The Chilling, page 16
That was how she failed to notice the Hägglunds on the horizon, heading towards her field camp. If Sally had noticed, she would have wondered what on earth it was doing there.
22
In the mess area of the Red Shed, Kit sat clutching a coffee and looking out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sally’s Ski-Doo speeding down the road. Kit had been there for an hour or so after cleaning up, and with each passing minute visibility had grown poorer. She felt uneasy. Sally should have been back by now.
In the first few days of April, the brutality of winter had made itself known, reminding everyone at Macpherson that the continent was now imprisoned in ice. Although the sun still shone occasionally, the daylight hours were shrinking. The average daily temperature was about minus eleven degrees Celsius, and the average wind speed 45 kilometres per hour.
That evening’s dire forecast was for winds of up to 160 kilometres per hour. This would mean a complete lockdown for the station. Visibility would be at zero, and the katabatic gusts coming down from the plateau would be at their fiercest and most deadly. No one would be able to go outside, probably for days. To put her mind at ease, Kit was hoping to see Sally sooner rather than later.
‘Have you seen Sal?’ Kit asked Bill, as he wandered in for his regular afternoon tea, scratching his head.
‘No. But I was just speaking to Dustin, who said he saw her earlier this afternoon.’
‘Dustin?’ asked Kit, puzzled.
She had left Sally doing fieldwork a few kilometres off station, while Dustin had told her at breakfast that he’d be in the surgery most of the day, doing a long-overdue stock inventory. He must have seen her on her return. Relief flooded Kit’s body like oxygen.
‘Where’s Dustin?’ she asked, standing up.
‘He’s gone to the bar before it closes,’ said Bill, glancing at the clock.
On her way to the bar, the wind picked up and pelted loose gravel at her legs. She felt the breeze at her back all the way down the sloping path, past the side of the workshop to the bar in the old electricians’ shed. Peering inside, she could see only Dustin and Warren. They were seated on opposite couches. Warren seemed engrossed in a magazine, and Dustin had a pint of beer propped up against his belly and was leaning back with his feet on the table.
It was unusual for Kit to see him like this. He liked to set certain standards of health and moderation for the rest of the station. When she heard he was frequenting the bar, she assumed he was merely keeping an eye on things. But he seemed to have had more than two standard drinks already—there were a few empty bottles on the table. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were fixed in a wide-eyed stare, gazing off into the distance. Veterans called it the Antarctic Stare.
‘Dustin,’ said Kit.
He started as if he’d just woken up. ‘Oh, Kit,’ he croaked. ‘Hi there. Come join us.’
Warren looked up as if to say, Who is ‘us’?
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I haven’t come for a drink. I was just wondering … Bill said you’d seen Sal today. Is that right?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Dustin placed his feet on the floor and shook himself awake. ‘Earlier this afternoon.’
‘When? I was worried she was going to get stuck out there in the snow.’
‘Oh, I think I saw her about one or two o’clock.’
‘Really?’ asked Kit with some surprise. It was almost six, the official closing time for the bar, and full night was about to descend. That would mean Sally had been back for at least four hours. It was odd that Kit hadn’t seen her.
‘She said she was going to come here, to the bar, later on,’ added Dustin. ‘What time is it now?’ he asked with sudden concern, looking around.
‘It’s exactly …’ Warren pulled up his sleeve to reveal a large watch. ‘Five-forty.’
‘Oh, Christ. I have to get to the store, to get those vitamin D supplements. We’re completely out. And I have to get the Ski-Doo back to Blondie by six. Shit!’ Though the Green Store was only five minutes from the Red Shed, the Ski-Doo was a handy vehicle for lugging small boxes of supply from building to building.
‘Are you sure …?’ asked Kit, watching him stand up rather shakily and spill some of his pint on the table.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘It’ll only take ten minutes. I’ll be fine.’
She trusted him enough to let him go.
‘Stay for a drink?’ Warren asked her.
She knew the bar was about to close, but she expected Sally to turn up at any time, so she stayed.
