Алистер Маклин - Athabasca

He lay still again, panting, beaten. Suddenly images began flashing through his mind, conjured up uninvoked by the extremity of his desperation. Once again he witnessed the final terrifying seconds of the car-crash that had killed his wife, the time when an explosion had blown him clean off a rig in the Gulf of Mexico, into the shark-infested sea…

All at once he became aware of a light flashing over him. Then someone was crouching, pulling at his arms. Then he heard a high, feminine cry.

“Corinne!”

“My God!” she cried. “What’s happened? Oh, Jesus!” She leapt to her feet and began to run. “Wait!” she screamed ovej her shoulder.

Dermott saw her fall, get up again, and go like a greyhound, round the corner of the shoe, the flashlight swinging wildly in the blackness. He shouted something after her, but she was gone. Wait , she’d said. Wait! What a hell of a thing to say! How could he wait? The shoe was scarcely ten feet from him: one minute, give or take a few seconds.

He found his eyes were full of tears, though whether they were of fear or relief or gratitude or what, he couldn’t tell. He was crying like a baby.

Seconds were passing. He began to count. He got to ten and couldn’t go on. He had been overtaken by a horrific vision of the exact physical process of destruction that was about to annihilate him. He would feed his feet and legs to the monster first. Or could he? Could he listen and watch while his ankles, shins and knees were crunched and flattened on the tundra? No – he would have to get the end over quickly and give it his head. But what would that be like, for God’s sake? To hear his skull crack and feel that unthinkable weight! Impossible! Never!

He roared again: “CARMODY!” As if by a miracle, his shout was answered. Headlights came boring up out of the night and swept across him as the vehicle turned. Dermott stared incredulously as the lights came on at speed, heading right for him and the front of the shoe. At the last moment the vehicle slowed, but not enough to stop. The driver deliberately slid it into the front of the shoe, using it as a last-ditch barrier to stop the monster’s progress. There was a sharp crash and the tinkle of falling glass. Then the door of the Jeep opened and Corinne leapt out.

There was so little space left that Dermott had all but been run over. The Jeep’s left-hand wheels were almost on him. The next thing he saw was the tyres being forced bodily sideways towards him by the irresistible pressure of the dragline’s advance.

Corinne had the tail-gate of the Jeep open. She dragged out a steel box – the emergency equipment – and dumped it behind Dermott with a crash.

“Keep still!” she shouted above the noise. “No – come back a bit. There. Keep there! I’ve got the bolt shears.”

Dermott leant backwards in the attitude she ordered, speechless with tension. He saw the wheels of the Jeep come sideways at him again. The back wheel was touching his feet already. The Jeep was being pushed like a toy. At that rate it was going to do more harm than good: it was merely acting as an extension of the shoe, and would crush him before the dragline itself reached him.

He felt Corinne struggling behind him. Suddenly she gave a desperate cry. “Oh my God! I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”

Dermott’s voice returned. “What’s happening?” he shouted.

“The cutters!” she sobbed. “The bolt shears are biting into the chain, but I can’t get enough pressure on them. It’s too bloody hard!”

“Put one end on the ground,” he ordered calmly. “One handle on the ground. Then get your weight on the other.”

He felt her try, but she slipped and went down with a crash. “Try again!” he yelled.

By then the noise of the dragline was overwhelming: its roaring and grinding filled the night. But suddenly a new sound: a sharp crack told him that the great steel treads of the shoe had hooked into some part of the Jeep’s bodywork. Instead of being pushed back, the vehicle had been gripped and held down. Dermott stared incredulously as the Cherokee began collapsing like an eggshell. The remaining headlight was snuffed out. Cracking, snapping noises accompanied the collapse of the hood and front wheels.

Behind him Corinne gave a despairing scream. “I just can’t do it. I’ve got half-way through, but that’s all.”

“Look for a hacksaw!” Dermott shouted. “In the emergency pack.”

“Got one!” She began working again frantically.

For Dermott time seemed to have stopped. He saw that the Cherokee’s engine block had at last offered the dragline a spot of serious resistance: only a spot, it was true, but a definite token. Ponderous as a dinosaur, the machine lifted one foot slowly into the air as it ground the little human vehicle beneath its steel sole. As if in a trance, Dermott saw the windshield shatter, the front of the roof crumple down, the passenger compartment flatten. Right in front of him a back wheel snapped off and was squashed flat onto the ground. If his arms had been free, he could have reached out and touched the front of the shoe – it was that close.

But his arms were not free.

“I can’t!” Corinne screamed in desperation.

Dermott’s head cleared, and he shouted: “Is there an axe?”

“A what?”

“An axe.”

“Yes – here.”

“Smash the chain with that. Aim for the link you’ve been working on.”

“I might hit you.”

“To hell with that. Belt it.”

He felt the thump as she let drive. The chain snatched sharply at his wrists and nearly jerked his arms from their sockets. Suddenly he smelt the stink of gasoline: the tank had been crushed.

Clank! She brought the axe down, then again. When Dermott twisted to see how she was doing, the clawing thread of the shoe scraped down past his shoulder. The thing was touching him. He shrank away from the monstrous beast, and brought out his last, terrible idea.

“Chop my hands off!” he ordered, quite calmly.

“I can’t!”

“Go on. It’s them or me.”

“NO!” She gave a piercing shriek and swung the axe down with every ounce of her behind it. Next second she was on her knees sobbing: “Oh my God, it’s gone! It’s gone!”

Dermott fought his instinct to leap up. He held himself down as she struggled with the severed link. The tread was bumping and bruising him now. In a few moments it would hook him under, as it had the car.

“For Christ’s sake!” he shouted. “Hurry!”

Miraculously, his hands came free. He got his arms back to their normal position and twisted sideways. “Look out for the pit!” he yelled. He himself was on the very lip. Hardly had he rolled clear of the dragline when there was a huge whumph and a roar of dark-red flame shot sideways at ground level. A chance spark had ignited the car’s gasoline. By a fluke he had rolled into the wind, so that the fiery blast went the other way and left him unscathed. Corinne was there behind him, also intact.

The blaze made no difference to the monster’s advance. The flames roared for a few seconds, then went out, and the dragline continued without faltering towards the brink.

Dermott felt weak with reaction – but not as weak as the girl. One moment she was standing behind him; the next, as Dermott struggled to find the words to express his gratitude to her, she had collapsed in a heap on the ground. He picked her up as tenderly as he knew how, laid her gingerly over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, and began carrying her towards the still-lighted windows of the isolation quarters. His eyes seemed to have gone blurred with the strain. Or was it just ice? He scrubbed them with his free hand and saw better. Out in the patch of white light ahead of him, the helicopter was preparing to take off, lights flashing, rotor spinning. Even as he watched, it lifted off and slanted away into the sky.