Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1)

by Ellis, Jennifer

  She felt Vincent ease off the seat behind her. Then she did the same, and turned around to see the helicopter hovering at eye level only a few hundred feet away. The white light blinded her temporarily and then slipped past her as it scoured the rest of the hill.

  “We have reason to believe you know where Soren Anderson is. You will have to come with us. Do not move, or you will be shot.”

  The helicopter started to drop to the ground beneath them. If they ran for the mist, they would probably be shot before they reached it, especially Vincent, and if by some miracle they weren’t, these guys would follow them.

  Instead of feeling the fear that she probably should, Sasha wanted to kick the snowmobile in frustration.

  The chopper edged the final few feet to the snow, and two men with assault rifles leapt out.

  The spotlight came to rest on her and Vincent again, and Sasha lowered her eyes to the almost incandescent sheen of her navy parka.

  They had failed.

  A deep guttural yawp rocked the air, throwing Sasha to her knees. The dirt and snow on the ground beneath the helicopter shot into the sky on the wave of what seemed to be a colorless gas, taking the men and chopper with it. A giant black hole opened on the plain where the helicopter had been sitting. Then the chopper burst into brilliant orange flames, and the men and machine disappeared from sight as they plummeted into the vast new crater.

  Chapter 12 – Debts

  Sasha stared at the crater, waiting for the helicopter to rise out of the black expanse. But nothing emerged, and after the initial blast that threw debris almost to the foot of Trainor, the crater went ominously silent and became just a deep dark pit like all the others.

  She looked cautiously over at Vincent. He was still standing at least, but his skin had a funny greyish tinge.

  “Alright, so I guess we carry on,” he managed.

  “I guess so. There’s probably other men back at the station. They’ll be on their way in snowmobiles very soon.”

  Sasha retrieved the packs and the M72 and handed the lightest one to Vincent. Then she turned and started to trudge through the heavy snow toward the mist. Vincent trailed her, clearly having more difficulty and stopping to rest every few steps, but he had a determined set about his face, so she did not ask him if he was okay.

  She waited for Vincent at the edge of the sea of mysterious fog. What had happened to this world, to her world? It seemed as everything had become unmoored. Would gravity be next?

  The wind picked up, sending ice crystals swirling in miniature tornadoes in its wake. She braced herself against the assault and glanced over her shoulder. High-piled clouds had collected on the horizon and glowed ominously purple in the light of the aurora. The next gust of wind nearly flattened her. She turned to see Vincent on his knees in the snow behind her. The clouds rolled and rearranged themselves in the gale, moving in to block out the starlit sky with alarming speed.

  She ran back and grasped Vincent’s arm.

  “We need to go. That storm’s not right.”

  She managed to pull him to his feet. The wind whipped at their clothes and snow started to rain out of the sky.

  A loud whoomph reverberated through the air. An avalanche. The explosion, or the snowmobile, had destabilized the snow. They would be crushed. Vincent had already automatically pivoted to bolt down the mountain that shook beneath their feet.

  “No!” Sasha yelled. “Vincent, We have to run into it. We have to get into the mist. Or we’re dead.”

  Vincent stopped and turned, his head bowed. “The things you ask of me,” he said, before launching up the mountain faster than she had ever seen him move. It went against every instinct, every hour of avalanche training, and every bit of good sense that Sasha once believed she had to follow him. The thick snow clenched their legs and began to move beneath them as they fought the last few feet into the mist. But the cement-like snow gradually dissipated and vanished, and they found themselves running across the volcanic rock of Paulet Island.

  It seemed even warmer here than before, and the air was thick with the smell of sulfur. The chatter of the penguins on the beaches and rocks below filtered up to them against the backdrop of the pounding surf.

  Sasha dropped to her knees, cupped her hands around one of the warm black rocks, and uttered every form of thanks she could think of.

