Chill Factor: Ice Station Zombie 2

by JE Gurley

He crawled over Brad’s body until he could reach Deen’s feet. Together, they tried to pull Deen up, but the ladder was too heavy, weighting him down.

  “Cut the ladder free,” Hughes called.

  “We can’t lose the ladder,” Deen replied. “We might need it.”

  “Lose the ladder!” Hughes snapped.

  Brad felt Deen wriggling beneath him. Suddenly, the great weight lessened. The ladder rattled as it banged against the side of the crevasse on its plunge into the depth of the chasm. They pulled Deen back onto the ice.

  As the three of them lay there fighting for breath in the dry, thin air, Deen gasped, “Don’t ever let me do something that stupid again.”

  1 5

  Sept. 14, Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

  Once safely off the glacier and onto the relatively flat surface of the Ross Ice Shelf, travelling became easier. The wind didn’t let up, but visibility improved. While the others took turns driving, Brad handled the cooking of food on a small stove and made sure there was plenty of hot chocolate and coffee available. During the descent of the glacier, neither of his companions offered him the opportunity to drive, for which he was extremely grateful. His skill at driving the Sno-Cat was limited, and he had no great desire to drive it over an ice cliff or into another crevasse. He was satisfied being a passenger.

  In spite of the tedium of the long hours in the vehicle and the lack of conversation as each man kept his private thoughts of what they might find to himself, the number of miles behind them slowly grew larger than the miles ahead of them. Even so, the journey took seven weary days. Finally, they neared their destination.

  Jutting above the horizon of frozen ice, the twelve-thousand-foot cone of volcanic Mt. Erebus was visible even in the darkness. A thick, black column of smoke billowed from the mouth of the volcano like a chimney spewing from lakes of fire in the bowels of hell. Streaks of lightning from static discharge highlighted the ash cloud. The volcano’s ominous rumbling was audible above the roar of the diesel engine. In the daylight, it would have been an awesome spectacle. At night, it was spectacularly frightening. McMurdo Base shared Ross Island with Mt. Erebus. At a distance of less than seventy miles from the raging volcano, Brad wondered what the personnel at the base were experiencing as the earth erupted and the ground trembled. If any were still alive, he reminded himself.

  They tried the radio, but got no reply. The radio had been useless for the last five days. They couldn’t reach any of the other vehicles. Several miles from the base, Hughes brought the Sno-Cat to a halt and killed the engine. The sudden silence and lack of motion after so many days with the diesel engine roaring in the background was unsettling. The low rumble of the volcano quickly filtered through the silence reminding them of the dangers they faced.

  “We should walk in from here,” he announced.

  “No closer?” Brad asked. The thought of leaving the Sno-Cat behind concerned him. In spite of the claustrophobic confines of the vehicle, it had become a womb protecting him from the realities of the world outside. Facing them might be more than he could bear.

  “The noise might attract unwelcome visitors,” Hughes explained, “and any one left alive might be trigger happy.”

  Realizing that Hughes was right, Brad sighed and began donning his anorak and mittens. He shoved his heavy gloves in his pockets. He couldn’t pull the trigger of the rifle wearing them, and he wanted to be ready if they confronted any zombies. Carrying only their weapons – the two .308 Winchesters and the Russian AK-47 – they began their hike across the ice. Brad felt exposed on the open ice after so many days inside the Sno-Cat. He trod carefully, despite the fact that the ice beneath his feet was nearly eight-hundred-feet thick. It didn’t allay his fear of the two-thousand feet of ice-cold water beneath it. The darkness could hold a thousand zombies. He strained his eyes to pierce the surrounding gloom.

  They approached the base with caution. No lights were showing, but that didn’t mean that there were no survivors. However, it was not a good sign. With no generators running, the base had no source of heat other than wood-burning stoves. The wind blew toward them bringing a cloud of choking ash from the volcano. The astringent smell was strong enough to mask but not completely conceal the stale odor of burnt wood. Any fires at the base were long dead.

  “It looks dead,” Deen said, voicing Brad’s thoughts.

  “Not everything dead is harmless,” Hughes warned. “Keep an eye out.”

