Дэниел Смит - Below Zero

OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA

NOW

Zak Reeves was utterly alone.

He blundered away from the airstrip. His boots crunched icy snow, the crump-crump-crump the only sound in his head. Or rather, it was the only sound he listened to, because he blocked out the soft chanting of the red-jackets. No. Not just the red-jackets. May too. Mum and Dad. Dima. Their faces blank, their eyes empty, their bodies crawling with bugs.

He ran and ran, trying so hard to push their tortured faces from his mind. His legs moved as if they were on autopilot, because he needed all his mental strength to force the darkness from his head. It clouded in at the sides of his vision, made the world swim in front of him. The ground was hardly beneath him any more; it was softening, trying to fall away as the thing beneath the ice invaded his mind.

Zak had no idea he was shouting.

‘Get out of my head!’

Over and over again.

‘Get out of my head!’

Then it was gone. The probing fingers withdrew. His legs grew heavy – so, so heavy, like they were encased in concrete – but he continued to push across the snow, one foot at a time until he couldn’t move another step and he fell to his knees and hung his head. His chest heaved, the cold air saturating his body, every breath blowing out his precious body heat. He let the tears flow, pooling in the base of his goggles, freezing solid on his cheekbones. He cried for Mum and Dad. He cried for May, and he cried for the hopelessness of his situation. There was no one to help him now. There was nowhere for him to go.

And when there were no more tears, Zak felt the cold tighten around him. He shivered hard and lifted his eyes to stare into the unforgiving desert.

Ahead of him, there was nothing.

Literally nothing . He heard May’s voice as if she were right there with him.

The world stretched out for ever . On and on. Flat and cold and grey. If there had been enough light, it would have been brilliant white, but for now it was grey, grey, grey. To his right, another eternity of snow and ice. To his left, the same.

From somewhere out there, a rumbling reached out to him. The sound of an engine? Or was it something new? Something he hadn’t seen? Perhaps it was another biomechanical monster, created by the Spiders. Or maybe it was help. Someone was coming? The sound grew louder as if it were approaching, but it passed to his left, too far out for him to see anything.

Zak sat up and listened, allowing himself a brief moment of faint hope, but as the sound faded to nothing, his hope of rescue faded with it. And when it was gone, he sat back in despair, wondering if the sound had even been real.

In the distance behind him, the base looked small. It looked alien , like he had run out on to a faraway planet. The lights were out again, so Outpost Zero was nothing but a series of shapes. Behind it, above the mountains, the sky was clear. A sickle moon sat low and bright, casting its silver light across the base. Ice and snow glittered like riches.

The moon was surrounded by a billion billion stars, burning through the atmosphere, bringing light that was millions of years old. But even that was nothing compared to the colour. The sky was full of colour. Pink, purple and yellow streaks shone upwards like searchlights, shifting and swirling among the stars. They swam across the heavens in moving shafts, filtering the glow of constellations, colouring the sky like a bioluminescent alien landscape.

The Aurora Australis.

Zak could hear Dad’s voice in his head telling him what caused it. Something about electrons crashing into atoms in the atmosphere, but that made it sound so much less than it was. It made it boring. Actually seeing it was pure magic.

Zak shivered and tore his eyes away from the spectacle. He was wearing layers, good protection, but no kind of protection would last for ever out there. Already the cold was finding its way inside his clothes. He was losing body heat with every breath, and he could feel himself beginning to shiver more and more. He had to get inside. If he didn’t find somewhere soon, he would freeze to death.

Zak got to his feet and turned in every direction. Nothing had changed. The landscape was still endless. It was still empty. He looked back at the base and wondered if there was any part of it that was safe, but he knew they were waiting for him. Wherever he went, whatever he did, they would sneak into his thoughts and they would know . The only place for him to go was towards The Chasm. Follow the arrow he had seen on the map. There had to be something there. If he could reach it, he might be able to find out what was happening here. He might be able to stop it.

So he checked his bearings with the silhouette of the base, and began walking out into the endless desert of Antarctica.

The cold was worsening. It stung his lungs and numbed his fingertips. He pulled his hood tighter, banged his hands together and rubbed them hard as he dragged his heavy feet on and on. His movement was slow and his steps were clumsy. And when he glanced back again, the base was tiny. If he lifted his hand he could pinch Outpost Zero between his finger and thumb as if it were a million miles away. There was no going back now, he would freeze to death before he reached it, but there was nothing ahead, either. Nothing but ice and snow and wind. And the realization crept over him with a deep feeling of dread. He had been wrong. The icy desert was as endless as space. He might as well have been searching for a single snowflake.

His mind was woozy, his thoughts confused. Everything was beginning to shut down. His senses were failing, but Zak knew enough to understand what was happening to him. Hypothermia was taking him in his grip. Killing him slowly. It was grinning as it wrapped its arms around him, squeezing tighter and tighter.

Come on in, Zak , it said. Everyone’s safe and warm in here .

‘Head back,’ he mumbled, but Outpost Zero was nowhere to be seen now. He frowned and turned on the spot, watching the horizon, but there was nothing other than grey snow and black sky. The Aurora Australis was gone. Outpost Zero was gone. Zak had no idea which way to go.

Panic clutched at his heart. He was going to die out here. Like Scott of the Antarctic, he was going to freeze to death.

‘Don’t give up. You’re almost there.’

Startled, Zak whipped around and stared at the figure standing not far away from him. It was the same person he had seen before, the one wearing ancient all-weather gear, like in those old photos. His head was covered by a woollen balaclava, with a hood pulled over it. Goggles protected his eyes.

‘Who are you?’ Zak was too tired to be afraid any more. ‘What do you want?’

The figure didn’t speak again. Instead, he lifted his right arm and beckoned with his hand.

‘You want me to follow?’

The figure turned and walked away.

So Zak followed. His feet dragged, and his body shivered. He had no idea where he was going, and he wasn’t sure if he even cared. He just didn’t want to be alone and he didn’t want to die. But his body was starting to fail him. He couldn’t feel his face, his fingers were numb, and his legs were growing weaker by the second. His mind was vague and unfocused. The cold was forcing its way in. Hypothermia was winning, and Zak began to think dying wouldn’t be so bad. If he gave up and fell into the snow to lie still and let the cold take him, all of this would be over. All the fear and the pain would disappear.

What a relief that would be.

But he didn’t stop. He trudged on and on, following the figure towards a rise in the perfect landscape. And as he came closer, Zak turned his head slowly left and right, peering along the length of the ridge. It was at least a hundred metres high, and stretched as far as he could see in both directions. A perfect white wall with smooth sides. The only way to climb it would be with ropes and spikes.