by Dan Smith
‘Do you seriously think we’d have left you there on your own?’ Mum said. ‘A fifteen-year-old and a twelve-year-old? And Zak’s not well, remember.’
Zak hated it when she talked like that; like he was some kind of invalid. The brilliant thing about May was that she didn’t try to wrap him up in cotton wool. May was just as moody with him now as she had always been.
‘I’m old enough to be responsible.’ May thought twice about the scowl, and softened it to a more vulnerable expression. ‘You and Dad could have come on your own. It’s not fair we have to—’
‘I don’t want to hear it. We’ve been through this enough. And Zak wanted to come, remember.’ Mum switched off her cell phone and stuffed it into her coat pocket. ‘I guess we’re out of reception area now.’
‘But really,’ May went on. ‘You even got a message to say everything was sorted. Your Spiders are fine. They don’t even need you here; we could have turned around and gone back to St Lucia and—’
‘We were already at the South Shetland Islands,’ Mum stopped her. ‘It made sense to keep going.’
‘It was supposed to be a holiday.’ May sighed harder than she needed to. ‘When do we ever get a holiday? You and Dad are always so busy with your stupid drones, and then Zak—’
‘Enough.’ Mum fixed May with one of her looks. ‘We’re here now. Anyway, this’ll be interesting for you. How many other people can say they’ve been to Outpost Zero?’
‘Oh, I dunno, thirty-two?’ May said. ‘All of them families, training to spend the rest of their lives on Mars. I mean where do they find these people? They must be mad. Who’d want to take their kids to Mars for, like, for ever.’ She rolled her eyes at Zak, making him smile.
‘Actually, it’s a few more than thirty-two.’ Dad had unbuckled his seat belt and was stretching his back. ‘Mum and I have been here, remember. Other scientists too. And the people here aren’t mad; they’re highly intelligent, highly qualified, and highly trained. Even their kids are well above average.’
‘No hope for me and Zak, then.’
‘Think about it,’ Dad said. ‘They’re like the early pioneers in America. They’re going to find a new way to live. Eventually we’re going to use up all our resources on Earth and we’ll need somewhere new. The Exodus Project is about finding a way for humanity to survive beyond the small planet we live on. This is just the beginning.’
‘Maybe we should be thinking about ways to live on our own planet without destroying it,’ May mumbled. ‘Anyway, I still think they’re mad.’
Zak didn’t want to listen to them argue any more, so he pulled up his hood, zipped his coat higher, and tucked his chin into the lining. They’d had to buy Extreme Cold Weather gear on the way here. The coat was a little too big, but he liked the way it smelt. New and fresh.
‘So,’ Dima climbed through into the main cabin, ‘everybody is in one piece?’ Without waiting for a reply, he made his way along the plane and opened the door, flooding the aircraft with freezing air.
The others followed, but Zak’s legs felt as if they were made of rubber, and he stumbled.
‘You all right?’ Mum took his arm.
‘Fine.’ He forced himself not to pull away because he didn’t want to hurt Mum’s feelings.
‘Dizzy? If you get any more headaches, you must—’
‘I’m fine. Honest. Why does no one ever listen to me?’ He wanted her to stop babying him so he had to show he was strong. With a little more force than necessary, he grabbed his backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and headed for the door.
The tiny hairs inside Zak’s nose prickled when he took his first breath of Antarctic air, and the cold tightened the skin on his face. It made him feel more alive than he had felt for weeks.
Dad was the first on to the runway, turning round to offer Zak a hand.
A month ago, Zak would have taken it, but now he didn’t want to show any sign of weakness. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, ignoring Dad’s hand and jumping down.
Zak stood on the compacted snow and stared out into the swirling storm.
‘Makes you feel like Scott of the Antarctic, doesn’t it?’ Dad shouted over the howling wind.
‘Not exactly.’
‘Didn’t he, like, die?’ May yelled as she jumped down behind them. ‘And everyone else who was with him? Starvation and exposure, wasn’t it?’
‘May-Ling.’ You knew she was being warned when Mum used May’s Sunday name.