  It was immediately obvious that no ships were in port, but Brad knew there would not be. The winter ice was too thick for even the mightiest icebreaker. Any rescue for survivors would have been by air.

  Trying to keep his nervousness from his voice, he asked Hughes, “Do you see any planes?”

  “McMurdo has three runways – Pegasus, Williams Field, and Sea Ice. Pegasus is near Black Island – too far away to see. Williams Field is on the other side of the island. If there are any planes, they would be there.”

  The dark, volcanic rock and dirt of the island jutting from the surrounding ice with the volcanic plume of Mt. Erebus reminded Brad of a whale breaching in the surf, only this whale was not friendly, and the three of them were not on a pleasant whale watch in peaceful San Diego Bay. They climbed the low rise of the rocky beach toward the scattered collection of almost a hundred buildings that comprised McMurdo Base. Observation Hill towered over the small city. The row of summer dorms would be empty, as would many of the buildings. Capable of accommodating twenty-five hundred or more summer visitors, only about two hundred maintenance staff remained in McMurdo during the winter months. Brad had spent many hours in the Albert P. Crary Science and Engineering Center, named for the first man to set foot on both the North and South Poles. He tried to remember the name of the astronomer from Harvard who had briefed him on the facilities at Amundsen-Scott – Hendricks; yeah that’s it, a short, terse man with a rotund belly and an insufferable braying laugh. And there was Andrea Coleman, the woman who had given the winter survival lecture. He wondered if either was still alive.

  “I see something,” Deen hissed between clenched teeth.

  Brad looked in the direction Deen was pointing and saw two figures moving, barely visible in the moonlight. “Are they human?” he whispered.

  “Can’t tell.”

  “Do we shoot or say hello?” he asked Hughes.

  Instead of answering, Hughes clicked on his flashlight and played it over the two figures – zombies. One had suffered horrible burns on its upper body, its facial features unrecognizable. The other was a naked older woman, her breasts crisscrossed by black lines. The creatures focused on the light and began moving toward them. Brad raised his rifle to fire.

  “No, don’t,” Hughes said. “A shot will bring others.” He pointed toward a row of buildings – the summer dorms. “Let’s head there. Maybe we can lose them inside.”

  They began to trot toward the dorms and reached the first one well ahead of the zombies. The first door they tried was bolted. As Hughes pushed at the door with his shoulder, Brad glanced back over his. The zombies moved slowly but remained eagerly intent upon their prey. Hughes, too, noticed their approach. He backed up two paces and lunged into the door. With a loud crash, the doorjamb shattered and the door flew open. The room was dark, cold, and empty. No one had been inside since the last visitors left in March. They passed through the dorm to the opposite door and exited quietly, leaving the pursuing zombies behind them, still searching for their lost prey.

  The odor of burnt wood permeating the base had not come from fires built for warmth. Many of the buildings were now blackened skeletons. McMurdo had suffered the worst calamity a polar base could endure other than zombies – a fire. Whether started accidently in an effort to keep warm, or as protection against zombies, the wind had whipped the fire into an uncontrollable inferno, sweeping through the base, leaping from building to building like a living creature seeking to quench its hunger on ash and misery. The destruction of Amundsen-Scott paled in comparison. Mor
e than half the buildings showed some signs of damage.

  “There’s nothing here.” Deen’s quivering voice betrayed his bitter disappointment. He collapsed on an overturned oil drum, sitting and staring at the wreckage. “We came all this way for nothing. Nothing.”

  “Any C-130’s would come in from Christchurch,” Hughes said. “They wouldn’t be here. They would be on the runway out on the ice.”

  Deen raised his voice until he was shouting. “It means they’re gone, or dead. No one’s coming.”

  Brad fought to keep his own disappointment under control. He wasn’t ready to give up so easily. “Maybe the radio’s working. Maybe we can contact someone.”

  Deen glared at him. “Contact who – the Navy? No ships are coming. The National Science Foundation – they’re dead. Everyone’s dead. We’re stuck here in this frozen white hell. We’re going to die here.” Hughes placed a hand on Deen’s shoulder but Deen shrugged it off. “Leave me alone,” he snapped. “Both of you leave me the hell alone.”

  Hughes walked over to Brad. Speaking softly, he said, “We have to check out the buildings. The others will be here in a day or so. We have to find a secure place to hold up, gather supplies. We have to try to survive.”

