The Cold Beneath (31 page)
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Because I need you, Pip.”
“I know. As a subject.”
“No. I need someone else to corroborate my claims.”
“What claims?”
“Of what happened here. What do you think I’m going to tell the rescuers once they arrive?”
It was my turn to laugh. “Tell them the truth! That the crew was the subject of a mass experimentation that left them the equivalents of rabid animals. Tell them you’re at fault. Or is that not part of your collected data?”
“Be reasonable. I didn’t want this to happen. And I shouldn’t suffer because of it.” Geraldine set her pad and pen on the long table against the far wall, taking a deep breath before she turned to face me again. “I have a story prepared, but I need you to back me up.”
A story? With all that has transpired in this heartless wasteland of ice and death, she boils it down to a story? I stared at her, in silence, waiting to hear her grand tale of adventure and sorrow.
“When they arrive,” she began, “We will tell them how the crew mutinied after the crash. How they killed Albert and Lightbridge and half of the other men. How the new régime went house sick after a week or so and ended up at each other’s throats until everyone was dead.”
I had to hand it to her; the woman showed a talent for weaving the most believable of lies. She always had. “And why do you need me to prove this?”
Making her way to my cot, Geraldine sat alongside me. She lowered her voice to a sultry purr as she whispered in my ear, “They’ll never believe a woman could survive that kind of madness on her own. Unharmed, or rather not abused.” I shifted my glance to her hand on my thigh as she began to stroke my knee through the fabric of my trousers. I raised my eyes to hers, where we locked gazes as she finished with, “But with you to protect me, and my virtue, they will have to believe.”
I tried hard not to laugh at the idea of her having even an ounce of virtue left after everything she had done. “How is this going to work if I’m just destined to become one of those things?”
“Because you’re not.” She lifted her free hand to my hair, where she ran her fingers through my wayward locks as if we were two lovers alone.
Perhaps it was her proximity, or her soft caress, but I had trouble following her line of logic. “I’m not?”
“Once you’re off the compound, you will revert to your normal state.” Her touch shifted to my forehead, dropping to caress my nose, then lips. “You’ll detoxify for a few days, during which your temperature should return to normal, and then you’ll be right as rain.”
It took everything I had to keep my hands seemingly in my bindings and resist the temptation to push her away. Under her stroking fingers, I asked, “You can do that? You can just take it away like that?”
“Of course.” She traced the line of my jaw, then followed the tense muscles of my neck until she cupped my head by the back of the skull. “It just needs to work out of your system. As long as you don’t suffer a loss of motor function between now and then, you should return to a perfectly normal state.” Geraldine brought her face very close to mine, her breath hot on my mouth. “And I need you perfectly normal for when the rescue party arrives.” With that said, she proceeded to kiss me, deep and strong.
I sat there in silence, with her latched to my lips and her words echoing in my heart. On the one hand, she didn’t mean for any of this to happen. She intended to inject us, record the findings, and then wean us off the compound on our return trip. It wasn’t her fault the accident happened. It wasn’t her fault those men died in the fire. In some small way, she really did mean well.
And yet on the other hand, all of those men died for nothing. Lightbridge, Albert, Kidman, Bathos … all of those men died for nothing. She could have told us sooner. She could have warned us after the wreck, took us off the injections and saved everyone from this terrible fate. She could have,
should
have, but didn’t. She kept pushing it through our veins so she could continue to collect her precious results. She knew those men would rise to combat us while she was gallivanting about the North Pole. She knew I would have to deal with the revenants, yet she left me and the others alone with those nightmares. Clueless. Defenseless. Hopeless.
Fury seized me again, filling me with a cold, hungry rage. As Geraldine finished sealing her deal, she lifted her lips from mine, then leaned back to take stock of my reply.
Unfortunately for her, my reply was swift and vengeful.
****
****
Reckoning
“You murdering bitch!” I yelled.
Without giving her a chance to escape my reach, I struck out, landing a square blow against her nose and knocking her to the floor. It was the only time in my life I struck another person in anger. Even when Elijah told me he had asked for Geraldine’s hand, I kept my rage to myself. But now? Now a lifetime of bottled fury flooded out in a vile torrent of ugliness. I scrambled to my feet with every intention of beating the woman to death for what she had done.
And I would have too, if it weren’t for my weakened state.
I still am unsure how long Geraldine had kept me under the pentothal, but when I rose to my feet it was as though I had forgotten how to walk. At first I almost folded double, my knees turning to water under my weight. But I caught myself on the edge of the cot before I could join Geraldine on the floor. Lifting my bulk, I stood as best I could over her as she stared up at me, holding her nose.
“You could have saved us,” I said. “You knew what would happen to us. You knew, and you let it happen anyway.”
“Philip,” she gasped. “Please don’t do this. We need to work together.”
As she spoke, a trickle of bright red dribbled from under her hand, tracing its way down her chin and pooling on the floor. I must have broken her nose when I hit her. Part of me rejoiced in her pain, while part of me winced inwardly. How shameful to take glory in beating a woman! But while she cowered under me, bleeding from my strike, I was reminded of her treachery by the rise of muffled groans around us. The revenants were frantic, whipped to frenzy by the scent of blood in the air. Their growls and howls filled me with a terrible idea. A final solution not only to the problem of this traitor to all humanity, but a blessed release for my own suffering.
I stumbled across the room to the surgical tray. There, I snatched up a scalpel, then whipped about in place, brandishing it at the woman with a snarl upon my lips.
“Philip!” Geraldine cried. “What are you doing?”