  Vincent squatted with difficulty, his stiff limbs popping, his stance unstable, and his breath coming in heavy wheezes. “Well after that, young lady, I’m definitely going to need a muscle relaxant, a stiff scotch, and a colostomy bag. At the very least, I’m going to have to get my heart rate down a little before we move on.” He removed his glove and placed his hand on the rocks beneath his feet. “It’s warm,” he murmured. “Paulet has become active again.”

  Sasha nodded, and Vincent took a seat on a rock. They could rest for a few minutes.

  “Do you know the tunnels, Vincent?”

  “Only a few of the main branches, and I’ve only gone in a few hundred feet. Murphy knows them though.”

  “Murphy?”

  “Murphy lives on the island in the tunnels. We bring him food and other supplies every month.”

  “Scraggy looking man? Long hair, beard?”

  “Did you see him?”

  “I think so. He helped me find my way out of the tunnels.”

  Vincent looked thoughtful. “That’s good. Maybe there’s hope for him. Did he talk to you?”

  Sasha shook her head. “Who is he?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Let me guess, it has something to do with Soren. I need to know, Vincent. Now.”

  Vincent sighed and placed his hands on his knees. “Murphy and Soren were best friends. They were both volcano researchers. The three of us did the seven volcanic summits together as part of Soren’s dissertation research. Some say there was a rivalry, but I don’t think so. At least not in the early days. They supported each other’s research. But then Marina came along, and both of them fell for her. Hard. Maybe Murphy the hardest. But Marina liked Soren and they got together. Murph took it badly. He had set up a shack on Paulet here to study the volcano. He claimed that based on his research, Paulet was going to erupt again. He has some half-baked theory about the world’s volcanoes being connected, and that the eruptions of one influenced the eruptions of the others. It didn’t get a lot of traction. But Murphy was always that way, a little eccentric. Some academics are like that—a little too close to the fire.” Vincent paused to turn and look out to the ocean, which roiled and surged against the edges of the island. But the night was a vast canvas of stars, aside from the patch of fog that hovered just below them, and the wind, while strong, was warm. Sasha removed her parka and tried to tie it around her waist with the sleeves. She would not make the mistake of leaving her parka behind again.

  “I’ve never seen the ocean around Paulet so wild,” Vincent said almost absently. “Anyway, Soren and Marina came to stay with Murphy here on Paulet for a few weeks. To mend fences, Murphy claimed when he invited them, and Murphy wanted to explain his hypotheses to Soren regarding what he was claiming was the ‘hole in the world’. Marina was just excited to be at one of the penguin epicenters of the Antarctic. Nobody knows what happened, there were suggestions that Murphy made a move on Marina, or that they were having an affair, but whatever happened, it all went wrong. Marina died. Both Murphy and Soren were suspects, and both claimed it was an accident, but for whatever reason, the prosecutors went after Soren. After the trial, Murphy moved to Paulet permanently.”

  “Vincent!” Sasha interrupted. “You said the hole in the world. That’s what those guys were looking for. Remember? That’s why they’re looking for Soren.”

  Vincent shook his head. “That’s all rubbish, I’m sure. There is no hole in the world. That’s just some delusion of Murphy’s.”

  Sasha looked out at the wild ocean and then down at the mist from which they had just emerged, and shuddered. “I don’t know. I’m beginni
ng to think anything is possible.” She rose. “Are you going to help me look for Soren?”

  Vincent shifted his gaze to the black rock at his feet. “I’m an old man. Part of me thinks I should just go find my boat, and take it back to the Antarctic Station, if there is a station, and see if there is any part of my former life left. I’m also fairly sure that I should insist that you come with me.”

  “We can’t leave Soren. We have to at least try to find him.”

  Vincent let out a big harrumphing sigh. “Yeah. That’s what the other part of me says. Up you go. We’ll have to use the tree entrance as I can’t squeeze my carcass through the crow entrance.”

  “Vincent, I think a demon impersonated you yesterday. He was trying to get some information from me about the hole in the world. Just in case, I think we better have a safe word, in case we get separated.”

