The Last Hunter - Lament (Book 4 of the Antarktos Saga) (35 page)

After finishing the second bun, she looked at her reflection in the window glass. She looked like an anime version of Princess
 Leia 
. . . a dark-skinned, nappy-blond-haired version. Whitney smiled. For the first time in a long time, she thought she looked good. Maybe it was the reflection of Portsmouth and the ocean in the background that caused her to cast a fairer gaze at herself. She wasn’t sure. But her brown skin and darker brown eyes hadn’t looked this vibrant in a year.

Whitney knew that while her outward appearances were improving, her heart was still healing. No amount of exercise or sleep could erase the torment she had endured the past year.

Cindy
 Bekoff
, her friend and psychologist, believed Whitney’s upcoming trip to Antarctica was an excuse to flee from the pain. “There aren’t many places on earth more remote,” she had said. “You need to deal with your pain before moving on.”

What Whitney hadn’t, and wouldn’t, tell her, was that it was where
 
he
 
was . . . it was where he had been hiding all this time. She wasn’t running from pain; she was accelerating straight toward it.

The wind reversed direction, flowing up and over the red Victorian home’s shingled roof and heading for the ocean. As the gust spilled across Whitney’s body, she took note of its sudden warmth. The temperature shift struck her as odd—a cold front and heat wave battling for supremacy. New England was known for its drastic weather changes, but this variation in temperature during a mid-summer day seemed downright freakish.

CHAPTER 4

Longing for home and family,
 Anguta 
failed to notice the first ripples in the water’s surface. Something was rising. Bubbles expressed from the emerging creature churned the surface and snapped
 Anguta’s 
attention back to the task at hand. Raising the spear over his head,
 Anguta 
waited for the right time to strike.

The water parted to expose the dark gray flesh of the humpback’s hide. Still
 Anguta 
waited. An early strike might connect with the beast’s tail, causing the man to be thrashed about with every pulse of its mighty fluke. As the whale’s head breached the surface,
 Anguta 
focused, waiting for the moment when the whale would exhale a spray of mist and expose its eyes.

Anguta 
felt his heart stop when he made eye contact with the whale, but there was no exhalation from its blowhole to trigger his throwing arm. He stood solidly, gripping his spear, muscles taut, but did not throw. He stared into the eye of the creature, which appeared to be blinded by cataracts. With a heavy heart, he realized that he and the whale weren’t so dissimilar. They’d sired families.
 Traveled the Arctic. Fought the elements. 
And they’d grown old. Then he remembered their crucial difference. He was a hunter. Years of failed hunts flashed through
 Anguta’s 
mind, and all the mercy he felt for the blind whale evaporated quickly as the spear sailed from his hand.

As soon as he released his hold on the spear, he knew his aim was true; it was a killer shot into the humpback’s eye. The tow line unfurled at
 Anguta’s 
feet as the spear covered the twenty-foot distance to the whale. The tip of the spear struck home, dead center in the
 whited 
eyeball—and glanced off.

The sound and physical reaction of the spear would have been no different if
 Anguta 
had flung it at a stone.

He followed the ricocheted spear with his eyes in disbelief at what had happened and annoyance that he’d have to retrieve the spear. But when the weapon struck the ocean, it bounced again. The surface was frozen.

There’s no ice here,
 Anguta 
thought.
 Perhaps an iceberg?

The old man scanned the world around him. It was white and frozen. His eyes turned back to the whale. Its skin sparkled with frost—it was frozen solid. It was only then that he noticed the biting cold nibbling at his skin. He had never felt such a degree of cold through his arctic gear. The sensation was similar to rolling stark naked in the snow.

As his muscles involuntarily twitched, working to warm his body temperature, he tried to get his bearings. He had to find shelter. But as he searched the newly frozen ocean for a glimmer of hope, his goggles fogged and he became as blind as the now-petrified whale.

