James Rollins - The 6th Extinction

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“That’s just the thing, planning’s got nothing to do with it. It’s the unexpected that’ll bite you in the ass every time. Blindside the hell out of you.”

Jason nodded, recognizing the practical wisdom buried behind those gruff words. He stepped to move past Kowalski, when he noted a small photo clutched in the man’s thick fingers. Before Jason could get more than a glimpse of the woman in the picture, Kowalski tucked the photo away.

As Jason hauled open the door, he wondered if the man’s warning was less about the dangers of a mission and more about the pitfalls of a romantic life.

But such thoughts vanished as the cold struck him like a hard slap to the face. The wind came close to shoving him off the high deck. He half slid his way to the ladder and climbed down. He found one of the researchers sheltered on the leeward side of one of the giant ski towers.

The man crossed, patted Jason on the shoulder, and with a voice quavering from the bitter cold said, “All quiet. If you get too frozen, hop into Carl’s cab to warm up.”

With those few words, the researcher headed up the ladder and toward the promise of a warm bed.

Jason checked his watch.

Only fifty-nine minutes to go .

He slowly paced the station, staying out of the wind as much as possible. He studied the skies, searching for any telltale lights of an approaching plane. All remained dark out there; not even the stars were visible through the ice fog rolling across the shelf from the distant coast. The only light came from the south, a slight yellow glow, marking the John Deere’s location. He used its position like a compass as he made his rounds.

After a while, the howl of the wind seemed to fill his head, rattling around inside his skull. His eyes began to play tricks on him, seeing phantom lights in the gloom. He blinked or rubbed them away.

As he circled yet again, he considered hopping into the tractor’s cabin — not for the warmth, but to escape the monotony of the darkness and the perpetual howl of the katabatic winds. He moved out from under the hulking module and stepped toward that patch of yellow light, only to have a vague glow catch his eyes to the far left, to the west.

He tried blinking away that dull light, only to have it become two eyes shining out of the gloom. Through the roaring in his head, a lower grumbling intruded — accompanied a moment later by the crunch of ice.

It took him another half breath to realize it wasn’t a trick of the night, but something huge, barreling through the winds toward the lone module.

Jason hauled out his radio and brought it to his lips. “I’ve got movement out here. On the ice. A big vehicle approaching from the west.”

“Copy that,” the lookout inside said. The man shouted to others inside the station before returning to the radio. “I’m seeing it now, too!”

Jason moved behind the cover of one of the ski supports, the radio still at his lips. “Tell Carl to douse his lights out there!”

After another couple of seconds, that island of warm light extinguished. The only illumination now came from those twin beams of light that rapidly grew larger and brighter. Jason estimated that what approached was the size of a tank. This particular guess was heightened by the sound of treads grinding across ice.

Jason heard the hatch slam shut above. Then Gray and Kowalski came clambering down the ladder, pistols in hand. Only then did Jason think to remove his own weapon from inside his parka.

“Over here!” Jason called to them.

The two men joined him.

Gray pointed to the other hydraulic towers. “Spread out. Stay hidden. Let them get close. Offload even. Any signs that they’re hostiles, we’ll use the darkness to wage a guerrilla war on the ground. Barstow is on the roof with Karen, armed with our last two rifles, to help cover us from above.”

After getting acknowledgment from Jason about this plan, Gray headed to one pillar, Kowalski another. They ran low, trying not to be seen.

The lumbering vehicle had slowed, its engine changing timbre.

Then it stopped forty yards off.

The winds shifted the fog enough to reveal a strange sight. The arctic machine was the size of a massive tank and looked like one, too. Giant belt treads flanked both sides, each rising taller than an elephant’s back. They supported what appeared to be an armored bus topped by what looked like the wheelhouse of a tugboat.

Lights flared up top, along with shadowy movement from within.

A door opened in that wheelhouse, and a dark figure stepped out onto the open deck that circled the upper structure. A shout cut through the wind’s howl. It was not loud enough to discern any words, but it sounded like a query, a challenge.

Another figure passed something to the one on the deck.

From the sudden increase in volume of the speaker, it must have been a bullhorn. “HELLO! WE INTERCEPTED YOUR RADIO COMMUNICATION EARLIER! WE KNOW ABOUT YOUR TROUBLE!”

The speaker was clearly a woman, British from her accent. She must have eavesdropped on Gray’s earlier radio call to Karen.

“WE FOLLOWED YOUR TRACKS AND CAME TO HELP!”

Gray bellowed from his hiding place, needing no bullhorn to be heard. “Who are you?”

“WE REPRESENT PROFESSOR ALEX HARRINGTON. WE WERE EN ROUTE TO COLLECT A GROUP OF AMERICANS WHEN WE HEARD OF THE ATTACK.”

Jason bit back his shock and considered this possibility. Painter had told them that the professor’s contacts would be flying over to Halley. But after eavesdropping on the station’s attack, had they turned back and come overland instead?

“WE MUST HURRY! IF THE AMERICANS ARE HERE, THEY MUST COME WITH US RIGHT AWAY.”

“And who exactly are you?” Gray pressed, plainly wanting more proof. “What is your name?”

“I’M STELLA… STELLA HARRINGTON.”

Jason took in a sharp breath, recognizing the name from the mission files. The speaker confirmed this in the next breath.

“THE PROFESSOR IS MY FATHER — AND HE’S IN DIRE TROUBLE!”

If they poke me with one more damned needle…

Jenna paced the length of her section of the newly expanded patient containment unit. She’d been quarantined here for the past twelve hours.

Inside the hangar, the CDC team had added new pods to the original quarantine hospital. Through a window on one side, she could see Josh, unconscious on his bed. He had suffered two more seizures during the past afternoon, fading in and out of delirium.

From her pod, she watched the young man being subjected to another battery of tests. A nurse held him rolled up one side, while a doctor performed a spinal tap. There remained little doubt Josh had become septicemic with whatever microbe was out there. But from what Jenna had been told, they hadn’t been able to isolate the presence of the infectious virus in any of his tissues or blood as of yet.

They kept taking samples from her, too, looking for the same.

On the other side of her pod— my cell , she thought angrily — another window revealed Sam Drake in the neighboring section. Like her, he was dressed in a hospital gown and looked no happier as he sat in his bed. They had both been thoroughly scrubbed upon arriving here, a humiliating procedure that included having to huff through a pressurized nebulizer that delivered an aerosolized dose of a powerful broad-spectrum antimicrobial. It was a precaution in case they had inhaled any of the infectious particles at the Yosemite cabin — not that the drug had yet to be proven effective.