80 Days or Die

by Peter Lerangis

  Max sat forward, hopeful. “How long will that take?”

  “Two days,” Hugo said.

  “Two days is good,” Max said. “We can do that.”

  “Thank you!” Alex blurted.

  Hugo raised his eyebrows. “Save the thanks until after the trip. To get from Tierra del Fuego to Antarctica, one must cross the Drake Passage. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Max said. “The only part of the ocean that circles the entire world uninterrupted by land.”

  “Smart boy,” Hugo said. “Six hundred times the water flow of the Amazon River. With no constraints to the water’s movement, everything is bigger—waves, wind, rain. In good weather, it’s the ‘Drake Lake.’ But in bad . . . well, it is not for the fainthearted. Waves can be as high as forty feet.” He laughed. “Then we call it the Drake Shake.”

  “Lovely . . .” Nigel drawled.

  “So,” Hugo said, “I strongly suggest you wait for a plane.”

  Before Max could answer, he felt a buzzing in his pocket and looked at his screen. A call from his dad, not a text. Nigel and Bitsy were arguing with Alex, who was looking at Max for support. But he ducked out of the office and into a waiting room. “Hello?”

  “Max? It’s Dad!”

  He loved hearing his dad’s voice. It had been so long. Every incident, every weird moment of his adventure bubbled up inside his brain and crowded just inside his mouth. Before he could think of what to say, it all began spilling out at once: “We’re fine. We found four of the ingredients. One of them was a hippo bone! We were in Greece, where I rode a motorbike, and then we took a trip on the Trans-Siberian—”

  “Max, I can’t wait to hear more,” his dad interrupted. “But I’m afraid I have some news. Nothing to panic about right now. But your mom . . .”

  His voice trailed off. That was not good. That didn’t sound like a nothing-to-panic-about thing.

  Max sat down. “My mom what?”

  “Her cancer has returned, Max. Apparently the treatments didn’t quite knock it out.”

  “But that can’t be true,” Max said. “We got the best doctors in the world.”

  “Absolutely. We did. But . . . the human body is unpredictable, Max. Even with the best care—”

  “Is she going to die?”

  “We’re taking her for more examinations. There’s a good chance we may have to return to the Mayo Clinic. The doctors don’t know much yet—just that it’s back. But she’s a fighter, Max. You know that.”

  “Yes, she is,” Max said, because it was a fact.

  “Sorry to call with bad news, but I’ll work out your return with her and the pilot. Mom will love to see you.”

  “Yes.”

  “In the meantime, stay safe. Listen to what Alex tells you, OK?”

  Max didn’t know where to begin with that one. So he just said, “Yes,” and hung up the phone.

  He sat. He looked out the window to the sea. The silence was growing around him now. It was so loud he had to put his hands to his ears and scream.

  “Max!” Alex barged into the waiting room, but Max ran out the door. “Max, where are you going? It’s freezing!”

  He wasn’t feeling the temperature. Or the snow that was just beginning to fall. He wasn’t seeing the sea lions on the shore reacting to his screams, slinking into the ocean. He wasn’t looking at the patch of ice he stepped on as he ran toward the shore.

  But he felt the sharp pain up his spine as he fell. And the warmth of a thick parka Alex was wrapping around him as he sat on the ground. “What happened?” she said.

  Max tried to swat away the skunk smell. It was suffocating him.

  “Did something happen to your dad?”

  “No no no no no no no no no no.”

  “Your mom? Is that it, Max?”

  Max was rocking now. “It didn’t matter. The submarine. The money. Everything we did. It didn’t work. She’s sick. She’s sick again.”

  “Oh no . . . no . . . I’m so sorry.” Alex wrapped her arms around Max, and he didn’t fight it. Bitsy, Nigel, and Hugo were by his side now. Alex must have mouthed something to them, because they were all saying how sorry they felt.

  “Do you want to go home?” Alex said.

  Max looked out to sea. Five brownish-gray whiskered seal faces stared at him, bobbing on the water. It looked like they were waiting for his answer. He wanted to tell them it was none of their business. But he knew Alex would take it the wrong way. So he took a deep breath and answered her question with the only facts he knew. “I wouldn’t be going home,” he said. “Dad’s probably taking her back to Minneapolis.”