  Vincent nodded, and they agreed that Soren and Sasha’s safe word “Franklin” would also be their safe word. They started to head up the cone in the direction of the lone short scraggy tree that jutted defiantly out of the dark rock. Amidst the penguin cries, Sasha was sure that she heard something else. Barking. Had some of the dogs survived Robert’s execution or—she blanched at the prospect—Paul’s snack time?

  The barking grew closer and all of a sudden two huskies appeared, one copper and the other black and white, their muzzles spattered and stained with red. Timber and Tundra. As they drew closer, wagging and barking, Sasha could see that they had penguin guts and feathers all over their faces and backs, and they stunk of decay. Their stomachs bulged and a loud gurgling sound came from Tundra’s gut.

  “You two idiots have been eating penguins for the last few hours,” Sasha declared. However grateful she was to see them alive and here, they were undeniably foul.

  The two dogs continued to bark and wag enthusiastically, clearly confused as to why she was not greeting them with her usual hugs and exclamations of joy.

  “Ugh, what do we do with them?” she asked. They could not take the two wretched, reeking dogs into the tunnels, as much as Sasha might like to have them for protection. Anyone would smell them coming a mile away.

  Vincent had pulled his neck warmer up over his nose. “They have to be washed off. Let’s go down to the beach. We can drop off some of our supplies, and I should show you where my boat is moored anyway, just in case. It’s a secluded beach with a wide bridge of rock over it. If you don’t know the way down there, you’ll never find it.”

  They set off down the mountain with Vincent in the lead, the dogs and their rotten stench following behind. The dogs moved more slowly than usual, and they had to pause while Tundra barfed up some half-chewed penguin bones and bile.

  Sasha wanted to kick the blockheads for their stupidity. To survive everything that they had survived and then die from penguin overconsumption—that would be too much.

  Near the beach, Vincent took a sharp right and began skirting the mountain. From this vantage point, it appeared that the rock formed a shelf with steep cliff that dropped off into the ocean. After a few minutes, Vincent stopped. There was a small dark hole in the lava rock near the edge of the mountain.

  “We have to climb down there. There are lots of footholds, but be careful. It opens up after a few feet.”

  Vincent lowered himself slowly into the hole. The dogs, alarmed by his sudden disappearance, started going berserk leaping and hopping around the rim. Sasha peered down into the black expanse, and withdrew a headlamp borrowed from Gregor from the pack. Would the dogs be able to navigate it? The pair of them charged around the hole skittishly as if it were alive. She saw the white sand not too far below them in the hole, but the walls were too steep for a four-legged creature. They would have to jump, and hope not to bang their heads against the side. Sasha started the descent herself. The dogs, even more concerned now, thrust their stinky snouts with extended tongues into her face as soon as she was at their eye level.

  She batted them away. “Get back, you two nitwits.”

  A few seconds later, she stood next to Vincent in the deep grey sand on the small curve of beach in a natural cave, a hollowed out scoop of rock in the island, not more than forty feet wide. The echo of the waves had amplified as the foamy surf surged at their feet. Two large motorboats bobbed in the swells and two overturned rowboats nestled side by side in the rocks at the top of the beach.

  The dogs continued to bark like lunatics, but then Sasha saw the flashes of white fur as one after the other leapt into the dark hole.

  “There are two boats,” Sasha said, stating the obvious.

  “One of them is Murphy’s,” Vincent replied. Sasha scrutinized the boats. One was a small white and blue trawler obviously in good repair. The other, a tinier silver craft, looked like it had seen better days.

  The dogs eyed the surging water suspiciously and made no move to go anywhere near it. Tundra danced along the edge of the surf that threatened to soak his paws.

  “We’re going to have to throw them in,” Vincent said. “Huskies don’t generally swim. I have rain slickers in my rowboat. I suggest we put those on.”