She’d been there for half an hour, making polite chitchat with Warren, when they noticed a noise outside. It was a low rumbling in the sky, like a large aircraft flying overhead, accompanied by the sound of pebbles hitting the walls. Whatever the wind was blowing in, thought Kit, it was not good. Warren went back to his story about some frozen pizzas.
But soon the noise got louder and more frightening. Thumping and creaking came from above, as if an angry demon had landed on the roof and was trying to tear it off. The demon shook the building. A few minutes later, a battalion of witches joined him, screaming and whistling as they rode in on the clouds.
The snowstorm had arrived.
Kit eyed the ceiling, praying it would stay in place. ‘Do you think we should make a run for the Red Shed?’ she asked Warren anxiously.
‘We’d better give it a shot,’ he said, launching into action and reaching for his bag.
Together, they pulled on their extreme cold weather gear and their thick snow boots. When they opened the door, they were struck by a fierce blast of air. Kit instinctively turned her head.
She eventually peered out, but she could see only a metre or two in front of her—the rest was snow. In the darkness, the glow from the floodlights in the doorway made it look like a hardened, frozen wall of white.
As they stood there, a loose piece of corrugated iron flashed past in the light, twisting and screeching like an animal. She and Warren doubled back inside.
After they’d peeled off their gear and come back into the bar, the phone started ringing. It was Blondie, and he sounded pissed off. Stuck in the freezing powerhouse, he wanted to know why Dustin hadn’t returned with his Ski-Doo.
Kit explained that Dustin had gone to the Green Store, and was probably still there, waiting for the storm to blow over.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ said Blondie.
She advised him to stay put until the worst of it had passed through. They would all have to be castaways for a little while, cut off from the rest of the world. But everything would be fine by morning.
Half an hour later, the noise died down. The thumping and banging on the roof ceased, and pebbles no longer drummed incessantly at the walls. The gale forces from hell had left—for now. In the bar, it was quiet and serene.
Warren offered to take a quick look outside. He came back to report that he could see several metres ahead with a torch; if they stuck to the gravel road, now under a thick coating of snow, they could be inside the Shed in five minutes. A row of thick ropes—blizzard lines—marked the way. He could even see the building’s lights as a foggy glow in the distance. They should go now, he said.
‘These little pockets of calm are what helicopter pilots like to call “sucker holes”,’ he explained as they zipped up their suits. ‘You might think those azure-blue skies and gentle winds are a sign of better weather. But you get out there, and—wham!’ He demonstrated with his hands, while his eyes widened. ‘Suddenly, it blows up again. You’re in the air surrounded by a shitload of trouble. So that’s why we better go now.’
Once outside, however, Kit had an impulse to check on Dustin. She could see the blurry floodlights of the Green Store, up ahead to the left, and the faintest suggestion of a yellow object outside: the Ski-Doo. She was surprised that Dustin was still there.
‘I’m going to see if Dustin’s all right,’ she called to Warren, her breath catching in the breeze.
‘Are you sure?’ he said, turning back in concern.
‘I’ll only be five minutes. You go—I’ll be fine.’
Warren hesitated, then called out, ‘Okay, just five minutes then. I’ll see you back home.’ He marched up the slope to the Shed.
Kit followed her own torchlight steadily along the other gravel road. When she got to the Store, she laboured up the steps and threw all of her weight against the door. It opened, and she stumbled inside.
Cavernous as a warehouse, the Store was on two levels. It was organised into rows laden with supplies—kitchen, scientific, medical, electrical and so on—much like a supermarket or a hardware store.
‘Dustin!’ she called. ‘Dustin!’ She didn’t want to stay any longer than necessary. She could hear the light pitter-patter of gravel against the walls.
Without taking off her extreme weather gear, she ventured into the store itself, shuffling noisily in her thick boots. She knew where the medical supplies were kept, because during the changeover she’d delivered several boxes from the Star. When she located the correct aisle, she checked for boxes of vitamin D and found that their shelf was empty.
