“They’ve taken off,” Sasha said.
“They must have smelled something.”
“What do we do?”
“Well, keep going, I guess, and hope. Isn’t that basically what we’ve been doing all along?”
Hope.
How did one hope in an apocalyptic world? She supposed you just did. If you were walking, you were hoping, in some format. Otherwise, you would just stop walking, and running directly into avalanches…
Sasha kept walking.
The heat spiked and perspiration started to cloud Sasha’s vision. Clanking and grinding noises filtered down the tunnel toward them and the whole mountain now seemed to be emitting a satisfied hum.
The low howls of the dogs echoed up the tunnel. It sounded like they were excited, but had been told to be quiet. Like they had found Soren.
Sasha started to run toward the sound, but Vincent caught her arm. “You need to be slower and quieter and have your rifle at the ready.”
Sasha raised the rifle and continued down the tunnel.
The noise and the heat intensified, and the tunnel made a slight bend and then abruptly opened up into a large well-lit circular cavern. In the center of the cavern a giant metallic cylinder jutted out of a broad, steaming, smoking, sulfur-scented hole. The cylinder rose up to the ceiling and fit into a large machine braced to the second floor of the cavern with large metal arms. The machine was a mass of interlocking gears and pulleys cranking and whirring. The room vibrated faintly and Sasha had to take a couple of deep breaths to control the trembling of her legs. All around the edges of the cavern were the darkened outlines of exits.
The dogs emerged from one of the darkened exits and ran urgently over to her and then back again as if they wanted her to follow.
She skirted the hole and the machine, followed by Vincent who looked positively clammy and ashen, despite his ruddy complexion. A quick peek over the edge into the hole revealed bubbling orange lava many hundreds of feet below them. She shrank away. The stench and smoke made her throat burn and her eyes sting.
The exit that the dogs had led them to turned out to be a new tunnel, and a few feet town the tunnel in a slight indent, Soren was chained to the wall shirtless and spread-eagled, his rippled abdominal muscles streaked with sweat and soot. He watched them approach with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. The dogs danced around him, nosing his inner thighs and butting against his ankles.
“Water,” he said in a raspy voice. “Call the dogs off. Don’t touch the cuffs. They’re alarmed.”
The dogs responded reluctantly to Sasha’s command to lie down. She retrieved her almost empty water bottle from her pack and held it to his cracked lips. He consumed the water with what looked like painful gulps, and precious water spilled down his chin as he choked and coughed. Sasha pulled the bottle away.
“More,” he gasped, his blue eyes burning into her.
She returned the bottle to his lips and he drank more carefully this time, emptying the bottle.
“Food?” she asked.
Soren shook his head. “Too thirsty.”
Vincent had already emptied his bottle himself and murmured something about going back to The Helga for more water.
“We need to get Soren out of here, Vincent.” She bent to investigate the cuffs that held Soren’s ankles to the rock wall. “Maybe we can shoot them off.”
“Can’t,” said Soren. “If you touch the cuffs, the demons or the guards will come and then you’ll be caught too. Believe me, I’ve tried. You need to get out of here.”
“What, and leave you here? What do they want from you?” Sasha asked.
“They want some information they think I have.”
“And do you?”
“No,” said Soren.
“Who does?” Sasha demanded.
“Murphy does,” said Vincent.
Sasha turned and stared at the old man. “You know what they’re trying to do here then?” she said, gesturing at the machine in the cavern.
“I have an idea,” Vincent said. “Let me guess, they’re looking for the hole in the world.”
Soren nodded. A gash above his left eyebrow had started to scab over.
“Are you saying it’s real?” Sasha asked. “You just said it was rubbish.”
“Well all volcanoes are technically holes in the world,” Vincent said. “They’re just looking for a specific one. That I believe is rubbish.”
Sasha furrowed her brow. “Why?”
Vincent shifted his attention back to Soren, as if hoping the younger man would explain.
Soren licked his lips. “They’re trying to cause a full geomagnetic reversal. So far they’ve only been able to generate jerks and excursions.”
