The Chilling, page 8
Kit moved cautiously towards him. Up close, Nick Coltheart was abnormally pale, like a fresh corpse raised from the dead. He didn’t speak but stared ahead with the cloudy red eyes of someone under sedation. The skin beneath his eyes was dark, his lips were dry and his shoulders hunched.
‘This is Dr Kit Bitterfeld, our dentist,’ said Dustin. ‘She’s come to check on you.’
Swallowing, Nick shifted his gaze to the floor. ‘I don’t like dentists,’ he said in a quiet voice.
Kit laughed mirthlessly through her nose. ‘Well, that’s okay. I don’t like patients.’
When he heard her voice, his arms tightened around his chest. ‘Perfect.’
‘Okay to leave you two alone for a few minutes?’ said Dustin. ‘I want to have a word with Dr Sidebottom.’
Kit nodded, but she was ambivalent. She almost wished that Dustin would stay. Nick had spoken like a near-comatose drunk, and she was wary of him still. She could hear a vague whisper of caution in her head but couldn’t make out the precise words. Turning to say something to Dustin, she found that he was already gone.
‘Okay,’ she said, shaking the whispers out of her head. She turned to Nick again. ‘Why don’t you lie back down on the bed, and we’ll take a look at your teeth.’ When he failed to respond, she moved in closer and peered beneath his fringe. ‘You okay?’ she asked, smiling.
For the first time, he looked up at her. As their eyes met, his lips parted and he breathed in. A light appeared in his face as if he’d only just emerged into full awareness—as if he’d only just realised she was in the room. He didn’t speak but looked at her so intently she felt a thrill of electricity in her veins. His dark-brown eyes gleamed in the fluorescent light. They seemed to hold a question for her, but its precise wording was difficult to discern.
She squeezed his hand, the impulse to touch him coming without any conscious thought or reflection. His skin was surprisingly soft and warm. ‘You’ve been through an ordeal,’ she murmured, rubbing his thumb.
Finally, he shifted his unnerving gaze and smiled at her, flashing a hint of perfect incisors. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, his lips forming a smile that quickened her pulse.
Her cheeks reddening, she smiled again. ‘Why don’t you just lie down,’ she repeated, ‘and we’ll take a look at your teeth.’
Moving slowly, he lay down but continued to look at her.
As she gathered her instruments and flicked on gloves, it took all her concentration to focus on the task at hand. She didn’t know why she felt so unsettled. She’d seen Nick twice before—the first time naked—and neither time had sparked any attraction. On both occasions, of course, he’d been more of an object than a person. Now his intense animal presence was difficult to ignore.
After a deep breath, she sat next to the bed and positioned the lamp close to his face. ‘Okay—open, please,’ she said, taking the mirror from her tray of instruments.
At first, his gums looked fine. But when the light reflected from the mirror, she spotted some redness and swelling near the incision point. She pressed her index finger to the spot. ‘How’s the gum there?’ she asked, frowning and squinting.
His tongue nudged her finger as he tried to reply, and, as she pulled back, her knuckle brushed his lips.
‘There’s some inflammation,’ she said, her blush deepening. She didn’t dare look him in the eye. ‘Let’s give your mouth a good rinse, and we’ll see if more antibiotics can clear it up over the next few days. You can sit up if you like.’ She held out her hand to help him. He was still weak, she thought.
But his grip was strong and firm. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. She helped to steady him, then moved over to the bench to prepare the rinse. The hiss of running water resounded in the silence. When she turned off the tap, she realised he was asking something.
‘… become a dentist?’
‘What was that?’
‘So if you don’t like patients, why become a dentist?’ he repeated, his eyes holding a subtle challenge.
‘I’m not a dentist-dentist,’ said Kit, turning her back to him. She prepared the saline solution in a plastic cup. ‘I’m a forensic dentist, and I’m more of a research scientist these days. My subjects are usually dead, I’m afraid.’
