by JE Gurley
“Aim for the head,” Brad said. “I think that’s the only way to stop them.”
Pirelli stared at him but said nothing.
“I’m coming with you,” Liz said to Brad. “I need to go to my lab.”
Brad nodded.
Most of the over-winterers remained in the galley gawking at the corpse, but at least fifteen people followed Pirelli to a locker in the corridor outside the galley from which he retrieved two more pistols and two rifles. He handed a rifle to Brad and passed out the other weapons to those who claimed to be able to shoot. Brad checked the .308 Winchester to make sure that it was loaded. He was familiar with the Winchester, similar to the .270 he owned. Intended as a bear rifle, there had been little need for such a weapon in the Antarctic until now. Brad enjoyed the comforting weight of the weapon in his hands. He noticed Guy Hughes was carrying the other rifle.
Pirelli and six others continued down the corridor to Pod B, while two more groups went downstairs with Hughes leading the way. Brad, Liz, and three others entered her office. It was empty. The damp sheets used to cover the bodies were lying on the floor. To be safe, he checked the nooks and crannies and inside the closets. As they left, he said to Liz, “Lock the door. We need to make sure they don’t get behind us.”
Shots erupted from down the corridor in the direction Pirelli’s group had gone. Moving cautiously, they went to check it out. They found Pirelli and the others with him standing over a mangled corpse. Parts of the internal organs were missing, as well as large chunks of flesh from the arms, legs, and face. Fresh blood stained the walls and floor. Fingers of congealing blood ran down the walls. Brad became sick to his stomach as he recognized the blood-soaked Hawaiian shirt worn by Mark Walls.
“It’s Walls,” he said as he reached down and removed a cellophane-wrapped Miguel Grau cigar from Walls’ bloody shirt pocket. Remarkably, the cigar was free of blood. Walls would never again have the opportunity to smoke his favorite brand. Brad stuffed the cigar back in Walls’ pocket, and then noted the blood drops and splashes in the corridor leading away from the body.
“He was in the communications room with Mike Sampson working on the satellite feed,” Pirelli said. “We spotted one of the Russians down the corridor. I fired but I think I missed. I think he went toward the exercise room.”
Brad noticed Pirelli’s right hand trembling and knew why he had missed. He wondered if the trembling was from fright or from a reaction to the scratches. Though it had been less than fifteen minutes since the incident, the skin around the wounds was livid and puffy from infection. Did the purported outbreak at McMurdo concern whatever was affecting the Russians? If so, was it contagious?
He nudged Liz and drew her attention to Pirelli’s arm with his eyes. She gasped when she saw the swollen, discolored flesh around the wounds.
“Tony. You had better let me tend to your arm.”
He glared at her. “We have more important things to do now.”
“I think it’s infected,” she said, her voice gentle and calm but insistent.
He stared at her, and then his gaze travelled down to his arm. Surprise showed in his face as he saw the condition of his arm. He held out his hand and noticed the shaking. “It doesn’t hurt. In fact, it stopped itching.”
“Even so, as base physician, I insist on treating it. The others can continue.” She leaned closer to his ear and whispered, “Remember your concern when we brought the bodies in.”
Fear dawned in his eyes. He glanced at his arm again and nodded.
To Brad, she said, “I’m taking him to the infirmary.”
“Take Tony’s pistol. Lock the door behind you.”
He watched Liz lead Pirelli away, wishing he could stay with her, but anger at Walls’ death surged through his veins. He wanted revenge.
“Come on,” he said to the others.
They moved slowly, checking each room carefully by first peering through the glass porthole in the metal door before entering. Satisfied that the room was empty, they locked the door as they left. They spotted Sampson sitting on the floor in the corridor outside the communications room leaning against the wall and holding a piece of torn cloth around his arm. Blood seeped through the makeshift bandage. His face was pale from loss of blood, and his eyes were wild with fright. When he saw them, he tried to push himself to his feet; then recognizing them, collapsed back to the floor.
“He attacked me, bit me.” He held out his savaged arm as proof. “The bastard went after Mark. What the hell is happening?” he cried.
