Icequake: A Prophetic Survival Thriller

by Crawford Kilian

  “You are here,” he said thickly. “You are the Shackleton men?”

  “That we are.” Al picked his way across the slippery floor; Will shut the door behind him and followed.

  “We are very glad you come,” the man smiled. He was gaunt and pale; his thick grey-black beard was matted. “I am Ivan Grigorievich Varenko.” And he slowly extended a bandaged, badly frostbitten hand. Al took it gently.

  “I’m Al Neal. I think we met once, a couple of years ago at Mirny. And this is Will Farquhar. Where are the other men?”

  Ivan tugged at the blankets on either side of him, revealing two sleeping men; they breathed shallowly, as if dreaming, and did not wake. Both looked as ravaged as Ivan himself. He nodded towards the one on his right, a very young man with a sparse blond beard and a half-healed scar across his forehead. “Yevgeni Pavlovich Shtein. Geophysicist.” The other was middle-aged and moonfaced, with a beard as white as Al’s. “Kyril Matveivich Borisov. Aircraft mechanic.”

  “Are they sick?” Al asked quietly. He and Will squatted awkwardly by the men’s feet.

  “We are all sick. Frostbite. Scurvy.”

  “Your wife told us you were well.”

  “I — I do not want to worry herself. If I say we need help, and you cannot help — what use? You know, I do not think you could reach us.” The smile flashed again. “I am very happy you surprise me.”

  “Can you walk?” asked Will.

  “No. Not well. For last week I must crawl to radio.” He nodded towards a table across the room, where an ancient field transceiver stood; it was hooked up to a hand-cranked generator. Will looked at Ivan’s bandaged hands and imagined what it must be like to operate the radio. “Every day we try, we try. Until yesterday, nothing. I nearly stop.”

  Al looked at his watch. It was almost noon, Shacktown time, but only about 1000 local time. Sunset would be around 1630 or 1700. There wasn’t much margin for delay, and he didn’t want to spend a night here if he could help it.

  “Where are the fuel drums?”

  “In green shed near airstrip.”

  “We’ll have to refuel as fast as possible. Then we’ll come back and put you on board. It shouldn’t take more than an hour and a half.”

  They went back outside and walked as quickly as they could to the shed Ivan had mentioned. Its doorway was solidly drifted over; Will had to go back to the Otter for a couple of shovels, and they spent fifteen minutes digging their way in. Al looked inside and nodded.

  “Well, well. Genuine JP4, all right.” The drums stacked inside were stencilled US NAVY VXE-6. “I’ll bet I dropped some of these myself.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Back in the old days, we couldn’t do enough for each other, us and the Russians. But we didn’t want to take their fuel for our own flights, so we used to airdrop a few drums every now and then, so we could fly out on our own gas. Then everybody got snarky, and we didn’t come here so often anymore. And the Russians were too proud to use what we left.” He saw that the seals on the drums were intact, and broke one. A little clumsily, he tilted the drum and poured some fuel through a scrap of cloth.

  “Looks okay. There might be some sediment on the bottom, but I’ll check for that while we’re tanking up. Let’s get a move on.”

  They had to wrestle the drums outside and then roll them a hundred and fifty metres to the Otter. Seven drums would be needed to fill the Otter’s tanks. Will cursed the plane for needing so much, and Al for misjudging their fuel consumption on the flight in. But at last they were ready, and the process of pumping the gas into the tanks took less time than he expected, even with Al’s pauses to check for contamination. By 1345 Shacktown time, the job was done. Al looked up at the sky.

  “Warming up. We’re going to get some weather.”

  They went into the hospital building with flashlights — whose batteries did not quite freeze — and found a stretcher. It wasn’t easy: the interior was a mass of collapsed partitions, overturned furniture and broken glass. Then they returned to the main building.

  “Now — who’s going to be our first passenger?” said Al. He unrolled the stretcher.

  “Kyril Matveivich,” Ivan said at once. Kyril shrugged and grinned, showing several missing teeth, and tried to get up. His legs wouldn’t support him; Will and Al had to carry him. There was a nasty, putrid stink from his boots; Al recognised it at once as gangrene. They wrapped him in blankets and carried him outside.

