Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1) (12 page)

All cold and very unpleasant possibilities.

From the frying pan into the fire—that’s what Barry, the “mist traveler” had said. Are you infected? What did that mean? When she had first imagined her mother’s potential death a few hours ago, it was on a sinking cruise ship during the blindness. She had pictured her mother in her hot pink cocktail dress, a stiff gin and tonic in hand, flirting with a young crew member until the final moment when the ship went under. Sasha had rationalized that maybe it would not have been a bad death. But perhaps her mother had been “infected” instead.

Robert paced manically along the edge of the crater, seemingly obsessed with the fire. Any attempts she had made to strike up conversation in the last few hours, to bring Robert back to himself, or at least to whom he had seemed to be prior to the events of the last forty-eight hours had failed completely, with Robert regarding her with utter distaste that she would venture to pose such absurd questions.

Darkness had taken the island with the resoluteness of a stormy northern winter night. Save for the fire, not a single source of light penetrated the sheer black that surrounded them.

She must have drifted off to sleep because when she jerked awake, her legs frozen with cold, the fire had diminished considerably. Her first thought was that soon Robert would likely be asking for her assistance with the torches again. The second was an alarming recognition that she was not alone. A man sat on a snowmobile only a few feet away, a curl of smoke from the cigarette in his mouth drifting into the air. He was underdressed for the Arctic, even for someone near a giant bonfire. In fact, as Sasha rose to a sitting position and took him in fully, she saw that he wore little more than a fitted black shirt and pants. He was bald and wore no hat, and the fire illuminated razor sharp cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and full thick lips that curved into a faint smile when he saw she was awake.

As with Ice, Sasha had the impression of the man occupying far more space than the edges of his body suggested, as if the rest of him were fanned out all around him like the feathers of a peacock or the headdress of Medusa, hidden from all those who did not know where or how to look.

He rose from the snow machine in languid fashion and made his way in her direction, flicking the cigarette into the snow.

She tried to stand, but her legs, asleep and icy, refused to cooperate.

“Ms. Wood,” the creature intoned, for there was no doubt in her mind that this thing was no more human than the demon she had met earlier in the day.

She nodded.

“I’m Pollution, one of the new four horsemen, although we generally prefer fossil fuel burning vehicles to horses. I understand you’ve made the acquaintance of Ice.” She saw the flash of frightening teeth in his mouth, slanted and pointed barbs that were at odds with his beautiful features.

“The new four horsemen?” Sasha searched her mind for the old four horsemen…of the apocalypse. Death, pestilence, war, famine, mayhem…she couldn’t totally remember. They hadn’t been a big topic in her geomorphology classes.

“Of the environmental apocalypse,” he pressed, his glittery dark eyes never leaving hers. “We’re a new faction. Death and war may think that they have things all tied down as far as apocalypses go, but they’ve been a little passé over the last few years. And they’re like blunt force objects that all of you humans can line up around abolishing, which makes their work much more difficult. Much better to slip in on the wings of global progress, greed, and lifestyle enhancement. Nobody even saw us coming. They just thought they were living the dream. And really, wars end, famine recedes, and epidemics are resolved. But we’re responsible for destroying the earth that supports your precious little special snowflake selves. So we have more staying power, and you stupid little humans continue time and time again to enable us.”

“Who are the other three…horsemen?” Sasha managed to stutter.

“Hab, Ove, and Dev. You can call me Paul for short.”

Sasha must have looked completely bamboozled because Paul gave a snort of impatience. “Habitat destruction, Overpopulation and Development. I thought you were an environmental specialist. Anyway, you don’t really need to know about us. I understand my friend Ice has offered you and your friend Soren a deal.”

“I’m not completely sure I would call it that.”

“What would you call it?” Paul stood very close to her now and in addition to the unsettling nature of his eyes, and the sensation that he was much larger than he appeared, a heat and pungent chemical stench emanated from his body that made Sasha want to shrink away. And yet he moved silkily like a cat, shifting from one location to another with unnatural speed, fooling her brain as she tried to track his advance, his presence. He seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, his long clawed fingernails stroking the air.

“I don’t know.”

