The Cold Beneath

by Tonia Brown

  “Lightbridge,” I said. “The men will return soon.”

  “I know,” he said, his voice heavy with grief.

  The destruction of his ship was one thing.

  The ruin of his last chance at honor, another. But this? This insanity was going to tip him over the edge. I could see it in his tired eyes. This was going to kill him. Without a single revenant laying hand upon the poor man, he was going to die, and soon. This terrible fate to which he had resigned forty poor souls was going to break his heart, both figuratively and literally.

  Yet there were question to be answered. Work still to be done. I could see the three men exiting the mouth of the ship, running across the snow to meet us and our bloody deed.

  “Lightbridge?” I asked. “What will you tell them now that they have seen it with their own eyes?”

  He looked up to me and sighed, his burden a worn and heavy cloak cast about his person. “The truth. We shall tell them the truth.” He paused, as if considering his own words, before he added, “Ignorance is bliss, but it seems the Arctic wants no man happy.”

  “And what of them?” I asked, pointing to the freshly dead men.

  “What of them?” he asked, unsure as to my implications.

  “You must dispatch them.”

  Lightbridge’s eyes went wide with horror. “Mr. Syntax! I will not defile—”

  “You must!” I shouted over him. “Have you learned nothing from my tale? Or from Albert’s? Why do you think those two returned?”

  The man wrinkled his nose as he said, “But to act so … disrespectful.”

  I did something then, something of which I am neither proud nor ashamed. It was a desperate act, performed by a desperate man. I snatched Colonel Gideon Alabaster Lightbridge by the lapels of his heavy jacket, drew him down to meet my wild gaze and pleaded, “I beg of you, if I die, if I fall in this godforsaken place, promise me that you will put a bullet in my unmoving skull. Do not let me come back like that! Promise me, Gideon! Promise me that you will release me from this certain Hell!”

  I only wish Lightbridge had lived long enough to take me up on my request.

  I look back upon this moment as my greatest sin. With all I have done, all that has come and passed, this moment replays itself to me with exquisite horror. If only becomes my mantra as I recall it. If only I hadn’t stopped to beg him to rescue me. If only I hadn’t distracted Lightbridge. If only I hadn’t been such a coward. If only I had grabbed the gun and did the very deed I begged him to do myself. If only one of these things were different, then he might have survived. He might be here with me, now, helping me set to record our terrible deeds and prepare the world this warning.

  But alas. My actions cannot be changed any more than I can take back my joining the crew in the first place. And so, it is with heavy heart I report that my deeds at that very moment killed Lightbridge. My pause for discourse, my hungry need to be assured that he would set me free from the bitterest of ends, killed the only man I had ever come to love as a true friend.

  Here is how I killed him.

  As he leaned in toward me, listening to my plea, a beatific smile crossed his aged face. He nodded, slow and purposeful, as if finally grasping an understanding within my words. I was reaching him! Bless the heavens above, I was making sense to him. In his eyes, I saw he understood; he knew that the skulls of the fallen had to be destroyed, lest they return. In that smile there was no humor, only remorse and regret and a man who could do nothing but smile at my senseless request.

  He smiled down at me and said, in a very low voice, “Philip, in all of my days, I would never have imagined I could promise such a thing. Yet now I find myself without recourse. I promise that if you should fall before me, I will … take care of your remains. But only if, should I fall first, you will promise to take care of mine.”

  I could have embraced him.

  I should have, then perhaps things would have played out differently for us both.

  Again, excuse me the indulgence of wallowing in my regrets, for they are all I have now that everyone else is gone. I should have embraced the man, but I didn’t. What I did instead was nod and agree and give my thanks and grin back up at him like some great aping ass. What I did, in essence, was distract him, and myself, from the immediate threat. The very threat I was trying to force him to perceive. For as we grinned at one another and made our solemn pact and reached our understanding, the moment had already passed. It was already too late.

  Harris took less than an hour to revive.

  Gabe and Alexis were back in mere seconds.