‘Dead?’ He sounded mildly alarmed. ‘Christ. I hadn’t realised dental problems were that bad in Antarctica.’ When he said ‘Antarctica’, he emphasised the ‘Ant’ like an American, but otherwise his accent was Australian.
‘They’re not—not in humans, anyway. I’m here to assist someone studying a colony of Weddell seals near Macpherson Station.’
‘Oh. So you’re a … sealologist?’
‘I think you mean “seal biologist”. And no, that’s the team leader. I’m going to be examining the teeth in live seals and their carcasses, as a research assistant.’
‘Right. And this is because …?’
She paused at the bench and faced him. He peered at her from over his shoulder. ‘You ask a lot of questions for someone newly raised from the dead,’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘You should be resting. Your body and your brain are exhausted from the effort it took to keep you alive. You almost died, you know—it was only your physical fitness that saved you.’
‘I’m nervous.’ He sighed. ‘Did I happen to mention I don’t like dentists?’
‘You did.’ She turned back to the bench, blinking furiously.
‘So who are you running away from, Kit?’ His tone was casual, but the question was unsettling.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Or should I say what? What are you running away from?’
Inclining her head at him, she frowned. He reminded her of her mother when her memory first started to fade. Daphne’s conversation had become unnatural and erratic, difficult to predict; she’d masked her awkwardness with a fixed smile.
Nick smiled pleasantly. ‘Isn’t everyone in Antarctica running away from something?’ he asked, gesturing with one spade-like hand.
She responded in a serious tone. ‘I’m here to do research. The Weddell teeth are a kind of bellwether for climate change. During the winter, the seals bite through sea ice to get to the surface. This means their teeth deteriorate, so they can’t eat anymore and they die. But our research suggests their teeth are improving yet their mortality rates are increasing. We think it’s because the sea ice is thinning and so isn’t as tough on their teeth, but at the same time they’re losing their natural habitat. I’m here to do data collection.’
‘So you and I,’ he said, ‘we research similar things …?’
‘Do we?’
‘I measure and document the thickness of sea ice.’
‘Oh, that’s right, you’re a geophysicist.’
‘So I’ve been told.’ A shadow crossed his brow, and his face stiffened.
She brought him the cup for rinsing. He took it from her and slowly lifted it to his mouth. But instead of drinking, he gripped the sides and squeezed the plastic till it cracked. Some of the solution spilt onto his wrist, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Standing before him, Kit waited for him to say something or rinse his mouth. Instead, he stared straight ahead. After a while, he lowered the cup to his lap as tears trailed down his cheeks.
The cup dropped to the floor and landed with a splash.
She bent to pick it up, her eyes fixed on his grief-stricken face. ‘Are you okay?’
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘No one … no one will tell me.’
Confused and alarmed, she said, ‘I’m not sure it’s best that I—’
‘Just tell me,’ he said, suddenly grabbing her by the shoulders. His eyes were dark and fierce. Then it seemed he registered her worried expression, because he relaxed his grip. ‘Just tell me,’ he whispered, smoothing her sleeve. With his mottled cheeks, he looked like a child. ‘What happened to the people on that ship?’
She proceeded with care, wanting to reassure him but reluctant to say too much. ‘We don’t know.’
‘Are they all dead?’
‘I … I think you need to rest.’ She frowned and busied herself finding tissues on the bench. There was a heaviness in her heart—it was difficult to see someone in so much pain. She went back and handed him a tissue.
‘Oh my God,’ he cried. ‘They’re all dead, aren’t they?’
‘No, no,’ she reassured him. ‘We don’t know that.’ She couldn’t think what else to say.
He wiped his face with the tissue, his distress mounting, and she could offer no solace or comfort.
‘They haven’t been found,’ she said quickly. ‘They’re missing on the sea ice. But there’s a helicopter search party out looking for them right now.’
His shoulders relaxed, and he sighed a ragged breath. ‘Why am I here, then?’ he whispered.
‘You were found unconscious on the ship.’
