Below Zero

by Dan Smith

  When Storage was lost in the storm behind them, Sofia stopped and leant close to Peters’ ear. ‘Give me the scanner.’

  ‘What happened in there? What’s going on?’

  ‘Just give me the scanner!’ Sofia had defeated her panic, but she could see Peters was still battling with his. ‘Quick!’ She reached for his pocket, but he pushed her hand away and fumbled for it himself.

  She took it from him, brushed ice crystals from the screen and squinted at the steady blue glow of the trackers on the satellite map. ‘They’ve gone back to where they were,’ she shouted. ‘Come on, let’s get out of this weather. And don’t lose that camera.’ She stuffed the tracker into her pocket.

  As she battled through the storm, Sofia kept an eye on Peters and considered her options. Their priority had to be ViBac. It was essential they upload the video footage so if anything happened to them, there would be a record of this. Somebody would come looking for them, and they’d need to know what had happened here. After that, she had to call for help, so their best bet was to head to Refuge. Once there, they could—

  ‘There’s something out there!’

  Peters’ words sent a surge of adrenaline washing through her veins, and she turned to see him standing a few paces behind her. He was pointing the camera along the landing strip to their right.

  Sofia wiped her goggles but all she could see was the swirling frenzy of particles in the wind.

  ‘Something’s moving.’ Peters kept the camera pointed into the storm. ‘Something big.’

  ‘I don’t see anything.’ But as she said it, a darkness moved in the white-out. A large, grey shadow, shifting from left to right across her limited field of vision. And, barely audible over the storm, came the strange tick-tack-tick-tack of metal striking ice.

  ‘You see it?’ Peters called. ‘You hear it?’

  ‘I . . .’ Sofia wiped her goggles again, wondering if it had been her imagination, a trick of the blizzard, but the shape moved again. This time it grew larger, becoming darker as if it were approaching. ‘Keep moving.’ She fought hard to hide the fear in her voice. ‘Keep moving.’ She wanted to stay strong for Peters. It was her job to stay strong. ‘Just keep—’

  The shadow surged forward, exploding from the blizzard like a shark erupting from the foamy sea. Sofia had never liked the erratic movements of the Spiders. The way their legs stuttered; the way their arms jerked when they swapped attachments, but when the Spider came at them out of the storm, it was different. The jerky movements were replaced by smooth, fluid motion. This thing wasn’t like a robot now: it looked as if it were alive, and it came with the speed of an unstoppable juggernaut: a mass of scuttling legs and reaching arms.

  When Sofia first realized what it was, she thought there was no way it was going to stop. It was going to trample right through them, crush them into the ice. But it did stop. In the blink of an eye, it came to a halt, centimetres from where Peters was standing.

  Peters was too shocked to do anything more than stare in horror, camera still pointed at the Spider which leant forward as if it were inspecting him.

  Sofia knew she had to do something, so she raised the rock collector she had taken from the Magpie, and swung it as hard as she could. There was a crunch when it connected with the Spider. The impact of metal on metal jolted her arm, and rattled her teeth.

  Taken by surprise, the Spider paused only for a heartbeat before it struck. With an unnatural pounce, it extended one of its arms and snatched hold of the rock collector as Sofia swung it a second time. It tore the tool from her hands, jerking her forward so she tumbled face down on the ice.

  The Spider’s other arm shot out and grabbed Peters around the bicep.

  Peters screamed, dropping the camera, and the bug scuttled backwards, dragging him away into the storm.

  OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA

  21 HOURS AGO

  Sofia lay on the ice watching the shadow fade from black to grey. When it was gone, she stared at the emptiness of the swirling blizzard.

  Another person, in the same situation, might have despaired. They might have given up. They might have decided it was easier to stay where they were and wait for the Spider to return for them. What else could they do?

  The thought crossed her mind, but no, Sofia Diaz was not the kind of girl who gave up. She did not lie back and accept what was happening to her. Sofia had been in difficult situations before. She enjoyed danger, she loved the thrill of adventure, and she liked to be in control.

