Paul smiled. “That’s why you’re not a scientist.”
“True…but we’ve been with this crew long enough to know some things. And personally, I think something screwy is going on. The way those cables melted and snapped isn’t normal. They were wrapped around a hunk of frozen ice and somehow managed to get heated beyond seven-fifty… huh, I just told the camera guy, Mark, about that.”
“You think he—”
“No… not like that. Whatever happened up there would take more brains to pull off than a cameraman has. It just doesn’t add up.”
Paul arranged his screwdrivers by type and size. “I’m right there with you, pal. But I trust Eddy. He’ll fill us in when he knows something.”
“Okay, but if you had to guess, what do you think happened?” Steve took a drag of tobacco smoke.
Paul looked up from his refilled toolbox with a smile. “How am I supposed to know? I just drive shit.”
A cloud of smoke burst from Steve’s mouth as he laughed.
“Am I interrupting?” a soft voice said from the open side of the backhoe box.
“Not at all,” Paul said, giving Steve a mischievous glance.
Steve looked at the ceiling with a grimace. “If you’re not here to apologize, you can about face right now and go back to leading the frozen armies of the ice queen nation.”
Nicole paused, and bit her lip for a moment. “Actually, I did come to apologize.”
Steve’s head turned so fast that he nearly tore it off. “What?”
“You saved my life. Compared to that, the camera is worthless. We got the footage, anyway.”
Steve wasn’t quite impressed yet. “And if you hadn’t got the footage? Would I still be the world’s most hated man?”
“No… I didn’t mean—of course not. But you should see it! As I grabbed the camera, it panned around toward you and filmed every second, up until the point you dove through the air and tackled us. But you looked very heroic.” Nicole smiled.
Steve was happily surprised. “I did?”
Nicole nodded. “And I’m going to make sure that clip makes it into the documentary.”
“Great,” Paul said. “Give the man another reason to inflate his ego.”
Steve’s mind barely registered the comment. He had set a goal to save Nicole’s life, and he had done it! True, when he saw the ice falling above her, it was pure instinct driving him forward. Saving a life had always been one of Steve’s fantasies. But he had fulfilled two goals. Saving a life…and it was Nicole’s! She was indebted to him! Steve’s mind rummaged for the right combination of words that would ensure Nicole would answer his request for a date in the affirmative. But the words never made it to his lips.
Steve cocked his head to the side. “You guys feel that?”
“Feel what?” Paul asked.
“Weird. I thought I felt the ground move.”
“Ah, must be amore!” Paul announced.
Steve glared at Paul, forgetting all about the shaking ice. “One more word out of you, and I’ll show you how functional this backhoe can be on your candy ass.”
Paul laughed. “Oh, don’t tease me, big boy.”
Nicole’s face reddened. Steve’s face was handsome in a rugged kind of way, but his embarrassed, boyish look made him adorable. Maybe she’d thank him again later.
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
Brian Norwood didn’t like being ordered around by Eddy Moore. “If it was found with the dig, it belongs to me, and I’ll be the one who decides what to do with it.”
Eddy didn’t budge from his position of hovering above Norwood, who was still lying on the floor. “This device might present a danger to the crew, which is still my responsibility. You do not want to come between me and that job.”
Norwood paused. “Fine…but I don’t think we should just get rid of it. It could be a find of monumental proportions.”
“I agree,” Eddy said. “But I don’t trust it in your hands.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I still don’t know what happened to the mammoth.”
“Eddy, get off it already. You’re staring a stunning success in the eyes and you’re still worried about what almost happened?”
“Yes,” Eddy said. “Give the device to Kevin.” Eddy turned to Kevin. “Put it in my backpack. I’ll carry the burden.”
“You mean you’ll steal my artifact,” Norwood said.
“Norwood, please give me a reason to slug you again.”
