Lincoln Child - Terminal Freeze

Marshall was very eager for that calm to return. Even so, he couldn’t deny there was something special about this night, something unique and exciting that he felt absurdly pleased to be part of.

Now Davis stepped out of her trailer, accompanied by Conti, the personal assistant, and a publicity flack. They headed toward a small clearing near the old security checkpoint, where Fortnum, Toussaint, the gaffer, and the key grip were waiting. “You’re sure you’re warm enough?” Marshall heard Conti ask fawningly as they walked by.

“I’ll be fine, darling,” said Davis in a martyr’s tone of heroic resignation. She had exchanged her expensive fur for a stylish Marmot down jacket.

“The shoot shouldn’t take more than ten minutes, tops,” Conti said. “We’ve already gotten the process shots and the backgrounds.” They didn’t glance toward Marshall or Ekberg as they sailed past.

“Well, I’d better make myself useful,” Ekberg said. “I’ll catch up with you later.” And she joined the flack at the rear of the small procession.

Carradine grinned and shook his head. He was chewing a massive wad of gum that swelled one cheek like a hamster’s. “What say you? Shall we stick around and watch this dog and pony show?”

“If you can stand the cold,” Marshall replied, nodding at the trucker’s flimsy shirt.

“Hell, this isn’t cold. Come on, let’s get us a pair of front-row seats.” And the man grabbed two wooden packing crates, set them down in the snow, sat on one, and gestured Marshall toward the other with a flourish.

There was a final commotion by the security checkpoint; the lights came up, Ekberg gave the teleprompter a dry run; the sound check was wrapped; Davis ’s nose was given a last powdering before she shooed the makeup girl away with a curse. Then there was the snap of a clapstick; Conti cried “Action!” and the cameras rolled. Instantly, the fretful scowl left Davis ’s face, replaced by a dazzling smile, her expression somehow becoming excited and dramatic and alluring all at the same time.

“It’s almost time now,” she said breathlessly to the cameras, just as if she’d been with them in the trenches for the last week. “In less than twenty-four hours the vault will be opened, the primordial mystery will be solved. And as if nature itself understands the gravity of this moment, we’ve been treated to a most unusual display of northern lights that is second to none in its allure and grandeur…”

Even though Fear Base turned relatively quiet-everyone abed in expectation of a busy tomorrow- Marshall as usual spent a restless night, tossing in his spartan bunk. Try as he might, he could not get comfortable. Pulling up the sheets made him too warm; throwing them aside chilled him. Now and then, the muscles of his arms and legs tensed spasmodically, as if unable to relax, and he could not escape the feeling that-despite all evidence to the contrary-something was quite wrong.

Finally, he sank into a half doze in which a succession of disturbing images moved slowly across the field of his inner vision. He was out walking the permafrost, alone, beneath the strange and angry northern lights. In his mind, they were lower than ever in the sky, so low they seemed to press down upon his shoulders. He stared at them in mingled awe and unease as he walked. And then he stopped, frowning in surprise. Ahead of him, on the torn and frozen ground, the lights actually met the land, viscous driblets flowing like wax from a tilted candle. As he stared, the forms grew larger, took shape, solidified. Legs and arms appeared. There was a moment of dreadful stasis. Then they began approaching him-slowly at first, then more quickly. There was something horrible about the way they came, their bodies alternately bulging and ebbing; something horrible about the evident hunger with which they stretched out their splayed hands toward him. He turned to run but found, with that horrible creeping paralysis of a nightmare, that his leaden feet were so terribly slow to move…

Marshall sat up with a start. He was sweating and the covers were twisted around him like the winding-sheet of a corpse. He stared left and right, wide-eyed in the darkness, waiting for his breathing to slow, for the vestiges of the dream to fade.

After a minute, he glanced at his watch: quarter to five. “Shit,” he murmured, sinking back onto the damp pillow.

There would be no more sleep-not tonight. He sat up again, then stood, quickly dressed in the gloom of his bunk, and slipped out into the corridor.

The base was so quiet it reminded him of the first nights he’d spent here, when the labyrinthine corridors and the long-abandoned spaces seemed to overwhelm the tiny band of scientists. His footsteps rang on the steel floor and he felt the ridiculous urge to tiptoe. Leaving the dormitory section, he walked past the labs, the mess, the kitchen, then turned down a corridor into an area of the base they’d never used: a warren of equipment rooms and monitoring posts. He paused. In the distance, he could just make out the faintest strains of music: someone’s CD player, he assumed; there were very few radio stations within five hundred miles, and even those tended to concern themselves with the price of diesel oil and the state of the annual moose rut.

Hands in pockets, he wandered deeper into the maze of listening posts. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to shake an oppressive sense of foreboding. If anything, it seemed to increase: a perverse conviction-given the excitement of the coming day-that something terrible was going to happen.

He paused again. The claustrophobic base, shrouded in watchful silence, just exacerbated his gloom. On impulse, he turned, threaded his way back, climbed a stairway to the topmost level. He walked to the entrance plaza, walked by the sentry post, then passed through the staging area, donning his parka as he did so. It was only eight hours since he’d last been out, but in his current frame of mind nothing was going to keep him inside this shadow-haunted base another minute. Grabbing a flashlight and zipping the parka, he opened the outer doors and stepped outside.

He noticed with surprise that the display of northern lights had grown even more intense: a deep, unguent red, throbbing and pulsating. It transformed the entire apron-with its temporary shacks and Quonset huts, tents and supply caches-into a monochromatic, otherworldly landscape. He put the flashlight in a pocket. The wind had picked up sharply, worrying at loose tarps and indifferently tied ropes, but even it could not explain the eerie cracklings and moanings he could have sworn came from the lights themselves.

There was something else that seemed odd, but it took him a moment to realize what it was. The wind was almost warm on his cheek. It felt as if a false spring had abruptly come to the Zone. He unzipped his parka slowly; he should have checked the thermometer on the way out.

He moved through the low structures, half of them backlit blood red, the other half sunken into shadow. As he did so, a low creak sounded from the small forest of outbuildings ahead.

He paused in the crimson half-light. Was somebody out here with him?

Everybody-scientists, documentary crew, and the mysterious new arrival, Logan -were bunking inside the base. The only exceptions were Davis, in her mega-trailer, and Carradine, the trucker. He glanced in the direction of Davis ’s trailer: it was dark, all lights out.

“Carradine?” he called softly.

The creaking noise came again.

Marshall took a step forward, emerging from between two supply tents. Now the bulk of Carradine’s semi came into view. He glanced toward the rear of the cab, where the “sleeper” was. Its windows were dark, as well.