  ****

  back to toc

  ****

  Twenty-Seven

  The Loss of Light

  A high-pitched wail rose from the once-dead men on either side of us. To my surprise, and Lightbridge’s I am sure, the creatures were already on their feet. They set upon Lightbridge first. Both of them. The very same corpses that Lightbridge had agonized over defiling took to their feet and pounced upon the man, tearing him from my grasp and dragging him to the ground. The three of them were a singular blur of blood and limbs and screams. I was so shocked by their quick return that for a fleeting moment, I didn’t react. I did nothing as Lightbridge struggled for his life.

  Until I spied the man’s gun lying on the snow.

  I crouched, scooped up the weapon and took aim as I readied it. But the three before me struggled as one; I could hardly tell where Lightbridge ended and revenants began. A sudden thought seized me. Did it matter if I struck him in the attempt to destroy these monsters? The answer was of course it mattered, just not enough to keep me from firing. Which I did.

  The shot was guided by the divine, detaching Gabe from his mouth-latched spot on Lightbridge’s torso, and flinging the now truly dead man back into the snow. The second shot was not as well placed, clipping the second revenant across the shoulder. Yet it was enough to turn the beast’s attention away from Lightbridge and onto me. As he rose from his crouch, I steadied the weapon and fired.

  I was met by an empty click.

  “Give me your heat!” the beast cried.

  He then leapt like a hungry wolf for the tender lamb of my throat. I cowered, throwing my arms up to ward him off, which did precious little good. The thing landed square upon my person, driving us both into the snow, and the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t cry out, couldn’t scream what were sure to be my last words. A great burst of pain exploded from my right forearm, and in natural reaction, I pulled away from the creature’s bite. Just as I jerked my forearm from its mouth, at the cost of a large chunk of my flesh I should add, the beast was knocked away from me.

  As Lightbridge and I wrestled the monsters, the three men had returned with weapons and righteous anger. Lent had a length of piping—which he had just swung at the creature—while Collins sported a shotgun, and Bryant carried the small handgun I had used on half the crew only a few days before. The three men crowded around Alexis, intent on subduing him, but I knew that to be a disastrous course of action. They had missed the men’s first deaths and just saw me fire upon the pair. God only knows what they thought was happening.

  “Alexis,” Lent said in a placid voice. “You need to calm down. We can help you.”

  “Kill him!” I shouted.

  “Cold!” Alexis screamed. He lunged for one of the men, who deftly stepped aside.

  Collins snatched Alexis by the arms, catching the struggling beast in a bear hug as he yelled, “Alex! Be still! We don’t want to hurt you. Grab his legs!”

  Bryant dove for the thing’s legs, gripping even as the creature lashed out with wild kicks.

  I found myself helped to my feet by Lent, and I took the opportunity to pull him close and ask, “Can’t you see he’s already dead?”

  In the man’s eyes, I found my answer. Lent’s face was pained, tortured with his knowledge of the truth. He glanced back to Bryant and Collins struggling to hold Alexis still. “Then Albert’s story was true?”

  I was
right in my reckoning. The men had eavesdropped.

  “Yes,” croaked Lightbridge. “Shoot him.”

  “Sir?” Lent asked.

  “Shoot him in the head, quickly. Before he kills you all.”

  At once I lost interest in the revenant behind me, rushing to Lightbridge’s side, thanking the heavens he was still alive. Yet as I drew upon his bloody form, I could see that he was at the end of his tether. Just as Albert was on his death bed in the warmth of the ship, Lightbridge was moments from his own demise out here in the cold. He was gored, gutted, with his thick jacket ripped open straight into the depths of flesh beneath. The ice about him faded to a pink slush as blood seeped farther and farther from his core. He was bleeding to death from his wounds. If we didn’t act, and soon, he would die in the frost, with his warm blood gathering in steamy pools upon the ice. Perhaps a fitting end, considering his insane quest for True North.

