The air around her started to grow damp and dense and she realized with surprise that she could no longer see the edge of the crater above her. She managed to make her way down a few more feet until she almost fully occupied the milky air. The snowmobile sounds had ceased, replaced by a higher pitched chattering hum. She would almost think it was birds, except it there were too many calls blending together into one incessant noise. Soon, Robert would be looking over the edge of the crater with his gun.
“Just a few more feet…hurry up, Sasha.”
She clambered down another bit, until she was almost in the fog, and then her foot slipped and she swung out to the side, her anchored foot and the axe still precariously holding her to the crater wall. She suppressed a scream and tried to grind her other foot back into the snow, but the snow seemed harder and less giving. Still she managed to find a narrow shelf of hold that seemed solid. The walls were getting steeper and her hands were wet with sweat in her mitts. The high-pitched chatter had intensified. She turned to tell Soren that she couldn’t go any further, but he had already vanished into the mist.
She withdrew her axe and tried to jam in again half a foot lower, with a quick decisive strike like Soren had taught her, maintaining the delicate balance of attachment to the wall. But it was like the wall had suddenly become made of stone. The axe ricocheted off and thrust her backwards. Her feet came unmoored and she was in free fall, going to a certain death.
Chapter 8 – Hell on Earth
Her heart felt like it had expanded painfully to fill her entire chest. This was the end of her life. How much would the impact at the bottom hurt before she expired? The noise she had heard before grew louder and angrier and she had the sense of movement of dark shapes all around her. Things brushed against her face, like bats. Was she falling straight into hell?
Then the rope that attached her to Soren snapped and held tight around her waist. She would kill him too, pulling him right from the cliff wall with her momentum. But instead of feeling the rope slacken indicating his fall, it held and she was dashed against a steep rock face, bruising and cutting her face, shoulders, and legs. Pain exploded in her head where she hit it. Then she dangled, blood streaming down her face, swinging on the rope like a pendulum. She had dropped below the mist, and all around her on stony cliffs with the wild ocean surging below, were penguins…thousands and thousands of penguins.
She scrambled for a foothold in the rocks while penguins scolded and scurried all around her. There were multiple ledges and despite the shooting pain in her arms and legs, she was able to grab on and stabilize herself.
“I’m okay,” she managed to yelp up to Soren. The rope quickly went slack as Soren descended the rest of the way out of the mist. They were not that high up. To their left was a sheer cliff that dropped right into the ocean, but to their right, a hundred feet below them, the cliff flattened out into a rough rocky plateau. And everywhere, as far as the eye could see, were Adelie penguins. They emerged from nooks and cracks in the cliff to stare at her, and some even took runs at her. She had to raise one arm and shrink away to avoid contact with jutting beaks.
Soren came to rest beside her, his blue eyes darting this way and that as he too tried to take in and process their location.
“I know this place,” he said finally. “We’re on Paulet Island.”
Sasha gazed out at the rocky shore. Paulet Island…in the Antarctic. She supposed the Antarctic part had been pretty much obvious from the penguins. But how did Soren know it was Paulet Island?
She turned back to Soren with the question in her eyes.
“My partner Marina was a penguin researcher, before… We spent a lot of time here.” His voice cracked and his face seemed to have fallen in on itself. He turned and closed his eyes for a second, and then snapped his attention back to Sasha. “You’re bleeding. We need to get down to the shelf there and get you cleaned up. Then we’ll wait for Robert to come to the conclusion that we fell into the crater and died.”
The blood from her face tasted like copper on her lips. “What if he knows about the mist? What if he follows us?”
Soren cast a grim look at the white mass of fog that billowed around the top of the cliff, and then over his shoulder at the rocky cliff shore and the frothing sea at its edge. “Then, if he calls in reinforcements, if there are reinforcements, I’d say we’re pretty much cornered.”
The wind was less than that in the Arctic, but still blasted against them in gale force gusts. Sasha thought of the other snowmobile. Who had been driving it? Paul? She would not want to be cornered with a demon on this island.
