Terminal Freeze

  “It is that which you have awakened.”

  “What?” Sully spoke up. “The same creature? That can’t be.”

  The Tunit shook his head. “Not the same. Another.”

  Marshall felt surprise burn its way through him. Was this possible?

  Silence settled briefly over the group. “Go on,” Sully said at last.

  “It was encased in ice in a small crevasse at the base of the wing,” Usuguk continued.

  “Probably frozen by the same phenomenon,” Faraday murmured.

  “My uncle was very agitated. He came to me. And I went to Colonel Rose.”

  “The base commander,” said Logan.

  Usuguk nodded. “No one else was to know. My uncle had me tell the colonel that the army must leave the spot at once. It was forbidden ground. And the kurrshuq was its guardian.” He paused. “But they did not leave. Instead the colonel sealed off the crevasse and summoned them.”

  “Them?” Marshall repeated.

  “The special scientists. The secret scientists. They arrived before the new moon. Two cargo planes, their bellies full of strange instruments. These were all placed in the north wing, under darkness.”

  “So the north wing was re-tasked,” Logan said. “Its original purpose set aside while the new discovery was examined.”

  “Yes.”

  “What of your uncle?” Logan continued. “The other Tunits?”

  “They left immediately.”

  “But you stayed.”

  Usuguk bowed his head. “Yes. To my everlasting shame. I told you I had little use for the ways of my tribe. And the scientists needed a helper, someone who understood the operations of the base. Someone who could also act as—as protection. Since I already knew of the kurrshuq, I was selected. They were kind to me, included me in their work. They called me ‘the little scientist.’ One of them, the kidlatet called Williamson, was interested in…” He paused, apparently hunting for the word. “In sociology. I shared with him some of the legends of my people, our history and beliefs.”

  “And what of the…the creature?” Marshall asked.

  “It was cut very carefully from the ice, taken from the crevasse, put in a freezer in the north wing. The scientists were to study it, measure it, then thaw it. But it soon thawed itself.”

  “Thawed itself?” Sully repeated.

  “Of course.” Usuguk shrugged as if perplexed by Sully’s incredulous tone.

  Marshall and Faraday exchanged glances. “It was alive?” Marshall asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And it was hostile?”

  “Not—not at first. Kurrshuq is a crafty demon. It plays with you, like the fox cub plays with a vole. The scientists were intrigued. Once they had recovered from their fear, they were intrigued.”

  “Their fear?” Marshall asked.

  “The kurrshuq is terrifying to behold.”

  Logan pulled out a leather notebook. “Will you describe it?”

  “No.”

  Another brief silence.

  “Tell us what happened,” Marshall said. “To the scientists.”

  “As I told you, it pretended to humor us. Pretended to be friendly. The scientists continued their observations and tests. They tested its strength and speed. They grew more and more excited—especially by its ability to defend itself. They talked of testing its intelligence, of finding ways to—what was the word they used?—of weaponizing it. But on the third day it chose to do the will of the evil gods. It wearied of toying with us. One of the scientists, the kidlatet named Blayne, was testing its…its instinct for the hunt. What they wanted it to hunt they would not tell me. He had a tape recorder, with the sounds of animals in distress—marmots, snowshoe rabbits. When he played the tape, it grew angry. It tore him to pieces. We heard his screams and came running. When we arrived his body was all over the audio lab. And the kurrshuq was asleep on the floor, Blayne’s head between his forepaws. It had eaten his soul.”

  Marshall glanced at Logan. The historian had a small leather notebook open and was writing furiously.

  “The scientists left without touching the body and returned to their quarters to talk. Some said that the creature should be killed immediately. Others said, no, it was too valuable a find. Maybe, they said, the death of Blayne was an accident. The creature was confused, acting in self-defense. They agreed to continue their study.”

  “Williamson, the one interested in sociology,” Logan said, looking up from his notebook. “Did he discuss this with you?”

