Ice Hunt

Co

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I thought I heard something.” He stood and listened for another few breaths, then shrugged heavily. He turned and continued down the tu

After another ten steps, the path plunged over an ice cliff.

Co

Amanda squeezed up next to him. It was tight. The pit ended about fifteen feet down. The splash of red on the ice was a raw slash. One boot lay in the middle of the stain. Also a mining helmet, the lamp smashed.

Co

There was no sign of a body, but the bloody track led off to the side. Out of their line of vision.

“I have to go down there,” Co

Amanda stared at the amount of blood on the floor. It seemed hopeless, but she shrugged the coil of poly-line to the floor. “I’m lighter. You brace me, and I’ll go down and look.”

Co

Amanda tossed a length of rope to the bottom. Co

“You ready?” she asked.

“I won’t drop a little slip of a girl like you,” he groused. “Just find Lacy.”

Amanda nodded. She pocketed her flashlight, grabbed the rope, and began to rappel down into the ice pit. She lowered herself, hand over hand, spiked feet against the wall. She quickly reached the bottom.

“Off rope!” she called up as her toes hit the floor.

The line jiggled as the large man unbraced himself and crawled over to the edge. He still wore the loop of poly-line around his chest. He stared anxiously down at her and mouthed something, but with his thick beard and the glare of his helmet lamp, she could not make out what he was saying.

Rather than admit her ignorance, she simply waved to him. She pulled out her flashlight.

As she swung her light, her nose curled. The smell was rank. It seemed to hover at the bottom of the pit like bad air in a cavern, heavy, thick, suffocating. She swallowed hard. One summer, while going to Stanford, she had worked in the ke

She followed the blood trail with her flashlight. It led past the cliff to an opening in the ice wall. It was a horizontal slot, even with the floor, similar to a street drain that led into a city’s underground sewers. It was no higher than her knee, but almost as long as the length of her body.

A big sewer drain.

She crossed toward it and called out, “Lacy!”

Deaf, she glanced up to Co

Her toe hit something on the floor, drawing her gaze back down. It was Lacy’s boot. It spun from her kick. She instinctively followed it with her flashlight. It hit the wall and stopped. From this angle, her light shone down into the boot.

It wasn’t empty. Bright bone, splintered at the end, stuck out of the boot.

She screamed. But no noise came out. Or maybe it did. She had no way of telling. She scrambled backward on the ice, crampons now acting like ice skates.

She craned up to the cliff’s edge.

No one was there.

“Co

She could see his light up there, deeper in the tu

“Co

Then the light stopped its dance, as if hearing her. It settled still, pointing toward the top of the tu

Amanda backed across the ice, trying to get some distance, trying to see farther down the mouth of the tu

Something moved over the geologist’s headlamp, casting a shadow over the ceiling. Something large, hunched…

She now held her flashlight with both hands, pointing it like a weapon. It was surely just Co

Terror tightened her belly.

The shadow drew closer.

Amanda didn’t wait.

She bolted across the ice, fleeing along Lacy’s bloody track, aiming for the only means of escape. She dove belly first onto the ice. The wind was knocked out of her. She didn’t care. She slid toward the dark sewer drain, flashlight pointed forward.

Then she was gone.

The slot swallowed her away.

The momentum of her slide carried her several feet down the drain. Illuminated by her flashlight, the low ceiling drew upward. She scrambled up to her knees as she slowed, spi

The sloped floor dumped into a hollow space. She sat up. The roof here was high enough to stand if she ducked her head, but she remained seated. Her flashlight waved around the room.

It was a dead end…in every sense of the word.

Across the bowled floor of the hollow, bones lay everywhere: cracked, splintered, some bleached white, some yellowed. Empty skulls, human and animal, gleamed. Femurs, ribs, scapulas.

One word rang in her head.

Nest…

In a back corner lay a crumpled form, bent and broken, unmoving, festooned in a red, white, and blue Thinsulate outfit. Frozen blood pooled around the shape.

She had found Lacy.

Matt fought the two guards who flanked him in the backseat of the Sno-Cat. “We have to go back!” he yelled.

An elbow struck him across the bridge of the nose. Stars and pain blinded him, knocking him back into his seat. “Stay seated, or we’ll handcuff you.” Lieutenant Mitchell Greer grimaced and rubbed his elbow.

The other guard, a bullnecked seaman by the name of Doug Pearlson, had drawn his pistol. It was presently pointed at the roof of the Cat, but the threat was plain.

“Matt, calm down,” Craig said from the front seat.

“We have our orders,” the driver, a petty officer, said.

A minute ago, Lieutenant Commander Sewell had radioed their vehicle. He had ordered them to continue to the Russian ice station immediately. The commander had been unable to raise the station himself, and warning of the Russian ambush had to be relayed.

Then an explosion had cut off communication. It was a close hit, sounding at their heels. The ice shook under the Cat’s treads. All eyes searched behind. Gunfire sounded in the distance.

But the threatening storm had rolled in early, squalling up snow in a ground blizzard. All attempts to raise the other Sno-Cat failed. Fear for Je

There was still no sign of the trailing vehicle.

“Try them again then!” Matt snapped, blinking back tears from the pain of his bruised nose. He could taste blood in the back of his mouth.

The driver shook his head and unhooked the radio. “Cat Two, this is Cat One. Respond. Over.” He held the receiver up.

No answer.

“It could just be a local blind spot,” the driver said. “We see that up here. Sometimes you can communicate with someone halfway across the globe, but not in your own backyard.” He shrugged, bouncing slightly as the Cat rode over a series of ice ridges.