“Vincent said you were taken, by men on snowmobiles. That I was to tell him where the hole in the world is. I had no idea what he was talking about.” She left out the part about Soren loving her.
Soren looked back at her. “We need to get off this cliff. Can you climb?”
Sasha nodded. She thought so. Together they inched the rest of the way down the cliff, her muscles and bruises protesting with each movement. The rocks were slippery with penguin excrement, and several times Soren had to grab Sasha’s harness to prevent her from going down. At the bottom of the cliff, inexplicably, Soren’s snowmobile lay smashed and splintered into a million pieces, penguins already occupying the spaces on top of and around the twisted metal parts.
Sasha and Soren huddled together in a small cave-like opening out of the wind, the Adelies who had previously occupied it squawking their rage all around them. Soren removed his mitts and cleaned the blood occluding her eyesight as best he could with the small first aid kit in his pack. The look on his face told her that she probably needed stitches on her forehead just above her eyebrow. But there was no possibility of that, so he pulled the wound gently closed and placed butterfly closures along the extent of it.
Then they both had small sips of water and stared out over the ocean.
“The sea is too wild,” Soren said. “It’s not usually like this here. It’s usually calmer. There’s something wrong.” The wind carried the hint of snow, with flurries appearing and disappearing in whirls across the island and water.
“Well, it seems like there’s something wrong pretty much everywhere,” Sasha said, her lips thick and swollen from where they had bounced off the cliff face. Her head throbbed dully. She wanted to go to sleep. She probably had a mild concussion. If she slept, she might not wake up. She tried not to picture Timber still plodding along in the deep snow, his old bones aching with the cold. If he did make it back to the station, nobody would know to open the door for him.
Despite the chill in the air, the rocks beneath them felt almost warm through her layers of polar clothes. She removed one of her mitts and placed it against the dark rock slab. It was warm.
Soren saw her. “Paulet is an old volcano. There’s still geothermal heat beneath the surface that keeps the temperature of the rocks slightly elevated, and the island snow-free most of the year, even though it is as freezing as hell everywhere else.”
“Do you think hell is freezing?” Sasha said idly. “I thought it might be warm.”
“I’m pretty sure hell is probably designed to take the form of whatever you fear or hate the most,” Soren said. His voice was gruffer than usual, with an edge to it. “Now tell me exactly what happened with Vincent.”
Sasha closed her eyes. “I will, but I just need to sit here for a second. I don’t feel very well. Maybe you should try the radio or sat phone. The reception might be better here. It seems less stormy at least.” Perhaps they should try to find a way to the Antarctic station. Apart from the stench of penguin crap, this was far more hospitable than the place they had just left. If there were no demons or bad men on snowmobiles, it might be a lot safer too. And she didn’t know if she had the strength to climb that cliff again, back into the fog. But they had left Timber behind wandering in the snow, and probably Tundra too.
Soren shook his head as if he knew what she was thinking. “Penguins taste like shit,” he said. He pulled out
his compass. The red north arrow was almost as erratic as it had been for Sasha when she had stood by the crater fire, but its movements seemed more concentrated on one half of the compass. Soren squinted his eyes and furrowed his brow. “It’s still trying to say north is south. As for the radio, without the antenna array that I have set up at the station, the reach of this thing is going to be at most a few miles. I’ll try the phone though.”
He pulled out the sat phone and turned it on, crawling out of the cave so that he could hold the phone up to the sky. He checked the phone, then rose and walked out on the rocky bluff, watching the screen of the phone, shaking his head, while the penguins alternately scattered and charged him.
He returned a few minutes later. “It’s no use. It’s a dead zone out there. It’s like the magnetic disruptions have affected the satellites in orbit.”
Sasha nodded. “Paul said GPS was no longer working, but it was working for us yesterday. At least it was giving us directions. They were the wrong directions, but…” Sasha trailed off.
Soren squinted and elevated his eyebrows. “Who’s Paul?”
