Polar Vortex

Chapter 7

Danny left them an MSR stove and a few of the tins of food. They ate out of the cans as quick as they could, then mounted up on Danny’s snowmobile. Mac wrapped a scarf around his face until he felt like a mummy, but he still had no goggles. Louisa drove.

Before 1991, the Soviets had mined the entire valley, digging coal out of the high ridges. He could just make out the old mine buildings perched on the mountains like birds’ nests, every couple of kilometers, and the lines of the cableway towers that had carried the coal back to the processing plant in their main settlement, further up the valley. From there, they’d loaded it onto caterpillar-tracked lorries and driven it down the ice road to Nadezhda, at the mouth of the valley.

Twilight had fallen, but high up on the mountain, the last sun glowed off a window on one of the old mine buildings. Almost as if a light was on. In his three months on Utgard, he’d heard plenty of stories about the mines. Why had the Russians come to the end of the world just to mine coal? What was hidden in those old mine tunnels, even now? There were plenty of Zodiac hands who claimed they’d heard strange noises coming from the mine complex, or seen unexplained footprints. When Mac had visited, on a rare day off, all he’d seen were derelict buildings and post-Soviet rubbish.

The valley opened out. Night had fallen, but a full moon was rising, shining off the snow so bright he could see his shadow.

Girls and boys come out to play, the moon is shining bright as day.

The nursery rhyme chased through his head, stuck on a loop he couldn’t stop. He twisted round and looked back.

And there, behind them, was a light. Not up in the mine buildings like he’d seen earlier; down in the gloom on the valley floor, on their track. Moving towards them.

He grabbed Louisa’s shoulder. She slowed, looked back, then jammed on the accelerator. Even in the moonlight, the treacherous ground was hard to read; the headlight flashed up ruts and fallen stones, but never quite soon enough.

Ahead, he saw the cats-cradle silhouette of Nadezhda — long steel gantries that had fed the coal into the waiting ships. He’d never been, but he’d heard the ground was still black from the vast coal piles that had accumulated over the ten months a year that the port was icebound.

The Russians should have stayed, he thought. Soon it’ll be ice-free all year. But even as he thought it, he realised they were already back. Not Soviets, and not for coal — but the planet wouldn’t notice the difference.

And if he wasn’t careful, they would kill him.

The snow ran out half a kilometer before the town. Coal dust had settled on the snow so that instead of reflecting sunlight, it absorbed it and melted. The Arctic in microcosm. They abandoned the snowmobile, and ran across broken ground to the harbour complex. Moonlight made the gantries alien and vast. When the ice-caps melted, and civilisation fell, perhaps this was what the world would look like: skeletal giants quietly rusting, skewed in poses of slow-motion collapse.

And for humanity, like Mac, a return to the terror of being hunted.

The temperature had dropped since the sun set. He didn’t know how far, but it had to be south of minus twenty. The harsh air burned in his lungs as he ran; his throat hurt so much he could barely swallow. And the irony was that under all his layers, he was actually starting to sweat. That was bad. As soon as he stopped moving, it would freeze on his skin. And then life expectancy would be down to minutes.

He checked behind him. The DAR-X snowmobile had stopped. The driver walked towards them: not running, but the quick stride of a man who just wants to get on with it. Moonlight glinted on the barrel of the shotgun he held.

Mac ran faster. Louisa had gone ahead; he caught up with her near the shore, by a huge warehouse whose corrugated walls hung off it in strips. A crane loomed overhead, its hook still hanging in mid-air. Concrete pilings stuck out of the dark water like teeth. Louisa looked around, searching the shadows as if she was expecting someone.

‘Where’s the boat?’

She pointed to a semi-circular building, like a Nissen hut. ‘In there.’

Their pursuer was barely fifty meters off. Was that within range?

As if he’d read Mac’s mind, the man lifted the shotgun and fired into the air.

‘Stay where you are.’

He had a gunslinger’s voice, from the hard wastelands of the American desert. A voice which dared you to disobey.

