Whiteout

by Adriana Anders

  She slid the covered pan of bacon onto the service line, added dishes of stewed tomatoes and crab cakes—a crew favorite—and fought the fresh, hot wave of embarrassment that washed over her.

  What an idiot to have hoped that a dance might heat up that man’s subglacial eyes. Why did she have to go and ruin a clearly defined…what was the opposite of friendship? Enemyship? Didn’t sound right.

  She sent a final glance at the clock and—

  The door swung open, more violently than usual, and there he was, right on time, too-wide shoulders filling the doorway, perma-scowl on his annoyingly handsome face: Dr. Ford Cooper, the Ice Man himself.

  * * *

  Coop shoved open the galley door.

  “Doctor Cooper,” Angel Smith said in greeting. She did not seem happy to see him. Unsurprising but not a problem. If the weather held, it would be her last day. The last time they’d be forced to converse.

  In response, he grunted through scarred vocal cords, already raw from the morning’s arid cold. And then tried again. “You see Cortez?”

  She didn’t answer right away. Just blinked at him, followed by a slow, deep inhale. “No. You’re the first person here.” She scowled. “As usual.”

  Shit.

  He’d just woken up all of Cortez’s students and half the people on his floor by pounding on the man’s door again. That had not gone over well with any of them. “He’s out on the ice,” they’d told him, with big intimidated eyes.

  “Why?” Coop had asked the frightened-looking kids. “He was sick, right?” Ill, not sick. He was ill. “Why’d he go out again if he has the Crud? Was he feverish? Delirious?” he pressed. “What’s going on?”

  The students had all glanced at each other, their expressions saying that both Coop and Cortez were batshit crazy anyway, so who knew what the hell he’d gone out for.

  “Did you actually see him?” A few head shakes, so Coop had set off—he’d go out on the ice himself to find the man if he had to. This wasn’t normal. None of it was.

  He’d made it about twenty feet before his stomach had produced a long, low grumble, however, telling him that he’d better feed himself now or he’d regret it. Sustenance was essential everywhere, but in Antarctica, where bodies consumed calories as fast as the generators burned fuel, eating was key to survival.

  With a bitter sigh, he’d changed directions and stalked toward the central building.

  On normal days, getting food from Angel Smith was a pain. Today, it was an annoyance he didn’t have time for. A necessary evil.

  “You see or hear anyone else walking around this morning?”

  She shook her head with a sniff and turned her back to him, leaving Coop to suck in a calming breath.

  Just a few more hours of this and the place would empty out, only the die-hard winter-overs left to carry on the work meant to keep the station alive through the dark, cold months. For some of those months, even Coop would have to stay indoors. Which was fine, because after today, it would be just him and a skeleton crew of trustworthy souls. That knowledge brought relief flowing through him so fast and hard he could have sunk to the floor with it.

  Angel Smith would leave and take her excessive everything with her. She was too curvy, too boisterous, too gregarious, too loud. Had she not noticed that people here liked quiet? Okay, not entirely true, judging from the unholy din the Poleys had made at the Nest last night.

  The plates rattled as he grabbed one, still peeved that he’d gone there at all. But the Cortez thing had burrowed under his skin—a mystery he needed to get to the bottom of.

  Hurriedly, he opened the first serving dish. His belly went wild as the warm fog of bacon hit him.

  He’d just grabbed a croissant when Angel started sharpening a knife with a slow, even cadence that seemed oddly grim to his ears.

  Slice. Slice.

  His eyes were drawn to the enormous blade she dragged back and forth along the steel rod in her left hand. Each long, sharply ringing pull made his teeth clench so hard he could feel it in his balls.

  Was he imagining the implied threat here? Christ, he thought, letting his eyes, for one brief moment, slide down her back, I need to hurry up or she’ll—

  Why was she standing like that, her shoulders curved forward, her head tilted at a strange angle? The posture was different from anything he’d seen from her—a woman who didn’t seem to have a grumpy bone in her body. At that moment, she looked…defeated? Tired?

