Black Ice

by Matt Dickinson

  Lauren sympathised with him. Her own mouth was filled with a type of glutinous slime, a clear indication that her body wasn’t getting anything like enough fluids.

  Things had changed in the last forty-eight hours, the early attacking style of the trek now replaced by a miserable shuffling of feet, scuffing across the ice in a despondent line as mile after mile passed at a snail’s pace.

  The equipment problems had largely been solved; now they’d been hit by the horrific realisation of just how much distance was really in front of them.

  ‘I will never again look at a motorway signpost in the same way,’ Frank commented. ‘I swear every mile feels like ten.’

  Lauren and Sean took on the lion’s share of the sledge hauling, giving Murdo, Richard and Mel as much down time as they could. Frank was out of the hauling rota thanks to his injuries.

  The haulers had quickly learned to hate the sledge, the way it constantly nudged at their heels, the way the rope around their waists caused friction burns as the hours continued.

  There was one positive development: by the third night, Sean and Murdo had the night shelter in much better shape.

  Their earlier attempts had been to try and construct a type of wigwam, using three ski sticks and wrapping their one blanket around the makeshift frame along with the few bits of plastic and metal sheet they had managed to bring with them from the base.

  There was no room to lie inside, only enough space for them all to sit in a tightly packed circle. The lucky occupant of the sleeping-bag shift—the two-hour highlight of their nights—would curl up in the middle to give the others a chance to warm their feet beneath the fabric.

  As an idea, the wigwam principle was sound enough, but the structure was too high and thin, making it fundamentally unstable. A sturdy wind would blow the poles to one side, collapsing the teepee so that one of the occupants—normally Sean—would have to go out and retie the flimsy guy ropes and try to make it erect again.

  ‘We’ve got to have a better system,’ Sean announced after exiting into the night for the tenth time to repair the shelter. ‘This one truly sucks.’

  During the next day’s trek, Sean and Murdo talked it through, discussing the finer points of detail as an effective way of passing the time.

  The solution they came up with was for a much lower structure than the previous one. First they took the sledge and turned it on its side so that the flat surface was facing into the wind. It acted as a windbreak approximately two metres long and half a metre high. Behind it, they lined the ice with the metal sheets, then placed the softer, more comfortable plastic sheeting on top to give them some insulation from the heat-stealing properties of the floor.

  When it was time to rest, they lay side by side—like sardines in a can—with the blanket suspended over them from the sledge. The sleeping-bag occupant acted as the anchor for the blanket at the other end and also doubled as a foot warmer for anyone brave enough to take off their boots. It was claustrophobic—the blanket sagged just a few inches above their faces—but the lack of space was itself another advantage, giving their body heat a better opportunity to warm the air.

  The result—the ‘Mark Two Den’, as Sean christened it—was a big improvement, an ingenious way of maximising their scant materials and far warmer than the previous shelter. It didn’t blow down, it was relatively snowtight in drifting conditions and if snow did collect on the blanket a vigorous heave from below could always clear it. The main disadvantage was suffered by the two team members at the outer extremities of the shelter, their unprotected flanks froze solid without the warmth of another body to close up to. They rotated these positions every hour.

  ‘Like emperor penguins in the winter,’ Lauren said. ‘The ones on the outside always get the bum deal.’

  The Mark Two Den was a success, but it still wasn’t enough. Only inside that sleeping bag could any of them find true sleep. For the rest of the interminable hours of the night, there was nothing but the cracking of the frozen blanket in the wind and the chattering of teeth.

  In their minds was one thought, and one thought only. When would they get to that depot? And how much food would it contain?

  63

  Fitzgerald steered the snowcat in a little closer. Now he was just a few hundred metres from the wreckage of the base. It was the closest he had dared to come since the fire.

  He paused, looking intently into the ruins, alert for any sign of movement. If someone ran towards him, he was ready to turn and race away.

