Sub-Zero

by Robert W. Walker

  The wind whipped about the room and rushed through the door. Gordy’s large arms and hands were frozen to his desk. He had some paperwork in front of him which he seemed to have been studying. It was as though he’d fallen asleep over it.

  Gordon’s skin was white with a blue luster. It looked as if someone had poured a bottle of linoleum wax over his head. His hair was matted with ice and as hard to the touch as flint chips.

  Tim stood over him, oblivious of the cold which was fast causing his own hair to bristle and stand on end. It was now, below the icy layer of hair, he saw the matted blood over Gordy’s eye. Some blood had trickled from his ear.

  Something inside Tim Crocker’s mind told him he must see what it was on Gordy’s desk that he’d been reading before he died. He must have been greatly absorbed to have allowed someone to hit him from behind. It was obvious to Tim’s trained eye that Harold Gordon had been the victim of murder and not the storm.

  Tim saw he couldn’t just pick up the papers on Gordy’s desk. They were under a half inch layer of ice.

  “Good Lord,” he gasped, the wind roaring around him. “How damn cold is it in here?”

  He pulled out a large hunting knife from his pocket.

  The knife had come in handy again and again. It had tools for all purposes in it: a can opener, a cork screw, a three inch blade, and a six inch blade could be pulled from the fat little grooves of the knife. He opened the six inch blade and tried to chip away at the edges of the desk where the papers under Gordon’s hands lay. After several chips at the ice, the blade broke. Tim realized it was the cold as much as the ice that had broken the blade.

  He looked down at his hands. They were burning from cold. The hair on the back of his hands was standing straight up, bristling. So was the hair on the back of his neck, on his arms and legs. He could feel a sensation like needles touching him all over, and then felt nothing. The sensation was gone. He felt numb. Each movement he made, each step seemed a great effort, weakening him terribly. At the same time, his movements couldn’t be felt. He no longer felt his toes, or Gordy’s hair when he placed his fingers on it.

  He knew enough about the first stages of death by cold to know he was close to faint. Still, he wanted those papers.

  Tim looked at Gordy’s middle-fifties face in its frozen state, and shook his head. Gordy was a nice, friendly guy, always greeting people with a smile and shouting in the worst of weather, “Beautiful day to be alive!”

  Tim Crocker kicked wildly at the snow and ice at Gordy’s side, pushing at the waist-high ridge of spidery whiteness. He pulled away all the snow he could from around the older man at the desk. Then he stepped back, even more aware now than before: that his time was running out. He could hardly believe that no one in the entire building had answered his distress call. He wondered, too, where Wertman and Joanna had gone.

  He lifted his leg and braced his foot against Gordy’s chest, the heavy boot resting against Gordy’s brown uniform shirt. He held onto the icy desk’s corner. “Sorry, Gordy,” he said with a powerful kick to the dead man’s chest.

  The effort was not immediately successful, but Tim heard the dull crack made by the separation of ice between Gordy’s head, his hands, and the desk top. With a second kick the chair pulled slightly away, and Gordy’s body fell to the floor at the foot of the desk. Portions of ice, like miniature icebergs, lay about the desk. The flat, almost translucent piece in the center held the precious papers.

  Bits and edges of the sheets were torn and sitting in other ice pieces, which had shattered when Tim forced Gordy’s body and the desk apart.

  He snatched up the most promising looking piece of the large ice-puzzle covering the desk. The shattering had loosed the ice from the desktop.

  “What the hell is this?” came a voice over the roar of wind. “What happened?”

  Tim was startled by the sudden sound of another human voice. He managed to get to the door where a square-faced, squat, rough-looking young fellow stood. Tim could hardly control his vocal cords any longer. He stuttered with the chill in his bones. “You, you, you a, a, a doctor?”

  “Something like that,” snapped the square-shouldered, shorter man. “Med student. What’s happened? You look almost as dead as the fellow in the hall.”

  “Help-me-out-of-here, doc,” Tim managed to say. In the corridor, there were several other men standing about the corpse of the man who’d tried to kill Wertman. “No I.D.,” one of them was saying.

  “Damn, it’s frigid down here,” said another. Tim recognized a third man as Henry Ketterling of the newsroom. Henry was saying, “Poor bastard froze to death waiting for the damned elevator.”

  “Looks that way,” guffawed Jim Marvin, Ketterling’s writer.

  Then they saw Tim come out with the doctor into the drab corridor. They passed the refuse dump, the door to the underground garage, and a door marked emergency exit, until they stood before the elevators. Marvin and the others surrounded Tim and George Walsh, the medical student, asking questions.

  “Tim! Who is this guy on the floor?” “Y ou the one called for help?” “What’s the matter with him?”

  George Walsh tried to fend Marvin and the others off. “Can’t you see he’s nearly frozen himself? Leave him alone.”

  But Tim managed to say, “In there, Gordy.”

  The elevator arrived. Tim and Walsh boarded but the others went curiously down to Harold Gordon’s office.