  They donned the rain slickers and commenced the ludicrous process of trying to lure, force, or drag the two recalcitrant huskies into the water. At several points, especially when her boot filled with water, Sasha contemplated giving up and just leaving the two beasts behind tied up in the cove. But eventually they got the two dogs sufficiently washed off. They stowed the slickers and both dogs then proceeded to shake their wet fur all over Sasha and Vincent.

  “Thanks a lot,” she muttered.

  Sasha put her headlamp back on and flashed it around the cove. The light came to rest on Vincent’s boat. “The Helga” was clearly inscribed in flowing blue script on the white side.

  She left her light trained on the words and shifted her eyes to Vincent. “Anything you wanted to share?” she asked.

  “Not really,” said Vincent. “Shall we go?”

  “Yep,” said Sasha.

  They left some of their food supplies, outerwear, the tent, and sleeping bags beneath one of the overturned rowboats and made their way back up the mountain through the oddly warm moonlit night, the dogs beacons of white ahead of them.

  At the tree, Vincent pulled the rifle from where it was slung on his back.

  “You’d better give me the M72. It’s finicky,” he said.

  Sasha nodded silently and handed him the heavy weapon, which he hooked over his shoulder. He handed her the rifle, which she grasped with sweaty palms.

  They made their way silently down the tunnel. After several admonishments from Sasha, the dogs seemed to understand that they needed to be quiet. It was warm inside, warmer than Sasha had remembered it being before, and the tunnel was lit with that same strange glow. Vincent had put his headlamp on before going into the tunnel, but now flicked it off as he peered about the tunnel uneasily.

  But he didn’t say anything. He just set his lips in a grim line and headed off down the tunnel.

  “Soren was captured near the crow entrance,” Sasha whispered. “Do you know your way around here at all?”

  Vincent shook his head, and flicked his headlamp back on. “I can get us from here to the crow entrance. That’s about it. I guess we might as well start there.”

  They hustled along, the eerie stone tunnels echoing with the scrape and shuffle of their boots, the click of the dog nails, and Vincent’s labored breathing. Maybe this was a fool’s mission. Why would the demons have kept Soren here, of all places? They could easily be long gone to anywhere in the world by now, leaving her and Vincent to wander fruitless in this maze of tunnels.

  “You kind of look like her, you know,” Vincent said.

  “Sorry, what? Who?”

  “Marina. She was small and dark-haired like you. From certain angles, the two of you are almost identical.”

  Sasha tried to process the implications of this. Was Vincent suggesting that Murphy thought Sasha was Marina, or worse, that Soren had
liked her because she looked like his dead wife?

  She was trying to muster up some response when Timber and Tundra started to sniff the tunnel floor and run in circles, their noses pressed to the ground. The tunnel seemed vaguely familiar, like it could have been near the place where Paul had grabbed her.

  “Do you think they smell Soren?”

  “Possible,” Vincent said. “Following them is as good a choice as any as right now.”

  “Okay. Find Soren,” she urged the dogs. “Find Soren.”

  The dogs bolted off down the tunnel in a stop and go fashion, hurrying down some corridors, but pausing to sniff all around and occasionally wait in some spots. It felt once again to Sasha like they were going in circles, but the dogs did not hesitate, and they were definitely progressing consistently downhill, which meant that they had not doubled back on themselves…and that they were getting deeper into the heart of the mountain.

  Vincent withdrew his compass and held it in the palm of his hand several times. But inevitably he shook his head in frustration and put it back in his pocket.

  The heat seemed to be rising, and although Sasha did not want to say anything, it seemed like the tunnel was brighter. Sweat dripped down her back and between her breasts. She was no longer sure how long they had been walking, or if the dogs ahead of them were in fact just a mirage and they had walked through more fog to another place entirely. At times, she thought she heard the pad of footsteps behind them, but every time she turned, the tunnel was empty.

  She blinked in the half-light. The dogs. Where were the dogs? She could no longer see them. They had been pretty good about stopping and waiting, but now they were nowhere to be seen. Vincent had clearly noticed too, for he like Sasha, quickened his pace and swung his headlamp around from right to left like a pendulum, trying to find the dogs.