Days of Night

by Jonathan Stone

  They leave the ATVs running. They start up the scaffold stairs. He observes the scaffold overhangs this time as they climb up, paying extra attention to see if there is one where he knocked his head, as they told him, but he sees nothing precarious, nothing in his direct path, and that confuses him.

  He has to climb the stairs with them because they are not going to leave until they have made contact with Hobbes or Bramlett or Simmons or Stanford, surprising them with the good news, testing the connection with them, until he’s been assured by the base that the comm connection is back.

  Same procedure. Dolan taking the odd wrenchlike tool out of the box.

  It’s Dolan who opens the panel on the electronics pod. Heller and Pritchard standing over him.

  Dolan, the silent, brooding one.

  Dolan, the mad genius.

  Opening the panel and then turning to Heller and Pritchard.

  “I can’t do it,” he shouts at them, into the wind. Barely audible but loud enough to be unmistakable.

  “What do you mean?” Heller shouts back, his hand squeezing the gun inside his parka’s chest pocket.

  “I can’t do it. I want to, but I can’t.”

  I want to, but I can’t. Heller is trying to process this. It’s confusing. Incomprehensible. Is he feeling T3; is it hypothermia?

  It is only later that Heller will understand the meaning.

  A meaning that would have been perfectly clear if Heller had only been a little smarter a little sooner.

  I want to, but I can’t.

  Because he won’t let me.

  Once again, the scaffolding, as impulsively and unpredictably as before, comes alive from behind him to smash Heller on the back of the skull, and he crumples.

  Antarctic night, endlessly black, goes even blacker.

  As black, as blank, as vast and measureless as death must be.

  73.

  McMurdo in summer is a bustling, industrious place, every corner of it occupied. McMurdo in winter is hunkered down, quiet, but, of course, has the same physical geography, the same real estate as summer McMurdo. Which means there are hundreds of places, in winter, where no one goes. Places that are shut up tight. Or everyone assumes are shut up tight, anyway.

  He is in one of those places. Hog-tied. Plastic ties tight around his wrists and ankles. Dark. He has no idea where he is. He’d guess that most of McMurdo has no idea where either.

  There’s no slap and sting of wind in here. But there’s also no heat.

  About the size of a closet. Some kind of storage. Not to be opened up until spring.

  A locked-room mystery. The phrase comes back to him. With its new, twisted, personalized meaning. Those mysteries that Robert Trebor loved to read over the winter, and gave up as too irrelevant, too unrealistic, too beside the point. Irrelevant? Unrealistic? Heller is in—he will end up—a locked-room mystery. Unknown. Unsolved. Unread. Until spring.

  The last thing he saw was Dolan. Dolan and then blackness. Dolan in front of him, uncomfortable, upset. I want to, but I can’t. Meaning it was Pritchard behind him. Pritchard who delivered the blow. Heller never took a step. So he didn’t trip or miss a metal stair. He was standing still.

  With Pritchard behind him.

  The back of his head pulses. But he notices that he is sore all over. He closes his eyes. He opens them.

  There is suddenly a penlight in his face.

  Pritchard’s voice behind it.

  “You moved your head,” the voice says flatly, evenly. “You moved your head and fell away from me, so I could only hit you on the back of the head once. One time ain’t enough—as I guess we’ve both discovered,” he says.

  Heller can’t see Pritchard’s expression behind the penlight, but he imagines the little smile. Wry and toothy with meaning.

  One time ain’t enough.

  One blow to the back of the head.

  One murder. Sandy Lazo-Wasum’s.

  One time ain’t enough.

  Heller can’t move his feet or hands but nevertheless can tell that the Glock is no longer in his parka pocket. As he lies there on the floor in the dark, he can feel the emptiness—the hollowness—of that pocket.

  “This time, you fell down a flight of stairs, and your fall has saved you. For now. Until I figure out what to do with you,” says the voice. Pritchard’s voice behind the penlight.

  In a moment, Heller knows exactly where the Glock is.

  It is against his forehead. Barrel icy cold.