“Mark’s dead,” Brad said and watched disbelief dawn in Sampson’s eyes. “Where’s the Russian?”
“I heard a noise in the conference room a few minutes ago.”
Brad glanced toward the room they had bypassed upon seeing Sampson and nodded. “We’ll check there.” He pointed to one of the men. “Take Sampson to the infirmary.” The man hesitated. Brad grabbed a fire axe from the wall and tossed it to him. “Here. Use this if you have to.”
Outside the conference room, he hesitated. Seeing the group bunched together, he called, “Spread out.” He entered the room first with the rifle pointed straight ahead. The Russian wasn’t there. He looked under the table, but the room was completely empty. Puzzled, he returned to the corridor. Suddenly, the Russian lunged from the adjacent cloakroom containing heavy outdoor gear and fell upon Harry Coombs. Before anyone could help him, the Russian sank his teeth into Coombs’ neck and jerked away with a mouthful of flesh. A geyser of blood sprayed the Russian’s snarling face. Brad saw the panic in Coombs’ eyes slowly fade as he collapsed to the floor, dead. Brad raised his rifle, but at that moment, Barbara Connelly stepped into his line of fire.
“Move!” he shouted, but there was too much confusion as everyone crowded together to avoid the Russian’s outstretched arms. Someone stumbled, inadvertently shoving Connelly forward. The Russian attacked her, clawing at her face and chest, biting her lower arm. She pushed him away, but not before he clamped down on her right hand, severing her little finger and ring finger. She screamed in agony. One of the men grabbed her to pull her to safety. Frightened, she fought back, scratching madly at his eyes. It took three men to subdue her and move her from the Russian’s vicinity. Seizing the opening that they created, Brad fired. The sound thundered down the corridor. The impact of the heavy .308 bullet in the chest knocked the Russian backwards. His head exploded as Brad’s second bullet tore a path through the skull. Thick, black blood and gray brain matter splattered the wall and sprayed the pipes running along the ceiling. He fell to the floor with an audible sigh and Connelly’s severed fingers still protruding from his mouth.
The situation had become unreal – walking dead, people eaten, and fingers bitten off. Brad was beginning to believe Hughes’ zombie theory. Though he had little regard for cheap fiction, he had watched his share of zombie thrillers as a child. The undead creatures on the screen moved and acted just like the Russians. By what process could the dead return to life – voodoo magic, a rare viral disease? If Pirelli’s arm was any indication, now several people were infected.
Brad fought to calm his racing heart. Panic served no purpose. One more of the Russians still roamed the base, the young man. He pointed to a first-aid box on the wall.
“Someone bandage Barbara’s fingers to stop the bleeding.”
Warren Feinstein, one of the power plant mechanics, took Connelly aside, speaking to her gently in hushed tones to calm her down as he carefully wrapped her maimed hand in gauze. The others in the group stood around, unsure of what to do. Offering words of sympathy to Connelly, something they would normally have done if her injury were from an unavoidable accident or even through carelessness on her part, seemed somehow inappropriate. Brad eyed the group. Most were frightened and well out of their depths. They were equipped to deal with most emergencies around the station or with acts of nature, but facing the walking dead was a situation with which no one had experience. They were simply targets.
“Look,
there are too many of us to be effective. Two of you come with me. We’ll continue downstairs and work our way back to the other groups. The rest of you take Barbara to the infirmary. Find something to use as a weapon, and then lock yourself in the galley with the others.” He glanced at Coombs’ body. With no morgue, they would have to move all the bodies, including those of the Russians, outside in the cold soon, Nature’s freezer, but that could wait. “Be careful,” he added needlessly.
He watched the others as they disappeared down the corridor, hoping that they ran into no trouble. Barbara was so weak from blood loss and shock that it took two of them to support her. Ian Bain, a Brit from northern England overwintering at the Pole on an Oxford grant to study global weather patterns, and Greg Mclean, one of the Ice Cube technicians, elected to accompany Brad downstairs. Bain was slim and wiry, but Brad had seen him working out in the exercise room. He pushed his small frame to its limits lifting weights. Brad doubted he had an ounce of fat on his body. Mclean was tall, rugged, and, though somewhat crude in manner and obnoxious when drunk, was always ready for a bit of heavy lifting or rough work. He had worked during the summer with the drilling crew placing the Ice Cube sensors, manhandling the heavy hot water drills used to bore the holes.
