EDEN (12 page)

‘Five to three,’ Bradley grinned without warmth. ‘We’re done here.’

The balance of power had shifted from Jake to Bradley, and Cody knew that he was the cause. The soldier turned to him.

‘That signal you heard. You get a location on it, anything at all?’

A thousand thoughts flashed through Cody’s mind as he considered the man before him, and of what Sauri had told him. Bradley couldn’t be trusted. He shook his head.

‘I got nothing.’

Bradley glared at Cody. ‘You get the first contact we’ve had for five months and you don’t think to triangulate the source?’

‘I didn’t see you sitting up there at that station for hundreds of hours,’ Cody shot back, ‘might have been useful if you’d told us you knew how to work the equipment.’

Bradley ground his teeth in his jaw and he gripped his rifle tighter. ‘You record it?’

‘No.’

‘So it’s useless then,’ Bradley said. ‘Even if we get away from here we don’t have a clue where to go.’

‘We’ve got some idea,’ Cody replied. ‘Think about it. It’s been winter in the northern hemisphere. There’s no power. People who have survived long enough will have tried to migrate south, toward the equator. There’s no point in us heading for Canada or Quebec.’

‘So you’re saying that we just bypass them and head south, for America?’ Sauri asked.

‘I’m saying that we get clear of the snowline as quickly as possible,’ Cody replied. ‘The most likely place that electrical equipment might have survived is probably equatorial regions where the impact of the solar storm was at its weakest. It’s also where we’ll most likely find any survivors as their winter will have been less harsh than elsewhere.’

‘We can’t know that for sure,’ Jake cautioned. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it’s a big gamble to bypass the nearest settlements.’

‘There’ll be nothing at Eureka that we don’t already have, except fuel and maybe discarded equipment. The place wasn’t manned any more anyway. By running directly south we’ll save a hundred kilometres of travel. We should head for Grise Fjord.’

Bradley slung his rifle over his shoulder.

‘We can argue the toss about this on the way,’ he snapped. ‘Right now we’re wasting time. Who wants to help me load up the BV and get the hell out of here?’

Bradley didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and strode out of the block, pulling his hood up against the cold as he shoved the door open and disappeared.

Charlotte and Bethany followed him, Sauri and Bobby close behind. Cody waited until they had left before he looked across at Jake.

‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’ Jake challenged. ‘This could get us killed. It’s too soon.’

Cody didn’t answer as he left the block.

*

Bradley led the team at a breakneck pace in loading the BV, packing as many supplies and barrels of diesel fuel as they could fit into the trailer section. They worked in the hangar until late at night, and as the team slipped away to rest Cody offered to lock the hangar behind them.

‘I’m going to head to Polaris Hall before we leave,’ he explained. ‘See if I can pick up that signal again.’

Cody trudged alone to the building and upstairs to the Signals Development Position. He switched on the radios and slipped the headphones on. The gentle hiss of static filled his ears again, strangely comforting now.

Cody kicked his chair back slightly from the desk and began rifling through a series of drawers. It took him only a couple of minutes to find what he was looking for.

He placed the small book on the table before him, and then from his pocket he fished the scribbled dots and dashes. Carefully, he began translating the coded message until he had a series of figures written before him.

Cody looked at them for a long time before he finally folded the coordinates into the book. Then, he had a better idea. He sat back and read the numbers over and over again until he could recite them from memory.

Then he tore the paper into tiny shreds and stuffed them into his pocket. He shut down the radios and put his jacket back on before heading for the exit.

As he locked the door behind him and left Polaris Hall, he lifted the shredded paper from his pocket and let the pieces be taken by the buffeting wind whistling between the blocks. The sound of an engine roared above the gale and he whirled as a snowmobile rattled up alongside him.

‘What was that you just tossed?’

Bobby sat in the snowmobile’s saddle, his face in shadow within his thick hood.

‘Junk,’ Cody replied. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To Alert Five,’ Bobby replied. ‘Reece is out of commission, so I figured I can replace the distress beacons for him and then recharge the old one using the snowmobile’s battery. Once we get moving we can carry them with us, give people a way of tracking our position. If there’s somebody out there like you said, they might hear it.’