  Pritchard holds it there for a long beat—in clear, mocking imitation, mocking repetition of Heller holding it against Dolan’s forehead.

  Pritchard suddenly draws it away, pockets it. “I’m going to kill you,” says Pritchard flatly. “I just have to figure out how.” Like a little puzzle. Like the kind of puzzle he enjoys. His little hobby, his way to pass the time, during the winter-over in Antarctica.

  Once again, Heller has misunderstood, misinterpreted a partnership.

  It is Paul all over again. Paul who continually deceived him. Paul who made him look stupid.

  But this time, his stupidity will cost him his life.

  “You were watching Dolan, weren’t you? Dolan, the radio genius, odd, quiet. Dolan, the brooding mastermind. I saw you watching him,” says Pritchard, leaning close in the penlight, unable to resist the satisfaction of a smile. “Not looking so closely at Pritchard, the talker, always so forthcoming, slightly childlike, why I’d even excitedly shared my secret snake hobby with you. Pritchard who always credits everything he knows to Dolan. Innocent-sounding, innocent-seeming Pritchard,” says Pritchard.

  So he’s not childlike at all. Just cleverly childlike when he needs it. When he has to be.

  “Those are all my snakes. They’re all venomous. The smaller brighter one at the back is just a different subgenus. Dolan doesn’t like them, but he tolerates them. And Dolan thinks I suffer T3. That I suffer it terribly. Like I fooled you into thinking I suffer it,” says Pritchard. “Dolan feels bad for me. Very sympathetic. Very forgiving. He attributes a lot of my behavior to that. He wishes I’d get professional help.” Pritchard checks the ties on Heller’s wrists. “Truth is, it’s Dolan who suffers T3. Makes his judgment very cloudy. All his thinking goes soft. But the most interesting thing is it makes him completely forgetful. I discovered that years ago with him.”

  Heller has read the relationship exactly right—one dominant and one subservient, one forceful and one malleable, one demanding and one beholden, one in charge and one in trancelike obedience and trust—but he has read who is who, which is which, exactly, entirely wrong.

  Pritchard’s hearty sociability. Dolan’s furtive diffidence. Heller has completely misinterpreted.

  Unfortunately, he knows exactly why Pritchard is telling him all this.

  Because Pritchard is planning to kill him. And he wants Heller to know how he will get away with it. How he will continue to get away with it.

  Heller knows by now that cruelty is part of Pritchard’s MO. In thinking about the two murders, in searching for a common thread, Heller had eventually noticed a cruel connection—in both cases, the victim’s lover had to observe the victim’s autopsy. Sorenson had to suffer seeing Lazo-Wasum’s naked body on the examining table. Heller had to endure seeing Trish Wong’s. Both of them not only had to bear the autopsies but in the moment had to stay silent about their relationship to the victim. Watching the examination. Watching others poke and prod the bodies that had been warmly next to their own just hours before. All this was somehow part of the thrill for the killer. Heller theorized that it might even be what determined the choice of victim—and might be the whole motivation for each murder.

  But Heller realizes only now that Pritchard has always had the opportunity to be nearby for each of those autopsies. To be near enough to see, gauge, enjoy the reaction of Sorenson, then of Heller. To see, gauge, enjoy both their shock and their shamed silence. That’s somehow the thrill.

  He likes the cruelty. He needs the cru
elty. Heller hopes that extra need for cruelty will somehow be Heller’s chance to survive.

  Survival. Always the subtext of life in Antarctica. And now for Heller, an extra hurdle to Antarctic survival.

  He searches Pritchard’s words again. This time, you fell down a flight of stairs. This time. Meaning last time, it was different. Meaning last time, you were pushed. That’s all it could mean.

  Meaning last time you were pushed, but we said you hit your head and fell, to make it look like an accident. Which it wasn’t.

  This time, your fall down the flight of stairs was an accident. Not in the plan. Your fall has saved you.

  Meaning the plan had been more blows to the head. Sufficient blows to the head.

  Then why didn’t they finish him off out there, once he stopped falling?