  Brad nodded. Hughes was right. They couldn’t give up hope. Doing something, anything, would keep them focused. Liz was coming. When she arrived, things would be better. Together, they could manage.

  “Okay.” He glanced at Deen, quietly muttering to himself and kicking at the volcanic ash with the toe of his boot. “We can’t leave him here.”

  “He’ll be all right. He has to get this out of his system. He’s a survivor. He’ll come around.”

  Brad hoped that Hughes was right. They needed everyone if they had any chance of surviving until either help arrived or they discovered a means of leaving Antarctica.

  “The science building looked intact. Maybe … maybe Liz can figure something out, a cure or a vaccine.”

  “Maybe.” Hughes’ narrowed eyes and tightly set jaw contradicted his words, but Brad saw no advantage in confronting him over it.

  His own conviction was largely due to hope rather than faith. He had never been a man of faith, deriving his order of the universe in the stars he observed through his telescope more willingly than in a deity he could not. Science was not a catch-all, could not provide all the answers, but it did allow a more thorough questioning of the questions that mattered. If man’s science had created the zombie virus, then science could defeat it. However, if it was due to an act of nature, all bets were off. By some cosmic spin of the dice, mankind had rolled snake eyes and was anteing up to the gods of chance.

  Rather than leave Deen alone in his misery and at the mercy of a possible zombie attack, the two explored the nearby buildings to keep an eye on him. An intact garage held several snowmobiles, three vans, and a snow tractor, but nothing with more range than their own vehicle. They quickly discovered the fates of many of the crew at McMurdo. Eight partially consumed bodies and dozens of bullet-riddled zombies lay scattered around the outside of a supply building. Moving carefully in case any survivors mistook them for zombies and shot first, the entered the building. Inside, they found only carnage, but not one inflicted by zombies. Five bodies, three men and two women, lay on the floor. Three of them looked as if they had simply lain down to die. They rested in a solemn row, hands folded over their chests, their wrists slit. Pools of blood surrounded them and stained their clothing. The last two had been shot, a murder-suicide, or a double suicide. There was no way of determining which. The sight dismayed Brad more than Shelia Meyer’s suicide had. There, a distraught lover had ended her life. Here, five people had agreed to a group suicide. They had lost all hope and had given in to their darkest urges.

  Hughes walked around the room examining the bodies, and then the revolver beside one of the bodies. He shoved it into his coat pocket and left the building without saying a word. His stony face betrayed no emotion. Brad followed him outside and confronted him.

  “Say it,” he demanded.

  Hughes shook his head while staring at the ground. “They were weak. I’m not.” He looked up at Brad. “You’re not.”

  Brad’s anger drove his words. “Maybe they were surrounded, out of ammunition, out of food. Maybe they were weak, but that’s no reason to dismiss them so easily.”

  “If zombies were around, they would be nothing but bones.” He slapped the pocket with the revolver. “There were two bullets left in the pistol. They could have killed four zombies. Instead, they gave up hope, not just of rescue, but also of surviving. I have to dismiss them. They’re dead.”

  “They’re still people.”

  Hughes kicked one of the zombie corpses outside the building, a man wearing green coveralls and a cap that read Bell, one of the helicopter pilots. “They’re corpses just like this poor sod.” He swung on Brad. Brad, thinking Hughes was going to strike out, backed up two paces and held out a hand, but Hughes only continued. “We have to concentrate on the living. Anyone who gives up and wants to die should die, or they’ll drag down the others. This is no time for weakness, Niles. Intelligence or physical strength isn’t much use now. Strength of character will determine who survives and who doesn’t.”

  Brad wanted to argue, to refute Hughes’ words, but deep down inside, he knew Hughes was right. Instead, he said, “It doesn’t matter. We need everyone.”

  Hughes nodded. “For now. Later …” He shrugged his shoulders.

  The next building was empty, but a dismembered corpse lay blocking the rear door, which swung ajar in the wind, producing a loud squeaking noise. A five-gallon fuel can lay inches from the man’s outstretched hand. Brad picked up the fuel can.

  “It’s full,” he said to Hughes.