“You do know. Answer me,” the creature hissed. “Because if you think that because he presented you with the plight of the polar bears, and the glory of winter, and frigid climes, that he is any less hell bent on your destruction than I am, then you are a fool. He is a demon after all.”

“What exactly would I gain from answering you?” Sasha said, swiveling so that she did not have her back to Paul who had suddenly appeared behind her.

“You get to live for a few more weeks or years. You get, perhaps, to witness the end. We could even potentially find your dear little gin-swilling mother and reunite you for the main attraction.”

The fact that he knew her mother drank gin somehow made him scarier. “And if I don’t answer you?”

The creature gestured at the crater. “Around here, arranging a death is hardly even an inconvenience. We could burn you, let you plummet to the bottom of that pit, or leave you to freeze to death slowly. So many options. Has he bedded you yet? Soren? He used to be quite the Lothario. Quite tireless in bed, for a human, and can’t be trusted, I’ve heard. I see you’re blushing. So you and Soren
have
been doing the lust and thrust? No?”

Sasha’s answer was cut off by the scream of jet engines just above them. Out of nowhere, a 747 airplane hurtled out of the low-hanging clouds at full speed, too close to the ground to even come close to executing a safe landing. The plane passed overhead, throwing Sasha to the ground with its energy, and then plunged straight into the ground less than half a mile away, disintegrating into bits in an explosion of flames on impact.

When Sasha managed to scramble to her feet, small bits of wreckage burned all around them, but the plane had otherwise been completely obliterated.

“Oh my God,” Sasha said. “Oh my God…”

Paul exposed his distorted teeth in a wide and creepy grin. “We call them demon fireworks. With the blindness and the loss of GPS, and the coming magnetic reversal, the last few days have been a veritable Mardi Gras, with all sorts of juicy human-filled planes popping off left right and center. These ones were probably heading to some sort of southern clime on a little autumnal get away, determined to continue on with their lives and the holidays that they so deserve, despite the clear and evident signs that the apocalypse has started, while the airlines continue to bravely carry passengers forth, lest they risk bankruptcy with their paper-thin margins.” Paul shook his head and offered an exaggerated sigh. “It’s a pity.”

Sasha turned back to him, holding back the tears. She wasn’t even sure what she was crying about. The plane, her situation, the things the mist traveler had said, the fact that in the past forty-eight hours, the world had turned upside down—literally.

Probably all of it.

She clenched her fists. “I won’t help you.”

Paul was all of a sudden inches from her, even though she had not seen him move, his rotting, chemical-scented breath hot in her face, and long-nailed fingers wrapped tightly around her wrist. From a distance, one could be fooled into thinking that Paul was human, or human-like. But up close, his eyes were pools of terrifying emptiness. She expected him to sprout fangs at any second. He pulled her in even closer, but instead of teeth carving into her jugular, he ran his nose up her neck and jaw, inhaling her like one would savor their dinner. She tried not to scream. Then he pulled back and smiled.

“Did I present it as a choice? My mistake. You’re assuming your death would be quick and relatively pain free. I feel obligated to mention that it won’t be.”

The wind and blowing snow had picked up dramatically, and Sasha wondered idly whether if Paul were to let go of her, she might just be carried into the atmosphere on the wave of the storm.

Paul glared up at the clouds that were generating the snowflakes and shoved her to the ground hard.

“I have a meeting. I’ll be back to discuss our arrangement further,” he said. “Continue helping Robert with the fires.”

And then he was gone, as if he had just blinked away, leaving Sasha breathless with fear.

The storm let up slightly as Sasha and Robert moved on with their torches to the next crater, thankfully out of sight of the blackened wreckage of the plane.

After the fire was lit, Robert followed his usual protocol of staring at the fire and completely ignoring Sasha, apparently unconcerned that she might wander off into the night because that would of course mean inevitable death. However death might be preferable to what Paul might be planning.

Sasha sank to the ground to watch the fire herself. Soren had equipped her with a small compass. The compass would obviously be wrong, but maybe she could use it somehow to find her way back to the station, if there was still a station.

