Terminal Freeze (23 page)

“It’s supposed to be this rough?” Barbour asked through gritted teeth. “The ride, I mean?”

“Nope. Normally they cover the winter road portages in a layer of ice. But we’re making our own road. Just grab the ‘oh, shit!’ handle.”

“The what?”

“That stabilizer bar over your door.”

Barbour reached up and took hold of the horizontal metal bar, then glanced at Carradine. The cab of the big truck was so large that the man was actually out of reach. It seemed his hands were constantly moving-over the steering wheel, to the gearshift, to one of the innumerable buttons on the dash. She had never ridden in an articulated lorry before and was astonished at how high off the ground they were-and just how rough it was.

“Have to keep our speed down to thirty,” the trucker said, omnipresent wad of gum bulging one cheek. “Don’t want to damage the trailer coupling. We’ll have to slow down even more when we reach the lake, but at least the ride will be smoother then.” He chuckled.

Barbour didn’t like the sound of that chuckle. “What lake?”

“We’ll have to cross one lake on the way to Arctic Village. Lost Hope Lake. It’s too wide, can’t be avoided. But it’s been nice and cold, we shouldn’t have any problems.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Why do you think they call it ice-road trucking? On the regular winter road, 80 percent of the route is over ice. The portages only count for 20 percent of the trip.”

Barbour didn’t reply. Lost Hope Lake, she thought. Let’s hope it doesn’t live up to its name.

“We’re lucky we’ve got this wind,” Carradine went on. “It keeps the snow cover down, helps me find the most level route across the permafrost. We have to be very careful-can’t risk getting a blowout, all those people back there without heat.”

Barbour glanced into the rearview mirror. In the reflected running lights she could just make out the silver bulk of the trailer. Thirty-five people inside. She imagined them sitting in there, probably speaking very little, with only a flashlight or two for illumination. The heat would be waning by now.

Carradine had shown her how to use the CB radio to communicate with Fortnum. She plucked the handset from its cradle, made sure the proper frequency was selected, pressed the Talk switch. “Fortnum, you there?”

There was a brief crackle. “Here.”

“How is it going back there?”

“Okay so far.”

“Is it getting cold?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll give you updates as we get farther south. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Will do.”

Barbour didn’t know the proper etiquette for ending the conversation so she simply replaced the handset onto the transmitter. The last part of the exchange had been only for morale-there was of course nothing she could do to help them. She glanced over at Carradine. “How much farther?”

“To Arctic Village? It’s two hundred and ten miles from the base to the northern outpost. That’s where we’re headed.”

Two hundred and ten miles. They’d already been on the road nearly an hour. Barbour did a little mental calculation. They still had almost six hours to go.

Outside the broad windshield, the storm was a confusion of white flakes against a screen of black. The wind whipped huge skeins of snow up from the ground, exposing the featureless gray moonscape of permafrost beneath. Carradine had turned on every fog light and headlamp on the truck, and despite his light tone and joking manner she noticed just how carefully he watched the landscape ahead, gently turning the truck well before encountering a potential obstacle.

The cab bounced and shook until it seemed her teeth would loosen. She wondered how Sully and Faraday were getting on back at the base, whether or not Marshall had returned. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Sully talk her into leaving. It was just as much her expedition as anybody else’s; she wasn’t only the computer specialist, she had important research that shouldn’t be abandoned just because…

Something had changed. She glanced over at Carradine. “Are we slowing?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“We’re approaching Lost Hope Lake. Fifteen miles per hour, maximum, on the ice.”

“But there’s no heat back in the trailer. We can’t delay.”

“Lady, let me explain. Driving over a frozen lake creates a wave beneath the ice. That wave follows us as we cross. Drive too fast, the wave gets too large and breaks through the ice. If that happens, we sink to the bottom. The ice refreezes overhead in minutes and, presto, you’ve got a premade grave that-”

“Right. I get the picture.”

Now, out of the darkness ahead, something glinted dully in the headlights. Barbour sat up, peering intently-and nervously. Ice, stretching into the distance until it became lost in the storm.

Carradine slowed the truck still further, working his way down through the gears, then let it roll to a stop with a chuff of air brakes. He reached back into the sleeper cabin, pulled out a long tool shaped like a svelte jackhammer. “Be right back,” he said, opening his door.

