by Karen Dionne
“Can you walk?” she asked. “We’re going back to the station. The storm’s quit.”
Using the top rail for balance, he got to his feet, then let go and took several tentative steps. He swayed, but stayed standing. “I can walk.”
“Good. Put this on.” She handed him his coat. “And be sure to zip up. The wind is down, but it’s still plenty cold.” She started for the door.
“Wait a minute. What about Cam?”
She turned around. “I’m sorry. Your friend didn’t make it.”
Ben studied the lump beneath the covers. He sighed, then squared his shoulders. “I didn’t think he would.”
Zo noted the set of his jaw with approval. Thank God he hadn’t started blubbering like a baby. She wasn’t ready to take him off her enemies list, but he’d definitely moved up a notch.
“We’ll come back for his body as soon as we can. Right now, it’s critical that we get back to the others. We found some . . . medicine . . . while you were sleeping—a treatment that we’re sure will help.” She wasn’t about to tell him the particulars. The new microbe was so potentially valuable, the last thing she wanted was for Soldyne to get its hands on the information. Hopefully Ben was still enough out of it that he wouldn’t ask questions.
He nodded. “Then let’s go.”
The moon was a small, white circle in an expanse of sky bluer than her darkest jeans, a rich, deep indigo magnified by the reflection in ice and snow. As she stepped outside, Zo felt like she was walking underwater. The cold made her cough, but she breathed it in, grateful to escape the claustrophobic shelter.
The moon was a reminder of how far along they were in the season. Even if Elliot hadn’t canceled the remaining tour ships, they wouldn’t have had visits from more than another one or two. The sea ice was already moving in. After mid-February, any ship entering Antarctic waters risked getting stuck for the next eight months.
Ahead of them, the station was obscured by shadow; a square, black box barely discernible against the blue horizon. She wanted to run, but forced herself to hold back. Ben would never be able to keep up. Ross was helping him along as it was. More important, running might draw the rats’ attention. Presumably, they’d gone back to their shelter, but now that the storm was over, who knew how long they’d stay there—or how long it had been since they had eaten. She scanned the sides of the path like a driver watching for deer.
To the left, the helicopter glowed a soft silver. Near it was what looked like a boulder where previously there had been none. A piece of wreckage, or another body? Someone from the station who, like Mac, went outside to cool off? A picture of Sam’s body came to mind, and she shuddered, remembering how the soft meat of his cheeks and both of his eyes had been gone.
Enough. Yes, the rats were out there, perhaps stalking them this very minute, but she refused to let herself be cowed. The world was full of danger. All that mattered was that Elliot was sick, and she had the means to save him. She walked faster. She couldn’t help it. She was a horse who’d scented the barn, a runner at the finish line, a mountain climber within feet of the top. A few more yards, a few more minutes, and all would be well.
Then she stopped. There were no lights at the station. No lights meant no heat.
She ran. Surely the building still held enough heat to keep people from freezing. They hadn’t been gone that long. Elliot had to be safe and warm in their bed—
She reached the building and darted into the shadows, then stopped again. She looked at the main door, and it was all she could do to keep from crying.
The door was open.
Chapter 37
Ben watched Ross and Zo intently as they looked from the door to each other. They didn’t say a word to him, but they didn’t need to. Ben’s poor, conked-on-the-head brain might be operating on three-quarters power, but he could still add two and two.
He waited for them to acknowledge the obvious. Maybe they thought they were protecting him, the way parents shielded their kids from the seamier side of life, or doctors held back bad news. What they didn’t realize was that as far as the rats were concerned, he’d already earned the T-shirt. He’d seen Quentin’s body; watched the rats go after Cam’s leg like it was a ten-foot sub at a frat party. If the rats were inside the building, and the residents were as sick as Ross and Zo claimed, he knew as well as they did what they’d find.
“Okay,” Ross said. “Change of plan. I’m going over to the maintenance shed to restore power. You two will have to take care of things here on your own.”
Still nothing about the rats.
He turned to Ben. “When you get inside, take the corridor to the right. The men’s dorm rooms are all on the outside wall. As long as you keep hanging right, you won’t get lost. When you find someone sick, give them two teaspoons of this.”
He handed Ben a plastic squeeze bottle. The shape felt familiar. Ben stepped out of the shadow and held the bottle up to the light.
What the—? This was their miracle cure? The stuff he used to spread on his toast when he was a kid?
“Some of them might be unconscious,” Ross was saying as matter-of-factly as if he went around dispensing bottles of honey as medicine every day. “If they are, go easy with them. Not everyone’s necessarily going to be in their right mind, so some of them might fight you because they won’t understand you’re trying to help. But no matter what, you have to get two teaspoons in them. Got it?”
