other. Some gusts were so strong that Michael was blown back against a wall or half-buried fence, and had to wait to push off again until the wind had died down. Not that it ever stopped. There were times, in Antarctica, when you wished for nothing more than stillness, a temporary truce with the elements, a chance to stand still and catch your breath and look up at the sky. The sky could be so beautiful�so blue and pristine it looked like the most perfect thing imaginable, an enameled bowl fired to a hard blue glaze�and at other times, like now, it was simply a smudged bucket, a dull broad glare that was impossible to distinguish from the endless continent of empty ice it glowered over.
The ski poles were a good idea; Michael doubted he could have stayed upright without them. Lawson, with his sore ankle, would surely have been toppled. In fact, Michael made it a point to stay a couple of yards behind Lawson, just in case he went over and started to roll. Once the wind caught you and knocked you down on an icy patch, you could roll like a bowling ball until you hit some kind of obstruction; Michael had seen a beaker named Penske, a meteorologist, rolling past the Administration module one morning until he collided with the flagpole and hung on to it for dear life.
Michael rubbed one mitten across his goggles to clear away some of the snow, and for a second he wondered if he could make his fortune by marketing goggles at the South Pole that had their own windshield wipers. He'd have liked to call out to Lawson, to ask him if the leg was really okay or if he wanted to turn back, but he knew that the wind would blow the words right back into his mouth�and the temperature was so low you could crack your teeth if you kept your mouth open too long.
They made their way past the glaciology lab�Michael glanced inside for Ollie, but if the bird had learned anything so far, it was to stay inside the crate on a night like this�and the marine biology lab, and the climatology lab, until Michael saw Lawson heading off to the left, toward a big, rusted-out trailer squatting on its cinder blocks like an old red rooster. Bright light shone out through its narrow window panels.
Lawson stopped to rub his ankle under the rough wooden trellis that framed the ramp, and motioned for Michael to go on ahead. The door was a steel plate�dented, scratched, and covered with
the faded remnants of Phish decals�and Michael banged on it with his fist. Then, having given warning, he shoved it open and went inside.
His goggles immediately fogged up, and he had to slip them back on top of his head. He parted some thick plastic curtains, threw his hood back, and found himself standing in a sea of metal shelves and cabinets, all at least six feet high, and crammed with samples of indigenous moss and lichens. There were little white labels, inscribed in a spidery hand, on each shelf or drawer. Fluorescent lights flickered in the ceiling, and from somewhere among the impenetrable racks he heard the tinny sound of cheap speakers playing an endless jam.
And he also heard something else�a low, wet, snurfling sound. When Lawson came through the door, Michael instinctively motioned for him to keep silent. Lawson looked puzzled, but Michael gestured for him to stay where he was, by the door, and then, still carrying his ski poles, he started to thread his way through the maze of cabinets. Could it be another one of the dogs, Michael wondered? Or more than one? Should he back off and call the chief for reinforcements? But what if Ackerley was in big trouble and needed help right now?
The music was getting louder, but so was the strange lapping sound. Like somebody slurping soup. Or cereal. Was that all it was? Ackerley, deaf to the world, eating a bowl of cornflakes and rocking out? Michael found himself wedged between two towering cabinets, one marked GLACIAL MORAINE, SW QUADRANT, and the other reading SPECIMENS, STROMVIKEN SITE. But there was a chewing sound, too, so maybe it wasn't cereal. More like a stew maybe. Why would you eat some microwaved crap in a lab trailer when Uncle Barney was serving up hot grits at the memorial dinner?
He peered through some of the shelves and saw a long lab counter, not so different from Darryl's, with a couple of sinks, a microscope, some bottles of chemicals. But no one was sitting on the lab stool. And now that he looked again, he saw that a couple of potted plants were upended, and one of them had smashed onto the floor. An iPod was cradled on a shelf between its own tiny speakers. Michael stepped out of the shelves and closer to the lab table. The eating noises were coming from the other side, from down near
the floor, and as he moved around the corner, he saw the tips of two rubber boots, their clasps undone, sticking out. He gripped the ski poles harder.
The eating sound became a rending sound, like flesh being torn, and when he got all the way around, he saw first the broad expanse of a flannel shirt, stretched across the shoulders of a big man, huddled over a body on the floor, and busy at work. If he hadn't known better, Michael would have thought, in that first instant, that it was Danzig.
Who was dead.
He raised one of the sharp-tipped ski poles and shouted, for want of anything better to say, �Hey! You! Stop what��
But he got no further. The huddled man's head whipped around, startled, the beard so matted with blood it looked like it had been coated with a bright red paintbrush. His eyes were red-rimmed, too, and blinking furiously. Michael was so stunned he fell back, and the man leapt up at him, snarling. One of the poles went flying, clattering against a cabinet, and Lawson hollered, �What's going on?� and started crashing through the labyrinth.
The man clutched at Michael's collar, almost as if seeking something�
his help?
�and his breath reeked of blood and decay. But worst of all, it
was
Danzig�dead and frozen Danzig, with his throat torn out by the dog�whose fingers were ripping at the fabric of Michael's coat. Michael staggered back against another set of shelves, and the whole rack toppled over, taking him and Danzig down onto the floor amid a hail of dirt and seeds. Michael banged him in the face with the handle of the pole, wishing he could somehow get the sharp end into action. Danzig's face hovered above his own, his teeth stained with blood. His eyes were black with rage and�though Michael would only have time to think of it later�a bottomless grief, too.
