Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1) (13 page)

She could no longer see anyone ahead of her.

“Vincent! Vincent!” she yelled. Nobody replied. She called again and again, turning around and around, running first in one direction and then in the other. But she heard no answer, and nobody came. After ten minutes of yelling, her voice was completely hoarse, and she was still completely alone.

The storm had increased in intensity, and she was completely and utterly lost. She scanned the horizon, swiveling in a full circle, looking for anything, a shape, flames, an aurora, a mountain, lights…anything to orient herself. She put on her headlamp and pulled the compass out of her pocket. The red arrow moved in an erratic and unsteady circle and then oscillated back and forth in a thirty-degree arc.

“Fine, then,” Sasha said to nobody. “I guess I’ll go that direction and hope it’s south. She set off at a reasonable pace, but after an hour trudging in the freezing wind and dark, and nearly stumbling into two craters, she was shaking uncontrollably from the cold and began to feel her hope ebbing. Where the hell was she going? Her head spun and she wanted to rest in the snow. She was becoming hypothermic.

She closed her eyes and tried to summon some sort of strength. But all she felt was cold. She let herself fall to her knees. Maybe just a short rest.

Something wet touched her cheek, a warm tongue. Her eyes fluttered open. A dog stood in front of her. Timber, a mask of white covering his face and blanketing his back, his brown eyes and tips of his ears the only spots of darkness in his pale face.

She put her arms around him, the snow from his face soaking her neck.

“Good dog. Good dog,” she murmured. “I’m just having a little rest.”

As soon as she released him, Timber turned away from her and started to head back the way he had come. But unlike Vincent and the other dogs, he stopped and waited a few feet away. Sasha closed her eyes again.

Timber barked loudly.

“I know, I know,” she said. “I’m just tired.”

He lunged back at her, his teeth bared, closed his jaws on her arm and started to pull. The pain and pressure jolted her awake. Timber did not release her arm, and slowly she rose to her feet. The dog, apparently satisfied that she was now alert, loosened his hold and started to move forward again. Sasha collected every fragment of strength she had and followed.

They walked on and on through the night and the squall, until Sasha was stiff with fatigue and cold. Timber set a faster pace, pushing her to generate a small core of body heat. He paused occasionally to sniff the ground, or the air, and led her around crater after crater. She avoided leaving her headlamp on, lest she ran it out of batteries or notified someone of their location, but she risked flashing it occasionally. All she ever saw ahead of them was the relentless streak of snow against the backdrop of night. The snow had started to grow deeper and making her way through the snowdrifts was exhausting. She would stumble and fall, and Timber would stop and wait until she was once again pressed against him.

Where was Soren? Where had they taken him? Who had taken him? Was he dead? Where had Vincent gone? Were she and Timber alone on this vast cold plain?

At times, she thought she saw the glimmer of green and purple in the sky through the snow. More of those strange auroras that Edie and Cal had been tracking? Or the arrival of an alien spaceship?

Occasionally she thought she heard the sound of a snowmobile. Someone coming to rescue her or Robert hunting her down? Timber seemed to veer away from the noise, and she could only pray he knew what he was doing.

After what seemed like an eternity, the light level shifted, from blackness punctuated by ribbons of white to a deep grey. It was dawn then. At least the sun still seemed to be following the natural order of things.

The sound of a snowmobile engine broke the relentless sound of the squeak of snow under boots. This time Timber stopped and sat, and then let out a low keening howl followed by stream of barks, his head thrust high and fierce into the air. She could see why he had once been the lead sled dog. The snowmobile slowed and then came closer. Despite her hope that Timber somehow knew who it was, she shrank away from the noise and cast about for a place to hide. But on this part of the island the snow carpeted a flat plain with no relief, not even a hillock, to be seen against the gunmetal grey sky.

She sank to her knees, considering burying herself in the snow. But Timber seemed determined to make their presence known and as the snowmobile approached, she saw Soren’s brilliant red parka. Soren. He was alive. But Soren did not wear the expression of joy that she was sure occupied her face. Instead, he wore a ferocious and angry scowl. He barely slowed the machine when he neared.