“No,” Ben said. “I don’t.” He felt like he’d landed in the middle of someone else’s nightmare. What they were asking was beyond bizarre. “You expect me to go into a building with no lights that’s most likely swarming with rats, find people who are sick, and then, even if they don’t want me to, I’m supposed to squirt honey down their throats? You’re out of your freaking minds.” And they thought he had cognitive problems.
“We have to tell him,” Zo said.
“You got that right.” He’d already risked life and limb (and poor Cam had given his). No way was he going in without full disclosure. “Follow me! Come on! Walk this way!” they had burbled like purple dinosaurs. Well, this kid had had enough. Give him informed consent over blind obedience any day.
“There’s no time,” Ross said.
“Make time.” Ben crossed his arms over his chest.
“All right. You want to hold us hostage until you get your way, then fine. Short version: The station’s water is contaminated with insulin. The people inside aren’t sick, they’re suffering from insulin overdose. Eating something sweet will cure them. If they don’t get it, they’ll die.”
“Some of them already have,” Zo said. “Please. We don’t have much time.”
Ross’s Cliff Notes explanation raised more questions than it answered. Ben remembered now why he and Ross had never been close. You’d think someone with an IQ that was three times anyone else’s on the planet would have learned how to make his point without being rude. Still, Zo seemed sincere, and if they were right . . .
“Do I get a flashlight?”
“Sorry, Zo said. “I didn’t think we’d need them.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll have the power back in a few minutes. Now if you’re done wringing your hands like a little old lady, can we please stop yakking and go save some lives?”
Inside, it wasn’t completely dark, but it was close enough to pitch black. Down the length of the hallway, indistinct pools of light hinted at open doorways. The squares weren’t enough to see by, but at least they gave a sense of space and place.
As Zo’s footsteps dopplered down the corridor, Ben headed right, keeping one hand on the wall while he swung the other in a wide arc, not really expecting to connect with anything, not sure what he’d do if he did. He wasn’t afraid. The situation was so far beyond the norm that any terror he should have felt was tempered by an overwhelming sense of unreality. He wasn’t here. Not really. He couldn’t be. He wasn’t an adventurer. He was a desk man. His world was phones and faxes, not rats and dead bodies
.
He groped his way down the hall. Ross’s bombshell reverberated in his head. “The water is contaminated with insulin.” “Survivors might be unconscious.” Drink the glass of water someone had oh-so-thoughtfully left beside your bed, and the next thing you knew, you were on your way to dead. “You fainted,” Ross had said when Ben woke up with the taste of syrup on his lips. Right. And somewhere in Brooklyn was a bridge with his name on it. He clenched his fists. Not fifteen minutes earlier, he’d nearly died from insulin overdose. Ross and Zo both knew it, but wouldn’t admit it. Their omission was as obvious as it was intentional. He wondered if they’d given him the water on purpose as a test. Once someone lied to you, all bets were off.
And now the three of them were supposed to be allies: Ross, Zo, and The Human Guinea Pig.
He came to the first doorway and felt his way in. The light from the single window was mirrored by an identical square on the tiles. Asbestos, by the look of it, the same green-and-white marbled kind his parents had in their basement. Not a particularly useful detail, but Ben filed it away since it was the only thing he could see.
The rest of the room lay in deep shadow. Ben strained to hear signs of life—creaking bedsprings, rustling bed-covers, a cough, breathing that wasn’t his own—then laughed. This wasn’t a morgue. If he was looking for living bodies, all he had to do was ask.
“Hello! Anyone here?”
No answer. He shuffled to the right and immediately bumped something solid. A dresser, he concluded after patting it down. He edged around the perimeter taking stock: clothes on hooks (a nylon windbreaker and the ubiquitous flannel), a low dresser with a lamp he almost knocked to the floor, a set of bunk beds.
He ran his hands over the bottom bunk. The covers were rumpled as though the bed had been slept in, but the bed was empty. Ditto for the one on the top. Ten steps farther, he found a third bed, also empty. If everyone was as sick as Ross and Zo claimed, where were they? Unless these were the beds of those who were already dead—
Shuddering, he continued on. He was almost to the door when his foot nudged something soft. A body. Naked, or nearly so, with skin as cold as the room. He lifted one wrist, not expecting to feel a pulse, but checking anyway, then muscled the body onto the bed, covered it with a blanket, and went back into the hall.
After the scant light in the bedroom, the corridor seemed even darker than before. He strained to hear voices: Ross’s, Zo’s, anyone’s—
Instead, there was a rustling sound, the barest whisper of movement, followed by a series of tiny clicks.
Toenails on tails?
He broke out in a sweat. God, this was awful. Where was Ross? What was taking him so long? Why couldn’t he get the lights back on? He leaned against the wall and fought his rising panic. Sarah wouldn’t think him so heroic if she could see him now. And Paula—if Paula ever found out, she’d never let him out of her sight again.
