Terminal Freeze (27 page)

Kari Ekberg stumbled down the corridor of C Level, the flashlight slick in her sweaty hands. Her shins ached from where she had barked them on protruding ducts and storage crates; her knees were skinned from half a dozen falls onto unforgiving steel and linoleum floors. Thank God the light and radio still worked. Yet again she forced the dreadful images from her mind: Conti screaming as blood flew in all directions like spray from a rotary sprinkler. Yet again she told herself, over and over, like a mantra: Don’t look back. Don’t look back.

It had taken fifteen minutes to descend the two decks from the officers’ mess: fifteen minutes of unadulterated terror. Now she passed the laundry, ancient washers and dryers standing in silent rows below curling posters exhorting cleanliness. Next was the tailoring shop: a nook barely large enough for a desk, a sewing machine, and a tailor’s dummy. Beyond, the hallway divided. She stopped and fumbled with the radio. Her hands were shaking so badly it took three tries to depress the Transmit button.

“I’m at the hallway junction by tailoring,” she said, hearing the quaver in her voice.

Marshall ’s voice crackled back. “I just reached D Level. Hold on, I’ll radio Gonzalez for directions.”

She stood, gasping for breath, in the close darkness. This was the worst time: standing, waiting for instructions-and waiting for that strange full feeling in the ears, the stealthy tread that signaled the approach of nightmare…

“Make a left,” Marshall ’s electrified voice said. “At the end of the hall, make another left. You’ll see a staircase: go down it. I should be waiting there. If not, radio me.”

Ekberg pushed the radio back into the pocket of her jeans. Turning left, she shone the light around briefly, searching for obstacles, then took off at a jog. She passed the food-preparation areas: empty kitchens, huge porcelain sinks gleaming and spectral. A dozen doorways flashed past, yawning onto rooms black and mysterious. Her knees and shins throbbed fiercely, but she pushed the pain to the back of her mind. Ahead, illuminated by a single bulb, she could see the hallway divide again. Go left, he said. Go left, and you’ll see a…

Suddenly, her foot caught against something and she fell headlong to the floor, her radio clattering away down the corridor, the flashlight rolling against the wall and winking out. God, no, no…

Crawling on hands and outraged knees she felt around frantically for the flashlight. One hand closed over it and, heart in her mouth, she pressed the switch. It flickered, went out, then brightened. Thank you. Thank you. Pulling herself to her feet, she shone the light ahead, searching for the radio. There it was: on the ground maybe ten feet ahead. She raced to it, knelt, scooped it up.

“Hello!” she said, fumbling with the Transmit button. “Hello, Evan, are you there?”

Nothing. Not even static in reply.

“Evan, hello!” Her voice spiked sharply with anxiety and dismay. “Hello-!”

Suddenly she stopped. Something had just set off her instinct for self-preservation, five-alarm. Was that the padding of feet from the darkness behind, heavy and yet horribly stealthy? Was that blood rushing through her ears, or some faint, strange-almost unearthly-singing? Terror coursed through her afresh, and with a sob of despair she jammed the broken radio back into her pocket and forced herself to start running once again. The light at the end of the corridor drew closer. And then she was at the intersection, veering left, shining the light wildly ahead, searching for the stairwell.

There it was: a well of blackness. She dashed up to it and raced down the steps, flashlight clattering against the metal handrail, no longer making any attempt to conceal her panicky flight.

She paused at the bottom step, looking about. Another dim corridor stretched on ahead, desks and tools piled up on either side. It was empty.

She blinked hard, wiped the back of a hand across her eyes, looked again. Nobody.

“Evan?” Ekberg said into the emptiness.

She felt her breathing grow shallower. No, no, no…

And there it was again: that low singing noise, almost like a whisper in her ears. Whimpering, she took a step forward, off the bottom step and into the corridor. She felt an overpowering need to look over her shoulder, up the stairwell. The light twitched in her hand…

“Kari!”