  As a Scout, Sofia had learnt the meaning of ‘Be Prepared’. She had printed it out on a piece of paper and stuck it on her wall so she would never forget it. Right underneath it was another motto that had served her well when she had been rock climbing or on survival weekends in the Outback. Being prepared was great, but sometimes things go wrong. And whenever that happened, she had a back-up; the unofficial motto of the United States Marine Corps.

  Improvise, adapt and overcome.

  That’s what she had to do now. She told herself to get a grip, sort herself out and get on her feet. There was no excuse for lying there doing nothing. Not ever. She might not know what was going on, but she was going to do everything she could to find out, and to warn anyone else who came to Outpost Zero. She would improvise, adapt and overcome.

  She opened her mouth and screamed into the storm. She shouted so loud and hard that her voice was like broken glass when it ripped from her throat. It was a battle cry, tearing out of her; her promise to the storm that she was going to fight.

  She scrambled to her feet and pulled the tracker from her pocket. A blue dot – all that was left of Peters – was travelling away from her at high speed, rushing across the airstrip towards Storage, but Sofia couldn’t afford to waste time thinking about him; there were two other Spiders out there somewhere and she had to reach safety. She shoved the scanner back into her pocket, snatched up the camera Peters had dropped, and hurried across the landing strip, keeping the guide rope in her left hand as she ran. The tightness of the rope was reassuring. It would get her back. It would lead her to—

  The rope slackened and slumped into the snow behind her. Somewhere in the storm, something had cut it.

  The Spiders. They’ve come for me.

  Forcing the panic down, Sofia kept hold of the loose rope and battled on through the storm as shadows gathered. Hidden by the weather, more monsters were moving in the darkness, cruising, testing, waiting for the right time to strike.

  ‘Get away!’ Sofia yelled at them. ‘Leave me alone!’ There had to be something she could do to protect herself, something that would give her time to get to The Hub.

  The flare gun!

  It was still in her pocket. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing, and it might give her the time she needed – it might be the difference between life and death. Using her teeth, she pulled the glove from her right hand and flicked it away. Without the glove, she was able to move more freely, but it wouldn’t be long before the cold bit into her skin and turned her fingers black. She had to be quick.

  She dug the flare gun from her pocket, thumbed back the hammer, and aimed at the main cluster of shadows.

  When she fired, a sharp pop! punctuated the wind, and sparks jumped from the barrel of the pistol as the flare shot out. It travelled no more than a few metres before hitting something hard – ting! – and coming to an abrupt stop. The flare bounced away and dropped into the snow, bursting into a bright dance of red sparks that illuminated the surrounding area like brake lights on a foggy motorway. In the red glow, Sofia saw the silhouettes of two Spiders identical to the one that had taken Peters, but they didn’t come forward to attack her. Instead, they recoiled from the bright light of the flare, jerking away as if it had caused them pain.

  It’s the way they see.

  The Spiders were equipped with cameras allowing them to see in different ways. That’s why they had found it so easy to track her and Peters in the storm. They had heat-vision, night-vision, infra-
red, microscopic. And the brightness and warmth of the flare had interfered with all of those. If she could keep them blinded, damage the camera, she might have a chance.

  With her left hand hindered by her thick glove, and her right beginning to go numb, Sofia fumbled as she reloaded the gun. She cursed her clumsy fingers as she struggled to push the flare into the chamber, then snapped the gun closed and fired another shot. This time she aimed at the ground directly in front of the two Spiders. Pop! The flare sparked and burst into a bright flash of red. Smoke filled the air around it, creating a swirling cloud to hide her escape.

  Sofia fired once more before reloading, pocketing the gun, and reaching for the guide rope. The Spiders were turning this way and that, trying to locate her, but she had stolen a few precious seconds and didn’t have much further to go. She kept the loose rope in her left hand, following it until it grew taut as she came to the place where she had tied it to the Magpie.

  The silhouette of The Hub filled the storm in front of her, and she knew she was almost there.

  I’m going to make it.