She searched for her compass in her small pack. Was north south now, or west as it had been this morning? In the dark and snow on the back of the snowmobile, she had become hopelessly turned around. She had the sense that the station lay to the southeast because she had glimpsed some of the western coastal mountain range as they drove to their most recent crater. But they could have traveled far enough to come around the northern tip of the island, which would mean the station was due south. She tried to flip the compass bearings in her head. If north was mostly south on the compass, as it had been yesterday, she should head to compass north. But if north was west as it had been today, then she should head to compass east.

She pulled out the round compass and waited for the red north arrow to settle. But it didn’t. It pulled first one way, and then the other in a dizzy circle. She steadied her hand and tried again, but although the needle pointed briefly to where she thought might be south, it soon resumed its drunken oscillation around and around and around beneath the glass of the small metal compass.
Useless piece of crap
. She was starting to sound like Soren.

She stared in the direction she thought might be south. The blizzard tossed the snow around her in a torrent, and without the aid of the inferno in the crater she could only see about five feet in front of her. The prospect of leaving the dozy warmth of the fire and heading into a sure death was daunting at best. But death by hypothermia was surely better than by burning or falling.

She squinted again into the whirr of snowflakes. Had something just moved, a shadowy form? Was Paul coming back? She leapt to her feet, her heart stuttering wildly.

She saw the shape again. Four dogs pulled a sled carrying a parka-clad figure. Soren. The sled stopped. Sasha glanced behind her, but Robert still watched the fire fixedly. She ran madly in the direction of the sled. But it was not Soren. It was Vincent bundled up in layers of scarf and mittens, his rheumy blue eyes wide.

“Get on, get on,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”

Sasha climbed on the sled and clasped her arms around the old man. He was very warm. Vincent gave the snow-covered dogs the order to go, and the sled sped silently off into the night. She could not make out which dogs were pulling them, but she knew it was not Tundra, Cedar, or Timber. The other dogs must have come back.

After they were far enough away that Sasha could no longer see the flames, Vincent stopped the sled.

“Soren’s been taken,” he said without preamble, his hearty voice muffled through his balaclava. “He came back to the station in a panic to see if we had seen or heard anything. They took him out just outside the bay. Three men on snowmobiles. Before he left, he said that it was him they were after and they had just taken you because they know he loves you. He said that if anything happened to him, they would take him to the hole in the world. He said you’d know where it is.”

Vincent’s hands started to shake, and Sasha patted his arm awkwardly even as she scrunched up her eyes. Hole in the world? What was Vincent talking about? Soren loved her? Liked her, maybe. Love seemed a bit out there, although she had to admit, the prospect was not totally unwelcome.

“I can’t believe I just cowered in the storage bay like a feeble old man when they captured him. We have to help him,” Vincent said urgently. “I’m armed now, and ready. Where is the hole in the world?”

Sasha shook her head. “I have no idea. Soren never said anything about a hole in the world. There are holes everywhere. Maybe he means the crater he fell into yesterday. He said he heard penguins.”

Vincent shook his head violently. “No, no. It was something bigger than that, I’m sure of it. Soren is a volcano researcher…or was. It has to be some sort of volcanic hole. Think. Think. We need to rescue him.”

“Why didn’t he just tell you where it was? I don’t have a clue.”

For a fraction of a second, something dark and dangerous seemed to flit across Vincent’s eyes, but it vanished almost immediately, replaced by wide-eyed alarm. “Think back through your conversations. It could have been something seemingly innocuous. We need to find him. He also said something about a deal with ice that you could explain it to me. What are you doing with ice?”

“I really can’t help Vincent. I don’t even know Soren that well. Soren has no deal with Ice as far as I know. Ice asked us to help, but Soren didn’t agree to it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The sound of jet engines cut off Vincent’s reply as another plane screamed overhead, way too low. The explosion of the crash echoed through the night, but the plane was too far away, and the snowstorm too blinding for them to see any flames. The dogs, clearly spooked, started to bark and then took off, the empty sled trailing behind them. Vincent turned and ran after them, yelling “Whoa! Whoa!” The dogs ignored him. Sasha added her own calls and started to run after Vincent, who was moving extraordinarily fast for a man in his late seventies. The shadows of the dogs and Vincent began to grow dimmer and dimmer, and finally Sasha stopped.