Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1)

by Ellis, Jennifer

  “I’m Sasha Wood, one of the researchers here. Nice to meet you.” Sasha tried to smile like Amber, who was still beaming and practically bobbing from one foot to the other, but she couldn’t quite muster the same level of enthusiasm for these men with so many guns.

  “So three researchers were lost in a blizzard,” Jenkins said. “And the caretaker, Soren Anderson?”

  “He was lost trying to find them,” Sasha said quickly. “At least we assume he was. He just didn’t come back.” She hoped that Amber would decide that the Antarctica story was too ridiculous to share. Vincent didn’t seem to be fessing up that he had just waltzed in from Paulet either.

  “That’s very unfortunate,” Jenkins said. “And that’s everyone that was here then?” Sasha looked at Vincent and Amber, trying to decide whether to tell them about Edie. If these guys decided to check out the east wing, the fact that there was a dead body in the station would become all too obvious.

  “I’m afraid the other researcher was murdered. Her body is in the east sleeping wing. We haven’t moved it, or touched anything. We think whoever did it broke in.”

  “Broke in?” Jenkins glanced pointedly at the snow-shrouded windows. “I didn’t know this was a high crime zone.”

  Sasha forced another smile. “Odd, isn’t it?”

  “We’re going to have to take a look,” Jenkins said.

  “That’s probably a good idea. Have…have any weird things been happening in the last few days? You know, unexplained phenomena. Things like that?”

  “You mean other than the House passing the new Health Care Bill, and the fact that north is now south and vice versa, which has caused a number of challenges everywhere? Other than that, not anything really strange. Why do you ask? Have strange things been going on up here?”

  Just demons, several plane crashes, rabid polar bears, a crazy woman babbling about a dragon, and mist that takes you to the Antarctic, Sasha thought, squinting her eyes at them. Even the remote possibility that everything was okay, that Jenkins and his crew were the good guys—the U.S. military—here to rescue them, and she could return to her life of research and leisure and general good times, sent a visceral cord of hope down the entire length of her body.

  She considered the small shard of hope for a few seconds, examined it, savored it, and then she shook it off.

  They were jostling about each other like a trio of demented hyenas, wearing wide and forced grins. That guy who had arrived in the helicopter two days ago had said that everything had gone to hell everywhere—that in fact it was worse elsewhere, and the address from President Kent had indicated the blindness had occurred worldwide. Demons were involved, and this trio of jokers was either lying or unprepared to protect them, and given that they were all clutching assault rifles as if their lives depended on it, they pretty much held all the cards right now.

  She had to get out of here and get to Soren as soon as possible, but she couldn’t exactly open the gun locker and load up on weapons in front of these guys. She would have to wait.

  She smiled at the men. “No, nothing particularly strange, except for bad weather, which isn’t all that weird for the Arctic, and of course the murder, which is really disturbing and has been terribly upsetting for us all,” she said. She noted that Amber and Vincent had arranged their features to appear suitably grave, even though clearly neither of them had given two hoots about Edie before. Of course, she hadn’t either. Edie had just seemed like collateral damage in the whole bizarre sequence of events. “Are you going to take a look at that body, then? Or do you want some food first? Are you going to be staying with us in the station?”

  “We’ll look at the body first, and then we’re going to have to search the station,” Jenkins said. “Do all of you have alibis for the time of the murder? Were you all together?”

  Sasha, Vincent, and Amber all glanced at each other. Sasha had been with Soren. Vincent had not arrived yet, and Amber had been locked in the east wing…with Edie, or Edie’s body.

  “Yes,” said Sasha. It was the easiest answer. Vincent and Amber both bobbed their heads.

  Jenkins seemed to accept this answer. “Alright. Flaherty and I are going to go and look at the body, and Connor will stay here and look for signs of a break-in.”

