For a moment, the winds slackened, as if to rest from all their blowing. As the clouds of snow subsided, Marshall could once again make out the strange, blood-red northern lights lowering in the sky. They cast an eerie crimson glow over the tiny village of ice.
Taking a deep breath, he made his way to the snowhouse, drew back the caribou skin that served as a door flap, and stepped cautiously inside. The interior was dark, low-ceilinged, and full of smoke. A profusion of skins and blankets covered the floor. Marshall brushed the ice and snow out of his face and looked around. As his eyes adjusted, he realized there was only one occupant: a figure in a heavy caribou-skin parka, kneeling before a small fire.
Marshall took another deep breath. Then he cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said.
For a long moment, the figure remained motionless. Then, slowly, it turned toward him. The face was a dark hollow within the fur-lined hood. The figure raised a hand to the hood, pulled it back with an unhurried, deliberate motion. A wizened face marked with intricate tattoos stared up at Marshall. It was the old shaman who had come to the base, warned the scientists to leave. He held a reindeer antler in one hand, decorated with fantastical lines and curlicues, and an intricately carved bone in the other. There were several small items scattered across the reindeer skin before him: polished stones, tiny fur fetishes, animal teeth.
“Usuguk,” Marshall said.
The man gave a faint nod of his head. He didn’t seem surprised to see him.
“Where are the others?”
“Gone,” the man replied. Now Marshall remembered the voice: quiet, uninflected.
“Gone?” he repeated.
“Fled.”
“Why?”
“Because of you. And what you have awakened.”
“What have we awakened?” Marshall asked.
“I have spoken to you of it already. Akayarga okdaniyartok. The anger of the ancient ones. And kurrshuq.”
There was a pause in which the two men regarded each other in the flickering light of the fire. The last time they met, the old man had seemed anxious, frightened. Now he looked merely resigned.
“Why did you remain?” Marshall asked at last.
The shaman continued to look at him, his black eyes shining in the reflected firelight. “Because I knew you would come.”
35
The weeping wasn’t particularly loud, but it refused to abate: a continuous drone of background noise, mingling with the tap of the heating pipes and the distant hum of generators. When Wolff closed the door of the officers’ mess, it faded from audibility. Yet it remained a presence in Kari Ekberg’s mind; a presence as real as the fear that gnawed and refused to go away.
She glanced around at the people in the mess: Wolff; Gonzalez and the corporal named Marcelin; Conti; the academician, Logan; Sully, the climatologist; a handful of film crew. On the surface, everyone seemed calm. And yet there was something-in the furtive expressions, in the way people started at unexpected sounds-that spoke of controlled panic.
Gonzalez glanced at Wolff. “You’ve got them all locked down?”
Wolff nodded. “Everyone’s in their bunks, ordered to remain there until we tell them otherwise. Your private, Phillips, is standing guard.”
Ekberg found her voice. “You’re sure they’re dead?” she asked. “Both dead?”
Gonzalez turned toward her. “Ms. Ekberg, bodies just don’t get any deader than those two.”
She shuddered.
“Did you get a look at it?” Conti asked, his voice a low monotone.
“I only heard Ms. Davis’s screams,” Gonzalez replied. “But Marcelin did.”
Wordlessly, everyone turned toward the corporal, who was sitting alone at a table, an M16 slung over one shoulder, aimlessly stirring a cup of coffee he’d forgotten was there.
“Well?” Conti urged.
Marcelin’s youthful face looked pink and shocked, as if someone had just ripped the guts from his belly. He opened his mouth but no sound came.
“Go on, son,” Gonzalez said.
“I didn’t see much,” the corporal said. “It was rounding the corridor when I-”
He stopped dead again. The room was silent, waiting.
“It was big,” Marcelin began again. “And it had a head with…”
“Go on,” Wolff urged.
“It had a head with…with…don’t make me say it!” Abruptly the pitch of his voice spiked wildly.
“Steady there, Corporal,” Gonzalez said gruffly.
Marcelin gasped for breath, the hand that held the plastic stirrer stiffening. After a minute he mastered himself. But he shook his head, refusing to say more.
For a long moment, the room remained silent. Then Wolff spoke up. “So what do we do now?”
Gonzalez frowned. “I don’t see that we have a lot of choices. Wait for the weather to clear. Until then, we can’t evacuate-and we can’t get reinforcements.”
“You’re suggesting we wait around to get picked off, one by one?” said Hulce, one of the film techs.
“Nobody’s going to get picked off,” snapped Wolff. He turned to Gonzalez. “What’s the weapons status?”
“Plenty of small arms,” replied the sergeant. “A dozen M16s, half a dozen larger-caliber carbines, twenty-odd sidearms, five thousand rounds of ammunition.”
“The scientific team brought along three high-powered rifles,” said a voice. Ekberg glanced toward it. It was Gerard Sully, the climatologist. He was leaning against the rear wall by the steam trays, one hand nervously drumming on the steel railing. He was very pale.
Wolff glanced around the room. “We’ll need to make sure anyone on the move travels as part of an armed group.”
Gonzalez grunted. “Even that may not be enough.”
“Well, what else can we do?” Wolff countered. “We can’t just cower behind locked doors.”
“You can use my truck,” came another voice.
Everyone glanced toward it. It was Carradine, sitting in a plastic chair tipped back on its rear legs. Ekberg hadn’t noticed him before; she wasn’t sure if he’d been there the entire time, listening, or if he’d come in during the conversation.
“It’s like I offered before,” he continued. “My rig’s the only thing that can get people out in a storm like this.”
Wolff sighed in irritation. “We’ve been over this. It’s not safe.”
“Oh?” Carradine replied. “And staying here is?”
“You couldn’t fit everybody inside.”
“I could fit them in Ms. Davis’s trailer.” The trucker lowered his voice. “It’s not like she needs it anymore.”
“He’s right,” Gonzalez said. “You’ve got-what, thirty-three, thirty-four crew? With the scientific team that’s still less than forty. Everybody will fit inside that trailer.”
“What if they get lost?” Wolff asked.
“I never get lost,” replied Carradine. “GPS, baby.”
“Or break down? Or have a flat?”
“Ice-road truckers always carry spares and redundant equipment. And even if I can’t fix it-well, that’s what God invented CB radio for.”
“It’s simply too dangerous,” said Wolff. “I said no earlier, and I’m saying no now.”
“The situation has changed,” Gonzalez growled.