  “I meant, to be with your mom wherever she is.”

  “That’s what he said,” Max replied. “He wants me to come back.”

  Alex turned him around and forced him to look into her face. Max hated looking into people’s eyes. It creeped him out. When he was a kid, he thought other people’s eyes were like the black holes in outer space that could suck you in. But he didn’t feel that now. In Alex’s eyes he saw two little mirrors, two images of himself staring back. He wondered if that meant a part of him was actually living inside her. And vice versa. He had never thought of that before.

  Max shook his head. “We need one more ingredient. One more and we have the cure that saved Jules Verne. We have been doing this for Evelyn. That’s enough reason to keep going. But now Mom’s sick again. We can’t go back, Alex. What if we can save Mom too? We’re so close . . .”

  “Why? Because it might not work,” Alex said. “We have to face the fact that this mission could be hopeless and crazy.”

  “Maybe,” Max said with a deep sigh, “but stopping it would be crazier.”

  38

  CAPTAIN Perez was about a hundred feet tall and shaped like a question mark. At least it seemed that way to Max. He moved fast and laughed a lot, his body stooped forward and his eyes constantly darting around.

  “Tell me again why you are traveling to the Frozen Continent?” he asked Max.

  They were sitting in the ship’s mess cabin. Mess was a good name for it. The crew members ate a lot of fast food and left a lot of wrappers. But Perez had treated Max, Alex, Nigel, and Bitsy to a breakfast of whole wheat toast, jam, and tea. Which was fine with Max. He hadn’t slept much the previous night, and he was not all that hungry. “All we know,” Max said, “is that we have to get water from a hot cave.”

  “Really?” Perez said. “Someone asked you to do that?”

  “A hot cave in Antarctica seems like an oxymoron,” Bitsy said.

  Nigel’s stomach growled. “Breakfast without scrambled eggs seems like an oxymoron,” he muttered.

  “I caution against scrambled eggs if you’ve never experienced the ‘Drake Shake,’” Perez said. “But you’re welcome to help yourself, if you must.”

  As Nigel went for the stove, Perez stood from the table and began walking toward the stairs to the upper deck. “Well, good luck to you, kids. And do let me know if you find a three-headed seal.”

  “Is there such a thing?” Max asked.

  “About as likely as finding a hot cave.” Perez threw his head back and let out a sharp, barking laugh. “I will radio my buddy, Dr. Blomdahl, at the base. She knows the island better than anyone. See you in a minute. And stay put. Looks like we had a recent drop in barometric pressure.”

  As he walked away, Max turned to the others. “That wasn’t funny. About the cave.”

  “Or the drop in barometric pressure,” Bitsy said. “What does that mean exactly?”

  Nigel shrugged. “Sounds like a good thing to me. The lower the pressure the better, yes?”

  The ship moved, and Alex’s plate slid across the table. Bitsy caught it before it fell. Max heard voices outside and went to the window. In the distance, a wall of gray clouds had settled over the sea.

  They were moving in, fast.

  “Looks like London,” Nigel said, scarfing down a pile of scrambled eggs. “I feel right at home.”
/>   Max shook his head. The sky was darkening now, the voices on deck getting louder.

  Alex and Bitsy joined him at the window. In the distance, it was hard to tell the sea from the sky now. But just outside the ship’s hull, the water seemed to be boiling. Max grabbed on to a guardrail. The ship tilted slowly upward. “Hang on!” he warned.

  In a moment their side of the ship slapped back down. Water cascaded over the rail and onto the deck. Behind Max, Nigel’s plate crashed to the floor, and he let out a scream.

  “What on earth is happening?” The old man staggered up to the window, a few flecks of yellow egg on his scraggly beard.

  “High air pressure pushes the humidity away,” Max explained. “When the barometer is low, it means low air pressure. All the clouds and yucky weather can rush in. High barometer is good weather, low barometer is bad.”

  “Now you tell me,” Nigel said.

  Captain Perez opened the hatch and peeked in. “Batten down everything,” he shouted, “and stay where you are, for your own safety!”