  “You all right? Can you feel this? Can you hear me?” George Walsh kept asking Tim as they ascended in the elevator, trying to get some response from Tim. “What’s this? Your hands are turning blue under this ice sheet in your hand. Let me hold it for you.”

  But Tim just kept saying, “I’m all right,” refusing to release his hold on the ice sheet now in his possession.

  9

  High above Meig’s Field, Marlo Cigliani could feel the fantastic pressure of the winds whipping around the ice-packed lake below. Marlo could not get down. Meig’s was crusted with waves of ice that had engulfed aircraft sitting off the runways. Choppers and other small aircraft were being hurled about so that the landing sites and runways below looked like a child’s room cluttered with discarded toys. Marlo didn’t want to stay aloft with dwindling fuel and the raging storm, but he couldn’t get ground clearance. He’d tried several times to rise over the storm. This proved impossible. The storm layers were miles high, the pressure against his bird was tremendous, and the weight of the ice around his copter’s blades conspired to keep him low.

  He wished now he’d bailed out over the Fieldcrest Building and left Wertman to pilot the copter.

  He immediately thought about Midway Airport, southwest of his present position. It was a lot closer than O’Hare and probably a lot less jammed. But he’d heard a report several hours old that all rescue operation vehicles were reorganizing at O’Hare. He sure would like to be there when operations resume, he thought. It would be automatic. He and his copter would be drafted, along with every other helicopter. There wouldn’t be much he could do or say. He’d have at least a week, maybe more, of rescue operations. His services being requisitioned by the Civil Aeronautics Rescue Operations, he’d still draw full pay from Fieldcrest, and at the same time really help out—a damn sight more exciting a prospect than flitting around with these newsmen with their dumb-ass questions posed to frost bite victims and bereaved people who’d lost family. Questions like, ‘How’s it feel?’

  “The hell with Midway,” he said to the storm outside the five-inch-thick Meteor-glass dome of the helicopter. He yanked the throttle to the right and veered westward, lowering his altitude as he did so. He picked up the octopus-looking section of roadways where the Dan Ryan, Northwest-Kennedy, and Eisenhower Expressways merged near downtown Chicago. He shook his head at the sight of hundreds of stranded cars, seemingly endless zigzagged truck trailers and Greyhound bussesso close and yet so far from the downtown terminal. He followed the trail of cars leading west, those stalled on the Eis
enhower. He would follow it west until he was parallel with the airport and then skip over. Normally, he’d follow the Kennedy, a more direct route. But the strange wind was carrying out west right now. He would ride the air current. Fighting it for too long would crush him.

  Less than fifteen miles from the airport, Cigliani, flying low and following the path left him by the tops of sedans and trucks, spotted something unusual. It was a vehicle, halfway overturned in the right hand lane. What was unusual was that it wasn’t buried. Almost all the cars he’d been able to make out down below were covered to their rooftops. But this little square job, lying over on its side, was still showing most of its chrome and honey color. It looked like a jeep. Maybe it was a rescue vehicle, now stranded itself. Maybe there less than a half hour. Whoever was driving it must be nearby or even trapped inside. On the other hand, Cigliani tried to tell himself, the way the wind was blowing, it could just have uncovered the jeep. The thing could have been buried there for days and the wind just decided to look to see if its prize was still there! The wind was funny that way. You could never tell which way air currents and little pockets of air were going to act.

  But that clean looking, honey-colored paint kept staring back at Marlo. The stranded machine seemed to be sending up a plea. Some sort of living vibrations.

  Marlo wanted to push on to the airport. He knew the control boys there could help him down. He thought how stupid it would be to smash up on the highway trying to rescue someone who wasn’t even alive or there! How the hell would he explain it to his FBC bosses? Worse, how would he explain it to the other pilots?

  He pushed his throttle forward giving himself a nice, comfortable rise and tilt to move on. He began to hum his favorite melody, What I Did For Love. But it was no use. The object he’d seen tugged at him relentlessly.

  “Damn fool,” he said to himself, turning the bird to circle the unusually clean jeeplike vehicle below.

  10

  George Walsh brought a syringe out of his black valise and filled it with Heparin IV. He injected Tim with the powerful anti-coagulate immediately, disregarding Tim’s outburst of “Hey! No junk goes inside me!”

  “Shut up!” snapped Walsh, plainly irritated.

  Until he reached for the syringe, Tim Crocker had paid more attention to the melting ice block on the settee beside him than he had to Walsh’s adept medical hands. They were in a small alcove outside the men’s room, where a mini-kitchen and soft chairs stood, long since used up by the storm-trapped junior newsboys. The alcove stood just beyond the Junior Newsroom where student reporters paid their dues: running errands, carrying tele-tape, sweeping floors, and going out for lunch orders.

  Walsh had tried to get Crocker off at the 28th floor where he knew a comfortable place, but Tim was like a bear in fear of being caged. He’d told Walsh he didn’t need any more help. He told him to take a hike. Walsh always marveled at frostbite victims. They usually felt no pain, nothing, except lightheadedness. Meanwhile, icy crystals, like tiny snowflakes, turned their blood cells into miniature log jams inside the affected areas.