He took a deep breath. For some reason, thinking about his family made him feel better. After all, these people had families, too.
He stepped confidently into the next room and turned to the right. Immediately he slammed into a dresser. The dresser tipped. Cheap dorm-room furniture was Ben’s thought as he went down. Then he was back in the helicopter again, falling, falling, falling, his heart racing like a rabbit’s as yesterday’s terror came flooding back. He lay on the floor amid the wreckage until his heart rate slowed.
The room reeked of spilled aftershave. He put out a hand to get to his feet, mindful of the broken glass, and bumped something cylindrical, which rolled away with a metallic clatter. He grinned, thanking God for scientists who were afraid of the dark.
He switched the flashlight on and swept the beam over the room. Two beds, two bodies. After confirming that they were dead, he moved on.
The next door was closed. Ben opened it and went in. Beneath a travel poster of Rio de Janeiro, one bed was completely stripped of blankets. The other was piled high. He hurried over and pulled back the covers.
A man lay underneath, pale, trembling, alive. The man’s lips were cracked and quivering as though he were dreaming.
Ben sat down beside him and put the bottle to his mouth. The man sucked greedily as if his body knew by instinct what was needed. After he’d slurped down what Ben guessed was the appropriate dose, Ben took the bottle away.
A hand grabbed his wrist. “More.” The voice was weak and thick.
“I don’t have any more.” The bottle was full, but the rest was for the others. Judging by his own experience, the man would feel fine in a few minutes. Incredible, to think that a spoonful of sugar was all it took to bring someone back from the dead.
“Thirsty.” The man reached for a glass on his nightstand. Ben beat him to it and grabbed it away.
“Hey! That’s mine. Give it to me.”
“It’s empty,” Ben lied. “Hang tight. I’ll go get you some more.”
He looked at the glass, and felt like pitching it against the wall. Instead, he dumped the contents into a wastebasket, dropped the glass in after, and continued on.
Chapter 38
Ross could hardly keep from laughing as he double-timed over to the maintenance shed. Ben probably wanted to deck him for calling him a little old lady. In a way, Ross wished he had. Not that he was a fan of physical violence; he just wished the guy would show more backbone. Provoking him into action was the same trick coaches and drill sergeants used to fire up their men. Get their adrenaline raging, and the fools rushed in. He was actually sorry that Ben had fallen for such an obvious ploy. The backbone thing again.
He was even sorrier that he had to tell Ben about the insulin compound. God only knew what Soldyne would do with it. Ben’s boss was responsible for one of the worst acts of environmental vandalism of all time. What else would he be willing to do in the name of profit? Ross would have loved to give the Diabetes Foundation a flask of tainted water as a gift, but that wasn’t how the pharmaceutical industry worked. The new treatment could never be brought to market without significant backing and big bucks; a massive investment that would yield even greater results. Still, he hated that a corporation that had shown such gross disrespect for the planet would benefit.
He also hated the way Ben had forced his hand, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. With the three of them standing outside arguing while inside, people were dying, he didn’t exactly have a choice. Ben’s self-righteous, “I’m not going in until someone tells me what’s going on” pose was as disgusting as it was dishonest. He wasn’t taking a stand; he was only doing what was best for Ben. Bottom line: The guy was afraid to go in.
Well, he was inside now—hopefully, doing his job.
The moon lit the way, sparkling the ice on the graveled path and making the metal shed glow. As Ross came near, the moonlight revealed something else. The entry door alongside the two giant overheads was open.
He pursed his lips. One thing he and Zo hadn’t discussed when they discovered the door to the main building open was why. Neither was the kind that could blow open by accident. Both doors had a windproof double-latching system that prevented it. Only a human could open the doors. Only a human could forget to shut them.
He stuck his head inside. There was a shuffling sound from the back.
“Hello!” he called. “Who’s there?”
He moved toward Sam’s worktable in search of a flashlight. As he passed beyond the faint circle of light the open door afforded, he continued with his arms outstretched, sidestepping obstacles both real and imagined like a quarterback in slow motion—a careful dodge here, a cautious feint there. He stumbled once and swore as he fell over what turned out to be an engine block, banging both shins.
At last he came to the worktable. Ross explored the tabletop by feel, mindful of knives and saw blades and nails. He found a flashlight on a high shelf. The beam threw up shadows like the lodge fires that had accompanied his grandmother’s ghost stories when he was a child. The legends were as real to her as the scie
nce he had learned from books; stories of the ancestral dead, not properly buried, who roamed the earth until they found a home in a skeleton uncovered by erosion, or a corpse buried too close to the surface—or in a young boy foolish enough to touch the handprints on the ancestral cave walls. He detoured around the Hägglunds, avoiding the morgue he and Zo had set up in one corner.
