The Spawning (37 page)

“That year I was down there, I was out hiking about with this biologist named Best. Okay guy. Shitty poker player. We got our asses lost, truth be told. Those valleys go on and on, just a maze, and they all look kind of the same with the dunes and rocky bluffs. Mid-afternoon, we come into this valley. We hike up and down dunes and find ourselves looking down into this hidden hollow about the size of a football field. It's full of pebbles and this fine sand that's frozen hard as ice. Down there, sticking up from that sand were these shapes . . . real odd looking, they were. I called Best's attention to them, suggested we crawl on down and have a look see. Because even up at the edge of that hollow, I can see the damn things are animals of some type. Best checks ‘em out with his binoculars . . . then he gets real pale, real nervous. Says we have to head back. What about them things? says I. But he don't want to no part of ‘em. Seals, he tells me. They ain't nothing' but seal carcasses. Seals, my white ass. Those weren't no seals.”

“What were they?” Coyle said.

Frye shrugged. “Who can say? I was only there for about ten minutes before Best took off like something was about to take a bite out of him. But they weren't seals. Kind of big, barrel-shaped, you know? Things like spokes coming off ‘em that might have limbs and shriveled wormy things on top of their heads. The wind and blowing sand had eroded them down to skeletons or frameworks on one side, the other was all black and shiny. It was kind of eerie seeing them in that place with the wind moaning around you, all those dunes and towers of funny-looking rocks. Had to be thirty or forty of those mummies, some standing up, others kind of leaning, some eroded to nothing but withered frames and others just breaking the sand.

“But they weren't goddamn seals.

“Mummies of something, but not seals. No way. I'm thinking they were the same things that team found at Kharkov that year and what Slim saw under that tarp and what Shin saw on top of the dome. I figure what we found was sort of a graveyard of those things that the wind had peeled from the ground over centuries probably. Those things had probably been there millions of years . . . wouldn't you say? No matter. Best wanted no part of it.

“Anyway, about ten years ago this ANG pilot at McMurdo was into me for a couple grand on account he was no card player. I let him square up by taking me on a sight-seeing tour in his helicopter. We flew over the Dry Valleys. Took us about an hour to find the one that Best and I had visited. I knew it was the one because of this funny prong-shaped rock rising up at the eastern edge. Well, that hollow was gone. Dunes had drifted back over it. But those mummies are still down there, just waiting.” Frye cleared his throat like something was lodged in it. “I tell you this tale because through the years there's been lots of things that people didn't want to connect into the greater whole. Best knew what those things were, but he was afraid of ‘em. Same way we're all afraid of ‘em, some more than others. And pretending that there wasn't something strange down here all these years because it didn't fit in with our science and our sense of history was a big mistake. One we're all going to be paying blood for. And that's my bedtime story for the night.”

Coyle didn't say anything, he just thought about how Slim had looked the day he had seen the thing under the tarp at the crash site and how, years before, that paleobotanist named Monroe had looked when he told him about that thing he'd found frozen in the ice cave. The thing he'd had to spend the night with. Alone.

Denial was a luxury they could no longer afford, as Locke had said.

After Frye told his tale of the Dry Valleys to Coyle, he had been making his way through the Community Room, feeling the oppression and riven silence of the station, and the HR rep had come running up behind him.

“Frye,” he said. “It's important.”

And it always was, wasn't it? For a moment or two he did not even turn around. He just sighed and felt his shoulders bunch, a tightness spread out in his extremities. He could see Ida and The Beav in the Galley door, whispering to one another and looking in his direction.

Yes, ladies, we are indeed up to something. Rest assured.

Finally, he turned. “What now?”

Special Ed looked like he hadn't slept in days. His eyes were so red they looked like they were full of blood. “It's Hopper. He's locked himself in his room and he won't come out. I . . . I'm not sure what to do. I didn't know who to bring this to.”

“So you brought it to me? The Waste Supervisor?”

