ELECTRICIZED BORDER

DO NOT CROSS

The placard was barely visible under an ancient layer of clouded ice. Perhaps the border was at one point in time an efficient and deadly method of security, but now, it stood cold like everything else, a remnant of another time.

   The sound of screeching steel cut through the frigid air as Kenneth pulled a rusted ladder down with an ice-encrusted plastic rope. Kaminski stood still, smoking a cigarette. Once they had cleared the wall, the two boys got to work checking the traps and sorting anything they had caught, carefully navigating the ice-field so as to not ensnare themselves. As they walked the expanse of the ice fields, the boys found that, oddly, all seventy-three traps were still cocked back and in place. Most days, they caught around twenty or so– ten on a bad day, but today they were empty.

   “...Can’t believe this,” Kenneth muttered.

   “It looks like we’re going home emptyhanded. My pops is gonna kill me. Looks like another week of stew and bread.”

The boys were stunned. In all of the last three years they had been responsible for maintaining the traps, never had they experienced anything like this. Unsure of what to do, they sat down on a small boulder, and Kaminski pulled his lighter out of the front pocket of his parka. Kaminski was fifteen, about six inches too short for his age, and skinny as a bone. By many accounts, he would have been called a runt, so, for the last year, he’d begun wearing an extra large parka and stealing his uncle’s cigarettes in the hopes of making himself appear older, more mature. Kenneth was seventeen, tall with broad shoulders and a coarse stubble on his neck. He was quiet. Conserved. Oftentimes people mistook his silence for incompetence, though, in reality, he was a thoughtful boy, brighter than most back at camp.

   “Want a hit?” Kenneth motioned his cigarette.

   “No.”

They sat there for a while, sitting in the silence of the Antarctican tundra. A  of jagged, rocky mountains filled the distance, some fifty miles away or so, but nothing but a flat, icy wasteland for miles in between. The ice fields were a sea of white and grey, occasionally interrupted only by small darker splotches in the distance. These strange blobs were, in fact, the entrances to a vast series of tunnels that laid beneath the ice fields. Often, when work was slow, Kaminski daydreamed, yearning to explore the caverns, but his father warned them never to venture out past the edge of the trapping zone.

“We could always-”

“No.” Kenneth didn’t let him finish; he knew what the younger boy was going to propose. “Let’s go check the East traps.”

“That’s not our area though.”

“Maybe they could use some help.”

The walk to the Eastern Zone was long and uneventful. It involved a half hour or so of pacing the circular border wall, then crossing a shallow ravine. These walks were quiet– the way Kenneth liked it, but today, Kaminski had other plans.  

“Weird how all the traps were empty. I don’t think this has ever happened before… can you remember a single time where-”

“No.”

“Yeah, me neither. I was thinkin’, if they don’t need much help over here, maybe we could go-”

“No.”

   “You didn’t even let me finish.”

   “Please.”

“I was saying, maybe we could go check out one of the caves. I know you don’t really care, but there’s one about a ten-minute walk from the edge back at the West zone.” Kenneth just stared.

“Come on, man. You never want to have any fun.”

This wasn’t untrue. Kenneth had always been a rather serious boy. Even as a young child, he never went sliding down the hill with the other boys. In fact, Kenneth never seemed to take part in anything, instead, choosing to sit alone and think. This worried his mother a great deal, and while, in reality, there was nothing to be worried about, Kenneth’s mother always struggled with how to treat him compared to his two rowdy younger brothers.

“We’re here,” Kenneth muttered to no one but himself.

As they cleared the ravine’s edge, both boys were shocked to see the Eastern zone emptier than the ice field they had checked less than an hour earlier. Along with nothing to show for the traps, there was no one on post-- at least, none in sight, and after a few minutes of calling out and wandering the expanse of icy nothingness, it was clear that they were alone.

   “Maybe they went back over the wall- someone could’ve got hurt or something,” Kaminski yelled from a distance.

   “Probably,” Kenneth said. Then, realizing his friend could not have heard him at such a volume, he yelled back, “That’s probably it.”