  Usuguk nodded. “He asked me many questions. What my people knew of kurrshuq, why it was here, what it wanted.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I told him the truth. That it was the guardian of the forbidden mountain. That the Devourer of Souls could not be killed.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “He spent a lot of time writing in his little book.”

  Logan rummaged in his pocket, pulled out the faded journal, passed it to Usuguk. The Tunit opened it carefully, turned the yellowed pages, passed it back with a nod.

  “‘The Tunits have the answer?’” Logan quoted. “Perhaps it was a question—not a statement.”

  “What happened next?” Sully asked.

  “The next day, when we went back in, I was armed. It acted…differently. It was unresponsive, hostile. When the scientists pushed it, it attacked.”

  “It killed them all?” Sully went on.

  “No. Not…not at once.”

  “How, then?”

  As he talked, the Tunit’s gaze had slowly lowered. Now he suddenly looked up, fixing them one after another with eyes haunted by memory. “Do not ask me,” he said, voice trembling. “I do not wish to remember.”

  The room fell silent. Slowly, Usuguk let his gaze return to the distant point. His face relaxed, grew resigned once again.

  “Did you shoot it?” Marshall asked as gently as he could.

  Usuguk nodded without looking at him.

  “What happened?”

  “The bullets annoyed it.”

  Now Logan spoke. “How did you get away?”

  “It was…stalking us. Those who remained alive tried to escape the north wing. It cut us off, once, twice. At last there was only me and Williamson. We were hiding in the electrical room, not far from the north wing exit hatch.” His speech slowed, became halting. “It came out of the shadows…Williamson screamed…it leapt on him…he tumbled backward onto an electrical coupling…there was great light and smoke…I ran as quickly as I could out of the north wing.”

  There was a long pause in which nobody spoke.

  “Colonel Rose sent for a special team,” Usuguk continued at last. “When we returned to the north wing, we found the kurrshuq, still lying on Williamson’s body. It no longer moved.”

  “Dead,” Sully breathed.

  Usuguk shook his head. “It chose to move on. To leave its corporal being.”

  “What did they do with its body?” Marshall asked.

  “The body vanished.”

  “What?” Sully asked.

  “They returned later with a body bag. By then it was gone.” The Tunit looked at them in turn. “It is as I told you. It chose to return to its spirit form.”

  Sully shook his head. “Probably crawled off to die. They were in a hurry to close the place, cover up the whole incident—I’ll bet they didn’t look too hard for it.”

  Marshall looked at the shaman. “And you? What did you do?”

  “I left the military. I took a few from my village who would listen and started a new community, out on the ice. We strove to live the old, true way of my people, the way they had lived for thousands of years, before the kidlatet came. I left the things of the physical world behind.”

  Sully wasn’t listening. “Don’t you see?” he said. “It’s susceptible to electricity. That’s its Achilles’ heel. We need to get word to Gonzalez.”

  The Tunit looked up quickly. “Have you heard nothing I told you
? This is not an animal. It is of the spirit world. You cannot kill it. That is the reason I came back—to tell you this. You did not listen to me the first time. You must listen now. Because I speak the truth. I am the only one who lived.”

  Sully did not respond. He walked across the room, picked up the radio Gonzalez had given him.

  “There is a second reason I came back,” Usuguk said, turning to Marshall. “The creature you found. You said it was larger than a polar bear, did you not?”

  Marshall nodded. “That’s right.”

  “The creature the scientists cut from the ice fifty years ago was the size of an arctic fox.”

  There was a shocked silence. For a moment, nobody stirred. Then Sully raised the radio, pressed the Transmit button. “Dr. Sully to Sergeant Gonzalez. Do you read me?”

  The radio buzzed static.

  Sully tried again. “Sully to Gonzalez. Do you read? Over.”

  More static.

  As Sully tried again, Usuguk rose from the chair and came over to where Marshall and Faraday were standing. “After you came here—when the sky rained blood—I feared you had wakened another,” he said. “That is why I warned you all to leave. I am a shaman. I have one foot in the physical world, and the other in the spirit world. You must believe that I understand these things.”

