Ice Hunt

“You’ll have to hurry,” Sewell said to Kowalski and Je

Je

Standing atop the bunk, Je

Helped by the two sailors shoving her hips, she pulled up and poked her head into the blizzard. She was immediately blinded by the winds and blowing ice.

She do

Je

He grunted a bit, then signaled her, jabbing a finger toward the windward side of the hut. The pair shimmied and slid on their butts to where the sloping roof went straight down toward the ground. The ice threatened to take them over the edge against their will.

On this side of the Jamesway, snow had built up into a large bank, a frozen wave permanently breaking against the hut, reaching almost to the roof. Kowalski searched from his perch for any Russian guards. Je

He glanced over to her.

She nodded.

Kowalski led the way. Sliding feetfirst over the edge, he dropped down onto the snowbank, then rolled skillfully down its icy slope. He vanished out of view.

Readying herself, Je

Now to escape.

She rolled artlessly down the snowbank, losing control of her tumble and landing atop Kowalski. It was like hitting a buried boulder. The collision knocked the wind out of her.

She gasped silently.

Rather than helping her, Kowalski pushed her farther down into the snow. He pointed with his arm.

Beyond the edge of a neighboring hut, a group of shadowy figures hunched against the wind. They were only discernible because of the pool of light cast about them from idling hovercraft bikes.

The pair stayed hidden.

The shadowy group soon mounted their hovercraft. The engines must have been idling because the headlamps immediately rose, swaying in the gusts, then turned away. The wail of winds covered the sound of the engines, giving an eerie quality to the sight.

The vehicles vanished into the empty ice plains. The two remaining guards stalked away and disappeared into the next building.

Je

For the first time in years, Je

She whispered soft words into the wind.

I’m sorry…Matt, I’m so sorry…

Gunfire erupted behind them, loud and near.

“Up!” Kowalski yelled in her ear, yanking her to her feet. “Run!”

Amanda fled alongside the tall stranger. The grendel still remained out of sight farther up the maze of passages, but the buzz of its echolocation filled the back of her head with a fuzzy, scratchy feeling.

It was tracking them, slowly, cautiously, driving them deeper into the ice island.

“What is it waiting for?” Matt asked.

“For our luck to run out,” she answered, remembering Lacy Devlin’s fate. “One of these times, we’re going to turn into a dead end. A blocked passage, a cliff. Then we’ll be trapped.”

“Deadly and smart…a great combination.”

Together they rounded a curve of smooth tu

Matt turned to her. “We can’t keep this up. We’re just heading deeper and deeper down, away from where we want to go.”

“What else can we do?” She held up the small ice ax she had taken from Co

“Not a chance.”

“Well, you’re Fish and Game. I’m geophysical engineering. This is your department.”

Matt bunched his brows. “We need something to lure this thing off our scent. Lay a false track for it to follow. If we could slip past it, get above it, then at least we’d be heading toward the exit as we ran.”

Amanda struggled for an answer to this riddle, her mind shifting into objective mode. She reviewed what she knew about the beasts. Little to nothing was the answer, but that did not preclude her from extrapolating hypotheses. The grendels hunted by echolocation, but they were also sensitive to light and perhaps even heat. She remembered her experience in the beast’s nest. It hadn’t been aware of her hiding place until after it destroyed the flashlight and she had begun to sweat.

Light and heat. She sensed an answer here, but what?

They ran past another crisscrossing of tu

“Wait!” she called out, and stopped.

Matt slowed, braking on his heels, one hand on the wall. He turned to her.

Amanda backed to the tu

“What are you thinking?” Matt asked.

She hurried back to the crossroads, eyes sca

She lifted her creation higher.

Matt joined her and nodded. “A lure for a false trail.”

“Let’s hope this does the trick.” She slipped past him, ducked low to the ice, and flung the helmet down the main tu

Amanda stood and faced Matt. “Light and heat. The grendel will hopefully follow after the lure, heading deeper. Once past here, we can sneak behind its back and head up.”

“Like tossing a stick for a dog.” Matt nodded, eyeing her with more respect. He turned off his flashlight. The only illumination now came from the vanished helmet.

In the darkness, they retreated down the side tu

Now to wait, to see if the grendel took the bait.