The Last Hunter - Descent (Book 1 of the Antarktos Saga) (2 page)

Mawson frowned. Mertz had a reputation for being a humorous fellow. “My lip is split. My knees are sore. My stomach is rumbling. I’m not in the mood for jokes, so let’s go. I want to be off this glacier before dark.”

“His hair was red. As red as the blood staining your beard. But his body was pale.” Mertz returned his eyes to the snow. “Wouldn’t have seen him if not for the hair.”

Mawson’s patience wore thin. “Mertz,” he growled more than said.

The man turned to him and Mawson saw wide-eyed fear. “I’m
not
joking.”

With his eyes shut, Mawson took a deep breath. The energy he’d exert losing his temper would drain him later on. He’d need that strength to survive. Calming his voice, he said, “Mertz, look around. What do you see?”

He glanced at Mertz, who was indeed looking. “White. From horizon to horizon. White! There is no one there. Not now. Not before. And if we stand here one more minute, we will—”

A sound like a howl rolled across the frozen plain. Mawson’s voice caught in his throat. It sounded...human. But it wasn’t. “The wind,” he said quickly, noticing the deepening wrinkles on Mertz’s sunburned forehead.

Why hadn’t the man covered his skin
? Mawson thought. Before he could ask, a second, louder howl echoed around them.

Before Mawson could once again dismiss the sound, Mertz spoke. “There’s not a breeze to speak of.”

Mawson held his breath. Mertz was right.

Mertz looked at him again.
I told you so
, his expression said. But as he turned away, his head spun back around, past Mawson, toward Ninnis. His eyes popped wide. His arm reached out. A high pitched, “No!” shot from his mouth.

Mawson turned around in time to see the last of the sledge dogs pulled toward a hole in the ice. It whimpered, digging its claws into the ice. Then it was gone. Ninnis, six dogs and the sledge had disappeared. The glacier had come to life and swallowed them whole.

The two men ran for the spot where Ninnis had been. They stopped short, sliding on their feet as the ice opened up before them. Ninnis had parked the sledge atop a crevasse. Had they but continued moving, he would have made it across.

Mawson lay on his stomach, dispersing his weight, and slid to the mouth of the gaping hole. One hundred and fifty feet below, on a ledge, lay a lone dog. It twitched between whimpers, its spine broken. Ninnis and the other five dogs were gone, disappeared into the darkness beyond.

“Ninnis!” Mawson shouted. “Ninnis! Lieutenant! Can you hear me? Are you alive, man?”

There was no reply. He suspected there never would be. But they couldn’t just leave him. For three hours the two men shouted until their voices grew hoarse. They tied all their ropes together, but the line wasn’t even long enough to reach the now dead sledge dog.

Distraught over the loss of their colleague and friend, Mawson and Mertz didn’t want to give up hope. But they had no choice. Ninnis had fallen with most of their food, their tents and warm weather gear. To survive the three hundred fifteen mile journey back to base camp, they couldn't spend one more minute mourning the man.

Mawson peeled a frozen tear from his cheek and returned to his sledge. They needed to move.

As they maneuvered the remaining sledge, and dogs, which would later become their food, around the crevasse, neither man heard the muffled cries coming from below. They left without pause, on a journey that would claim the lives of all six dogs and Mertz. Mawson alone would survive the journey and eventually return home to England.

But Ninnis would outlive them both.

Had either man thought to descend the rope they’d fashioned, they would have found their man tucked inside a hollow hidden by an overhang only fifty feet from the surface. After regaining consciousness, he’d tried to call out to them, to reach for the rope, but some unseen force pinned him down. An hour after Mawson and Mertz gave up the search, a hand so white it was nearly translucent, came away from his mouth.

“Welcome home, Ninnis,” a voice whispered in his ear, the breath smelling like rotten, jellied eel.

Ninnis filled his lungs and let out a scream, but the sound was cut short as he was taken by his collar and dragged deeper into the ice.

1

I scream.

I’m too terrified to do anything else. My hands are on my head. I’m pitched forward. My eyes are clenched shut. Every muscle in my body has gone tight, as though clutched in rigor.

The monster knocks me back and I spill into a pile of bones and old skin. But I feel no weight on top of me. No gnashing of teeth on my body. The thing has missed its tackle, striking a glancing blow as it passed, but nothing more. Perhaps because I bent down. Perhaps because it can’t see well in the dark. I don’t know. I don’t care.

I’m alive. For now.

And I don’t want to die.

But I’m certain I’m going to and the events of the past few months replay in my mind. I can’t stop it. I can’t control it. And in a flash, I’m back at the beginning.

I’ve been told that the entire continent of Antarctica groaned at the moment of my birth. The howl tore across glaciers, over mountains and deep into the ice. Everyone says so. Except for my father; all he heard was Mother’s sobs. Not of pain, but of joy, so he says. Other than that, the only verifiable fact about the day I was born is that an iceberg the size of Los Angeles broke free from the ice shelf a few miles off the coast. Again, some would have me believe the fracture took place as I entered the world. But all that really matters, according to my parents, is that I, Solomon Ull Vincent, the first child born on Antarctica—the first and only Antarctican—was born on September 2
^nd
, 1974, thirteen years ago, today.

