Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1) (7 page)

At the waypoint, Soren checked both the radio and the sat phone and received nothing but static and silence for his efforts. Even the crazy lady had vanished. The storm had picked up again and icy strands of wind found their way down the neck of Sasha’s parka. After a few more failed attempts with the radio and phone, they made their way back in the direction of the station without stopping.

As they approached, her stomach clenched. Was the station still there? Had the GPS even guided them in the right direction? When she heard the rumble of the bay door opening, she nearly wept with relief. They detached themselves from all of the ropes and found their way inside. The smell in the bay had lessened. Whatever was dead there had frozen while they were out. There seemed to be no question that Tundra would come inside with them now. Timber greeted them with relieved howls, and Cedar bounced all around them nipping at knees.

They shed their outer clothes, made ham and cheese sandwiches, and received a “go away” from Amber in response to their queries. She had eaten her breakfast though, and they replaced the empty plate of toast with a sandwich. Something smelled very bad in the sleeping wing, but neither Sasha nor Soren had the energy to deal with it, or even think about it.

They made their way back to the common room, and as if by tacit agreement, they both collapsed onto a couch and promptly fell asleep, a dog at each of their sides.

She awoke to hear Soren at the radio again, talking to the crazy lady, trying to get a distress signal out.

“The dragon is coming. We can all feel him,” the woman said in her heavily accented voice. “The time is very near.”

“We’re in a bit of trouble up here. If there’s anyone else with you, I would really like to talk to them. Anyone in your house, or out on the street. Please help us,” Soren said.

The storm had picked up again and ice pellets and snow slashed against the station windows.

“I am the only one left. I will broadcast until the end. Me and Dr. Midnite. We are spreading the true gospel.”

“Please, what is your name? Mrs.?”

“That is not important, Soren Christopher Anderson. What is important is that the polar champion shows up at the appointed time.” Sasha flinched. Christopher? Was that Soren’s middle name? How had the woman known it? Had Soren given it to her?

“I would really appreciate it if we could talk to someone else, Maybe Dr. Midnite,” Soren said.

“Dr. Midnite is not here,” the woman replied.

“Then go find someone else and radio me back. Please.”

Sasha shifted on the couch, and she heard the sound of Soren flicking the radio off.

“She’s the only one I can reach who speaks English,” Soren said by way of explaining why he was spending time on the radio with a crazy lady.

“Soren, what is going on? Why are we all blind? Who is Vincent Robinson? Why didn’t you answer my calls when you were in the crater? Who was in those planes?” The questions that they had only briefly discussed on the way back had wound relentlessly through her fitful dreams.

After his sharpness by the crater, she was relieved to hear Soren’s customary calm and patient tone. “I have no idea. Like I said before, I didn’t even hear the planes. For a part of the time I was climbing out of that hole, it seemed like I couldn’t hear or see. Or at least I couldn’t hear what you heard, and I couldn’t hear you calling me. And then when I got out of the crater, I stood there and called for you, and you didn’t answer me. And then I heard your voice, ever so faint, and I called Tundra, and he came, and then I found you. Tundra must have dragged you a long way away when the plane exploded.”

Sasha shook her head. “No. I don’t think he pulled me that far at all. Maybe ten to twenty feet at most. We should still have been able to hear each other. Who is Vincent Robinson?”

“Vincent Robinson…” Soren paused and his deep voice was oddly crackly. “Vincent Robinson is the caretaker—has been the caretaker forever—of the International Polar Science Station in Antarctica. I did research down there once for a couple of years.”

Sasha tried to process Soren’s words. “How? Why? How could he be here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t think I hallucinated him or something?”

“I don’t know. No, I don’t think that.” Something about Soren’s voice made her think that he wasn’t telling her everything.
Did
he think she hallucinated Vincent?

“He smelled of menthol,” she said fiercely. “Surely I didn’t imagine that.”

Soren was silent for a few seconds. “Vincent always used menthol on his back. He broke it in a falling incident in Antarctica in 1993. He was doing a seven summits research expedition. Never fully recovered.”

