Before Cody could say anything further, Bobby gunned the engine and the snowmobile’s glowing tail lights vanished into the bitter darkness.
***
12
‘I can’t see a damned thing!’
The cab of the BV was filled with warm air blasting from vents in the dashboard as the vehicle rattled and thumped along the ice. Cody held on to his harness as Jake guided the BV in pursuit of the lead vehicle, its tail lights glowing through the horizontal snowfall sweeping across the plains now aglow with the pale light of dawn.
‘Just keep an eye open for Bobby’s snowmobile!’ Charlotte said. ‘He’s got to be out here somewhere!’
The world outside the vehicle was a featureless grey and white mass of thick snow, solid ice and sixty knot winds. The interior of the cab smelled of grease and diesel-tainted air and was illuminated by the glow from the instruments and the glare from the headlights. The windscreen wipers hissed rhythmically as they struggled to keep the glass free of ice and snow as the engine noise hummed through the cab to where Charlotte and Bethany sat in the rear seats.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have let him go,’ Cody uttered.
‘Patience,’ Jake soothed. ‘The storm was bad last night. He obviously decided to stay put.’
Bradley drove the lead vehicle. Cody assumed it was because the soldier was impatient to leave, but it was just as likely that if Brad’s vehicle went down a crevasse, Jake’s would have time to stop.
‘Just follow Brad,’ Cody replied. ‘He knows where he’s going.’
Jake hung grimly on to the wheel as he chuckled bitterly.
‘Sure, as far as the observatory. After that, it’s anybody’s guess.’
Cody glanced at the tachometer, which they had reset before leaving Alert an hour previously. Five kilometres. They might make forty clicks a day if they could find a path south, which meant a minimum of twenty days to reach Grise Fjord.
‘Alert Five should be up ahead,’ Bethany said from the rear seat, holding a map in her lap as she searched for landmarks and guide posts through the swirling snowfall.
The guide posts were almost obscured by thick snow drifts, making it hard to pick out the reflective caps. Without constant use and clearing work, the road to the station was already disappearing beneath the ever changing Arctic.
‘We’re on track,’ Jake confirmed and gestured to the vehicle ahead in the gloom. ‘But this is just the beginning and we’re struggling already. What does Brad think it’s going to be like in a hundred miles’ time?’
Cody couldn’t think of anything useful to say, so he sat in silence and watched the eerily featureless landscape shudder slowly by.
*
Bobby Leary pushed hard against the station door as he struggled out against the gale. He held in his hand a pair of locator beacons and an arc-light, which he kept huddled beneath his arm as he shut the door behind him and trudged against the wind toward the side of the building and the communications tower.
His boots clanged loudly on the metal steps as he clambered wearily up them, thick snow swirling into his face and the wind howling like wolves through the structure as he reached the upper level. The severity of the storm had prevented him from leaving the previous night, and he had spent the long hours of darkness curled up in his sleeping bag in the observatory.
The aerials were quivering in the gale, ice coating their surfaces with horizontal icicles. Bobby pulled one of the beacons from its cradle under his arm and attached it to the largest of the aerials. Nearby the previous beacon was shrouded in ice and frost, its battery long dead.
Bobby ensured that the beacon was secure and then activated it. A bright red light flashed and a steady green light signalled that it was emitting. Bobby turned and took the arc-light out and affixed it to the mast, then turned it on. The brilliant disc of light flared into life, illuminating a shaft of snowfall out into the gloom. Bobby turned it until it pointed north. Satisfied, Bobby turned for the steps and then froze solid as though he had died mid-step.
A low, muffled rumble reverberated through the wind. Like a growl.
A huge white head appeared at the top of the steps, black eyes squinting against the wind and a thick black nose sniffing the air. Even in that terrible instant Bobby noticed how the wind ruffled the enormous bear’s fur in beautiful parallel ripples.
The head, as big as Bobby’s entire torso, swivelled around until the two black eyes were fixed upon his.