  Sasha shifted her eyes to the station clock. It was already early afternoon. She had wanted to get back to look for Soren by nightfall. She found it a bit odd that these three were going to start investigating Edie’s death immediately. She was pretty sure that the military had people for that, or given that it the murder had occurred in Canada, that the Canadian police would be the ones to investigate. She had assumed that they would just want to check and confirm that there was in fact a dead body, and then call in the appropriate authorities, not search the station.

  Jenkins made a move to head to the east wing, but Amber intercepted him with a toss of her red curls and an overly enthusiastic flutter of her eyelashes. “I was wondering if you could radio my parents before you go. I’m sure they’re in a panic. None of our communications devices have been working properly for the past several days and I usually check in with them every night.”

  She concluded her request with a pouty thrust of her lips. If Jenkins wasn’t shouldering a giant assault rifle, Sasha was pretty sure Amber would give his arm a squeeze, like she used to do with all of the men in the station, except Soren.

  Jenkins’ gaze drifted down Amber’s body and come to rest on her very perky breasts, before he snapped his attention back up to her face. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question, ma’am. Our radio equipment is classified. You’ll have to wait until we return you to the United States.”

  Amber drew her eyebrows together. “Could you just ask someone to call my parents then?”

  Jenkins licked his lips and then shook his head. “Sorry. The storm’s affecting our communications devices. The signal is bad. We can try later, perhaps. Right now, we need to take a look at that body. It would probably be best if the rest of you stay out here. Connor, have someone show you all the exits from the building. Flaherty, you’re with me.”

  Jenkins and Flaherty marched over to the east wing door and proceeded down the hall, drawing the door almost closed behind them.

  Connor, a younger man with pale blond hair, wandered over to the windows. “These the only windows in the station?” he said.

  Sasha nodded.

  “Someone mind giving me a tour?” he said.

  “I can,” Amber chirped, leading him off to the west wing while peppering him with questions regarding the size of their helicopter and what base they would be flying into.

  When Connor was in the west wing with Amber, Sasha grabbed the cleaver and hurried over to the gun locker. She slipped the cleaver into the locker door crack and started to apply leverage to the door. Maybe she could ease it open quietly. Vincent trailed behind her wringing his hands, which had a slight tremble.

  “I need to get this open so I can hide some of the guns out in the storage bay. If you’re still planning to come with me, I think we’re going to have to sneak off.”

  “You don’t believe they’re really here to rescue us, do you?” Vincent murmured.

  “Do you?”

  Vincent offered a bleak little smile. His eyebrows were like little grey feelers extending out from and into his eyes in swoops. “One can always hope. I’m an old man. Too old for many hijinks.”

  Sasha applied more pressure to the door. The cleaver was holding together but the door had not started to give at all. “Vincent, if you don’t want to come with me, you don’t have to. You can stay here and hope that these guys are actually on the up and up. Just tell me where your boat is.”

  “No, I’m coming. I may be old, but I’m enough of a scientist still to know that if there’s a portal through mist from the Arctic to the Antarctic, that the probability that everything is A-okay in the rest of the world is low.”

  The knife made a snapping sound and Sasha withdrew it. The plastic o
f the handle had broken up near the blade, which was now wobbly. She wanted to kick the door. Inside the east wing, she could hear the sounds of Jenkins and Flaherty moving furniture around and tossing things on the ground. It seemed that they were conducting a search for something. But what? If they were looking for evidence of the murderer surely they would be more methodical.

  The thud of boots echoed down the west wing hall. Connor and Amber were coming back. Sasha retreated from the gun locker and inserted the cleaver into the knife block.

  Connor and Amber appeared back in the kitchen. Connor inclined his head at them and then strode across the kitchen floor to the east wing, where they could hear the three men speaking in low voices.

  “Did he do anything strange, Amber? Ask any strange questions?” Sasha whispered urgently.

  Amber wrinkled her nose. “He was a perfect gentleman. I hope this storm lets up soon. What do you think we should make them for dinner? We might as well use up the best food, since we’re going home. Do you think I should offer them a beer?”

