David Gilman - Ice Claw

It might be the lower-level chamber beneath the air-vent chimney that was too small to crawl down. The water chute was the only way out.

This was extremely dangerous. In fact, “extreme” didn’t quite cover it. But it was a risk he had to take. He opened his backpack, pulled out a garbage bag and began stripping. As each layer came off, the freezing air snared itself around him, barbed-wire sharp. He knew he couldn’t hang around too long or it would freeze him into submission. With all his clothing stuffed into the plastic bag in his backpack, except his boxer shorts and trainers-whose tough soles might help deflect any sharp-edged rocks on the way down the waterfall-he was already relishing the thought of dry clothing at the end of this nightmare plunge. He was shivering violently. You had to know what freezing-cold water would do to you in order to survive it. Cold water strips away body heat twenty-five times faster than cold air does. The moment Max got into that sluice his blood pressure would rise and he would start hyperventilating-and that was dangerous. The sudden shock would stop him from holding his breath. Even strong swimmers have drowned in cold water. Knowing what to expect would help him survive, but not knowing how long he might be in the water was the frightening part. After three minutes his body temperature would drop, hypothermia would set in, his muscles and limbs would be unable to keep him going.

Experts called it sudden cold water death.

Max pulled his backpack on across his chest-this would stop it snagging and also give him a buoyancy aid. He clambered onto the rock sill, tried to stop his teeth chattering and took a deep breath, mentally locking it into his lungs. He needed that air as long as possible.

He pushed into the tongue of water and immediately gasped, losing vital oxygen. Water spilled across his head, his neck felt as though someone had pinioned him with icicles, and his throat constricted with the cold. Control it! CONTROL IT! his mind shouted at him. He suppressed an urgent desire to yell as he felt the water-smooth rocks disappear from below him. He plunged from darkness to dim, glowing light in the space of twenty seconds. His stinging eyes saw the drop-only three or four meters-before he splashed into a pool of water.

It felt as though broken glass pulsed through his veins. The cold was shutting him down-rapidly. He couldn’t function; his arms were useless, his mind unable to grasp the deep sleep that threatened to suffocate him. Images danced across his vision. Snow and ice packed the edges of the pool below, and the remains of something dark and bloody stained the smudged snow. This was the end. He had gambled and lost and now the dark ice would take him. A deep instinct for survival, a small glimmer in his brain, told him there was time for one more gulp of air. And then he went down into the water.

The impact, the resistance of the water and then a floating sensation. Downwards. Out of your depth. Too far down . The cold left him. That meant he was either unaware of the terrible effect the temperature was having on his body and he was slipping into deep unconsciousness, or he had warmth and protection, like a young polar bear.

The pool’s water was marginally warmer, not by much, and its salty content stung his eyes. At first it seemed as though daylight streamed down into the depths, but then his achingly cold mind told him that it couldn’t be. These were artificial lights allowing something to see beneath the water. What something?

A white monster smashed into the water. A mature polar bear, its huge paws, thirty centimeters across, scooped away water. This was the something.

Fear-generated strength gushed through Max. An unusual feeling of clumsiness encumbered his body. He was dogpaddling, pulling water beneath his body, legs kicking awkwardly, bubbles streaming from his nostrils as he peered through the gloom. White turbulence from the surging water came into view as it coursed through the pool and escaped onwards over a lip of rock.

He dared a look behind him. The polar bear was striking up from the deep pool, broad paws swatting away water in an almost lazy fashion, as if in slow motion. It was an illusion. The bear was so strong it made his power seem effortless. The fury and violence if he caught the intruder in his territory would be terrifying.

The watercourse was the escape route. Max didn’t know how he had stayed under the surface for so long, or how his body had coped with the heart-stopping cold, but he went as fast as he could, broke the surface, reached up onto the packed ice on top of the rock ledge and tried to haul himself out of the water. The backpack strapped to his chest made it impossible. The horror of having his legs dangling in the water with the predator less than a couple of meters below spurred the strength back into his limbs. Twisting his body, he levered himself ashore using an elbow and the biceps of one arm.

On all fours he clambered across the rock, through the bloody remains of a seal, heading for the sluice that funneled the water away. To his left an ice wall blocked his escape-but the slushing sound of water behind him told him the bear had hauled itself clear and was within lunging distance. Max dived into the sluice and sensed rather than felt the power of the polar bear as he heard it bellow, its paw slashing through the air, missing Max but connecting with the ice wall. It sounded like someone scraping their fingernails down a blackboard.

He had missed savage injury and certain death by seconds, but if he stayed in this fast-moving watercourse he would be swept away into the plunging water that disappeared at the end of the rock cave, forty meters away. He flung out his arm, caught hold of something cold and hard. Steel. The edge of a steel cage.

There was no more strength in him. To hold fast against that flow and haul himself over the rim of the channel into the cage was beyond him. Better to die now. Just let go and die. It was so easy.

Sayid’s face looked up at him from the back of the taxi taking him to the airport at Biarritz. That was the last time he had seen his friend. It was like being punched in the stomach-his friend needed him. That was why Max was here! Right now he didn’t care about a crazy man causing devastation. He wanted to save his friend. But first he had to survive.

Max tightened his grip. He wouldn’t give up, but the effort needed was still too much-and then nature took a hand. The water twisted him; he floundered, kept his grip on the steel bar, but he was now belly down, facing the surging water. He couldn’t breathe.

It happened so quickly that the thoughts were barely formed when the force of the water slammed against his backpack, still strapped on his chest, and threw him upwards with the force of the current. It gave him an instant to twist and fall onto the straw floor of the cage whose steel bars he had clung to.

He lay still, the prickly straw making no impression on his frozen body. A blue tinge covered his skin, like the beginning of a bruise. But he was alive. The white noise of the sloshing water seemed like a lullaby. No longer a threat, it offered a soothing comfort to his battered body. The other sound he did not understand-a persistent, desperate scratching.

The alarm bell that rang loud and clear was in his head. He needed warmth and food. His body was desperate for sugar and carbohydrates. The deep straw stank of stale animal smells but he would have happily burrowed deeply and slept. Instead he forced his painful, trembling limbs to stand and undo his backpack. Everything was still dry. He plunged his arms down into the bag, fingers searching for the energy and chocolate bar he knew he had tucked away. He tore off the wrapper with his teeth and shoved the contents into his mouth. He pulled out the dry clothes, but he needed to get his circulation going first, to rub warmth into his skin. There was a pile of sacks tacked against the far wall beyond the cage doors. He pushed. The cage was bolted. Max reached through the bars. The bolt was jammed; the damp air had set it fast. He tried to wriggle the bolt’s handle but it barely moved. If he tried to hammer it with the heel of his hand he’d cause damage to himself. Removing one of his sodden trainers, he slipped his hand inside and used it as a buffer for his fist.