“No sarcasm, okay? I'm just not up to it.” He drew Frye over to one of the tables, made him sit with him. “Hopper's the station manager. He's in charge. What are we supposed to do without him? I mean, God.”

What were they supposed to do
without
him?

Was that a trick question?

Because the way Frye was seeing things, whether Hopper was in the driver's seat or not, it made little difference. He hadn't exactly been a leader to begin with. The big boys at the NSF put guys like Hopper in charge because he had what some of the old timers on the Ice called Monkey Syndrome:
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
Didn't matter what happened, guys like Hopper toed the company line and did what they were told and never, ever would they question the very questionable practices of said company or blame them when the shit hit the fan.

Frye didn't know where they got people like Hopper, but The Program was infested with them same way Frye's maiden aunt Alma's guest room mattress was infested with bed bugs when he was a kid and had been forced to spend nights there. Maybe the NSF bred them or grew them in fish bowls like Sea Monkeys, but there was never a shortage.

“If Hopper's that messed up, then the torch is passed to you, Ed.”

But he shook his head. “Frye, c'mon, don't say that. I'm a good administrator . . . at least, I always thought I was a good administrator . . . but I can't handle running a station. It's not in me.”

“Well, if Hopper's lost it, you have to take charge, Ed. You're company, you're NSF, the rest of us are contract people. The beakers are here on grants. You have the helm. You know the rules same as I do.”

He shook his head again. “I just can't. I was thinking of someone else.”

“Who?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“Yes! You have the most experience down here. People listen to you, they trust you.”

“People think I'm an asshole.” He looked at Special Ed and the man just looked beaten, like a rag that had been squeezed out and hung on the line to dry. “All right, this is what you do. You go try and talk to Hopper again. You can't get him to open that door, I'll get a few of the boys together and we'll break it down. Horn and Gwen both have medical training. Either of them can give him a shot of something. That's what you do first.”

“Okay, Frye.”

“We'll strap him down and keep him drugged if we have to. If it comes to that, you need to get on the wire with NSF, tell ‘em what's going on, tell ‘em they have to risk getting a flight in here.”

“It's not that simple. Hopper already told them that until he was blue in the face. We're stuck. They want us to stick it out. There will be absolutely no rescue team coming in here.”

Frye barked a laugh. “I just love how The Program looks after its own. Listen to me, Ed, do not tell anyone about that. You do, you'll have a full-blown fucking riot on your hands. You hear me? I don't think these people have completely given up hope yet, but when they do . . .”

Special Ed looked as pale as the plasterboard walls. His Adam's apple kept bobbing as he tried to swallow it down.

Frye put a hand on his shoulder. “You have to stand tough now, Ed. It's never been so important. The NSF has abandoned us.”

“But why . . . why would they do that?”

“I'm guessing they have bigger worries. Now go see about Hopper. And keep your mouth shut, okay? People here don't need to know he's losing it until it's absolutely necessary. No need to panic them.”

And that's what he said, but what he was thinking was:
How long? How long before the news spreads? How long before everyone realizes this ship no longer has a captain or even a figurehead? And how long before they do something really stupid?

Later, Coyle found The Beav in the Galley, clicking away on her laptop. “Inventory never ends, Nicky.” She looked up from her printouts. “Heard about Hopper,” she said.

“Yeah,” was all he could say. “He didn't leave us much of a choice.”

“They never do.”

Special Ed hadn't been able to talk sense to him, so Coyle, Frye, and Locke had taken the door off the hinges and went in after him. And to his dying day, Coyle would never forget the look of horror on the station manager's grizzled face when they rushed in there and took hold of him. He did not fight. He just trembled and sobbed when Gwen shot him up with a hypo, his face sallow and corded with strain.

