The platoon leader had just taken two steps forward when he stopped. In front of us, the beetle suspended in midair neither burst nor fell, but seemed to be neatly divided by some invisible force into three completely identical bodies. They were the same size, their shells half-translucent, the same dim blue light flowing inside them, like cold flame hidden beneath ancient ice. Three tiny points of light hovered in the thin air. One shot straight at the platoon leader, while the other two almost simultaneously streaked toward the formation.
There was no warning.
The platoon leader, Harris, and Flynn were struck almost at the same instant. Harris had originally been assigned to the company logistics section, but had volunteered to come into the mountains with us; at that moment, he was no different from the rest of us. The instant the beetles touched their bodies, blue fire ignited beneath the skin, as if their flesh itself were glowing, burning from within. The screams tore through the valley.
They fell onto the ice and rolled, trying to smother the flames against the frozen surface, but the fire did not spread outward; it consumed from the inside out. Snow could not cover it, and air could not weaken it. The true disaster came in the next moment. After the first encounter with the beetles, everyone had instinctively taken their rifles off safe and chambered a round; it was not discipline breaking down, but training forming a reflex in the face of sudden threat.
Flynn was nineteen.
He was too young, and had not yet learned how to remain steady in the face of this kind of death. The flames devoured not only his body, but stripped away his control. Under the shock of pain and terror, his finger convulsed on the trigger.
The gunshot exploded in the glacier basin. The echo ricocheted between the mirror-smooth ice walls and was amplified again and again, as though the entire mountain were answering. Three comrades fell. The bullets were not fired out of hostility, yet they still took lives with precision. The situation spiraled completely out of control.
The platoon sergeant had chosen to end his own life rather than allow us to fire, because he knew that millions of tons of snow hung above our heads. Compared to the blue flames, gunfire was the true destruction. I did not give myself time to think.
I raised my rifle and fired three short, controlled shots. The platoon leader. Harris. Flynn. All three collapsed at once. The shots echoed through the valley for a long time, as if delivering a belated sentence. In that moment, I could barely breathe. Only minutes earlier, we had been standing shoulder to shoulder on the same ice; now I had ended their lives with my own hands.
Just then, a snowflake landed on my forehead. The sky was still clear, the sunlight sharp; there should have been no snow. When the flake melted against my skin, I already understood. The avalanche had begun.
From the three bodies still burning, one beetle rose from each. When their wings vibrated, the dim blue light flowed within their translucent shells; when they stopped, the glow disappeared, and they looked almost like ordinary insects.
At this point, whether we fired or not no longer mattered. Eli was the first to raise his rifle. His movement was calm and steady. Three shots struck the center of the three beetles. They were no larger than a thumb, far smaller than the bullet's diameter, and were torn apart instantly; the blue light extinguished, and fragments fell onto the ice. But in the distance the mountain had already begun to tremble. The sound was low and continuous, as if something deep within the earth's crust were shifting. The entire valley shook with it. I looked up and saw the snow slab above beginning to fracture. Massive sheets of snow rolled and gathered into a white torrent, pouring down from the heights. We stood in the center of the basin, theoretically with nowhere to run, but even in the face of total annihilation, the body still runs by instinct.
Eleanor had already lost consciousness. Howard lifted her onto his shoulder. Eli and I dragged Dr. Carter toward the opposite slope, hoping to gain even a few yards of elevation. We did not abandon our rifles; it was not a gesture, but instinct shaped by years of training. The rest of the equipment was left behind. Five of us ran across the trembling ground.
I had heard avalanches described before, but had never imagined that an entire mountainside could move like a silver sea, compressing the air into a roar. Just as despair was about to consume all conscious thought, violent tremors tore open a massive downward-angled fissure in the steep slope ahead of us. We did not hesitate. We ran straight into the fissure.
The gradient was far steeper than expected. Our bodies lost control, we tumbled, collided with one another, and crashed into a vast hollow below. In the next instant, an entire slab of snow slammed down and sealed the opening. Powdered snow filled the air, choking us into violent coughing. The thunder above continued for a long time, as though the entire mountain were rearranging itself. Then everything fell silent.
Darkness closed in.
Howard's voice sounded in the dark, low and restrained. "If you're alive, say something." I forced out a weak response. Eli switched on his flashlight. The beam cut through the drifting snow dust. Eleanor sat there, dazed, but without obvious major injury. Dr. Carter was unconscious; his left leg was badly broken, the end of the bone piercing through fabric and skin, pale in the narrow beam of light. We were alive.
Five of us.
Buried beneath an entire glacier. And the world above us had fallen completely silent.