  Sasha wanted to say no, that the beer was Soren’s, but perhaps if they got the three men drunk, it would be easier for her to slip out. Or perhaps things could get worse.

  The three men came back out of the east wing. Timber and Tundra, who had settled by the fire, both let out mumbling growls.

  “Was Soren Anderson, the caretaker, here at the time of the murder?” Jenkins said.

  “Yes, but—” Sasha started.

  “Then we should search his room as well.”

  “He had nothing to do with the murder. He was with me at the time,” Sasha said, although technically, given that she was completely blind at the time, she did not know this for sure.

  “Soren Anderson has a history of violence against women.”

  “What? This was completely counter to anything she had ever imagined with respect to Soren.

  “I’m sure he did it,” Amber declared. “He and those dogs.” She jabbed her finger in the air in the direction of Timber and Tundra. “He had a creepy angry look in his eyes most of the time. He probably killed Robert too.”

  “That’s completely untrue. Robert tried to kill us.” Sasha said. She swung around to look at Vincent, to demand that he say something in Soren’s defense, but Vincent had focused his attention on the floor, and his rosy face had gone a pasty shade of puce.

  “You’ve seen Robert, then?” Amber said. “Why would you keep that information from me, unless you’re in it with him?”

  Jenkins pointed at Sasha. “We’re going to check Anderson’s room. Nobody leaves. Got it?”

  Sasha flicked her eyes to the station window. The snow still railed against the glass and the wind howled and rattled the pane. If she made a break for it, realistically, how far would she get? Jenkins seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion because he shot her one last intense look as if to imply that he meant business and then turned away.

  Jenkins, Flaherty, and Connor made for the west wing. Amber trailed along behind them like an agitated terrier, offering to show them around. Sasha risked a peek in through the door to the east wing that the men had just departed. Blankets, papers, and personal items were strewn in the hallway. It was like the place had been ransacked.

  “Vincent, what did Soren do? Because I can tell from your face that he did something.”

  Vincent emitted a heavy sigh. “Soren was one our best researchers. Good with the science, creative, and determined. Brilliant, you might say, but also able to deal with the extended fieldwork aspect of the job.”

  Sasha nodded and blinked at Vincent, trying to hurry him along to the point.

  “Nobody really knows what happened…except… Anyway, he was acquitted due to lack of evidence, and I for one think it was an accident. He loved Marina more than anything, and he would never have hurt her. It’s a shame. He never really recovered. There was no way he could resume his research on Paulet. So he came here.”

  “So Marina died then?”

  Vincent lowered his eyes to the floor again. “Yes, she fell. On Paulet. She and Soren had been there for several weeks doing their research. There was a storm. It took a long time for a boat to get to the island, and by that time she was gone.”

  “Why did they think Soren did it?”

  “There were questions of infidelity. I didn’t believe it, of course. But when you have someone who’s rising through the ranks as fast as Soren, there are people who become resentful. Anyway, one can never know the precise nature of events when there are no witnesses. I chose to believe in Soren and gave him a recommendation to come here.”

  The tap of military boots on the cement floor caused Vincent to stop talking, and they both shifted their attention to the trio, Amber’s halo of red visible between their shoulders.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” Sasha said. What exactly had they been looking for, a weapon? She could hardly see Soren depositing the bloodied knife in his room, when there were miles and miles of desolate Arctic to toss it. She snapped her teeth together. Why was she even going down that road? She did not believe that Soren had anything to do with Edie’s death.

  She must have said the words with a bit too much attitude because Jenkins narrowed his eyes at her.

  “Soren didn’t murder Edie,” she declared.

  Jenkins ignored her. “We’re going to have to continue our search of the entire premises. If anyone knows anything that they should be sharing, now is the time. When did you and Anderson encounter this Robert fellow you claim tried to kill you? Where is he?”

  “She and Soren were making up stories about going to the Antarctic through some mist in a crater,” Amber declared. “They’re clearly nuts.”