“It won't leave me alone, Nicky,”
he gasped like he was asphyxiating.
“It'll never leave me alone. I don't know what it is . . . a devil, a demon . . . but she put it on to me! She set it on me so it would haunt me to my death!”
He breathed in and out, trying to catch his breath. He ran a hand through his hair.
“I lock my door and it . . . the ghost . . . always opens it. I wake up and it's standing there, that dark ghostly shape with the burning red eyes . . . just watching me! A hallucination . . . it must be, yet, yet, it's not just visual! I can smell that thing and it stinks like ammonia, sharp and acrid! I can hear it breathing and sometimes it says things with that fluting, piping voice! I shut the door, I lock it and bolt it and it does no good! It opens it and . . . and sometimes it walks right through the door or right through the walls! Sometimes I don't see it, but I hear it! It has many arms and I hear them moving, swishing and slithering like snakes! It has claws . . . something like claws because it drags them over the walls while I sleep!”

“Take it easy,” Coyle told him. “Just take it easy.”

“Fuck you!”
Hopper screamed at him in a childish treble.
“You don't know what it's like! I'm hunted, haunted . . . oh Jesus Christ, why doesn't it stop? I . . . I woke up and it was there, standing over me as I slept . . . I could see its shape, smell the ammonia seeping from it . . . it's very cold, frozen, ice drops off it . . . it was standing there, watching me, getting into my fucking dreams and taking me to that place with the towers... the black city . . . everything rising and narrow and twisted! It won't let me go! It'll never let me go . . .”

It had been an ugly, disturbing scene.

They found a 9mm automatic on the table near his bed. God only knew how he had gotten his hands on it. Bottom line was, he didn't attempt to use it on them. He never even reached for it. And that was because he planned on using it on himself, Coyle figured. He was strapped down and medicated now in Medical. They put Butler in an unused room in C-corridor where Gwen and Zoot could keep an eye on her.

“Who's in charge now, Nicky?” The Beav wanted to know.

“Special Ed, I guess.”

She laughed. “Oh yeah, far out. He's the guy you want.”

Coyle just said, “It's out of my hands.”

“You should, you know, take over. You're the only one who can. Maybe Frye, but Frye's an asshole.”

“I've been walking around the station talking to people,” he told her, “about

Butler.”

“She's a witch, Nicky.”

“A witch?”

“Sure. Things happen around her. Supernatural things.”

And that was the general feeling he was getting from most concerning Chelsea Butler . . . a possessed witch. “Like I said, I been talking to people. Trying to get a feel for all this. What's happening.”

She nodded. “People are losing it. A couple . . . I won't say who . . . have this crazy idea about stealing a ‘Cat or a Spryte, you know? Making a run for Pole Station or something. And I'm like, why? All the stations down here are going through the same shit we are if the rumors are true. But people want out, Nicky. They want to run. I don't blame ‘em. They all want to get back home. But I'm like,
why?
World's going to hell, it's shitting its own pants. Why go back there? Wait it out here. We got food and heat and all the good stuff. Why risk it for that . . . that insanity, you know?”

“That's sound thinking, Beav.”

She stared at him for a time, said, “When I was eighteen, Nicky, me and these friends of mine, we get a vial of LSD Twenty-Five, the good shit. Make you see God, right? We go up to Monterey, rent this beach house in Big Sur and we trip our brains out for like six days straight. Out of sight. Last day there, this friend of mine, Darlene—her old man was a cop, dig it—goes on this bad trip. I mean, really bad. Heavy stuff. I spent like five hours on the beach with her, holding her and telling her it would be okay. She was out of it, right? It was summer and it was hot, but she's shivering, telling me that she's in the snow, she's up in the mountains in some big empty city and it's cold, freezing cold. She's lost in it, can't find her way out. She described that city to me. How it was, what it looked like inside. She said men didn't build it, it was real, real old, been abandoned a long time. Like I said, heavy stuff. Just a bad trip? Just a hallucination? She was scared shitless, man. Maybe I was, too. I never thought there was such a place until I heard about that dead city they found under the mountain. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, you know?”

“She had a vision of an alien city down here,” he said.

“Yeah, without a doubt. We've all dreamed about those places, haven't we? And now I guess we all know why.”

There was nothing he could say to that. Nothing at all.