He seemed puzzled. ‘But why wasn’t I with the others?’
‘We don’t know.’
He was silent.
A thought occurred to her. ‘We found a note in your pocket,’ she said. ‘It says that you shouldn’t eat either 6753 or 6247. Are those numbers codes for sulphites or something you might be allergic to? We couldn’t find them on a list of additives—the closest number was for monosodium glutamate and the code matches a modified maize starch. Could you be allergic to MSG or maize?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
She went to the bench and remixed the solution. She brought it over in a glass tumbler. ‘Here, rinse,’ she said, touching his shoulder. He swished it about in his mouth. After she fetched a stainless-steel bowl, he dutifully spat into it. ‘Thank you,’ she said, as he leaned back and laid his head on the pillow.
At the sink, she cleaned out the glass and the bowl. Once she’d finished, she ran a hand through her hair, breathing deeply, and watched the water swirl down the drain.
Her heart was hammering. ‘You should rinse every four hours,’ she said.
He didn’t respond.
‘Every four hours …’ she repeated in a louder voice, turning around. She was startled to hear a noise coming from the bed.
Nick’s eyes were closed, and his head was thrown back, his mouth open. He was snoring.
8
Marion Lovall lay inside the sodden bivouac, miserable and gazing at the roof. The sun shone through the thin layer of polyester, tormenting her with its lack of heat and comfort. The wind sucked at the tent walls, expanding them to full stretch and then billowing them in again, whistling and hissing as it did so. In her sleeping bag, her toes were numb, and her skin felt pruny and wrinkly. Her damp brown hair had escaped from her beanie and was clinging to her face. Her spine was a frozen rod.
She rolled to her side and her hip came up against a hard object. It was the gun, wrapped inside a tea towel. When she’d first awoken, she’d been lying on top of it.
Rolling the other way, she could smell her socks and mukluks, the fetid odour of wet sheepskin permeating the tent. It was impossible to get comfortable.
This is hell, she thought.
Each passing hour brought a fresh source of misery. Four days earlier, their ordeal on the Petrel had begun with fire and heat, it had escalated with the rising of the wind, and it had now reached the point that they were lost in the fog. They had no idea how to get back to the ship.
Once the flames had taken hold, the alarm had sounded: one short blast followed by one long resounding blast, then repeated twice more. Most of the crew had been eating breakfast in the mess and as a collective they knew what to do.
Alone in the passageway, Marion had been paralysed with fear and incomprehension. What did the siren mean? When she smelt smoke and saw people spilling out of exits, she exclaimed once she realised they were being told to abandon ship. But she couldn’t join the others straight away. There was something she had to do …
Her task completed, she rushed to her cabin. Shaken and panicked, she stuffed the gun into her survival kit. The naturally pessimistic part of her already envisaged a scenario in which their short-term evacuation turned into a long-term battle for survival. In such a scenario, the gun would come in handy. If things became desperate, as they surely would, she could walk away from the crew, out onto the sea ice, and make her escape on foot. Sometimes pessimism was just pragmatism.
She soon joined the rest of the crew mustered at a safe distance from the burning ship. They hunched together in the cold, clutching their survival kits, some laughing nervously, others gaping and shaking their heads.
In an act of heroism, four crew members went back to release the lifeboat. They dragged it across the ice, depositing it about three hundred metres from the ship. With a signal from Thorn, their voyage leader, everyone picked up their bags and went to shelter near the orange vessel.
Marion couldn’t recall Thorn’s first name. Everyone just called him Thorn, and the voyage leader himself addressed everyone by their last name.
Thorn had ensured that the crew took enough food supplies, bivvies, sleeping bags and fuel stoves to camp out on the bay for several days. At the time, those provisions seemed unnecessary—even overkill, as one cynic put it. But when the fuel tanks exploded, and the deck was consumed by flames, even that cynic said a prayer of thanks for Thorn’s foresight. They wouldn’t be returning to the Petrel in a hurry. A conflagration of flames and smoke swirled and eddied in the air as the fire fed on the fuel. All they could do was stand by and watch the ship burn.
