Chapter 3
Maddie's narwhal obsession started at age twelve, seeing her first one in a marine mammals book at the local library. The only time she stole anything in her life, she tore out the picture and kept it hidden at home, taking it out only at night, long after her parents were asleep. The connection, to her at least, was instant and obvious; these were the descendants of, or at the very least, somehow related to, real unicorns.
Maddie would argue: “There are lots of abnormalities in nature producing what some call unicorns: goats with malformed horns or horses with calcium deposits on their foreheads, but the narwhal horns are not defects. These are grown from birth, a natural evolutionary formation with a specific design, and the purpose of that design is still up for debate.”
As Maddie delved deeper into the aspects and physical appearance of the mesmerizing creatures, she was stunned by the lack of information available then, just as it was this very day.
“There is very little consistent information available on these animals. Why do they have horns? Why do some twist one way and others the opposite? And almost nothing is known of their mating behaviors, feeding habits or social structures,” she told anyone who would listen.
This floored her, that in the modern age of wireless internet and instant information, so little was known about such an intriguing creature. She wanted to scream out loud: “Am I the only one seeing this?” at times. It really seemed as if not too many people were concerned with these blatantly obvious and burning questions. Well, she was, and she would pursue these questions to their conclusions.
Hence, the near cardiac arrest when she was called into a counselor's office and presented with the opportunity to come to Alaska for a research program devoted exclusively to narwhals. They had chosen her for the lead biologist role! Chose her, that was the thing; she never even applied, they had found her.
It was unreal, a paid vacation, as she saw it. Studying, first-hand at that, the animal that had fascinated her for nearly sixteen straight years, and not just study it, but lead the team that studied an entire pod of them.
“Everyone else at the station will have their own disciplines and agendas, but the entire station is devoted to the primary goal of studying narwhal whales. That means you will be the most important researcher there, the Lead Marine Biologist, is your official title,” the representative had told her in the counselor's office. It would take her classmates a lifetime to achieve a goal such as this, and hers literally fell right into her lap. She was ready to leave right then and there.
Maddie was dreaming of new discoveries and majestic, horned horses in a thick and misty forest, when the trees of the woods starting buzzing, rather annoyingly and loudly. The entire forest was abuzz with it now, and the unicorns must have run away, because all she could see was a dull beige hue, with something red blinking in the background.
Oh Shit! I'm late again! Maddie's mind shouted at her, even though the rest of her body was not awake yet, and the lack of coordination showed.
Fumbling for the clock and knocking it on the floor, as usual, she managed to silence it. Squinting through the light, she knew she had already missed Tim's daily sample collection; he always went out at first light. One thing she could never seem to accomplish was getting up on time. She consistently ran out the door dressing and cussing as she went. To her credit though, she was never late to work or school, however disheveled she appeared upon arrival, she just couldn't get up on time for anything else.
Maddie always wanted to be present when Tim took his samples, even though it was not part of her official duties. Not only did the whales congregate and even interact with them in the mornings, but she also liked Tim's company. He was much of the big brother she never had; he was tall, smart and good-looking, and Tim was the only one in the station that did not treat her like she was crazy or stupid.
While she had learned long ago to stop verbalizing her wild theories to colleagues, word from past acquaintances and the unfortunate articles she posted on the internet theorizing her ideas got around within academic circles. No one else at the station liked or respected her, and that was just fine with Maddie; the feeling was mutual.
Running out the door of the station with gloves dangling out of her pockets, a pop-tart in one hand and her upper coat in the other, Maddie took off down the trail in her usual fashion. Looking out the window of the cafeteria, two of her fellow station-mates wondered how she survived up here at all.
Approaching the last bend in the trench, Maddie stopped to catch her breath, don her coat and compose her appearance, not wanting to look like she woke up late and rushed out... again. As she tried in vain to get the fuzzy hood just right, keeping those tickling hairs off of her nose, an overwhelming urge to pee took her by surprise. Maddie realized that she hadn't even visited the latrine before heading out and that she would have to relieve herself outside... again.
A mix of trotting and skipping, blended perfectly with the 'I have to pee' dance, combined for a one of a kind performance that put the Jitter-Bug to shame. She made her way back to an area where part of the trench wall had slumped down and collapsed, making a sloped drift for her to climb up and get out of sight.
The only thing worse than squatting in the cold is squatting in front of someone in the cold, she thought to herself and smiled. She had to pee bad... almost bad enough to let it go right there, but the top was close enough now, if she could get her clothes parted in time, that is. This was the main reason she wore a two-piece outer and inner shell: not only was it easier to put on when running late, but she could “Get the plumbing out when she needed to,” as Tim would put it.
As she parted the bottoms and tops and positioned herself, she always thought she must look as awkward as a giraffe trying to drink, and this thought always made her giggle. As if it wasn't hard enough to pee in sub-zero temperatures, laughing was not conducive to the act of urinating and further impeded her progress. The pressure on her bladder was steadily growing.