I must admit, my first instinct upon seeing the razor-sharp blade was to turn it upon myself. My plan was simple. I would cut my own throat, allow my life to flow freely over her cringing form in great crimson sprays. Then with my dying breath, I would pray there was enough of the compound in my brain to warrant a return. I am ashamed to say that a terrible thought lurked in my dark heart at that moment. It was my greatest desire that if I did walk again I would remain cognizant enough to enjoy my revenant revenge upon her.
Yet I failed to make that final cut. As I leaned upon the tray, scalpel in shaking hand poised at my very throat, all my courage fled my being. Even faced with such treachery and doomed to this nightmare of an existence, I couldn’t turn the blade upon myself. I was, and still am at heart, a coward. I couldn’t take my own life.
But I knew who could take it for me.
“Philip,” Geraldine said, very calmly, trying her best to placate me in my sudden madness. “Just put down the blade. I need you right now.”
“You need me?” I asked as I lowered the scalpel to my side. “Now? But my love, I thought you’d needed me all along.”
She rose to her knees with a smile, thinking she had won me over. “Of course. Of course I needed you all along. Now give me the scalpel.”
Geraldine leaned forward, at which I stepped back. She scooted to me, and I stepped back again. We danced like that for a moment, she crawling forward on her knees and I treading backward in wobbly steps until I rested against the cot of thing-that-used-to-be-Albert. I glanced back at it for a brief second, struck by the fact that it—as well as all of the beasts—had fallen silent since I took the blade in hand. It was as if they knew the path to which I had resigned myself. It was if they wanted it as much as I did. Perhaps more.
“Come now, hand it to me,” she said. Geraldine lost the smile to another grim frown, her voice growing impatient, as if she were talking to a child. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
A moment of clarity washed over me as I formulated what I thought would be my last act upon Earth. “No. For once I do, Geraldine. I really do know exactly what I’m doing.”
I turned then, and with a few swift motions cut the bindings that held the creature in place. The rope about the revenant proved little resistance for such a sharp blade. The beast was free in a heartbeat, liberated and ready to feed upon the heat of the living.
“For God’s sake, Philip!” Geraldine shouted as she cowered again. “What have you done?”
I knew what I had done. I had damned us both, but no more than she had cursed us already. The thing on the cot looked up to me with Albert’s eyes, and I saw in them such empty hunger. A bottomless void that could never be sated, could never be filled. I also glimpsed understanding of what had transpired; the comprehension that it was no longer caged. In that moment, that very second that the beast realized it had gained its liberty, I drew my last breath and waited for it to rise and take me. I waited for it to leap from the cot and release me from this lunacy. To my surprise, it snatched the gag from its mouth, pushed past me as it rolled off the cot and hastened across the floor.
It ignored me in favor of making a meal of Geraldine!
“Give me your heat, woman!” the thing cried.
Her screams reached me before I could turn about, and I knew without looking what was happening. The creation had returned to the creator, to consume with a fury that which had brought upon him the curse of life. Or, in this case, un-life. Albert was tearing her apart behind me, enacting a punishment that even I in my righteous anger couldn’t bring myself to commit. But still, wasn’t it by my hand that she died? Wasn’t it by my judgment that she screamed blue murder, begging even a once forsaken God for his mercy as her monster tore the last cry from her supple throat?
Was I any better than she?
I lingered for a moment, my back to the terrible violence behind me, pondering the vengeance I had wrought. I unleashed her executioner, and as they tussled behind me, I was moved to finish the job. From cot to cot I slipped, cutting each beast free, and growing strangely stronger all the while. I do not know if it was the satisfaction of knowing she was facing judgment at the very hands of those she had damned, or if it was just the adrenaline that accompanies one during such terrible deeds. Either way, by the time I had cut the last creature free and it leapt past me to join in the feast, I found my strength had returned full force.
I stared down at the scalpel, wondering if the time for me to end my suffering had finally arrived. Still, I couldn’t bring the blade to my own throat. Try as I might, I couldn’t turn it against me, even though it was the single thing I desired most now that Geraldine had faced her fate. As I stared at the blade, contemplating the idea of destiny to the sounds of a woman being torn to shreds behind me, I was overcome by a strange awareness. It dawned upon me that all of my brushes with death had been brief, minimal, really, when compared with the rest of the crew. Something higher had stayed my hand before and was doing so now. I had been spared time and time again for a reason.
I knew then what I must do.
Dropping the blade to the cot, I staggered to the door. Without a glance at the sure carnage behind me, I slipped through the exit and closed the door as quietly as I could manage. Down the hall I stumbled, to the kitchen, where I stopped and filled a large cook pot with a few provisions—canned goods, flasks of water and the likes. Nourishment to keep me alive long enough to complete my divinely inspired task. With the barest of supplies at hand, as well as all of the remaining vials of that dreadful compound, I returned to the hallway, noting that the screaming had stopped. Geraldine was dead.
In the vacuum of her silence, another screaming rose to meet my ears. As I hobbled back to my room, I realized the voices producing the shrieks were coming from below me. I decided, without double checking, that Geraldine hadn’t dispatched those three men entirely. She must have killed them, then dragged their remains to the brig or cargo bay, and locked them away for future study. How she managed all of this on her own, I couldn’t imagine. The idea of it left me shuddering in disgust.
The pot of goods was heavy but manageable. I clutched it to me as I hurried to my room, slipping inside and closing the door behind me. There I dropped my supplies on the bed, then pushed the cot against the door, along with the desk, barricading the only entrance to the room. As well as the only exit.
I trapped myself inside my room not to wait for rescue, but to record this very tale. You see, as I stood there, basking in the glory of Geraldine’s final moments, I realized that I had been spared with purpose. God Himself saved my life, but not so that I could continue to live. No. I have done and seen too much to remain upon this Earth any longer than I must.
