The vision of that immensity and the fear that those thoughts provoked began enveloping Taylor as he skimmed over drifts and fought the giant, insistent hand of the wind. Even though the great white desert had unnerved him, the constant darkness—with the same uninterrupted, featureless face, just black instead of white—was no better. The beam from the Skandic’s headlight died an arm’s length in front of him, illuminating nothing more than the next snowbank or the toothed ridges of the damned frozen sastrugi that made his teeth slam together in his head.
Only the GPS kept him on course; there was no chance he could use a compass, and sight, of course, would be useless until he was almost on top of the Russian base, his final destination. His situation was still dicey, of course, but he permitted himself to feel a tiny amount of optimism for the future, because even if those bastards back at Shackleton survived his parting shot into the VMF and the subsequent fire, the fever that had consumed the high-strung and volatile crew was enough to finish the job. They’d been on the verge of tearing each other apart; it would be a miracle if anyone else made it out of that hellhole alive.
All of which meant that, if he made it to Orlova, and they didn’t turn him over to whatever secret police they were using these days, and he managed to make it back stateside, his future was set. As Shackleton’s sole survivor, the story he’d tell the press would keep news cycles running for a week. He’d make a few appearances, describing the deplorable living conditions and the psychological stresses, then hit them with the biggest surprise of all: it had all been an experiment to drive people crazy. He’d sue TransAnt, write his memoir, sign a movie deal. These last four or five shitty months would turn out to be the meal ticket he’d been looking for his whole life. Not bad for a piss-poor kid who used to dream about owning a pair of shoes.
A gust hit him sideways, lifting the right side of the sled a foot into the air. He leaned into the rise and slammed the snowmobile back down to the ground. The track’s teeth slipped and spun, then bit into the ice. With his heart slamming in his chest, Taylor wrestled the sled back under control and reluctantly slowed the Skandic down to a crawl. At high speeds, the machine was the equivalent of an expensive kite, and getting dumped onto the ice was not an optimal outcome right now.
The gust presaged a shift in the wind. Snow hit him full in the face, cutting visibility down to nothing, and he slowed the sled down even more. Slow enough, in fact, that he risked a glance behind. In his imagination, he’d assumed he’d see a starlike pinpoint of light from one of the outside spotlights or maybe even the Halloween glow of fire from the explosion he’d triggered in the garage.
But Shackleton had long since disappeared from view, and the world behind him was as dark as the bleak, flat night in front of him. Nothing ahead, nothing behind . A hollow pit opened up in his stomach, despair and dread and naked fear fusing together . . .
It took longer than it should have to realize that the twisting, careening sense that the bottom of his world was dropping away was real, not imagined. The Skandic’s headlight tipped forward and away, a plank of light teetering over the crumbling edge of a crevasse. Taylor tried to roll backward from the sled, but it was too late. Man and machine tumbled into the darkness, the single headlight playing over the blue-black walls.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Cass unwound the scarf from around her neck and doubled it over her mouth and nose. The smell of gasoline was strong enough to make her gag and she had to squeeze her eyes hard to clear it of tears that formed and froze. Rationally, she knew that the Beer Can, always unheated, couldn’t be any colder than it had always been, but it somehow seemed darker and less protective than ever as she started down its metal steps.
The central shaft of the staircase appeared to her flashlight in muddy sections. The familiar sterile lights of each level were gone, as was the sluggish glow at the bottom of the shaft that she associated with the service lights of the ice tunnels that led to the arches and the VMF. Just one emergency footlight glowed at the top of the Beer Can. Her flashlight was the only other illumination.
Her steps made a hollow, staccato rapping as she descended the staircase. She wanted to move quickly, but the muscles of her calves and thighs twitched and shivered, making both her steps and her judgment risky. Her only source of heat was movement, which might be good enough for now, but as she failed to replace the calories she’d lost, her body would start to break down, slow, and die.
The dark maw of the ice tunnels loomed in front of her. She swung the light back and forth, expecting, perhaps, to see more bodies lying in the tunnel, on the ground, propped against the icy walls, but there was nothing. The sound of her breathing was loud in her ears. The layers of cloth swaddled around her head kept her warm, but also kept her isolated and deaf.
The smell of the gas was stronger. Moving slowly but steadily, she made it to the conduit intersection in twice the time it normally took with the power on and the lights guiding her way. Tugging the cloth aside from one ear, she listened down the tunnel.