“Get on,” he ordered.

She hesitated, but then she heard the second snowmobile. Robert.

“Get on. We’ve been playing goddamn tag all night, and I’m always it.”

Sasha got on, and Soren gunned the engine tearing away at top speed.

“But what about Timber,” Sasha screamed in Soren’s ear.

“I can’t bring him. Robert will follow us. He knows the way back.” Soren swerved to the left suddenly and Sasha had to clutch him with all her strength to stay on the snowmobile. The roar of the other snowmobile was closer now, and Sasha thought she could see a black shadow following them through the still pounding snow.

“But can he make it? It’s a long way…He’s so tired. Timber.” Sasha said the words softly, to herself.

“He’s an Arctic dog, Sasha. We’re not that far from the station.”

Soren carved a strange and winding path through the snow, trying to lose Robert in the quickening light of morning. But Robert continued to hone in on them, almost as if he had a tracking device, and Sasha could hear Soren swearing a blue streak as he turned and veered, trying to outdistance the other machine. The faint buzzing of another snowmobile joined the first one.

“It’s no use,” Soren said over the engine. “He’s got a faster snowmobile and he’ll be able to see us as soon as it gets any lighter. I’m heading for the crater I fell into yesterday. When I say jump, you need to jump. I’m going to let the snowmobile crash into the crater. Then we’re going to lower ourselves into the crater with our ice axes. They’re in the back compartment. Grab the whole compartment, or you’ll stab yourself with the axes when you jump. As soon as we hit the ground, you’ll only have a few seconds to lower yourself into the hole. The slope at the lip is only about sixty degrees.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue!” Soren barked. “We’re going. Grab the compartment.”

Sasha took hold the detachable back storage compartment. “But he’ll see us. He’ll look over the edge.”

She felt Soren’s body move as he shook his head. “This crater has fog in it. Jump. Now!”

Even with the cushion of snow, the impact of leaping off a snowmobile going full tilt took Sasha’s breath away. She rolled over and over in the snow trying to hang on to the compartment and stay away from the lip of the crater, as the snowmobile arced over the edge and into the depths below. She braced for the sound of it hitting the bottom. Soren was on top of her opening the compartment before she could even inhale. When the snowmobile crashed, the gas tank would explode and the crater would ignite, and they would be burned to a crisp.

She tried to find the words to explain this to Soren, but he was busy removing the two axes and a length of rope, and her lips seemed frozen, unable to articulate the danger. Soren tossed the compartment into the crater after the snowmobile, hooked the rope to the harness that she still wore from earlier, and gave her a push toward the crater.

She braced for the explosion of flame, but nothing happened. The snowmobile still had not hit bottom. But how was that possible?

Soren had already vanished over the edge, indicating that he would place a few screws for her to brace herself on. The other snowmobile was almost to the crater. If she didn’t go over the edge now, Robert would see her. The blast of a shotgun shattered the air over the ceaseless hum of the snowmobile. Had she been seen, or was Robert just firing randomly?

She scrambled over the edge, fumbling for the braces that Soren had placed. The upper part of the crater side was more gently sloped, as Soren had promised, allowing for some possibility of digging in with her axe and gaining a foothold, compared to the lower part of the crater where the walls became vertical.

“Just a little bit further,” Soren said. She turned and saw him a few feet below her, just above the fog that pooled in the bottom of the crater.

The snowmobiles were almost to the edge of the crater now. Sasha inched her way down until she was next to Soren, her axe planted in the snow-covered dirt. This was the easy part and yet her arms still felt wrenched nearly out of their sockets every time she moved.

“This is insane,” she said. “I won’t be able to hold on once the walls get steeper. I’ll drag you down with me.”

“We just have to get to the fog,” Soren repeated doggedly, continuing his way down the slope. Sasha followed him as best she could, wondering which step would be her last, the one where her toehold did not hold, or her axe slipped and she went plummeting to her death in the crater.

