Nikolas chuckled and pulled him closer, pushing his cold feet between Ben’s warm ones.
Dead flesh.
Ben shivered and let the endless night take him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Neither of them did early mornings. Nikolas’s wealth isolated them from the tyranny and boredom of work and all its attendant unpleasantness. But over Christmas they’d become accustomed to fitting in with the hours of children and octogenarians and other assorted guests, none of whom, apparently, thought anything of expecting to be fed before nine o’clock. Consequently, although it was still dark, Ben woke a little before eight and felt reassuringly invigorated. He thought ice. He thought snow. Then he thought Nikolas.
Sometimes, Ben reckoned, Nikolas was at his best when he wasn’t awake. Then, he was…perfect.
Ben studied him now.
Nikolas slept very quietly. He didn’t appear to breathe at all and he never thrashed around. He lay on his stomach, head turned to one side and seemed more shifted away than asleep, as if Aleksey were borrowing not his brother’s name but his body, and during the dark hours he left it to return to the very different life he’d lived before. Only the still body remained.
Ben poked Nikolas in the ribs, waking him abruptly. He wasn’t perfect at all like that. Ben liked the Nikolas he had when he was conscious, annoying flaws and all.
Nikolas took a deep breath, decided he was safe, and retaliated for the assault on his ribs.
They didn’t make it down to breakfast until ten.
§§§
Polar night, continual darkness, they discovered, seemed to have thrown everyone’s timing off—the dining room was still serving breakfast, and they were able to help themselves and sit together without the embarrassment of thinking everyone knew why they’d been late to the table.
They knew though, and Ben couldn’t help smirking to himself at the ache deep in his arse as he piled his plate high from the buffet table. He liked a residual sense of Nikolas inside him and knew, by the expression on his smug face, that Nikolas was thinking about this too.
Ben sat next to him, isolating him at one end of their row. Nikolas accepted the new positioning with equanimity, mainly because he was able to keep one hand unobtrusively on Ben’s thigh as he read his paper. Ben had time, between refuelling and forcing Nikolas to at least eat some fruit, to observe their fellow guests.
Mattie Mayberry and her husband were sitting separately, which was a little odd, but she was flicking through a magazine and he was talking to Claire.
The singer was obviously tired and strained, a cold sore marring her lip this morning. She was pale and makeup-free. Ben had mixed with celebrities over the years, drifting vaguely on the edges of a world he wasn’t interested in and didn’t fit, and he’d realised fairly early on that genuine perfection, that which needed no artifice at all, was very rare. And although Ben would have said this beautiful woman was one of the lucky few, Mattie Mayberry was possibly feeling the pressure of her years. What was the average age of a female recording artist these days? Fifteen?
The English couple were still reading—maps now rather than guidebooks—and Lars was sitting on his own, apparently eating as much as Ben. Ben smiled as he recalled his punishment for Nikolas the previous night. He’d finally forced a confession that the wispy-bearded boy had actually been asking Nikolas about him—insisting that he looked exactly like Ben Rider from Finding Peace. Nikolas, needless to say, had amused himself, spinning inventive and wholly untrue explanations for why this resemblance occurred. So, that had been another reason to punish him.
§§§
Ben’s first activity wasn’t scheduled until lunchtime. There was even some discussion about this happening at all, as the weather forecast wasn’t good. Apparently, a storm was brewing somewhere over the ocean, the only question being when it would hit the coast. Nikolas had discovered, much to his disgust, that there was still no internet signal. Ben seized the opportunity of him being at a loose end and in a bad mood to force some exercise on him. Nikolas didn’t do walking, and he didn’t do the cold, but he liked doing Ben—frequently—so when his privileges in the Ben Rider-Mikkelsen department were threatened with withdrawal, he grudgingly accompanied him outside.
It was minus thirty now, the severe dip in temperature heralding the expected storm, ominously still, dark, yet…not. When their eyes got accustomed to the strange non-light, they were able to see clearly enough to wander down to the beach and then along it. Ben wanted to get away from the lights of the hotel, around a small headland, and into the next bay.