“Another demon. He’s one of the four horsemen of the environmental apocalypse. His full name is Pollution. He claims to be responsible for climate change. They’ve been burning all the methane out of the craters. He wanted to know what deal you struck with Ice.” A sudden jolt of pain flashed through her head, and she winced involuntarily.
Soren’s blue eyes immediately filled with concern. He reached into the cave and gently tilted her face to the dull light of the Antarctic sun, his hand warm on her cheek. “You took a pretty good blow to the head. You should really see a doctor. You don’t feel nauseated at all do you?”
Sasha shook her head. In actual fact, she did, but there was nothing they could do about it. “I’m okay. Just sore.”
Soren did not break the stare that lingered between them for a few seconds, but then flinched as if he was startled, or had suddenly remembered something. He shifted his gaze to the ground and his expression sagged for a moment, but then he reorganized his features into his usual imperturbable state and kneeled and crawled into the cave next to her.
“The earth’s magnetosphere protects us against solar wind and cosmic rays that would strip away the upper parts of our atmosphere. I’m wondering if the atmosphere is getting totally chewed up right now with the reversal and weakening of the magnetic field. Com satellites are higher in the atmosphere than the GPS satellites, so they went first, and now the GPS satellites which were in lower orbit are gone. It would also explain why the radio is screwed. They depend on the ionosphere. Solar flares and major upper atmospheric disturbances can absorb radio waves.”
“So, the bottom line is that we’re alone?” Sasha asked. She unzipped her parka and removed it. The rocks were throwing off a fair bit of heat.
“It’s looking that way.”
“And there are demons running around.”
“I don’t know if I buy the demon thing.”
Sasha almost laughed, but her laughter felt a bit hysterical. “We’re surrounded by penguins, which means that we just travelled through some fog to the Antarctic, and Vincent came the other direction. And we came across an identical station to yours named the Shackleton station, which suggests that in some sort of reality Shackleton lived and explored the Arctic. And you don’t know if you buy the demon thing?”
“I need you to tell me exactly what Vincent said about the hole in the world. Everything.”
Sasha was about to start talking when Soren pressed his hand against her shoulder.
“Wait! Quiet for a second,” Soren ordered, springing out of the cave and looking in every direction. He strode to the edge of the bluff and then back again, and then returned, his face a turmoil of emotions. “Sorry. I could have sworn I heard dogs barking for a second.” Sasha strained her ears but all she heard were the penguins and the continuous thrash of the water against the rocks.
The penguins, which had quieted their calls to a subdued hubbub, suddenly lit up in a wild chorus of cries, and a rock tumbled down the cliff and landed at Soren’s feet.
Soren grabbed at Sasha’s hand and hauled her to her feet. “Someone’s coming down the cliff,” he said. “There’s only one way off this bluff.” Sasha snatched up her parka, and tried to follow Soren over the slippery, jagged rocks. More rocks skittered down the cliff-side.
Soren had already arrived at the edge of the bluff. As soon as Sasha reached him, he grabbed her parka and tossed it over the edge of the plateau and then snapped his rope onto Sasha’s harness and pushed her in the direction of a cliff-like slope. The angle was not as steep as the cliff above, or the other cliffs surrounding the bluff, which were sheer drops into swirling water or onto sharp and deadly rocks, but this one was no easy passage.
“I’ll belay you for the first bit. Go!” Soren ordered.
“Couldn’t you just shoot them while they come down the cliff?” she hissed.
“I didn’t mention that my game of tag was bullet tag. I’m out of cartridges. Go!”
Sasha scrambled down the rocks, her feet sliding and refusing to cooperate, having to rely on the rope more than she would like. Three figures attached to ropes were vaguely visible through the mist on the cliff above.
“Soren you need to come,” she said. Soren flicked a look back up at the cliff-side and, apparently agreeing with her, turned and started his own descent.
Several scraped fingers and banged knees later, Sasha hit the sloped gravel beach occupied by thousands of penguins.