Somehow the confirmation that the real Vincent used menthol made Vincent’s unexplained presence on Ellesmere all the more creepy.

“How is Vincent Robinson here in the Arctic?”

“I don’t know, Sash.” There was something in his voice again. Something he wasn’t telling her. She wondered about the Marina that Vincent had referenced, who she was, who she had been to Soren. Or if Marina was just a fragment of Vincent’s obviously somewhat addled mind.

“If you know him, and you believe he was actually there, why did we leave him behind then? Why didn’t we look for him? He was hurt.”

“Because I don’t think he was actually there anymore. He didn’t answer our calls.”

“So he just disappeared? Into thin air?” Sasha’s own voice sounded rather papery and thin. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“When I was down in that stinking pit, and after I had hauled myself out, when I couldn’t hear you, I didn’t hear the planes, I heard something else.”

“What?”

“Penguins. I heard Adelie penguins.”

“So…we’re at the South Pole now?” If Sasha thought her voice sounded thin and papery before, it was nothing compared to how it sounded now.

“No, I don’t think so. Obviously we’re still in the Arctic Polar Station, which is in the Arctic, I think. But I think the two regions are connected somehow.”

“Like what, through a wormhole? A crater? Vincent and the penguins came through the crater?” Sasha’s voice bubbled with borderline hysterical laughter. Being completely blind seemed like the least of their problems now. “Is that why the GPS was all screwed up? Vincent said his was too.”

She heard Soren’s exhale of breath over the wind outside. He must be leaning closer to her. She wished that he would just extend his hand and touch her—somewhere, anywhere. In the absence of the comforting connections associated with sight—Soren’s little smiles, the crinkling of the skin around his eyes, the intensity of his gaze—her yearning for touch as an anchor had escalated.

As if sensing her need, or responding to needs of his own, Soren inched forward until their kneecaps were grazing.

“I don’t know. You know Edie and Cal were up here investigating the auroras and changes in magnetic north. Earth’s magnetic field has been weakening for centuries. Some scientists believe that indicates we are heading into a period of geomagnetic reversal, where the poles will flip and the South Pole becomes the magnetic north. The poles have flipped in the past, and it’s believed that when they do, it occurs quickly. Not this quickly though, and there was expected to be a period of instability in which the earth’s magnetism would be all over the place. Anyway, that wouldn’t explain the GPS problems, unless changes in magnetism were also affecting satellite orbits, which is possible if the field weakened dramatically. It’s believed that during a period of geomagnetic reversal in which the magnetism of the earth is at its weakest, Earth could be vulnerable to solar flares and solar wind. That might explain our blindness and the GPS. Nothing explains Vincent, the crater, and the penguins, though.”

“Maybe Vincent was part of a rescue mission. He was on one of the military jets and he jumped with a parachute and hit his head, and that’s why he’s confused,” Sasha said.

Soren’s exhale came in the form of a chuckle this time. “Vincent is almost eighty, so I doubt he’d be their first choice for a rescue party. I hope he’s okay, but it’s all too inexplicable. I don’t think he could really have been here. I believe you heard him, and smelled him. But maybe it was just a projection of him. I can’t explain any of this right now. We should probably have dinner and check on Amber. Then I’m going to get back on the radio. It’s our only hope.”

“What do you think that smell is? In the east sleeping wing?” She did not really need to ask this. After smelling death in the storage bay last night, she was well aware that it was the same smell emanating from the sleeping wing. The more important question she supposed, was what, or
who
was dead in the sleeping wing? But in the absence of sight, short of feeling the dead body, how would they figure it out?

Soren’s hands gently touched her kneecaps. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe we could tune in a radio station on the shortwave. See what, if anything, is happening in the rest of the world,” she suggested.

Something in Soren’s knees made a popping noise as he rose. “Good idea. I tried once and got only other languages. We’re pretty far north. But why don’t you try again? I’ll get something started for dinner.”