  Swallowing back an unwelcome wave of discomfort, he picked up a sticky-looking bun, threw it on his plate, then paused as he scanned the food. She’d put out a feast. A riot of smells and shapes and colors vibrant enough to rival the bright red of his coat.

  It was so over the top, even he could see that there was something behind it. A celebration?

  Maybe, but she didn’t seem all that festive right now.

  Yeah, well, I don’t usually bring that out in people.

  He could only surmise that she was sad to be leaving. And here he was, being his usual curt self in the face of all of this…generosity. She worked her ass off to feed the Poleys and he’d barely done her the courtesy of thanking her. With violent suddenness, his face heated. And he’d refused her a silly little dance.

  He needed to say something.

  In preparation, he inhaled the buttery scent of fresh pastries, and his mouth watered. Something smelled like Christmas. Cinnamon? Was that what that odor was? A neighbor used to bake them cookies when he was a kid, and they’d smelled exactly like this—only not nearly as fragrant.

  Stop procrastinating.

  He forced himself to speak. “Ms. Smith.”

  She half turned to face him, expression blank, brows and chin lifted, ready for a fight. As if to illustrate how little he mattered, her hands continued their smooth slide, scraping steel to steel. His breathing picked up.

  “I’m…sorry.” There. He’d said it. Or mumbled it at least.

  He turned to go, plate only half-full, then sighed, swiveling back. Shit. The woman had fed him for the past few months, and though her presence perturbed him, hers was admittedly the best food he’d eaten on this continent. Or possibly anywhere. He shut his eyes, breathed in, and opened them again. “And thank you. For everything.”

  He punctuated his words with a single nod.

  Okay. Done.

  Ignoring her open-mouthed expression, he took his plate and left the galley, intent on fueling up as quickly as possible and heading out to find Cortez.

  Chapter 5

  What was that?

  Angel stared at the door, so tense waiting for a punch line that she jumped and nearly dropped her knife when it swung open again a couple seconds later.

  The sight of Jameson barreling in deflated her—with relief. Probably.

  “Saw Coop rushin’ off with a plate full of food.” He raised one red brow at her. “What’d you do to him?”

  “Me?” The word came out a little too shrill. “Are you kidding with—”

  “Yes, gorgeous.” He winked as he walked up and grabbed a plate. “Just teasin’. Coop’s the best man here, but Lord knows he’s not good with…”

  What—words? Women? Mere human beings?

  “…emotion.”

  Squinting, she opened her mouth to grill him on what emotion she could possibly be responsible for but then stopped abruptly. There was that totally weird apology to consider, after all. Not to mention the most out-of-the-blue, awkward thanks she’d ever received.

  She glanced at the door, thinking of the way Ford had stalked out, wolfing down his food.

  Actually, “wolf” was a good description for the man. A lone one—fierce, unapproachable, with that rough, rarely used, gravelly voice. There was something kind of wolf-like, too, about his face with its broad, flat, angular features, lips that somehow looked both hard and
curved, and square jaw. He was remote, stiff and smooth as sharply carved ice. Except when he looked her way.

  She let out a humorless sound. Right. She alone was responsible for chiseling that extra line of annoyance between his eyes. The one that made him look angry.

  What the hell had he thanked her for anyway? For slinging institutional food his way? For asking him to dance? And the apology? That was—

  She caught Jameson’s eyes on her and quickly looked away, flushing hot.

  Thankfully, Pam chose that moment to sail into the galley, followed by a couple researchers and a little cluster of interns. Pam’s “Hey, y’all!” led to a long, sappy breakfast, full of teary-eyed farewells and hugs in a quieter, more sober version of the night before.

  “Didn’t realize leaving would be so hard,” Angel told her friend during a lull.

  “Could just stay.” Pam grinned, knowing full well that wasn’t an option. She could return next summer, but cooks didn’t over-winter. From here on out, the crew fended for themselves.