‘Dustin!’ she called again. But it appeared that he’d been and gone. He’d collected an entire winter’s worth of vitamin supplements and then departed—without the Ski-Doo. She wondered what he could have been thinking. Perhaps shortly after his arrival, conditions had become so poor that he’d decided it would be foolhardy to ride a Ski-Doo up and down the slope. Possibly, he’d ventured back to the Red Shed on foot.
Kit located the phone and rang Bill.
The wind was tugging at the door as fierce gusts battered the walls. Just as Warren had predicted, the storm hadn’t been dead but only resting. The Store shook with each fresh blast of air.
‘Is Dustin with you?’ she asked Bill, shouting over the bad line.
‘No.’ His voice was crackly and indistinct, as if coming from a great distance. ‘Warren just told me you went to look for him in the Green Store.’
‘He’s not here. At least, I don’t think he is—I didn’t check the upstairs office,’ she added, the thought just occurring to her. ‘He might be having a nap. I’ll go have a look and call you back if I can’t find him.’
‘Okay,’ said Bill. ‘You call me if you need me. Otherwise, hope to see you here as soon as possible. Don’t think we’ve seen the last of it yet. You shouldn’t be out there on your own.’
She agreed and hung up.
The upstairs office was empty. As she was shutting the door, the phone on the desk rang.
It was Bill again. This time the connection was good enough that she could detect the concern in his voice. ‘Kit?’ he said, breathing hard into the receiver. ‘I’ve just spoken to Dustin. He’s in the bar. He says he’s been wandering around in the storm, and he’s kinda disoriented. He wasn’t making a whole lotta sense, to tell you the truth. He said he’s bleeding quite badly from the leg. The line got cut off before I could get all the details. I need you to get over there to him and help him out, as quickly as possible, before the weather turns again. Can you do that?’
‘Sure,’ she said, with one ear cocked to the wind. She could hear a sinister change in the speed and frequency of gusts, but she calculated she still had a good ten minutes or so to fight her way back to the bar without being stuck in the blinding snow. She’d walked the path a hundred times—she could probably do it in her sleep. The bar was less than two hundred metres away. ‘I’m leaving now,’ she told Bill before she hung up.
After tucking a few bandages into the large pockets of her suit, she went to open the main door. As she pulled on the handle, it sprang inwards and pushed her against the wall with all its weight, knocking her off balance. A violent gust of snow blew into the entrance way.
Bending down on one knee, Kit huddled against the door, her shoulder to the wind, and readjusted her hood. She checked that her gloves were securely fastened around her wrists, her pockets were zipped up, and her suit legs were covering her boots; she didn’t want any of that killer snow creeping through the cracks. Clearly the blizzard had already returned with a vengeance. Her task was going to be hard enough without being frozen to the core. She would have to do this blind.
In the doorway, she pulled on her ski goggles and pointed her feeble torch, only to see a familiar wall of whiteness less than a metre in front of her. Visibility was zero, but she would have the assistance of the blizz lines strung between the buildings. As long as she had those, she reasoned, she could feel her way to the bar.
And so she proceeded down the Green Store steps, clinging to the rail as the wind slammed her into the wall. At the bottom of the steps, she lifted her torch to survey the path ahead. Once again, all she could see was a wall of snow. It was useless to point her torch anywhere but at the ground. The snow was so thick that she couldn’t even see the floodlights behind her anymore. As she moved forward, however, the torch illuminated something bright yellow a few metres away—the Ski-Doo.
Struck with an idea, Kit struggled over to the snowmobile and turned it on with fumbling hands. But it was obvious the Ski-Doo would be of no help whatsoever. Though its engine had started with a lurch, its headlights were no use. All they did was illuminate an even greater expanse of snowy nothingness. If she got on board and set off down the slope, she could be out on the sea ice and hopelessly lost in the darkness before she even realised she’d gone the wrong way.