“But-” she began to protest.

The trucker stepped out and shut the door behind him, dropping down out of sight, and she fell silent. A moment later she saw him again, trotting out ahead of the truck, an incongruous sight in his tropical shirt, tool balanced on one shoulder. The wind had eased, and skeins of snow curled around him almost caressingly. As she watched, he stepped onto the ice, walking perhaps fifty yards out. He unshouldered the tool, fired it up, and applied it to the ice. It was, she realized, a power auger. Within thirty seconds he had broken through and was trotting back toward the cab. He climbed up, opened the door, and swung in. He was smiling widely. A thin coating of ice covered his hair and shoulders.

“You’re just bloody daft, you know that?” she said. “Going out into a storm, dressed like that.”

“Cold is a state of mind.” Carradine threw the auger into the back, then rubbed his hands together-out of chill or anticipation, Barbour couldn’t guess. “The ice is twenty-two inches thick.”

“Is that bad?”

“That’s good. Eighteen inches is the minimum. We’re ahead of the season. This here is good for twenty-five, maybe thirty tons.” He jerked a finger toward the auger, chuckling. “I know this trip’s kind of low-tech. No continuous profiling, no ice radar, like they have on the real winter road. But hey, we don’t have any load restrictions or pain-in-the-ass dispatchers, either.”

He looked at her a minute. “Okay. I’ll tell you something now, just so you’ll be prepared. Driving on ice isn’t like driving on a normal road. It bends with the truck. And it makes a lot of noise.”

“What?”

“It’s better if you hear it for yourself.” He released the brake, put the truck in gear. “Now I’m going to ease us onto the lake. You don’t want to hit it too fast and stretch the ice.”

“Stretch it? No, no, you certainly don’t want to do that.” Barbour looked out at the seeming limitless span of ice that lay ahead. Were they really going to drive an eighteen-wheel truck onto that?

“All right.” Carradine let the truck creep forward toward the shore, then glanced at her again and winked. “Here’s where you cross your fingers, ma’am.”

They crept forward onto the ice at little more than ten miles per hour. Barbour tensed as she felt the shaking and pounding of the permafrost give way to the far more unsettling sensation of ice flexing beneath them. Carradine frowned with concentration, one hand on the wheel, the other grasping the gearshift. The engine whined as they moved forward. “Gotta keep the RPMs high,” he muttered. “Helps prevent spinning out.”

As they ventured farther onto the ice, Barbour could hear a new sound-a faint crackling that seemed to come from all around her, like the sound of cellophane being torn from a Christmas toy. She swallowed painfully. She knew what that sound was: the ice, protesting under the massive weight of the big-rig truck.

“How far across?” she asked a little hoarsely.

“Four miles,” Carradine replied, not taking his eyes from the ice.

They kept on at what seemed a snail’s pace, the crackling growing louder. Snow skittered along the ice, forming eddies and cyclones and odd phantasmal shapes in the headlights. Now and then Barbour heard sharp pops and booms from beneath. She bit her lip, mentally counting the minutes. Suddenly, the truck yawed sideways, sliding to the right. She looked quickly at the trucker.

“Gust of wind,” he said, turning the wheel very gently to compensate. “No traction out here.”

The CB radio chirped. Barbour reached for the handset. “Fortnum?”

“Yes. What’s all that noise outside? People back here are getting a little worried.”

She thought a moment before replying. “We’re going over an icy patch. Should just be a couple of minutes more.”

“Understood. I’ll pass the word.”

She replaced the handset, exchanged glances with Carradine.

Five minutes crawled by, then ten. Barbour realized her right hand had gone numb from gripping the stabilizer bar. The faint give of the ice, the constant crackling and snapping sounds, made her so tense she feared she’d go mad. The wind moaned and cried. Now and then a stronger gust would shove the truck sideways, forcing Carradine to compensate with the greatest of care.

She peered ahead through the murk. Was that the far shore in the distance? But no-it was just a dark wall of icy pellets that hung in the air, shifting and throbbing in the wind like a rippling curtain.

“Ice fog,” Carradine explained. “The air can’t hold any more moisture.”

The strange mist began to envelope the truck like a cloud of black cotton. The visibility, poor to begin with, abruptly dropped to near zero.

