EDEN (6 page)

‘I thought you shut the power off,’ Bradley uttered to Jake.

‘I did.’

Charlotte stared up at the ceiling as the lights grew in brightness until they hummed with the current surging through them. Then, one by one, they silently blinked out as their fuses and bulbs blew in quick succession and the building was plunged into absolute blackness once more.

‘What was that?’ Bethany asked her.

‘We won’t know until tomorrow,’ Charlotte whispered in response. ‘Best thing that we can do now is get our heads under our duvets and keep warm.’

The team dispersed silently to their rooms, Cody climbing into his sleeping bag and laying down to look out of the window at the brilliant aurora shimmering across the heavens outside and illuminating the distant mountains to the south.

He hoped that Maria could see the same spectacular display from where she was, thousands of miles away.

***

Cody was running.

Running hard, trying to flee.

He could feel them behind him, knew that they would catch him. Everything had become a lie. Everything was coming down on him and he knew that he would never, ever escape it. He cried out at the top of his lungs that it wasn’t his fault and that it wasn’t meant to happen as the whole world plunged down onto him and crushed him beneath an unbearable burden of shame, guilt and regret.

Cody’s eyes flicked open, and for a moment he believed that he was blind such was the absolute blackness. His mind began reconnecting itself as his dream faded away, memories replacing the phantoms of sleep. He glanced at the faint outline of his window but behind the curtains he could see that the green glow was gone, darkness having resumed sometime during the night. Cody hauled his duvet off and clambered out of bed.

The cold hit him first as he saw his breath condense on thick clouds. The floor was like ice beneath his feet. He looked down in surprise and then threw his clothes on as quickly as he could. If the generators were still down they were in deep trouble.

He made his way into the living quarters.

Empty.

He turned and leaned out into the corridor down to the main doors. Empty and black but for a faint, flickering light.

Cody turned and walked to the communications room, briefly remembering that Boston were supposed to call him back this morning. As he turned into the room he was surprised to find Jake, Charlotte, Bethany and Bobby all crammed around the radios and the computer with Sauri and Bradley, Jake in the seat.

A lone candle burned on a table nearby.

‘Morning folks,’ he said as he walked in. ‘Any news about how far south the aurora got last night, and what’s happened to the heating?’

Jake dialled a frequency into the radio banks. ‘Any station, this is Alert Five, please respond, over?’

Cody blinked, patted his own chest with one hand. ‘Have I passed away? Can anybody hear me?’

Charlotte turned to him, her features stricken. ‘We’ve got a problem, Cody.’

Jake turned in his seat as if realising for the first time that Cody had joined them.

‘I can’t raise anybody on the radio, on any frequency,’ he said.

Cody stared at Jake for a long moment. ‘Communications antenna is probably iced up, I’ll take a look.’

‘I already did that,’ Bethany said. ‘It’s fine.’

Cody looked at the computer monitor. The screen was dead.

‘It’s down,’ Jake confirmed as he saw the direction of Cody’s gaze. ‘Everything’s down.’

Cody struggled to digest what Jake was telling him.

‘Our signals must be disrupted or something,’ he said. ‘Maybe we can use the satellite phone to… ’

‘Dead,’ Charlotte cut him off. ‘So are the cell signals.’

‘It must be our equipment then,’ Cody replied.

‘I checked out our own radios using our static detectors, to see if they picked up the signals. Everything’s dead.’

Cody stared at the computer monitor as if willing it to suddenly spring back into life.

‘You try calling Boston?’ he asked Jake.

‘Repeatedly,’ Jake nodded. ‘We’ve got nothing, no phones and no power.’

Cody forced his mind into action, drove the confusion away.

‘Maybe the power lines got hit,’ he suggested and turned to Charlotte. ‘That aurora from last night. They’ve been known to trip satellites and transformers out, right, overload circuitry and such like?’

She nodded.

‘Sure, but they shut the satellites down when solar storms hit to protect them, then turn them back on afterward. Same for the lines, except that the forces station cleared out yesterday so there was nobody to shut them down.’

‘So we start up the oil-burners and hunker down until they come back,’ Cody suggested. ‘Most of our communications go through a satellite so it explains everything.’