“What?”
Soren looked at Vincent, his voice croaky. “Can you explain?”
Vincent nodded. “I don’t know it as well as you, but geomagnetic jerks and excursions are smaller changes in the geomagnetic field than a full reversal. Jerk, I believe, without getting too technical, basically means very rapid changes in magnetic declination and dipole strength that can occur in a single year. Excursions are short-lived dramatic declines in magnetic strength, but longer than jerks, with changes in the pole orientation up to 45 degrees. Our magnetosphere has been decreasing in strength over the last two thousand years, and the westward drift of the dipole had been accelerating, until the last few years when the drift became destabilized. Is that right?” Vincent said to Soren.
Soren spoke with effort. “Pretty much. Geomagnetic jerks, excursions, and reversals have been associated with a lot of major geological and climate related events on Earth, such as massive storms, the eruptions of super volcanoes, earthquakes, little ice ages, climate change, and the collective eruption of volcanoes worldwide.”
“So what Murphy was studying?” Sasha said.
Soren winced a bit. “You know about Murphy?”
“A little,” Sasha said. “So why are they doing this?” She had to ask, although she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.
Soren drew his bleeding lips into a tight line. “Because most magnetic reversals and collective volcanic eruption episodes are associated with mass extinctions.”
“Alright. Well, why don’t you just tell them where to find Murphy and they’ll let you go?”
Soren’s eyes looked, if possible, even more haunted at this suggestion. “I already betrayed Murphy once. I’m not going to do it again. Besides, I don’t want them to find the hole in the world. If they do, they’ll destroy the world for sure.”
“So you’re just going to let them hang you here in this oven by your fingernails until you die?”
Soren narrowed his eyes. “If that’s what it takes.”
Sasha wanted to kick him, and then kick the cuffs that held him in place. “Does the folder at the station with the coordinates and the references to the bacteria have anything to do with this?”
Soren blinked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe it’s nothing. It’s just something I found in Edie’s room.” She stared at Soren, thinking that if he had killed Edie, he might flinch. But he remained impassive.
“So how does this thing work?” Vincent said, gesturing at the machine.
Soren shook his head. “Not sure. My best guess is that they got it deep enough somehow to influence the electrical conductivity of the mantle, but I’m not sure. There are some that say that magnetic field changes are correlated with, or caused by, other things like solar minimums and nuclear bomb testing. Maybe this is just their backup plan.”
“Can we turn it off, do you think?” Vincent asked.
“The demons are around. It would be risky, Old Man.”
Vincent’s smile was almost wolfish. “That’s what he and Murph used to call me, when we did the seven volcanic summits. And that’s back when I could have bench pressed either one of their skinny little arses.”
“Don’t you think we should focus on getting Soren out of he
re? Or finding Murphy, and convincing him to turn himself in?” Sasha replied.
Vincent held up the M72. “Maybe if I distract them by messing with their machine, you can get Soren out of here.”
“What if you make things worse?” Sasha said.
“Not sure how they can get much worse, and I don’t think we have time to discuss it. It would be better if I shot this thing into the main gears up on the second floor. I’ll shoot away from this entrance so that hopefully you won’t be hit by the debris. You’ll have to huddle in Soren’s alcove, or go down the tunnel. Give me fifteen minutes exactly. When you hear the shot, wait until the main explosion is over and then get those shackles off of Soren and run for it.”
“What about you?”
“Soren’s right. I’m an old man. I’ll take whatever is coming my way.” He pressed a set of keys into Sasha’s hand “Get down to the boat and wait off shore for me for ten minutes and no more. I’ll signal you from the cave with my light. If I don’t come, go, and if you do happen find Helga, tell her I love her and try to convince her to stop with this dragon nonsense.”
Then Vincent turned and marched off back into the cavern.
Sasha ordered the dogs into tiny space in the alcove behind Soren and then squeezed her own body in next to his, which to get well out of the way of any potential blast, required that she huddle in his very sweaty armpit, and stabilize herself on the sloping floor by pressing her hands against his thigh and torso.
