The Winter Over

by Iden, Matthew

  In his office, he moved quickly, staying long enough to scoop only the most critical pieces of his work into a backpack. He spared a last look, feeling nothing but revulsion for the little space—the books, the paintings, the stupid fucking fish—then flipped the lights off and hurried out, locking the door behind him.

  He paused to glance down the hall: the knot of people was seething, wrestling, breaking each other’s bones and hearts and trust. Involuntarily, his lip curled. They got what they deserved.

  He turned in the opposite direction and headed for the Beer Can. When the shots rang out, he stopped in his tracks, shocked. Then he broke into a run, realizing in a wash of insight that even he had underestimated just how bad things had gotten.

  Hanratty didn’t know when the situation had gotten so out of hand.

  Someone had punched him in the side of the head and it ached from the cheek up to the temple, while a dull throbbing emanated from his thigh where someone else had kicked him. One hand held the collar of someone’s shirt—the face was so twisted with anger, he couldn’t recognize him—then the face was whipped away, replaced by a woman’s clawed hand raking at his eyes.

  Throughout the melee, he was aware of Taylor shouting hoarsely, threatening people with detention if they didn’t clear out. Hanratty fought the urge to laugh—the fool was telling the genie to get back into the bottle or else . It had explained a lot, he thought, when he’d found out that Taylor was not nearly the international mercenary soldier he’d initially claimed, but instead had been a sheriff’s deputy at a Louisiana jail before working security at a few TransAnt facilities. And now his inexperience was coming home to roost.

  Hanratty pushed the woman—he finally recognized her as Beth Muñez—away and shouted to Taylor, “Back up, back up! We’ve got to get to the office and regroup.”

  Taylor, his normally flat expression twisted into fury, didn’t seem to hear him. He was struggling with Dave Boychuck, who, even with his wrist broken, was still wrestling the security chief one-handed. From nowhere, someone took a swing at Taylor, landing a weak punch that the chief caught on a hunched shoulder. The second attack seemed to trigger something in Taylor; he lashed out a kick that buckled Dave’s knee, punched him in the throat for good measure, then backed up.

  Hanratty felt he was seeing something in reverse that he’d already viewed; he knew the results even before they played themselves out. Taylor’s hand shot to his waistband, reached under his shirt, and came out with a pistol, black and square and ugly.

  Hanratty yelled something incoherent and dove toward his security chief. As bad as things were, what he was seeing now was sheer insanity.

  Taylor backpedaled, trying to give himself separation, while simultaneously bringing the pistol up in a two-handed grip and taking aim at the crowd. A few of the crew saw the gun and screamed as they began scattering, diving, and running away.

  Hanratty found himself alone in front of his chief. He reached for the gun. In his mind’s eye, his hand wrapped around the barrel, twisted it away, and saved the day.

  In reality, Taylor simply saw another body hurtling toward him, an outstretched hand reaching for his weapon, and so he fired. Two bullets hit Hanratty: one in the chest above his right nipple, the other above his collarbone, tearing away a length of his jugular vein and carotid artery.

  Hanratty clapped a hand to the blood leaping from his neck and fell to the floor, looking up at his chief in disbelief. His mouth gulped like that of a fish out of water. Taylor, his eyes impossibly wide, took two steps back, then fled down the hall. Shouts and shrieks of the terrified crew came to Hanratty down a long, narrow tube, growing more muffled and faint as his blood pumped out to join that of the others scattered around him.

  In the thirty seconds left of life, Hanratty gifted himself with the thought that he would be remembered, if not as a hero, then at least not as a coward, if he were to be remembered at all.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Taylor ran along the hall—gun in hand, head swiveling—ready for anything.

  It was all over. Hanratty was dead. Keene was nowhere to be found. Ayres and Deb and half the crew were crazy or gone or dead, he didn’t have time to figure out which. He’d had a suspicion it would end this way, had tried to warn Hanratty to stop talking to people and start leading them. Draw some fucking lines in the sand. Kick people back into their corners. Take charge. But instead Hanratty had decided to reason with people, talk to them. Well, we saw how that worked out, didn’t we, Jack?