  I didn’t witness the dispatching of Alexis. My focus remained upon my dying friend as the single shot sounded from behind me. What little life was left in Lightbridge’s eyes dimmed at that noise, at the knowledge that he had brought his crew to this awful state. That he had led them to this terrible end.

  “Someone take his feet,” I commanded. “We have to get him inside, to Geraldine.” I moved to lift his shoulders, at which he cried aloud in such agony I was forced to back away again. The men lingered, but none moved to help. Perhaps they were wiser than I. “Help me, damn it!”

  “No,” Lightbridge said. “I am done. Let me be.”

  “Gideon. We can get you inside.”

  “To wither aboard my worst mistake? No. I will die here, in the open. I always belonged to the great outdoors.”

  I stooped to my knees, and for the first time in my long and weary life, I wept.

  I may have been a man of weak constitution, yet I was not by any means a weeping man. I but nodded with a grunt at the news of my parents’ death. I had watched dry eyed when Geraldine walked away after telling me she was set to marry that bastard instead of me. I stood stalwart, years ago, as my beloved country slipped into the horizon, sure I would never see her again. Yet now, at the side of the only man to find a single redeemable quality in my useless soul, I wept. Unashamedly and loud enough to raise the dead yet again, I wept. Maybe it was because I was so exhausted, or perhaps it was because I respected the man just that much. Whatever the reason, I wept.

  The tears stung my face, threatening to freeze in place as they slipped from my eyes. “Please don’t leave me, Gideon. You were my only real friend.” I could sense the men gathering about us, each silent as they witnessed my breakdown.

  “Lent,” Lightbridge croaked. He looked up to the man in question, and I could see his fire was fading.

  “Yes, sir?” Lent asked.

  “When I go, I should be … taken care of. Just like the others. I want you all to know … that it’s the right thing to do. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Lent sounded doubtful, but nodded all the same.

  “Don’t sound so grim … son… you don’t have to do it.” Lightbridge laughed a little, then looked back to me to add, “Someone else … already promised.”

  Clutching his hand, I whispered, “And I will.”

  “Philip … I have to ask for one more promise.”

  “Anything!” I gathered him to me, greedy for his final moments, wishing I could stretch them out across the rest of my life rather than have them tumble away from me in the few seconds we had left.

  “If you make it back … if God sees fit to forgive us and rescue you … there’s a place, on my estate, behind a grove of apple trees …” His voice became distant then, as he went lax in my arms. But his lips continued to move, so I lowered my ear in time to hear, “… and tell her I love her. Philip, go to her and tell her I still love her. And I’m so sorry.” He closed his eyes, and his voice grew to a thin rasp of wheezing. “I should have gone to see you every day … but I couldn’t bear the sight of that cold stone … I couldn’t live with the thought … that you were gone … I’m so sorry … I’m so sorry.” He paused to release a single ripple of warmth into the cold air as his life fled his body with his last word. “Bessy.”

  “Go to her now,” I whispered. “She’s waiting.”

  I don’t remember asking for the pistol, and perhaps the men pushed it into my open hand out of understanding more than command. Either way, I found myself in possession of the thing, so upon my given word, I did as asked. I cradled his corpse to me, poised the weapon beneath his chin and sent him on his journey to reunite with his true love.

  We should all be so lucky.

  The report deafened my left ear, and the powder burned my jacket in long streaks of black and blood. My own wound—a chunk of torn flesh gushing copious amounts of scarlet—was numb in the face of Lightbridge’s death. I had witnessed so many lives destroyed by whatever ill had befallen us, yet the death of that one man threatened to consume me. I stared at his remains, for they were still draped across my arm, then I turned my attention to the gun. How easy it would have been to place the barrel in my mouth and cease this tortured living. How comforting the sweet release of true death would have been. I craved it. No! I needed it! Better still, I deserved it after all I had seen. I raised the gun to my own face, pushing it against my temple, intent on ending my life.

