Terminal Freeze

“Beautiful,” Conti murmured as he filmed. “Just beautiful. The only thing better would be if-” Remembering himself, he fell silent. He lowered the camera and shot a hooded gaze in the direction of Wolff and Ekberg.

The faint lighting in the hallway dimmed, brightened, dimmed again. Then it went out completely. And Ekberg found herself in utter darkness. She heard a surprised hiss from Wolff. A few seconds later, the light came back on, somewhat fainter than before.

Conti heaved the camera back onto his shoulder. “Ready?”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Wolff said.

“What are you talking about? We know where they went now. This is precisely what we came for-we have to hurry.” And he trotted forward. After a moment, Wolff followed. Ekberg swung in behind, hugely reluctant.

The corridor ended at an intersection, where the bloody tracks clearly went right. They passed several doors and a stairwell leading down to C Level before the tracks petered out. They stopped at the point where the last faint fleck of blood was visible on the floor.

“Well?” Wolff asked.

Conti pointed ahead. “The hallway dead ends in that room, there.” And again he fitted his eye to the camera and moved forward.

Ekberg remained motionless, watching the director as he proceeded toward a double door stenciled

RADAR SUPPORT. The doors were open and-surprisingly-a few lights were on within. As she watched, Conti stepped through. He looked first right, then left. And then he froze. For a long moment he remained motionless. At last he turned on the camera, filmed for perhaps fifteen seconds. Then he glanced out into the corridor.

“Kari?” he said in a strange, thick voice. “Could you come here a moment?”

She walked down the corridor, stepped through the doorway. Directly before her was a huge metal rack full of ancient, dusty equipment. When she looked at Conti inquiringly, he simply nodded over her shoulder. She turned, looking in the indicated direction. At first she saw nothing. But then she looked down, in the corner, where the floor met the adjoining walls. A head lay there, upturned, staring at her with an expression that almost seemed accusatory. She staggered backward, reeling under a double blow of shock and horror. A part of her registered that this had been Creel, the foreman of the roustabout team they’d hired from Anchorage. The head had been torn rudely from its shoulders, and arterial blood sprayed in a wide corona around it. A few feet away, two booted feet peeped out almost impishly from behind the edge of the metal rack.

She groaned, stepping backward quickly. As she did, she bumped roughly into something. Turning, she looked directly into the wide lens of Conti’s camera. He had been filming her. She could see the reflection of her face in the glass-a small face, pale, vulnerable, frightened.

“Stop it!” she heard herself cry. “Goddamn you, stop it, stop it, stop it!”

45

“I’ve finished my analysis of the blood from the vault shards,” Faraday said quietly.

Marshall glanced over at him. The biologist was staring up from his position at the fixed-angle centrifuge. He had spent the last several minutes moving from the stereozoom microscope to the centrifuge and back again, and the eyepieces of the microscope had left marks that made him look like a raccoon.

“And?” Marshall prompted.

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever encountered.”

Sully sighed impatiently. Gonzalez hadn’t reported in, and he was taking the wait badly. “Specifics would help, Wright.”

Faraday replaced his glasses and blinked at Sully. “It concerns the white blood cells. Mostly.”

Sully waved his hand, as if to say, we’re waiting.

“You know white blood cells are all about infections, inflammation, and the rest. The neutrophils, lymphocytes, basophils, etcetera-they’re tasked with defense, with wound healing. Well, this organism has a hyper-developed white blood cell line. It’s like a healing machine on steroids. There’s an incredibly high concentration of monocytes. And they’re not at all typical-they’re huge. They’re clearly capable of transforming into macrophages and dumping a ton of cytokines and other chemicals into the bloodstream, promoting almost instant healing.”

When nobody replied, Faraday continued. “There’s something else. The tests indicate a chemical compound in the blood and cell tissue very similar to arylcyclohexylamine.”

“Come again?” said Marshall.

“It’s the causative agent in PCP. And it’s present in the creature’s blood in a remarkably high concentration-more than one hundred nanograms per milliliter. I believe it’s an NMDA receptor antagonist, acting as both a stimulator and an anesthetic. What I can’t understand is how the creature could produce such a chemical-I’ve never seen anything like it before in nature, certainly not in these concentrations. Assuming it’s not exogenous, perhaps the anterior pituitary gland is releasing it into the bloodstream as a response to stress. Anyway, such a flood of exotic chemicals in the bloodstream would account for its apparent imperviousness to bullets and other injury. It simply doesn’t feel the wounds, and-”

“This is all very interesting,” Sully interrupted. “But it doesn’t get us any closer to the real goal: finding the damn thing’s Achilles’ heel.”

“He’s right,” Logan said. “The most important thing is learning how to stop it.”

“Maybe it’s been stopped already,” Marshall said. He glanced around the life-sciences lab with eyes made bleary by the long trek through the snowstorm. “Maybe it’s dead. Electricity worked last time.”

“Last time, the beast they were dealing with was much smaller,” Sully replied. “We don’t even know if it was the same species.”

“It was the same,” Usuguk said. “Kurrshuq is kurrshuq. The difference is size, power, capacity for evil.”

Marshall glanced over at the Tunit, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the lab. He had taken several fetishlike items from his medicine bundle and arrayed them on the ground before him. Picking up each in turn, he spoke to it in a low, singsong tone, full of pleading and urgency. Then he carefully replaced it on the ground, gave it a loving half turn, and picked up the next.

“What are you doing?” Marshall asked.

“Performing a ceremony,” was the response.

“I gathered that. What kind?”

“This has become a place of unrest. Of evil. I am asking my guardian spirits for help.”

“Why don’t you ask them to send down a couple of bazookas while you’re at it?” said Sully. “M20s, preferably.”

There was a noise in the corridor outside. The speed with which everyone save Usuguk turned toward it drove home to Marshall just how much tension was in the air. The knob turned and the door pushed open. Sergeant Gonzalez and a private-the one named Phillips-stood outside. They came in slowly and closed the door behind them.

“Well?” demanded Sully.

Gonzalez walked stiff-legged into the center of the room. He un-houldered his M16 and let it drop to the floor. Phillips simply stood where he was, ashen-faced.

“Is it dead?” asked Marshall.

Gonzalez shook his head wearily.

“And the trap?” asked Logan. “The electricity?”

“The electricity made it mad,” replied Gonzalez.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Marshall asked quietly.

The sergeant’s gaze drifted toward the floor. For nearly a minute he said nothing. Then at last he fetched a deep breath.

“We set it up just like you said. Standing water on the floor, atop a metal plate. A curtain of bare wires hanging down from the ceiling, attached to a high-voltage source. In a corridor the beast would have to traverse if it wanted to reach the rest of the base.”

“And?” Marshall prompted.

“It flanked us somehow. Came up from the rear. I don’t know how it got around our position, but it did. We managed to fall back. It approached, hit the wires. Took the full electrical load.” He shook his head at the memory.