  I wish. The thought surprised her.

  Behind Pam, some of the recent summer arrivals crowded in and Angel rushed to make more coffee.

  Someone shifted and sidled up close to the food. Bradley Sampson, the new operations manager. Okay, so maybe she didn’t like everybody she’d met here.

  “You gonna miss me, Angel?” His jaw tightened as he crunched down on one of the Life Savers he always seemed to be sucking on. The sound was like bones breaking.

  “Sure.” She gritted her own teeth and moved back, wondering how he’d managed to enter her personal space with the food still between them.

  “You really mean that?” She was always unsure how to respond to the guy. He shifted close enough to press his hips to the counter and leaned all the way over the glass divider, his voice friendly, expression innocent. “Sure wish we could take you with us.”

  Angel went very still. Her skin prickled from the top of her head to her toes.

  “What?”

  “You know. ’Cause you’re leaving today?” He gave her a quizzical, innocent smile, but somehow even that got her heart racing.

  “But you’re not.”

  “Hm.” He winked.

  “Okay,” she muttered weakly before heading back in search of something to do with her hands. What the hell? Had she misheard him? Because if she hadn’t, that was the weirdest—

  The door opened and someone stuck their head in to yell, “Sky’s clear! Plane’s taking off from McMurdo!”

  A cheer went up and everybody ran to get ready. No time to worry about what she had or hadn’t heard now.

  With the help of a couple crew members, she quickly cleaned the kitchen and then stepped back to give her domain one last look. The shelves were a little sparse. And though she hated the supply arch with a passion, she wouldn’t leave the winter crew without supplies. One last task before she said goodbye to this place forever.

  Heaving a sigh, she left her warm kitchen, suited up, and descended the long, dizzying spiral staircase that led from the central building to the supply arch, which housed dry storage, mechanical equipment, items needed for the field sites, and everything else that could be kept at a constant deep freeze. Sewage was packaged in one of the arches and prepared for removal. Jameson’s shop, where he and the other mechanics worked on equipment, was in yet another, while many of the researchers counted on the arches’ deep freeze to keep their field samples from melting.

  Every clanging step took Angel farther underground, the air around her growing noticeably cooler. By the time she reached the bottom and pushed through the door into the yawning space, her eyelashes had frozen stiff.

  It always took a few moments to psych herself into leaving the relative safety of the tin-can-like stairwell for the enormous supply arch.

  She was going to call out to see if anyone was there, but that was totally the kind of thing the first victim did in horror movies. Besides, it wasn’t really a creepy, dark snow tomb about to crumble under the weight of a bazillion tons of ice. That was just her imagination. She peered up at the corrugated warehouse ceiling. Well, the dark part was true. Only a few of the lights seemed to be working. Were the others out? She felt along the wall and flipped the switch. Nothing. Okay, great. Fine. A quick check confirmed her Maglite was still in her coat pocket.

  From the outside, the arches were snow-covered, nothing visible but brightly shining metal doors, but inside, the place was more shadows than light. In the next arch over, the power plant’s bright-yellow machinery busily chugged out electricity and heat for the entire station. And in the farthest one, Jameson coddled hardworking vehicles into lasting another season, another year. But this arch was silent, dark, lifeless, the type of place where you’d expect to see bats hanging from the ceiling. Except, of course, nothing could survive down here.

  Swallowing hard, she avoided the tall rolling ladders lined up on the concrete floor like stairs to nowhere and peered into the shadows behind the massive metal storage shelves lining the long building. The coast was clear. Nothing but a bright red POSITIVELY NO SMOKING sign.

  Oh for Pete’s sake. Relax.

  She walked farther inside and grabbed a sled, onto which she’d pile supplies before dragging the whole thing out through the big arch entrance, up the ice ramp, across the snow, and to her kitchen. It was a long haul, but she couldn’t carry the stuff back up the steps.