Norwood leaned away from Eddy and handed the device to Kevin, who held it like a newborn baby. Kevin glided it to Eddy’s backpack, but as he walked, the ice shook with a violent tremor. Kevin’s light grip was no match for the vibrations shaking his body. The device slid from his hands and landed on the tent floor. Kevin bent down for the device. As he reached for it, the metallic pill popped open and flashed a red light across his eyes.
Kevin’s mind was transported to the surface of another world. The sky was emerald and the water reflected the sky. A massive city sat on the coast of the rolling green ocean and stretched toward the purple clouds above. The beach was a spongy pink, and a cool, sweet-smelling breeze, like watermelon, wafted across his senses. With a bright white flash, the world was undone and reorganized. The city was in ruins, burning, and billowing clouds of black smoke. A flash tore through Kevin’s mind and he came face to face with a creature straight out of one of his comic books, only this was very real, better than any Hollywood special effects guru could create. Its six crimson eyes were stacked from face to forehead in two columns of three. Its teeth were like a great white shark’s, and its face was covered in what looked like spires of bone breaking through the skin. It stood on all fours, agile like a cat, but with the cunning purpose of a human. Its muscles rippled beneath its smooth, gray skin. A mane of black hair ran down its back, disappearing along its long tail and reappearing as a tuft at the tail’s end. The creature snarled at Kevin and swung its clawed hand toward his midsection.
Kevin fell back and screamed as he slammed back into the real world. Eddy and Eve were leaning over him. “Kevin! Kevin!” Eddy’s voice beckoned to him through the haze.
“What happened?” Kevin asked.
“You tell us,” Eve said. “The ice shook and you dropped the device. You bent down to get it and then froze, like you were in a trance…but your eyes were moving like you were seeing something…did you see something?”
“Something, yes,” Kevin said, as the cobwebs began to fade from his mind. He realized that the rumbling ice that had caused him to drop the device, which now lay at his feet, still shook the tent. “What’s happening?”
Eddy looked to the tent’s entrance, which still flapped open in the wind. “We don’t know. Brian went out to check.”
“Feels like an earthquake,” Kevin said.
Eddy shook his head in the negative, “I lived in Southern California long enough to know what an earthquake feels like. This is something else.”
“It’s getting louder…growing closer…” Eve said. “Like a train. Oh, God. Eddy, do you remember Colorado?”
Eddy’s eyes locked to Eve’s, serious as hell.
“What happened in Colorado?” Kevin asked, eyes wide with a growing fear.
Eddy turned to Kevin, his voice almost a whisper. “Avalanche.”
“But we’re on a flat plain. That’d be impossible.” Kevin looked to Eve, her face frozen in fear. “Wouldn’t it?”
A burst of red entered the tent. It was Norwood, his lungs burning for more oxygen. He turned and zipped the entrance tight before clinging to one of the titanium support poles. He felt the stares of his comrades and turned to them with wide eyes. “Hold on to something,” he said with a shaky voice as the color drained from his face. “And if you believe in God, start praying.”
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
“Okay, now I know I’m not the only one feeling that,” Steve said, as a low rumble shook through the backhoe box.
The tool bo
x on the floor began to rattle as the tools shook inside. Paul stared at it. The tool box bounced into the air and spilled over. Paul righted it and started piling the tools back inside. “If this is somebody playing some kind of damn stunt with that crane, I’ll kill’ em,” Paul muttered to himself.
Nicole headed for the open side of the backhoe box, which from the outside looked like a big black cube with one side torn down. Steve followed. They stopped on the open wall of the backhoe box, which shook beneath their feet. To the left was snow and blue sky, the same to the right and straight ahead. Steve and Nicole looked at each other, realizing at the same time where the cacophony of noise was coming from.
Steve broke for one side of the box, Nicole to the other. Approaching the backhoe box, still a half mile away, a wave of white reached high into the sky like a tidal wave of snow. Steve felt his arms grow weak at the sight of it. His legs loosened and he fell to his knees with the realization that they would all be suffocated under a blanket of snow.