“I can’t believe you’re just letting him go,” she said.
Soren’s mouth twisted in a faint smile. “I wasn’t exactly in a position to stop him. Besides it’s pretty easy to get all heroic when the end of the world seems imminent. If you can’t get me loose, you need to take the dogs and run like hell.”
“And what, get in Vincent’s boat and go…where? With no navigation I might add?”
“Go back to the station. There’s a trapdoor under my bed that leads to a cellar with a two-year supply of food. Wait this thing out. Burn the furniture for heat. Just stay alive.”
Sasha gave out a sob. “Why? What’s the point if I’m the only person left alive in the world, assuming the geological apocalypse doesn’t hit the Arctic as well?” She didn’t bother mentioning that the station was overrun by men from who knows where.
She rested her forehead against Soren’s shoulder, and he leaned his head so that it touched hers. This was the closest they had ever stood to each other. Despite his potential murderer status, her heart flipped around so hard in her chest that she ached, and she risked curling her fingers around his shoulder in more of an embrace.
“What happened between you and Marina and Murphy?” Sasha asked.
She felt Soren’s body stiffen, but he didn’t pull away. “I made a mistake. I didn’t trust Murphy, and I should have. I knew he was completely in love with Marina, but I should have known he’d never put that before our friendship. We were staying here with Murphy, doing our research, and Marina told me that Murphy made a pass at her. I saw red and lost control. Marina was so distraught by our fighting that she ran out of Murphy’s hut and headed up the mountain. She must have gone all the way up to the crater, and tripped and fallen in. That’s where we found her pack and her axe, but we never found her body.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry, Soren.”
“When we got back to the station, a whole bunch of emails surfaced, apparently from me to Marina, saying that I knew she was having an affair with Murphy. I never sent those emails, but I had beaten Murph to a pulp and destroyed his vocal cords. So the case looked pretty bad. But even though I had beat the crap out of him, Murphy refused to testify against me. So they let me go due to lack of evidence. Anyway, it’s not a part of my past I’m particularly proud of. But I do know that I’m not turning Murph over to these guys.”
“And who is Herman Rethoret?”
A muscle in Soren’s jaw pulsed. “He was on my dissertation committee. The committee that shut down my research. I don’t know if there even is a real Herman Rethoret, or if it was Paul all along. I can only guess that there was something they didn’t want me to find.”
So. This had started a long time ago. Sasha didn’t say anything, she just continued to press her forehead against his shoulder that smelled of sweat, and sulfur, and Soren.
“I’m scared.”
She felt the press of his lips against her hairline. “Me too, litt ett, me too.”
Sasha was going to ask Soren what he had just said when she heard Vincent say “Good Evening,” and the world exploded.
The walls of the alcove shook, and debris and dust flew past them through the tunnel. Mechanical clanking, yells, and terrifying squeals could be heard in the cavern. Sasha sprang out from beside Soren, called the dogs to her and then aimed the rifle at the first of the chains that held Soren’s cuffs to the wall. But her heart was pounding too fast. She only had five cartridges.
“Whoa,” Soren exclaimed. “Take three steps back so your body is around the corner and aim as far away on the chain from my body parts as possible.”
Sasha obeyed and then tried to concentrate, her fingers slick on the trigger. She missed the first time and the second, the bullets ricocheting off the rock in dangerous and terrifying directions, but thankfully not hitting Soren.
She lowered the rifle, sick with dismay. “It’s no use Soren. I’m a terrible shot. I only have three more cartridges.”
“Don’t even think about it. Take another step back. Rest the rifle on the wall. Forget about using the scope. You’re too close. Take a deep breath and exhale just before you shoot. If it doesn’t work this time, you need to go without me.”
Sasha did as ordered and the first of Soren’s shackles came away from the wall. The next two shots were also on target and Soren now stood with one arm in the air.
The mechanical pandemonium had continued on the second floor, and the air smelled bitter with electrical and chemical smoke. Sasha didn’t even want to turn around and look. She imagined the huge gears from the machine spinning through the air at the wrong angles, Vincent lying dead, and the demons scuttling around fixing their invention.
