The Arctic Code

by Matthew J. Kirby

  The sight of the mask stopped her. The need for it stopped her. What was she doing, going to a place where her own unaided breathing could freeze her from the inside out?

  She shook her head and zipped that thought away with all the equipment inside her mom’s old pack. All she needed to worry about right now was getting on a flight. She slipped out of the bedroom and down the stairs. In the darkness of the living room, she watched the rise and fall of Uncle Jack’s bulk on the couch, making sure he was asleep.

  Poor Uncle Jack.

  She hoped he would forgive her. She eased the front door open, squeezed through, and then eased it closed again, all without waking him.

  Out on the sidewalk, she slung the pack up onto her back, and it was a lot heavier than she’d been expecting. She almost lost her balance, but she wiggled under the straps and adjusted herself to the weight of it.

  The reluctant sun still huddled over the horizon, but its first soft glow had arrived. Eleanor pulled out a bus map she’d printed, the routes to the airfield highlighted, and walked to her first stop.

  The schedule didn’t have the next bus leaving for seventeen minutes. As she stood waiting there for it, the early-morning cold closed in. She wasn’t normally outside at this time. Few people were unless they had to be. Eleanor hadn’t worn her warmest gear. She didn’t think she’d need it until she reached the Arctic, but now she wished she’d put it all on. It only took a few moments for her teeth to start chattering, her fingers and toes to tingle, her nose and ears to hurt.

  Before her mom’s first Arctic trip, she had gone over the effects of cold on the human body with Eleanor. It had probably been a misguided, overly intellectual attempt to alleviate some of Eleanor’s fears. It hadn’t worked.

  When facing extreme cold, the human body immediately reroutes blood to vital organs, leaving the extremities without adequate circulation and vulnerable to frostbite. This has other effects, like going numb, and the increased blood supply to the kidneys makes you have to pee. Metabolism slows to conserve energy, which in turn slows brain activity, making you feel sluggish and foggy. The cold makes you stupid.

  But these are only delay tactics. It’s all just the body’s effort to save what it can, the most important organs, until you’re able to get somewhere warm. Because the human body is not meant to survive in cold like this. It can’t.

  Without normal blood supply, your legs and arms get weaker and weaker, making it harder to move. Skin cells start to rupture, and tissue dies. The numbness and the fogginess only get worse until you start to think it would be a good idea to lie down and take a nap. That’s when the cold finally wins.

  And that’s the thing. The cold always wins. All it needs is time.

  Eleanor wasn’t at the point of lying down on the sidewalk just yet, but if she felt this cold right now, here in Phoenix, how would it be in the Arctic?

  The bus rumbled up a few minutes later. Eleanor stamped her feet and leaped on board as soon as the doors hissed open.

  Eleanor had to change buses at the city’s main terminal. She disembarked at the same time a new batch of refugees unloaded just up the curb, their eyes glassy from exhaustion and disbelief. Everything they owned they carried in suitcases and duffel bags, having left the rest behind for the ice to devour. Government workers walked among them, giving instructions, handing them slips of paper with their new addresses in the Ice Castles. Their new homes.

  Eleanor wondered where they had come from. Idaho? Wyoming? What had their lives been like, with the ice sheet bearing down on them, grinding everything underfoot? How long had they clung to their homes before surrendering it all to the ice and retreating? How hard had it been to make that decision?

  When Eleanor thought about having to do the same, she knew the decision would be an easy one. She wasn’t attached to her house, or to Phoenix. Even though she’d lived there most of her life, she’d never felt like she belonged. Her mom and Uncle Jack, they were her home. When it came time for Eleanor to hang on to something, to refuse to give ground to the ice, that was where she would make her stand. That was why she was going north.

  She turned away from the refugees and found her next bus, climbed aboard, and a short ride later, she arrived at the city’s general aviation airfield. Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport still ran nearby. Eleanor could see its terminal and flight tower in the distance across the tarmac. But the planes over there carried only travelers heading south. The airlines rarely ever sent a passenger flight north.