She glanced down the corridor again. A figure had come into view at the far end, a dark silhouette in the low light. With a cry she ran toward it. As it approached she recognized Marshall, worried expression on his face, an automatic rifle slung over one shoulder.

“Kari,” he said, coming up to her. “Thank God. Are you all right?”

“No. It’s after me, the monster, I heard it just now-”

“Hurry.” And with an urgent tug of his hand he led the way back down the hall.

Despite her growing exhaustion, Ekberg followed closely as Marshall traced a circuitous path past storage spaces and repair bays. Once they stopped at an intersection as he tried to recall the correct route. Another time they radioed back to Gonzalez for directions through the labyrinth.

“Where are we going?” she panted.

“The science wing. It’s one deck below. It’s protected by a thick hatch. It’s much safer than the upper decks. And we’ve assembled a weapon, a sonic weapon, that we hope to test on the beast. But first things first-let’s get you safely behind the hatch.”

They reached another stairwell and Marshall practically dove down it, three steps at a time. Ekberg followed as quickly as she could. E Level was a tomb, its low ceilings covered by thick rivers of conduit and cabling. They jogged past several rooms, Marshall ’s light illuminating the way. They turned right at a T junction. And then Marshall stopped so abruptly that Ekberg almost plowed into him.

Ahead the corridor ended at a massive hatchway, thrown wide open, brilliantly lit from the spaces beyond. Just inside was a strange contraption on a wheeled cart, all wires and antennas and electrical components like a confection from a 1950s science-fiction film. Two of the scientists-Faraday and Sully-were toiling over it. Beside them stood Sergeant Gonzalez, machine gun at the ready, pointed in their direction.

“What’s wrong?” Marshall said. “Why isn’t the weapon out here, away from the hatch?”

“No batteries,” said Faraday. “We had to connect it to the power supply inside. This is as far as the wires will reach.”

“Well, for God’s sake,” said Marshall, “find a connection out here!”

“No time,” replied Sully.

“You’re damn right there’s no time! That thing’s behind us, and we can’t compromise the safety of the science wing with an open-”

Marshall stopped in mid-sentence. Then Ekberg became aware of it, too: a creeping presentiment, more sixth sense than sensation, that raised the hairs on the back of her neck and sent fresh fear coursing through her. Once again, every instinct cried out for her to turn and look back. And this time she yielded, glancing over her shoulder.

Around the corner, just within eyesight, a black shape was crawling stealthily down the staircase toward them.

“Move, move!” And Marshall physically propelled Ekberg down the corridor and through the reinforced hatchway. The M16 that thumped against his back as he ran was an unfamiliar-and yet too familiar-weight. Just inside the hatchway, Sully-white-faced but determined-was manning the controls of the sonic weapon. Long power cables led away from it back into the electrical room, pulled taut, at the limit of their range. The big drivers sitting on the bottom tray crackled and hummed with latent power, the woofer trembling slightly. Directly behind were Faraday and Logan, looking on anxiously. They were flanked by Gonzalez and Phillips, both kneeling, automatic weapons pointing out through the hatchway and down the corridor. Usuguk stood behind them. He was holding his medicine bundle in both hands and chanting a low monody.

Marshall looked around quickly. This was exactly the situation he had hoped to avoid: hatchway wide open; weapon inside the science wing, untested and unproven; all of them now utterly exposed and vulnerable to attack. “We should close the hatch,” he said. “Just close it, now.”

“We’ll have time,” Sully replied. “If it doesn’t work, if it doesn’t stop the creature, we’ll have time.”

