Holy Terror
Authors: Graham Masterton
Graham Masterton
For Dr Kristin Ãverland. And with very special thanks to Hilly Elvenstar, who gave me the trance of a lifetime
.
Longyearbyen, Norway, September 18 1918
Longyearbyen, Norway,
September 18 1918
It was only three o'clock in the afternoon when the steamer
Forsete
appeared through the pearly mist that hung over the docks, but already it was starting to grow dark. The sea around the
Forsete's
bows had the sloppy, reluctant consistency of gray porridge, and Arne knew that she would have to be the last ship into Longyearbyen before they were all iced in for the winter.
He clapped his frayed gray mittens together as he waited for the
Forsete
to churn her way sideways up to the wooden wharf. His friend Tarjei stood beside him in his filthy reindeer coat, a cigarette stuck to his lip.
âHow much do you bet they forgot the batteries?' said Tarjei.
âI don't care if they forgot the batteries so long as they remembered the schnapps.'
Arnulf was standing a little way away, a tall skinny scarecrow in ear-muffs. âI don't care if they forgot the batteries
and
the schnapps, so long as they remembered to bring some women.'
The wharf shuddered as the
Forsete
bumped against it. Lines were thrown from her bow and her stern. They were so cold that they fell with a curious stiffness, like failed attempts at the Indian rope trick. The steamer's crew were huddled against the rails, all bundled up like the men on the shore. Nobody waved, or called out a greeting. It was 11 degrees below freezing and none of them were here because they enjoyed it.
The gangplank came down and Arne went forward to meet the
Forsete's
captain, a stocky little white-bearded Viking in a brown woolen fisherman's hat. âWinter's come early this year,' he remarked.
âWinter comes earlier the older I get,' the captain replied. He had deepset eyes like tiny chips of ice. âThis is going to be my last year, believe me. Half the crew have coughs and sneezes.'
âYou brought the oil? And the spare parts for the generator? And the winding cable?'
The captain retrieved a crumpled manifest from his coat pocket. âYou've got all of that. Plus that tinned pork you asked for. Plus â well, something extra.' He turned back toward the steamer, where seven young men were collecting up knapsacks and cheap cardboard suitcases. âA few more lads for underground work.'
âNever learn, will they?' said Arne, wryly. âStill, I suppose we can use them.'
The young men came down the gangplank, one of them slipping on the ice and sitting down on his rear end. The rest of them whooped and laughed. The captain beckoned them over and introduced them to
Arne. âThis is Arne Gabrielsen, chief engineer. He was here before the war. In fact he was here before you were born. In Longyearbyen, Arne is your boss, your father, your priest and your doctor. You won't be able to survive here without Arne, so treat him with respect.'
One of the young men took off his glove and held out his hand. Arne ignored it. In this cold, he didn't take his mittens off for anything as inconsequential as a handshake. The young man was pale and he was shivering. âTormod Albrisgten,' he said. âWe're all from Tromso.'
âAny experience, any of you?'
âOle worked in a quarry once. I helped out on my uncle's farm. Digging out frozen turnips, that's hard work.'
âThis is different. The coal seam is very deep here, 110 meters below ground. The equipment is old, too. The company haven't been able to replace it since the war. Hey â you're not frightened already, are you? You're shaking like a leaf.'
âJust a cold, that's all. It was going round the ship.'
âWell, Arnulf will show you to one of the huts. You can light the stove and warm yourselves up.'
Arnulf grumbled, âThey could have sent us women. Just
one
woman! Just because we're miners we don't have to live like monks.'
He trudged off through the gathering gloom toward the small collection of houses and huts and warehouses that lay close to the harbor. Hesitantly, the young men shouldered their knapsacks and followed him.
Helped by the miners on the docks, the ship's crew
swung out cranes and nets to unload their cargo. They hardly spoke, except to call out, âWatch out below!' Two old motor lorries were parked on the wharf with their engines running to keep them from seizing up. The day was fading fast, but a last ghostly light was reflected from the glacier on the other side of the bay.
The captain took out a packet of Wotan cigarettes and passed one to Arne. They stood together and smoked in silence, occasionally trudging their feet to keep warm. It was so cold that it was impossible to tell which was smoke and which was breath.
In the middle of the night, in the middle of a dream in which he came across a polar bear in the middle of the street, Arne was shaken awake.
âArne! Arne! It's me, Tarjei! You have to come quick!'
He sat up. The only light in his bedroom came from the small tiled stove which glowed redly in the opposite corner.
âWhat's wrong?' he asked. âWhat time is it?'
âJust gone three o'clock. There's something wrong with those boys from Tromso. They're sick.'
âThey've got colds, that's all. Give them a tot of schnapps and tell them to put on an extra blanket.'
âThese aren't colds, Arne. You
have
to come.'
