Lincoln Child - Terminal Freeze

“I won’t let you go down there,” Wolff said.

Conti continued to fiddle with the camera. “Didn’t anything I said earlier sink in? This is simply too important. If they’re down there, I have to film it.”

“We should never have left the officers’ mess.” Wolff looked back at Ekberg as if to demand her agreement.

She said nothing. She was too full of grief and horror. The memory of being back in the mess, agreeing to run sound for Conti, already seemed a lifetime away. The notion that the good of the documentary outweighed all other considerations now filled her with revulsion.

“It won’t take me long to check,” said Conti. He lifted the camera back onto his shoulder. “Wait here if you want. Kari, I’ll need your help.”

Ekberg shook her head. “Sorry, Emilio. I’m not going.”

Wolff put his hand on the camera. “You’re coming back with us. Now.”

“You can’t order me around,” Conti said, wheeling away, his voice abruptly spiking. “This is my shoot.”

“I’m the Blackpool representative-”

Suddenly, Wolff fell silent. He gave a low grunt of pain and covered his hands with his ears. A moment later, Ekberg felt it too: a painful pressure that seemed to radiate from the center of her skull.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“We need to get out of here,” Wolff replied. “Get out of here fast, before-”

Once again he stopped speaking. His jaw went slack and his frame seemed to sag. He was staring past Conti, down the corridor. Ekberg turned to follow his gaze with huge reluctance, fear buckling her knees, afraid to look but even more afraid not to.

Ahead, at the corridor intersection, the webbed darkness had begun to shift.

They made their way down through the levels in almost complete silence. Gonzalez led the way, M16 slung over his back and powerful flashlight illuminating a path through the clutter. A heavy monkey wrench hung from a cloth ring stitched to his fatigues. Logan and the scientists came next: Sully with a weapon in each hand, Marshall and Faraday carrying khaki duffels of hastily gathered tools and equipment that might or might not come in handy. Next came Usuguk, his tattooed face expressionless. Phillips brought up the rear, darting frequent looks over his shoulder.

They moved past the storage spaces of D Level, racks of ancient instruments and redundant sensor arrays like watchful sentinels in the faint light. As Gonzalez’s torch swung in an arc, catching new objects in its beam, sudden shadows darted at them from open doorways and storage niches.

The gloom and silence began to wear on Marshall ’s nerves. He hadn’t really wanted to leave Ekberg, Conti, and Wolff behind, but the possibility of fashioning a weapon that might harm the creature made it a chance worth taking. He slowed his pace, falling back slightly until he was beside the Tunit. “Usuguk,” he said, eager to turn his mind elsewhere. “Why do you call this mountain a place of evil?”

It took the Tunit a moment to answer. “The story is very old. It has been handed down from father to son, generation to generation, for longer than living memory can tell.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

Usuguk paused again before continuing. “My people believe in two sets of gods, the gods of light and the gods of darkness. Just as everything has an opposite-for happiness there is sorrow, for day there is night-it took both sets of gods to fashion our world. The gods of light are supreme. They are the ancient ones: the gods of goodness and wisdom. They bless the hunt, fill the sea with fish. They watch over the natural order. The gods of darkness are different. They control sickness and death, the human passions. They dwell in dreams and nightmare. Over time, their own veil of darkness began to poison them. They grew envious of the gods of light. The evil that was their instrument, their source of power, seduced them. And they themselves became evil.”

They turned a corner, continued past a series of repair bays.

“The gods of darkness tried to undermine the gods of light, twist their deeds into evil, pollute the land, turn the healing sun dark. When this failed they tried to use their evil to corrupt the gods of light, turn them against themselves. Although the gods of light were benevolent, this worried and angered them. And that was when Anataq spoke up.”

“Anataq?”

“The trickster-god. He is neither light nor darkness, but acts as a balance between them. He had seen the acts of the dark gods and knew them to be disruptive, dangerous to the order of nature. So he offered to help. He went to the gods of darkness and told them of a secret Tunit cave; a place, he said, where the fifty most beautiful and unspoiled women of the tribe were kept. Their beauty, he said, was of such rare quality that they were not to be had by men, but to be admired and revered. Their cave was deep within a mountain. This story aroused the lustful interest of the dark gods, and their blood burned hot.”

Following Gonzalez, they descended a stairway to E Level, lowest in the central wing, their feet ringing softly against the metal steps. “The gods of darkness asked Anataq where this mountain was. But the trickster-god would not tell them. He said only that he visited the mountain once a year, each midsummer eve, when the guardians of the women were away at the purification ceremony. That year, on midsummer eve, he went to the hollow mountain. The gods of darkness followed him, as he knew they would. And once they were within its deepest chamber, Anataq poured liquid fire down upon them, sealing them inside.”

“Lava,” murmured Marshall.

“The anger of the dark gods was terrible. They bellowed and shrieked, and again and again the mountain spit fire. Their violence was such that the sky was rent from horizon to horizon and the heavens bled. For thousands of years they raged. But Anataq had sealed them in too well, and at long last they grew weary. The mountain no longer belched red fire. The heavens no longer bled.”

Until now, Marshall thought. With such a legend as part of his belief system, it was no wonder Usuguk had grown agitated at the return of the strange, crimson-colored northern lights. It was remarkable to think that the man had been able to work at this base at all-in particular, to work with such a terrifying and dangerous creature. But then, he reflected, Usuguk had been young and full of doubts about his people’s traditions. Too bad it had taken such a shocking episode to transform him.

“And the kurrshuq?” he asked. “You called it the guardian of the forbidden mountain.”

“Once the gods of darkness were imprisoned in the mountain, Anataq called on the kurrshuq to guard it, to make sure there was no escape. The kurrshuq are creatures of the spirit world, not gods but powerful beings who do not deign to involve themselves in the ways and lives of the People. For many years, a group of them guarded the mountain. But slowly, very slowly, the darkness of the imprisoned gods corrupted them as well. And they became evil things.”

“Eaters of souls,” Marshall said.

The Tunit’s eyes darted toward him momentarily, then looked away again.

E Level was even more crowded with cast-off detritus than the higher floors had been, and completely dark, and their progress slowed considerably. Gonzalez led them past mechanical spaces and an auxiliary control room, then stopped at an electrical chamber just beyond. Motioning the others to wait, he stepped inside. Marshall watched as he opened an electrical panel, twisted a series of heavy fuses into place, then closed it and threw a fail-safe switch. He grunted his satisfaction, stepped back out into the corridor.

“The north wing should have juice now,” he said.