‘Not everything,’ Bobby said. ‘I’ve tried every radio frequency we’ve got on a standard analogue dish, from short to long wave, ultra, you name it. There’s not a sound coming in from anywhere.’

Cody felt a new chill shudder up his spine. ‘Nothing at all?’

‘Nobody is broadcasting on any wavelength that I can detect. No music, no forecasts, no news channels. Nothing.’

Cody looked at Jake. ‘You ever had this happen before?’

Jake shook his head. ‘Never, and if any station up here ever did lose contact with the outside world a rescue package would be dispatched within hours.’

‘And the weather’s been okay the last twelve hours,’ Bobby said. ‘They could have sent an airplane to pull us out at any time.’

Cody watched as Jake wracked his brains.

‘We’ve got to assume the fault’s at our end,’ Jake said finally. ‘Maybe we just need the power back to gain a signal. Even the dishes down at Eureka have to be positioned horizontally to detect a satellite. Up here, we can’t even see them.’

‘What do you have in mind?’ Bethany asked.

Jake rubbed his head for a long moment. ‘Nothing. I don’t know how best to deal with this. Our main concern should be survival first, then re-establishing contact.’

Cody looked at the other members of the team, finally sensing the unease infecting the cold air in the room.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Bradley said. ‘I think we should try the base. If anywhere is going to have equipment tough enough to still work, it’ll be there.’

‘They said they’d shoot to kill if anybody trespassed,’ Bethany pointed out.

‘Hard to do that if there’s nobody there,’ Jake said in Bradley’s defence as he got out of his seat. ‘And besides, I’d define this as a goddamned emergency.’

‘But if we’ve got no power what makes you think the base does?’ Charlotte asked the soldier.

‘Alert is protected against pretty much everything,’ Bradley replied, ‘even things like electromagnetic pulses produced by nuclear attacks, and its power transformers and lines have extra shielding. They might be holding up.’

Jake stood up and began buttoning his thick jacket. ‘That’s good enough for me. We pack up and move north, because if we stay here we’ll be frozen solid by this afternoon.’

Jake pushed his way out of the communications room and past Cody, then tugged at his arm.

‘Cody, you give me a hand with something?’

Cody nodded and followed Jake out of the block. The darkness was complete but for a row of emergency glow-sticks that Bradley was cracking to illuminate the corridors with a chemical glow. Cody followed Jake through the pools of light and outside, zipping up his jacket as he did so. The air outside seemed frozen solid in the darkness, the glittering stars across the heaves above even brighter now without the station’s external lamps on.

Jake walked across to the parked snowmobiles and then turned to face Cody.

‘Have you done this?’

Cody stared at Jake in surprise. ‘Come again?’

‘Have you shut the station down, sabotaged it in some way?’

Cody gaped in disbelief. ‘Why the hell would I do that?’

Jake yanked a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Cody. Printed upon it was a screen grab taken from the computer in the communications room, the cover of the newspaper and the hunt for a killer.

‘I went through the search history last night,’ Jake said, ‘after that phone call I got from Boston.’

Cody shook his head. ‘I looked at the Boston Globe’s main page when I called home yesterday. What’s this got to do with me?’

‘Nothing,’ Jake replied, ‘except that the call I got was from a police detective in Boston.’

The air around Cody seemed to get suddenly colder as he stood and stared at Jake. ‘What did they want?’

Jake took a pace closer. ‘You tell me?’

Cody struggled to keep his features even as he spoke. ‘You think I’m responsible for all of this? Jesus, the Canadians cleared out Jake. What the hell could I have to do with that?’

‘Any of the others know about this, Cody?’ Jake asked, then pointed at the print out.

‘Not that I know of,’ Cody replied. He took a deep breath as he looked at the image in his gloved hand.

Jake watched him for a moment. ‘Somebody here is wanted for something serious in Boston, and I can only assume that means either large scale fraud or homicide.’

Cody was about to reply when the door beside them banged open and Bradley Trent stormed down the metal steps, pulling his hood up against the frigid air.

‘Maybe we should send a message ahead of some kind, to warn anybody who might still be at the base?’ Charlotte said as she followed Bradley out into the darkness.

‘They didn’t inform us of why they cleared out,’ Jake replied for the soldier. ‘Why the hell should we inform them that we’re going in?’