‘You get the boat,’ Mac said. ‘I’ll draw him off.’

He didn’t know where the words came from. He’d never been heroic. He didn’t know what was on the memory stick. But he understood it was important, that it was good, and that the man with the gun was against it. When the stakes were that high and that clear, decisions took care of themselves. It felt right.

A cloud drifted across the moon. The effect was dramatic, as if someone had flicked off the lights. Mac took his chance.

‘Go,’ he shouted. He ran away from the Nissen hut, making as much noise as he could. He headed for the warehouse, a shadow against the snowy mountains behind.

The cloud moved away. The light turned back on, bright and unforgiving. Mac saw a doorway and ducked in.

The building must have had a roof, once, but that had gone, leaving it open to the sky and the moon. Not so good for hiding. He looked down, and realized the roof was at his feet, lying where it had collapsed: a heap of jagged metal, littering the floor like a box of knives.

He couldn’t hear if the gunslinger had followed him. But he didn’t want to stick his head out the door and get it blown off finding out. He kicked the steel wall, a mournful sound like a waking ghost. He still couldn’t quite believe he was trying to get a man with a gun to come after him. He started edging his way around the room, hugging the walls where there was less debris. Still not safe. A snag caught his trousers: before he realized, it had ripped a gash in the thick fabric. A centimeter closer and it would have been his leg.

Another cloud; the light went out again. The darkness sapped his courage with sounds he hadn’t noticed before. The breeze moaning through the dead buildings; the waves whispering on the shore; metal clanking on metal. Were those footsteps? Blind, surrounded by sharp broken edges, he didn’t dare move.

The clouds parted — only for a moment, but it strobed the open room like a flash of lightning. Mac looked up. And froze with terror.

How did he get there?

Halfway up the opposite wall, a metal walkway had half survived the roof’s collapse. One end had come down; the other hung from its struts, so that it sloped down like a ship’s gangway.

And, in the flash of moonlight that escaped the clouds, he saw a man standing at the top of it.

He looked huge. Perhaps that was the shadow behind him, or the magnifying effect of Mac’s fear. The face was hidden by the hood of his parka; Mac couldn’t see a gun. But how had he got there so fast?

Could there be more than one of them?

The clouds closed up and the figure vanished in the pitchy darkness. Mac didn’t wait for his eyes to readjust: he ran. Steel talons plucked at his legs; this time, one cut right through his clothes to the skin. Probably drew blood, but he didn’t notice. He forced his way out the door.

Earl stood in front of the warehouse, waiting for the moon to come back. The guy and the girl had split up, which was probably smart. The harbour complex wasn’t huge, but it was a mess. Clambering around in the dark would most likely get him hurt — or worse. Out here, something as dumb as a rip in your coat could kill you.

Maybe he should go back to the snowmobiles. He didn’t want them to circle around and steal his ride. He should have taken out the key, but he’d been so close behind them he hadn’t thought of it.

The moon came out and went straight back in again. He would have never admitted it, but the place kind of freaked him out. He’d given those stupid kids a fright, for sure; maybe that was enough. They’d think twice before they came and fucked with Echo Bay again.

A clatter from inside one of the buildings rattled the night air. He turned, just as the clouds parted and the moon came back out. A man staggered out the warehouse door.

The kid. Not so smart after all. Must have gotten lost, or spooked by the dark. Now he was right in Earl’s sights.

He wasn’t going to shoot him. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a killer. He just wanted to rough him up some so he’d learn his lesson. He moved closer. The kid saw him, saw the gun in his hand. Looked like he couldn’t believe it.

Then he ran.

Mac didn’t understand it. Thirty seconds ago, the man had been halfway up the inside of the warehouse. Now he was out here, on the opposite side of the building. How was that possible?

His brain didn’t care about possible any more. It cared about survival, and survival didn’t argue with the facts in front of your face. He turned again and ran, around the side of the warehouse. At least he seemed to have distracted him from Louisa. Maybe too well.