When the wind changed direction and toxic smoke besieged their camp, the crew moved further afield, a kilometre or so away. Even then, the greying clouds reached out to them with long slender fingers, beckoning them to return. If they dared to remove their goggles or masks, the smoke stung their eyes and assaulted their lungs. Without being told, they silently prepared to spend the night on the ice.
Everyone knew their situation was precarious. Occasionally, the rolling waves from some distant wind would rise beneath them, making the sea ice swell underfoot. There was a chance that the same wind would loosen the pack and create fissures in the surface. But they had no choice, and no one expected them to be there for long. They calculated that it would take two to three days for the Southern Star to break through and get to them. They would likely spend a few cold nights out on the bay with hardly any sleep, but they wouldn’t come to any real harm.
Marion was grateful to be sharing a bivvy with Curly Hollow, one of her closest colleagues for three years. They’d been on Antarctic expeditions before. At the muster, they’d gravitated towards each another, and Curly had held her hand when it was confirmed that her boyfriend Jason Weathers and their friend Nick Coltheart were missing. Thorn had said that Jason and Nick were most likely taking shelter on board, and no one should worry.
Overcome by trauma, Marion had barely spoken a word to Curly for several hours. But she was glad to have his calming presence by her side. In their working life, he just got on with the job despite inevitable difficulties. While she was an atmospheric physicist and worked on theoretical models, Curly was a mechanical engineer and thought a lot about earthly practicalities. She couldn’t think of a better colleague to have with her right now. Conditions were cramped in their bivvy—they were much closer physically than they’d ever been before—but she didn’t care, provided she could stay warm.
Once they were alone in the shelter that first night, Marion had turned to him. ‘What happened?’ she asked, her voice cracking. ‘What happened on board?’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, momentarily confused. He half rolled over to face her. ‘The ship was on fire, so—’
‘What about Jason?’ she whispered in an urgent tone. ‘Did you see him?’
Curly hesitated. ‘No one was able to find him. No one knows what happened to him.’
She fell silent. The wind was picking up, and the bivvy rustled with a dry flapping sound.
‘What about Nick?’ asked Curly quietly. ‘What happened to him?’
Marion rolled away and stared off into space. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, shutting her eyes.
The next day, they awoke to discover that an oppressive fog had surrounded the camp, casting a hazy yellow glow over the bivvies alongside the lifeboat. With some unease, the crew realised the fog was obscuring their vision of the Petrel.
‘Where’s the ship gone?’ asked the second mate, peering into the vapour. The garish red vessel was nowhere to be seen.
‘Don’t worry, cobber,’ said Thorn. ‘She’ll show her face once the fog has cleared.’
‘Why don’t we go back now?’ asked Curly. ‘The fire seems to have died down.’
‘We could give it a shot,’ suggested Thorn, rubbing his chin, ‘but I’d feel better if we could actually see where we’re headed. The last thing I’d want is for us to be wandering lost in the mist.’
As if on cue, somewhere in the fog, a fuel tank exploded.
‘That settles it,’ said Thorn, with some satisfaction. ‘It’s too dangerous to go back right now. We’ll stay here until this pea souper moves on.’
Less than an hour later, the group heard a helicopter hovering above their heads. They scrambled out of their shelters and craned their necks. Some waved their arms, shouting, ‘Hey! Over here!’ Thorn even hurried to set off a flare.
But they could barely see the sun through the mist, let alone a helicopter. It was unlikely the chopper crew could see them.
The group paced back and forth in the gloom as the rotor noise faded.
‘We should’ve gone back to the boat,’ muttered Curly, kicking at the ground.
‘I know,’ said Marion. ‘The search-and-rescue team will be headed straight there.’
‘And we’ll be left out here, to freeze to death.’
‘No.’ She shook her head.
He glanced at her, looking surprised by her optimism.