  Kyril must have been inside for a long time, the sunlight made him grunt and shut his eyes, and his lids promptly froze together. But he made no complaint during the ten minutes it took to reach the plane. They got him inside and gently lifted him into a seat. Will pulled a sleeping bag out of one of the survival packs and gently drew it over Kyril’s legs — partly to keep him warm, and partly to suppress the smell. Kyril looked around the cabin with obvious professional interest; he seemed to be pleased with what he saw.

  “Khorosho,” he nodded. “Otter very good.”

  It took three more trips to load the airplane: two for Yevgeni and Ivan, and one for some boxes of scientific records and personal effects, including a small bronze bust of Lenin. Then the JATO bottles had to be attached.

  “Want me to go through the checklist?” Will volunteered when everyone was strapped in.

  “Don’t bother,” said Al, his hands and eyes moving smoothly over the instruments. He taxied to the far end of the ski-way and turned the Otter around. It was almost 1500 hours, Shacktown time. The sky was rapidly growing overcast.

  “Dos vidanya, Vostok,” Al said.

  The Otter began to move, slowly at first, and then accelerated. Near the end of the ski-way Al ignited the JATO bottles, and everyone was slammed back into his seat. The engines howled, sucking at the thin air, and then they were climbing at a shallow angle above the seracs. Will shouted from sheer exuberance; cheers and laughter came from the cabin.

  “Those are three tough buggers,” Will said.

  “Yup. Good men.” Al rummaged in his anorak and found some cigars. He put one in his mouth and handed the rest to Will. “See if anyone wants a smoke.”

  They circled the abandoned station, gaining altitude, and then turned Grid West-South-west. Smelling of fuel, cigars, excrement and gangrene, the Otter pursued the sinking sun.

  Chapter 9 – Pressure

  It was dark by the time they reached the centre of the Shelf, but the TACAN signal was fairly clear. Al even made voice contact with Roger Wykstra, and told him that all was well but that the Russians would need immediate medical attention.

  “Okay, Papa Al, I’ll tell Kate. We’ll start sending up a flare every three minutes until you start your approach. And the ski-way will be marked by fires. Anything else? Over.”

  “Boy, all the comforts of home. Ah, tell Terry to throw some steaks on the fire, and no nonsense about rationing. We’re all starved. Over.”

  “Will do. Mind your step, now. Over and out.”

  A few minutes later they saw the first flare sparkling like a star over the dim blue surface far ahead.

  “Bang on course,” Will said. “What a bloody navigator!”

  “Nothing to it,” Al grinned. “I just followed the smell of my own fear.”

  “Your fear? I’ve been pissing my pants all day.”

  A second flare went off, much closer now, and then two lines of orange light appeared: the ski-way. Al circled, dropped and landed with scarcely a bump.

  Floodlights glared into the flight compartment as the Otter taxied up to the hangar, but Al and Will could just make out a group of dark figures milling about on the snow. The hangar doors drew open, and someone ran out with the winch cable. Two minutes later they were inside and the doors boomed shut.

  Al got up and went in the passenger compartment. The Russians looked exhausted. He patted Ivan’s shoulder, and then went to open the door. He saw Katerina walking steadily and carefully, picking her way over the greasy duckboards. Despite her bulky anorak
and trousers, Al thought she looked very small.

  “Hey, Katerina!” he bellowed, his voice echoing off the hangar roof. “Come and say hello to your husband.”

  “He is pretty tough, that one,” she said. “I thought he would be okay.” She climbed the four-step ladder into the cabin, her smile bright.

  “Katya — ”

  She caught her breath when she saw him in the dim light.

  “Ah, Vanya — Vanya!” She fell to her knees beside his seat, gripping his arms and kissing his cracked and blackened lips.

  *

  Much later that evening Katerina left the infirmary and went for a walk in Tunnel D. The walls glittered with frost. From the huts in Tunnel C came laughter and Max Wilhelm’s uncertain tenor rendition of ‘Your Cheating Heart’. The welcome-back party had moved from the lounge to the geophysics lab after Katerina had insisted on quiet in the infirmary. She was glad she hadn’t dampened the celebration.