“Can’t see a bloody thing,” Barbour said. “Slow down.”

“Can’t,” the trucker replied. “Can’t lose momentum.”

This new blindness, combined with the awful flexing and crackling of the ice beneath them, was simply too much for Barbour. She felt herself hyperventilating, drowning in anxiety. Hold on, luv, she told herself. Just hold on. Only a minute or two more.

And then they were through the cloud of ice-and now she could see the rocks of the far shore, at the very limit of the headlight beams. Relief flooded through her. Thank God.

Carradine took his eyes from the ice long enough to glance at her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Suddenly the truck gave a sharp lurch downward. At the same time there was a loud crack, like the report of a gun, just behind them. “Soft spot,” said Carradine, stepping heavily on the accelerator. “Weak ice.”

They pushed forward faster now, the big diesel whining. Another crack, louder, this one from directly below. Barbour saw that a split had formed in the ice and was now shooting out ahead of them with increasing speed, the two sections pulling apart. Carradine immediately compensated, maneuvering the truck so the crack stayed between the front wheels. But ahead the crack forked, once, twice, spreading across the ice at crazy angles like summer lightning. Carradine turned the wheel sharply, moving laterally over the webbing of cracks. The popping and snapping spiked abruptly in volume. Just then a brutal gust of wind caught the side of the truck. Barbour cried out as she felt the rear of the truck twist, then tilt alarmingly, threatening to jackknife and overturn on the collapsing ice.

“Spinout!” Carradine shouted. “Hold on!”

Barbour clung desperately to the stabilizer bar as the trucker fought to keep the big vehicle from rolling. Slowly, forward momentum brought them level to the ice. The far shore was just ahead now, less than fifty yards away. But the truck was still in a barely controlled spin. It collided with one of the shoreline rocks in a shuddering crash, lurched away, then stabilized. Carradine goosed the throttle again and the truck roared off the ice and back onto the washboard surface of the permafrost.

Barbour exhaled a long, shivering breath. Then she reached for the CB handset. “Fortnum, it’s Penny Barbour. Everyone all right back there?”

After a moment, Fortnum’s crackly voice replied. “A little shaken up but otherwise okay. What happened?”

“A gust of air caught us. But we’re off the ice now, and it should be clear sailing the rest of the way.”

As she replaced the handset, she happened to glance at Carradine. He was peering into his rearview mirror. Seeing the expression on his face, her anxiety returned.

“What is it?” she asked.

“That rock we hit,” he replied. “Looks like it holed our left tank.”

“Petrol tank? But don’t you have two?”

“The left tank was full. The right one isn’t. It’s only a third full.”

The feeling of anxiety spiked sharply. “But we’ve got enough to get to Arctic Village -don’t we?”

Carradine didn’t look at her. “No, ma’am. I don’t believe we do.”

They had worked quickly, in as little light as possible. Precisely how much the beast relied on sight, Gonzalez didn’t know-but there was no point making it any easier for the goddamned thing.

He tapped Phillips on the shoulder, then gestured toward the dimly lit intersection ahead. “Cover that corner,” he whispered. “I’ll make the final connections.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Signal the minute you hear anything.”

“Sir.”

He watched Phillips move down the hallway-a shadow among shadows-and take position near the intersection. Then he glanced at the hastily constructed setup immediately before him: half a dozen thick copper wires, hanging from the ceiling and suspended a foot over a shallow pool of water. Crude, but lethal enough once he’d finished. Then he slipped back through the doorway marked

MOTIVIC POWER STATION.

He stopped just inside, looking around at the complex arrays of cogs, couplings, shafts, rotors, and hydraulics. The substation housed the giant machinery once used to turn the radar dishes. He had chosen this particular room for three reasons: it was nearby, it had sufficient power, and it lay along the lone hallway that led out of this section of B Level. Sooner or later, the creature would have to come this way.

His eyes drifted to a far corner of the room, where Corporal Marcelin stood, weapon at his feet, trembling, eyes downcast. Then, picking up the loose ends of the copper wires-he and Phillips had run them over the pipes of the hallway ceiling and through the transom above the door-he headed toward the main electrical panel. Though the radar dishes hadn’t been spun up in almost half a century, the electrical connections that fed them were still operational. He’d just tested them himself: the fuses were a little powdery, the connections rusted, but they were still capable of plenty of current. Besides, he didn’t need to use the radar dishes-he just needed to run power to them.