‘What?’ May said. ‘It’s true.’
‘Well, maybe this isn’t the best time to hear about it,’ Mum told her.
‘Yeah, May-Ling,’ Zak shouted, and gave his sister a wicked smile.
‘Whatever, freak.’ May stuck out her tongue at Zak and pulled on her goggles.
‘Quite the adventure story, though, eh? Scott, I mean.’ Dad wasn’t bothered by May’s grumpiness. He was used to it.
‘Yeah.’ Zak crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I guess.’
‘Anyway, nothing like that would happen now.’ Dad leant close to Zak’s ear so he didn’t have to shout so loud. ‘This place has everything you could possibly need. Food, light, warmth—’
‘Light?’ May said. ‘I can’t see any light. Everything’s switched off.’
‘— and there are experts here who would put your doctors to shame. Some amazing equipment too.’
‘No welcoming committee, though,’ Mum said. ‘You think they know we’re here?’ She pulled her hood tighter as the wind tried to rip it away.
‘Maybe we are not welcome,’ Dima shouted. A nervous smile wrinkled the saggy skin under his eyes. ‘I am joking, of course. Come on, we see what is going on.’ He jumped on to the ice and closed the door. ‘I leave the plane lights on to help us.’
In the weak glow from the Twin Otter’s windows, and keeping together for warmth and safety, they trudged towards the cluster of buildings. The blizzard battered them, rushing beneath their hoods and forcing its way into their coats, but they leant into the wind and battled on towards the place where they were to be stranded.
Alone.
In their own cold, dark, nightmare.
OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
The main building of Outpost Zero was a two-storey module called The Hub. Smaller buildings – containing sleeping quarters and workspaces – were connected to it by tunnels. Sturdy legs kept the base raised a couple of metres above the ice, protecting it from snowdrifts. The whole place was designed to withstand temperatures as low as minus one hundred degrees Celsius, and survive storms that could batter it for weeks.
Zak and the others headed straight for The Hub, seeing it loom out of the swirling blizzard. There was no movement from the base, no light, no sign of life – something that puzzled Zak because he knew there wasn’t anywhere for the inhabitants to go. The nearest place was the British Antarctic Survey research station Halley VI, more than five hundred kilometres away.
The wind moaned around the base like a mournful ghost. It battered the new arrivals as they approached, and tiny fragments of ice bombarded them from all directions. Zak was glad he had goggles, otherwise he was sure he would have lost his eyes – if they hadn’t already frozen solid in his skull.
A few metres to the right, the Martian Rover Vehicle – the MRV – was parked between The Hub and the runway. It wasn’t much more than a silhouette in the storm, but Zak knew it was big, with six huge tyres and a cabin like the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. Even as big as it was, it still rocked from side to side in the strong blizzard, creaking and complaining.
As they passed the MRV, a dull ache pulsed in Zak’s head as if something was pushing into his thoughts. The feeling of hard ice beneath his boots disappeared and he had the strange impression he was floating in the storm. The MRV was gone. The base too. He was hanging over a vast and swirling black sea that was calling to him, enticing him to fall into its depths. He stared down into its endless darkness, his thoughts spinning and . . . in an instant he was
back on the ice, jolting with the sudden sense of falling he sometimes had when he was drifting off to sleep. The base and the MRV were back – exactly where they were supposed to be – but there was something else; something out of place.
A huge white bear, far bigger than anything he had ever seen in a picture or in the zoo, lumbered out of the storm. It fixed its black eyes on Zak before standing on its hind legs and stretching its mouth wide in a silent roar that revealed stained and terrible teeth.
Zak’s chest tightened and his blood raced, and when the beast dropped on to all fours with a heavy thump, he tried to shout a warning to the others. But he couldn’t speak. His voice caught in his throat as the bear lowered its head and started towards him, picking up speed. It thundered across the ice, an unstoppable monster. Zak stumbled backwards, closing his eyes and raising his arms in useless defence.
‘You OK?’ May’s voice cut into his thoughts.
Zak was confused when no attack came. He opened his eyes.
‘What are you doing, freak?’