  “Another,” Marshall repeated. He was still having trouble taking it in.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised,” said Faraday. “Game theory predicts that the least optimal result is the one most likely to occur.”

  “The size of a fox,” Marshall said. “And it killed seven men.”

  Usuguk nodded. “Now do you believe me? This kurrshuq is an even more important spirit. It will not leave as the last one did. You cannot kill it. You cannot conquer it. You can only leave. There is still a chance it might allow that.”

  “But we can’t leave,” Marshall said. “There are too many of us for the Sno-Cat. We’re trapped here, by the storm.”

  The Tunit looked at him with glittering eyes. “Then I am very sorry for you.”

  42

  “It’s supposed to be this rough?” Barbour asked through gritted teeth. “The ride, I mean?”

  “Nope. Normally they cover the winter road portages in a layer of ice. But we’re making our own road. Just grab the ‘oh, shit!’ handle.”

  “The what?”

  “That stabilizer bar over your door.”

  Barbour reached up and took hold of the horizontal metal bar, then glanced at Carradine. The cab of the big truck was so large that the man was actually out of reach. It seemed his hands were constantly moving—over the steering wheel, to the gearshift, to one of the innumerable buttons on the dash. She had never ridden in an articulated lorry before and was astonished at how high off the ground they were—and just how rough it was.

  “Have to keep our speed down to thirty,” the trucker said, omnipresent wad of gum bulging one cheek. “Don’t want to damage the trailer coupling. We’ll have to slow down even more when we reach the lake, but at least the ride will be smoother then.” He chuckled.

  Barbour didn’t like the sound of that chuckle. “What lake?”

  “We’ll have to cross one lake on the way to Arctic Village. Lost Hope Lake. It’s too wide, can’t be avoided. But it’s been nice and cold, we shouldn’t have any problems.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Why do you think they call it ice-road trucking? On the regular winter road, 80 percent of the route is over ice. The portages only count for 20 percent of the trip.”

  Barbour didn’t reply. Lost Hope Lake, she thought. Let’s hope it doesn’t live up to its name.

  “We’re lucky we’ve got this wind,” Carradine went on. “It keeps the snow cover down, helps me find the most level route across the permafrost. We have to be very careful—can’t risk getting a blowout, all those people back there without heat.”

  Barbour glanced into the rearview mirror. In the reflected running lights she could just make out the silver bulk of the trailer. Thirty-five people inside. She imagined them sitting in there, probably speaking very little, with only a flashlight or two for illumination. The heat would be waning by now.

  Carradine had shown her how to use the CB radio to communicate with Fortnum. She plucked the handset from its cradle, made sure the proper frequency was selected, pressed the Talk switch. “Fortnum, you there?”

  There was a brief crackle. “Here.”

  “How is it going back there?”

  “Okay so far.”

  “Is it getting cold?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll give you updates as we get farther south. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Will do.”

  Barbour didn’t know the proper etiquette for ending the conversation so she simply replaced the handset onto the transmitter. The last part of the exchange had been only for morale—there was of course nothing she could do to help them. She glanced over at Carradine. “How much farther?”

  “To Arctic Village? It’s two hundred and ten miles from the base to the northern outpost. That’s where we’re headed.”

  Two hundred and ten miles. They’d already been on the road nearly an hour. Barbour did a little mental calculation. They still had almost six hours to go.

  Outside the broad windshield, the storm was a confusion of white flakes against a screen of black. The wind whipped huge skeins of snow up from the ground, exposing the featureless gray moonscape of permafrost beneath. Carradine had turned on every fog light and headlamp on the truck, and despite his light tone and joking manner she noticed just how carefully he watched the landscape ahead, gently turning the truck well before encountering a potential obstacle.