  “Is this the ‘Drake Shake’?” Bitsy called up.

  Perez smiled. “Something you can tell your grandkids about.”

  Now the water was churning against the sides. It exploded into violent sprays and flooded over the decks like a river. It smashed against the windows of the mess hall and seeped under the door. “It feels like we’re in a bloody washing machine!” Nigel cried out.

  Max stared at the sea, his jaw dropping. The boat was rising again. The expanse of water before them seemed unbroken to the horizon. But something was wrong. The surface was no longer flat and choppy. It was swollen and slanted upward, like an endless skateboard ramp or the climb to the peak of a roller coaster. “I don’t like this . . . .” Bitsy said.

  “We’re going up,” Alex said. “And what goes up must come—”

  “Hhhrrrlp,” gulped Nigel, pressing his hand to his mouth.

  Max slipped to his knees but held on tight. Alex and Bitsy screamed. The boat couldn’t have been vertical, but it felt that way. Abovedecks, Perez and his crew were yelling.

  Max smelled fish.

  And in a moment, as the boat slammed down with a thhoooom onto the sea, he also smelled why Captain Perez had warned Nigel against scrambled eggs.

  39

  “PEREZ calls me Dr. Blomdahl, but I prefer Ingrid,” said the apple-cheeked woman who greeted them at the base medical center—which was kind of a grand name for a group of modest trailers and huts on one of Antarctica’s outer islands. Max’s legs were wobbly from two days on the rocking boat. It was mid-morning but the sun was barely over the horizon. Even though the temperature felt close to zero, and they were all in down coats, the doctor stood at the open front door in a loose white shirt and jeans. “He tells me you’re searching for some scientific mystery? I warn you, a trip to Antarctica can be addictive.”

  “Pardon me,” Nigel said, “but if you can conjure up anything less addictive than that atrocious trip across the sea, do let me know. I would prefer to do it in a balloon. And I detest balloon travel.”

  “What is your time frame on this quest?” Ingrid asked.

  “ASAP,” Max said. “Or people will die.”

  “Oh, dear,” Ingrid said.

  “It’s a long story,” Alex said. “We can pay for lodging. We’ll need some help. We can pay for that too.”

  “Well, there is plenty of room,” Ingrid said. “And in this remote place, everyone loves company. Especially in the darkness of the winter. And even more especially from budding young polar scientists. I suppose I can arrange things.”

  “Awesome,” Max said.

  As they all introduced themselves, Captain Perez backed away. “Ciao, everyone. I’ll be back when you need me.”

  Ingrid led Max, Alex, Bitsy, and Nigel into a solid, one-story building sheathed in metal. “As you can see, everything is a little bare-bones here. There is no permanent habitation on the continent. No ancient humans had any way to migrate here and settle. No villages or towns. Until the nineteenth century, this was basically a twenty-seven-billion-ton hunk of ice. It’s heavy enough have a flattening effect on the Earth. There are parts of the year when the sun barely rises at all, and the winds can reach two hundred miles an hour. It’s brutal. No one would want to live here.”

  “You live here,” Max said.

  “I work here. Just several weeks a year.” Ingrid brought them into a room that looked like a laboratory struggling to be a lounge. A couple of ragged sofas had been pushed against the wall and covered with books and stacks of paper. A sink and a drying rack were full of test tubes, and boxes of cereal and noodles shared the shelves with textbooks and discarded lab coats. “I study ice,” she went on, throwing some of the books off the sofa and onto the floor. “Down here, that’s a form of time travel. What froze millions of years ago stayed frozen. The farther you drill down, the deeper into the past you go. You find secrets about the early atmosphere, prehistoric marine life—”

  “How about hot caves?” Max asked. “Are there any of those?”

  “We have a sauna, if that’s what you mean.” Ingrid looked at her watch, then quickly began pulling the blinds. “Ach, so much to talk about! Sit. Please. Make yourselves at home and help yourselves to food. I have some work to do before I join you. Put your stuff on the table. I will take it to our mud room after I do this.”

  “Why are you pulling the blinds down?” Max asked. “It’s nearly dark.”