Arne took the glass funnel off the oil lamp beside his bed and lit it. He could see at once that Tarjei was serious. Without a word he took his thick plaid shirt off the back of the chair, tugged on his pants and his huge coarse-knit sweater, and his coat.
Outside it was so cold that Arne felt as if he had been hit in the face with a ball-peen hammer. His shoulders hunched, he followed Tarjei across the windswept street to the huts where most of the unmarried miners lived. There was a small knot of them outside the porch of the young men's hut, carrying lamps and flashlights.
âI went in to make sure their stove was burning properly,' said Kjell. âGo in and see them for yourself.'
Arne opened the door and went inside, with Tarjei closely following him. There was a sharp smell of woodsmoke mingled with the sharper tang of vomit. The hut was plain, with a boarded floor and a potbellied stove in the middle, and the young men were lying in bunk beds on either side. Some of them were silent. Others were coughing and shivering and gasping for breath.
âWhat do you think it is?' asked Tarjei.
Arne leaned over the bunk of the young man called Tormod. His face was blotchy maroon, and his eyes were so swollen that he could barely see.
âTormod!' said Arne. âTormod, can you hear me?'
âCan't â breatheâ' Tormod gargled. He coughed, and a thick gobbet of blood and phlegm landed on his chin. âIs â my â is â my â mother here?'
Arne untucked the blankets at the end of the bed and lifted them up. Tormod's feet were prune-colored. Arne dropped the blankets and stepped away.
âWhat is it?' Tarjei repeated. âIs it food poisoning?'
Arne shook his head. âThe red face, the black
feet. The lungs filled up. It's the Spanish influenza.'
Tarjei looked at him fearfully. âWhat can we do? Supposing the rest of us have caught it?'
âWe can't do anything. We'll just have to pray that it's too cold here for the disease to survive.'
He went around to the other six bunks. Four of the young men were dead already, drowned by the fluid in their lungs, and he knew that it wouldn't be long before the others succumbed. The Spanish influenza killed with unbelievable rapidity. He had heard stories of people waking up in the morning in the best of health and dropping dead in the street the same afternoon. And the disease always seemed to favor young people, like these. Arne wasn't a religious man, but as he covered their faces he commended each of their souls to God.
It was beginning to snow when the funeral procession reached the cemetery at the top of the hill, and from here the town was only dimly visible, like the town that Arne had seen in his dream.
Two jackhammers burst into a staccato duet, then stopped, then started again, then stopped. Arne had ordered that the seven bodies be buried twenty feet down, where the permafrost never thawed out, even in the middle of summer.
The pit had stopped work for the morning and nearly everybody in Longyearbyen had gathered on the hill, over 400 of them. The seven pine coffins lay side by side, decorated only with sprigs of spruce and ribbons in the Norwegian colors of red, white and blue.
Old man Hansen said a prayer, and then they sang
a hymn together. The snow whirled thicker and thicker, around and around, until Arne found it hard to keep his balance.
The coffins were lowered: a small steam-shovel was used to push the frozen soil into the grave. Arne walked back down the hill on his own. He had seen plenty of death in his time. Miners gassed; miners burned in firedamp explosions; miners crushed beneath tons of coal. But the speed and the invisibility of the Spanish influenza frightened him more than anything he had ever come across before.
He felt as if the wing of death were sweeping over them.
At 12:27 on August 10 the temperature in New York City rose to 106 degrees to make it the hottest day of the decade. All the way down Fifth Avenue the traffic glittered in the haze, and the air was filled with the bronze smell of automobile fumes. From up here on 57th Street the sidewalks downtown had become a mirage, with crowds of lunchtime shoppers bobbing on the surface of a shining lake.
In the back seat of his arctically air-conditioned taxi, Conor checked his heavy stainless-steel watch and tried to work out if it would be quicker to walk.
âYou want out?' the Palestinian cab driver asked him, his eyes floating in the rear-view mirror. âMakes no difference to me, sir. You want to melt, melt.' He turned around in his seat and added, âI'll tell you what about this heat. This heat defies the natural laws of the universe.'
âTell me about it,' said Conor. He was already more than twenty minutes late.
âWould I make up such a thing? I took a correspondence
course. This is the start of something totally cosmic. Maybe not the end of the world. But equally just as bad.'
The traffic suddenly surged forward, horns blaring, and after a brief tussle with a bus at 55th, they arrived at last outside the gleaming display windows of Spurr's Fifth Avenue. Conor climbed out of the cab and the heat roared in his face like a lion. As he paid off the driver, he said, âWhat was it? The correspondence course.'
âOh.' The cab driver made a vigorous sawing gesture. âCarpentry.'
In spite of the heat, Conor stood on the sidewalk for a moment watching the cab drive away. How did a correspondence course in carpentry qualify you to predict the end of the world, or something equally serious? But then, well, Jesus was a carpenter, wasn't He, and He came from Palestine, too. There was a satisfying Irish logic to that.
