by Ann Gimpel
I’d signed on with the expedition as a lark. It might have been stupid of me to walk away from a lucrative surgical practice, but I was burned out dealing with insurance companies and batshit crazy practice partners. At the time I left, I told myself I was taking a break, nothing permanent.
The looks I got—like I was the worst kind of fool—annoyed me. What business was it of anyone’s if I chose to take advantage of my master’s degree in biochemistry? I figured some of them were jealous because I had the freedom to walk away. No husband. No kids. No more student loans. No mortgage. Free as the proverbial bird.
Because they were jealous—and resentful—they’d labelled me selfish, immature, self-indulgent. I’d laughed it off and left anyway.
My job was assessing the effects of Antarctica’s severe climate on human bodies. That part of things had gone well; evaluating physiological changes was right up my alley. What wasn’t so fine were rival firms, all wanting to tap Antarctica’s stores of mineral wealth. The Antarctic Treaty forbade mining rich veins of gold, silver, cobalt, copper, chromium, and uranium, but there wasn’t much of a police force in Antarctica. In my months at the southern end of the world, I’d discovered the conglomerate I worked for was almost the only honest one. They stopped at mapping Antarctica’s mineral wealth. Other less scrupulous groups came behind us, drilling the sites we’d recorded.
Illegally, I should add. Antarctica is controlled by twelve countries, the original signers of the Treaty back in 1959. Drilling and mining are off the table. Not allowed under any circumstances.
When my bosses complained, reported the scavengers to the Antarctic Treaty System, retribution was swift in a place with zero law enforcement. Men boarded our vessel, forcing us into several Zodiac rafts. I’d resisted. All my struggling did was earn me a blow across the back of my head from the butt end of an automatic rifle. And that’s where my memories jump off a cliff into the abyss.
I reached up, intent on assessing the lump behind my head, but taking off my gloves again and unzipping my insulated suit enough to push the hood back were huge deterrents. Warmth is my friend. Warmth will keep me alive. If I sustained a concussion, it wasn’t incompatible with life. Probably because I was focused on it, my head throbbed, but not much I could do about a subdural hematoma.
And it probably wasn’t as serious as something like that since I was up and wandering around.
Maybe this place, the one I’d been chucked into like so much trash, was one of the many ice grottos dotting the Palmer Peninsula. I considered it, but too many things didn’t fit. For one, it’s too warm in here, and the running water suggests otherwise.
Another look at the rock and dirt walls made me certain I was underground, which narrowed things down. Antarctica’s ice sheet has thinned from global warming, but there aren’t too many spots with accessible cave systems. Most are buried beneath fifty feet of ice or more.
I’m not that far down. Nowhere close. Light is filtering in from translucent places above me. I squeezed my eyes shut to rest them for a moment. Now that I was up and moving, I was determined to explore every aspect of my prison. When I first regained consciousness, I’d screamed my lungs out, but no one answered. Or if they did, I couldn’t hear them over the roar of rushing water.
Where were the seventeen other researchers from my boat? How about the twenty seamen who’d piloted it?
Whoa. Rein it in.
I buried my face in the high neck of my suit and took a few deep breaths of warm air. Panic was close to the surface. Too close, and I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. I have a good mind. It’s always been one of my saving graces, and it was past time to put it to use. There has to be a way out. I was tossed in here—or carried—which argues there’s a way out as well.
Oblong rocks lined one wall. Odd shapes, the distribution didn’t look natural, but maybe my head injury was worse than I thought. I scrunched my forehead, sorting possibilities, but then realized my mind was wandering. Mostly to force a way past the inertia gripping me, I walked toward the closest group of rocks.
Breath caught in my throat before my stomach doubled up in rebellion. Between the two, I had a hell of a hard time breathing. Not oblong rocks. Bodies wrapped in tarps. Horror turned my guts to water. I bit back a shriek.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Get hold of yourself,” I gritted out and hurried forward.
