Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire

Chapter 9

“There,” Nils said, pointing across the icy wasteland. “On the left, about ten o’clock.”

Gabriel squinted through the Spryte’s frosty windshield in the direction that Nils was pointing. At first he saw nothing but white, but then, as the noisy vehicle drew closer, he spotted a long, twisting swirl of crimson in the ice, like a bloodstain left by a slaughtered giant. It was a similar shade of red to the bone-fire in the Transdniestrian fortress, actually—as if the brick red flames had somehow been frozen in the ice. The carmine depths even seemed to flash and sparkle as they approached.

“This is the ice that Dr. Silver was sampling when he disappeared,” Nils said, slowing and then stopping the Spryte about a hundred yards from the site. “There are hidden crevasses all over this location, one of which undoubtedly claimed the life of Dr. Silver. These are an anomaly—there are normally no such crevasses found in this area. The rescue team has already explored many of them, but no…” He looked at Velda, then turned away, squinting through the windshield. “No traces of Dr. Silver were found.”

Velda’s lovely face was stoic inside the pale frame of her furlined parka hood.

“We go on foot from here,” Nils said. “It’s not wise to bring the Spryte any closer. We will need to gear up and rope together before we start, just as if this were a glacier climb. I want everyone in harnesses and crampons—and remember to flatten out and anchor with your ice axe if one of us goes down, so that we don’t all get pulled down after.”

Nils opened the door to the Spryte, stepped out onto the ice and promptly disappeared from sight.

“Nils!” Gabriel cried, leaning across the Spryte to the driver’s side to look out the open door.

The moment he shifted his weight, he felt the boxy vehicle shift with him, the driver’s side dipping dramatically as a series of sharp cracks and a long low rumble sounded from beneath them.

“Everyone, shift to the right!” Gabriel said, pushing himself back against the passenger side door. “To the right! Millie, move—we need your weight.” The big man threw himself against the side of the vehicle. “Come on. As far over as you can or this thing is going down and taking us with it.”

For an unbearably tense moment, the Spryte rocked slowly back and forth as if deliberating their fate. No one said a word. The only movement inside the cab came from the swirling clouds of their anxious, steaming breath. Then, slowly, the rocking eased and the vehicle seemed to even out, balanced with the left side only slightly lower than the right. The slant was enough that Gabriel could now see out the open door. The frozen crust that Nils had fallen through now sported a jagged, three-foot-wide crack.

“Nils!” Gabriel called. “Can you hear me?”

For a minute, they heard nothing but the howl of the wind. Then as if from a great distance, a tiny, echoing voice answered.

“I’m alive.” Gabriel saw Velda’s eyes slide shut with relief. “I’m on a…a kind of steep ledge. Very slick…can’t get much of a grip. I suspect I will fall if I shift my weight even slightly.”

“Okay,” Gabriel said, his mind racing. “Okay. Just hang on. We’re going to figure out a way to get you out of there.”

He turned back to where Millie, Velda and Rue were squeezed together in the far right-hand side of the rear seat.

“Listen,” he said. “One of us needs to try and reach the gear in the back. We need to grab the packs and get out of the Spryte before it falls.”

“I’ll do it,” Rue said. “I’m the lightest.”

“Fine,” Gabriel said. “Go.” He pressed his body back against the passenger-side door as Rue carefully began crawling toward the packs behind her. As she closed her fingers around the strap of the closest pack, the Spryte shifted again, tilting precariously. Gabriel leaned back hard to counterbalance it and he saw Millie doing the same, but Rue lost her footing and tumbled against one of the rear doors. She grabbed the frame as the door swung open, barely avoiding falling out and into the crevasse. The pack was not so lucky. It slid past Rue and out the open door.

A moment later, Nils’s voice called up from below. “What was that?”

“Your pack,” Gabriel shouted. “It didn’t happen to land near you by any chance…?”

“No,” Nils said. “Gabriel?” There was a long echoing pause. “I’m becoming somewhat concerned about my situation.”

“We’re working on it,” Gabriel said. What he didn’t say was that he was becoming somewhat concerned about their situation, too. He could feel the Spryte still gently teetering and could hear the ice beneath them groaning. “All right,” he said, “forget the packs. Everybody out. Rue, you go first, out this side.”

“But Gabriel, if we don’t have any supplies…” she began.

He cut her off. “No time to discuss it, Rue. We may only have seconds—”

But they didn’t even have that.

They all felt it as the lip of the crevasse crumbled beneath the Spryte’s weight. The vehicle tipped forward and smashed through the fragile surface. There was a silent instant where Gabriel felt suspended in midair, like a baseball at the top of its trajectory in that infinitely brief, motionless instant before the descent begins. And then they were plunging into darkness.

