Sasha felt her heart rate accelerate as Kyle talked. She couldn’t believe any of this was possible. Kyle was clearly lying about staying holed up in a tent for reasons she could not comprehend. But aside from that, it could have happened exactly as Kyle had said. She had been in the storage bay tied to the rail while Soren and Kyle went outside. Soren could have met Edie and cut the rope. And then if Edie had gone around to the back door of the east wing, Soren could have let Edie in that night while Sasha slept.
And then he could have killed her.
Chapter 11 – Hole in the World
“So, you heard Anderson’s voice coming from one of the craters? Can you take us to that crater?” Jenkins said.
Kyle screwed up his face. “You mean go back outside in that storm? Are you kidding? It’s a whiteout. We’ll never find it.”
“It is of utmost urgency that we find Anderson,” Jenkins said.
“Why?”
“Because, he’s a murder suspect that’s why. And even if he isn’t, the U.S. military generally doesn’t leave folks in holes to starve and freeze to death. Have some food, then suit up. We’re heading out. Do those snow machines work?”
“As far as I know,” Sasha said. “May I come with you?”
Jenkins turned on her with mock concern. “Are you worried about your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend, but he is my friend, and I kind of believe in innocent until proven guilty.”
“Oh he’s guilty, but feel free to come along.”
Kyle still looked a bit green leaning against the station door fifteen minutes later. Jenkins and his men had continued their relentless prowl around the station, overturning anything that was not attached to walls.
It was decided that Connor would stay behind with Amber and Vincent, and that the other four would head out on two of the snow machines.
After some debate, Sasha found herself with her arms clutched around Flaherty’s waist as they sped off into the night, the snowmobile headlights illuminating the thick wall of snow cascading from the sky. Jenkins set a rapid pace and Sasha closed her eyes against the rush of dusk and sleet. She hoped that Flaherty was a good driver. The craters were everywhere and one mistake and they would both be dead.
They turned first one way and then another, weaving through the craters. They stopped occasionally while Jenkins and Kyle presumably conferred, and sometimes, when they were halted, when the loud bray of the snowmobile engine no longer filled the air, Sasha swore she heard voices—not Soren’s—coming from the craters. Jenkins and Flaherty seemed to hear them too, because every time they stopped, every time they asked Kyle if this was the crater, if he knew where he was going, when they observed that they seemed to be going in circles—which was impossible to confirm with no GPS, landmarks or functioning compasses—they grew progressively more agitated.
At last, Jenkins drew his snowmobile to an abrupt standstill and Flaherty pulled up beside him.
“Is this the one?” he bellowed into the wind. “I heard someone yelling.”
Kyle shrugged. “Could be? Like I said, it’s hard to tell in the storm. I don’t think my hearing is as good as yours. We can check it out.”
Jenkins scrunched up his face like he wanted to strangle Kyle on the spot.
“Shouldn’t we turn the snowmobile headlights so they’re facing the crater?” Sasha asked. “Probably safer.”
Jenkins shifted his evident desire to strangle someone to her, but gave Flaherty the order to turn his snowmobile around so the lights hit the crater, and then stalked off towards the giant hole. There were definitely voices coming from the crater, but they sounded like the calls of hundreds, not a single man.
In the beam of the headlights, they approached the edge of the crater slowly; only Kyle hung back. He had pulled out a cigarette and the red glow illuminated his face, his eyes slitted like those of a cat.
“Help us! Help! We’re trapped,” a single voice came into focus.
“Who’s down there?” Sasha ventured when she noted the goggle-eyed expressions on Jenkins and Flaherty’s faces.
“Help! Please! Someone save us.”
“We’re here to save you,” Sasha called. “Where are you? How far down are you?”
“Larry, did you hear something? Is someone there?”
“I’m Sasha. We’re here to help you. Can you hear me?”
A man’s voice. “It’s just your imagination, Ella. There’s nobody there.”
“We’re here!” Sasha yelled, louder this time.
The chorus of helps rose in volume and crescendoed, and the individual voices vanished. The plaintive symphony continued, rising and falling in volume.
“What the hell…” Jenkins said, peering into the darkened hole. He withdrew a flashlight from his pack and shone it all around the edges of the crater. Mist swirled around in the crater about thirty feet down, its silky white tentacles licking the sides like the contents of a simmering cauldron. The snow and wind had let up, but true darkness had started to settle in.
“I’m not sure if those people are actually in the hole. I mean they are, but they aren’t here in the Arctic. One of the craters Soren and I found led us through the mist to the Antarctic.”
Jenkins swung the flashlight around until it was shining almost directly in her eyes. The scent of cigarette smoke almost made her choke. She glanced over her shoulder. Kyle had approached from behind and stood watching her attentively.
“You’re lying,” Jenkins said. “What caused these holes?”
“Methane, I think. Robert was lighting them on fire.”
“So if I drop a flare in, it will ignite?”
“It might.” She tried to read his expression but the light was blinding her, and she had to turn her gaze to the ground. He couldn’t actually be planning on lighting the crater. Not if there might potentially be people down there.
“Let’s just see then shall we?” Jenkins moved the flashlight beam away from her face and pulled something round out of his pack. A grenade.