  He felt no responsibility for Hanratty’s death. If the moron hadn’t tried to grab his gun, he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. But he was a trained professional, indoctrinated to handle insurrection brutally and effectively. What had Hanratty expected? What was he thinking ? When the world went to hell, you fired first and sorted things out later. If someone put themselves in front of the barrel, that was on them.

  It hadn’t occurred to Taylor just where he was running to; he just knew he needed to get away from the mob and get out of the base before someone did for him like he’d done for Hanratty. He was halfway down the stairs in the Beer Can, taking the steps two and three at a time, when he realized his feet had already decided for him. He’d have to hurry; he wasn’t dressed for the sixty below of the service arches, but if he kept up his calorie burn, he might get through without losing too much to frostbite.

  At the base of the stairs, he stopped briefly to listen. The lower level, always fairly quiet, was eerily silent now. He was too cold to stop for long, however, and jogged through the hatch and toward the arches. His labored breathing and the squeaking crunch of his steps along the ice became the only sounds.

  Had he been moving at any slower than a full run, he might’ve been intimidated. But with the very real dangers of the crew behind him, imagined dangers were more easily dismissed, although it occurred to him that, despite the bloodbath upstairs, no one knew who had killed Anne and Pete. For all he knew, the killer was down here with him, as well. He covered his mouth with a sleeve to warm the incoming air and picked up his pace.

  Humans were not built for sixty degrees below zero. At just over a minute in the tunnels, he could feel his body shutting down, his vision blurring. Gasping and shivering uncontrollably, he reached the VMF seconds before collapse. He had just enough sense left to wrap his sleeve around his hand before reaching for the metal latch to the garage or he would’ve lost all the skin on his palm and fingers. With his hand covered, he threw open the door and flicked on the lights while his breath poured out in great billows of white vapor.

  His eyes darted around the garage. The VMF was warmer than the tunnel, possibly in the low teens, but that only meant his death would be prolonged if he didn’t find a source of warmth or protection in the next few minutes.

  “Come on, Jennings, you bitch,” he snarled into the empty space. “I know you kept spares.”

  There . Tossed casually on a stool was a set of Carhartt overalls covered in grease. He hurried over and started tugging them on, cursing at the tight fit. He was hopping around on one leg, trying to shove his body into the overalls, when he shouted in victory. Hanging from a hook in the corner: Jennings’s spare ECW gear.

  He abandoned the overalls and snatched the parka. A light sheen of sweat that had formed on his brow and back had already frozen, and he ran a hand along his face to break up the ice. He began throwing on the gear as fast as he could, fumbling with the zips and buckles. His hands had lost feeling, the fingers thick as sausages and just as clumsy. In thirty seconds, however, he had the entire set on and the tremor in his limbs slowed to an occasional twitch. The gun he stashed in an inside pocket, which was a shame, but he no longer felt quite as exposed as he had back in the halls of Shackleton.

  Now he needed wheels. He jogged over to the station’s fleet of Skandics, parked neatly in a row. Moving as quickly as the bulky gear would allow, he checked their gauges and general state of wear. He needed something tanked up and in good working order; his lif
e depended on which machine he chose.

  He finally settled on one of the older but more reliable-looking sleds, started it to get it warmed up, then ran to a supply shelf, where he rummaged through pre-stocked saddlebags meant for outside workers who needed to grab-and-go. Cannibalizing several, he managed to put together a bug-out bag of two first-aid kits, a GPS system, flares, a radio, and a basic survival kit. He tossed this onto the back of the Skandic, strapped down an extra can of gas, then trotted over to the large garage door to open it. The great bay door whined and ground its gears, unused to fighting the massive snowdrifts that had piled against it since summer. It rose slowly, inevitably, and the warmth of the VMF disappeared as the black cold of the South Pole night flooded in like water bursting over a dam.

