Terminal Freeze (15 page)

The set of rooms was small and stripped as bare as a monk’s cell. Only the skeletal frames of bunk beds and a few sad-looking metal cabinets remained. And yet as he looked around, Logan felt certain this had been the scientists’ quarters.

Locating it had proven a challenge: C Level was cluttered with so much spare junk, it was hard to discern habitat from mere surplus bedding. But there were precisely eight beds here, arranged in attitudes that suggested an actual living arrangement rather than mere storage. There were four bunks in the central room, two above two. A single bunk in a good-sized room to one side-no doubt the chief scientist’s quarters. Two more beds in a room on the other side. And one last bunk in a cramped space off the bathroom barely larger than a closet.

Logan switched on every available light. Then, hands behind his back, he strolled slowly through the suite of rooms, looking around, peering into the empty cabinets, silently cajoling the long-departed ghosts to whisper their secrets to him. He’d hoped to find something: tools, perhaps, or equipment, printouts, photos. But it was clear the quarters had been carefully searched long ago, every item of interest removed and-if standard operating procedure in such classified matters was followed-immediately incinerated. Two hangers hung forlornly in a closet; a button lay on the floor, trailing thread behind it like a kite string. A tube of toothpaste sat on the metal shelf above the bathroom sink, curled and desiccated. It seemed the space had little left to tell.

Logan returned to the central room. He had lived in a similar space himself once, years ago, on an archaeological dig near Masada. The Israeli army had loaned the team of scientists and historians a remote set of barracks to bunk in. Logan shook his head, recalling the aridity and the isolation. It had felt, he remembered, a million miles from anywhere. Just as this place did.

He settled slowly onto the wire springs of the nearest bunk. Empty rooms or not, scientists left trails. Their minds were always busy. They kept journals. They had ideas and observations to collect, and never more so than when away from civilization, far from phones or research assistants. There would be notes to jot down, things to come back to later in the comfort of private labs: ideas for experiments, theories for research papers. His wife had teased him about this very thing more than once, calling him a conceptual pack rat. “Other people hoard dish towels, greeting cards, spare toasters,” she’d said. “You hoard theories.” The scientists here would have been no different.

Except for one thing. They-and their theories-never got out.

He rose from the bed, looked around at the four bunks again. The chummiest guys, the socializers, would have slept in this room, played poker or bridge. He walked slowly through the other rooms, stopping at last in the cramped compartment. This dark and cave-like space would probably have been the least desirable berth. And yet it was the one he would have chosen: private, quiet, the ideal place to concentrate on one’s thoughts.

Or to write a journal.

As he stood there-in the acute and watchful silence-an unexpected but strangely delicious shudder passed through him. All of a sudden he felt intensely alive. Even if I don’t succeed here, he thought, even if this whole wild-goose chase proves a failure, right now is what makes it all worthwhile. There was something indefinably glorious about the hunt itself: here, in this room, three floors beneath the ice, trying to piece together the struggles of those men, fifty years ago; putting himself in their shoes; and maybe-just maybe-finding gold dust.

The room was utterly empty save for the bare bed frame. Kneeling quickly, he looked at it from below. Nothing. He pulled the lone, empty cabinet away from the wall, looked behind it, looked beneath it, pushed it back into place. In the rear of the room was a closet, barely big enough to stand in. He lifted the single metal rod that spanned it, peered into its hollow core, returned it. There was a narrow lip that ran along the closet walls, just below the ceiling; he reached up and drew a finger along it, finding nothing but dust. He stepped back into the room, looking around again: at the bare walls and ceiling, at the lone lightbulb.

If I’d been living here, he thought, if I’d been keeping unauthorized notes of my findings-and I would have-where would I have stashed them?

He pulled the bed frame away from the wall. The metal surface behind it was as bare as all the rest, save for an electrical outlet near the floor. With a quiet sigh, he pushed the bed back into position.