Despite bumped shins, generally stilted movement and falters, they were navigating blind in the station common room reasonably well. It was familiar and enclosed. If they were forced out onto the wide snowy plains and sharp mountains of Ellesmere for any length of time, they would not fare so well. However, Sasha could not shake the creepy feeling that someone could be watching them without their knowledge. But surely the dogs would warn them if someone else was in the station.

Sasha felt about for the small portable radio that she knew occupied the desk in the lab. She turned and pressed knobs until static emerged and then she twisted the dial on the side. Station after station, it was the same panoply of foreign languages that she had never before heard. These, even more than Vincent’s unexplained presence, the crater, the GPS, the blindness, the crazy dragon lady, the dead dogs, the
thing
that had called her perfect, the disappearance of all the other researchers, and Amber’s breakdown, were what scared her.

It was one thing for there to suddenly be a wormhole from the North to the South Pole, but it was quite another for there to be a wormhole between planets or worlds.

She continued fiddling with the dial. Surely there was one English-speaking station broadcasting somewhere. Or French. She could speak some French.

She leaned over the desk pressing the radio speakers to her ears, listening for even the faintest catch on a station. Then she felt it—the slight puff of warm air on the back of her neck, followed by the scent of cigarettes.

“Soren,” she said sharply.

“Yes?” Soren’s voice came from the kitchen area. He had not breathed on her neck. She had not mistaken the scent of wood smoke for the stench of cigarettes.

The dogs would warn them if someone else was in the station unless it was Kyle—Kyle, with whom they were familiar, even if they did not like him. The dogs, after several stern scoldings from Soren when they initially greeted Kyle with low growls and bared teeth, had lapsed into skirting him with a wary fury in their eyes.

“Timber,” she called.

Timber’s response was a deep threatening snarl.

Sasha leapt up from the desk and turned around. She did not want her back to Kyle. Not that it would do much good. Had he been here all along? Was he brandishing a knife or a gun?

“Soren,” she said again. “I don’t think we’re alone.”

Timber’s growl had intensified and Tundra, who had been lying over beside Soren, came to join him. Sasha heard Soren’s slow movements in her direction.

“Kyle, is that you?” she asked.

There was no response. She could hear the click of Timber’s nails on the floor, and then felt his rump hit her knees as he growled. Timber was
shaking
. Shivers vibrated through his hindquarters as he pressed his body against hers and continued to emit warning sounds.

What would make a husky shake like that?

The station temperature had dropped precipitously, and a frigid breeze blew over Sasha, like there was a window or a door open.

“Who’s there?” Soren said. “Answer.”

“Soren Anderson, always so authoritative,” a chilling, raspy voice said. The same voice the thing had used in the bay, the thing that had called her perfect. “I’m just paying a little house call to see how things are going on this fine evening.” Sasha’s body started to shake like Timber’s. Whatever this thing was, it was not human.

“Who are you?” Soren demanded.

“Some call me Ice,” the cold voice announced.

“What are you?”

“Well, that’s complicated and unimportant right now. I’ve come to talk strategy. Well, that and to feast my eyes on the lovely Sasha Wood.” If Sasha was cold before, these words sent an even deeper surge of ice into her veins.

“What?” Soren said.

“You are fond of the cold, no, Soren Anderson? I am only making that assumption based on your lifestyle choices. There are worse outcomes that we could have than a land of ice and snow. There are those who would take the ice and snow away from us forever. Remember that, when your time comes.”

“What are you talking about?” Soren snapped.

But there was no further response, and the cold wind in the station vanished. Timber lunged away from Sasha in a clatter of toenails, barking. Tundra and Cedar followed, and the three dogs whipped themselves into a frenzy howling and baying into every corner of the common room, but whatever had been there, whatever had spoken to them, had vanished. Sasha sniffed. It smelled faintly like ocean or fish.

“I’m scared,” Sasha said.

“We need to start carrying our guns at all times,” Soren replied.

“What if we shoot each other?”

“We just have to make sure we’re touching each other when we start shooting. I did
not
like the sound of that thing, but I don’t think we should assume that a bullet can’t take it out.”

“We shouldn’t assume that it doesn’t have its own gun.”