Sasha pulled the lever to expel the spent cartridge and move a new one into the chamber—maybe Gregor had counted wrong—but when she aimed and pulled the trigger, there was no answering explosion of sound and recoil. She nearly bashed the gun against the wall. She ran over to Soren, who was now pulling with all his weight on the one remaining chain, and added her efforts to his.
“Do you have your ice axe?” Soren said in her ear.
Sasha let go of Soren and withdrew her axe from her pack. She went to bash the chain with it, but Soren stopped her and took the axe. “Let me. I’m going to try to pry this out. You go. Look for Murphy. He was a hoarder. He used to have a bunch of tools in his hut that I bet he brought with him when he came to live in the tunnels. I need a hacksaw or a bolt cutter.” Soren wedged the tip of the axe into one of the chain links and started trying to pry the link apart or out of the wall by levering it off the rock ceiling, grunting with the effort. “Take the dogs. Murph was living in a set of caves not far from here, less than ten minutes run, near the cairn entrance. Murphy and I marked all the tunnels at the junctions, so we could find our way around. Look up in the upper curve of the tunnel at each junction and you will see some tiny scratches in the rocks; they have an arrow and a small drawing marking the way to the four major exits, cairn, tree, crow, and beach. Follow the ones to the cairn exit and start looking for a small entry cave on the left hand side of the tunnel. Murph’s caves are off that one. Come back if you can. Maybe the distraction that Vincent caused will buy us enough time. If you can’t come back, just go. Take the beach exit. It’s closest to Vincent’s boat. Do not take the cairn exit past Murphy’s caves.” Soren turned and reapplied his full efforts to the ice axe.
“I’m not leaving you,” Sasha said.
“Go,” Soren barked. “It’s our only chance. If I get myself free, I’ll com
e and find you.”
On impulse, Sasha leaned in and kissed his jaw, then she turned and ran. She bellowed for the dogs, but only Timber came. Tundra remained resolutely beside his master.
The mountain seemed to be shuddering as she ran. A pending eruption, or just the continued after effects of the explosion and malfunctioning machine? She didn’t know, but she ran on, her sweat-soaked blistered feet pressing painfully against the sides of her boots.
At the first junction, Sasha shone her headlamp on the curve of the tunnel where wall turned into ceiling. Sure enough, there, etched in the stone just inside the right-hand tunnel, was a small drawing of a pile of rocks, invisible unless you knew where you were looking. The other tunnel was marked with a drawing that looked like a bunch of grains of sand.
She raced down the tunnels, Timber padding beside her, taking turn after turn following the cairns. She was going up now, heading out of the bowels of the mountain. Some of the tunnels were not marked. Sasha wondered if that was because they didn’t go anywhere, if they were the loops that turned back on themselves that she had taken again and again her first night here. She avoided these branches and continued to follow the cairns.
Soren had said less than ten minutes run. Sasha wondered if he meant at his pace, or at hers. She kept her hand on the left wall of the tunnel, so she would hopefully feel the cave entrance if she did not see it. Was it the same cave in which she had slept two nights ago? She guessed that it probably was.
She bolted into the small alcove when she saw it, and found the small hollow where she had spent the night. Sure enough, in the corner of the first cave was a small tunnel. Sasha got onto her hands and knees. “Hello!” she called into the tunnel. “Murphy? I’m a friend of Soren’s. He needs your help.”
Hearing no answer, Sasha crawled into the tunnel. After a few feet of very claustrophobic and uncomfortable maneuvering, she found herself in another cave, this one furnished with a small wooden cot, a table that held a single propane burner, a stack of books, and a small trunk. No wonder Murphy had found her. She had slept in his entryway. Timber, unable to navigate the small tunnel, gave a low whine from the room where she had spent the night. In a small additional alcove, she found a pile of tinned goods stacked in one corner, and tools leaning against the wall in the other. She grabbed the rusted hacksaw and the bolt cutters and headed back to the exit.
Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1) Page 19