Luckily for Steve, Nicole didn’t have the same reaction. She grabbed Steve’s shoulder and shook him. “Steve! Get up! We have to get inside!”
Steve’s body was placid in her hands. His eyes glazed over as his head tilted back, following the icy tsunami into the sky.
Nicole was desperate. “Steve!”
Nothing.
Nicole did the only thing she could think of at the moment. She grabbed him by the coat, pulled him close and slapped him hard across the face.
“Oww!” The man was reborn. Steve flinched back, hand on his cheek.
“Steve!” Nicole said.
“What?” Steve rubbed his cheek, stunned and confused.
Nicole pointed toward the wave of snow, which was two hundred yards out and four times as high. A shadow loomed over them.
Steve stood with renewed urgency and dove into the backhoe box with Nicole.
“We need to get this thing closed!” Nicole sounded desperate.
“Paul!” Steve shouted as he grabbed a chain connected to the outside of the open wall.
Paul heard the fear in Steve’s voice and forgot his mess of tools. He looked up and saw Steve pulling on the chair, trying to pull the large metal door up from the snow. It was a near impossible task, but Steve was tugging. Paul ran to Steve’s side and took the chain without being told. They pulled with all their strength and the door budged, free from the ice…but they were moving too slow.
“What’s happening?” Paul shouted over the rumble, which was monstrously loud now.
Steve’s eyes were wide. “Just pull!”
Nicole got in line behind Paul and took the chain in her hands. She thanked God for making her a fitness freak and put her muscles, which were as strong as Steve’s, into the chain. The door rose toward them.
The rumble became so loud that their grunts of exertion couldn’t be heard. With a sliver of sky still visible through the open panel, everyone gave the chain one last pull. The wall slammed shut and clicked into place. The world went black, but not without sound. A wave of noise surrounded the backhoe box. Steve thought it sounded like being at ground zero during a shuttle launch.
As chaos surrounded them, every noise reverberated off the inside of the dark enclosure. Loud clunks echoed like the voice of God as equipment was smashed against the outside of the box. Screams from horrified victims, dozens of the crew who had labored so hard to assist in raising the mammoth shrieked past, carried by the torrent of snow. Other voices were silenced as their bodies smashed into the outside of the box.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Nicole huddled against the backhoe in the dark, listening as shrieking voice after shrieking voice was smashed from existence or drowned by the howling noise.
The rumbling ceased and an eerie silence filled the void. There were no voices outside. No sounds of movement. No signs of life. The only audible sounds were their quick breaths and the pounding of their hearts ready to burst from their ribcages. It occurred to Steve that many of his closest friends, other than Paul and Nicole, were dead or dying beneath a solid prison of snow. It then occurred to Steve that they too were sealed in a tomb. If the backhoe box was covered in snow, they would have no way out and no fresh air to breathe.
Steve unlatched the wall they had only moments ago struggled to close. He pushed on it, grunting. The wall, which normally fell down like a freshly cut tree, remained upright and solid. They were locked in.
Steve turned and leaned against the door. He slid down onto the floor of the box. The darkness felt oppressive. The smell of oil and gasoline, no longer filtered by fresh air, burned his lungs. He was sure that the only three people that could have survived the onslaught of snow were now going to die of asphyxiation. Every breath between now and approaching death would be spent breathing this rancid air. He hoped hell wouldn’t be this bad.
After reaching into his pocket and pulling out his lighter, Steve lit his cigarette. But he never inhaled the smoke. The orange glow of the lighter lit Paul’s face behind the glass of the backhoe.
“Better get out of the way and cover your ears,” Paul said. “This is gonna be loud.”
SURVIVAL
12
RECOVERY
A sheet of white pocked by blemishes of debris was all that remained of the mammoth dig site, which only minutes ago, had been alive with activity. The site had been transformed into a frozen graveyard. The wave of snow had fallen hard and fast, landing like a tidal breaker and burying the site under several feet of packed snow. Some equipment, which was built to withstand immense storms, survived, but the only evidence that humans had once populated the area was the occasional limb protruding from the frozen field like a headstone.
