Dark Winter

by William Dietrich

  “So we give him a shot at us?” Linda asked.

  “We ambush him.”

  Others were nodding now too. The idea of doing something, acting together, was beginning to reenergize them.

  “I just want him to go away,” Linda moaned.

  “I just want him to go away,” Linda moaned.

  “No. Because if he gets away, he wins. He leaves us like lab rats, pressing levers and chasing cheese. The Three Hundred Degree Club becomes a stunt. The Pole becomes a stunt, a pretension where people don’t belong, and not the point where the planet’s lines and times and countries all come together into something powerful, like Gabriella believed. Don’t you see? Robert Norse wants to erase everything Mickey Moss built by making us give up on it ourselves. It’s when we stop fighting for each other and this place that he can justify his own solitude.”

  It was disorienting listening now to Lewis, the man they’d almost killed.

  So it was Clyde Skinner who ended the last hesitation. He unsteadily stood.

  “I don’t want him to get away with my eyes.”

  ********

  Lewis stepped out of the galley first, bracing for a shot despite the bland certainty about Norse’s movements he’d conveyed to the others. What if he was wrong?

  But no shot came. The shadowy dome seemed empty, a soft slough of wind audible through the hole at the top. He heard nothing else, saw nothing else. So he stepped down to the snow and waved the others out, watching them pour silently like a line of emerging bees, trotting across the snow to the junction of the archways where the ramp was. Still no Bob. To the left and right were the barrier walls they’d erected to seal off the fuel supply and the generators. They hadn’t been breached, and the door to the outside was still bolted and locked. If he was in the garage, Norse had followed Pika’s way.

  “Okay, there has to be some kind of tunnel or corridor,” Lewis told the others. “Go outside and get in position, we’ll push from behind. Stay low, but move fast once it starts. With luck, we’ll surprise him.”

  Pulaski unlocked the dome’s smaller side door and the winter-overs began filing out into the night, going up the ramp as they had before to stake out Lewis. This time, if Lewis was right, they’d stop the Spryte. If wrong, they’d retreat to the emergency camp at Bedrock and regroup. Pulaski told them that the galley suddenly seemed like the worst kind of trap.

  “Unless Bob wants us to abandon the galley,” Hiro muttered.

  “We Yanks had a general named Grant once whose officers were always spooked by a general named Lee,” Pulaski said. “Grant told them to stop worrying what Lee was going to do and start thinking what they were going to do.”

  “What happened?”

  “They won the war.”

  Lewis turned with Longfellow and Mendoza to BioMed. The trio studied the sick bay module, which stood on stilts a foot above the snow. Crouching, Lewis could now see there was one point at the rear where a metal culvert led from the sick bay floor down into the snow. Stepping back to view its roof, he noted there was a tube of utility piping that reached to the arched ceiling above, conduits spreading like branches. Some kind of artery ran up the back of BioMed like a spine. It was here, he was certain, that Pika went in and out.

  With everyone suspect, no one had been trusted to have access to their power supply. The necessary exception had been their generator mechanic. Norse must have coerced him into showing the way. Coerced him into getting the Spryte. .

  BioMed’s door was half open; the snapped lock had made it impossible for the fugitive to secure it after himself. The three men went inside. It was much as before except that Skinner’s bed was empty. Medical supplies remained scattered, drawers askew, the shelves where Lewis had been tackled were still toppled. The cold had invaded, and broken liquids were frozen into thin platters. Lewis went to the rear room. Poor Nancy Hodge lay in the wreckage of her life, her corpse stiff from cold. In the confusion that had followed her death her body had been shockingly forgotten. Now she’d have to wait for commemoration. Lewis stepped over her to the cabinet he’d dragged askew.

  He saw the panel in back of it was now removed. Cold air swirled into BioMed from the dark air beyond. Had Pika been forced to show this entryway to Norse?

  Lewis poked his head in and looked downward. No light, but a faint glimmer from spaces beyond. He couldn’t risk his own light. If he came upon Norse, he wanted it to be a surprise, which meant claustrophobic gloom again. “I hate tunnels,” he murmured to Longfellow.