  Walsh applied a heat-inducing, non-friction gel over both hands and wrists now. Crocker held his hands out and up like a boxer preparing for a fight.

  Crocker’s mind was not on his hands, though. He was staring at the wet, soggy papers that lay in a puddle on the settee next to him.

  “It’s the goddamn building prints,” said Tim Crocker to George Walsh who’d tied the last of the bandages around Tim’s hands.

  “Hold still, will you?” Walsh said for the hundredth time. “You don’t seem to realize the seriousness of these frost burns. Do you know what’s happened to your hands?”

  Tim, who hadn’t been paying much attention to George Walsh before now, straightened up and stretched out his bandaged hands for inspection and asked, “What do you mean?”

  Walsh was suddenly quite officious and angry. “You could damn well lose your hands pulling a stunt like the one you pulled. Ice crystals get under the skin, turning the cells frigid until the blood vessels constrict. You might liken it to hardening of the arteries, except the cause is the cold. So, your blood stops flowing through, making the human hands, organs, legs, whatever, even colder. It’s a closed cycle, and for a prolonged period, it can cause gangrene. Any longer and you might’ve lost these!”

  Walsh tapped Tim’s bandaged right hand with a jabbing index finger, picked up the little medical bag he carried, and started for the elevator. “I’m going back to my couch on the 28th floor. I just hope it’s still there.”

  “Couch?”

  “In the receptionist area for someone named Theodore Atgeld,” chuckled Walsh, whose curly hair rose above his head in wild clumps and mounds, looking like a morass of dry blueberry bushes. Pity it was all falling out, Tim thought.

  “Atgeld’s some relation to Fieldcrest,” remarked Tim, putting the building prints aside for the time being. “He’s a big shot in PR, I think.”

  “Personnel,” Walsh corrected Tim. “How’d you find the handy couch?”

  Tim was smiling into Walsh’s face, a tacit thank you for his help. The elevator arrived and Walsh, stepping onto it, answered, “Looking for work, what else?”

  The door closed on Tim’s plea, “Looking for work here? Why?”

  With Walsh gone, Tim turned back to the building’s blueprints. There were several pages. Photostats. Gordy would’ve had to go to Denver for the originals. Like everything else at Fieldcrest, the blueprints were on microfilm, for the originals had been shipped to safer climes. Tim’s mind raced. Why was Gordy looking over building sketches of pipes, electrical lines, elevator shafts, and air-filtration ducts carrying heated air to all parts of the building? The designs also showed every office, every coffee room, and every hallway, not to mention staircases, lighting, and heating centers. Was he studying the building? If so, what for? Hadn’t he known every niche and corner? He’d been working there for years, Tim thought. But Tim wasn’t certain just how long Gordy was with FB Enterprises.

  Maybe Gordon didn’t know the building as well as everyone always assumes a man in his position would, Tim considered. Taking another tack, Tim wondered if Gordy pulled the copies for some sort of inspection, a reason other than studying them for himself.

  “Personnel,” Tim mused aloud. Maybe it would be interesting to know how long Gordy was Chief of Security at FBE. He wondered how he could get the information. Of course. Marie. She’d know.

  He glanced again at the blueprints. They appeared complete. Then he noticed a small circle traced in light pencil around a control area marked 2-10-b. What this control was Tim could not know for certain, for the legend to the blueprints was not among the papers he’d gotten off Gordy’s desk. It could be important, but didn’t seem to be. It was somehow connected with the ventilation and heating and cooling systems. From the print, it was located at ground level, just below the concourse, near the elevators.

  Tim looked around the near empty newsroom for a place to stash the blueprints. He didn’t want to be around when Ketterling, Marvin, and the others returned. That’s why he’d chosen to come to the Junior Newsroom on 86.

  Just then he saw the young kid who delivered the tele-tape to the newsrooms upstairs. The kid was bent over a desk, perspiring over a story he’d written for his editor. Tim fought his memory for a name to attach to the kid. He wanted to say Jerry or Gerald.

  He risked a tentative, “Jerry! How the hell are you doing?”

  The white-faced young man looked up at Tim. When he saw who it was, he turned back to what he was doing. Crocker thought the kid might be interested in his hands, so he came closer, clutching the building prints between the bandaged hands the way a bear holds onto a live fish he’s caught. Tim put his hands where the boy couldn’t miss them. He studied the boy’s response, or lack of response. Finally, Tim sat on the desk’s edge.

  The young would-be reporter looked up. “Hey, I’ve got to get this story done. What do you want?”

&nb
sp; “I’m Crocker, with the news, upstairs,” said Tim. “I know.”

  “Aren’t you curious about these?” Crocker lifted his hands, spilling the blueprints across the kid’s desk.

  “I saw you thawing out over there. What’d you do, stick them outside?” But the student reporter’s deep brown eyes were going over the building prints. He didn’t care about Crocker’s hands. But his interest in the blueprints was great. “Hey, where’d you get these?”

  “Listen, Jerry,” .began Tim, lifting the prints from under the young man’s eyes, “I think I’m onto a damn good story, but I need help.”