Surviving Antarctica (21 page)

Polly smiled. “You’ll probably buy a bank, Billy.”

“I’m going to go to high school and college,” Billy boasted. “I bet Grace will use it to buy dogs.” He laughed.

Polly thought his laugh sounded mean.

Grace looked down at her cup. “I’ve thought about starting an animal shelter. With so many starving people, no one pays attention to animals.” Grace didn’t want to tell the kids about her real dream. They might laugh at her. She planned to use the money to move her family to Antarctica. They would eat seal soup and seal steaks every night.

“And you, Polly?” Grace looked at her.

“I’m like Billy. I want an education,” Polly said.

Robert laughed. “Why? You’re already an encyclopedia.”

“Do you want to teach, Polly?” Andrew asked.

“Maybe.” Polly wanted to do something that
would make a difference in the world, but that sounded too grand. She turned to Andrew. “What about you?”

Andrew panicked. He hated big broad questions like that. He had no idea what he wanted to do. Before this trip, all he had wanted to do was watch more television and do fewer chores. But now he wasn’t sure what he would want to do. He just knew he couldn’t go back to the soft spot on the couch.

Billy watched Andrew’s discomfort with pleasure. There was no way that the viewers would vote for such a dumb person to be MVP. Andrew was out of the running. And Robert was too bossy, Polly too cerebral. He was sure the winner would be either him or Grace. And if the dogs were losers, then Grace was, too.

“I say that we take a nap,” Robert said. “If it’s still calm when we wake up, I’ll go out and finish cutting up the seal.”

“Good idea,” Polly mumbled, suddenly tired.

Andrew struggled to keep his eyes open. The wind must have stopped completely, because he could hear the sounds of the other kids’ breathing. Even after two nights in the tent, it still felt strange to be so close together. After all, they hadn’t even known one another two weeks ago.

He had set out his sleeping bag as far from the others as possible in the small tent, because even though they had left the ship, he hoped his friend could still talk to him.

Billy was snoring.

Would his friend talk to him again? Andrew wondered. The tent was strong and sturdy, and he was almost dry and very warm. He felt his eyelids growing heavier.

Some nine thousand miles away, Steve, who had just checked into work, was wondering the same thing. Except for Andrew’s, the other kids’ eyes were closed; their cameras were shut down. This was his chance.

Steve watched the steam from the kids’ exhalations rise to the center of the tent. He listened to the sounds of the children sleeping, and from behind him the slow
swish, swish, swish
of Pearl’s broom. At least there were no soldiers with muskets ready to shoot the kids, as in the
Civil War Historical Survivor
series, or wild beasts outside waiting to tear the kids up, as in the
African Explorers Historical Survivor
series. These kids weren’t going to catch any dread disease, the way the contestants in the Black Plague contest had. There were no pyramids to build, as in the Egyptian contest. Yet a
storm raged outside their tent. It was minus fifteen degrees. The weather could be bad for a long time, and the kids probably had only five days’ worth of food. He didn’t believe that five kids could actually survive without help.

And he doubted whether the advice that he would be able to offer would be enough. He hung his head. If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he really didn’t think that the kids were going to survive.

The audience rating for the past two days had been higher than for any survival show in history. It had climbed to 97.8 percent.

Hourly, the production department received e-mails from the Secretary of Entertainment:

Steve hoped the ratings didn’t mean that viewers were having fun. But he wasn’t sure of anything except that the situation was hopeless.

Andrew’s screen blinked on, then off. He was fighting sleep. Could he be waiting for Steve?

Why not? Why not be kind to the kid? It was the least that he could do. Steve reached under the screen and pulled out the mike. Holding it, he felt that Andrew was closer to him. He hesitated, almost hypnotized by the steady swish of Pearl’s broom.

When he was young, Steve had put his little brother to sleep with rhymes. Before he had a chance to change his mind, he flipped on the switch: “Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the nuclear monster bite.”

“Ahh …” Andrew gave a long sigh of satisfaction and closed his eyes.

Steve faced five dark screens in the empty room. The other members of the night crew were in the basement, playing cards. While Steve liked Chad and the rest of them, he was much younger than they were, and he didn’t care about the things they talked about: their kids, their taxes, and their bills.

On his way to the water fountain, he caught sight of Chad’s briefcase sitting on a stool. He was drawn to its shiny blackness. If the top hadn’t been open, he might have been able to resist. He walked over to it.

He cast a glance at Pearl. As usual, she was paying attention only to a spot on the floor. He riffled through Chad’s papers and found what he was looking for almost immediately.
ANTARCTIC SCRIPT,
he read.

Steve looked away from the script. At the moment he couldn’t read any more of it; he was too angry. The calamity on the ship had been bad enough, but he held in his hand written proof that the Secretary planned five more calamities. The contest wasn’t fair anyway, and here the Secretary had gone out of her way to create more problems for the kids. How could she do this? Why did America view the troubles and almost certain death of its poor as entertainment?

He had a vague recollection of an EduTV series about Roman gladiators. Men placed in the middle of a coliseum to fight lions and tigers while Roman crowds cheered. Didn’t the Romans’ love of gladiatorial combat predict the fall of their civilization?

How were the gladiators different from these kids?