  “Well, it can’t be a very long one. I’ll go first.”

  “No, I will, because it was my idea. Just in case he uses that gun.”

  Taking a breath, he climbed into the shaft and dropping down the short ladder inside it, finding himself in a utility culvert that led in both directions under the archways. Pipes ran here, more that he’d ever suspected existed. The station was as complex as a spaceship. He wondered if Tyson had hidden in her somewhere after Cameron was stabbed. There was enough light from the opening overhead to dimly see and he considered for a moment which way to go. In the direction of the fuel arch it was dark, with a sound like water running. Unlikely Norse would go that way. It was opposite of the garage. Back under the other archway, towards the generators and Spryte, there was a dim light of another opening. He began crawling anxiously in that direction.

  It was a tight, grubby, cold place, the thing Lewis hated most. But Pika must have come this way on his regular rounds to keep the plant running. Had Norse and Abby passed here too? It occurred to Lewis that maybe the psychologist had known about this escape hatch all along. That maybe that’s why he’d agreed to Pulaski’s determination to seal up the archways, to lock them in the dome. But why would Pika tell him?

  Lewis came to an opening overhead that light issued from and could hear the reassuring drum of the generators. At least Norse hadn’t cut their power. Cautiously he poked his head up and glanced around from a corner of the generator room. No one. He pulled himself out of the tunnel and crouched near the reserve generator. The electrician and astronomer came up beside him.

  “You see anything out of the ordinary?”

  Longfellow crept from machine to machine. The middle one was drumming faithfully. No wires, no bombs, no monkey wrenches. “I think he’s left them alone.”

  Lewis was surprised. Maybe Norse didn’t care if he left witnesses. Maybe he was tired of killing. Maybe there was some booby trap they couldn’t see.

  “We have to make sure,” Mendoza said.

  “We do that by catching him,” Lewis replied.

  The three men began cautiously moving toward the gym and garage, giving the others time to circle around in the snow.

  Suddenly there was the sharp pop of a gun. Lewis reflexively dropped at the bang, flinching from the expected whine of a bullet. Had Norse spotted them? The others fell with him. But there was no buzz, no thud of a projectile hitting a hard surface, and he realized the bullet would have reached him before the bang anyway. The shot had been aimed at someone else. Had Norse gotten in a struggle with Abby? His stomach tightened at the thought of it. “Come on,” he hissed. “Let’s rush him.” Determined to risk a confrontation, he moved forward. The other scuttled after him. Ahead there were footsteps and the slam of a door.

  The gym was dark, the door to the garage beyond closed. Lewis trotted ahead and then tripped on something in the gloom. Damn! Raggedy Ann, the CPR doll? He reached around. No, someone still warm, and sticky. His heart hammering, he moved his hands along the head and body. Despite himself he felt a flood of relief. It wasn’t Abby.

  “Turn on the light,” he whispered.

  Longfellow felt along the wall until he found a switch, all of them blinking in the glare. The body was Pika’s, they saw, sprawled as he tried to run back towards the generator room. His arm was outstretched, as if trying to score a goal, and his back was bloody. Norse had cut him down in mid-flight, the poor little bastard. His other arm was tucked under him and clu
tching something rough and heavy as tightly as a football. Lewis reached under and tugged it free.

  It was the meteorite.

  Then he heard the snort and roar of a revved-up Spryte.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Norse didn’t open the bay doors that allowed him to exit the half-buried garage, he crashed through them as a precaution against surprise. Always a step ahead! His Spryte burst through in a blaze of light, spraying snow and plywood fragments like a tug butting a wave. The machine’s headlights momentarily blinded the ring of winter-overs who’d hunched against the icy darkness to wait for their tormentor, and the violence of the breakout startled them. The machine lurched over the lip of the garage ramp and rocked back down, jerking a sled of fuel and supplies behind it. The engine’s howl and the clanking of the treads made it sound like half dinosaur, half tank. When the beams finally swept by them and the cab was silhouetted against the stars, the ambushing group could see there were two people inside, Abby swaying uncertainly and Norse hunched at the wheel. It was obvious the psychologist planned to charge through the station and head toward Vostok as quickly as possible. No pause to say good-bye.