Then he paused. Pulling the bed away once again, he knelt beside the wall, retrieved a combination tool and a flashlight from his pocket, unscrewed the outlet plate, and shone the beam of his flashlight inside. What he saw surprised him. The outlet receptacles were disconnected and came away with the cover plate. Behind it was just a dark rectangular hole. Then, looking more closely, he noticed a strand of thick rubber wrapped around the ancient switch box. One end of the length of rubber disappeared down into the blackness behind the wall space. Gently threading it out, Logan found it was tied to a hole punched into the spine of a small notebook: yellowed, tattered, covered with mildew.

As carefully as if he was handling a Fabergé egg, Logan untied the little knot of rubber, wiped the dust from the notebook, and opened the cover. Faded, spidery handwriting covered the first page.

He smiled slightly to himself. “Karen, darling,” he murmured. “I wish you could see this.” But there was no response from beyond the grave-as Logan knew there wouldn’t be.

The corridors of the south wing were dimly lit, and shadows striped the drab metal walls. It was 6:00 PM and Fear Base lay cloaked in utter silence. Ken Toussaint walked down the central passage of A Level, portable digital camera in one hand and Conti’s hastily sketched map in the other. He hadn’t seen any of the small detachment of soldiers-Conti had promised to keep them occupied through the dinner hour-but nevertheless he found himself walking almost on tiptoe. Something about the close silence unnerved him.

This was the strangest and most unpleasant photo shoot he’d ever been on. He’d been sent to some out-of-the-way places in his time; he’d been eaten alive by mosquitoes in Cambodia, dusted sand out of every imaginable orifice in Chad, flicked scorpions from his equipment in Paraguay. But this took the cake. Marooned on the roof of the world, hundreds of miles from anything resembling civilization, threatened by ice storms and polar bears, confined to an ancient, smelly military base. Not only that, but it seemed all the discomfort had been for naught.

Reaching an intersection, he stopped, consulted the map, turned right. And that wasn’t the worst of it. What had been merely annoying had now turned abruptly lethal.

What was he doing here, anyway, sneaking around like this? When Conti had given him the assignment he was dazed by the news of Peters’s death, still trying to process it. The implications of what Conti wanted hadn’t really sunk in. But now, walking down this silent corridor, they had. Big-time. Now, when it was too late to object.

He’d only been in this wing of the base once before, yesterday, searching halfheartedly for the missing carcass. It seemed to house lots of engineering and technical apparatus, at least judging by the worn lettering stenciled on the doors he passed. On impulse, he stopped by a door labeled TRANSDUCER ARRAY-BACKUP I. He reached for the knob, jiggled it. Locked. He continued on.

It seemed almost cannibalistic, what Conti wanted: a gratuitous, sensationalist filming of a member of their own crew, now that he was dead and couldn’t object. It was a gross invasion of privacy. What would Josh’s family have to say?

On the other hand, he told himself as he started forward again, the network wasn’t stupid, they’d make sure it was tasteful, nothing gory. And Conti knew what he was doing-he had to remember that. Conti might be a brilliant filmmaker, but he was a realist as well. If there was a way to turn this disaster around, to make something truly memorable, he’d find it. Toussaint reminded himself that he, too, had a reputation to worry about.

The fluorescent bulbs were less frequent now, and the intersection ahead was wreathed in intertwining shadows. And there was something else to think about: this was, at last, a truly unique assignment. Nobody but he and Conti knew about it. It could become a feather in his cap, something to add to his portfolio. For the entire production phase he’d been doing second-unit work, shooting inserts, getting the B shots. He’d always been distinctly in Fortnum’s shadow. This was a chance to change that. He’d make sure to add audio commentary to the shot: if the network liked it, that could only help raise his profile further.

Reaching the intersection, he plucked the lens cap from the camera, switched it on, set the frame rate, fired up the supplemental illumination, adjusted the focus, checked the white balance and exposure, fitted the cord of the shotgun mic to his belt pack. He’d do this in one long take: sweep into the infirmary, move to the examination room, do a 360 of the body, zoom in for a few close-ups, maybe briefly pull back the sheeting he’d been told Peters was wrapped in. That would be it. He could be in and out in ninety seconds, the footage safe and secure on the camera’s hard disk. Like Conti had said: get in, get the shot, get out.