  Eleanor’s only chance would be here, and she had to get on a plane soon. The tremulous sun had just crested the horizon. Uncle Jack would be awake soon. He’d probably assume Eleanor was asleep in her bed and let her be for a little while. But not for long. Eleanor had no idea when the G.E.T. would show up for her Sync, but she planned to be in the air with it heading north before then.

  Cargo planes of all sizes sat on the tarmac, maintenance crews scrambling over and around them, tanker trucks with antifreeze hosing them down, guys with Ping-Pong paddles directing pilots for takeoff from the ground. There were lots of large buildings and hangars squatting in clusters. Windowless, industrial structures, muted paint fading and peeling.

  Eleanor realized she had no idea where to go or how to go about this. She needed a pilot heading to Barrow, ideally. But failing that, a pilot at least flying to Alaska. She figured the chances of that were good, since Alaska had become a hub for oil dealing in North America, and that was where most of the supply-laden northbound flights would be headed.

  But what should she do? Just go up and ask someone? Hey, I don’t suppose you’d mind taking a twelve-year-old girl on your plane?

  The other problem was the fence. There was only one gate she could see onto the airfield, where vehicles were checked, and Eleanor was pretty sure the security guards working there wouldn’t just let her through. But she adjusted her pack and walked toward it, trying to keep her head up, like she knew exactly where she was going.

  As she approached, she noticed what looked like a big red shed with a white metal roof just a bit down the road from the gate on her side of the fence, a few trucks and other vehicles parked in front of it. A stenciled sign above the door read PROP STOP CAFE. Eleanor didn’t know what a “prop stop” was, but it sounded like it might be a plane thing, and if the café had that kind of name, it might be the kind of place pilots hung out. Maybe she could talk to someone in there about flying north.

  The building looked like a shed on the inside, too, with rough wooden walls and floor. But it was warm and clean, and it smelled of bacon and butter. Eleanor had left her home that morning without eating breakfast and felt suddenly hungry.

  There were several men and women at the tables, some of them wearing regular coats, some of them wearing the utility gear she’d seen on the ground crews out on the tarmac, all of them a bit rough-looking. She didn’t see any waiters or waitresses, though. Just a window back into the kitchen, where a large man with a yellow bandanna tied around his head hunched over a steaming griddle.

  “Feel free to seat yourself!” he called to Eleanor over his shoulder.

  The men and women she passed stared at her as she sought out an empty booth and took a seat, setting her pack on the floor. Were any of these people pilots? What should she do, stand up and make an announcement? Go around the room whispering? She needed to know which, if any of them, were going to the Arctic, and which would be willing to take her.

  “What can I get you?”

  Eleanor glanced toward the kitchen window. The cook leaned through it, gripping the ledge, looking at her.

  “Um. Scrambled eggs?”

  “Bacon or sausage?”

  “Sausage.”

  “Adam and Eve on a log and wreck ’em!” he shouted before disappearing.

  Adam and Eve? Who is he talking to?

  Two men seated at a nearby table were watching her. Eyeing her pack. She pulled it closer and felt the first twinge of nervousness since she’d left home ea
rlier that morning. She didn’t know who these people were, where they were from, or where they were going. How could she trust any of them?

  A small TV was perched high in one of the corners, tuned to a news station. Eleanor couldn’t really hear what the reporter was saying, but it was one of those UN meetings where no one looked like they were actually listening to the woman speaking. Headlines scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

  MEXICAN PRESIDENT SANCHEZ PLEDGES BILLIONS IN ADDITIONAL AID TO THE UNITED STATES. . . .

  THE GLOBAL ENERGY TRUST ASSUMES CONTROL OF THE ARABIAN PENINSULA’S OIL RESERVES. VIOLENT PROTESTS ERUPT ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST. . . .