They’d been warned in the induction the previous night not to stray out of sight of the hotel—that distances and directions could become very confused in the polar darkness, shapes changing, known landscapes losing their familiarity. Ben, however, reckoned if they stayed by the sea, on the beach, they couldn’t go far wrong.
They were wearing complimentary Canada Goose jackets over ski suits but it was still alarmingly cold. The ground was so hard that when Ben tried to kick loose a beach pebble he only produced a metallic ring and the stone stayed frozen in place. The sea was like grey-green slushy.
“The storm may bring the ice floes.” Nikolas was squinting in the frozen air out over the lapping slush. He added, “That will bring the bears.”
“We saw a bear yesterday, if you remember.”
They carried on along the shoreline, the hotel now a faded, muted orange behind them. After another minute, Nikolas frowned, tipping his head to one side. “How far have we come?”
Ben snorted. “About two hundred feet. Stop complaining, or I’ll make you strip down and go for a swim.”
Nikolas put a freezing-cold glove to Ben’s face and gently turned his cheek toward the…nothing. There was no hotel, no amber glow. Ben’s mouth opened, a huge stream of icy breath appearing, and then he glanced back to Nikolas to find him only vague and indistinct. “What the fuck?”
Nikolas came closer, becoming solid once more. “Fog.”
“Fog can’t come up like this! Oh, my God. Stephen King fog. This is so cool. Listen.”
“If you are about to tell me you hear lepers or any—”
“No. Shush. Listen. Absolute silence.”
There was. The silence was loud. It made Ben’s ears ring with the need to seek out sound.
They were completely alone.
Nikolas tugged Ben’s arm. “Let’s go back.”
Ben chuckled. “Scared?”
“Oh, I’m quaking in my size twelves. But I also think it’s time for coffee. Very hot coffee? Maybe some kransekakestenger…”
Ben thought about the delicious cakes he’d seen being put out after breakfast, leant into Nik and kissed one icy ear. “You win.” He began to walk slowly back.
Nikolas grabbed his arm. “This way.”
Ben shook him off. “No. There’s the…where’s the sea gone?”
Nikolas took a few steps the way he’d indicated, but suddenly the ground gave way beneath him and he tumbled a few metres in the snowy collapse. He climbed to his feet with great dignity, but scrabbled together a handful of the densely packed crystals and shoved it in Ben’s grinning face. The wrestling warmed them up for a moment, but then Ben sobered. “Seriously, where’s the beach gone? We were on the pebbles, following the sea.”
“We’ve gotten turned around. The hotel was over there.”
They were hopelessly confused now, however.
Ben felt a deep shiver start in the small of his back, but repressed it. “Okay, let’s go a few paces in each direction. Can you see footprints?”
But there was nothing but frozen ground and the endless dark and suffocating, claustrophobic fog.
“This is ridiculous!”
For once, Nikolas didn’t contradict him. They’d moved a few feet in every direction, but there was nothing.
“Hey!” Ben suddenly began rummaging in his clothes. “I’ve got my phone on me.”
“No signal, remember?”
>
“But it’s got a torch app. Help me.”
Nikolas didn’t normally need any encouragement to help Ben undress, but his hands were like frozen claws, and he couldn’t at first undo the zip of the jacket. Once he’d discovered Ben’s warm ribs though he was clearly uninterested in actually finding the phone. Ben laughed, kissed his chilly face but shoved him off—forcibly. Zipping back up, he fumbled the light on.
It bounced back off the solid fog. “Shit!”
“Look.”
Shining the torch down, Ben could see what Nikolas was pointing to. A very faint difference in the appearance of the pebbles was now visible. A slight disturbance of the hoar frost. Moving slowly, they began to follow the tracks. The pebbles ended and now they were on hard-packed snow, but the trail continued. A faint, shuffling-drag pattern. “Was this us? We stayed on the beach.”
Nikolas nudged him. “What’s that?”