  Staggering against the push of the wind, he returned to the snowmobile, threw his leg over the saddle, and headed out of Shackleton for the last time. As he crossed the threshold, however, a thought occurred to him. He slowed the Skandic, then stopped. The idea was vicious, and possibly self-destructive if anyone with any authority ever caught up to him, but it suited his sense of completeness and right. TransAnt wanted to see if the crew of the Shackleton base could handle adversity and stress? Well, he’d give it to them.

  Jogging back into the main floor of the garage, he pulled a fuel hose twenty feet out of its reel, then nicked the hose with a pair of shears. Back at the fuel dashboard, he punched on the flow button and kicked the lever. Gas pulsed out of the hose and pooled on the floor, filling the garage with evil-smelling fumes. He ran back to the Skandic, kicked it in gear, and tore away from the garage as fast as he could.

  A hundred feet away, he parked and looked back. The bright lights of the VMF formed a perfect square in an otherwise velvet black world. He couldn’t have asked for a better target—it was literally the size of a barn door. Reaching into the saddlebag, he pulled out the flare gun and aimed directly for the center of the square, like he was shooting the heart of Shackleton itself.

  The flare, blown slightly off course by a savage wind, barely sizzled and tumbled its way into the garage. But, as he’d hoped, an errant spark met the spreading gas fumes. The square blossomed into a flower of fire.

  The shockwave hit Taylor hard, nearly knocking him off the snowmobile. But he kept his balance, then turned and sped off, the weak beam of his headlight showing the way into the night.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Leroy woke crying. He’d been dreaming of the ocean and pale sand the color of a peach, the warm breezes he’d felt once on a trip to the Gulf, and the feeling of the sun hot on his back. The dream dimmed, and out of the darkness, he saw his sister, her face first scared, then smug and cruel, slipping and molting into another woman’s face, someone dark-haired and screaming.

  He lay under the mounds of carpeting and nesting material he’d scavenged, trying to calm the tumult in his head. Guilt, anger, pain, hunger, fear. And cold. So incredibly cold. He couldn’t seem to stay still and he was always cold, so he’d taken to stalking up and down the ice tunnels, hitting himself and slapping the walls like they were sides of beef to reassure himself he could still feel. But now the cold seemed to be inside of him, freezing him from the inside out, and there seemed to be no answer to it.

  His days and his nights had been filled with suffering. His mind seethed with impressions of the wrongs done to him, or those that might be done. For the pain, he took the pink pills—the blue pills had run out long ago—but they seemed to do little except excite his imagination. Scenes of blood and the visceral feel of a wrench breaking bone passed through his vision and he groaned, realizing he was replaying memories—recent memories—not visions.

  Starving after nearly a month of living in the tunnels under the station, eating only what he’d managed to bring with him and the little bit of food he’d grabbed from intermittent raids up above, he’d begun wandering closer to the base, eventually coming across someone hauling supplies from the warehouse on a cart. Leroy had followed him, frustrated when he’d taken the freight elevator, and so he’d ascended the steps to the base for the first time in a week. Smells from the galley had pulled him in and he’d begun panting at how warm everything was. He’d followed the cook quietly, only meaning to knock him out and steal the food he needed. But then he’d seen her and suddenly the only important thing was to obliterate the person who reminded him of a lifelong source of guilt and fear.

  When he was done, he’d grabbed what food he could and fled back to the safety of his nest. Exhausted, he’d fallen asleep immediately, only to be ripped awake by his nightmares. When he was awake, however, the visions of blood were still vivid and alive in his head . . . Then he looked down at his hands and saw the real thing.

  They’d come for him eventually, he knew. He could’ve lived down here indefinitely if he hadn’t bothered anyone, but now that he’d killed, they’d want to capture him and drag him back for their judgment. The thought made him twitch under his layers, and his mind careened off into a new clutch of anxious thoughts. He croaked threats and curses into the air.

  He froze in mid-curse. A dull, distant whump had reached his ears. Considering how far away he was from the occupied parts of the base, it must’ve been earsplitting at the source. The sudden noise was a shock in a place where, aside from the creak of ice and burble of fluid through the sewage pipes, he was the only source of sound. Had he actually heard it? Or imagined it?