‘Maybe they left guards behind?’ Charlotte suggested.

‘Doubt it,’ Jake said, gesturing to Bradley Trent. ‘They wouldn’t have bothered to come looking for this loser if they were leaving people behind.’

‘Up yours,’ Bradley muttered. ‘I’ve got the lead out there. You don’t pass me unless I tell you to, understood?’

‘Fine by me,’ Jake replied. ‘If there are any guards remaining, they’ll probably shoot you first.’

Jake shot Cody a concerned look as he turned for his snowmobile. Bradley mounted his and tried to start it. Nothing happened.

‘Damn, battery’s gone,’ he uttered.

Cody tried his key, turned it in the ignition, but nothing happened.

‘Christ, even the snowmobiles are dead!’ Jake said in disbelief.

‘We’ll have to walk,’ Bradley said. ‘If I’m right, we can use the snowmobiles from Alert instead.’

‘It’s five kilometres,’ Cody pointed out.

‘Then the exercise will do you good,’ Bradley snapped. ‘Got a problem with that?’

‘Start packing up some of our gear,’ Jake called back to Charlotte. ‘We might need to move into the base.’

Cody followed Bradley out into the bitter darkness, the soldier leading the way along the twisting road that led to the airbase. The darkness seemed to close around him as though he himself was being pursued. He tried to shrug off the sense that thousands of miles away his life was falling apart and there was nothing that he could do to prevent it.

The walk across the lonely ice road took over an hour, the only sound the crunching of their boots on the ice. Nobody spoke, and Cody guessed that was because nobody really knew what to say.

The first thing that Cody noticed as they approached was that the runway lights were off and the base itself was enshrouded in total darkness. Only a tiny building near the edge of the base showed any signs of life, a single window illuminated from inside that he glimpsed as they walked. The remainder of the base was so inky black that if he hadn’t known it was there he would never have seen it.

The base consisted of a series of large hangar like buildings, surrounded by accommodation blocks all served by eight large fuel silos beside the airfield road on the far side of the base.

Bradley strode alongside the nearest of the hangars as Jake, Cody and Sauri joined him.

Cody looked at the large buildings, most of the accommodation blocks prefabricated out of aluminium and standing on legs that elevated them above the ice. The larger service hangars stood on the ice itself.

‘How come this place is so big?’ he asked Bradley. ‘I thought it was just a listening post?’

‘It is,’ Bradley replied. ‘But normally there are about seventy people based here on rotation, plus vehicles to haul goods, refuelling bowsers, am-tracks, snow clearers, you name it. We need enough gear to keep the place running through the winter for long periods when supply flights can’t get through.’

Jake walked alongside Bradley as they strode between the huge buildings.

‘What about ships?’ he asked. ‘Can’t they run stuff through?’

Bradley shook his head.

‘Not in the winter. The Lincoln Sea is covered in ice thick enough to stop any vessel, although in summer it’s navigable. Most captains don’t venture up here though as the ocean’s still full of icebergs. One wrong move and
wham
!’

Bradley punched a gloved fist into a palm with a thump that echoed between the buildings. He reached out to doors as they passed them, yanking on them to no avail.

‘Everything’s locked up,’ he said as they searched the complex.

‘Why would they do this?’ Cody asked. ‘Surely they must intend to come back at some point?’

‘You’d think so,’ Bradley muttered. ‘Not like my unit to abandon their own, especially not in a hell hole like this.’

‘There was a light on in one of the buildings,’ Cody said. ‘I saw it on the way in.’

‘Motion sensor,’ Bradley replied. ‘Probably a fox set it off.’

‘Looked like it was an interior light,’ Cody insisted.

‘Where?’

Cody led them in a direction he felt was about right for where he saw the light. They walked out of the complex of large buildings and found a series of smaller blocks, one of which glowed from within.

‘I’ll be damned,’ Bradley said with a bright smile that glowed in the starlight.

Bradley jogged across the ice as Jake, Cody and Sauri followed. He reached the door to the small block and burst in, a bright rectangle of light spilling out into the eternal darkness. Cody climbed the block steps and walked inside to see Bradley holding a piece of paper, his eyes scanning from left to right and his features collapsing as he did so.