Ben looked up at the indistinct, dark presence ahead of them. The thought, “Bear!” leapt unbidden and unwelcome into his head, and his heartbeat ratcheted up. But the shape was too regular, too unmoving. They made toward it. Anything solid and different in all this white was welcome.
It was a hut.
Ben reared back. “Shit no. This isn’t happening.”
“What’s wrong? Come. We’ll shelter in it until the fog lifts or until someone realises we’re missing.”
“No. I’m not going in there.”
Nikolas considered him and suddenly began to laugh. He shook his head fondly and went to the door, examining it to see if it was locked.
It pushed in easily and Nikolas disappeared.
Ben was left in the dark on his own.
But he was SAS.
Still, it was very quiet.
He glanced back from examining the dense murkiness surrounding him to find the hut had vanished.
The fog had thickened. Fortunately, he hadn’t changed position. He took one step and collided with a wall. Even then he moved right instead of left and came to a corner, not the door, and had to retrace his steps.
He flung himself through the door and shut it behind him. Then opened it again. Then swore loudly and shut it once more.
A chuckle issued from the darkness, and it really wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Stop pissing about, Nikolas!”
“Maybe lift your hand? The torch?”
Ben suddenly realised he was shining the torch at his feet and swung it up. Nikolas’s frozen, pale face wavered in and out of the thin LED beam. He held up his hand to protect his eyes with a curse, and Ben mumbled an apology and began to shine the light around the horrid little space.
“What the fuck?” He reared back. Things were watching him from the walls.
“Skins. It’s a hunting shack.”
“Oh! I got that. What the fuck are they?”
“Foxes by the look of it. Shine that thing over here.” Nikolas was bending by an old woodstove.
“No way. That’s not going to…oh.”
One click of Nikolas’s lighter and a small flame glowed in the stove’s belly.
“How did you do that?”
“It’s an old trick I learnt with bear fat when I was in the gulags. I always carry some—”
Ben plucked the very modern box of wax firelighters from Nikolas’s hand.
Nikolas grinned and bent to light a cigarette.
Gradually, they built the fire up with dry kindling they found in a basket until it almost felt warm compared to the icy temperatures outside. They left the door of the firebox wide open and huddled next to it, hands outstretched.
“This is the hut, right?”
Nikolas frowned and looked around, and then cautiously down at the chair he was sitting in. Suddenly, he snorted. “Now you know why I don’t eat.”
“Huh? I thought it was because you were generally an idiot.”
“That is only one reason. I also observed that when it came to the…harvesting…the eating…the fat inmates got eaten first. It’s only common sense.”
“So—”
“You can’t eat me. Nothing to scavenge. Whereas—” He made a theatrical lunge for Ben as if pinching for an inch of good solid, tasty fat, hindered both by the Canada Goose jacket and the total absence of any on Ben’s body. “Muscle is just as tasty.”
“Oh, fuck off. Shut up.” Ben was laughing, though. “We’re not staying here long enough to die or be eaten, trust me.” To prove his point, he got up and went to the door, opening it a crack and peering out.
“Still foggy?”
Ben was about to nod when he heard someone ask, as clear as Nikolas’s question about the weather, “Ben, where are you?” The voice was remote, subdued by the murky darkness, but it was insistent enough and real enough for Ben to want to reply. He had the strangest thought, however, that if he did speak, he would admit, “I don’t know.” He swallowed and ventured cautiously over his shoulder, “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Ben went further outside, gripping the door behind him. He jumped slightly when Nikolas’s hand landed on his. “What?”
“Listen. I heard someone ask, ‘Ben, where are you?’ I heard it.”
Nikolas tipped his head to one side. “That’s a strange thing to say, given you are here as James.”
Ben frowned at him to be quiet, but he heard nothing more.
They both shouted, but no response came back.
“I heard a voice! Why aren’t they answering?”
“Maybe the sound is distorted by the…cold?” Nikolas trailed off and shrugged. Suddenly, a loud foghorn sounded, coming clear through the miasma. Ben grinned. “That’s the hotel. Come on.”
Nikolas put a hand on his arm. “Wait.”