A cone of orange material marked the position of the research tent, its titanium support poles stabbing through the snow. A knife gripped by a strong hand sliced through the tent’s skin from the inside and carved a large hole. Eddy peered out through the hole he created and looked up at the blue sky above. “We’re okay,” he said. “It didn’t cover the top.”
Eddy turned to Eve. “Ladies first.”
“I’m…I’m not sure I want to see what’s out there,” Eve said.
“We’ll be okay,” Eddy said, doing his best to sound confident.
Eve put her hands on Eddy’s shoulders as he wrapped his fingers around her booted foot. He launched Eve up through the roof and she climbed out onto the solid snow. Kevin was next, followed by Eddy, who then pulled Norwood out. The work was distracting enough that no one took a look around until Norwood was fully extracted and lying on the ice.
Eddy’s mind spun as he surveyed the damage. The entire site had been wiped out, and he knew no one else could have survived. The four of them were in the only reinforced tent. Everyone was dead! Falling to his knees, Eddy’s hands shook and his throat became tight, his breathing labored and his vision grew blurred. “They’re all dead…”
After several minutes of shock-induced silence, Eddy said, “We need to get some help out here.”
Eve sunk to her knees next to Eddy and held him. “What…what about survivors?”
Norwood kicked at the ice with his boot. It barely made a dent. “It’s too compact. If they weren’t killed in the initial storm, they would have asphyxiated by now, not that we could dig them out. We have no tools, no communications…and what’s worse, the mammoth is back in the ice.”
Eddy felt as though he would vomit when Norwood expressed concern over an animal that had been dead for thousands of years instead of remorse for the deaths of dozens of people. Their friends. But not everyone had been killed. Eve was at his side and that gave Eddy some comfort. And there was Kevin, too.
With a quick glance, Eddy saw that Kevin was in bad shape. He hadn’t said a word and was sitting on the ice, twitching his legs and staring straight ahead, eyes fixated and unblinking. Eddy was sure he was in shock, but rather than feel bad for the man, Eddy was envious. He wished he could shove aside the torment that wracked his mind. He wished he
could feel nothing, but Norwood’s continuing monologue ensured that Eddy continued to at least feel rage.
“We should have reinforced the tent around the mammoth… What a loss. Of course, then maybe some of the others might have survived. As it was, the only things that could have withstood that storm were the research tent and the backhoe—”
A roar, like an ancient Gryphon, shrieked from the inside of the backhoe box, which was covered in snow except for a single side. Metal smashing against metal boomed from the box and the exposed wall crashed open at a forty-five degree angle. All eyes turned to the opening.
Eddy stood like a soldier at attention when Steve poked his head out. His eyes grew wide as Nicole climbed out, blocking her eyes from the sun’s glare on the snow. Eddy ran toward them like Forrest Gump on a mission when Paul climbed out from the box, amid a flurry of curses. Eve and Norwood were on Eddy’s heels, but Kevin remained sitting, frozen like a statue of Buddha in snow gear.
Steve jumped into the air with a burst of joy as he saw Eddy approaching. “Guys! You’re alive!”
After a joyful reunion filled with hugs, tears and unanswered questions about what had happened, Nicole got her first look around. “Where is everyone?”
Eddy turned to Nicole with glistening eyes. “Nicole…”
Nicole spun in every direction, seeing nothing but a mix of white snow and a rainbow of debris. “My crew. Where’s my crew?” Her voice shook.
Eddy put his hand on Nicole’s shoulder and she looked into his sad eyes. “Nicole, I’m sorry.”
“They’re dead?” Nicole’s eyes widened with the realization. “No!”
Norwood stepped forward, his mind working. “When the storm hit—”
“That was no storm,” Kevin said with a low grumble. He had returned to reality and had approached the group so silently that no one was aware of his presence until he spoke. “We raised that…that strange artifact from the ice and it caused this.”
Raising the Past Page 11