  Throwing off the blankets and pieces of carpet, he struggled to a sitting position. He held his breath, listening intently.

  He heard nothing. But he felt something.

  It began with a light, feathery touch, caressing the sliver of exposed skin on his cheek. A few seconds later, it was pressing insistently. His scarf, frozen permanently in the shape of his face, crackled as he peeled it away.

  The wind, forced through the halls and corridors under the station, moaned its greeting, then, squeezing and tilting through tiny spaces, it pitched upward until it was a constant, insistent shriek.

  Leroy scrambled to his feet, his heart racing. Without thinking, he began shrieking along with the wind, his voice rusty and breaking from disuse. In his mind, he saw nothing but colossal movements of color and emotion. A part of him made a weak attempt to hook reason onto his actions, but in the end, he gave up and gave in. A cracked smile broke across his face as he shuffled out the door of his nest and into the ice tunnel beyond, still singing the song of the wind, looking for its source.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Cass was shivering.

  She hadn’t gotten a real night’s rest since being locked up—no surprise, of course. More than once she woke gasping, crying, or shivering. This time, she lay flat in bed with her eyes shut, willing herself to become calm and serene. Something was tickling her cheek, though. Still half-asleep, she reached up to scratch and felt a crust of ice on her eyelids.

  She sat bolt upright in bed, blind.

  Frantic, she rubbed the ice away and opened her eyes with difficulty. The room was dimly lit, illuminated not by the normal overhead lamp, but from a weak battery-operated emergency LED above the door, one of the same ones that had kicked on during the station-wide power failure. She stared at it, her vision obscured by her fogging breath.

  Her muscles, shocked by the cold, rippled and twitched as she rolled out of bed and began throwing on every scrap of clothing she could find. Taylor hadn’t allowed her any outdoor clothing, but Deb had secretly brought Cass her books, clothes, and personal items from her berth. Mouthing a thanks for the woman’s kindness, Cass pulled on five layers in all, then crawled back into bed, pulling the blanket up over her nose as she tried to get warm. Tiny ice crystals, formed by her breath as she had slept, clung to the ceiling above her head, glittering and twinkling like tiny stars. Her mind, almost as frozen as the rest of her body, lay dormant and blank, but after long minutes, the shivering slowed, then finally stopped, allowing her to think.

  Something had happened to the electrical syst
em that was bad enough for the emergency lights to kick on . . . again. But this time, it wasn’t just cold, it was below freezing in an internal room of Shackleton. For that to happen meant the power had been off for some time. And if that were the case and no one had come to check on her, then she’d either been forgotten or the situation on base was so bad it amounted to the same thing.

  Cass kicked off the blanket and rolled out of bed again. Stiff from her clothes bunching at the elbows and knees, she went to a bag in the closet and pried off one of the zippers. With the small metal tab clutched in one hand, she went back to the bed, upended the nightstand lamp, then used the end of the zipper tab as an impromptu screwdriver to loosen the base. After a minute of fumbling, the screws fell out and the base popped off. Fishing around inside, her fingers closed around a mini multi-tool from her belongings that Taylor had overlooked in his enthusiasm to lock her up. She’d hidden it as soon as she’d found the right place.

  Rummaging around in one of her bags, she dug out a flashlight and her trusty headlamp. Aside from the multi-tool and clothes, they were the only other resources she had. She flicked through the tools and chose the flat-head screwdriver, then went to work on the hinges of the door to her room.

  Never meant to act as the entrance of a prison, the door was hinged on the inside, which should’ve made the process of removing the hinges easier, but her hands were numb and she had to jam them under her armpits several times to warm them up. After ten minutes of patient manipulation, she had the screws out and the hinges dangling in place. She turned around and gave the door the hardest mule kick she could muster, driving all of her anger and outrage through the heel of her boot. The door flew open, twisted momentarily at the lock, then fell into the hall.