There was no uproar. No noise. No fuss. The polar bear blinked once and then clambered up onto the platform. Its huge bulk, the size of a small horse, dwarfed Bobby even in his thick Arctic clothing. Four foot high at the shoulder, five at the top of its head and weighing maybe a thousand pounds, Bobby was both stunned and terrified by its sheer size.
The bear padded toward him across the platform, filling his vision.
Bobby turned and hurled himself over the platform railing and down toward the snow some thirty feet below.
His stomach flipped as he plummeted and thumped down into the thick drifts. Even as he landed he felt his right leg slam into something hard, felt a crack shudder through his bones as liquid pain seared his thigh. His cry of agony was snatched away by the fearsome gale as he lay stranded on his back in the snow, looking up at the huge animal that was peering down at him through the cold metal bars of the communications tower.
The polar bear sniffed the rails, turned, and began padding back toward the steps.
Bobby heard his own cry of despair as he tried to haul himself out of the snow. Raw, deep pain surged through his leg and he felt bone grating against bone inside it. He flicked his head to one side and a globule of vomit stung his throat and splattered across the snow beside him. His arms felt weak with fear and cold as he swiped at the snow for purchase and dragged himself out, his broken leg trailing behind him.
The station door was barely thirty feet away but it seemed like thirty miles as he reached out and hauled himself across the ice. He made six feet before he heard a rhythmic, throaty breathing and turned to see the polar bear watching him from ten feet away.
Bobby stared in a rictus of horror at the immense predator. The bear loped forwards a single pace and sniffed at the vomit staining the snow. A big, thick tongue licked the mess briefly, and then the polar bear turned and lumbered across to Bobby.
Bobby grabbed a handful of snow in his fist and hurled it at the bear’s face. The animal did not even blink as it bent down and crunched its huge jaws around Bobby’s bloodied thigh.
*
‘I can see the light! Look, out there!’
Cody ducked to avoid Charlotte’s arm as it pointed at a faint blue-white light flickering through the dense snowfall as they followed Bradley’s BV toward the observatory, the buildings almost completely obscured by deep drifts.
Jake closed up behind Bradley’s vehicle and was about to say something when the brake lights on the BV ahead suddenly flared into life and the tracked vehicle slid to a halt on the thick snow.
Cody braced himself against the dashboard as Jake slammed on the brakes and their vehicle shuddered to a halt mere inches from the vehicle ahead. Cody saw the cab door flung open as Bradley leaped from the vehicle with his rifle in one hand and a serrated combat knife in the other.
‘What the hell’s he doing?’ Jake uttered.
Cody saw the bear a moment later. The huge animal loomed over something in the snow and peered up at Bradley as he charged toward it. Bradley drop onto one knee and aimed his rifle. A gunshot cracked out above the howl of the gale and the bear’s flanks quivered as the shot hit it. The animal roared and turned to face Bradley.
The soldier stood up and waved his arms, shouted at the top of his lungs as he suddenly charged at the animal. The polar bear roared again and bounded through the thick drifts like a giant white whale plunging through icy waves. Bradley kept going, his arms outstretched and his knife flashing in the weak light as the enormous beast loomed before him.
For a moment Cody thought that Bradley was going to take the immense beast on single-handed. Then he saw Sauri, on one knee, taking careful aim.
A second gunshot, snatched away by the brutal winds, and the polar bear’s head flicked sideways as its legs gave way beneath it as it plunged down into the snow barely six feet from where Bradley stood.
Jake opened the cab door and leaped out. Cody followed, fighting to open his door against the wind. The snow was deep and tugged at his boots as he ran off the track toward the observatory. Cody’s guts convulsed as he saw Bobby sprawled motionless on blood stained snow.
Sauri put another round into the bear’s skull for good measure as Cody ran past.
Cody dashed to Bobby’s side and slid down into the snow alongside him. He fought down a glob of vomit as he saw the terrible damage to the kid’s thigh. The clothing had been torn free and the flesh stripped away in a ragged, bloody mess. Tendons and skin flapped and quivered in the wind, caked in snow.
Cody turned, saw the team approaching. ‘Beth, get over here, now!’
