“Ackerley,” Murphy said, and Ackerley, his little round spectacles creeping down his nose, said, “Not now,” without looking up.
Murphy and Michael exchanged a look, as if to say What next? while Darryl simply looked on, aghast. What had happened to Ackerley? His throat, partially revealed under the plastic bag, looked ravaged, and the wrist of his left hand, which limply supported the clipboard, appeared broken and bruised. Flakes of blood crusted the skin.
“What are you doing?” Michael asked, in a deliberately innocent voice.
“Making notes.”
“About what?”
Ackerley kept writing.
“What are you writing about?” Murphy repeated.
“About dying.”
“You don't look dead to me,” Darryl said, though it wasn't entirely true.
Ackerley finished a sentence, then slowly raised his eyes. They were red-rimmed, and even the whites were tinged a pale pink.
“Oh, I am,” he said. “It just hasn't taken yet.” His voice carried a low, gurgling sound. He took a swig from an open can, then just let it drop from his hand.
Murphy had allowed the barrel of the gun to drift toward the floor, and Ackerley gestured at it.
“I wouldn't do that if I were you.”
Murphy quickly raised it again, and Ackerley let the last paper waft to the floor to join all the others.
“I've numbered them,” he said, “so you'll be able to follow along.”
“Follow what?” Michael said.
“What happens,” Ackerley replied, “afterwards.”
There was silence, and then Ackerley dragged the plastic bag away from his throat; the skin was so mangled that Darryl was surprised that he had been able to speak at all. The vocal cords could be seen pulsating.
“Now,” Ackerley said, nodding at the gun, “you'd better use that.”
“What are you talking about?” Murphy said. “I'm not gonna shoot you now. We'll figure something out.”
“That's right,” Michael interjected. “We'll talk to Dr. Barnes. There must be a way to help you.”
“Use it,” Ackerley said, in a ghastly rasping voice, “and afterwards, just to be on the safe side, cremate my remains.” Slowly rising to his feet, he took a faltering step in their direction. “Otherwise, you might wind up like me.” All three fell back. “It apparently passes from one host to another quite easily.”
“What does?” Darryl said, bumping up against a shelf of pots and pans that clanged in their boxes.
“The infection. Either through blood or saliva. Like HIV, it seems to be present, to some degree, in all the bodily fluids.” Staggering closer and focusing on the gun, he muttered, “Do it, or I will kill you. I'm not sure I have much choice in the matter.” His eyes, behind his glasses, blinked slowly. His foot knocked one of the empty cans toward them, and it spun in a lazy circle on the concrete.
Michael tried to prod him back with the tip of the speargun, but Ackerley brushed it aside.
“Use the handgun,” he said. “Do it right.”
He kept on coming, and there was less and less room to retreat. Darryl stepped back, past the kitchen equipment aisle, but at close range he could see the demented, though utterly determined, look in Ackerley's eye. He meant what he said.
“Shoot!” Ackerley cried, a bubble of blood popping from his open throat. “Shoot me!” and with his hands extended he deliberately lunged at Murphy's arm.
The gun went off with a blast, echoing for several seconds in the cold confines of the locker. Ackerley's head snapped back, his glasses flying off, and he dropped to the concrete floor.
But his eyes were still open, and he was mouthing the word “shoot” one more time before he suddenly grew still, and the last bloody bubble rose, then burst, on his throat.
Murphy's arm was shaking, and he lowered it to his side.
Darryl started to kneel by the body, but Michael said, “Hold on.”
Darryl held back.
“Yeah,” Murphy said, his voice quavering, “give him some room.”
“I think,” Michael said, solemnly, “we just need to wait a while.”
And so they sat, on the wooden crates, their heads down but their eyes on the corpse, huddled around it in a ragged circle. How long they waited, Darryl wasn't sure. But it was Michael who eventually knelt down to feel for a pulse and listen for a heartbeat. He shook his head to indicate there were none.
“But I'm still not going to take any chances,” Murphy said, and Darryl knew enough to leave it at that. Murphy would do what Murphy wanted to do, and it was best not to inquire too deeply.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
December 20, 11 p.m.
Michael had been preparing for the call for months, but when it came, it was still a shock. “It was a blessing,” Karen was saying, for at least the third time. “We both know Krissy, and she wouldn't have wanted to go on like that.”
The vigil was over. He sat hunched over, as if protecting himself from a punch in the stomach-because that was still how it felt-in the cramped communications bay. The last occupant of the chair had left a partially completed crossword puzzle on the SAT-phone desk.
“When exactly did it happen?”
“Around midnight, on Thursday. I waited till now to call because, as you can imagine, it's been kind of crazy around here.”
He tried to cast his mind back to Thursday night, but even such a short time was hard to fix. Everything was so fluid in the Antarctic, it was tricky to remember the day of the week, much less anything from the days before. Where was he, what had he been doing, at precisely that time? Practical and hardheaded as he was, he still felt that he should have known, that he should have had some weird psychic inkling that Kristin was leaving. That she was gone for good.
“Of course, now my mother secretly blames my father; she thinks if he'd left Krissy in the hospital, she'd still be alive, if you want to call it that.”
“I would never have called it that.”
Karen sighed. “And neither would Krissy.”
“What about the funeral?”
“Tomorrow. Very small. I, uh, took the liberty of ordering some sunflowers in your name.”
That was a good choice. Sunflowers-with their bold, bright yellow faces-were Kristin's favorite. “They're not namby-pamby flowers,” she'd once told him, as they'd hiked through a field of them in Idaho. “They say, hey, look at me, I'm big, I'm yellow, get used to it!”
“Thanks,” Michael said. “I owe you.”
“They were $9.95. We can let it go.”
“You know I meant for everything else… including this call.”
“Yes, well, when you get back to Tacoma, you can buy me the Blue Plate special at that Greek diner you like.”
“The Olympic.”
There was a pause, filled with the low crackle of static on the line.
“So,” Karen said, “when are you coming back?”
“I've got till the end of the month on my NSF pass.”
“Then what? They just chuck you out at the South Pole?”
“Then they stick me on the next supply plane flying out.”
“Are you getting what you need? A good story?”
If Michael had been in the mood to laugh, he'd have laughed then. How could he even begin to explain what had been happening?