He rounded the corner. There it was: second door on the left. Thrusting the map into his pocket, he fitted the viewfinder to his eye, lined up the shot. The beam of his camera light bobbed along the corridor with the movement of his shoulder, and he aimed the spotlight on the infirmary door. The door was closed.

An unpleasant thought suddenly struck him. What if it was locked? Conti wasn’t in the mood to take no for an answer.

He hastily approached the door, looking through the lens as he walked. A quick try of the door reassured his jangled nerves: it was unlocked. He reached in, felt for the light switch, flicked it on, withdrew his hand.

Taking his eye from the viewfinder, he glanced up and down the corridor again, with the sudden, guilty movements of someone up to no good. But there was nobody; there was nothing. Nothing except the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing nervously on end; a faint high keening in his ears that signified, perhaps, he’d waited too long to take his blood pressure medication.

Time to do this. He cleared his throat quietly, fitted his eye to the viewfinder again, pressed the Record button, and pushed the door wide. “I’m going in now,” he said into the microphone.

He moved quickly inside, careful to keep the camera level as he panned around the cramped space. His heart was beating faster than he liked, his motions jerky and abrupt. He cursed himself for not bringing the Steadicam, then reconsidered: an amateurish approach might be just the thing for this sortie. They could add some digital filters back in the lab, give the film the grainy look of a cheap camera rig, imitating shots taken on the sly…

The doorway to the next room came into focus in the viewfinder. The body, Conti said, would be in there.

“The body’s in the next room,” he murmured into the mic. “Beyond the office.”

He felt his breathing accelerate, matching his heart. Ninety seconds. That’s all. In and out.

He moved forward, sweeping the camera left and right as he went, careful not to trip over any obstacles. The doorway was a pool of blackness, perforated by the small yellow cone of the camera’s light. Again his hand felt along the nearest wall; again he snapped on the old-fashioned bulky switch.

The lights came up and immediately the view through the lens went solid white. Stupid mistake-he should have turned the light on before he entered, given the camera time to compensate. As the saturated white faded somewhat and the room shapes resolved themselves, he saw the examining table in the center. The body lay on it, wrapped tightly in plastic sheeting. Thin smears of blood ran along the underside of the sheeting like stripes on a candy cane.

Breathing still faster now, he got a good establishing shot of the room, then maneuvered slowly around the table, panning the camera along the length of the sheeted corpse. This was good. Conti’s instincts had been right. They’d edit the content down, add a few jump cuts, let the viewers’ imaginations fill in the gaps. He laughed through his panting breaths, forgetting in his excitement to continue the audio commentary. Wait until Fortnum sees this…

That was when he heard it. Although “heard” wasn’t quite right-it was more like a sudden change in air pressure, a painful sensation of fullness, felt through the pulmonary cavity of his chest and-especially-the deepest channels of his ears and nasal sinuses. Something nearby, something he instinctually understood to be perilous, made Toussaint take instant notice. His head jerked away from the viewfinder and-with the atavistic certainty of a million years of prey-locked his gaze onto the dark doorway in the far wall of the exam room.

Something lurked there. Something hungry.

His breath was coming even faster now, rough gulps of air that somehow weren’t enough to fill his lungs. The camera was still rolling, but he no longer noticed. His mind worked frantically, trying to tell him this was crazy, just an attack of nerves, completely understandable under the circumstances…

What the hell was he so worried about all of a sudden? He hadn’t seen anything, heard anything-not really. And yet something about the perfect blackness of that far doorway set his instincts ringing five-alarm.

He stepped back, swinging the still-whirring camera wildly, the beam of light lashing across the walls and ceiling. His retreating back bumped heavily against the corpse and it pushed back with the sickening stiffness of rigor.

Just turn around, he told himself. You’ve got the shot. Turn around and get the hell out.

He wheeled, preparing to flee.

And yet he could not flee. Deep inside he knew that if he didn’t look now, he’d never dare to look, ever again. And he sensed something else-something even deeper-telling him that, if his instincts were right, running wouldn’t make the least difference anyway.

Lifting the camera, fitting the viewfinder to his eye, panting audibly now, Toussaint turned back and-very slowly-aimed the beam of light into the darkness beyond the far doorway.

And into the face of nightmare.