Sasha felt a twinge in her heart. “Wait. Don’t. When Soren’s snowmobile went over the edge, it ended up in Antarctica with us. It didn’t ignite the crater. If you throw that in, it could end up wherever those people are. You’ll kill them.”
“Don’t you researchers do all sorts of things like this in the name of science? We can consider it an experiment.”
“What? No!” Sasha said.
Jenkins moved to withdraw the pin.
“Column A?” Kyle murmured behind her.
She and Kyle had used column A and column B as their code for who was going left and who was going right when they were collecting ice floe data. Column A meant left, whereas column B meant right. Sasha always did column A.
Flaherty almost had his back to them and was on their left, staring into the dark misty expanse below them. Jenkins had already pulled the pin and had his arm drawn back to heave the grenade into the crater.
Kyle was proposing that she push Flaherty into the crater while he took out Jenkins. If they failed, the men would surely kill them.
Kyle was already in motion, though—she felt the brush of his parka as he passed her, and Flaherty, alert to any movement, turned as Sasha rushed at him with her arms extended. She caught him a bit by surprise and he staggered backwards before righting himself and coming at her and grabbing with a strength that jarred her teeth in her skull.
Kyle and Jenkins grappled with each other only feet away, and she saw Jenkins lower his arm and release the grenade in an underhanded toss. The grenade skittered to the edge of the crater and rolled off, detonating only seconds after it fell. The explosion ripped through the air, coloring the mist vibrant orange, and then the crater burst into flames that filled the hole and extended at least a hundred feet into the air.
Flaherty clenched Sasha’s arms, swept her feet out from underneath her and pushed her into the snow, knocking the wind out of her. Then he lifted his foot and placed it firmly in the center of he
r chest, pinning her in place.
Kyle fared better, but not much. He and Jenkins still struggled, but Jenkins was landing punch after punch on Kyle’s chest and already bloodied face. Kyle tried to get his own punches in, but Jenkins was bigger and stronger, and after one final blow to the jaw, Kyle sank slowly to his knees and then dropped into the snow. Jenkins drew his handgun and leveled the barrel right between Kyle’s eyebrows.
Sasha listened for the screams of agony from the people in the crater who might now be on fire. But all she heard was the whoosh of the flames that towered above them.
“Throw her in,” said Jenkins. “We’ll keep this jackass for a bit longer, and see if his memory of which crater Anderson is in gets better when his life depends on it.”
Flaherty, who was the only person facing away from the crater, bent to grab Sasha’s shoulders to obey the Lieutenant, but then froze and stared at something over near the snowmobiles.
“What are you waiting for?” Jenkins said.
“Um, you should turn around,” Flaherty said, his voice a little tight and high.
Everyone twisted their head to see what had rattled Flaherty. Only a few feet away, between them and the snowmobiles, sat six massive polar bears glowing orange in the firelight.
Jenkins started firing his handgun at once, and Flaherty snatched a radio out of his pocket and yelled something into it. Then he scrambled to grab the larger rifle slung over his back and start shooting. Sasha and Kyle both crawled around behind Jenkins and Flaherty. The heat from the crater was intense. The bears advanced almost in formation, closing in on the group with alarming speed, seemingly unconcerned about the spots of blood that started to appear on their stunning white fur. Flaherty’s higher-powered weapon was having more impact, causing one bear to fall to the ground, riddled with bullets. The bears were within thirty feet now. Jenkins, having emptied the clip on his handgun, yanked his assault rifle around and started firing wildly, trying to hit as many bears as possible in a scattergun fashion, his fear overtaking his logic that taking out one bear at a time would be more effective.
The bear on the far left had reached Jenkins and reached out with one paw containing five razor sharp claws and sliced ribbons into Jenkins’ coat and skin before Jenkins could pummel him with enough bullets to drop him. The distraction had allowed another bear to approach Jenkins from behind, rise up on its hind legs and decapitate the Lieutenant with one swipe of its paw. Up close, these bears were shocking, towering at least ten feet over Jenkins, who crumpled to the ground without his head, adding his own blood to the sea of red that now marked the snow in all directions.
Flaherty had managed to keep his head—literally and figuratively—and focus his shooting. A second bear lay dead only a few feet in front of him, and the third bear had been using the body of the other bear as cover. But now the bear that had killed Jenkins started to approach Flaherty from the left and Flaherty started to crack, aiming first left and then straight ahead, his eyes wide and frantic. He managed to get one shot into the bear on the left, slowing its advance, but the second bear would not emerge from behind the body of the other bear.
“Help me out!” he yelled. “They’re coming for you next.”
Kyle started to inch over to where Jenkins’ assault rifle lay in the snow. The two remaining bears had now joined forces and had caused Flaherty to back to the edge of the crater while still trying to get off shots. The bloodied bears roared in rage, and then suddenly Flaherty was gone over the side of the crater and into the fire.