Of course, I don’t buy my parents’ seeming lack of memory when it comes to my birth. When I broach the topic they start ducking and weaving like spastic boxers. What I’m sure of is that something strange occurred when I was born; something that frightened them enough to bury all record of it. And they’ve done a good job. I’ve searched in and behind every drawer in this house. I’ve scoured the attic and the basement. I’ve even flipped through every one of the thousands of books they have on shelves around the house in search of a hollowed-out core. I’ve found nothing. But occasionally, at a Christmas party or get together, someone who heard the story slips up and reveals a tidbit before covering their mouth and offering an, “Oops.”

They think they’re protecting me, but all they’re really doing is making me feel like a freak. More of a freak, I should say. Everyone else I come into contact with thinks I’m weird, too. My parents just feign ignorance.

In celebration of my uncommon birth, my family is celebrating in the most common way imaginable: a quiet dinner at home. In attendance are my parents, Mark and Beth, and my only real friend, Justin McCarthy. We eat in silence, first enjoying the hot orange grease of Maria’s Pizza, and then the fudgy, chunky center of a Dairy Queen ice-cream cake, all polished off by tall glasses of Cherry Coke.

Nothing like massive amounts of fat and sugar to make you feel older.

Though the party, if you can call it that, is a subdued affair, I look at the gifts with great anticipation, the way a lion does a zebra before pouncing—hunter’s eyes. I don’t want toys. Didn’t ask for any. Not interested, despite grandfather’s continuous donations of G.I. Joes. My parents always know what to get me. Because despite their constant lies about my past, they’re like me.

Smart. Uncommonly so.

Nerds. Geeks. Bookworms. I’d heard all the names at school. Being smarter than everyone in my class exacerbated the issue. No senior in high school likes to be upstaged or outsmarted by a thirteen-year-old with a cracking voice. Though I sometimes wonder if their real problem with me was my resistance to 1980’s pop-culture; I don’t feather my hair, wear friendship bracelets, or watch Music Television. It doesn’t matter now. All that went away when my parents decided to home-school me. My nervousness, tension and boredom has been replaced by excitement, learning and stimulation. Not to mention a name-calling cease fire.

Well, almost. My parents call me Schwartz. The name evolved from my mother’s first nickname for me: first and only, which was short for the “first and only baby born on Antarctica.” They quickly shortened it to FAO and then, thanks to the FAO Schwartz department store, I became Schwartz. After the movie
Spaceballs
came out a few months ago, my parents stopped using the name in front of Justin because, almost as a Pavlovian response, Justin would say, “I see your Schwartz is as big as mine.”

The first gifts I open are books—fiction and non-fiction, popular and obscure—I like them all. Next come three boxes of Robotix kits. I'll put the dinosaur-looking robot on the cover to shame with the creature I’ll create. The biggest box comes last. I tear into the bright blue wrapping paper as Justin slurps grease from a leftover pizza slice.

The loud slurp stops short and grease drips on to Justin’s plate. “Whoa,” he says.

To Justin, this is a “whoa” moment. He likes to blow things up. To me it’s a big letdown. My parents see my down-turned lips even as I fight to reverse them.

“You have to build it yourself,” mom says.

“The box says it mimics the pattern of a real lava flow,” dad adds.

I let out a grunt, wondering if my parents IQs have dropped. Or maybe they’ve finally given up caring? The gift is nothing more than a cardboard cone, some quick drying clay, a pouch of red-colored baking soda and a small bottle of vinegar. This is the
big present
? They had gone on about how surprised I would be. About how incredible the gift was. This is...simple.

Boring.

Justin punches my shoulder. It hurts. I know he didn’t mean it to, but I seem to feel pain more than other people. Justin’s dark brown eyes are impossible to see behind the tinted sports glasses he always wears, but I know they’re wide with excitement. I focus on that to avoid thinking about the pain in my arm.

“Are there any G.I. Joes we haven’t melted?” he asks.

“A few.”

“Let’s go!” Justin dashes from the dining room and takes the stairs two at a time. “C’mon!” he shouts from the top.

“Go ahead,” mom says. “He has to go home in an hour. Mass starts at six in the morning.”

Saturday morning mass is something I never understood. It’s a sacred time. Not mass, mind you. Saturday mornings. A bowl of Cocoa Pebbles starts the morning.
Starvengers
,
Gaiking
,
Robotech
and more
,
followed by Creature Double Feature, which promises at least one
Godzilla
movie, fills my day until noon. It is a TV line-up so good that I am sure God skips mass for it too.

 
“May I be excused?” I ask with a sigh.

Dad chuckles. It’s the kind of chuckle that’s a substitute for calling someone stupid. I’ve heard the laugh enough to recognize the sound. “You don’t need to ask after we told you to go.”

I brush some of my long blond hair, which has garnered more than a few Einstein taunts, out of my face. Mom and Dad wear unreadable smiles. Like they know something I don’t. I hate that feeling—I’ve felt it every day of my life—so I slide off the chair, pick up the large, but light, volcano box and march it upstairs. When I hear mother giggle—just like the kids at school used to—a tear forms in my eye.

I’m such a wimp. No, wimp isn’t the word. That’s like calling someone a chicken. Means they’re afraid to fight—which also describes me—but that isn’t what I mean.
Crybaby
. That’s the word. One laugh from my mother and I’m all weepy. Of course, the laugh combined with the silly present confirms that they don’t take me seriously. And if they don’t take me seriously, they’ll never notice I’m not a kid anymore—if you ignore the fact that I’m about to bury a bunch of action figures in a miniature volcano—and that means they’ll never reveal the mysteries surrounding my birth. I’m not sure why the day I was born interests me so much. You don’t hear other kids asking about when they were born. But there is something in me, something raw, which longs to know more.