  More of Pritchard’s words come back to him: Dolan saved you! He had assumed Pritchard said it mainly to make Dolan look good. To make the story be Dolan, take attention away from Pritchard. But Heller has always heard something odd, some other meaning, in Pritchard’s repetition of the fact, in the overly upbeat tone of Pritchard’s voice. Now, he hears the mockery, the cleverly disguised, cleverly expressed annoyance. Frustration with his partner. Dolan saved you! What if Dolan has saved him? Emerging temporarily, just enough, from the fog of his forgetfulness, the haze of his T3 symptoms, from his fluid mental “softness,” to convince Pritchard not to kill him. To convince him that Heller is not in the way, or doesn’t deserve it, or isn’t really a problem. Dolan saved you. Does it mean that Dolan has saved him again? Because after all, Heller is still alive.

  Hobbes, Simmons—all of McMurdo—will be missing them soon.

  So Pritchard will have to do something quickly.

  Beat him up some more, bruise him badly—lethally maybe—to show he died falling down the metal stairs.

  Sorenson will never know the difference. Sorenson’s a nurse. A good one, but a nurse.

  Heller goes through the possible scenarios in his head.

  But he seriously underestimates Pritchard. He miscalculates Pritchard’s cruel genius once again.

  74.

  Paradoxical undressing

  Twenty to fifty percent of hypothermia deaths are associated with paradoxical undressing. This typically occurs during moderate to severe hypothermia, as the person becomes disoriented, confused, and combative. They may begin discarding their clothing, which, in turn, increases the rate of heat loss.

  ―Wikipedia

  Heller lies in the dark.

  He has no idea where he is at McMurdo.

  Somewhere closed up in the winter, he is sure. Somewhere no one can hear him yell for help or scream in tortured pain.

  A locked-room mystery.

  He notices he’s getting steadily colder. He’s starting to shiver.

  He knows it’s only a few minutes until he’s shivering uncontrollably.

  Pritchard comes in again, this time with Dolan.

  Dolan barely looks at him. Heller registers it now as autistic. High-functioning autistic.

  “Ever heard of paradoxical undressing?” Pritchard asks Heller.

  Heller shakes his head.

  “A symptom of hypothermia. Happens in almost half of all hypothermia cases. Your metabolic function changes so dramatically you feel like you’re burning up, and you take off all your clothes, which, of course, just accelerates the problem. Accelerates it until death.”

  Heller is silent. Pritchard continues.

  “The victim becomes very combative. Won’t let anyone near them to help them. It’s often followed by a further effect called terminal burrowing. The victim looks for a place to bury himself, hide from harm. Obviously, it’s some kind of holdover from our primitive animal brains. Shows you what level the brain is working at, how hard it’s working, when hypothermia sets in. But don’t worry. Terminal burrowing is never going to happen to you. There’s no good place to burrow out there. It’s all hard-pack ice.”

  Terminal burrowing, no.

  But paradoxical stripping, yes.

  “It’s almost time to strip, Joe Heller,” says Pritchard. “Almost time to strip and get back out there to the comm tower.”

  Where Heller’s hypothermia set in so violently (Heller can already imagine Pritchard’s version to Hobbes and company), where he defended himself so vigorously from our help, there was nothing we could do. That Joe Heller is a strong guy—and this time, it worked against him. He wouldn’t let us near him. He was so crazy. And what could we do anyway? The guy had a Glock!

  We should have read the signs from his earlier episode, when he got disoriented and fell. We should have taken his proclivity for hypothermia much more seriously.

  But he was as excited as we were about a breakthrough in our communication effort. We thought we had one. That’s why we were all out there together, risking the cold and dark.

  Unfortunately, we were wrong, Hobbes, sir. We were wrong, Stanford, sir. It didn’t fix anything. We’ve still had no further communication. There still may be no one out there.

  Heller looks at Dolan.

  Dolan saved you.

  Dolan is not even looking at him.

  75.

  The frozen Antarctic continent.

  In winter, as dark as it is vast.

  As vast as it is cold.

  A frozen, empty continent.

  A man naked on it.

  Naked, in the shadow of a communications tower.

  Naked, running in circles.

  Two men in parkas, watching.