  But the Spiders were closing in. A few more seconds, and they would have her.

  Sofia pushed harder than she had ever pushed before. She forced herself to keep moving. She drew on every last reserve of energy, calling on every muscle to work harder. Reaching the stairs, she grabbed the handrail to haul herself up. At the top, she ripped open the panel beside the door and yanked hard on the emergency lever. The door clunked, hissed and slid open. Sofia lunged inside as the first Spider reached the bottom step. Its legs clattered, metal against metal. She spun around, slamming her fist hard against the lock, glimpsing the Spider trying to climb the stairs as the door slid shut.

  ‘And stay out!’ She flicked the lock, sealing the door.

  Sofia shook the blood back into her numb hand and, in the darkness of The Hub, fumbled her way towards the door at the back of the room. She checked the walkway was clear, and headed across as fast as she could. When she reached Refuge, she went into the office and dropped into the chair in front of the desk. It was the same chair robotics engineer Dr Adam Reeves would pull out to access ViBac less than a day later.

  Sofia was out of breath when she directed the camera at herself and started recording. Her cheeks were red raw from the cold. Pushing back her hood and lifting the goggles on to her forehead, she stared into the lens.

  ‘Somebody will find this,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who; but someone will, and I’m hoping it’ll help. Everything I know is here. Somehow the Spiders have . . . come to life. Sounds crazy saying it out loud but it’s like they have a life of their own. There’s those things on the back of everyone’s necks, and . . . something in Papa’s nose. Something grey, like the thing Doc Blair found in the ice core. I reckon the others will have them too, but I didn’t have time to check, we just had to get out of there, me and Prof Peters . . .’ Sofia looked away from the camera and wiped her nose. ‘Yeah. Prof Peters is probably one of them now.’ She closed her eyes and banged her closed fist against her forehead a couple of times before turning to stare at the camera. ‘It’s got to be something to do with those guys from BioMesa. They brought something up from The Chasm. This has to be something to do with them. It has to and . . .’ Sofia shook her head. ‘And I brought it back here. This is my fault. I did this. I’m so sorry, I . . .’ She stopped. ‘I’m going to fix this. I’ll . . . I don’t know how . . . I’ll try to get the comms working, get a message out, then I’ll see if I can get my head round what’s going on here. Power’s off and it’s getting colder, I can’t sit here doing nothing. Improvise, adapt and overcome. That’s the way forward. That’s what I’ll do; head out to where they were bringing up the ice cores. There must be something there to explain all this. Maybe . . .’ She looked down as something occurred to her. ‘OK. I’m going to upload this video to ViBac, and then I’m going to try comms and see what I can find out. Wish me luck.’

  OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA

  NOW

  When the screen froze, Zak and the others stared at the fuzzy picture of Sofia Diaz. Zak had about twenty-five billion thoughts in his head, but the one that floated to the surface was about her. She was tough, resourceful, confident – everything he wished he could be – and even though he’d never met her, he knew he liked her. But they hadn’t seen any sign of her since arriving at Outpost Zero.

  Because they got her, Zak thought. She didn’t escape.

  She wasn’t in Refuge, so those bug things must have got her and she was in Storage, right now, standing like a zombie with the others. She probably had one of those disgusting things inside her.

  ‘They were like the things we saw in the lab,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’ May asked.

  ‘Those bugs coming out of his clothes. And the thing in his nose. They’re like what we saw in the lab. And when the Spider attacked me before, I saw stuff underneath it like . . . like something was growing there. And it looked the same as that grey thing.’

  ‘Growing?’ May pulled a face. ‘On the Spider?’

  ‘Yeah.’ And the more Zak thought about it, the more positive he was that those sinews hadn’t been growing into the main body, they had been growing out of it.

  ‘How could something be growing on it?’ Mum asked. ‘What could be growing on it?’

  ‘It’s those insect things,’ Zak said. ‘The things they brought out of the ice.’