Marshall opened his mouth to protest again but at that moment there was movement at the corridor junction. All eyes turned to the dim hallway beyond the hatch. Slowly, a huge form came into view. Marshall stared in disbelief at the features: the wide, spade-shaped head; the teeth that gleamed wickedly; the dozens of razorlike tentacles that hung beneath. It was the creature of his nightmare, only worse: he’d seen the top of the head through the ice, but the dark occlusions had mercifully hidden the hideous lower half from view. Although perhaps it wasn’t merciful, after all, because surely if they could have seen those dreadful teeth through the ice, those vibrissae that slithered like a nest of snakes, they would never, never have allowed such a horrible beast ever to be unfrozen…For a moment he simply stared in horror and surprise. Then he unslung the weapon and pulled Ekberg over to Faraday.

“Take her deep into the science wing,” he said. “Find the safest, most secure spot you can. And lock yourselves in.”

“But-” Faraday began.

“Do it, Wright. Please.”

The biologist hesitated a moment. Then, nodding, he reached for Ekberg’s elbow and together they retreated back down the passageway, past the soldiers and the softly chanting Usuguk, rounded the corner, and disappeared from view.

Marshall turned back to the nightmare that was now crouched, fully exposed, at the corridor junction. From over his shoulder he could hear somebody breathing stertorously. “No,” said Phillips in a high desperate voice. “No, God, please. Not again.”

“Steady, soldier,” growled Gonzalez.

Sully-also breathing loudly-wiped his hands on his shirt, replaced them on the potentiometers and oscillator pots. Marshall crept forward half a dozen paces to the inner fairing of the hatchway, ducking behind the metal lip. He smacked the bottom of the ammo clip to make sure it was properly seated, pulled back the slide rod at the top of the weapon to chamber the first round, felt around the handle for the safety and toggled it off.

The creature took a step forward, looking at each of them in turn with unblinking eyes.

“Any time you’re ready, Doctor,” said Gonzalez.

The creature took another stealthy, deliberate step. There were bare streaks here and there in the matted hair that lay across its powerful shoulders-bullet tracings-and through those streaks Marshall could see the dull gleam of what looked like a snake’s scales.

Sully’s hands were shaking badly. “I’ll, I’ll try the wash of white noise first.”

For a moment, all Marshall heard was Phillips’s labored breathing and the rattle of another weapon being cocked. Then a squeal of static came from the drivers.

The creature took another step.

Sully’s voice was high and tight. “I’ll raise the sound pressure to 60 decibels, apply a low-pass filter.”

The volume abruptly increased, filling the narrow corridor. Still the creature came on.

“No effect,” said Sully over the wash of noise. “I’ll try a simple waveform instead. Sawtooth, fundamental frequency of 100 hertz.”

The sound of static faded, replaced by a low hum, rising quickly in pitch.

In the hallway, the creature stopped.

“Square wave next,” Sully said. “Raising frequency to 390 hertz at 100 decibels.”

The sound broadened, grew more complex. And as it did, Marshall began to hear-or thought he heard-a strange, faint singing, like the low tone of some sinister organ, borne on a distant wind: a complex, exotic, mysterious sound that had nothing to do with the waveforms created by Sully. His head felt strangely full, as if with some internal pressure.

The creature hesitated, one massive forepaw raised in mid-step.

“Adding the sine oscillator now,” came Sully’s voice. “I’ll raise the frequency, 880 hertz.”

“Goose the decibels,” Marshall called over his shoulder.

The sound grew louder still, until the metal walls of the corridor seemed to vibrate with noise. “Passing the threshold of pain!” shouted Sully. “At 120 decibels!”

The maelstrom of sound, overlaid with the fullness in Marshall ’s head, threatened to grow maddening. The creature took a step backward. Its haunches jerked slightly, as with involuntary tremors. It shook its shaggy head: once, twice, violent shakes of obvious pain.

“Just the sine wave now!” Sully cried. “It’s working!”

And then-suddenly-the creature gathered itself into a crouch, preparing to spring.

