Дэниел Смит - Below Zero

OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA

NOW

As it turned out, the inside of a wrecked plane wasn’t a great place to hide.

The storm might have gone, but a biting wind still found its way into the metal fuselage, moaning through the ragged tear in the front of the aircraft. It stole any body heat that escaped their ECW gear, and carried it away into the Antarctic desert. So, despite their layers of clothing and their thick coats, Zak and May shivered against the cold as they kept their faces close to the window, watching the exterior of Outpost Zero.

For now, the place was deserted. The airstrip beacons had gone out, and the only light was that which spilt from The Hub windows.

Zak felt as if he wasn’t on Earth any more. He was somewhere alien and cruel.

He shifted in the seat, moving closer to his sister. ‘You OK?’

‘No.’

‘Me neither.’ He dug in his pocket and pulled out the Snickers bar he had put there when they had been looking for food to give to Dima. Thinking back on it now, it seemed like a hundred years ago. He tore open the wrapper and offered it to May. ‘If we eat something, it might help us stay warm.’

The chocolate was frozen solid and May struggled to bite off a chunk. She held it with both hands and used the teeth at the side of her mouth. Like a dog chewing a bone, she managed to bite off a chunk and start crunching.

The chocolate wasn’t much, but it made things feel a little better. A little more normal. She tore off another bite and passed the Snickers to Zak. When he took it, May stood and walked deeper into the plane.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Dima said we had emergency camping gear.’

Zak gnawed at the chocolate and listened to May rummaging about somewhere in the semi-darkness. When she came back, she was carrying a bundle under each arm.

She dropped the bundles at Zak’s feet. ‘Sleeping bags. They’re probably a bit stinky, but they should keep us warm. She went back towards the tail of the plane and returned with a holdall stuffed with gear. ‘We might need these too.’

She opened the bag and took out a mean-looking claw hammer. She weighed it in one hand, then put it on the floor and dug into the holdall again. She pulled out an ice axe, a short-handled shovel, and a waterproof bag filled with red tubes that looked like sticks of dynamite from a cartoon.

‘Flares,’ May said.

They each stuffed as many flares as they could into their pockets.

‘You want this?’ May picked up the hammer.

Zak shook his head. ‘You keep it.’ He took the ice axe and turned it over in his hands. It felt weighty and deadly, like he could definitely use it to protect himself. But could he sink that serrated point into a person to defend himself? Into Mum or Dad?

He put it on the floor and grabbed the shovel. ‘I’ll have this.’

They unrolled the sleeping bags and put them over their legs as they sat side by side. They didn’t dare climb into them, just in case they needed to leave the plane in a hurry.

When they were settled, they finished the Snickers bar in silence, checking for any sign of movement outside. After a while, May looked at her brother. Their faces were close, and when she spoke, he saw his breath around her head.

‘They really know what you’re thinking?’

Zak watched her. He was trying to decide if she was making fun of him.

‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘I’m not winding you up. Seriously.’

Zak lowered his eyes. ‘Yeah. I do think they know. And it’s really creepy, but it kind of makes sense. It explains so much.’

May waited for him to go on.

‘The whole time we’ve been here I’ve been getting this feeling like something was inside my head. Or trying to get inside my head. Right from before we even landed. I’ve been seeing, like… ghosts. Of things I recognize. Things I’ve been thinking about.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like when we first arrived and we were talking about polar bears—’

‘I remember.’

‘So when we were going towards The Hub, I saw one. A polar bear.’

‘There aren’t any polar bears in—’

‘I know that. But we’d been talking about them, and then I saw one.’ Zak rubbed his face. ‘I know how it sounds, but it looked real. I mean, it wasn’t real, it was in my head, but it felt like it was there. I saw an explorer too, exactly like I’d seen in an old photo. Dad was talking about Scott of the Antarctic when we landed, so I was thinking about explorers and… it’s like something rummaged through my head and found those thoughts. Like it was trying to break into my mind, so it used my freshest thoughts to make me understand it was there. Maybe it can’t use words, so it uses pictures. And remember when the Spider attacked me in the Drone Bay?’

‘How could I forget that ?’

‘It didn’t hurt me, though, did it? But it was so weird, May, I had, like, this vision of a sea of those bugs. The Spider was close’ – Zak put his hand in front of his face – ‘right here. So maybe the communication was stronger. Same as when I got close to the live bugs in the lab. And just now in Refuge. They felt stronger in my head, and… and I had this feeling like it wanted to tell me something, like there was something under the ice.’

‘We know there’s something under the ice, Zak.’

‘But something important .’ He paused. Maybe he’d said too much. The way she was looking at him, she probably thought he was going mad; that his illness was eating his brain and he’d finally lost the plot.

‘You don’t believe me,’ he said. ‘And don’t give me that “I believe you believe it” rubbish—’

‘I’m not!’

‘— we both saw what those bugs did to Mum and Dad. And we’ve both seen those people out there acting like they’re being controlled. The Spiders too, May. Those people found something under the ice and—’

‘And now it wants to kill us,’ May said.

Zak stopped and watched his sister. ‘But it hasn’t killed anyone yet, has it?’

‘Not that we know of. So maybe it just wants to turn us into zombies.’

‘But why?’

‘Who cares why? To keep us for whatever’s down there. Maybe it’s some kind of alien.’ May stared at Zak. ‘And when it comes out, it’s going to be hungry, so those bugs are making sure we don’t go anywhere.’

Zak tried not to think about being eaten by aliens. ‘Thing is, though, when we got here, the lights were out. If they wanted people to come here to get eaten, why would they make it difficult for us to land? And those emails… it’s like something was trying to stop people from coming here. And when we needed heat, we got heat. When we needed light, we got light. So it doesn’t make sense. Why would—’

‘ None of this makes sense, Zak.’ There was frustration and fear in her voice. ‘Bugs, zombies, robots coming to life. None of this makes sense. All I really want to know is how do we get out of here? How do we get Mum and Dad back?’ May turned round and pointed her finger against the window. ‘And how do we stop ourselves from either freezing to death or from getting turned into one of those things out there?’

Zak closed his eyes and took a deep breath. May was right. They were both getting cold. They wouldn’t survive for long out here in the plane. But he tried not to think about the plane, because if he was right, something was watching his thoughts. The red-jackets would know by now that he and May weren’t in Refuge, so they would be searching for them somewhere else. He pushed any picture of the plane from his mind and imagined them hiding in The Hub, on the upper level. He imagined them piling chairs and tables across the top of the stairs to barricade themselves in. It was difficult to keep the thought in his mind when there were so many other things to think about. He’d never realized how hard it was to think of two things at the same time.