Brad led the way, descending the stairs slowly, stopping often to listen for the remaining Russian. It was difficult to distinguish human noises over the sighing of the ventilators, the soft gurgling of the heating system, and the background noise of the building reacting to the temperature and wind. The television lounge, the first room they came to, was dark. Brad fumbled for the light switch with one hand while holding the rifle steady with the other. The lounge was empty. The arts and crafts room, where personnel could paint, sculpt, or create pottery to pass the time, was equally empty. They entered the gymnasium across the corridor. Their steps echoed in the open two-story room, largest in the station. He looked around the interior, taking in the blue walls and the white Antarctica logo on the wall, remembering Walls playing basketball just that morning, and shook his head. Walls’ death was a senseless loss. He would miss him. Like the other two rooms, the gym was empty. The emergency power room took longer to check. The diesel generator, control panels, fuel and water pipes, and stacked supplies, created a maze in which a man could easily hide. They carefully examined each nook and cranny.
Brad started at the sound of glass crashing to the floor in the corridor outside. Rushing out of the room, he saw the third creature that had once been human standing amid a pile of broken glass shards, the remains of a glass display case built into the wall. Sensing or smelling them, the young Russian whirled and snarled at them. It came at them at a slow shuffle, ignoring the glass shards shredding the flesh of its feet as it trod upon them.
“Son of a bitch,” Mclean said. He made to take a step forward as if wanting to challenge the dead Russian to a fistfight. Brad held his arm out to stop him.
“Don’t get near it,” he warned.
Mclean glared at him and clenched his fist. “I can take this bastard,” he snarled.
“Whatever infected the Russians may be contagious.”
“You mean its bite is dangerous?” Maclean asked.
“And maybe its scratches,” he added, remembering Pirelli’s arm.
He observed the creature as it approached. It felt no pain. Its feet were bleeding badly from the glass, but it hobbled toward them uncaring. Gazing into its dead eyes was a glance into the depths of hell. Nothing human lingered inside the Russian’s fleshy shell. Only animal hunger remained. It stared at Brad as he might stare at a T-bone steak. He could smell its fetid breath, as if its insides were corrupt. He raised his rifle to fire.
Just at that moment, a bullet struck the back of the creature’s head, exiting just above its right eye, disintegrating the right portion of the front of its skull and spraying Brad with dark, thick blood. Even so, the creature made one final lunge at him before dropping lifeless to the floor at his feet. The stench became overpowering. Brad’s stomach roiled in protest.
“Jesus!” Mclean exclaimed, covering his nose with his hand. “That fucker stinks.” He nudged it with his booted foot; then kicked it.
Another group marched down the corridor toward them. Guy Hughes held his rifle casually, but the slight smirk on his face told Brad that he had deliberately timed his shot to test Brad’s metal, waiting until the last moment to fire. This angered Brad.
“Got him,” Hughes said. Before Brad could express his outrage, Hughes said, “He attacked Adler.”
Brad glanced at Bruce Adler’s face. A series of parallel scratches marred his right cheek.
“That’s the last of them,” Hughes pronounced with satisfaction.
“I hope you’re right.” Brad looked down at the corpse, wondering why his senses told him the worst was yet to come.
6
August 24, Amundsen-Scott Base, Antarctica
The conditions of Tony Pirelli, Mike Sampson, Bruce Adler, and Barbara Connelly worsened steadily. Their injuries refused to heal. Traces of black lines similar to those marking the Russians had appeared around the wounds. Sampson, the first bitten, was coughing steadily and passing in and out of consciousness. His breathing was very ragged, his chest heaving for every gasped breath. His pulse was weak and thready. Liz couldn’t understand an infection that spread so rapidly. In addition, four people not wounded or injured were complaining of nausea and headaches. Her examination revealed high temperatures and heavy congestion in their chests. At first, she had attributed it to the high altitude and dry air of the Polar Plateau, but everyone had sufficient time to acclimate over the winter. She prayed that it was a simple case of the flu, but like Brad, found it difficult to believe in coincidence.