How and why Sully and the others in the life-sciences lab thought electricity was the beast’s particular weakness, Gonzalez didn’t know and didn’t care. He was simply relieved-relieved as hell-to know it had one. Coming up with a plan, putting it into action, had taken fifteen minutes. And during that fifteen minutes he’d been too mercifully busy to think.

The main panel was set into the closest wall, fixed to the metal by four ceramic insulators. He opened its cover plate and shone his light inside. Four rows of heavy-duty fuses glinted back at him. He checked to make sure the mains were off, then used his pocketknife to strip the heavy insulation from the ends of the eight-gauge wires. As quickly as he could, he affixed the wires directly to one of the bus bars. He swept his gaze over the panel, ensuring that all the safeties were disconnected. Finally, he reached over, grasped the fail-safe lever beside the panel, and thrust it into the On position. There was a faint hum as the circuit went live.

Now the wires were crawling with six thousand volts and twenty amps of juice. That kind of voltage-three times the amount of an electric chair-would seize the heart of any beast, no matter how big. And Gonzalez wasn’t taking any chances: the twenty amps would cook it nicely, to boot.

He shifted the fail-safe lever back into the Off position and turned to Marcelin. “Come here, Corporal.”

For a minute, Marcelin didn’t seem to hear. Then he picked up his M16 and came forward on wooden legs.

“Wait here. When I give the word, throw this lever. Do it quickly. Got that?”

The corporal nodded.

“Take up position by the doorway. Wait until the thing has stepped into the water, made contact with the wires. Then open fire-and keep firing.”

Marcelin moved next to the electrical panel. Gonzalez took one last look at the jury-rigged connection, then stepped out into the hallway and took up his own position, careful to keep well away from the wires. He checked his weapon, ejected the magazine, knocked it gently against the ground, slapped it back into place. Now there was nothing to do but wait.

He gave his plan a quick run-through. It had been more than thirty years since he’d studied elementary engineering, but he remembered the basics well enough. Electricity passes easily through water. Organisms are mostly water, making them good conductors of electricity. So: hang enough live wires from the ceiling that the creature would have to come in contact with at least one, and hang them low enough so that it couldn’t crawl beneath. Pour enough water on the floor to create a shallow pool, and make sure it reached from wall to wall. Position the wires over the water and apply positive current. When the beast walked through the wires, it would complete the circuit-and good night, ladies.

It seemed foolproof enough. Now all they needed was for the thing to show up.

He crouched lower, minimizing his profile. He could see the dim form of Phillips up ahead at the intersection. Phillips was the lure. The private had a good vantage down both corridors; he’d see the beast when it was still far away. Once he was sure he’d been spotted, he would retreat down the hall, past the wires and over the water, to the spot where Gonzalez waited. As the beast approached, they’d signal Marcelin to throw the lever-and the frigging thing would fry.

Gonzalez snugged the stock of his M16 against his cheek, sighted along the barrel. While he’d been checking the electrical box, running the wires, he had been all too aware that the creature might surprise them at any moment. Now that everything was in place, he had time to think. And he did not want to think. Because he knew where his thoughts would stray: to the sight of the thing tearing Creel into dog food; to those horrible moments of mad, mindless flight away from radar support, never knowing if the next moment, he’d feel teeth sink into his back, feel those claws rip his limbs from his body…

He shifted position. No point in maintaining silence anymore now that the trap was set. “Phillips,” he called out. “Anything?”

From the pool of light at the intersection, Phillips shook his head, formed an X with his forearms.

Gonzalez shifted again in the darkness. Creel’s rocket had been sadly off target; it wasn’t surprising that it didn’t stop the creature. But the hail of bullets that had followed: Was it possible they all missed? Because if they hadn’t missed, then that meant…

Gonzalez didn’t want to think about what that meant.