Beth stumbled across the Cody’s side.
‘Oh Jesus,’ she uttered. ‘Help me get him into the BV.’
Cody managed to get his arm under Bobby’s back and together they lifted him from the snow and carried him across the ice to the nearest of the vehicles. Jake helped as they hefted Bobby aboard and lay him across the rear seats of the cab.
Beth squeezed in alongside him and snatched a medical kit from her bag as Cody knelt alongside her and yanked the cab door shut.
‘Cody,’ Bethany said, tears streaking down her face, ‘he’s in a bad way.’
Bobby’s face was pale with the cold and he was mumbling a feeble and incoherent stream of nonsense, his eyes closed.
‘You got morphine?’ Cody asked.
Bethany struggled to get hold of arterial clamps as she handed Cody a vial of morphine.
‘Wait until I’ve stemmed the blood loss,’ she managed to say as she fought back her tears. ‘Or it’ll be wasted.’
Cody watched, trying to ignore his squeamishness as Bethany used the clamps on the frayed arteries spilling blood across the seats and onto the cold metal floor beneath them.
‘The cold’s helping him,’ he managed to observe.
The arteries should have been firing high pressure blood like water cannons, but instead it was pulsing in lethargic spurts.
‘He’s lost a lot of blood,’ Bethany said, her speech quivering with cold and grief. ‘He’s fading fast.’
‘Stick with it,’ Cody encouraged her, closing his eyes and turning away from the bloody mess.
‘Okay,’ Bethany snapped. ‘Get it in him.’
Cody yanked Bobby’s right glove off and pushed the capsule’s needle into the back of his hand. The seal broke automatically and the morphine drained into Bobby’s body. Within minutes his ramblings had ceased and he lay in silence, breathing softly.
Bethany sat back and stared at Bobby’s shattered leg in dismay. Her hand flew to her mouth as she averted her head and choked on her sobs.
‘Can you do anything?’ Cody asked as he slipped an arm across her shoulders.
‘Jesus no,’ Bethany gasped, looking at Bobby’s shattered leg once more. ‘It’s too far gone. He’ll lose the leg. But we can’t do it here.’
Cody sat back in the cab and wiped a hand angrily across his face as he looked down at Bobby.
The door to the cab swung open with a blast of frigid air and snow as Bradley ducked his head inside.
‘What’s the verdict?’
Cody sighed. ‘He needs surgery. We’ll have to go back.’
Bradley stared at Cody from inside his hood for a brief moment, surveying the wounds.
‘He won’t make it,’ he said clairvoyantly. ‘Best we keep movin’.’
Cody turned and leaped out of the cab, forcing Bradley to stand back. ‘You think?’
‘He’s a liability now!’ Bradley insisted. ‘We can’t drag him around with us. It was his choice to stay out here all alone and now he’s paid the price.’
‘He came out here to prepare the beacons,’ Cody shouted above the gale. ‘He was taking a risk on our behalf! Are we going to leave him now to die for it?’
‘Better him than the rest of us!’ Bradley bellowed back. ‘We’re not going back!’
Jake’s voice cut above the gusting wind.
‘Then good luck, Brad. You’re on your own.’ Jake turned to Cody. ‘Get Bobby back to Alert. We’ll follow, with or without Brad, after we’ve loaded the bear on board for food.’
Jake turned and trudged toward the second BV without giving Bradley a chance to respond. Cody turned and slammed the BV’s door shut before heading for the cab. Reece and Sauri started off toward the dead polar bear.
‘Where the hell are you going?’ Cody heard Bradley shouted at Sauri.
The Inuit did not respond. Cody saw Bradley curse and shout as he stormed away.
The team was Jake’s again.
*
Jake reached up for the lead BV’s cab door when something stopped him in his tracks.
The blustering snow whipped across the ice fields almost horizontally, obscuring details in the snow and constantly reshaping the land around them. Jake could see the gruesome bloodstains where Bobby had been attacked, Reece, Sauri and a reluctant Bradley now hauling the huge corpse of the polar bear toward their BV.