A dozen things happened simultaneously. Phillips and Sully cried out in dismay and fear. The volume of the device spiked still further, broadening and swelling. Gonzalez gave an almost inaudible command to fire. And then bullets were singing past Marshall ’s head, ripping down the corridor in strafes of gray smoke as they whined off walls and tottering piles of surplus equipment. Marshall raised his own gun and depressed the trigger. He could see his bullets running true; see them impact the creature, then ricochet off; watched fresh streaks of chitinous obsidian appear on the beast’s withers and flanks as the slugs exposed more exoskeleton. At this moment of crisis, of absolute extremity, time seemed to slow and reality fade: it was as if Marshall could almost see each individual bullet fly down the corridor on its violent, futile journey.

And then the beast charged. Instantly, Marshall flung himself toward the hatch in a desperate attempt to shut it, heedless of the fire being laid down by Gonzalez and Phillips. But the creature moved with remarkable speed. In a heartbeat it was past the hatch and through, knocking Marshall aside, throwing him against the wall with a sickening impact, leaping over the sonic weapon and overturning it in the process as-with single-minded ferocity-it seized Sully in its forepaws and, with two savage twists of its head, tore his arms from their sockets.

Marshall raised himself onto one elbow, momentarily stunned by the force of the blow. The central corridor of the science wing had been transformed into a bedlam of sound and violence: the beast, ripping into the shrieking Sully; blood, spraying from the climatologist’s ruined limbs, spraying the walls and floor in a maelstrom of crimson; Gonzalez and Phillips, scrambling backward, trying to get in a clear shot at the creature; the tray that held the sonic weapon lying on its side, wheels still turning; Usuguk, stepping forward past the soldiers, shaman’s charm held out before him as his chanting rose in pitch and urgency.

As Marshall watched, ears ringing with the impact, he saw the beast bat Sully-still screaming-into the air with one powerful swipe of a forelimb. A second swipe knocked the scientist through a doorway and into the forward office. The creature bounded in after him, disappearing from view. An enormous din-the crash of furniture, the impact of a body slamming against walls-erupted from inside. Sully’s screams grew ragged.

Marshall tried to rise to his feet, staggered, pulled himself up. It was too late-Sully was going to die. They were all going to die. For a second he wondered if there was time to get them out of the science wing, to close the hatch on the monster, but he quickly dismissed the thought. There was no time. It was over, the thing would kill Sully and then it would turn on them, one at a time, and-

His eyes fell on the sonic weapon, its pieces in disarray on the hallway floor. And yet it had worked. That last waveform Sully had tried, the sine-it had clearly affected the creature. He tried to drown out the ferocious din, the shouts of the soldiers, the painful pressure in his head. Tried to think, to concentrate, in the few seconds he had left. Why would a sine wave work when a sawtooth wave or a square wave didn’t?

He stopped. Maybe it wasn’t the waveshape at all. Maybe it was something else entirely…

He dashed toward the cart, righted it, and frantically began picking up the electronics that had shaken free and reassembling them.

“What are you doing?” Logan cried. Sully’s screams had now stopped but the terrible crashing and banging in the forward office continued.

“Trying again.” Marshall checked the connections from the amplifier to the drivers, snapped a loose potentiometer back into place. “It’s the harmonics; it has to be. That’s the only answer. But we need proper acoustics if we’re going to maximize-” He looked around wildly a minute. “Come on, give me a hand. That thing will be back out any second. We have to get this into the echo chamber.”

“You don’t have time for that shit!” Gonzalez said. “What’s the point of moving it?”

“It’s like adding poison to an arrowhead. We’re maximizing the payload.”

With Logan ’s help, Marshall wheeled the cart down the corridor, slipping repeatedly on a floor made slick with Sully’s blood. Usuguk followed in their path, still chanting, shaman’s rattle in one hand and a bone fetish in the other. With difficulty the two men trundled the cart past the control room, past the corridor intersection, and through the rear hatch into the echo chamber itself.

“Gonzalez!” Marshall cried. “I’m counting on you to slow it down!”

Motioning to Phillips, Gonzalez fell back to a spot just outside the echo chamber and took up a defensive position.