Kit switched off the engine and slowly placed one foot in front of the other, grasping the nearest blizz line. She leaned sideways into the blowing snow and inched forward, one hand on the rope, in what she thought must be the direction of the harbour and the main road. Under its snowy coat, she could feel the reassuring crunch of gravel on the path.
After toiling down the path for a few minutes, she suddenly felt an overwhelming fear and hopelessness. In addition to the deafening roar of the wind against her hood, she could hear an ominous whipping noise overhead. Her stomach flip-flopped as she realised that it must be some cables or cladding that had come loose. She dropped to her knees.
This is the height of stupidity, she told herself. If she lost the rope, she would be dead. Surely Dustin wasn’t dying; surely he didn’t require her assistance right that very minute. I should go back.
But when Kit tried to stand up and turn around, she couldn’t do it. She had come so far and was so deep in the snowstorm that it was pointless to go back. It would be better to spend her energy going forward. Dustin was alone, and he was cold and bleeding. A combination of hypothermia and blood loss could kill him. She would never forgive herself if her lack of resolve led to his death—she had to get up and go on.
Ignoring the cracking whips in the sky, she continued with her torch trained on her feet and one gloved hand on the rope. Keep moving, keep moving, she repeated to herself. It was all she could do to keep on the road, to keep her balance, to keep her head in the midst of the swirling vortex.
Time dragged on. She seemed to be getting nowhere—but when the blowing snow lifted for a second, she recognised a familiar fork in the road. It was hard to believe that she’d stood there less than twenty minutes ago with Warren. The left-hand fork led back up the slope to the Shed, and the right-hand fork led down in the direction of the harbour, towards the bar.
Her steps would have to be even more careful now. The ground was relatively flat in this area, so if she got turned around or disoriented, she would have no idea where she was. And if she didn’t keep a close eye on the side of the road and stay with the blizz line, she could miss the narrow footpath leading to the bar and end up out on the dreaded sea ice. With the wind shoving at her back, she positioned herself towards the right-hand shoulder of the road and kept moving. The walking came a little easier now.
But then Kit saw something that made her stop dead.
Out of the swirling whiteness in front of her, a man with a torch materialised. He was dressed in a partly open red coat, with a black balaclava on his head and woollen gloves on his hands.
Momentarily, she was numb with fright. Her breath caught in her throat, and her heart beat wildly.
It was only when the man stopped leaning into the driving wind and straightened up to his full height that Kit realised who he was—who he had to be.
It was Nick.
23
When Kit saw Nick emerge through the blinding snow wall, her first response was one of fear. Her second response was to rationalise it away and assume that, like Dustin, Nick had been caught unawares and was hopelessly lost. Or perhaps, she supposed, Nick had offered to come help her with Dustin. These thoughts flashed through her mind in seconds, enabling her to swallow her panic.
Lunging forward, she grabbed Nick’s elbow and turned him around 180 degrees, so that he was facing in the direction of the bar. She couldn’t stop, in case she lost her internal compass. For all she knew, Nick had no idea where he was heading. She needed to keep moving along the blizz line in order to hold on to her bearings.
Fortunately, he was prepared to comply with her guidance. He stumbled a little at first, but then he hooked his arm into hers. They lurched side by side down the line with the wind pummelling at their backs.
A few minutes later, with relief, Kit glanced up and caught sight of the foggy glow of the bar lights. After leaving the path, then stumbling over rock and snow, she and Nick were soon standing outside the building.
In the entrance way, Kit removed her gloves and goggles, while Nick pulled off his mittens and struggled to remove his sodden balaclava. His hands were trembling, and he was unsteady on his feet. ‘Here,’ she said, touching his cold fingers, ‘let me do that.’
His face was a ghastly sight. His cheeks were deathly pale, his lips a deep shade of blue. His eyes were red-rimmed, and the ugly scar on his forehead was a vivid purple. On his collarbone there was a protruding white lump, like a piece of ice, where the cold air had stolen beneath his coat. But most alarming of all, his expression was dazed and open-mouthed. It looked as though he was going into hypothermic shock.