Mentally scolding herself for wasting so much time and thought on peeing, she pushed hard and just as the relief came, she notice movement out of the corner of her eye. This immediately halted the flow for which she had worked so hard. It was Tim taking his samples. She ducked down below the height of displaced snow at the top of the trench, noticing just how cold her exposed 'plumbing' was becoming. There was no need for her to even try at that point, it was nearly frozen shut now.
She started to stand up and yell at Tim when he took a peculiar stance, with his head tilted forward and to the left, like he was trying to look over and behind a store display counter. He must have vomited. Chunks were making loud and wet slaps on the water as they impacted, and a triangle of ripples appeared on the surface, originating from his face. There was an unusual sound, a Whuummp! that echoed all around, then was gone.
Tim was falling... he was down... the vomit was red... the ice was red... and she knew at that very moment, Tim was dead. The sound she heard was the shot, and Tim's head had just exploded before her eyes. She had no idea what was going on, and briefly wondered if Tim had just experienced the only explosive aneurism in recorded history.
Her mouth had gone almost painfully dry in an instant. Maddie's panicked brain was trying to reason why Tim had just puked his face right off of his body, but her cognitive reasoning had already put the pieces together; Tim had been shot from a distance.
Fortunately, she had slumped back on her rear, steadying herself with her hands, and avoided the sight of the convulsing and perverted arching of Tim's body as his nervous system tried to deal with the overload of signals from the trauma. Flipping over onto her belly, she crawled to the edge of the trench to peer over, when a sharp pain in her chest reminded her of the binoculars around her neck, which also reminded her of the .357 pistol under her outer coat.
She got both out and after checking the status of the gun, trained her binoculars on the hole where Tim's body lay limp. She could clearly see the chunks of skin, with a layer of bo
ne and internal matter clinging to it, in a macabre sedimentary layout on top of the water that made her wretch. The nausea passed, and resuming her survey, Maddie could not help but notice the steam rising from Tim's head and the widening trail of blood and brain matter, also steaming, spilling out onto the surface of the water.
Movement on the surface revealed that about a dozen whales, narwhals, were crowding together on the far side of the hole, as far from the body and drifting blood as they could get. In confirmation of her observations, the whales started to descend under the water, one after another, as the blood-slick approached, blowing exhaled air as they went.
Then she noticed something odd, a patch of ice appeared to be moving toward Tim's body, then it occurred to her that it was not ice at all, it was something alive. Scavengers or a bear this soon after a kill? They have good senses... but not that good, she mentally reasoned.
Putting the binoculars back to her eyes, she zoomed in and took great pains to hold steady. It was a person. A person in all white: “camouflage” her mind displayed to her in neon letters inside her head. It's a person in camouflage... with two guns.
She allowed herself to slip back down behind the embankment, concealing her head, then panic began washing over her in terrifying and debilitating waves. Her mind pieced the puzzle together for her, like an out of body experience, she could almost see the conclusions forming in her head. Tim was just shot in the head by a camouflaged sniper... She nearly blurted out, What is going on?
She looked back over the embankment, not knowing what else to do, immediately wishing that she hadn't. The sniper had stripped Tim naked and slid him away from the edge of the water, leaving a thick and very dark, red trail. He was cutting Tim's legs, back, arms and buttocks in long, somewhat straight slices. Then, as she looked on in total horror and disbelief, he packed all of Tim's clothes and belongings into a pack and began stabbing it.
What the hell is going on, her mind begged, is this guy really killing his clothes too? Then the sniper threw the pack into the breathing hole and Maddie understood, once again wishing desperately that she didn't know. He was sinking the evidence, poking holes in the pack so it would sink. The mutilation must be to speed the arrival of predators and scavengers alike, aided by the memory of the impression of the sniper upon her first sight of him.
Slumping down again and realizing her relatively close proximity to the sniper, Maddie began to panic yet again, shaking violently. She began losing control of her breathing and was expelling so much air that she was sure he would hear her, or at least see the plumes of vapor she was producing. She also realized at that moment that she had finished peeing, right into her pants.
Maddie rolled back away from the edge of the trench embankment, out of sight, and vomited in her own lap as she sat up. Dizzy and scared out of her mind, she began to crawl back in the direction of the station, too afraid and weak from shock to stand and walk. Something sounded like firecrackers. It was coming from the direction of the camp. Maddie realized that she was passing out. The shock and trauma of what she had witnessed, and what she realized was happening now, was just too much to handle at once.
As her brain was shutting her mind and body down, she had no doubt that the firecrackers in the distance were gunshots, probably leaving huge holes in the faces of the other team members, just like the one in Tim's face. Maddie's last conscious thought was: At least I won't feel it when they shoot me... and then she was gone.
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