Ben shook him off. “Come on! They’re making noise for us to follow. It’ll be easy now.”
“That’s the bear siren—they demonstrated it at the induction.”
“Yes, I know, but they’re using it for us now.”
“How do you know? Maybe a bear tripped one of the alarms and set it off.”
“They said there are no bears until the drift ice comes…” Ben stuttered to a halt and added contritely, “Yeah, okay, we saw a bear.”
“We saw a very pissed off, hungry bear. Possibly injured.”
“You think?”
Nikolas shrugged again. “The one that attacked the English boy was starving from rotted teeth. Why was our bear not out on a floe, hunting with all his little friends?”
“Maybe because he kept telling horrible cannibal stories and they banned him.”
“Maybe he was trying to prove to them his theory about the contents of the moving metal boxes…how juicy sweet human meat is…Heinz tins of Homo sapiens…”
Ben wrinkled his nose. “How fast can you run?”
Nikolas huffed. “If a pissed-off polar bear with toothache was chasing me, I think I’d run faster than you.”
“Okay, then let’s assume the siren is for us. Worst-case scenario and it’s a bear? We run!”
“You must strip off your clothes as you run if a bear is chasing you. They stop to examine and sniff every article.”
“Oh, God, it’s worse than being with Miles. Why me? You strip off your sodding clothes.”
“We’ll take it in turns.”
Nicely buoyed on fake bravado and humour, knowing what they were about to do wasn’t funny at all, they dampened the fire and secured the hut.
With no more words, they set off into the fog, following the siren.
After about twenty paces, surrounded by nothing but a swirling curtain of white, Ben whispered hesitantly, “It’s coming from all around us—the sound. What the fuck is happening?”
Nikolas stood closer, his eyes closed, apparently trying to focus on the hooting.
They shouted again, but once more heard nothing back.
Suddenly, as quickly as the fog had arrived, it lifted. They were standing close together on a long stretch of beach that went as far as they
could see, in the strange blue blackness, toward a headland to the right, and a large pile of rocks to the left. There was no hut and there was no hotel. Only faintly, almost too faint for the human eye to discern, there was a tiny glow of amber through a chink in the rock pile. That was the direction of the siren, too.
Without speaking, as it was well below thirty degrees and the wind, which had blown the fog away, was taking that down another ten degrees or so, they half-jogged, half-walked toward the promise of shelter.
The rocks formed a very effective barrier, and they had to scramble over them, gloved hands freezing on contact with the stone.
The hotel was on the other side at the far end of the beach. Ben turned around and considered the route they’d come. There was only shore as far as he could see and then a flat area of snow before the cliff rose. “Where’s the hut?”
Nikolas pinched the sleeve of Ben’s coat and began to pull him. “I don’t know and I don’t fucking care. Come on.”
It was so uncharacteristic for Nikolas to curse, Ben allowed himself to be dragged along.
They arrived back to a scene of utter…indifference. Penny and Richard Cooper were sitting by the fire drinking coffee or hot chocolate and admiring the view of the dark, midday beach. The siren, it appeared, always got tested at twelve o’clock. No one had missed them at all.
Ben went straight to their room.
The fire had been relit and was burning merrily. It was surreal. He strode quickly to the window and mentally retraced their steps. There was no way they could have gotten into the next bay without going over the rock fall. They had, in any case, only gone a few hundred feet when the fog had come down, and the hotel had clearly been visible.
It distressed him more than it should—the whole incident. And it wasn’t anything to do with Nikolas’s ridiculous stories or belief in anything supernatural—which Ben didn’t…believe in. It was confidence in his own capabilities that had been brought into question. He’d always had an amazing sense of direction. It didn’t matter where he was, he always knew which way he’d come and roughly which direction to head. It had never let him down until now. It was like finding out you weren’t the person you thought you were. “I don’t know.” Perhaps he should have taken the opportunity to reply, to confess to that disembodied voice. Maybe if he had, he’d have been…found.
John Wiltshire - [More Heat Than the Sun 07] Page 6
