave’s opening. Very close. 

Another wave of pain.

Think! You gotta live. That’s what Aguta said, and he meant something by that. Another one of his secrets. I’ll make it out of here and make him tell me. Yeah, he’ll have to tell me everything. No more secrets. Okay… I’ve gotta live. Think.

He took a breath and gathered himself, focusing back on the present situation. He began checking his body, going over one section at a time gingerly flexing this part and that, testing if what he could move, what hurt, and what didn’t—the last category included almost nothing.

His numb leg was starting to come back, all tingly-like, once he had shifted it. The other worked fine, just painfully. His left arm was still useless, and of course, there was his chest. Big issue. That was probably why he couldn’t use the arm—the left pectoral muscle in his chest wasn’t exactly in tip-top condition, given the massive tears running through it. His head still ached, but it was just a dull throb now instead of a piercing lance of fire every other second, which was a nice improvement.

His machete was gone, likely still laying out there wherever it had landed. No luck there. He did have the ice pick though, not that it would do much. But in his parka pocket, somehow surviving the bear’s swipe, the tumble, and being dragged who knows how far to this cave, there it was. The small wooden canister.

No, he thought, remembering the night under the sled. I can’t do that again.

But Aguta’s words rang in his mind. ‘Do not use this except to escape certain death… you must survive.’

This certainly was a certain death situation, and he definitely wanted to survive, but there was no way he was putting any more of that stuff in his mouth, no sir.

Wait, you idiot! You’re not supposed to put it in your mouth in the first place. You rub it on your skin, dummy. How could you be so stupid…

The thought trailed off as Lee began forming a plan. It was a simple plan, really, but simple was good. He could do simple. He needed something he could pull off. Simple could be pulled off. He ran through it in his mind:

Step one: put gel on skin. Step two: wait for gel to kick in. Step three: sneak out of the cave.

It was a good plan, he was sure of it. Lee reached into his pocket and pulled out the canister. After an awkward minute of fumbling with the lid with his one useful hand, he managed to get it open. The clear gel was inside, glowing only dimly in this dormant state. He set the canister in the crook of his limp elbow and scooped out a handful, ready to apply it to his skin.

Oh…

All his clothes were still on—there was no exposed skin to rub the gel on—and there was no way the clothes were coming off in his current state. He’d already seen how that had gone earlier. His eyes drifted to the wide rips across his parka, and the exposed raw flesh underneath.

Not like I have a better option, he thought, then gingerly slathered the gel across the first gash. He braced for pain, but the gel was cool, even soothing, on the torn flesh. It felt good, like it was even beginning to relieve the pain. He slathered the other three gashes generously, using the entire contents of the canister.

Then he waited. The gel began to glow brighter, and the relief was magnificent. The pain was lessening by the second, and he could actively feel himself feeling better, stronger. Soon the pain in his legs was gone too. Even his headache went away. He tested his limbs again. All working, excluding his left arm, but that was a mechanical issue anyway.

Lee sat up. The bears were too busy engorging themselves on his bulltooth to notice. He turned toward the mouth of the cave. Freedom was so close. He could easily sneak off. But there had been a pang of something when he looked at the bears. They were so… patronizing, tearing away at his prey, hungrily ripping and snapping up chunks of flesh that he was supposed to eat to take away his hunger.

It was all thanks to that one, the mother, that he was in this mess. The bulltooth had been at his fingertips. He had delivered the perfect stab with the spear. He would have returned to the chasm triumphant, a hero, or at least the underdog coming back to show them he was strong, powerful, that he deserved to live among them. Muktuk and Nantuk could shove it.

Lee was on his feet now. The godseye gel was glowing brightly, casting a blue hew across the stone at his feet.

All that glory would have been his. But no, the bear had stolen that from him, taken his kill, ruined his chest, dragged him here to die while humiliating him by eating his quarry right in front of him, only to top it all off by eating him too.

No!

It would not go that way. He would not let this beast walk free from its crime. No, it would pay. He would make it pay.

He was already walking toward it, his ice pick somehow in his hand, though he couldn’t remember it getting there.

Yes, he could see it now. The great predator of the ice, the mighty polar bear, laid low and bleeding out on the stone just as he had been, its cubs watching helplessly as he butchered it in front of them.

Lee could not wait any longer. With a maniacal shout, he broke into a sprint toward the bear, ice pick held high over his head.

The bear turned its head toward the commotion, letting out a confused grunt at the glowing blue child sprinting toward it. Then, sensing the threat, it let out a booming roar and reared up onto its hind legs, stretching up to its full height of ten feet.

Lee didn’t care. Eyes taking in the scene in an instant, he adjusted his route slightly, deftly jumping onto a boulder in his path, then as if it was a springboard, he launched himself wildly into the air. He soared, flying high. Higher than should have been possible—but everything was possible now. He flew through the air in a long arc, aimed straight at the polar bear’s face. With a final triumphant yell, he swung down with the ice pick, all of the might in his small body channeled into that one movement. That point of the ice pick landed squarely on the center of the bear's head, piercing deep through flesh and bone, not stopping until it was buried entirely up to the handle.

The white beast’s roar stopped in its throat. It teetered for a moment, hanging onto life for just one second more, the savage child still clinging to its head and neck, then its eyes rolled and it fell backward onto the half-eaten carcass of the bluetooth.

Lee hung on tightly, riding his kill down as it fell like a furry white rodeo. He placed his foot next to the ice pick in its skull, then pressed down as he pulled the point from the now lifeless animal. It came free with a sickly sucking sound. Lee, perched atop the great defeated beast, let out his own roar.

He was the predator now. This bear had merited death, and he was the harbinger of justice.

A whimpering nearby yanked his attention. One of the three cubs was nudging at the beast’s foot, making a strange crying sound unlike anything he had ever heard. It was annoying. Then something, something deep inside Lee, felt like it was trying to break into his mind. Trying to tell him something. That there was another way he should feel. That there was something… not right. Then something else, something powerful, intoxicating, pushed whatever that was back down.

The bloodied boy stood over the whimpering cubs. What were they crying about? Couldn’t they see that this was justice? That their mother deserved her sentence for what she had done to him? And yet they dared to mourn her? Pathetic!

He raised his ice pick again, then leapt forward and brought it down upon the first cub. He reveled in his dominance, laughing and shouting as he brought the ice pick down again and again. Colors from beyond the rainbow spattered against the stone as the walls began to dance, new and strange shapes writhing and swirling all about.

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And that’s it for now folks

Thanks for reading! I’ll try to post another segment by next Tuesday, so keep an eye on your inbox.

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– Xavier Macfarlane

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