  SCIENTISTS ESTIMATE THAT FEWER THAN ONE HUNDRED AFRICAN LIONS REMAIN IN THE WILD DUE TO LAND DEVELOPERS—

  “Order up!” The cook tapped a bell, set Eleanor’s food in the window, and disappeared. Eleanor still hadn’t seen a waiter or waitress.

  “You gotta go get it,” one of the two men said. “Kimball’s a one-man show.”

  “Oh.” Eleanor stood, looked at her pack, looked at the men, then hurried to the window for her plate. She doused her eggs with a splash of Tabasco before digging in. They weren’t as fluffy and creamy as Uncle Jack’s.

  “So, uh . . .” The man who’d told her to get her food leaned toward her. “Your dad work on the airfield or something?”

  “Nope.” Eleanor stabbed a sausage link with a fork and bit off half of it. “Just felt like some eggs.”

  He leaned back. “Uh-huh. Sure you did.”

  “Traveling?” asked the other guy. He wore a camo-print ball cap.

  “Are you?” Eleanor asked.

  “Always,” camo guy said.

  “Are you a pilot?” Eleanor asked.

  “We both are,” he said, gesturing to the first guy. “Where are you headed?”

  “I didn’t say I was headed anywhere,” Eleanor said.

  “No, ma’am, you didn’t. But Kimball sure ain’t known for his eggs and sausage. His hash, on the other hand—”

  “I’m not heading anywhere.” Eleanor made her voice firm. She had started to think that the kind of pilots who would take a twelve-year-old girl north were the exact pilots she should avoid. Some of the stories she’d heard about the Arctic replayed in her mind. There wasn’t much of a government left up there, no law, just a loose community of drillers.

  “It’s okay.” Camo hat reached out his hand and laid it on Eleanor’s table. “You’re not the first runaway to come through here. Not by a long shot. Depending on what you’re offering, maybe we can help you out. Where do you wanna go? Vegas? Houston?”

  Okay, now this guy was really creeping Eleanor out. “Barrow,” she said with sarcastic emphasis. “Alaska.”

  “Ha!” The first guy laughed. “You’re funny, kid.”

  She shrugged.

  Camo hat wasn’t smiling. He pulled his hand back. “Suit yourself. Your problems are your problems. Just trying to help.”

  Sure he was. Eleanor knew she wasn’t getting on a plane with either of these guys, but maybe they could still be useful. “What’s wrong?” She kept the sarcasm in her voice. “You don’t fly up to Alaska? Is your plane too . . . small?”

  “Ha!” The first guy laughed again and slapped the table.

  “My plane is just fine,” camo hat said, grinning now. “But if that’s really where you’re heading, you’re out of luck. There aren’t a lot of planes going that far north these days.”

  Eleanor hoped that wasn’t true. But now it was time to bluff. “Well, I know a pilot who’s here right now, and he goes up there all the time.”

  “Who?” camo hat said. “Luke?”

  Luke.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Luke.”

  “Luke.” The first guy kind of growled a little and shook his head. “I’d be flying up there all the time, too, if I had his fat contracts.”

  “Have you seen him around?” Eleanor asked.

  “Yeah, he’s parked in hangar eighteen today,” camo hat said.

  “Thanks.” Eleanor left some of the money from her mom’s stash on the table to pay for her breakfast. “Later, guys.” She gathered her pack and left the café.

  Outside, she looked at the line of parked vehicles. One of them, a big utility truck, had an airport label and service number painted on its doors. Eleanor bet that one was headed through the gate. She glanced around to make sure no one was looking and then climbed up into the truck bed. There wasn’t much back there to conceal her. Just some big blue plastic barrels she wedged herself between. After she’d hunkered down, she craned her neck and was pretty sure she’d be hidden from the view of the driver where she was. Her only hope was that the security guards wouldn’t really scrutinize the truck bed at the gate.

  Minutes went by. Eleanor felt the cold of the morning seeping in again, and she hoped the driver of this truck wouldn’t take forever eating his or her breakfast.