‘We don’t know that for sure, Bobby,’ Cody cautioned. ‘The signal was weak and…’

‘All the more reason to do it now,’ Bobby interrupted, ‘while they’re still maybe searching for us. We get it done, we’re golden. You want to risk leaving it until tomorrow?’

Cody looked out to the south, the horizon long lost to the darkness and the snowfall.

‘You sure you’ll be okay out there? Sauri said the polar bears will be hunting by now.’

‘I’ll overnight at the observatory if I have to. I can set up an arc light so you can home in on the station tomorrow, and we go from there. It’s worth it, Cody.’

Before Cody could say anything further, Bobby gunned the engine and the snowmobile’s glowing tail lights vanished into the bitter darkness.

***

‘I can’t see a damned thing!’

The cab of the BV was filled with warm air blasting from vents in the dashboard as the vehicle rattled and thumped along the ice. Cody held on to his harness as Jake guided the BV in pursuit of the lead vehicle, its tail lights glowing through the horizontal snowfall sweeping across the plains now aglow with the pale light of dawn.

‘Just keep an eye open for Bobby’s snowmobile!’ Charlotte said. ‘He’s got to be out here somewhere!’

The world outside the vehicle was a featureless grey and white mass of thick snow, solid ice and sixty knot winds. The interior of the cab smelled of grease and diesel-tainted air and was illuminated by the glow from the instruments and the glare from the headlights. The windscreen wipers hissed rhythmically as they struggled to keep the glass free of ice and snow as the engine noise hummed through the cab to where Charlotte and Bethany sat in the rear seats.

‘I knew I shouldn’t have let him go,’ Cody uttered.

‘Patience,’ Jake soothed. ‘The storm was bad last night. He obviously decided to stay put.’

Bradley drove the lead vehicle. Cody assumed it was because the soldier was impatient to leave, but it was just as likely that if Brad’s vehicle went down a crevasse, Jake’s would have time to stop.

‘Just follow Brad,’ Cody replied. ‘He knows where he’s going.’

Jake hung grimly on to the wheel as he chuckled bitterly.

‘Sure, as far as the observatory. After that, it’s anybody’s guess.’

Cody glanced at the tachometer, which they had reset before leaving Alert an hour previously. Five kilometres. They might make forty clicks a day if they could find a path south, which meant a minimum of twenty days to reach Grise Fjord.

‘Alert Five should be up ahead,’ Bethany said from the rear seat, holding a map in her lap as she searched for landmarks and guide posts through the swirling snowfall.

The guide posts were almost obscured by thick snow drifts, making it hard to pick out the reflective caps. Without constant use and clearing work, the road to the station was already disappearing beneath the ever changing Arctic.

‘We’re on track,’ Jake confirmed and gestured to the vehicle ahead in the gloom. ‘But this is just the beginning and we’re struggling already. What does Brad think it’s going to be like in a hundred miles’ time?’

Cody couldn’t think of anything useful to say, so he sat in silence and watched the eerily featureless landscape shudder slowly by.

*

Bobby Leary pushed hard against the station door as he struggled out against the gale. He held in his hand a pair of locator beacons and an arc-light, which he kept huddled beneath his arm as he shut the door behind him and trudged against the wind toward the side of the building and the communications tower.

His boots clanged loudly on the metal steps as he clambered wearily up them, thick snow swirling into his face and the wind howling like wolves through the structure as he reached the upper level. The severity of the storm had prevented him from leaving the previous night, and he had spent the long hours of darkness curled up in his sleeping bag in the observatory.

The aerials were quivering in the gale, ice coating their surfaces with horizontal icicles. Bobby pulled one of the beacons from its cradle under his arm and attached it to the largest of the aerials. Nearby the previous beacon was shrouded in ice and frost, its battery long dead.

Bobby ensured that the beacon was secure and then activated it. A bright red light flashed and a steady green light signalled that it was emitting. Bobby turned and took the arc-light out and affixed it to the mast, then turned it on. The brilliant disc of light flared into life, illuminating a shaft of snowfall out into the gloom. Bobby turned it until it pointed north. Satisfied, Bobby turned for the steps and then froze solid as though he had died mid-step.