  Pulaski was the first to stand up, running to take position in front of the charging tractor like a matador in front of a bull. The old soldier’s blood was up now, his opponent finally plain and visible. “Come on,” he roared to the others. “Help me stop him!”

  One by one the rest of the group rose out of the snow with their crude spears and clubs, rushing to surround the rumbling machine.

  Norse sounded the horn of the Spryte at Pulaski’s challenge, an angry, elephantine trumpeting, and then accelerated to run the determined cook down. The diesel snorted with power, its exhaust a black cloud. The commando waited until the last second, crouching as if willing to be hit, and then darted to one side as the machine ground by, running back along its length in his heavy boots, snow kicking up in lively spouts. A flying leap threw him upon the fuel and food sled that Norse was towing and the other pursuers roared at the sight. Then Pulaski regained his footing and sprang forward like a cat, a boot dancing on the trailer hitch until his gloved hand could catch a handhold on the main cab. If he could stop the Spryte the others would help him swarm Bob. Clenching a vent opening, he swung himself firmly aboard the snow tractor and worked along the driver’s side, a hammer readied in one fist. The rest of the winterovers were pursuing now like a pack of wolves, yelling and whooping.

  Because they hadn’t come through the tunnel, none of this group knew that Norse’s gun had already murdered Pika.

  The cook got to the cab door and Norse snarled soundlessly at him, swerving the tractor in a vain attempt to throw his attacker off. Pulaski swung the hammer. Glass shattered, breaking the Spryte’s cocoon of warmth, and the cook reached inside to either fumble with the door lock or drag Norse bodily out through the window’s splintery teeth. The others would never know for sure.

  The breakage gave Norse a clear shot. There was another bang.

  The bullet cuffed the cook off the cab and sent him flying. There was something graceful to his arc, like a backward dive off a board, but when the old soldier fell into the snow it was heavily, his body instantly still. Now it was Norse who howled, an animalistic cry of rage and triumph, and he gunned the machine even harder. Jouncing across the sastrugi drifts towards the summer camp, his Spryte was well on its way to leaving the Pole.

  Dana and Geller reached Pulaski first. The cook’s hood had been thrown back and the crest of his head had turned molten where the bullet had hit. Hot blood steamed like acid into the snow.

  He was dead.

  A few of them threw things, the clubs and spears banging off the sides of the Spryte as harmlessly as if it were an armored car. Then it was beyond them, red tail lights a taunt, driving on into the night.

  Norse was getting away.

  “Always a step ahead!” he roared.

  Suddenly there was a different snarl, a coughing rumble that rose to a whine, and another, single headlight blazed over the rim of the snow at the entrance to the garage. Snowmobile! It burst up through the wreckage of the garage’s bay doors as if catapulted, leaping a drift and coming down in a wild skid, its treads biting and its single ski pointing after its quarry. It was Lewis, in hot pursuit. Lewis and Mendoza came charging along after him on foot.

  The others began running again too, trying to catch the churning tractor. “He’s got Abby!” Geller roared at the geologist as Jed shot by him. “He shot Cueball! Stop him and we’ll finish it!”

  The blinded Skinner was dancing from leg to leg to the sounds of pursuit, howling in the cold. “Get him, get him, get him!”

  The snowmobile was far faster than the Spryte and Lewis pulled up alongside the machine quickly, eyeing the cab, trying to decide what to do. Norse pointed his gun out the window and Lewis fell back. How many shots did he have? One for Pika, one for the cook, but if he’d reloaded...Jed hefted the meteorite as he decelerated, considering. What choice did he have? He swerved around the back of the sled and came up on the snow machine’s other side where Abby was riding, praying she’d jump at what was coming next. Pulling alongside the galloping treads he chose a place to aim and then, with grim deliberation, threw the rock into the gearing.

