Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales Read Online Free

of the students around him, “let’s start our search for some ichthyosaur fossils. Right now, we are most concerned with locating those.”
    “Dr. Hanson?” Isaacs said.
    “We should start at those ridges.” Dogan pointed into the distance opposite, where a slightly elevated ring circled the land. “Water would have receded soonest from those areas, leaving the earliest and most complete fossils for us to find.”
    “Good thinking, Dogan. I applaud that.”
    “Dr. Hanson?” Isaacs repeated.
    Dogan may have gotten the Doctor’s attention, but Wendell was not going to be outdone.
    “Maybe, Dr. Hanson, we should use a grid pattern closer to where Dr. Lansing and his students made their discovery? I mean, it makes sense to me to start with a known quantity and radiate from there.”
    Dogan shot Wendell a look, and Dr. Hanson laughed at them. “Both good ideas, men, but don’t worry. I already have a plan. You see, based on my expectations, the fossil—”
    “Dr. Hanson?”
    Hanson sighed.
    “Please don’t interrupt me, Isaacs.”
    “Dr. Hanson? Can you come look at this?” Isaacs was kneeling by the tent, staring into the ground.
    Immediately, Wendell was certain it was another finger. Another pale white digit trapped beneath the ice. Or perhaps it was a whole hand. Something else lost for which there could be no reasonable explanation. Dogan approached, as did Gauthier, both alongside Dr. Hanson. Wendell remained where he was, worried about what they would find, though their faces suggested it wasn’t anything as mortally frightening as a severed finger. But it was also clear no one knew if it was far worse. Wendell hesitated but approached Dr. Hanson, his heavy boots crunching the ice underfoot. When he reached the four men, any conversation between them had withered.
    Something impossible was caught in the tangle of boot prints surrounding the tent: an additional set of tracks in the crushed and broken snow. They differed from the team’s in size—they were smaller, hardly larger than a child’s, and each long toe of the bare foot could clearly be traced.
    “Is it possible some kind of animal made them?”
    “No,” Dr. Hanson said. “These are too close to hominid.”
    “They can’t be, though. Can they?”
    “I thought this island was deserted.”
    “More importantly, what was it doing standing here in front of our tent?”
    “I don’t like this,” Isaacs said. For once, Wendell agreed with him.
    “Dr. Hanson, what’s going on?”
    “I wish I knew, Wendell. Gauthier, what do you think?”
    Gauthier looked at them over his thick beard. It was the first time Wendell had seen puzzlement in the pilot’s eyes. Gauthier looked at each of them in turn as they waited for him to offer an explanation, but he had none to offer. Instead, he turned away with a furrowed brow.
    “Where is everything?”
    Wendell didn’t initially understand what he meant, not until he walked into the center of the camp. He looked back and forth and into the distance, then pushed the insulated hood off his head.
    “It’s all gone. Everything.”
    It had happened while they slept. Someone or something had come into the camp and stolen all their food and most of their supplies.
    Things became scrambled. The men spoke all at once, worried about what had happened and what it might mean. Wendell was no different, a manic desperation for answers taking hold. Dr. Hanson did his best to calm them all, but the red rims around his eyes made it clear he too was shaken.
    “I don’t understand it,” he repeated. “There aren’t supposed to be any visitors here beyond us.”
    “It looks as if you were wrong. There is someone here. Someone who’s been following us.”
    It sounded crazy, and Wendell fought to keep from falling down that rabbit hole. Perversely, Dogan was the one Wendell looked to for strength, and only because he could imagine nothing worse than failing apart in front of him. Isaacs on the other hand