  More minutes passed. Eleanor’s teeth started chattering. She wondered if Uncle Jack had noticed she was gone yet. She wondered if the G.E.T. had come for the Sync. Were they already out looking for her?

  She was about to pull out her Sync to check the time when she heard the truck door open and felt the bed teeter slightly beneath her feet as the driver climbed in. The door closed, and the engine started.

  This is it.

  The truck eased backward from the café into the street, its pungent exhaust rolling over Eleanor, burning her eyes and nose. Then it pulled forward, and Eleanor tried to make herself as small as she could. The bumps in the road sloshed the liquid contents inside the barrels next to her ears. A few moments later, the truck slowed down and came to a stop. They were at the gate. Eleanor closed her eyes as a male voice carried back to her.

  “Good morning,” he said, sounding bored. “Badge?” That had to be the security guard.

  “Morning,” a woman said. Eleanor assumed she was the driver. “Long night?”

  “Yep. But my shift ends in fifteen.”

  “Wish I could say the same.”

  A moment went by. “Thank you,” the man said. “Proceed through the gate.”

  The truck pulled ahead, but Eleanor didn’t let herself breathe until it had driven well past the gate. The driver took a winding route between the airfield’s buildings. Eleanor tried to keep track of the turns but soon became disoriented and gave up. A few minutes later, the truck came to a stop, and the driver turned off the engine. Eleanor heard the door open, then close. She waited several moments, long enough for the driver to have gone, and then got up, put her pack on, and leaped down out of the truck bed.

  “Hey!” The woman stood a short distance off, smoking a cigarette. “What are you—?”

  Eleanor didn’t wait to hear what she was going to say. She ran.

  CHAPTER

  6

  “HEY!” THE DRIVER SHOUTED.

  Eleanor’s pack bounced hard against her back. She dove into the narrow alleyway between two buildings, elbows grazing either side. She didn’t know if the driver was chasing her, but she didn’t even turn to look.

  Eleanor burst out from between the buildings into a wider road. She threw herself down another narrow alleyway, across an even wider road, and into an open, dark hangar, where she crouched down in the shadows, slowed her breathing, and listened.

  She didn’t hear anyone coming. But she heard indistinct shouting. It sounded like a few people were calling back and forth about her. They knew she was here, somewhere on the airfield, and they were looking for her. If she got caught, this would be way worse than being reprimanded at the police station. She’d get arrested for sure. They’d call Uncle Jack, he’d take her Sync, and Eleanor would lose any hope she had of finding her mom.

  Her only chance was to get to hangar eighteen and somehow bribe her way onto this Luke guy’s plane before anyone caught her.

  Eleanor waited a few minutes longer, trying to figure out if the voices were coming closer. When she felt pretty sure they weren’t, she cr
ept forward and peeked out of the hangar. The road outside was lined with buildings, but like the one in which she now hid, none of them seemed large enough. She assumed Luke’s plane would have to be pretty big to make his Arctic runs.

  Farther down the road, the buildings doubled and tripled in size. She decided to make her way toward them. Fortunately, it was still pretty early in the morning, and the road appeared deserted in both directions.

  Eleanor scurried out but kept to the sides of the road off the pavement, running like a mouse in a corner, close to the buildings, her boots leaving footprints in the sand and snow. She’d made it a block or so when she heard the sound of an engine approaching.

  She ducked down behind a stack of empty wooden pallets, peering through the splintered slats as a utility truck rounded a corner up ahead and turned in the same direction she was headed, toward the larger hangars. She watched it drive off, getting smaller, until it turned another corner and disappeared.

  She waited a few more seconds before continuing down the road. On the way, she hid from two more trucks, as well as a group of guys wearing those big headset things around their necks, until she reached the first of the large buildings.

  Through a window in back, she could see it was a hangar, but it was empty. She moved on to the next, which had two smaller, sleek planes inside it, not what she was looking for.