He looked at his sister, and noticed the others had also stopped to watch him. ‘You . . . you didn’t see anything?’
May shook her head. ‘You seeing polar bears again?’
‘Umm . . .’ Zak peered into the storm. ‘No. No, course not. I just . . . I dunno, it must have been a gust of wind or something. You know. I slipped.’
May narrowed her eyes. ‘You sure you’re OK?’
‘Yeah. Fine.’ Zak thought he saw movement again, though. A dark shape moving away from the base. And there was a sound whispering in the wind. Tick-tack-tick-tack. Tick-tack-tick-tack.
Like bear claws on the ice.
‘What is it?’ May followed Zak’s gaze, and squinted at the swirling storm. Her face was lost inside the huge orange hood of her coat. She had made such a fuss about it in the shop – Orange? I have to wear orange? Haven’t they got a black one? – but Mum said they both had to wear something ‘high-vis’ in Antarctica. Black wasn’t an option.
‘I guess I thought I saw something,’ Zak said.
‘You are seeing polar bears. What? They’ve flown down from the North Pole for a holiday, have they?’
‘Oh, ha ha.’ But when Zak turned to pull a face at her, he caught sight of the MRV and noticed something else out of place. Zak had seen enough photos to know what the vehicle was supposed to look like, and he could tell something was different about it. Something was missing.
He was afraid to say anything, though, in case he was imagining this too; in case his ‘condition’ was making him see things. But as he stared, a brief change in wind direction gave him a clear view, like windscreen wipers had swept across a foggy screen. It lasted no more than a fraction of a second, but Zak immediately knew what was wrong with the MRV. The place where Han and Chewie would sit when they were about to jump to light speed was gone. Instead of a blunted cockpit surrounded by windows, there was a ragged hole exposing the smashed-up interior of the vehicle.
Zak tried to understand what he was seeing. What could cause so much damage to such a strong vehicle? Then the storm changed, closing around the MRV once more, and he turned to May, wondering if he had even seen it at all.
‘I saw it too.’ Her eyes locked with his.
‘We all saw it.’ Mum came closer.
‘Had to be the storm,’ Dad said.
The storm? But it looked as if the MRV had been torn open. Or bitten. Like something big had grabbed that hunk of junk and bitten right through it the way Zak would bite the end off a chocolate bar. The wind couldn’t do something like that, could it? Not even a giant polar bear could do that.
‘Come on, we need to get inside,’ Mum shouted against the wind.
Dad was the first to reach the stairs leading to The Hub. He grabbed the handrail and turned to check on the others. ‘Everyone OK?’ He put out a gloved thumbs-up.
One by one, they each replied with the same gesture, so Dad started up the steps, and the rest of them followed. When he reached the top, he slammed his fist on the door-control button.
Nothing happened.
‘No power.’ Dima shouted and pointed to a panel beside the door. ‘Use the emergency.’
The panel was already half-open, so Dad stuck his fingers into the gap and pulled it the rest of the way. He dusted ice off the emergency lever, grabbed it, and yanked it downwards. It had frozen in place so it took a couple of attempts before there was a hollow clunk, a hisssss, and the door slid to one side, revealing the dark interior of The Hub.
‘Come on.’ Dad stood aside and ushered the others past him. ‘Everybody in.’
OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
At home, Zak had this book called It’s A Strange World. It was a heavy, bright green hardback with a fuzzy lenticular photo on the front – the kind that changes when you move it. From one angle, the picture was of a weird reptilian monster’s head, green and leathery, with a huge mouth and small black eyes. But if you twisted it the other way, it turned into a human skull.
The book was full of photos and stories about the Unexplained. Bigfoot, the Tennessee Wildman, the Mothman, UFOs, stuff like that. One of Zak’s favourite things was to sit in bed and study the pictures, trying to think of explanations for some of the weird things that happen in the world. One of the stories was about a ship called the Mary Celeste that was found drifting in the Atlantic Ocean. There was nothing wrong with the ship, and everyone’s belongings were still on board, but the passengers and crew had disappeared. Gone.