Behind the building, he came onto a black patch of ground that looked as if a bomb had gone off. It must have been a coal mountain, once: a few left-behind lumps still lay at his feet. A vast gantry crane overhead cast criss-cross shadows.

Two huts stood on the far side. Not much, but there was darkness between them, and darkness was what he wanted. He ran into the narrow alley they made. Not as dark as he’d thought: ambient light reflected off the grey concrete walls. He stumbled along, kicking against debris. He checked over his shoulder for his pursuer. If he could just get out the other end, he thought he could lose him.

The alley ended in a wall. So sudden, he almost walked right into it. They’d bricked it up! He tried to climb it, but the walls were smooth and his frozen hands had no grip. Too high to the roof, and nothing he could find in the garbage at his feet to stand on. The moon had gone in.

Footsteps crunched across the hard, coal-littered ground behind him.

‘You’re not gonna get away,’ said the voice. ‘I see you.’

That couldn’t be true. The voice had come from out in the open, too far away to see Mac in the alley. But that was no consolation.

Mac was trapped.

Earl watched the kid run around behind the warehouse. Definitely an amateur — he’d have been better off staying put in his hideout.

He was about to follow. But he was hunting, and he had a hunter’s instincts: he caught a movement behind him and turned.

There she was, dragging something out of a Quonset hut about thirty yards away. The moon lit up her face so he could see it clear as TV. Definitely the girl he’d spotted coming out of the Tech hut. He thought about going after her, decided to leave her for later. He didn’t want the guy getting away.

He went around the warehouse and came out in open space that had once been a coal heap. Thought he saw movement in the shadows between two concrete buildings, but the moon went in again before he could be sure. He waited. He’d been around the harbour complex a few times before, was pretty sure that was a dead end.

The moon came back out. And again, his hunter’s senses twitched. He looked up at the gantry crane. The steel frame made shadows against the moon: lacy shapes that almost made you forget it was a hundred tons of steel.

But one of the shadows was solid. And it was moving.

It must be the guy — no way the girl could have got there so fast. He looked huge in the moonlight, almost as big as a bear. And fast. He was halfway up the crane tower already, swinging himself up the truss with astonishing speed. Crazy son-of-a-bitch. How had he gotten out of the alley and past Earl?

The man reached the top and scampered out along the long arm of the gantry.

‘You’re not gonna get away,’ Earl shouted into the air. ‘I see you.’

He put the shotgun to his shoulder, like duck hunting back in Galveston. Only to fire a warning shot, but the moon went in again so he held off. Didn’t want to kill the fucker accidentally.

In the darkness, he never saw it coming.

Mac had nothing left. No strength, no fight, no options. He flattened himself against the brick wall and waited for the firing squad. His only consolation was that Louisa might escape, that it might make some sort of difference to the world. But then he thought of his parents waiting back home, and it was no consolation at all. They’d warned him about him coming to Utgard, and he’d told them not to worry. What an idiot he’d been.

After a while, he realised the man hadn’t come.

After a while longer, he started to wonder if he wouldn’t.

His leg was freezing through his torn trousers. After standing still so long, the rest of him was only a couple of degrees behind. Not far off hypothermia.

If he left the alley, he might die. If he didn’t, he definitely would.

The moment he put it that way, everything became clear. He staggered back along the alley, steadying himself against the walls. The open space beyond came into view. Still no gunslinger, but there was a bundle of something on the ground that hadn’t been there before.

Mac came out of the alley. In the wash of moonlight, he made an easy target, but no-one took a shot at him.

The bundle on the ground was starting to look like a man. A lot like a man. Mac stumbled towards him and knelt down.

The man didn’t move. Something was wrong with his head: his skull was bent out of shape, and when Mac lifted the band of his hat he saw blood oozing out. He let go with a shudder. The man didn’t move. Didn’t even twitch. A heavy steel block lay on the ground beside him.

Mac looked up. The rusting gantry made a zig-zag silhouette against the full moon. Some of its bars were missing; others hung off like icicles waiting to drop. The block must have fallen at the just the wrong moment. Bad luck.