  Jenkins twitched slightly at the mention of mist, and Sasha felt an icy wave of despair. They knew about the mist. She had briefly formulated a half-baked multi-universe theory that perhaps the station had somehow become entangled in another world, where you could travel between the poles via mist, and everything had gone all to hell in that world as Barry the mist traveler had said, but that their own world—the real world—had continued alongside this weird world just fine, and they could go home.

  But if these guys knew about the mist, that was unlikely.

  The three military men had turned inward, conferring in low tones, but she did hear the word custody, and there was a glittery assessment and speculation in their eyes when they looked her way that she did not like.

  The buzzer to the station rang, loud and persistent, as if someone outside was leaning on it. Sasha’s heart lurched. Could Soren have escaped and come back?

  Jenkins flicked his hand in the air, and Connor and Flaherty headed out to the storage bay door, their guns drawn. Jenkins stayed behind with his gun trained on Sasha.

  After a few minutes and some loud voices, the station door was flung open and Connor and Flaherty appeared, supporting a pale, snow-covered, and nearly comatose Kyle between them.

  After several efforts to get Kyle to talk that were met with slurred and nonsensical responses, Kyle was wrapped in a sleeping bag and placed by the fire to warm himself. Nobody offered to strip and get into the sleeping bag with him. In the meantime, Jenkins and his men helped themselves to the station food and beer, and continued to rove through the station like feral animals, opening drawers, rifling through the contents, and then dumping everything in a pile in the corner of the common room with complete disregard for the years of filing and research that they were destroying. It occurred to Sasha that Robert had also spent a lot of time going through the station files, in a much more tidy fashion of course, and ostensibly to look up historical polar bear research, but now she wondered.

  Amber and Vincent had settled onto opposite ends of the couch to watch the proceedings, and even Amber had started to sense that something was not quite right with the three men and wore a pinched and confused expression on her freckled face as she traced their movements from desk to desk and drawer to drawer with her eyes.

>   “Where were you?” Sasha hissed when she finally decided that Kyle was warm enough to talk. Jenkins and his men huddled in the corner flipping through files in the tall filing cabinet, some of which probably dated back to the 1960s when the station was built. What could they be looking for? It was clearly some sort of document. Her mind slipped to the slim green file that she had found in Edie’s room and shoved into the snow.

  “I was at the Shackleton Station with some guy named Gregor Posnikoff,” Kyle muttered. “Who are these three jokers and where’s Soren?”

  “Soren’s gone, and these three guys just appeared,” Sasha whispered back. “They’re looking for something.”

  “No kidding. What?”

  Sasha was about to tell Kyle about the folder, but something in the way he was watching her, alertly, in contrast with his previous lassitude gave her pause.

  “I don’t know. Were you at the Shackleton Station this whole time?”

  “Is there something going on over here?” Jenkins said striding over to them.

  “No. I’m just checking to see if he’s okay,” Sasha said backing away from Kyle.

  “We’ll take care of that, thank you very much.” Jenkins came and towered over Kyle, the leather and metal bits of his uniform creaking and clanking.

  “You’re one of the researchers stationed here, I assume? Where have you been for the last two days?”

  Kyle scowled. “I got separated from the others a few nights ago and wandered around lost for a bit. I found one of the safety pods, pitched a tent and stayed holed up in that for the past two days. Just so you know, I think Soren Anderson has fallen into one of those craters. I distinctly heard his voice calling for help this morning when I passed by.”

  Soren. He was alive.

  Jenkins scoured Kyle with his eyes. “And what is your account of what happened in the station the night the woman, Edie, was killed?”

  Kyle flicked a glance in Sasha’s direction. “I didn’t know she was killed. Edie was outside the storage bay during the storm, when we were all blind. She and Soren started arguing about something. Some file or something. Edie said she had it. Soren told her to go around to the back door of the east wing, and that he’d let her in there. But then all hell broke loose. I think it was one of those rabid polar bears, and the rope that attached me to Soren got cut—Soren must have cut it—and I got separated from them, and lost, and that was the last I know of anything.”