Kneeling, I rolled the first tarp over and exposed the body within. I didn’t need to check for a pulse to know Brian was dead. He’d been a Scottish chemical engineer with a quick grin and a quirky sense of humor. Heedless of my newly warm fingers, I yanked off my gloves so I could examine him. I had to know how he’d died. Was it exposure or something far more malevolent?
Quick and methodical, I pushed more of the tarp out of the way. Its canvas was stiff and unyielding from congealed blood, but I forced it aside. Gunshot wounds, two of them, sat over his heart. My soul ached at the senseless slaughter, and I pulled his lids over his sightless eyes.
“Aw, Jesus, Brian. I’m so sorry.”
Not much point in wrapping him back up, so I moved on to the other forms I’d misidentified as rocks. Horror yielded to numbness, the same dispassionate place I’d discovered as a young doctor. One that allowed me to move forward on autopilot, no matter what was unfolding around me.
I made my way from body to body. After Brian, I didn’t expect any of them to be alive. My clinical detachment deepened as I checked each corpse for cause of death. So far, two others had been shot, and three looked as if they’d died from exposure.
“Well, that’s six out of seventeen.” I was talking out loud again. It made the carnage spread before me easier to absorb. And kept me from dissolving into a helpless muddle of tears. I’d cry at some point, but it wouldn’t be today.
I’ve never minded being alone, but the isolation in that cave unnerved me, haunted me, made it seem as if the walls were moving closer, threatening to choke the life from me too. After a few breaths to steady myself, I crawled to the last body, ignoring sharp rocks that cut through the heavy fabric of my outdoor suit. If I hadn’t been dressed for going outside when the men boarded my boat, I’d be just as dead as the rest of my crewmates.
Maybe not from gunshots, but exposure would have done me in.
I rolled the last body onto its side. This one was different. Rigor mortis hadn’t yet set in, and it turned easily. I focused on the man’s sharp-boned face and hope speared me, so sharp I almost couldn’t breathe. Johan Petris, the Dutch metallurgical engineer, was still alive. Dark stubble dotted his cheeks and squared-off chin.
I knelt next to him and ran my hands down his body, assessing for injuries.
Please. Please. Let him be all right. I wasn’t certain who I prayed to, but the words ran through my mind like a mantra embedded in a tape loop.
His eyes flickered open. “It is useless.” His accented words were harsh. “My leg is broken.”
“I can fix it. I’m a doctor.” I winced. I sounded like an idiot. He knew about my training, even though there’d been another “official” ship’s doctor to tend to the sick and injured.
“I did not forget.” He yelped when I touched his upper leg, finding the broken femur easily. It had bled like a bitch, and a huge knot pressed against his insulated bib pants.
“Steel yourself. I have to realign the bones—”
He grabbed my hand, clamping his fingers around my wrist. “Leave me. Even if you line up the bones, I have lost blood. A lot of blood. You can get out of here, Erin. I am dead weight. The cold will do me in soon.”
He focused very blue eyes on me. “If you stop moving, the cold will get you too.”
I ground my teeth together. I wanted to shake Johan, tell him he had to try, that giving up wasn’t an option. Besides, it set a terrible example for me. Hadn’t I flirted with curling up in a corner and giving in to a death that felt inevitable?
“I propose a deal.”
“Really? Here at the end of our lives�
�or mine, anyway—you want to turn into a gypsy trader?”
“I’ll realign the bones. You tell me what happened. They knocked me over the head before I even got into a raft. Do you know more about what unfolded after that?” I sucked in a ragged breath. “Do you know where we are?”
“Yes to both, but a bargain presumes you have something I want. I already told you there is no point setting my leg.”
“Your opinion, not mine,” I said tightlipped. What I didn’t say was I couldn’t bear to let him die. Despite my brave thoughts about not minding being alone, I did mind. A whole lot.
I repositioned myself at his feet and grasped his boot. Before I pulled hard and then twisted to get the splintered bone ends to mesh, I said, “This will hurt like nobody’s business. Go ahead and scream, but do not fight me. And try not to move.”