  She turned back and went into Tunnel B, avoiding the cold porch nearest to Hugh’s room; no need to disturb him — or his attendant — any further tonight. At the next door she went in and walked down the bunkhouse corridor until she came to the room shared by Max and Ben Whitcumb. She knocked gently.

  “Come in,” Ben snapped. When he saw who it was, his expression softened.

  “Hi, Katerina. Good to see you. Here, let me take your coat.”

  “Thank you.” She sat down and looked around. The cubicle was crowded with books, boxes of fossils and cold-weather gear, but there was little to reveal the personalities of the men who lived in it. Ben had been sitting at his desk, reading a geology journal.

  “I hope I am not interrupting?”

  “Nothing serious. I’m reduced to reading Max’s stuff these days. How is your husband? And his friends?”

  “Resting. They are all very glad to be here.”

  “I’m glad, too. It’s like the old days, isn’t it? When we all used to help each other.”

  “Yes. Not such very old days — you and I both remember them. Why are you not at the party?”

  “Oh — I’m not much for parties these days. Too many people get on my nerves.”

  “Yes, it happens. I want to ask you for a favour.”

  “Sure.”

  “You have medical training.”

  Ben smiled. “Not exactly. Two years as an Army medic, that’s all.”

  “It is more than anyone else has. Tomorrow I must operate on the men. I will need help.”

  “Amputations?”

  “Yes. I am afraid so.”

  “Well. I’ll be glad to do whatever I can.”

  “Thank you, Ben. I am grateful. About nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Katerina went down the service corridor to Tunnel A. She walked through the deserted mess hall and lounge, and noticed a light on in the microfilm room between the lounge and the infirmary. Will and Jeanne were sitting at two readers, scanning old articles and reports.

  “Hullo, Kate,” Will said. “Your babies are sleeping like stones.”

  “Good. And what are you two doing?”

  “Reading up on the Ross Sea Ridge,” Jeanne answered. “This crazy man had two beers and dragged me away from that lovely party to fiddle with microfilm.”

  “And what is the Rossy Ridge?”

  Will pointed to a map on the screen of his reader. It showed the Ross Sea, the Siple Coast and Marie Byrd Lane, off to the Grid West of Shacktown. “It’s a range of hills under the Shelf. See, it starts here, near the Siple Coast, and runs Grid East all the way to here.” His finger touched a spot about two hundred kilometres Grid South of Shackleton Glacier. “It’s about five hundred metres below sea level at this point. In some places a little higher — high enough for the Shelf to ground itself.”

  “Ah — I see what you are thinking,” Katerina said. “Our island is how thick?”

  “Between five hundred and fifty and six hundred metres,” said Jeanne.

  “And how far away are we from the Ridge?”

  “Fifty kilometres. A little less than a month away,” said Will.

  *

  Steve had been working on repairs to the drilling hut and on digging two new tunnels for seismic equipment. Every night he pitched into bed and slept almost without moving; in the morning he would wake and make love to Penny with an urgency that first excited and then worried her. It was as if something — some feeling, some joy or fear — could be expressed only in her arms. They would murmur amiably for a while afterward, and then get up to resume endless hours of work. She saw him when he came into the mess hall for meals — which wasn’t all that often — and sometimes in the evening if she could get off work before he came lurching in to sleep.

  The morning after the Russians arrived Penny and Steve both slept late; the party had lasted all night. Penny woke around 0900. Steve, beside her, was too still to be asleep. Next door Terry Dolan snored violently.

  “Awake?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Hi.” He kissed her.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  Steve yawned and stretched and said: “Winter.”

  “Oh ho ho,” Penny murmured. “I thought you were looking forward to it.”

  “In a way I am. But it’s getting close now. In two weeks we’ll lose the sun.”

  “So what? I haven’t seen much of the sun for ages anyway.”

  “It’ll feel different, believe me. It was rough enough here last winter, with just nine of us and plenty of food and knowing the first plane in would be landing by the middle of October. This year there’ll be thirty of us, on short rations, and no idea when we’ll get out. That’s what I don’t like — the uncertainty, and what it’ll do to everybody… If Hugh weren’t sick I’d feel better.”