Maybe it was dead. Maybe that was it. It had been mortally wounded, and its carcass was lying back there somewhere in the dark passages. Or maybe it had gone down to C Level. Maybe they’d be sitting here for hours, in the dark, waiting…

Gonzalez shook his head savagely to clear these thoughts. He glanced into the substation, toward the motionless figure of Marcelin. The corporal was in bad shape. He was confident-reasonably confident-the man could be relied on to pull the fail-safe switch. It was a chance he had to take. He couldn’t be in two places at one time, and Phillips needed him to…

Movement at the corner of his eye made him glance back down the corridor. Phillips was gesturing frantically, a stricken look on his face.

“Is it coming?” Gonzalez called. “You see it?”

Phillips fumbled one-handed with his gun, dropped it, frantically picked it up again. And all the time he was holding his other hand over his head, waving it, looking for all the world like a New Year’s Eve reveler twirling a noisemaker.

“Get the hell back here!” Gonzalez cried out. “Marcelin, get ready with that switch!”

But Phillips didn’t move. He just stood there, mouth working, as if terror had snatched his voice from him.

Gonzalez squinted into the darkness, frowning, trying to get a better look at Phillips. Focusing on the upraised hand, he could see now that it wasn’t just waving. It was pointing. Pointing at a spot behind Gonzalez.

Fear gripped the sergeant’s vitals. He looked quickly over his shoulder, back down the corridor behind him.

It was there: black against black, perhaps fifty feet away, moving with a stealthiness Gonzalez would never have guessed possible for such a huge creature. He stared in horror. For a moment, his heart faltered in his chest. Then it exploded into life again, hammering against his ribs. He tumbled backward, splashing through the water, electrical wires dancing crazily as he half ran, half fell down the corridor toward Phillips. It’s not possible, a voice was saying in some distant part of his brain. This corridor is the only way out. There’s no way for it to have gotten past us. And yet somehow it had. As Gonzalez took up a position beside Phillips, gasping, he saw the thing pause briefly, its unblinking yellow eyes staring coldly at them, before creeping forward again.

“Marcelin!” Gonzalez cried. “Marcelin, now!”

There was no response from the substation.

“Marcelin, throw the goddamn switch!”

Was that the low hum of the transformer applying the load? It was hard to tell over his gulps for breath, over the painful pressure that once again seemed to suddenly fill his head. The creature was still creeping toward them. Another few seconds and it would pass the door to the substation…and reach the wires. Gonzalez fell forward on the ground, the butt of the outstretched M16 snugged against his cheek. He tried to aim at the thing but the barrel of his weapon kept rising and falling with the beat of his heart. The beast was moving more quickly now, as if abandoning any pretense of stealth.

“Oh, my God,” Phillips was saying, in a voice that was half prayer, half whimper. “My God. My God…”

Another step. Then another. As it approached, the creature never took its gaze from them, never blinked, never hesitated. There was something so awful about that look that Gonzalez felt himself go slack with dread. It was all he could do to keep the rifle from slipping through his fingers and clattering to the floor.

And then the creature reached the water. As Gonzalez watched, it hesitated a moment. Then it thrust itself between two of the dangling wires.

For a moment, nothing happened. And then the corridor filled with a tremendous, ear-splitting crack. Livid lightning danced from wire to wire, arcing over the creature’s massive haunches, spitting a hundred forking tongues toward the ceiling. The air filled with the smell of ozone. Gonzalez felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Gray smoke billowed up in angry waves, filling the corridor, blotting the creature from view. There was a rising whine as the transformer tried to draw more current. The lights flickered-once, twice-followed by a hollow boom as the transformer overloaded. The corridor fell into utter blackness.

“My God,” Phillips was still repeating, tonelessly, like a mantra. “My God.”

The lights snapped on again as a secondary transformer picked up the load. The wires jerked and danced, raining fitful showers of sparks. Gonzalez peered through the roiling pall of smoke, searching desperately for a glimpse of the thing. It had to be dead. It had to. Nothing could live through that…

The creature’s head poked through the leading edge of the smoke. Gonzalez gasped, tightened his grip on his weapon. As the smoke began to slowly dissipate, more of the creature became visible. Black scorch marks were seared across its withers. For a moment it remained as still as death.

And then it opened its mouth.

Inside the substation, Marcelin began to scream.

The creature swiveled toward the noise. It reared back on powerful haunches. Then it turned and-slowly, deliberately-disappeared inside the doorway. And as he watched, unable to move, unable to act, Gonzalez’s heart seemed to accelerate with the pitch of Marcelin’s screams.