  As fast as she could, she yanked big bags of pasta from wooden pallets, a few canned items, then on to paraffin-coated eggs and frozen veggies and fruit. Those were a necessity here, since aside from the freshies coming in on today’s flight, there’d be limited produce. And her people needed their vitamins.

  It was at moments like this that she hated being short. The darned canned tomatoes were at the back of the second shelf, which meant the ladder wouldn’t help. And though she stretched as high as she could, she couldn’t quite get her hands on them.

  Grumbling under her breath, she pulled the sled into the shadows between two big units and the wall, then slid behind one of the metal structures. Her boobs made it a tight squeeze, but she managed to shuffle down, strained up, and slid a can off. She just caught it before it brained her, and—

  What was that?

  Every nerve ending in her body vibrated as she went still and listened hard for that strange scuffling sound.

  Buzzing, nerves on high alert, she held her breath and stared hard into the shadows, willing a familiar figure to walk by. But nobody appeared. And when it came again—a slow, stealthy dragging sound straight out of every one of her childhood nightmares—she screwed her eyes shut and crouched low, trying to make herself as small as she possibly could.

  It was absurd to be afraid of the dark. She knew that. She did. But there was something out there. Or someone. And she couldn’t for the life of her fathom why they were working so hard to be quiet.

  Chapter 6

  A door slammed and Angel startled, just barely tightening her hold on the can of tomatoes before it clattered to the ground.

  Okay. This was ridiculous. When would she stop being so spooked? Forcing herself to relax, she started to call out when someone spoke.

  “Down.” Though it was spoken quietly, some strange acoustic trick made the word so loud she obediently ducked before realizing the order wasn’t meant for her. She should make a joke right now. Bark or yell Up! or something. But she couldn’t even catch her breath.

  “S-swear I told you everything I know.”

  Wait. Who was that? A second guy? Whoever it was sounded scared, his voice high and shaky.

  “Look, Stickley.” Stickley. Alex Stickley. A climatologist maybe? Or maybe he was one of those guys who searched for meteorites. He liked hash browns. That she knew for sure. “If you can’t show me which tube it’s in, I’ll have to—”

  A dull thud made Angel jerk
so hard she rattled the metal shelf, then put out a hand to still it.

  Was someone hurting Alex?

  No way. This had to stop. Now.

  She’d half stood, ready to march down there, when the next sound hit her. A pop like a nail gun, quick and loud.

  Then screaming.

  For a few long moments, her mind went completely blank. Those sounds knocked all understanding from her, the way a word lost its meaning after repeating it too many times. Nothing made sense—not the noise or the voices or even the sight of her own gloved hands grasping metal.

  Dumbly, she focused on the industrial tomato can with its ’50s block lettering, then slid her eyes to the shelves and stared until the holes in the metal brackets lined up again.

  This nightmare was actually happening.

  She had to get out of here and find help. She started sliding toward the end of the storage area, an inch at time, her body so tightly wound it was a shock she could move at all.

  The man’s next words made her stop and listen. Though she truly didn’t want to hear them.

  “No, no, no, no, Alex.” That was Bradley Sampson speaking, in his soft, singsongy drawl. “See, bro, you’re not dead. You know? Just a kneecap,” he scolded affectionately. “It’ll heal.”

  Alex’s response was too garbled to understand.

  “Look, this isn’t about me. We answer to a higher power.” Apparently there was something funny about that, because someone laughed. Was there a third person there? “This is bigger than you or me, man.” Sampson lowered his voice, so she had to strain to hear. “I’ll put it to you straight: you help me figure out which of these core samples to pull, right here, right now, and this little cutie?”

  “No, no. Noooooooooooo.” The word was long and low and full of so much pain that it stood the hairs up all over her body.

  “This li’l lady and her mama back in Ann Arbor? Well, they might just survive this. But we need the ice samples. Today. Right now.”

  A scream welled up inside her—a bubble that needed to burst, only instead of being hollow, it was filled with the horror of this new reality. They’d threatened to kill his wife. His baby, for God’s sake. Oh God, Alex.