  Glancing out the rear of the building, he spotted a red twin-engine DeHavilland Otter tied down and covered by a tarp against the volcanic ash. Boxes of supplies covered by a fine layer of ash sat on the ground beside the open cargo hatch. At the sight of the undamaged plane, Brad’s hopes inched upward.

  Elated, he yelled, “It’s an Otter,” to Hughes and ran to check out the plane. The DeHavilland was in good condition. The tires were inflated, and a quick check of the cockpit showed that the battery was charged. A pistol lay in the pilot’s seat. It looked as though the dead man had been loading and refueling the Otter when zombies attacked him. So close, Brad thought as he pocketed the pistol, a Smith and Wesson .38 caliber revolver. With a range of only about five-hundred miles, he wasn’t sure where the man thought the plane could carry him so that he could escape in the small aircraft, but Brad admired his gumption.

  Hughes dashed his hopes. “Even if we had somewhere to go, it wouldn’t seat all of us. It holds eight people at most. Besides, why is it up here behind a garage instead of at one of the runways? It probably won’t fly.”

  “It might. If so, it might get some of us to another base where we could find help for the others.”

  “And if there’s no help there, or fuel for a return trip?”

  “I don’t know. It’s … it’s an option.”

  Hughes said nothing for a few seconds as he stared at the plane. The Kharkovchanka and the Sno-Cats were more valuable than the Otter, but Brad didn’t want to dismiss the plane as readily as Hughes had. Finally, Hughes nodded.

  “Okay, it’s an option, but let’s stay quiet about it for a while.”

  “Why?”

  Hughes shrugged. “Someone else might want to climb in and take their chances as much as I do.”

  Brad stared at Hughes in wonder. Hughes’ stolid demeanor was just a façade. He was just as frightened as everyone else was. Brad’s respect for Hughes raised a couple of notches. He could trust a man who was as scared as he was but kept the fear from his face.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing neither of us can fly,” he replied.

  A grin broke across Hughes’ face. “Come on. Let’s find Deen and check out the science building.”

  Deen
was waiting for them at the edge of the road. He held the AK-47 in his hands.

  “I heard a noise,” he said, jabbing the AK-47 toward the building in question. He began edging in that direction.

  “Leave it,” Brad said. “Don’t look for trouble.”

  Deen’s nervous smile worried Brad. “No trouble,” Deen replied. “Maybe we should thin the herd a bit.”

  Deen’s reference to the zombie ‘herd’ struck close to home. It had been too easy at Amundsen-Scott to forget that the creature’s they had been killing were once friends and colleagues. Here, where most were strangers, it would take no effort to think of the walking dead as animals, dismissing their prior humanity. He wanted to chide Deen for his callousness. Instead, he said, “Any shots will only draw a crowd of them.”

  The trio carefully avoided any groups of zombies, threading an indirect path between buildings and through stacks of fuels drums and crates of supplies. Zombies haunted the base like ghosts in the night, mute and spectral, wandering the dirt streets. A few stood and stared toward the erupting volcano, as if the light show and the sound evoked some spark of memory. Others fought over scraps of flesh on frozen skeletons. Brad shuddered realizing that these bits of flesh might have belonged to acquaintances.

  The A.P. Crary Science and Engineering Building was actually three separate units on different levels of a hillside connected by a covered walkway. Several different branches of science shared the labs – glaciology, climatology, meteorology, and marine biology. Brad had attended three lectures there while training for his over-winter at Amundsen-Scott. They entered from the lowest level, the Aquarium Pod, but first had to force the door open. The giant seawater tank was smashed and empty. A pool of ice filled with the frozen corpses of sea creatures formerly inhabiting the tank spread across the floor, partially blocking the entrance. The ice glittered diamond-like in their flashlight beams. The scene reminded Brad of a frozen fish market. Continuing upward, they reached the second level containing the Earth Sciences Pod and the Atmospheric Sciences Pod. The Earth Sciences Pod had suffered fire damage from an unattended boiler. A six-foot-wide gash in a section of outside wall had allowed volcanic ash and wind-blown snow to accumulate several inches deep. The Atmospherics Science Pod, which Brad thought would be of special interest to Bain and Shimoda, had fared better and was relatively intact.