  ‘Zak . . .’ Mum gave him one of those sympathetic looks, but there was something else beneath the expression. Her mouth tightened and the zigzag scar under her nose had gone white. It looked to Zak a lot like fear. ‘There has to be a rational explanation for this.’ She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘There has to be.’

  ‘It’s those things; I know you can see that. You don’t have to pretend you’re not scared. You saw them coming out of his clothes. One of them was inside him, we all saw it. Those people are being controlled and it’s got something to do with those insects. And if they can control a person, why not everything else? The whole base. The communications and—’

  ‘Insects controlling people?’ Dad took off his glasses. ‘That’s . . . no, this has to be something else.’

  But as he said it, they heard a sound from out on the walkway.

  Tick-tack-tick-tack.

  They froze.

  Tick-tack-tick-tack.

  When it stopped, all they could hear was the faint bluster of the dying storm.

  ‘I think they’ve come for us,’ Zak said.

  ‘No.’ May pushed back against the desk. ‘It’s the girl from the video. Or the others have woken up and now they’re all right.’

  ‘Sh.’ Dad pushed in front of them. He engaged the lock and put his face close to the window in the office door.

  ‘D’you see anything?’ Zak asked.

  ‘Sh.’ Dad raised a finger to his lips.

  ‘I don’t want to be like them. Like the people on the video.’ May spoke quickly and quietly. ‘I don’t want those things on me.’

  ‘You won’t get anything on you,’ Mum said. ‘Dad and I won’t let that happen.’ She moved to stand in front of her.

  May peered at Zak through strands of black hair. ‘I won’t be like them.’ A cold strength settled in her expression. ‘I won’t.’

  Zak’s mind was a jumble of all the crazy things that had happened over the last few hours. He felt like he had slipped out of his body and was watching from somewhere far away.

  ‘And I won’t let them get you either,’ May said. ‘I promise.’ She clamped her jaw tight, and Zak saw a determination in her eyes he had never seen before, and for some weird reason it actually made him feel more secure.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Dad whispered. ‘The door’s locked. That thing’s not getting in here.’

  ‘Thing?’ Mum asked. ‘What thing?’

  One by one, Zak and Mum and May crept towards the door and peered out. What Zak saw filled his veins with ice.

  A smaller,
cruder version of the Spiders was standing in the doorway to Refuge. About the size of a large, heavy dog, the main bulk of its dark metal body was raised a few centimetres off the ground; its legs poised either side. What could only have been a CCTV camera was mounted at the front, watching them. It didn’t come into the corridor, but waited, each of its six legs tapping the ground in turn.

  Tick. Tack. Tick. Tack.

  One at a time.

  Tick. Tack. Tick. Tack.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Zak whispered.

  ‘It looks like a crude imitation of the Spiders.’ Mum glanced at Dad.

  ‘Built using parts from the Magpie?’ he said. ‘And the plane?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like. There are composite components too,’ Mum said. ‘That’s incredible.’

  ‘You think they did that?’ Dad sounded unsure. ‘The Spiders? You think they took parts from the plane so they could build that . . . thing?’ He shook his head. ‘That’s impossible.’

  Impossible. Can’t be. Doesn’t make sense. Another explanation. Impossible, impossible, impossible. That’s all Zak was hearing from Mum and Dad.

  He couldn’t believe they still sounded like this was all so fascinating. Yeah, the robot thing was amazing and everything, but it was dangerous. It was covered in patches of grey yucky stuff that looked alive, and he was sure it wanted to do awful things to them. It wanted to control their minds, turn them into zombies and . . . what? That was the worst thing. They just didn’t know.

  Outside, the drone thing settled back and turned its camera directly at Zak.

  As it did so, he felt a deep warmth expand behind his right eye. It spread like ink in water, washing over him, pulsing and aching, exploding in a powerful jolt. A brightness erupted inside him, filling everything. His muscles tingled, his blood fizzed, and his thoughts were wiped away by a busy hail of white noise. It was as if his whole body was caught in an electrical storm. Zak was paralysed, and there was the strange sensation again, of something being inside his head, crawling over his thoughts.