“This series is wrong,” he said out loud.
Historical Survivor
’s rules prohibited acts of kindness like Pearl’s. Its aim was to torture people—even kids. He stared at the five blank screens on the wall. The Secretary’s treachery
just made him want to fight harder to protect the kids.

He reminded himself that nothing was hopeless. His whole family had died, but he had survived the Superpox, hadn’t he?

He still didn’t know how much he could do, but he leaned toward the screens and promised the kids, “You’re not alone.”

If he was to help them, he couldn’t let himself get too worked up; he needed to use his head. He picked up the script again from the floor where he had dropped it.

Steve skipped ahead.

Steve, feeling tears sting his eyes, closed the script. He sat down in a nearby chair and cried as Pearl swept. He wasn’t sure who he was crying for—himself or the kids or Pearl or the millions of viewers.

All of us, he decided through his tears.

IN HIS SLEEP
, Billy heard a noise and tried to wake himself. He felt as if he were at the bottom of a deep well. No, a crevasse. He tried to climb out, but he kept slipping down the icy slope.

The noise grew louder. Billy opened his eyes. He heard the sound of wild animals. Was he in Africa, in some jungle somewhere?

He stuck his head out of his sleeping bag and noticed the blue walls, a wool cap sticking out of the sleeping bag next to him, and the Primus stove. Then he remembered. He was in a tent in Antarctica in the middle of a blizzard. But Antarctica didn’t have any wild animals,
except for seals and penguins. He listened some more. Apart from the animal noises, it was quiet outside. The blizzard was over. He glanced at his watch. It was three
A.M.
or three
P.M.
in D.C. There was no way for him to know. All he knew for sure was that he had been asleep for hours.

The growling, snarling sound was loud. It was coming from more than one animal, and they were crazed and howling with excitement. They sounded like fierce wolves. Was this another calamity, another event in the stupid game? Had the Secretary transported wolves to Antarctica? There was something about this cold, forbidding terrain that made wolves seem appropriate.

He listened closely to the howls.

It was the idiot dogs. Who were like wolves, they were so fierce.

The dogs had gotten loose and were destroying the camp. Maybe the best thing he could do was to go back to sleep. The dogs would make a huge mess, and Andrew and Polly would vote to get rid of them in the morning. They had traveled seven miles yesterday before the bad weather hit. They had only twenty-three miles to go to get to the first depot. Pulling the loaded sleds, the cycles were
slower than Billy and Robert had hoped, but on a normal surface they could make four miles an hour. Driving the cycles, Robert and Billy could make it to the depot in six hours.

Billy slipped his head back into his sleeping bag, pleased that they were not about to get attacked by wolves. Besides, he felt like he was closer to depositing one hundred thousand dollars in his bank account. With Grace out of the way, he’d have a better shot at being MVP.

Then Billy remembered the seal. That’s what had excited the dogs.

The dogs were chowing down. Billy had tolerated the seal-leg soup, and seal steaks were bound to be even better. The dogs were eating his food. Billy reached over and shook Robert.

Robert groaned in his sleep.

Billy shook him again. “Listen.”

Robert shot up. “What?”

“The dogs.”

Robert paused and listened. “Why are they making so much noise?”

“They’ve gotten loose,” Billy told him. “Now we have to risk frostbite to catch them.”

Billy shook Grace. She sat up quickly, too. “What’s up?”

“The dogs,” Billy said simply.

“You must not have tied them up,” Robert
said, completely alert now.

“I tied them, all right,” Grace said as she scooted out of her sleeping bag.

“Then how could they get loose?” Billy asked.

“They probably ate through their harnesses,” Grace said. “Their food is moldy, and they’re hungry.”

“Well, come on,” Robert said.

Billy started groping around in his sleeping bag for his fur gloves. He felt his bags of nuts and candy, packages of crackers and health food bars before finally touching his gloves. He’d help Grace. Score points with the audience and Robert. He wouldn’t complain. Maybe tomorrow Robert would get rid of those stupid dogs. Didn’t Robert realize that he was setting Grace up as MVP?

Billy climbed out of his sleeping bag and, to keep his stash safe, carefully rolled it up. “Do you want to wake the others?” he asked Robert.

Robert was pulling on his parka. “I think we can handle it.”

Grace opened the tent flap and walked outside. The blizzard had stopped. They must have been asleep for a while, she thought, because the landscape had changed. The light from the sun and both moons reflected off the blanket of
new snow. The air seemed full of dazzling light. The mountains glowed in the distance. The temperature actually felt warmer, but Grace couldn’t enjoy the snowy wonderland because of the dogs.

Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and Apatosaurus were loose. The tethered dogs were standing and panting in frustration as they watched the feast in progress.

Not only had the loose dogs attacked the seal, one of them had ripped open a box of pemmican. The loose pemmican littered the white snow like dog droppings. The seal’s blood splattered the snow with pink polka dots.

Grace cracked the whip over Brontosaurus. He was undoubtedly the ringleader.

“You’re just hitting the air. Hit them!” Billy yelled. “They’re eating our food!”

What Billy said was true. The three dogs, large enough to be wolves, were devouring the seal. When Grace cracked the whip again, Brontosaurus turned back and looked at her, his fangs drenched in blood. Grace moved in quickly and pulled him off the carcass. He snarled and bit the air.

Grabbing his collar, Grace yanked him toward Robert. “Here,” she said. “Tie him up.”