  “Ah, but this is the rare time of day when the sun on the horizon will blind you through those windows at this angle.”

  As she bustled over to the window, Alex shot Max a disappointed look and shrugged. She, Max, Bitsy, and Nigel peeled off their coats and packs and laid them on the table. “Be back soon!” Ingrid said, scooping them up and disappearing into the hallway.

  Alex watched her duck into a room near a rear exit. “Max, are you sure you want to let that pack out of your sight?”

  “This is an island,” Bitsy pointed out. “There’s no place to go with it.”

  Max sat at the table, tapping with his hand. “We have to talk to more people. Someone must know about the cave.”

  “No doubt,” Nigel said. “But I shall be no help without a nap. I understand the urgency, but this has been a taxing voyage.”

  As Nigel flopped down on the couch, Max heard the sound of barking outside the window. He stood and peeked through the slats of the closed blinds. There, behind the hut, he saw the movement of gray-and-white fur and the black, eager eyes of excited dogs.

  He slipped behind the blinds and pressed his face to the window. The dogs were huskies—maybe two dozen. In their midst were a man and woman dressed in thick down coats. They were working on a couple of sturdy-looking sleds. Each sled had a wood platform maybe two feet by eight. Underneath, the runners extended backward from the rear by a couple of feet, like skis. The dogs were lining up in front like soldiers, wagging their tails in excitement. Working quickly, the two people swapped out some of the sled’s ropes and shouted to each other about guy lines, tug lines, and gang lines.

  Now Bitsy was joining him. “Awww, they are so cute!”

  “The people?” Max asked.

  Alex sidled in beside them. “The dogs.”

  The man slid one of the two sleds off to the side of a nearby shed. Then he helped the woman hook up six dogs to the other sled. When she was finished, she stood with each foot on one of the two rear runners. She clutched a curved handrail in the form of an upside-down U bolted to the sled below. Then, with a deep voice, she yelled, “Hike!”

  The dogs began to pull, slowly at first and then with greater strength. Max watched them take off and pick up speed. They had gone about thirty yards when she shouted, “Gee!”

  The dogs veered right. After a few seconds she shouted, “Haw!” and they veered left. As they circled back around to the starting point, the other worker kept busy hooking up more dogs to the second sled.

  “Some kind of
training exercise?” Nigel asked from the sofa.

  Max nodded. “They sure are more obedient than yaks.”

  “Who-o-o-oa!” yelled the woman, a big grin on her face, which had grown red in the wind. As the dogs stopped, she leaped off the runners and went to hug the dogs.

  “That looks so fun,” Alex exclaimed.

  “I prefer snowmobiles,” Bitsy piped up.

  “Alex and I haven’t had good experiences with those,” Max said.

  “A nice newspaper and a roaring fireplace for me,” Nigel said. “And by the way, my poor tummy is quite angry at me for that wretched boat trip. Do you happen to see any Tums here?”

  “We are doing nothing,” Max said. “I can’t stand doing nothing. Also, Ingrid was wrong about the blinding sun. You can’t even see it.”

  Max lifted the blinds, turned back into the room, and began pacing. But out of the corner of his eye, he caught the shape of another person joining the first two outside.

  Someone in a hurry.

  This person was wearing a thick winter coat but also thick pants. The two backed away, nodding in response to something Max couldn’t hear. The newcomer stood on the sled runners and tossed a backpack into a storage basket.

  Max’s backpack.

  “What the—?” he murmured, moving closer to the window.

  “Hike!” a voice snapped.

  Max felt his blood drain to his toes. He couldn’t see the face through the fur, but he recognized the sound.

  “Max?” Alex said. “Is that . . . Ingrid?”

  But Max didn’t answer. He was sprinting into the hallway.

  40

  “HELP us, please!” Pulling on his coat, Max shouted to the dog trainers as he raced outside. “That person—Ingrid—we have to follow her! She stole from us!”

  The young woman stared at him through her furry hood. “Excuse me, who are you?” she said, her voice making thick white puffs in the air.

  Behind her, the guy was hooking up about a dozen dogs for another training session. He looked up at the commotion. “Stole? Is this some kind of joke?”