Another pole suddenly flashed past Michael's head and gouged a hole in Danzig's shoulder. The man reared back, then jumped at Lawson. But his boots skidded on the loose seedpods, and he had to scramble to get up again. Michael quickly rolled over and stumbled to his own feet. Danzig had shoved Lawson, not all that steady to begin with, out of the way; he was sprawled on the floor, waving his ski poles wildly.
But instead of continuing his attack, Danzig stumbled away and went barging through the shelves with his arms swinging like an ape's, pulling one rack after another down onto the floor behind him. Sod and seeds and gravel flew everywhere, and by the time Michael had clambered over the detritus and made it through the plastic curtains and out to the door, the only thing he could see was a slick of blood on the ramp and a dark shape staggering blindly through the trellis and on into the maelstrom outside.
December 15, 10:30 p.m.
�What the
hell
are you talking about?� Murphy said, once Michael and Lawson had cornered him in the kitchen. Uncle Barney was just out of earshot, frying up one final skillet of grits. �Danzig is dead, for Christ's sake!�
�He's not,� Michael repeated, keeping his head and his voice low. �That's what we're trying to tell you.�
�You saw him, too?� Murphy said to Lawson, looking for confirmation of the impossible.
�I saw him, too.� Lawson glanced at Michael, as if urging him to continue.
�And he's killed Ackerley� Michael said.
Murphy looked as if he was about to swallow his own tongue. The blood drained from his face.
�We found Ackerley in his lab,� Michael said, �already dead, and Danzig was mauling the body. In fact, he's out there somewhere right now.�
Murphy leaned back against a freezer, plainly unable to process what he was being told�and Michael couldn't blame him. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes�if he hadn't been attacked himself�he wouldn't have believed it either.
�So, he's not in the body bag,� Murphy said, thinking out loud, �and he's not in the core bin where we put him.�
�No,� Lawson said, �he's not.�
�And Ackerley's dead, too,� Murphy repeated, as if simply to let the terrible information sink in.
�That's right,� Michael said. �We should go after him�now� before he gets too far.�
�But if he's gone stark raving mad,� Murphy said, as if clutching at a ray of hope, �he'll just freeze to death out there.�
Michael didn't know what to say to that. It sounded perfectly reasonable�of course a crazy man, without even a hat on, would surely die either from exposure or from falling into a crevasse�but at the same time he wasn't sure of it at all. Nothing made sense anymore. He had been with Danzig in the infirmary; he'd watched as Charlotte recorded his time of death. Whatever was running around out there on the ice wasn't necessarily Danzig at all. Michael didn't know what to call it.
�What did you do with Ackerley's body?� Murphy asked, trying hard to collect himself.
�It's where we left it,� Michael said. �Charlotte should examine it as soon as possible. And then we need to store it somewhere.�
Uncle Barney said, �Excuse me, gents,� opened the freezer to retrieve some butter, then limped back out of earshot.
�Not where we put the last one,� Murphy said, keeping his voice low. �We'll use the old meat locker outside. If Dr. Barnes is wrong about this one too, I don't want it running amok like the other one.� He suddenly caught himself, and said, �You know what I'm saying. I mean, Danzig was a great guy, and Ackerley was a nice enough fella, too, but this is all just so goddamn bad, so goddamn awful �� He trailed off, clearly flummoxed at everything he had to deal with.
But Michael didn't think Charlotte
had
been wrong. Impossible as it was to accept, Danzig
had
died, then somehow come back to life�though that was not an argument he was prepared to make just now.
Lawson bent down to nurse his bad ankle, made worse by the scuffle in the botany lab. And Murphy's hair suddenly looked a lot more salt than pepper.
�We could look for Sleeping Beauty at the same time,� Michael said, eager to get the go-ahead from Murphy. �And her Prince Charming.�
�Not to mention the sled dogs,� Lawson said. �If the NSF finds out that the last team ever allowed down here�the dogs that poor Danzig had to get grandfathered in�are missing in action, it's going to be a bureaucratic nightmare.�
�Danzig used to run them to Stromviken,� Michael said, �and the forecast's good, for a change. This storm is passing.�
�Not for very long,� Murphy said. �Last report, a new front's due by early evening tomorrow.�
�All the more reason to get on it,� Michael said.
Lawson nodded his agreement.
�What about your ankle?� Murphy asked. �Looks like you're favoring it.�
�Snowmobiling's no problem. And if we do find them�the dogs or the bodies�at least I know how to drive the sled back to camp.�
�All right,� Murphy said, as if he could no longer argue the point. �But not tonight. Get some solid rack time, then, first thing in the morning, if the weather allows, I'll log you in on a trip to the whaling station.� Reaching for the walkie-talkie fastened to his belt, he added, �I'll tell Franklin to have a couple of snowmobiles at the flagpole, gassed up and ready to go, by nine a.m.�
���
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
December 16, 9:30 a.m.
SINCLAIR HAD BEEN GONE FOR HOURS,
and while Eleanor's greatest fear was that something would prevent him from returning at all, she also dreaded the state in which he might return. He had been in a black humor when he left, seething with rage at the endless storm and bristling at his confinement in the freezing church.
�Damn this place to Hell!� he'd shouted, his words echoing around the abandoned chapel and up to the worn beams in the roof. �Damn these stones and damn these timbers!� With one arm, he'd swept a candleholder off the altar and sent it spinning across the floor. Stomping down the nave, his bootheels ringing on the stone, he'd thrown open the creaking door to the graveyard outside and hurled his imprecations at the leaden sky. He'd been answered by a chorus of forlorn howls from the sled dogs, curled up in balls among the markers and tombstones.
She especially feared him when he was like that, when he chose to issue his challenges at the heavens. She was convinced that he'd