Zak reckoned that when the sailors who found the Mary Celeste went on board, they must have felt the same way he did when he walked into The Hub. Everything about it was wrong. It was like stumbling into a spooky old graveyard at night.
When Dad closed the door, shutting out the howl of the wind, they stood in the darkness, no one saying anything. There wasn’t enough light to see more than a few centimetres in front of them, and it was way colder than it should have been. There air was clammy and damp, and the smell was . . . Zak made himself breathe deeper, tasting the air . . . yeah, it was like a mixture of over-ripe fruit and raw meat. Like the greengrocer’s and the butcher’s at the end of a long, hot summer day.
And Zak wasn’t the only one to notice it. He could tell everyone sensed something bad had happened here.
‘Hello?’ Dad’s voice died as soon as it came out of his mouth. ‘Anybody home?’ There was no echo at all, as if something had snatched the sound away. ‘Hello?’
Zak thought it was weird the way people did that, call ‘hello’ into the darkness. They always did it in films, as if the monster in the shadows was going to step out and wave with a smile. Hello!
‘There are torches,’ Dima said. There was a shuffle of boots followed by a patting sound. ‘Here.’ A click to Zak’s left, and a bright beam pierced the darkness.
Dima shone the light at the wall beside the door, illuminating a rack with two torches still in it. Beside them, a red fire extinguisher hung from a bracket, and next to it was a chunky orange rifle that looked like the Nerf Elite Alpha Trooper Zak had at home.
Mum and Dad took a torch each. They switched them on and swept the beams around The Hub.
The room was a rectangle, with a door in each wall leading to different sections of the base. On the wall beside each door, there was a fire extinguisher and one of those orange rifles. In front of them, a spiral staircase corkscrewed up through the ceiling. To the right, red plastic chairs were pushed away from square tables. One chair lay on its back like someone had kicked it over in a struggle. There were paper napkin dispensers, plates glistening with congealed food, overturned mugs with their contents drying on the tabletops.
As the torch beams swept across the room, Zak caught sight of someone standing by the last table. He saw the figure for a fraction of a second but it was enough to notice the old-fashioned windproof clothes. It wore large fur mittens, with a bulky hood shrouding its head. A dark balaclava covered its face so no skin was
visible, and goggles hid its eyes, giving it the appearance of a giant, bloated insect. It wasn’t doing anything; just standing there. Watching them.
‘What’s that?’ Zak grabbed Mum’s hand and swept the torch back.
Where the figure had been standing, the room was empty. But it had felt so real; exactly as Zak imagined Scott of the Antarctic would look.
‘Is something there?’ Mum asked. ‘You see something?’
‘No.’ Zak let go of her hand and told himself to get a grip. ‘Just a shadow.’ This trip was going to be a nightmare if he jumped at every shadow in the dark. First the bear, and now this? They had been so real, though. What was wrong with him?
‘We’re going to be OK,’ Mum said. ‘You know that, right?’
‘Yeah. Of course,’ Zak said. ‘I know.’
‘Come on, we need to find out what happened here.’ Dad ventured further into the room. ‘Looks like they left in a hurry.’
‘Left where, though?’ May wondered. ‘Where would they go? We’re literally in the middle of nowhere.’
There was a pool table further over to the right; the balls and cues still out on the blue baize, casting long shadows as the torch beams passed over them. Close to it, an L-shaped sofa faced a screen on the back wall. There were deep impressions in the cushions where someone had been sitting.
‘Ewww, what’s that smell?’ May said. ‘It’s like something died in here. Some holiday this is turning out to be.’
Zak stuck close to her. ‘I thought you liked scary stuff.’ He couldn’t help glancing over at the place where he had seen the figure.
‘Yeah, whatever. I like scary films, not real scary stuff. Remind me why this place is called Outpost Zero. No, wait, I remember. It’s because there’s zero reason to come here.’
‘Actually . . .’ Zak imitated his dad by removing nonexistent glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose, and deepening his voice. ‘It’s because Outpost One is being built on Mars. This base, right here, is what you might call Ground Zero for the Project.’
May snorted. Zak always did a pretty good impression of Dad.