I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I wasn’t at all sure I’d be strong enough to manage this without a traction splint, but I’d give it my best shot. The same calm, quiet place I always found once I settled on a decision surrounded me.
Pull and twist.
Yeah, I know, I told my inner instructor, the one who’d sat on my shoulder since medical school.
Johan grunted, but it turned into a long, tearing shriek. He tried to sit, no doubt to rip my throat out, but the motion gave me what I needed. I felt the femur ends slide together.
“Goddammit, Erin, Stop. Stop! I would rather die.” He flopped back into the dirt, squealing.
“Done. All done now. Breathe. The pain will slow down.” I was panting with the effort it had taken. “Going to take time for the lump to resolve, but it will now that the bone isn’t bleeding into your thigh.”
For long moments, the only sounds were him and me gasping for breath. “Yeah,” he managed through a grimace. “It is better. Still doesn’t mean I’ll live, though.”
“No. It doesn’t.” I kept my tone neutral and even. Lying to patients has never been part of my gig. “What happened after they clubbed me over the head?”
“Yeah. That was the quid pro quo, was it not?”
I nodded. “It was.” I rocked back on my heels and stuffed my hands into my gloves. “You must have heard me yelling when I finally woke up in here. Why didn’t you answer?”
He managed a shrug. “I could not get to you. Figured you would be dead soon anyway, just like everyone else.”
His explanation made sense in the grim, eerie half-light of the cavern.
“I have been listening to water for hours. Can you get to it?”
I staggered upright, grateful to have something to do beyond running the odds of his survival through my medical algorithm trained mind. “Yes. I’ll bring you some, but I need to find a container. Bet you’re thirsty from losing all that blood.”
“I am. There is an empty water bottle in my suit.” He pulled off one glove. Scrabbling with his zipper, he reached inside and withdrew a quart bottle.
I took it and kept my voice crisp when I said, “Put your hand back inside your glove.”
Johan made a face, but he also picked up the glove he’d discarded to fish out the bottle. “Yes, Mother.”
Hustling to the water, I filled the bottle. It was tough to keep a lid on my elation because I wasn’t alone anymore, but I needed to be realistic. Johan’s assessment of his prognosis was accurate. Absent someplace like the boat’s infirmary, his odds of living were virtually nil. He needed antibiotics, for one thing. And warmth. And fluids.
My survival hung in the balance too, if I couldn’t find shelter and food soon. I wouldn’t check out as fast as Johan, but neither would I be all that far behind him.
I squatted next to him while he drank in huge gulps. He handed the empty bottle back to me. After two more trips, he set the bottle down. “It is enough for now.”
“Tell me what happened. Do you know who boarded our boat?”
He hooded his eyes. “Yeah. That Russian group. The ones intent on gold and uranium. You might not have known because you do not speak Russian and you also did not hang around on the bridge, but Mikhail was really worried about them. A few hours before they boarded the Darya, the other two ships in this sector left for their home countries.”
“Do you suppose they had advance warning, or something?”
He paused to take a deep breath before going on. “Who ever knows about these things? Mikhail predicted problems and suggested we leave, but no one took him seriously.”
I pictured our tall, rawboned Russian sea captain with his short dark hair, intense dark eyes, and ever-present beer. “Hmmm. He’s Russian. They’re Russian. Do you suspect they were in cahoots?”
“No way in hell. Mikhail was a good man.” Johan’s face scrunched in pain. “Besides, he is dead. He refused to leave the ship, so they shot him.”
“He’s not here.” I waved my arm to encompass the collection of bodies.
“Yeah. I know. They dropped him off the side of the boat after they killed him.”
I sucked air through my teeth. “How’d Brian and Ted end up shot?”
“They attacked the men herding us to this cave.” Johan shook his head. “I am fading. Adrenaline is not going to last much longer. Let me tell this in order.”
I gripped one of his hands, nodding encouragement.
“Ten men boarded the boat. They radioed ahead, said they had critical scientific data to share about the uranium deposits we’d mapped the previous day.” Johan’s nostrils flared. “Mikhail warned us. Told us we should not let them board, but everyone fluffed it off, teased him about acting like a scared old woman.”