  She felt uneasy as she walked to the mess hall; it was as if whatever was struggling in Steve had almost come out, and she had forced it back inside. — Hell, if he wants to wring his hands and be a prophet of doom he doesn’t have to make me listen to it.

  But it wasn’t that, and she knew it. She was afraid he was going to tell her he was frightened, really frightened for his life, and that was one thing she didn’t want to hear. The midnight horrors were all right for neurotic women writers, but not for him. Not ever.

  *

  Katerina and Ben were in the kitchen, drinking tea. Ben looked self-conscious when Penny came in and avoided her eyes. Usually she felt sorry for him, and sometimes his moony expression disgusted her, but this morning his crush on her felt flattering. At least Ben wasn’t grim and all-knowing, like Steve. “Morning,” she smiled. “Can I make you two some breakfast?”

  “That is very kind of you, but no. We must operate this morning. Afterward, we eat. The men will not be ready to eat until tomorrow, except maybe some liquids.”

  “Oh.” Penny was taken aback. “Well, you know, call me if you need anything.”

  “Perhaps,” Katerina went on, “if you keep people out of the lounge this morning, and shut the door from the mess hall to the infirmary, it will be helpful.”

  “Sure.” She looked at Ben. “Are you helping? I didn’t know you were a surgeon, too.”

  “No, just an ex-medic.” He looked as wretchedly proud as a schoolboy complimented at his first dance by his date.

  Katerina finished her tea. “Let us begin.”

  *

  They brought Ivan and Yevgeni into the lounge; the infirmary was too small to hold everyone during an operation. Then men drowsed, woke and drowsed again. Penny looked in on them once in a while; they would look up and smile at her and then stare at the ceiling. Though they had been bathed last night, they still stank of sweat and gangrene, and occasionally a whiff of it filtered into the mess hall.

  Kyril lost his right foot, part of his left, and all the fingers on his left hand.

  Yevgeni lost all his toes and the fingertips of his right hand.

  Ivan, the last, lost his left foot, his right big toe, and most of the fingers on his right hand; he al
so lost his ears.

  It was past noon when the amputations were finished. The three men slept drugged in the infirmary; the lounge and mess hall now smelled of ether. Nevertheless, there was a crowd in the mess hall when Katerina and Ben came in. Carter sat them down at a table and patted their shoulders.

  “Did it go all right?”

  “Yes, very well,” Katerina said briskly. “Ben was excellent. Very helpful. Quick and precise.” Her hand reached out and touched his, gripped it hard for a moment.

  *

  Gordon Ellerslee finished his supper that night, got up and went back to the serving line. “Let’s have some seconds of that super stew, Terry!”

  “Sorry, Gord. That’s it.”

  “Aw, the hell you say.”

  “Come off it — we been on rationin’ for a week.”

  “This ain’t goddamned rationing, it’s goddamn slow starvation. I go out to the drilling rig every day, I freeze my ass off, I need the goddamned food. Now, how about some seconds?”

  There were almost twenty people in the mess hall. Their conversations stopped. “Hear, hear,” called Simon.

  Terry folded his arms and contemplated Gordon with detached annoyance. Suzy stood next to him, her face taut. Penny stood in the door to the kitchen.

  “You’ve put away three thousand calories today. Just like everybody else who works outside. I don’t hear anybody else bitching about it, except for that Kiwi asshole Simon.” Terry stared at Gordon’s big belly. “When that gut disappears — and that double chin — you might get some sympathy. But not from me. And you might even get seconds. But not from me.”

  Gordon slammed down his tray and turned away, his face purple. Carter stood up and came over to him. “Let’s talk about it at the seminar, Gord.”

  “Talk about more’n that,” Gordon growled. He stalked out of the mess hall and sat sulking in the lounge.

  *

  Carter opened the seminar with the usual routine announcements: tomorrow’s house-mouse and snow miners, Colin’s weather forecast and Laputa’s current position — about 1.7 kilometres Grid South-South-west of yesterday’s and 125 kilometres Grid South of their original location. He asked Katerina for a report on the Vostochni, and everyone applauded when she said they were doing well.