William Dietrich - Ice Reich

He was still breathing hard. "Then give it here."

"You can have it for the gun. Then we'll all live."

He licked his lips. "No. Give it here or I'll simply shoot you and take it."

"Do you promise not to kill us?"

"I promise to kill you if you don't hand that over."

She glanced at Owen. He shook his head. She cocked her arm.

"No!" said Drexler. "Don't throw it!"

She threw.

"God damn you!"

The cylinder landed in the snow at the edge of the water, almost going in. Neither man was certain if she'd been aiming for the water or Drexler. "I'm sorry. I was never good at throwing."

"Pathetic bitch." Keeping the machine gun aimed, he sidled to pick it up. "My life was ruined from the moment I met you, do you realize that? You never understood anything: not me, not Germany, not science- " He bent.

The water exploded.

Hart jumped back as if he'd been shot. There was an astonishing blur and the momentary flicker of a yawning pink mouth with white teeth. Then with a scream and a titanic splash, Jurgen Drexler was gone.

"Christ!" the pilot cried.

"Leopard seal," said Greta grimly. "It thought he was a penguin."

The cold was like fire, the shock so powerful that Drexler didn't even notice the animal's teeth had punctured his thigh. The gun and the tank of drug slipped away. Then, dismayed by the strange mouthful of cloth and flesh it had seized, the seal let go. The Nazi couldn't swim but the shock drove instinct. He thrashed toward the surface in a cloud of blood, erupting with a shriek.

"Save me!"

Hart considered only for a moment. Then he sprang forward and grabbed.

"Owen, no!"

The pilot ignored her. He heaved and Drexler slithered up on the ice, gasping.

"Why did you do that?"

"Because he has something that belongs to us."

Ice was forming on Drexler's clothes. His body was shaking uncontrollably, his strength and coordination ebbing, his brain shutting down. "Please…"

"I'll never understand you, Jurgen," Hart said, squatting. "You had heaven. You had Greta. And you chose hell." He yanked open the German's parka and began feeling his pockets. "Where is it, dammit?"

"Please…"

"Owen, the cylinder went in the water with him. It's gone." She looked at the smoking volcano. "God's will, perhaps."

"That's not what I'm looking for." He hoisted Drexler up off the snow and ripped open the flap of his chest pocket. "Here!" Then he dropped the German and backed away.

Drexler's lips were blue, his mouth still open. His eyes had lost focus. The pulse of blood from his bite wound had become sluggish. His movements were ending.

Greta stared without expression. "I don't feel anything except release, Owen," she confessed. "My compassion has died."

"He killed it. And in the end he's luckier than he deserves. The plague would have killed him more slowly." He turned to her and opened his hand. It was the penguin locket. "This is why I pulled him out. He showed me he'd kept the thing, to gloat." Yanking his gloves off with his teeth he opened it, inspecting. "Lost the pebble, I see." He unfastened the chain. "Put your hood down."

She did so and bent her head. Tenderly, he reached around and hooked the locket. She let it dangle a minute on the outside of her parka so he could see it.

"I gave the pebble to my father," she said. "So he could keep it safely for us."

"You trusted him not to sell it?" It was a grin.

"He wouldn't sell it. Not anymore."

Hart pulled her hood back up. "We need to conserve every bit of heat and energy we can now." They glanced down at Drexler's body. "You're a widow again."

She nodded- not with sadness but release. "Yes. But a widow with prospects." Her look was shy.

His look was a combination of pleasure and apprehension. "I should say so. If we can survive the sea."

Owen and Greta were quiet on the long walk back to the boat. Exhaustion was taking its toll and the trek was grim. They skirted the frozen soldier by the iceberg, rounded the open water, and worked back to their packs where they gathered their supplies. They passed the body of the other man that Hart had shot and found a third lying in the half-sunken motor launch. The pilot had hoped to transfer to that larger craft and use its engine to get clear of the ice but his gunfire had holed it. The dead storm trooper lay in pink water that had risen halfway up to the gunwales, its surface freezing into slush. So the couple restowed their gear in the whaler's lifeboat and pushed off from the pack ice, rowing numbly.

After several hundred yards they stopped and Hart tethered the boat to another ice island. They crawled into the bottom of the boat and covered themselves with a blanket and tarp. A light snow was falling and it dusted the covering. They kissed wearily in their cocoon and cupped like spoons, Greta nested into Owen. Then they slept. For the first time in weeks, dark dreams did not plague them.

The pair woke stiff but somewhat recovered, crawling out from under the tarp like burrowing animals. Hart looked around. The panorama was gray, water the color of lead. The ice was dull under a ceiling of cloud. He'd no idea what time it was, or even what day it was. Time had stopped, or become irrelevant. Atropos Island continued to thunder, the volcanic plume bulging under the overcast like a sagging belly. Mist fogged the distant glaciers and flakes of snow spat at them in lazy fashion. Everywhere Hart looked there was utter emptiness, a land and seascape absolutely vacuumed of life, of warmth, of history. They were in a frozen limbo and the only sound in all that chilly vastness was the drum of their own pumping blood, the only sparks of heat the ones each carried in their core. All that mattered in the end, he realized, was each other.

"I feel like we're the last living things on earth," he told her.

She was biting off a piece of bread, her eyes shining. To have awakened this morning was like awakening from her terrible dream. She'd never felt such relief.

"No, Owen. The sea is still alive. Look." She pointed.

There was a hiss. A cloud of rank vapor, evidence of another huge beating heart, puffed above the water. The surface roiled as the small hillock of a whale's back appeared. Then it submerged again and the tail broke the surface, waving. Beckoning them to the sea.

"It's a good sign," she promised. "That despite all the kilometers ahead we're going to make it."

Hart unhooked the boat from the ice and they began to row, following the whale. Slowly they worked out of the pack ice that clung to the island.

As they neared the open ocean the wind began to pick up. They hoisted the sail and huddled for warmth in the stern, the lifeboat taking on an easy motion as it slid up and down the swells. An iceberg passed by on the starboard side and they saw penguins standing on it. Yes, there was life after all.

"How far to land?" she asked.

"About four thousand kilometers to Africa."

"My God." The impossibility was obvious.

"We have to try."

They sailed on. Strangely, their mood was not despair but contentment. They were alone and with each other. It was enough. The sea was gray, the swells cresting with foam but not yet threatening to overpower their little boat. Seabirds appeared and began trailing them, riding the wind in long, looping circles. The overcast broke and a tantalizing rift of blue showed through. Behind, the island began to look simply like a gigantic dark cloud.

Hours passed. Greta dozed in Owen's arms, lulled by the roll of the sea. Then she lazily came awake again, watching the water. It was hypnotic, swells marking a timeless rhythm. She squinted, her gaze caught on something that broke the pattern. Something above the surface. Something hard. "My God. Is that a ship?" She pointed.