  This was the trap, he knew, and he had to admit it was well done. For three entire days he had seen not a single sign of life from the base. They were luring him in, coaxing him closer, hoping that he would lose his caution and make that one fatal mistake which would lose him everything. If he went too close, they’d be on him like a pack of wolves.

  That was where they were. Huddled beneath that charred section of corrugated iron, the remains of the engine shed. Other pieces of debris were placed around it to block out the wind and the snow. He couldn’t see inside. But they’d be looking at him, all right, praying for him to kill the engine, to take those few steps away from the snowcat.

  They would be desperate with hunger and cold.

  ‘Do you take me for a fool?’ he shouted at the ruins. ‘I know some of you must still be alive. Show yourselves! Maybe I can help you.’

  Nothing stirred.

  Fitzgerald looked behind him, suddenly aware that the ticking-over of the snowcat engine would disguise the footfalls of someone running towards him.

  He couldn’t turn the engine off. Perhaps it wouldn’t start again. Then he’d be at their mercy. One man against four … or were there five?

  He revved the engine, secure in the confident tone of the engine note, then drove in a circle around the base, trying all the while to see into that shelter.

  He paused again.

  Maybe they were dead? The thought was enticing. Was three days and nights enough to kill them? Christ knows that shelter must be like a deep freeze at night. Fitzgerald shuddered at the very thought.

  But Lauren was tougher than that. And Sean too. The others might have fallen with exposure, but Fitzgerald knew enough about those two to be pretty confident they’d still be alive.

  And they were waiting for him, had made themselves the bait.

  Suddenly, he had an idea. There were a few spare cans of food stashed in the back pannier of the snowcat, a contingency in case he somehow—God forbid—lost the tent or became disorientated in a storm.

  ‘I’ve got spare food!’ he called out. ‘I’m leaving some here on the ice for you now.’

  Fitzgerald tossed a tin of meat onto the ice.

  ‘Spam!’ he yelled. ‘No tricks. Just a goodwill gesture. Come and get it.’

  He backed off half a mile or so and watched for nearly an hour. No way they would resist that, he thought, no matter how much they wanted to bring him into the trap.

  But no one moved. No figure emerged, stiff and frozen, from the shelter to collect the food.

  But it wouldn’t be there tomorrow, Fitzgerald had never been more certain of anything in his life.

  One of them would crack. Or two or three. That meat would be calling to them stronger than they could possibly resist after three days and nights of no food whatsoever.

  He drove close again. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he shouted.

  Then he turned the snowcat and drove back out into the wilderness.

  64

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Frank told the others every time they waited for him to catch up. ‘I’m getting to be a bit of a liability, aren’t I?’

  Lauren kept back with him, matching his shuffling steps with her own and trying to keep his morale up by talking as they went. Their conversation was rambling, punctuated by long silences as they succumbed to fatigue.

  ‘You know what I want?’ he would say.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Frank was invariably fantasising about food.

&nbs
p; ‘Steak and kidney pudding. With thick gravy. And onions.’

  ‘There’s food at the depot,’ Lauren would tell him. ‘You can eat plenty when we get there.’

  There was no doubt in Lauren’s mind that Frank was gradually losing it. Sometimes he would come to an abrupt halt and stand in a daze for minutes on end, looking out across the white expanse in which they stood as if amazed to find himself there.

  Other times he would sing gently to himself, the same words repeated over and again as he tripped along.

  ‘It’s good to touch the green, green grass of home.’

  By that afternoon Frank was spending more time flat on his back than he was on his feet. Lauren would sit beside him, watching as the rest of the group walked away into the distance in a straggling line, then, impatient and fearful, she would goad him into action; her daily log placed them sixty-three miles from the base—but there were still nearly forty to go.

  ‘Get up, Frank, there’s more distance to make before we stop.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘A few more miles. We’ve got a target, Frank; you have to hit the target. You’ve made almost seventy miles; you can do more.’