With Walls dead and Sampson out of commission, there was no one left to handle communications, though Sampson had informed them that the equipment was working on their end. The problem lay elsewhere. With no way to contact outside help, she was all alone and had to deal with the crisis as best she could. She felt sadly inadequate to the challenge.
Her quick examination of the three Russians before Brad insisted that they move them outside, revealed internal organs consistent with corpses several days old. How then, could they move and, if not think, at least recognize a potential food source? What inhuman hunger drove them, for in her mind, inhuman they had become? Without a more powerful electron microscope, she had no way of determining the source of their infection or a method to combat its spread among them. So far, her cultures had indicated nothing abnormal. If it was an airborne virus, they were all doomed.
She rubbed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. She had gone without sleep for thirty hours and was bone weary. Her muscles ached and she could not think clearly. She struggled to grasp the fact that supposedly dead men, men whom she had proclaimed dead by every medical criterion she knew, had arisen and killed people. Not just killed, had eaten them. Some in the base had panicked and locked themselves in their rooms with several days’ supply of food and water. She couldn’t blame them. From a medical perspective, she could offer them no words of comfort or reassurance. Their guess was as good as hers, their fears just as valid. She was an overwhelmed nurse on a WWI battlefield, offering only platitudes, placebos, and a change of dressings.
“I prescribe another shot of scotch.”
She looked up to see Brad standing in the doorway holding out the bottle of scotch they had shared, when was it? Oh yeah, two days earlier. She appreciated his attempt to take her mind off her problems.
She shook her head. “I can’t. If I do, I’ll fall sleep.”
He drew up a chair opposite her, set the scotch on her desk, crossed his arms on the desk and leaned on them. “You need sleep. You look exhausted. Someone else can keep watch.”
“A death watch, you mean?”
He arched an eyebrow at her morbid remark. “Don’t think like that.”
She sighed. “I feel so helpless. I don’t know what to do. This is something I
’ve never seen before. I’m frightened.”
“So is everyone else. There were only about a dozen people at breakfast this morning.” He cocked his head to one side and stared at her. “Speaking of breakfast, when did you last eat?”
“Oh, I had an apple not long ago.”
Brad glanced into the garbage can. An apple core, brown and shriveled lay in the bottom. “By the looks of it, it was more than ‘not long ago’,” he chided. “If you won’t leave, at least let me bring you something.”
His offer touched her. Perhaps food would relieve the gnawing in her stomach, though she doubted it was hunger. It tasted more like despair. “Thank you. I could use some coffee and perhaps a sweet roll.”
He rose from his seat. “Back in a jiff.”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes to think. The key to the problem lay with the Russians. Since she couldn’t ask them any questions, the only thing she could do was suggest someone visit the Russian Kharkovchanka snow tractor and search for clues. If their destination had been Amundsen-Scott with a warning of some kind, perhaps they had brought some proof of their story. If they were escaping, maybe they could learn from what. She was hesitant to send someone to the tractor, but everyone was probably exposed already.
A series of high-pitched screams roused her from her quasi-sleep. She leaped to her feet and rushed to the infirmary to find Connelly backed up against the wall screaming at Pirelli, who was convulsing in seizures. His body arched to the point of snapping his spine as he bounced on the bed. His face had become a mask of black lines; his open eyes rolled back into their sockets showing only the whites of his eyeballs. His hands clutched at the air. Liz took Connelly’s good hand and led her away from her bed. Sampson and Adler were too weak to move. They watched helplessly from their beds as she then went to Pirelli’s side. She called his name to no effect. As she prepared a hypo of sedative to calm him, his convulsions suddenly ceased. He lay there staring upward at the ceiling, a soft sigh escaping his lips. Checking his wrist, she found no pulse. He was dead. As she watched, the black lines on his face and chest slowly receded, leaving behind dead, scaly skin.