Sasha sized up the two bears that had now turned their attention toward Kyle and her. Kyle had reached the gun and was aiming bullets at the bears, but he shot like a near-sighted researcher, and if she stood up, she would most likely be the one hit. The bears began evasive maneuvers, moving toward Kyle in an almost intricate dance, deeking first one way and then the other in swift and graceful swoops. Surely regular animals were not capable of this kind of subterfuge. They passed her, intent on Kyle now, and she was able to crawl forward a few feet until she was farther away from the edge of the crater. Flaherty had dropped his wide barreled weapon in the conflict, and she grasped it, staring at the mechanisms. She had no idea how to shoot the thing. If she aimed it at the bears and pulled something, she might just as likely take her own head off, or obliterate Kyle.
The two bears, perhaps deciding that the man firing the gun was more trouble than he was worth, suddenly turned around and started heading for her. Abruptly, Kyle stopped shooting.
“Kyle!” she yelled. “A little help here. Please. If you’re not shooting because you’re afraid of hitting me, don’t worry about it. I think a bullet to the leg or something would be better than polar bear decapitation.”
Kyle shook his head and seemed to be fiddling with the mechanism on his gun. “It’s jammed,” he responded.
“How do you shoot this thing?” Sasha waved her weapon in the air.
The polar bears were moving almost slowly now, circling around her as if deciding the most enjoyable way to kill her. They were only feet away, their blood flecked white fur and canine teeth glistening in the firelight. Their faces seemed flattish and feral and there was a cold fury in their eyes. She swung the weapon around in the air uselessly like a club. One of the bears moved to avoid contact with the gun, and Sasha saw a white plastic thing in the bear’s right ear. She’d seen them before in the station. They were radio transmitters designed for animal research. She shifted her eyes to the other bear. He had one too. These were tagged bears. She took a step backward and fell in a reverse somersault over one of the bears that Flaherty had already killed.
She scrambled to her knees, the two bears looming over her. Where was Kyle?
She saw him running around the edge of the crater in the other direction. Was he trying to draw the polar bears off, or abandoning her to be killed?
Sasha closed her eyes, preparing to die for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last few days…and heard barking. She snapped her eyes open. It was getting closer. Timber and Tundra ran into view, barking like lunatics, their lips pulled back and teeth bared. The bears turned immediately to the dogs, who looked diminutive in contrast to the hulking white beasts. The bears would dispatch the two dogs in seconds. But the dogs were more agile than humans and ran in circles around the bears growling and barking.
She staggered to her feet, slinging the heavy weapon over her shoulder. The dogs were once again sacrificing their lives for hers. A sob caught in her throat. The dogs continued their game. She looked back down at the tag in the dead bear’s ear. The tags screwed apart into two pieces, like an earring. Quickly, she bent and removed the tag. Then she ran as fast as she could to the snow machine.
The keys were still in the ignition to keep the headlights on. She flipped the choke to on and started the machine. The bears and dogs had moved further away from the crater. Perhaps if she drove past them, she could distract the bears away from the dogs. A distant voice in her head reminded her that the bears could outrun a snowmobile.
A vibrating sound filled the air and floodlights cut through the mist and clouds overhead. A chopper. Flaherty had radioed someone when the bears appeared. They must have had backup close by.
The massive two-rotor helicopter descended out of the clouds and hovered fifty feet in the air while two men with high-powered rifles started taking shots at the bears. The bears turned and roared their rage. The dogs, startled by the chopper, skittered away barking.
“Go, go, go!” Sasha said under her breath to the dogs, as she headed the other direction at full throttle. Whoever those men in the helicopter were, if they were with Jenkins and Flaherty, they were not friends.
She headed in a zig-zag fashion through the craters, trying to put as much distance between herself and the helicopter as possible. It seemed like there were more craters than there had been before. They were everywhere, and they loomed out of the snow at her unexpectedly, a slightly elevated ring of snow-covered dirt the only indication
of their presence, and the only thing preventing her from tumbling to her likely death. At times, she thought she heard voices coming from the craters, great choruses of people crying for help, or worse, screaming.
She drove wildly and probably in circles. With the clouds and fog, she couldn’t find any landmarks, and she kept hearing echoes of the helicopter rotor behind her. She needed to head for Mount Trainor, if she was going back to try to rescue Soren.
If.
No matter what Amber and Jenkins had said about Soren, Sasha did not believe it was true. Or did she just not want to believe it was true? Perhaps she had just been bewitched by his good looks and charm. And his goddamn dogs. His dead dogs. She had always been a sucker for dogs. Soren had clearly known something about the demons. Why had that Internet search on Soren brought up something about demons? Maybe he was more involved in this than she had thought. She slowed the snowmobile down. She was in the Arctic, with no food and no water, and she was already starving. She had no place to go, except back to the station, which had probably been taken over by the military guys, and the way things were going, probably a pack of demons too.
She had to find Trainor Mountain and go to Paulet. Even if she didn’t rescue Soren, she could take Vincent’s boat and try to get somewhere to safety. But that would mean leaving Vincent behind and stealing his boat.
The mist came up on her suddenly, soaking the fake fur around her parka hood. She did not have time to turn, and she hurtled through it, and out into a starlit sky with a purple aurora on the horizon, and the station right in front of her. The windows glowed a sumptuous yellow and smoke emerged from the chimney.
Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1) Page 16