  Sometimes a flash of humour would hint at the old Frank; back at Capricorn he’d been in the habit of imitating an old sea dog, and sometimes, almost hysterical with exhaustion, he would lapse back into it.

  ‘I can’t bear it, Cap’n. I’m too weak. Shoot me, for fuck’s sake; have you got a gun?’

  Lauren laughed.

  ‘I wouldn’t waste a bullet on you, Frank. I’d rather leave you here to rot.’

  ‘Not even any bloody vultures to pick at me bones.’

  But sooner or later the banter would have to stop and the walking would have to begin. Fifty minutes’ faltering progress, ten minutes’ rest. Lauren kept Frank to it even when he begged her in tears to let him rest longer.

  Eventually, his conversation became stilted and confused, he couldn’t hold a line of thought for more than a few minutes without getting disconnected. He took to leaning on Lauren for support, resting an arm over her shoulders and sometimes tipping her off balance.

  At that night’s stop, Lauren pulled Mel aside.

  ‘I think Frank’s getting hypothermic,’ she told her. ‘He can’t stop shivering.’

  After examining him, Mel could only agree.

  ‘We’ve got to get him into the sleeping bag. His body core’s getting dangerously low.’

  Sean and Murdo prepared the camp while Lauren and Mel persuaded Frank that he had to warm himself immediately.

  ‘I don’t want to take up anyone else’s slot,’ he said.

  ‘Frank. Shut up and get in the bag.’

  Frank did as he was told, and after an hour or so of violent shivering, his temperature gradually rose to the point where he was able to sip a little warm water. He was desperate to sleep, but before she would allow him, Lauren insisted that Mel examine his hands. The medic unwrapped the makeshift bandages slowly, taking care not to pull any more of the damaged tissue away from the burned areas of flesh.

  The fingers were infected, weeping copious quantities of pus. Around the edges of the wounds, Mel could see puffy, swollen tissue. The smell was slight, but to a trained medic it was enough. The early stages of necrosis were setting in. Gangrene was beginning to take a hold.

  Mel cleaned the hands as best she could, causing Frank no little distress as she did so, then they tore up another cloth to use as a clean dressing and let him sleep.

  ‘That’s as far as he can walk,’ Mel told Lauren later. ‘If he gets any weaker, his chances of gangrene are going to shoot up. From tomorrow he’s got to be on the sledge. At least until the first depot, where we can get him started on a course of antibiotics.’

  This was the moment Lauren had dreaded, and it had come far sooner than she had ever imagined. When they had set out from the base, the fear that one or more of the team would fail to make the three-hundred-mile trek under their own steam was at the front of her mind. Sooner or later, she had reckoned, someone was going to need to be hauled on the sledge.

  Now, after just five days, before reaching even the first of the depots, one of the team was already incapacitated. From now on they would have to find the strength to haul the sledge with Frank’s dead weight on it. The question was: for how long could they do that? And what would happen if another member of the team became unable to walk?

  Lauren didn’t sleep that night.

  65

  The meat was still there. Fitzgerald blinked with astonishment when he saw the can. He climbed off the snowcat and picked it up, examining the seal to check if they’d somehow broken into it during the night and replaced the food with ice.

  It was intact. They hadn’t eaten the meat. Those starving fools had sat there with a free meal on offer and hadn’t come out to get it.

  He looked towards the shelter, and, for the first time in those four days, a tiny germ of doubt entered his mind.

  Perhaps they really were dead. The shock of the fire must have been intense; some, perhaps all of them would have suffered burns. They would be dehydrated, weak as kittens from lack of food.

  ‘I know you’re in there!’ he yelled. ‘Show yourselves, and I’ll bring you food.’

  How many were still alive? What condition were they in after those four freezing nights? Would they have the strength to attack him? To race to the snowcat and drive it off to raid his camp?