A low, muffled rumble reverberated through the wind. Like a growl.

A huge white head appeared at the top of the steps, black eyes squinting against the wind and a thick black nose sniffing the air. Even in that terrible instant Bobby noticed how the wind ruffled the enormous bear’s fur in beautiful parallel ripples.

The head, as big as Bobby’s entire torso, swivelled around until the two black eyes were fixed upon his.

There was no uproar. No noise. No fuss. The polar bear blinked once and then clambered up onto the platform. Its huge bulk, the size of a small horse, dwarfed Bobby even in his thick Arctic clothing. Four foot high at the shoulder, five at the top of its head and weighing maybe a thousand pounds, Bobby was both stunned and terrified by its sheer size.

The bear padded toward him across the platform, filling his vision.

Bobby turned and hurled himself over the platform railing and down toward the snow some thirty feet below.

His stomach flipped as he plummeted and thumped down into the thick drifts. Even as he landed he felt his right leg slam into something hard, felt a crack shudder through his bones as liquid pain seared his thigh. His cry of agony was snatched away by the fearsome gale as he lay stranded on his back in the snow, looking up at the huge animal that was peering down at him through the cold metal bars of the communications tower.

The polar bear sniffed the rails, turned, and began padding back toward the steps.

Bobby heard his own cry of despair as he tried to haul himself out of the snow. Raw, deep pain surged through his leg and he felt bone grating against bone inside it. He flicked his head to one side and a globule of vomit stung his throat and splattered across the snow beside him. His arms felt weak with fear and cold as he swiped at the snow for purchase and dragged himself out, his broken leg trailing behind him.

The station door was barely thirty feet away but it seemed like thirty miles as he reached out and hauled himself across the ice. He made six feet before he heard a rhythmic, throaty breathing and turned to see the polar bear watching him from ten feet away.

Bobby stared in a rictus of horror at the immense predator. The bear loped forwards a single pace and sniffed at the vomit staining the snow. A big, thick tongue licked the mess briefly, and then the polar bear turned and lumbered across to Bobby.

Bobby grabbed a handful of snow in his fist and hurled it at the bear’s face. The animal did not even blink as it bent down and crunched its huge jaws around Bobby’s bloodied thigh.

*

‘I can see the light! Look, out there!’

Cody ducked to avoid Charlotte’s arm as it pointed at a faint blue-white light flickering through the dense snowfall as they followed Bradley’s BV toward the observatory, the buildings almost completely obscured by deep drifts.

Jake closed up behind Bradley’s vehicle and was about to say something when the brake lights on the BV ahead suddenly flared into life and the tracked vehicle slid to a halt on the thick snow.

Cody braced himself against the dashboard as Jake slammed on the brakes and their vehicle shuddered to a halt mere inches from the vehicle ahead. Cody saw the cab door flung open as Bradley leaped from the vehicle with his rifle in one hand and a serrated combat knife in the other.

‘What the hell’s he doing?’ Jake uttered.

Cody saw the bear a moment later. The huge animal loomed over something in the snow and peered up at Bradley as he charged toward it. Bradley drop onto one knee and aimed his rifle. A gunshot cracked out above the howl of the gale and the bear’s flanks quivered as the shot hit it. The animal roared and turned to face Bradley.

The soldier stood up and waved his arms, shouted at the top of his lungs as he suddenly charged at the animal. The polar bear roared again and bounded through the thick drifts like a giant white whale plunging through icy waves. Bradley kept going, his arms outstretched and his knife flashing in the weak light as the enormous beast loomed before him.

For a moment Cody thought that Bradley was going to take the immense beast on single-handed. Then he saw Sauri, on one knee, taking careful aim.

A second gunshot, snatched away by the brutal winds, and the polar bear’s head flicked sideways as its legs gave way beneath it as it plunged down into the snow barely six feet from where Bradley stood.

Jake opened the cab door and leaped out. Cody followed, fighting to open his door against the wind. The snow was deep and tugged at his boots as he ran off the track toward the observatory. Cody’s guts convulsed as he saw Bobby sprawled motionless on blood stained snow.