He waited. A cold wind cut through the tears in his trousers. The dead man lay at his feet. He felt like the loneliest man on earth.

Footsteps came running out of the night. He would have cried when he saw it was Louisa, but his tear ducts were frozen. She saw the body and stopped.

‘What—?’

He told her what had happened. She looked up, instinctively, searching the darkness.

‘We need to go.’

He pointed to the dead man on the ground. ‘Him?’

‘Leave him. No-one has to know we were here.’

‘What about Danny?’

‘He’s on our side. I’ll get on the ship, and you go back to base, and we won’t tell anyone about this.’

‘Shouldn’t we—?’

He couldn’t even finish his sentences. His teeth chattered, his body shook uncontrollably. Shock, exhaustion and the Arctic night had left him with nothing.

She took his arm and dragged him back to the snowmobiles. She got out Danny’s stove. Icicles hung from the eaves of the buildings: she snapped them off and put them in a pan to melt. She left him stirring it while she dragged the boat out of its hiding place. He heard her fitting the outboard motor.

‘Keep moving,’ she shouted from the shore. ‘You’ve got to keep moving.’

He didn’t want to. But he knew he had to. And he didn’t want her to shout at him again. He staggered to his feet and performed a series of drunken jumping jacks.

Louisa came out of the darkness with a roll of duct tape in her hand.

‘Where’d you get that?’

‘For repairing the boat. Let me mend your trousers.’

Afterwards, there were so many things he wished he’d said. Even in the moment, he knew he had questions, lots of questions that badly needed answering. But time was fluid, and in his hypothermic state he couldn’t get hold of it. All he did was sit there, while Louisa repaired his trousers and bandaged his cuts. She forced cup after cup of hot water down him, and when the pan was empty she heated two tins of spaghetti hoops that Danny had given them and made him eat both. She gave him her helmet and her goggles.

‘I won’t be needing these.’

He walked her down to the shore. Out in the bay, small icebergs glowed luminous against the water, growling as the ice inside flexed and cracked. An inflatable dinghy sat on the shore, tied to a concrete piling. It looked impossibly small against the vast ocean beyond.

‘Let me come with you,’ he said suddenly.

‘No.’

‘That man.’ He shuddered as the image passed in front of his eyes. ‘When they work out he’s missing, they’ll come for him. He might even have had a GPS tracker on the snowmobile.’ He glanced back up the valley. ‘Or they might have their own boats.’

‘No.’

‘We’ve come this far together. Let me help you finish it.’

She stared out to sea. He wondered if she was waiting for some sort of signal from the ship. She reached into her pocket.

‘Here.’ She pressed something into his glove. The silver memory stick. The reason they’d nearly died.

‘Take this back with you. Put it in the post to Greenpeace, in London. They’ll know what to do with it.’

‘What about you?’

‘Who knows what the oil company will do if they find out I’m on that ship? They’re well connected. One call, and we could have the Russian navy onto us. But they’ll never suspect that you’ve got it.’

He saw the logic. He still resisted. Louisa reached out and cupped her hand over his cheek. She stared into his eyes.

‘This is bigger than you and me.’

‘I don’t even know what’s on the stick.’

‘Don’t look. It’s better that way.’

‘I don’t know anything about you.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like … ’ He floundered. ‘Where are you from?’

She shrugged. ’Harpenden. North of London. You?’

‘Stirling.’

‘Glad we got that settled.’ She pushed the boat as far into the water as she could without getting her boots wet, then vaulted over the side. ’Give me a push?’

He found a metal pole and prodded the inflatable away from the beach. As soon as it was deep enough, Louisa dropped the engine and flipped the choke. Mac scanned the dark horizon.

‘I don’t see any lights from your ship,’ he said doubtfully.

‘It’s around the headland. Away from prying eyes.’

She pulled the starter cord and the motor roared into life. A stream of white bubbles erupted in the black water. In a few moments, she’d disappeared among the icebergs.

Mac waited until the engine noise vanished under the lap of the waves. Then he went home.