  If he could just walk up to that shelter and take a peek inside, all would be made clear. He could remove the bodies, drive them to the nearest deep crevasse and dump them where they’d never be found. Antarctica was not like the sea … it didn’t give up its secrets easily; a body thrown down even a medium-sized crevasse would not reappear for millions of years.

  There was one other possibility. They might not be in the shelter at all.

  Fitzgerald rejected that thought as soon as it entered his mind. Impossible. They had to be in there; there was, literally, nowhere else to go. The nearest base was eight hundred miles to the east … a distance no human could contemplate without food and equipment.

  Stay with the base. That was the accepted practice in a case such as this. Lauren would stick to the rules … or would she?

  ‘Hello?’ he called. Nothing but the flapping of a piece of metal in the wind.

  Fitzgerald found himself split. He wanted to believe they were dead … oh, how much he wanted that. But at the same moment he could not accept that Lauren and Sean would be defeated so soon. There were always some individuals that had more staying power.

  No. They were waiting in there. They knew he would be itching to see if they were dead or alive. They knew how frustrating it would be, not knowing, how the nervous tension would be eating away at him, gnawing at him hour after hour.

  Perhaps he should take a bold tack? Just pace right up to the shelter, axe in hand, and attack them outright. But why take the risk? Fitzgerald knew he held all the cards. A few days more wouldn’t make much difference.

  But it was getting tedious, this hanging around. He hadn’t imagined it would be like this. He wanted to get on with his journey, to drive the snowmobile back to the crashed plane, find the transmitter, and then set out for the coast … and the glory which was his by right.

  The explorer knew he could get to the crashed plane comfortably, so long as the snowcat didn’t break down. But he had to dispose of the bodies first. And make sure that Lauren hadn’t left any note behind that could compromise him.

  Before he left the base, he scrutinised the shelter once more. ‘Damn you, Lauren!’ he screamed angrily. ‘I know you’re in there, but your plan won’t work. I’m leaving now. Leaving for good.’

  He revved the snowmobile and retreated for three or four miles, where he parked up behind a big snowbank. They’d never see him at that distance.

  ‘Come on,’ he muttered. ‘Show yourselves.’

  But no one stirred. Fitzgerald retreated, shivering and disp
irited, to his camp.

  This couldn’t go on, he thought impatiently; it was just too much. Tomorrow he’d storm the shelter, come what may.

  66

  Richard was fighting a losing battle with his feet.

  Seventy miles of continuous cross-country skiing across the ice cap had brought the journalist to the point where each excruciating move required a major act of willpower.

  Why me? he asked himself a hundred times each day. What have I done to deserve this pain?

  When he looked back on the events which had befallen him in the past months, Richard truly wanted to cry. The plane crash, the two broken legs, the endless tedium and tension of the long winter at the base, and then the final shock of the fire. He had fought through so much, always fixing his thoughts on the world—and the warmth—he would return to.

  And now it was further away than ever.

  It obsessed him, that other world, that world where his day had begun with a tall cappuccino and a leisurely browse through the political pages of the quality press, with a short crowded tube journey and a brisk walk along a rainy street to the buzz of the newspaper office which was his place of work. That was nothing more now than a dim and distant memory. It had been replaced by a new world, one in which each day began with the crackling sound of his ice-encrusted clothing as he unfurled himself from a fetal ball on the glacier. This new world was one in which the moisture on his eyeballs was glazed and frosted as the cutting wind blitzed his face, and where the few drops of dark urine he produced each day froze instantly as they landed.

  Thank God his legs had had time to heal at the base, he thought; they ached like hell, but they were still obeying his command … for the moment. But his feet? They were beyond belief.

  The fast deterioration in the state of his feet had come as no surprise to Richard. He’d always had soft skin, had always been the kid forced to back out of the school cross-country race because of blisters, but this was something else entirely. The first twenty miles hadn’t been too bad; his flesh had seemed to adjust to the plastic ski boots quite well, and there’d been little pain other than a few pinches here and there.