William Dietrich: Dark Winter

"Homemade, we think. With two shots."

The others looked queasy, apprehensive, but with a slowly hardening resolve. They'd lost all sense of control. Maybe, following Lewis, they could somehow get it back.

"If any one of us tries it alone we'll be killed," Lewis said. "Any two of us, maybe. But with all of us, everyone distracting him…" He shrugged. "We win."

"With casualties," Pulaski warned.

"But not as lame victims."

Geller was nodding, too. He stood up. "I agree. We're sitting here like sheep."

"So we give him a shot at us?" Linda asked.

"We ambush him."

Others were nodding now, too. The idea of doing something, acting together, was beginning to reenergize them.

"I just want him to go away," Linda moaned.

"No. Because if he gets away, he wins," Lewis said. "He leaves us like lab rats, pressing levers and chasing cheese. Don't you see? Norse wants to erase everything Mickey Moss built by making us give up on it ourselves."

It was disorienting listening now to Lewis, the man they'd almost killed.

So it was Clyde Skinner who ended the last hesitation. He unsteadily stood.

"I don't want him to get away with my eyes."

Lewis stepped out of the galley first, bracing for a shot despite the bland certainty about Norse's movements he'd conveyed to the others. What if he was wrong?

But no shot came. The shadowy dome seemed empty, a soft slough of wind audible through the hole at the top of the dome. He heard nothing else, saw nothing else. So he stepped down to the snow and waved the others out, watching them pour silently like a line of emerging bees, trotting across the snow to the junction of the archways where the ramp was. Still no Bob. To the left and right were the barrier walls they'd erected to seal off the fuel supply and generators. They hadn't been breached, and the door to the outside was still bolted and locked. If he was in the garage, Norse had followed Pika's way.

"Okay, there has to be some kind of tunnel or corridor," Lewis told the others. "Go outside and get in position, we'll push from behind. Stay low, but move fast once it starts. With luck, we'll surprise him."

Pulaski unlocked the dome's smaller side door and the winter-overs began filing out into the night, going up the ramp as they had before to stake out Lewis. This time, if Lewis was right, they'd stop the Spryte. If wrong, they'd retreat to the emergency camp at Bedrock and regroup. Pulaski had told them that the galley suddenly seemed like the worst kind of trap.

"Unless Bob wants us to abandon the galley," Hiro muttered.

"We Yanks had a general named Grant once whose officers were always spooked by a general named Lee," Pulaski told him. "Grant told them to stop worrying what Lee was going to do and start thinking what they were going to do."

"What happened?"

"They won the war."

Lewis turned with Longfellow and Mendoza to BioMed. The trio studied the sick bay module, which stood on stilts a foot above the snow. Crouching, Lewis could now see there was one point at the rear where a metal culvert led from the sick bay floor down into the snow. Stepping back to view its roof, he noted there was a tube of utility piping that reached to the arched ceiling above, conduits spreading like branches. Some kind of artery ran up the back of BioMed like a spine. It was here, he was certain, that Pika went in and out.

With everyone suspect, no one had been trusted to have access to their power supply. The necessary exception had been their generator mechanic. Norse must have coerced him into showing the way. Coerced him into getting the Spryte.

BioMed's door was half open; the snapped lock had made it impossible for the fugitive to secure it after himself. The three men went inside. It was much as before except that Skinner's bed was empty. Medical supplies remained scattered, drawers askew, the shelves where Lewis had been tackled were still toppled. The cold had invaded, and broken liquids had frozen into thin platters. Lewis went to the rear room. Poor Nancy Hodge lay in the wreckage of her life, her corpse stiff from cold. In the confusion that had followed the murder, her body had been shockingly forgotten. Now she'd have to wait even longer for commemoration. Lewis stepped over her to the cabinet he'd seen dragged askew.

He saw the panel in back of it was now removed. Cold air swirled into BioMed from the dark air beyond. Had Pika been forced to show this entryway to Norse?

Lewis poked his head in and looked downward. No light, but a faint glimmer from spaces beyond. He couldn't risk his own light. If he came upon Norse, he wanted it to be a surprise, which meant claustrophobic gloom again. "I hate tunnels," he murmured to Longfellow.

"Well, it can't be a very long one. I'll go first."

"No, I will, because it was my idea. Just in case he uses that gun."

Taking a breath, he climbed into the shaft and dropped down the short ladder inside it, finding himself in a utility culvert that led in both directions under the archways. Pipes ran here, more than he'd ever suspected existed. The station was as complex as a spaceship. He wondered if Tyson had hidden in here somewhere after Cameron was stabbed. There was enough light from the opening overhead to dimly see and he considered for a moment which way to go. In the direction of the fuel arch it was dark, with a sound like water running. Unlikely Norse would go that way: It was opposite of the garage. Back under the other archway, toward the generators and Spryte, there was a dim light of another opening. He began crawling in that direction, Longfellow and Mendoza following.

It was a tight, grubby, cold place, the thing Lewis hated most. But Pika must have come this way on his regular rounds to keep the plant running. Had Norse and Abby passed here, too? It occurred to Lewis that maybe the psychologist had known about this escape hatch all along. That maybe that's why he'd agreed to Pulaski's determination to seal up the archways, to lock them in the dome. But why would Pika tell him?

Lewis came to an opening overhead that light issued from and could hear the reassuring drum of the generators beyond. At least Norse hadn't cut their power. Cautiously he poked his head up and glanced around. As expected, he was in a corner of the generator room. No one. He pulled himself out of the tunnel and crouched near the reserve generator. The electrician and astronomer came up beside him.

"You see anything out of the ordinary?"

Longfellow crept from machine to machine. The middle one was drumming faithfully. No wires, no bombs, no monkey wrenches. "I think he's left them alone."

Lewis was surprised. Maybe Norse didn't care if he left witnesses. Maybe he was tired of killing. Maybe there was some booby trap they couldn't see.

"We have to make sure," Mendoza said.

"We do that by catching him," Lewis replied.

The three men began cautiously moving toward the gym and garage, giving the others time to circle around in the snow.

Suddenly there was the sharp pop of a gun. Lewis reflexively dropped at the bang, flinching from the expected whine of a bullet. Had Norse spotted them? The others fell with him. But there was no buzz, no thud of a projectile striking a hard surface, and he realized the bullet would have reached him before the bang anyway. The shot had been aimed at someone else. Had Norse gotten in a struggle with Abby? His stomach tightened at the thought of it. "Come on," he hissed. "Let's rush him." Determined to risk a confrontation, he moved forward. The others scuttled after him. Ahead there were footsteps and the slam of a door.

The gym was dark, the door to the garage beyond closed. Lewis trotted ahead and then tripped on something in the gloom, sprawling. Damn! Raggedy Ann, the CPR doll? He reached around. No, someone still warm and sticky. His heart hammering, he moved his hands along the head and body. Despite himself he felt a flood of relief. It wasn't Abby.