  Shining their helmet lights on him.

  Watching, waiting . . .

  Pushing the naked man away from them, when he comes at them desperately, grabbing at them, at their clothes . . .

  When they first push him away, it requires some strength, some agility from them.

  But very soon, the naked man is stumbling around, can’t walk straight, can’t even take steps; he is delirious, speaking nonsense.

  They watch, they wait . . . it is fascinating to see . . .

  His clothes are scattered randomly—convincingly—around the base of the satellite dish tower, as if he has ripped them all off.

  Someone will eventually come and retrieve them.

  Heller can imagine the scene so vividly.

  His cognition shutting down.

  His frantic shivering, his racing in the snow.

  In the end, a painless death. All the literature says so. The nervous system shuts down self-protectively. Does it shut down before or after brain function? Of course, no one can know for sure. No one has lived to report back about it.

  They will have to rush his naked body into the infirmary, to make it look good, of course.

  They will have to risk Sorenson being able to revive him.

  But they will undoubtedly try to wait long enough so they know he’s dead.

  Which, in sixty below, won’t be that long.

  It is a little science experiment for them, Heller realizes. A matter of timing it just right. Making sure he is “dead enough” for Sorenson to not revive him, but to look like they acted to save him as soon as they could. As soon as he would let them near him, as soon as he would let them help him. And Sorenson is a nurse—she might not even be able to tell the difference anyway, might not be able to judge how long they were out there. They could say they brought him in as soon as they could. She’d have no way to know if they did; it would never even occur to her that they didn’t.

  The poison is a science experiment too.

  Pritchard enjoys these science experiments.

  That may be the most enjoyable part of the process for him.

  Maybe Pritchard came originally to Antarctica to cut himself off from people.

  To cut himself off from all the temptation—and it worked for a while, but it didn’t work forever. And maybe when he learned of the experiments by the pharmaceutical companies, it stirred his imagination, and there was no going back. But it’s a little late to be psychoanalyzi
ng Pritchard. A little late to be speculating. Pretty useless now.

  Advanced hypothermia. It’s a brilliant idea, Heller thinks. Criminally brilliant.

  Simple. Elegant.

  Going out of the world as naked as he came in.

  Going out of the world with the most primitive impulses and autonomic responses and needs—just as he came into it. Cold. Warmth. Fear. Wonder. Breathing.

  Disappearing into the black void―the endless black void of Antarctic night and the black void of unconsciousness―as he emerged from a measureless black void into the world almost fifty years ago. Full circle.

  It is easy to imagine. Terrifying to imagine. As vivid a scenario as a pandemic occurring on the rest of the planet.

  But an idea that requires no extra oomph, no extra persuasiveness, with fake radio recordings.

  An idea that is different in one major respect:

  It is about to go from vivid imagination to reality.

  A brilliant idea.

  With a practical problem that dulls its brilliance considerably:

  If Heller is to strip, they have to take the wrist and ankle ties off him.

  If they take the ties off him, he can move, he can attack them.

  They can’t defend themselves with the Glock, can’t defend themselves by shooting him, or their brilliant little tale of hypothermia won’t work.

  They can’t even threaten him with the gun. He knows they won’t shoot him, because they want—they need—the hypothermia story.

  He realizes that, oddly, Hobbes is helping him here. Hobbes and Simmons, Stanford and Bramlett, and all of McMurdo. Because Pritchard still has to make it look good. Still has to satisfy the powers that be, knowing that the world north of them does still exist. If McMurdo was really on its own—all that was left—then Pritchard and Dolan could shoot him now. But they still have to make a convincing case for what happens out here; they still have to convince Hobbes, Stanford, and the others. So they can’t just shoot him. Civilization or, at least, its vestiges and veneer are still working for Heller. As if making one last stand. Pritchard knows he can’t actually use the gun. Heller must have been suffering from T3. Or from hypothermia. He suddenly tried to attack us. We had to shoot him. Really, Pritchard? Shooting Heller in the head or heart? With Heller’s own gun? How’d you get his gun, Pritchard? No, Heller and Pritchard both know that version will never fly.