The crashing and banging from within the forward office stopped.

“We’ll need to set it up in the center to get the greatest effect,” Marshall told Logan.

Together, they pushed the cart to the middle of the catwalk. The electrical cables stretched taut, and for a dreadful moment Marshall thought they would not reach. But there was just enough play in them to position the weapon precisely in the center of the chamber, a spot marked on the floor of the catwalk with a label reading “0 dB.”

Marshall glanced at Usuguk. “You might be safer in that monitoring booth,” he said, gesturing to the glass-enclosed landing at the rear of the catwalk.

The Tunit stopped his low chant, shook his head. “Do you forget already what I taught you? If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance.”

“Your call.” Marshall turned the cart so the drivers were facing down the corridor, checked the connections, snapped the machine back on. No response. Frantically, he reseated vacuum tubes, tightened leads, and tried again. This time a low hum sounded from the massive woofer. He scanned the device, recalling the basics of sound generation on a synthesizer, reacquainting himself with the controls for amplitude, frequency, oscillator waveshape, filter envelope. He grabbed the amplitude knob, turned it sharply right. The cart began to tremble.

He noticed Logan was looking at him. “I calculate I’ve got about three minutes left to live,” the historian said. “If I’m lucky, it’ll happen quickly. In that case, I’ve probably only got two minutes. I’d like to die knowing what it is you tried to do.”

“That last waveform Sully tried,” Marshall replied, eyes back on the controls. “The one that caused the creature to react. It was a sine wave. That’s the purest sound wave possible. No harmonics, no overtones. So I’m going to pick up where he left off-I’ll use Fourier addition to complicate the pattern. Maybe it’ll hurt the creature enough to drive it away. If we can keep it away long enough, maybe we can create more portable-”

He fell silent. The creature had emerged from the forward office. Now it slowly turned to face them. Its forelegs and paws were sop-ping with blood, and its fangs and vibrissae were flecked with gore.

Marshall took a deep breath, tried to steady his shaking hands.

The creature took a step toward them. Quickly, Marshall set the waveform of the first oscillator to sawtooth, the frequency to 30 hertz, verified the amplitude of the master output was at 100 decibels. He pressed the tone button. The room rumbled with a low tone just above the threshold of hearing.

The creature sprang forward.

Marshall did a frantic mental calculation. A second note, overtone free, several octaves higher…

Even as he did so, the creature picked up speed, coming toward them at great leaps down the corridor. He set the second oscillator to sawtooth, dialed its frequency to 800 hertz.

“Christ!” Logan shouted.

Gonzalez and Phillips were firing now. Over the whine of the speaker, Marshall could just make out Phillips’s ragged cry, his weapon firing wildly, up and down and side to side as he lost the last remnants of his shattered nerves. The creature reached the soldiers, paused once again to shake its head violently, vibrissae dancing madly left and right. Phillips dropped his gun, rose to his feet, and ran down the corridor, wailing. The creature ducked its head, raised it again, and with a dreadful swipe of its foreleg knocked Gonzalez-still firing, point-blank-back into the echo chamber, a dreadful blow that sent him cartwheeling over the heads of Marshall and Logan. The sergeant hit the rear wall of the echo chamber with a crash, then slid down the curve of the wall to the floor twenty feet below, where he lay in a confusion of insulation and sound foam, stunned.

Marshall ’s hands were shaking badly now and he fumbled to set the third and final oscillator: sine wave again, this time at a very high frequency-60,000 hertz. A quick glance ensured that the amplitude envelope was fully front-loaded. Then, grasping the master fader, he pulled it all the way down. The eerie screeeeeee of the sine wave grew fainter, then stopped altogether.

“What are you doing?” Logan asked through gritted teeth. “You turned it off-and now we’re trapped!”

“I want to draw it inside the chamber,” Marshall replied. “We’re only going to get one chance at this. It has to count.”