“Go on.”
“You were there when they boarded, saw it unfold when they ordered us off the Darya and into the Zodiacs. They killed a few dissenters after they clubbed you. After that, everyone else marched down the gangway and into several rafts. Some of ours and their two. Half of the Russians remained on the Darya. God only knows what plans they have for our ship.”
He closed his eyes, breathing through parted lips.
I removed a glove to capture his wrist and check his pulse. It wasn’t as strong as I would have liked, but it could have been worse. “Would you like more water?”
“No, but maybe you can refill the bottle before you leave.”
I opened my mouth to protest I wouldn’t leave him, but shut it fast. I’d leave because one of us had to. Perhaps I could find help before the rugged Antarctic climate killed us both. It was December, Antarctic summer, but that didn’t mean a whole hell of a lot.
“The Zodiacs split up. I have no idea where the other ones went, but we are inside the chromium dig site. They probably picked it because the ice is only a few inches thick here.”
“So we’re still on the Palmer Peninsula,” I murmured. We’d only traveled a few miles from where the Darya had been moored in the bay next to King George Island. “Maybe I can get to one of the research stations.”
“How?” He eyed me through eyes pinched with pain and fatigue. “I am certain they would not have left a Zodiac on the beach.”
“Overland, how else? Is there a way out of this cave?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. Just keep walking that way.” He pointed. “You will have to climb at the end, but it is doable.”
“If it’s doable, how’d you break your leg?”
“You missed your calling, Erin. You should have been a lawyer. I ducked and ran before they could shove me in here. They caught up with me and bashed me hard enough to break my leg.”
I swallowed around a painful place in my throat, thinking about the force behind that blow.
“Get that look off your face. It was stupid of me, but that was when they shot Brian and Ted. Only reason they did not shoot me was they knew I could not walk anywhere.”
“How long have we been here?”
He shrugged. “Maybe thirty hours. Enough time for everyone but me—and you—to freeze to death. The others were not dressed to be outside.”
My heart ached for him. He’
d been lying in the middle of a sea of dead and dying bodies for two days, but hadn’t complained once. I felt small, petty, and vulnerable. I’d barely been conscious for a couple of hours, and I’d already contemplated cashing in my chips.
I pushed to my feet and returned to the bodies that had been wearing down jackets and pants. Methodically, I stripped off layers of insulation and carried the garments to where Johan lay.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Hang on. I’m making a warmer place for you.”
He didn’t say anything while I dragged three tarps close, doubling them to make a rough shield against the cold, damp dirt. Once they were laid out next to Johan’s prostrate form, he moved his upper body mostly onto the sheets of canvas. I lifted his hips and legs, slowly and carefully, taking extreme caution not to disturb his broken femur. Once that part was done, I piled the down clothing I’d collected beneath and on top of him, tucking it in.
“Erin.” His voice was weak, thinner than it had been.
“Don’t try to talk.”
“You need to go while your strength lasts.”
I placed a jacket beneath his head and snugged his hood around his gaunt, whiskered face. The hard truth was I couldn’t bear to walk away from the only other survivor from our ship. I knew I had to, but it was tearing me up inside.
“Just a little more, and then I’ll work on rescuing us.” I stressed the us part. Hope was often the only element standing between living and dying, and I’d be damned if I’d extinguish his.
Another search through the dead turned up belts and extra clothing. I fashioned a rough splint around Johan’s injured leg to stabilize the break. Lucky for us, I also found two more water bottles. A quick trip to the waterfall, and I filled both and left one alongside the half empty one next to Johan.
I tucked the other one inside my suit where it wouldn’t freeze.
Johan seemed to have slipped into a doze, but it could just as easily be a coma. I patted his upper arm, but he didn’t stir. Poor bastard. I draped another two tarps over him to hold in what heat they could and started in the direction he’d indicated. All my thrashing around had thawed my extremities. Thank God, the grinding pain was gone.