Unsure of what to do, they sat down in a patch of soft, powdery snow. Kenneth laid back, staring up at the blank sky, until, before he knew it, he had drifted into a light and restless sleep. Kenneth awoke to find the sun low above the mountains in the distance. How much time had gone by? At least a couple hours, he thought. Within the hour, nightfall would be upon them. Kaminski! Kenneth jolted upright, his vision escaping him from the sudden action. The sun’s distant silhouette was etched into the darkness of his vision.

Kenneth opened his eyes, expecting to find Kaminski laying next to him, or building a snowman as he often did, but Kaminski was nowhere to be seen. That’s when he saw it, a tiny orange speck in the distance. It was hard to tell, but the speck was moving, heading closer and closer to one one of the dark splotches in the horizon. In a fit of anger, Kenneth jumped to his feet and ran toward the speck.

“Goddammit, Kaminski!” he shouted at no one in particular. “Why can’t you just do as you’re told?” Kenneth chased the orange speck, watching it get closer and closer until it disappeared into the dark spot in the distance. Some twenty minutes later, Kenneth stumbled upon what looked like a massive sinkhole in the ice. There was something eerie about it all. This place made him feel uneasy, but despite Kenneth’s better judgment, he descended into the darkness below in search of his friend.

The tunnels were jagged and irregular, solid ice with a deep blue glow. Oddly enough, the tunnels seemed to get brighter the further he walked, and with no side-tunnels, there was only one way Kaminski could have gone. Even stranger still, over time, the ice became smoother and smoother- almost manicured, as if it had been carved. Kenneth could hear what sounded like wind in the distance, and believing it was an exit to the surface, began to run, but tripped over something sticking out of the tunnel floor. Kenneth gathered himself and began to brush his parka off, but as he went to stand up, glanced back to see what had tripped him.

“What the…” Kenneth muttered, his breath escaping him. Along the floor, something was reaching out of the ice. And to Kenneth’s horror, he realized it was a human hand, frozen to the floor. Kenneth was mortified, unsure of how to react, so he sat there, head against the tunnel wall, trying to catch his breath.

That’s when he heard it. A screech like the rusty ladder cut through the tunnel, only there was something else to it. Something that didn’t sound human. Kenneth was about to run when he heard the distant cries of his friend down the tunnel. In a surge of adrenaline, Kenneth ran down the passage which opened up into a large, dimly lit chamber, where, to his terror and disbelief, he saw three creatures leaning over a lifeless Kaminski. They had long, slender limbs, and bony, exposed ribcages. They were human in stature, but with elongated features and pale, frosted skin. Around them laid piles of Penguin carcasses, bloodied and mutilated. This must be why the traps were all empty, Kenneth realized. Stunned by the sheer quantity of meat in that cave– easily enough to feed the village for a month. He hadn’t been spotted yet, so Kenneth hid behind one of the mounds of flesh and bone. As the creatures finished their meal, they began to speak in a language Kenneth couldn’t understand. The creatures’ voices were deep and raspy; they communicated through a combination of speech, grunts, and hisses. Suddenly, they stood up and exited the chamber through the tunnel Kenneth had entered from. Kenneth waited a long while before emerging from his hiding spot. He examined the cave; the walls were covered in scratch marks and red handprints. Kenneth avoided Kaminski’s body; the sight of it was more than he could take. Unsure of what else to do, Kenneth grabbed as many penguins as he could, and began to make his way for the exit when he heard a groan from the other side of the room.

“Kaminski?” he whispered. “It can’t be.’

Kaminski's body shot upright, turning its bloody face to look at Kenneth. They locked eyes, but something was different about Kenneth's friend; his eyed were clouded, and his skin was pale and veiny. Before he knew it, Kaminski’s body was violently seized by a series of uncontrolled movements.  His jaw swung open, but instead of words, he let out an ear piercing screech. Kenneth dropped the penguins, ran down the tunnel as fast as he could. He could hear groaning behind him but didn’t look back. As Kenneth reached the sinkhole through which he entered and tried to climb his way out, it became apparent that the ice wall was too steep and too slippery for him to scale. Before panic got a chance to set in, Kenneth heard screeching in the distance. That’s when Kaminski tackled him, a shooting pain piercing his back. He turned to look at his oldest friend, and the last thing Kenneth saw was the reflection of Kaminski’s blank eyes in the dark. Then everything went white.