Gabriel felt himself thrown sideways, over the back of the driver’s seat. He fell against the others in a tangle of limbs, heard Millie’s grunt as their heads collided. The vehicle glanced off one sheer icy face of the crevasse and then the other before it came to an abrupt stop with a massive grinding crunch. They were tightly wedged between the narrowing walls of ice. The crevasse went on, as they could tell from the sound of chunks of ice continuing to fall into the darkness below—but the truck was too wide to fall any farther.

The faint light filtering down from above showed that the front end of the Spryte was smashed inward as if they had been in a severe head-on crash. If Gabriel had not been thrown into the backseat, he would have been pinned—or, more likely, crushed to death. The radio below the accordioned dashboard was twisted into useless scrap. The glove box had dropped open, dumping out a miscellany of maps and tools, including a large flashlight. Gabriel grabbed the flashlight and switched it on, driving back the blue gloom and illuminating the pale faces of the huddled team members.

“Everybody okay?” Gabriel asked. “Anyone hurt?”

Before anybody could answer there was a thud and a crash from above. Bits of safety glass rained down around them from a shattered window. Gabriel shone the flashlight upward to reveal a booted leg dangling through the window.

“Nils?” Gabriel said.

“I’m all right,” Nils said, though his voice sounded otherwise, like he was speaking through gritted teeth.

Gabriel helped pull Nils down into the cabin. The big Swede was shaken and sported a bloody bruise on one cheek, but he seemed at least not to have any broken bones.

“You really thought jumping down here from that ledge was a good idea?” Gabriel said.

“I wish I could tell you that I did,” Nils said, “and that this was all part of a clever plan on my part—but really it was the ledge’s decision, not mine.”

“Got it,” Gabriel said. He shone the light upward. It only penetrated so far into the deep blue walls of ice. The sky was barely visible in the distance.

“We’re going to have to try to free up some of the gear from the back and make the climb to the surface,” Gabriel said. “Won’t be easy, but we should be able to get back to the station on foot and then radio to the Pole for help. Nils, do you think you can make it?”

“I’m not sure,” Nils said. “My leg—”

“I can do it,” Velda said. “My father took me on tougher climbs than this when I was a kid.”

Gabriel doubted it. Any father who’d take a child on a climb even half this hard would’ve deserved an arrest for endangerment. But Gabriel appreciated the attitude, and he wasn’t about to turn down an offer for help. “All right. The rest of you stay here in the Spryte till we come back with a rescue team. We’ll go as quickly as we can.”

“Don’t go quickly,” Rue said. “Go safely.”

“That, too,” Gabriel said. “But in this weather, slow’s not safe. Not for any of us.”

Nils reached into his jacket and fished out a poker hand of Hershey bars from an inner pocket. “Before you go. Some calories.”

Gabriel grabbed two of the bars, passed one to Velda. They were rock hard.

“Break it into squares,” Nils said, “and hold each square in your mouth until it’s warm enough to chew.”

Gabriel did as Nils suggested, sucking on the chocolate in the icy blue twilight. In the depths of the crevasse, out of the shrieking wind on the surface, they were cocooned in a churchlike silence. It was tempting to stay here, huddled together for warmth. But it wouldn’t take long for the chocolate to run out, and, shortly after that, the warmth.

“Right,” Gabriel said around the last mouthful of chocolate. “Let’s see if we can free up that gear.”

Velda’s pack came free fairly easily from the rear of the Spryte but the remaining three were stuck fast, clenched in the crumpled metal as if between teeth. Millie was able to reach his pack and unzip it a few inches. He emptied it of a few smaller items through the opening, passed them to Gabriel. The other two packs were hopelessly inaccessible.

Gabriel and Velda strapped themselves into climbing harnesses and Gabriel readied a pick in one hand.

Rue, meanwhile, was poking around the ruined dashboard. “I might be able to get the heat up and running in here,” she said. “But I’m afraid that would melt the ice around us and send us who knows how much farther down.”

“Don’t do it unless you absolutely have to,” Gabriel said.

“We’ll be fine,” Nils said. “Just come back swiftly.”

Gabriel pushed himself up, using the back of the driver’s seat for leverage. He was about to stick his head out through the smashed rear window when Velda said, “Wait, what’s that sound?”

The team was silent, listening. Gabriel heard nothing at first and then a low, distant rumble that grew rapidly louder and louder.

“Oh, no,” Nils said.

“What?” Gabriel said.

His voice was a whisper. “Avalanche.”