A trail of blood in the snow marked where Bobby had been carried to the other BV, but from where Jake stood a second, fainter trail of blood led away from the station through the snow.
It was possible that the bear had eaten nearby and that Bobby had inadvertently disturbed the animal, which may have attacked if it felt that its food source was threatened or that it was being challenged. Jake turned and trudged across the snow field in the hopes of finding an uneaten seal or similar.
The trail was feint, pink splotches in the ice, but it led to a deep drift to the south of the station. Amid the snow, Jake could see patches of blood and fragments of clothing.
Panic flushed through him as he ran to the drift and saw a deep hole in the snow stained with ugly patches of black-brown blood. Strips of filthy fabric fluttered in the bitter wind, and as Jake reached the edge of the hole and squatted down a waft of putrid air hit him, stained with rotting meat and putrefaction.
Jake gagged, one gloved hand over his mouth as he peered down into the hole and saw the head of a man peering lifelessly out at him, thin hair fluttering on the wind, bloated purple tongue poking from between yellowing teeth and the whole macabre sight surrounded by a pair of severed hands, one of which had been shredded by the bear’s teeth.
Overcoming his revulsion and hoping that he had discovered the remains of an Inuit or polar explorer, Jake reached down and lifted the undamaged hand from the snow. It took him only a moment to realise that the hand was neither petrified nor fully decayed.
The body could not have been in the ice for long.
***
13
Week 24
My beloved Maria,
Our situation has not improved since I last wrote to you. Tragically, it is even worse.
Bobby Leary’s injuries were such that Bethany was forced to remove his leg. The base at Alert has a small operating theatre, but without professional staff we were forced to amputate using only morphine. Bobby recovered well for a few days, but then suddenly began a decline. He is now very sick and we have no means of treating him. Bethany suspects some kind of blood poisoning, perhaps from the bear that attacked him or from the broken femur he sustained when he leapt from the tower at Alert Five.
With Bobby so ill we are unable to travel. Bradley is threatening us all with physical violence if we do not depart soon. We have placed a permanent watch on Bobby in case Brad attempts to intervene and “put an end to his suffering”, as he so casually puts it, but we all think it’s just bluster and arrogance: it was Brad who charged the bear without thought for himself. Had he not done s
o, Bobby might not have survived at all.
I don’t know what we will do, Maria. The sun is permanently above the horizon now and daylight reigns. The ice in the Lincoln Sea cracks and thunders as it breaks up and the tundra is becoming visible all around us as the snow melts away into the sea. It would be truly beautiful and something that I would love for you one day to see were it not so brutally lethal to us now.
Our food runs low and the meat from the polar bear is almost gone.
We all know that we cannot remain here much longer.
*
Bobby lay on a bed in the accommodation block, a room to himself. Cody leaned on the wall outside and saw Charlotte Dennis sitting in a chair beside his bed, quietly reading a novel that he was fairly certain she had read twice already over the winter.
‘He said much lately?’
Charlotte looked up from her book and glanced at Bobby. She shook her head.
Bobby’s skin was pallid and sheened with a thin film of sweat. He lay beneath a duvet, a saline drip in his arm that Bethany had rigged for him. Although nobody really believed that Bradley Trent would wander in and throttle Bobby as he slept, the watch also prevented Bobby from thrashing in his delirium and ripping the line from his arm.
The idea of the kid dying of both blood poisoning and dehydration was too awful to bear.
‘How are you holding up?’ Cody asked her.
Charlotte smiled weakly but said nothing. She closed the book in her lap and stared at the floor.
‘We’ll get out of here soon enough,’ Cody said, just to break the silence.
‘Do you think they’re waiting for us?’ she asked.
Cody figured he knew exactly what she meant, but for reasons he could not explain he asked: ‘Who?’
‘Our families,’ Charlotte replied, seemingly immune to Cody’s apparent ignorance.
Cody looked at his boots for a moment, wondering what the hell he could say that wouldn’t sound trite.
‘We’ve got to hope that they are. What have we got, if we don’t have that?’
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