  I find that in moments of extreme stress, some people have the habit of shifting their attention away from the matter at hand, lest it drive them over the edge. It is an automatic reflex for them, nothing to find fault with, for they don’t do it out of ill will or meanness. And often, in this state of distraction, they blunder upon hidden gems of wisdom. This is what happened that day in the snow. While I was weeping and wailing and staring down the barrel of what I was sure would be my blessed peace, I heard one of the men behind me ask an odd question.

  “Why are they not frozen?”

  I looked up to find Bryant standing over the remains of the revenants, a curious look upon him. I asked, “What?”

  “Frozen. They’re terribly exposed, look.” He stooped to finger the wide gaps in Johnson’s weathered suit. “Exposed to the elements for hours on end. Blue with chill, yet they ooze with blood. Though it’s black and dead as they are, it still oozes when it should be frozen solid in their veins. Why do you suppose that is?”

  I was too tired for such needless questions. “I don’t know.”

  Lent grunted. “It’s as if what keeps them alive also keeps them from freezing completely.”

  No sooner had he spoke those words than I knew. I knew! I knew just what was happening and why it was happening, and the knowledge of it kept me from tasting the sweetest freedom of my weapon’s promise. Instead I was filled with a sudden and terrible anger. I shook from the power of it; my very core shuddered as if a chill were upon me. But it wasn’t the weather that had me trembling; it was the magnitude of the horrifying truth that took me so long to comprehend.

  I not only knew what was happening, I knew who was to blame!

  I laid my friend’s corpse upon the snow with all the gentleness I could manage, then scrambled to my feet without the help of the outstretched hands of the men. “You three, gather them to the ship.” I waved my wounded arm to the bodies surrounding us. “Don’t leave them out here for the animals. They deserve better. We all deserved better.”

  After I placed my command, I turned on my heel and made a steady march for the ship. None of the men questioned my authority, though truth be told, I had none. They could have ignored me, could have joined me in my return to the ship and the awful task that awaited me there. But they didn’t. As men of habit, they fell into their dutiful role and tended to the remains of their friends and comrades.

  I, however, made my way to the Fancy to end this madness once and for all.

  ****

  back to toc

  ****

  Twenty-Eight

  Accusation

  The trip back to the ship was of s
ome distance, and I had lost a fair amount of blood in my struggle with the revenants. But neither of these things turned me from my path. I put one foot before the other and laid out a straight line to the tunnel, into the ship, past the flap of the ruined airbag, into the long hallway and to the other end. There awaited my final confrontation. There awaited the truth of the matter. The source of our scourge. I gripped the gun, its heavy weight reassuring as I marched past the pedometrics, past the water closets, past the kitchen, and paused outside the infirmary. Drawing a deep and steadying breath, I kicked open the door, raised the weapon and called down a curse upon my foe.

  “Geraldine!” I shouted.

  “Pip!” she cried as she leapt to her feet and rushed to meet me. “Oh Pip! You look just awful. What has happened? I heard shots and screaming. Please …” She paused in her onrush and request to stare, comically cross-eyed, down the barrel of my weapon. It took a few heartbeats for the gravity of the moment to settle upon her. She blinked, then shook her head as if trying to loosen the image of me holding her at gunpoint from her mind. She backed up a step, then two, all the way until she was braced against Albert’s bed behind her. “Pip? What are you doing?”

  “What I should have done years ago,” I whispered. I cocked the gun, relishing the metallic click of it. How happy that sound was! What joy it heralded into my cold, black heart!

  “Laddie?” Albert asked from his sickbed, his voice hoarse and weak. “What on Earth are you pointing your weapon at the lady for?”

  “She’s not a lady,” I said. “She is far from it. She is a monster! You hear me? A monster!”

  “Philip!” Albert shouted.

  Geraldine gaped as her dainty hands covered her mouth in surprise.

  “She killed Lightbridge,” I snarled.

  “Gideon is dead?” Albert asked. The hurt in his voice tore at me, but there was no time to share in his grief. I was too full of fire and brimstone for that now.