Chapter 17
666 Words
82
STARTLING STORIES
door. Then, tucking the torch under her arm and returning the handgun to her belt, she drew on her gloves and surveyed her sur-roundings.
White flakes sifted gently from the low-ering sky and danced gracefully among the shipping containers. She drew a deep breath. The cold air frosted her alveoli and set off another round of coughing, but she didn’t care. It rarely snowed in Antarctica (which was a desert), and there was nothing as beautiful as falling snow.
Moving away from her container, she approached the motor transport. In the open, the wind strengthened, slipping into her open parka to slice through her cotton Hawaiian shirt and silk thermal undershirt like toilet paper. Her bare face ached. Her mother was Iñupiaq, and she’d grown up in Fairbanks, but her tours of duty had largely been in blistering climates, and upon retir-ing from the army she’d moved to L.A. The Arctic icecap had disappeared permanently over a decade ago. It was easy to forget tem-peratures could still drop as low as -144°F at the South Pole.
The snowfall was thickening as the wind raised the flakes of past flurries to mix with the new, but Mac could see the production cubes—trucks—and tractors and snowmo-biles. Stepping carefully on the rippled blue sheet of ancient ice, Mac squinted against the snow-squall and counted the vehicles in the makeshift parking lot. Pot smoke was thick in her skull. She took her time, moving carefully and focusing on the numbers.
Finishing at the snowmobiles, she nearly forgot the total when Stu materialized from the snowfall.
“Let’s go!” he shouted, extending a gloved hand.
Mac’s heart pounded with relief. Stu be-lieved her. He wanted to get the hell out of here.
She withdrew Stu’s razor from her pock-et.
He stopped in his tracks and spread his gloved hands in an appeasing gesture.
“You’ve got your g*n,” he said, staring at the grip near her belt-buckle. “Shoot me if you think I’m not me.”
He wore his snow-suit, but was shaking as if he were n***d in the polar cold. He stilled his trembling with visible effort. Above his mask, his bare eyes met her gaze steadily.
“I understand your paranoia,” he said softly. “There’s no way I’d trust me if I were you. I— Hell. Even I don’t trust me. But I want to help you. How can we end this?”
“We need to rescue the people who haven’t changed and get out of here,” Mac said.
Stu grimaced. “And then what? Our ship isn’t back again for weeks.”
“We’re not impossibly far from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. I can inform an old army buddy there that we’re incoming, if you have your satellite phone. Chick’s still got mine.”
“Of course.” Stu fumbled in a cargo pocket for the bulky portable. “Any vehicles missing?”
“All present and accounted for.”
“That’s a relief.” Stu kept his distance as he held out the satphone. “Wow, are your eyes red.”
“I dipped into your stash.”
Moving no closer, Mac pocketed the razor and reached to arm’s length. She felt wobbly—shouldn’t have gotten so stoned, maybe? But she got the satphone without touching his glove.
She moved quickly then, yanking her semi-auto from her belt and shooting Stu in the kneecap. As he fell, she blasted the other knee. Dropping her weapon, she plucked the torch from her pocket and set Stu on fire.
Abruptly, Mac faced a screaming, writh-ing thing. Its rubbery blue body flailed on the snow and lengthening blue hairs squirmed around an unhuman face. Wrath twisted like flames in the depths of three eyes.
Stu wouldn’t have come here. Stu had no way to know where she’d gone. Despite her warning, someone—some thing—had fooled Stu fatally.
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