  There was another bang, a squeal of metal. The rock caught in the bogie wheels of the tread and jammed it so the Spryte swerved wildly, the other cab door popping open. There was a spurt of dust as Mickey Moss’s jewel was crushed into powder. Even as the meteorite disintegrated, a broken tread slithered off one side and the snow machine spun helplessly. Abby was thrown clear and flopped helplessly into the snow, apparently stunned or killed. The Spryte’s one working tread sent it wheeling like a dog chasing its tail, the trailer tipping over and the hitch snapping free. The machine was mortally wounded, a window shattered, a tread gone, its extra fuel lost. The others ran up around as it careened, surrounding it. Norse was wrenching at the controls, cursing in frustration.

  It was like a boat without a rudder.

  Then the psychologist realized the inevitable and sat back suddenly, cutting the engine so the Spryte lurched to a stop. Its lights dimmed. Lewis shut off the snowmobile, too.

  It was quiet.

  Norse was trapped.

  The others stayed back several yards, wary of the gun, their lungs laboring in the bitter cold, surrounding the broken Spryte like hunters around a mammoth. Lewis ran for Abby, fearing she’d been shot. Falling to his knees in the snow beside her, he gingerly turning her over.

  It was Raggedy Ann, the CPR doll.

  Norse was laughing at him.

  The psychologist had climbed out of the cab of the machine and was standing on the Spryte’s roof, his parka hood lit by a halo of stars. He had his crude homemade pistol pointed casually outward, well aware that the others had re-collected their hurled weapons and were in a circle around him now, arms poised to throw. He might get off one shot, maybe two. Then it would finally be over.

  “Where’s Abby?” Lewis called as he shakily rose, trying to catch his breath.

  “You didn’t do as you were told,” Norse replied.

  It was quiet again, the only sound the hiss of lightly blown snow slithering over the drifts of snow. Lewis took a step toward the Spryte.

  “I didn’t really expect to get away,” the psychologist finally went on. “I knew that when I was forced to eliminate Gabriella. The game had gotten out of control. But I’ve made my point, haven’t I?”

  “Where’s Abby?”

  “I didn’t want to kill anybody, not really.” Norse turned slowly, facing each one of the surrounding group in turn, still strangely in command with the force of his personality. “I wanted to kill the pomposity. The pride. The hubris! The academic arrogance, the smugness, the indifference. It was the station that killed you people, not me! The delusion that a place like this can work.”

  Lewis was trembling with impatience and outrage, desperate to know what had happened to the woman wh
o’d saved him. But he had to communicate with this man, and that meant tolerating him for a little while longer. “It’s over, Doc,” he tried, his face battered, his voice hoarse. “Give it up and maybe we can get you help come spring.”

  Norse looked down at him, remote, lordly, distracted. “What possible help could I get from you?”

  “Learning how to live.”

  Norse shook his head, snowflakes dancing past his brush of regrown hair. “You still don’t understand, do you? I already died. Long, long ago.”

  They were quiet then, watching each other.

  “What did you put in the tractor treads?” Norse finally asked. The quiet of the group, their will against him, was finally unnerving him.

  “The meteorite,” Lewis said.

  “And it’s gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Destroyed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fitting, no?”

  “Good riddance,” Lewis said. “I hate that rock. Everyone does.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “With Pika, where you murdered him.”

  “He betrayed you, you know. We can’t know anybody, can we?”

  “Where’s Abby, dammit!”

  “Did you know that Pika sold you out for a few pounds of space rock? Quiet little Pika, who never seemed to know what was going on? Yet when I offered him the meteorite he showed me the way past the barrier into the fuel arch. I told him I was just fueling the jerry cans to escape. I told him I was going to take him to Vostok. He ran away from me to try to fix things with you when he learned the truth. But it’s always too late to fix things. That’s what I’ve learned.”

  Lewis had a growing feeling of cold dread. “What truth?”

  “That I’m still a step ahead of you, Lewis. That I’ve always been a step ahead. And the fact that you’ve cornered me out here, brought me down like a pack of yapping mongrel dogs, means nothing. Because I’ve already erased all of you.”

  “Did you kill Abby?” His voice was hollow. He felt sick.