The air around her started to grow damp and dense and she realized with surprise that she could no longer see the edge of the crater above her. She managed to make her way down a few more feet until she almost fully occupied the milky air. The snowmobile sounds had ceased, replaced by a higher pitched chattering hum. She would almost think it was birds, except it there were too many calls blending together into one incessant noise. Soon, Robert would be looking over the edge of the crater with his gun.

“Just a few more feet…hurry up, Sasha.”

She clambered down another bit, until she was almost in the fog, and then her foot slipped and she swung out to the side, her anchored foot and the axe still precariously holding her to the crater wall. She suppressed a scream and tried to grind her other foot back into the snow, but the snow seemed harder and less giving. Still she managed to find a narrow shelf of hold that seemed solid. The walls were getting steeper and her hands were wet with sweat in her mitts. The high-pitched chatter had intensified. She turned to tell Soren that she couldn’t go any further, but he had already vanished into the mist.

She withdrew her axe and tried to jam in again half a foot lower, with a quick decisive strike like Soren had taught her, maintaining the delicate balance of attachment to the wall. But it was like the wall had suddenly become made of stone. The axe ricocheted off and thrust her backwards. Her feet came unmoored and she was in free fall, going to a certain death.

Her heart felt like it had expanded painfully to fill her entire chest. This was the end of her life. How much would the impact at the bottom hurt before she expired? The noise she had heard before grew louder and angrier and she had the sense of movement of dark shapes all around her. Things brushed against her face, like bats. Was she falling straight into hell?

Then the rope that attached her to Soren snapped and held tight around her waist. She would kill him too, pulling him right from the cliff wall with her momentum. But instead of feeling the rope slacken indicating his fall, it held and she was dashed against a steep rock face, bruising and cutting her face, shoulders, and legs. Pain exploded in her head where she hit it. Then she dangled, blood streaming down her face, swinging on the rope like a pendulum. She had dropped below the mist, and all around her on stony cliffs with the wild ocean surging below, were penguins…thousands and thousands of penguins.

She scrambled for a foothold in the rocks while penguins scolded and scurried all around her. There were multiple ledges and despite the shooting pain in her arms and legs, she was able to grab on and stabilize herself.

“I’m okay,” she managed to yelp up to Soren. The rope quickly went slack as Soren descended the rest of the way out of the mist. They were not that high up. To their left was a sheer cliff that dropped right into the ocean, but to their right, a hundred feet below them, the cliff flattened out into a rough rocky plateau. And everywhere, as far as the eye could see, were Adelie penguins. They emerged from nooks and cracks in the cliff to stare at her, and some even took runs at her. She had to raise one arm and shrink away to avoid contact with jutting beaks.

Soren came to rest beside her, his blue eyes darting this way and that as he too tried to take in and process their location.

“I know this place,” he said finally. “We’re on Paulet Island.”

Sasha gazed out at the rocky shore. Paulet Island…in the Antarctic. She supposed the Antarctic part had been pretty much obvious from the penguins. But how did Soren know it was Paulet Island?

She turned back to Soren with the question in her eyes.

“My partner Marina was a penguin researcher, before… We spent a lot of time here.” His voice cracked and his face seemed to have fallen in on itself. He turned and closed his eyes for a second, and then snapped his attention back to Sasha. “You’re bleeding. We need to get down to the shelf there and get you cleaned up. Then we’ll wait for Robert to come to the conclusion that we fell into the crater and died.”

The blood from her face tasted like copper on her lips. “What if he knows about the mist? What if he follows us?”

Soren cast a grim look at the white mass of fog that billowed around the top of the cliff, and then over his shoulder at the rocky cliff shore and the frothing sea at its edge. “Then, if he calls in reinforcements, if there are reinforcements, I’d say we’re pretty much cornered.”

The wind was less than that in the Arctic, but still blasted against them in gale force gusts. Sasha thought of the other snowmobile. Who had been driving it? Paul? She would not want to be cornered with a demon on this island.

“Vincent said you were taken, by men on snowmobiles. That I was to tell him where the hole in the world is. I had no idea what he was talking about.” She left out the part about Soren loving her.