“Leave your parka here in this crevice. We need to blend in with the penguins. Head for that rock outcrop,” Soren whispered, removing his own parka. Sasha stuffed her red parka into the crack in the stones that Soren pointed to, and then together they made off, bent low, wending their way through the nesting penguins, aiming for an outcrop that had to be at least half a mile away. There were even more penguins down here on the beach and the noise was cacophonous. Sasha tried to lower herself to the same height as the penguins. Without their parkas, both she and Soren wore all black. If they stayed low, maybe they would not be seen. They had only gone about a hundred feet into the midst of the colony when gunfire began to slice the air. Penguins on either side of Sasha exploded in a sea of red, and she screamed.
“Run,” Soren ordered. “Stay low and zig zag.”
Sasha took off as fast as she could go, veering first left and then right. The bullets continued to fly, taking out penguin after penguin. The colony was in an uproar with birds scattering one way and then the other, screeching their dismay.
Sasha’s knees shook and the pain from hitting the cliff made her legs rubbery. She tripped over a penguin nest and stumbled. Soren’s firm hand cupped her elbow. He had stayed behind her, slowing his own pace and making himself more vulnerable to being shot so he could protect her.
He dragged her up and along as they crossed rock after rock and the shots got closer. The rock outcrop seemed like it remained almost a quarter of a mile away, and there was no cover anywhere else on the barren stretch of beach. They were never going to get away. They were going to die in this penguin colony and nobody was ever going to find them. If anyone was even looking.
A pack of dogs burst from behind an outcrop of dark rock at the edge of the beach in a barking swarm of black, white, and brown. Soren’s dogs. She felt the jolt of surprise in Soren’s hand on her elbow.
The dogs must have distracted the shooters for a second because the bullets stopped and then seemed to be redirected at the dogs. But the dogs were just a bit out of range at first and the shots hit the beach in a spray of sand, feathers, and penguin. The dogs bounded toward them in a barking joyous blob, tongues hanging out of their faces. Thunder was hit first, followed by Cairn as Soren bellowed “Whoa!”
The dogs, surprised by the interruption to their reunion with their owner, scattered and became mixed with the penguins, their pink tongues and movement the only thing making them stand out.
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The shooter turned his attention back to Sasha and Soren. The outcrop was now almost in reach, and the shots were increasingly falling short as the dogs surged around them.
Behind the rock outcrop, they allowed themselves to take sharp gulps of air as the remaining seven dogs howled their joy, seemingly unperturbed by the loss of Thunder and Cairn. Sasha could see Soren counting, checking which dogs were there, and which were not. The team had been fourteen dogs strong when Sasha had arrived at the station. Tundra, Timber, and Cedar were presumably still in the Arctic, while Thunder and Cairn had just been shot, which left two dogs unaccounted for. But there had been four dogs attached to Vincent’s sled.
“We have to go,” Soren said, jerking his head in the direction of the next rock outcrop, an entire stretch of beach away, this one thankfully marginally less strewn with penguins. They did not have time to worry about dogs. “They’ll be after us shortly.”
Sasha nodded and rose painfully to her feet. Her head ached and every muscle in her body throbbed. This beach did not extend up into a rolling grassy bench like the other one had, but instead was a long carved out semi-circle of beach flanked on two sides by black outcrops of volcanic rock and ending abruptly at the back with a sheer cliff. Getting to the end of the beach and behind the next outcrop would be their only escape.
They made their way through the penguins, going as fast as they could, the dogs bounding all around them. The shooters did not come upon them until they were almost to the other end, and once again bullets began to ping off rocks, and sand, and penguins. The dogs, having learned their lesson the previous time, headed to the outcrop immediately and barked desperately as Sasha and Soren staggered the last few feet.
And so began a wild chase from beach to beach and outcrop to outcrop around the island, with Sasha growing more exhausted and Soren looking grimmer with each beach, and always the sound of the barking dogs, screaming penguins and wild thrash of the ocean.
Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1) Page 11