Terminal Freeze

44

“What was that?” Conti turned suddenly, camera tilting dangerously on his shoulder.

Once again, all three paused to listen.

Wolff cocked his head to one side. “I don’t hear anything,” he said. “This is the third time you’ve done that.”

“I tell you, I heard something. A shout, I think. Or maybe it was a cry.” Conti pointed down the corridor. “It came from that direction.”

Kari Ekberg followed the director’s outstretched finger with her eyes. The corridor led into blackness. It was so dark she couldn’t make out its end. It was as if it led on forever, into the icy wastes beneath the arctic night. She shivered despite the humid warmth.

They had been looking for Gonzalez’s team, unsuccessfully, for half an hour now. They had first tried the staging area, only to find it deserted save for a large cache of weapons. After that they had moved around the central wing in widening circles. As the minutes passed, Conti had gotten increasingly restless: complaining bitterly about the time he had squandered in convincing them to assist him, fretting over and over that he was missing his “window of opportunity.” As their search shifted to the southern wing of the base, Ekberg felt herself growing more and more uneasy. It seemed to her just as likely they’d find the creature as Gonzalez’s party.

“Let’s keep moving,” Conti said. “The infirmary’s just ahead.”

“I know,” Wolff said. “I was there, too-remember? What makes you think the sergeant came this way?”

“I heard them saying that Ashleigh and that soldier were killed not far from it,” the director replied.

“Seems to me a good reason to stay away,” Ekberg said.

Conti didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he snapped on the camera’s supplemental illumination. Yellow light filled the corridor, throwing the old equipment scattered against the walls into sharp relief.

“If you’re so eager to find them,” Wolff said, “why not just use the radio?”

“Can’t do that,” Conti replied. “That sergeant doesn’t believe in my work. None of them do. They’d probably give us false directions, just to throw us off. Or confiscate the camera. We can’t take the chance.”

He led the way down the hallway. Most of the doors they passed were closed; the ones that were open gave onto shadow-haunted spaces full of unidentifiable gear. They descended a staircase, turned a corner.

“That’s it, right?” Conti said. “That door on the left?”

Wolff nodded.

Ekberg followed the two into a small waiting room. She had never been in this section of the base and, despite her unease, looked around curiously at the dusty medical supplies and ancient, fading labels of the bottles stored behind glass fronts. Conti had already walked into the next room, and when she heard his sharp intake of breath she knew he had found something. Peering in after him, she saw two sheeted bodies lying on an examination table. One was abnormally short, as if made up of parts rather than an intact corpse. The plastic coverings were so thickly smeared with blood and fluids that the remains were utterly obscured. Ekberg quickly looked away.

“Kari,” Conti said.

She was so overcome with horror that she did not reply.

“Kari,” he repeated. “Turn on the sound pack.”

It was all she could do to switch on the mixer, plug in the microphone cable. Conti hovered over the bodies, the glare from his camera raking them pitilessly. “They’re here,” he said into his lavalier mic, his voice fraught with the gravity of the moment. “The newest victims. One was a simple soldier, doing his part in the service of our country, who gave his life trying to protect others. The other was one of our own, Ashleigh Davis, who was also doing a service-a service in its way no less vital. She came to this godforsaken place in order to solve a great mystery. She was an intrepid journalist who never shirked danger, never hesitated to put her life on the line for others, whether for enlightenment or entertainment. The thing that killed them is still out there-as is the party of soldiers bent on its destruction.”

He fell silent, but his camera lingered over the sheeted bodies, passing back and forth, zooming in, panning out.

“They’ll never let you show that on the air,” Wolff said.

“I’m thinking of the DVD to follow,” Conti said. “The director’s cut.” He lowered the camera. “This was a lucky break.”

“A lucky break?” Ekberg asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Finding them here. I was afraid they’d be in cold storage already.”

Wasn’t so lucky for them, Ekberg thought. She began to object but held her tongue. It wouldn’t do any good.

They returned to the corridor and continued, their footsteps echoing hollowly on the floor. Now and then Conti called a halt and stood motionless, listening intently. There was an expression on his face she’d never seen before: a strangely furtive eagerness. His eyes shone with it. She glanced uneasily at Wolff. In the reflected light of the camera, his face was set in a dubious frown.

Another intersection, another endless hall. Conti stopped once again. “Look,” he said, pointing the camera down the hall like an oversized flashlight. “Isn’t that blood on the floor?”

Ekberg followed the beam of light. He was right: maybe twenty yards ahead, sprays of what could only be blood covered the floor of the hallway. They seemed to have come from an open doorway marked

P-H STAGING ROOM. A confusing welter of bloody footprints led in and out of the room and down the far end of the corridor. Ekberg felt a spike of anxiety.

Conti trotted ahead, fitting the camera’s viewfinder to his eye. Ekberg watched as he pointed the lens at the blood, panning left to right in a long, lingering take. Then he stepped up to the door-bloodying his own shoes in the process-and began shooting the interior of the room. He motioned for Ekberg to run the sound again.

“This is where the outrage occurred,” he intoned. “This is where the unspeakable finality of death overtook them. Death at the hands of what can only be described as a monster-a monster whose secrets we are now committed to uncovering…and putting to an end.”

He gestured for Ekberg to kill the sound. Lowering the camera, he pointed excitedly at the ground before him. “Look. Those tracks-there are three sets at least! That’s got to be Gonzalez and his men.” He paused, scrutinizing the floor more carefully. “My God. Is this the monster’s spoor?” He raised the camera again, panned ahead of them along the corridor.

As Ekberg came forward, she avoided looking into the room where Ashleigh and the soldier named Fluke had died, focusing instead on the bloody splotch Conti was staring at. It couldn’t be the tread of a creature-it couldn’t. It was too big; its shape was too unnatural. Something about it disturbed her violently and she looked away.

“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!”