With a precise, almost finicky movement that seemed wildly out of place for such a massive beast, the creature lifted one foreleg over the lip of the hatchway. The other foreleg followed. It glanced first left, then right, yellow eyes taking in the chamber. The strange low wash of singing in Logan ’s ears increased, and the pain in his head grew almost unbearable. Now the creature was fully inside the chamber, stepping out onto the catwalk. It groaned beneath its weight. One step, two…the creature crouched back on its haunches, tensing for another-and final-spring.

You might as well dance. With a quick movement, Marshall grasped the amplitude dial, set it to 120 decibels, and threw up the fader.

Instantly, the echo chamber came alive with sound. It was as if the sphere filled with a million wasps, all droning together, their hum amplified and re-amplified. The creature began to leap even as its entire frame convulsed. Marshall twirled the dial, raising the volume to 140 decibels. The creature convulsed again in midair, more violently this time, curling in on itself as it hurtled toward them; this arrested its jump and it fell heavily to the ground, shaking the catwalk alarmingly. Marshall ’s entire universe now seemed to be the frantic, terrible hum that echoed through the chamber, feeding on itself and building with an independent crescendo of power and intensity that seemed to penetrate his very pores. The creature scrabbled on the catwalk, clawing forward, first one paw, then the next, the bloody talons digging into the metal plating. Grasping the dial, his breath coming thick and fast, Marshall steeled himself, then twisted the dial all the way: 165 decibels, the amplitude level of a jet engine. Beside him, Logan covered his ears with his hands; the historian opened his mouth but any cry he made was completely masked by the barrage of noise-a screeeeeeeee that now seemed to be part of Marshall ’s very essence. His hands, too, went instinctively to his ears, but they were scant defense against the excruciating violation of sound. Spots danced before his eyes, and he felt himself grow faint.

The creature went rigid. Another violent trembling shook it from forepaw to hindquarter. It raised its head, opening its terrible jaws wide, the fangs still dripping with Sully’s blood, the vibrissae undulating fiercely. It turned sideways, banged its jaws against the catwalk with a horrifying impact: once, twice. It gathered its limbs, reared back. And then, as Marshall watched, its head came apart in an eruption of gore and matter, spattering them with a rain of blood, collapsing virtually at their feet. Drenched, the sonic weapon arced and squealed, then fell silent in an explosion of sparks.

For a long moment, Marshall simply stood there, trembling. Then he glanced over at Logan. The historian was looking back, blood trickling from his ears. He was speaking but Marshall could not hear him-could not, in fact, hear anything. Marshall turned away, stepped over the motionless creature-black blood still flooding from its ruined skull-and began walking toward the hatch leading out of the science wing, his limbs leaden. All of a sudden he felt a need to get out of this dark place of horrors, to breathe clean air. He sensed, more than heard, Logan and Usuguk swing into place behind him.

Slowly, painstakingly, they made their way up to the surface: to D Level; to the more familiar spaces of B Level; and finally to the entrance plaza, shadowy and lifeless. Still deaf, sodden with the creature’s blood, Marshall walked into the weather chamber, not bothering to don a parka. Stepping through the staging area, he pushed open the double doors leading to the concrete apron beyond.

It was dark, but a faint blush at the horizon line hinted dawn was not far away. The storm had subsided and the stars were coming out, lending a spectral brightness to the snowpack. Vaguely, as if from far away, Marshall recalled an Inuit proverb: They are not stars, but openings where our loved ones smile down to reassure us they are happy. He wondered if Usuguk believed this as well.

As if in response, he felt the Tunit touch his sleeve. When he looked over, Usuguk wordlessly pointed one finger toward the sky.

Marshall glanced up. The deep, unearthly crimson of the northern lights-the lights that had haunted them since the nightmare began-was quickly ebbing. Even as he watched, it faded away to nothing, leaving only the black dome of stars. There was no indication, even the faintest, that it had ever been there at all.