With agonizing care, she raised her head and shoulders above the floor of the hut, flashing the light in quick half-circles around the tiny room, ready at any second to slide down the icy ladder and take her chances falling to the floor below rather than confront whoever had killed Keene. Debris from previous generations of Polies littered the room, throwing strange shadows against the walls of the hut.
Nothing moved. There was no sound. She slowly crawled the rest of the way out of the hatch and into the Jamesway, whipping the headlamp around to try and see in every direction at once. Only after she was standing to her full height did she see it.
Propped up in a corner was a body dressed in full expedition gear. The head had been torn away and the hood of the parka pulled up to frame the empty space where it should’ve been. A wave of black blood stained the torso down to the belt line, starkly contrasted against the scarlet material. One arm was held up by the back of a chair in a pantomime of a wave of greeting or warning. Rigor mortis had curled the arm back toward the body as though it were gesturing to itself.
Cass stared at the corpse, then slowly closed the hatch and backed away as if it would stand and start walking toward her. Without taking her eyes off the body, she maneuvered her way toward the small patch of carpet where her shortwave was hidden. She knelt and, working by feel, reached for the piece of ancient shag carpeting that covered the false floor hiding the fragile components of her homemade radio.
But nothing felt the way it was supposed to. Risking a glance down, she trained the light of the headlamp on the space. A low moan slipped from her chest as she saw the gaping hole where the hidden cache should be. In the depression, lying in a jumble, were the smashed fragments of her only remaining link to the outside world.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Only the pain told Taylor that he was both awake and alive. Coming to in complete darkness and cold had been so much like being unconscious, he couldn’t tell the difference.
He thought, at first, that he was sitting. He was bent at the waist, but peculiarly so, and in such a way that he couldn’t feel his legs. Raising his head, he hoped to see just how far he’d fallen, but the darkness was total. It was so absolute that, afraid that he might’ve been blinded somehow in the accident, he ran a hand over his eyes. When he felt no damage, he reached for a small penlight he kept in a pocket of his parka, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw the cone of light bounce off the walls of the crevasse.
Taylor panned the light around him, assessing. The snowmobile, its front end smashed up to the seat, lay wrecked twenty feet away. Had he not scrambled out of the saddle when he had, he’d be part of that wreckage. Then again, he thought as he looked around, maybe it would’ve been a better thing.
The wind, savage and unrelenting on the surface, was softer down here. Taylor pushed back the hood of his parka and peeled off the balaclava. It was no warmer—his ears immediately began burning from the cold—but he could hear the engine of the Skandic ticking as it cooled, and now that his mask was off, he could smell the stink of gas and motor oil leaking out of the machine.
After composing himself, he pointed the flashlight at his legs. The left wasn’t so bad—only turned a little strange at the ankle, like he was stretching funny—but the right was bent up underneath him so that the sole of his foot was touching the side of his hip. The pain was a dull ache right now—maybe shock and cold were keeping it at bay—but he’d be screaming soon. Of the other bumps and bruises, few were worth mentioning except what he thought might be a broken rib or two, courtesy of the 9mm Glock he still carried in an inside pocket.
He swung the beam of his light back toward the Skandic. The saddlebag he’d packed had been torn or thrown free in the fall and lay a tantalizing ten feet away. Ten feet that could be measured in many different ways. Three strides, if he were walking. Less than two body lengths. Or, as it turned out, fifteen minutes of crawling, gritting his teeth and crying and spitting as the pain from his leg began to explode.
He gave a grunt of satisfaction as his fingers wrapped around the strap of the bag and pulled it close. Holding the penlight between his teeth, he clawed through the contents. The first-aid kits were less than useless: bandages and zinc oxide tape and sterilization pads weren’t going to help him solve a multiple compound fracture. He looked skeptically at a bivy sack and foil space blanket wondering just how long they could keep him alive, but he tucked them nearby anyway. A repair kit—rivets, extra nylon webbing, and a sewing kit—had him laughing so hard he started to cry.