  The cab bounced and shook until it seemed her teeth would loosen. She wondered how Sully and Faraday were getting on back at the base, whether or not Marshall had returned. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Sully talk her into leaving. It was just as much her expedition as anybody else’s; she wasn’t only the computer specialist, she had important research that shouldn’t be abandoned just because…

  Something had changed. She glanced over at Carradine. “Are we slowing?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re approaching Lost Hope Lake. Fifteen miles per hour, maximum, on the ice.”

  “But there’s no heat back in the trailer. We can’t delay.”

  “Lady, let me explain. Driving over a frozen lake creates a wave beneath the ice. That wave follows us as we cross. Drive too fast, the wave gets too large and breaks through the ice. If that happens, we sink to the bottom. The ice refreezes overhead in minutes and, presto, you’ve got a premade grave that—”

  “Right. I get the picture.”

  Now, out of the darkness ahead, something glinted dully in the headlights. Barbour sat up, peering intently—and nervously. Ice, stretching into the distance until it became lost in the storm.

  Carradine slowed the truck still further, working his way down through the gears, then let it roll to a stop with a chuff of air brakes. He reached back into the sleeper cabin, pulled out a long tool shaped like a svelte jackhammer. “Be right back,” he said, opening his door.

  “But—” she began to protest.

  The trucker stepped out and shut the door behind him, dropping down out of sight, and she fell silent. A moment later she saw him again, trotting out ahead of the truck, an incongruous sight in his tropical shirt, tool balanced on one shoulder. The wind had eased, and skeins of snow curled around him almost caressingly. As she watched, he stepped onto the ice, walking perhaps fifty yards out. He unshouldered the tool, fired it up, and applied it to the ice. It was, she realized, a power auger. Within thirty seconds he had broken through and was trotting back toward the cab. He climbed up, opened the door, and swung in. He was smiling widely. A thin coating of ice covered his hair and shoulders.

  “You’re just bloody daft, you know that?” she said. “Going out into
a storm, dressed like that.”

  “Cold is a state of mind.” Carradine threw the auger into the back, then rubbed his hands together—out of chill or anticipation, Barbour couldn’t guess. “The ice is twenty-two inches thick.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “That’s good. Eighteen inches is the minimum. We’re ahead of the season. This here is good for twenty-five, maybe thirty tons.” He jerked a finger toward the auger, chuckling. “I know this trip’s kind of low-tech. No continuous profiling, no ice radar, like they have on the real winter road. But hey, we don’t have any load restrictions or pain-in-the-ass dispatchers, either.”

  He looked at her a minute. “Okay. I’ll tell you something now, just so you’ll be prepared. Driving on ice isn’t like driving on a normal road. It bends with the truck. And it makes a lot of noise.”

  “What?”

  “It’s better if you hear it for yourself.” He released the brake, put the truck in gear. “Now I’m going to ease us onto the lake. You don’t want to hit it too fast and stretch the ice.”

  “Stretch it? No, no, you certainly don’t want to do that.” Barbour looked out at the seeming limitless span of ice that lay ahead. Were they really going to drive an eighteen-wheel truck onto that?

  “All right.” Carradine let the truck creep forward toward the shore, then glanced at her again and winked. “Here’s where you cross your fingers, ma’am.”

  They crept forward onto the ice at little more than ten miles per hour. Barbour tensed as she felt the shaking and pounding of the permafrost give way to the far more unsettling sensation of ice flexing beneath them. Carradine frowned with concentration, one hand on the wheel, the other grasping the gearshift. The engine whined as they moved forward. “Gotta keep the RPMs high,” he muttered. “Helps prevent spinning out.”

  As they ventured farther onto the ice, Barbour could hear a new sound—a faint crackling that seemed to come from all around her, like the sound of cellophane being torn from a Christmas toy. She swallowed painfully. She knew what that sound was: the ice, protesting under the massive weight of the big-rig truck.

  “How far across?” she asked a little hoarsely.

  “Four miles,” Carradine replied, not taking his eyes from the ice.