Frustrated and panicked,
 Anguta 
removed his goggles and immediately regretted the decision. His eyeballs froze. A jolt of savage pain threw
 Anguta 
off his feet and ripped through his body. Images sailed through his mind: Elizabeth, the kids, their little ones . . . would this cold front reach them as well?

Anguta’s 
body hit the kayak with a thud, solid as stone.

CHAPTER 5

Dmitriy 
stared, willing his mouth to form words to express his love, but he remained silent. He swallowed audibly and felt a sick feeling in his stomach. He glanced to the side, avoiding her penetrating eyes as his silent embarrassment grew, and noticed she was holding her Geiger counter. He remembered why they were there and wondered if she had found something important. He didn’t really care at the moment, but it gave him something to say. “You wanted to show me something?”

She seemed startled by the question. “I, uh . .
 . ” 
She noticed
 Dmitriy’s 
eyes on the Geiger counter. “Oh, yes, I . . . Look at this.”

Viktoriya 
pulled herself away from
 Dmitriy’s 
arms and stepped out toward the waterline where small, frigid waves lapped against the shore. She stopped and held out the Geiger counter. Sweeping left to right, the counter clicked slowly at first, then rapidly, then slowly again. She repeated the sweep two more times.

Dmitriy 
stood next to her and studied the shoreline beneath her feet. It looked as harmless as the rest of the beach, but he suspected something was buried there. He looked at the Geiger
 counter’s 
gauge as she swept it over again. The radiation levels read slightly above normal, but not high enough to kill them.
Enough to shorten their lives by a few hours, perhaps, but otherwise safe.

They had been sent to the faraway place to investigate mishandling of environmental pollutants during the Cold War. Siberia, at that time, had been used primarily for dumping toxic waste and exiled criminals. Now, after all these years, it was finally being recognized as a natural wonder. But severe damage had been done, and
 Dmitriy 
believed they were about to uncover more evidence of his country’s environmental neglect.

He bent down and scraped several small stones aside. As he set his eyes on a larger stone, he felt sweat gather on his forehead. He was hot. He wrote it off as exertion—he still wasn’t in very good shape— picked up the large stone, and tossed it to the side. Beneath it were more stones. This was going to take a while.

“Dima?”

Dmitriy 
turned and saw
 Viktoriya 
removing her parka.

“Are you hot?” she asked.

“Da, but I think I haven’t worked this hard in . . .” He noticed she was sweating, too.

Something was wrong. The temperature had risen. Removing his parka,
 Dmitriy 
let the heat soak in as he attempted to remember a time in his life when, if ever, he’d felt the air so hot. He couldn’t. The temperature seemed to be rising exponentially.

“Dima . . . the radiation?”

Dmitriy 
looked into
 Vika’s 
eyes and recognized fear. Had the radiation sprung a leak when he removed the stones? Were they being poisoned? He took the Geiger counter from her hand and swept the area. He shook his head.
 “No, something else.”

Still the heat rose.

His throat began to sting. He took a swig of water and offered the canteen to
 Viktoriya
. She gulped it greedily.

The trees behind them groaned as they bent under a burst of pummeling wind. The wind was dry and hot, like bending over an open oven.
 Dmitriy 
blinked his eyes as the moisture was wicked from them. Something was very wrong.

“We have to leave!” he said. He glanced up the shoreline where they had landed the helicopter, a football field away. “Get to the helicopter!”

He took
 Vika’s 
hand and helped her across the loose rocks. The rising heat made his heart beat wildly in his chest, urged him to sprint at full speed. But he couldn’t leave
 Vika 
behind. She had saved his life. She was his life. He would not let her die now.

Viktoriya 
slipped on a stone and fell forward, but
 Dima 
was there to catch her. He swept her into his arms and stumbled toward the copter.

The heat continued to rise.
 Dmitriy 
struggled to keep his eyes open. The heat was so intense that it felt as though his eyes were peeled grapes. He looked at
 Viktoriya
. Her eyes were clenched shut.

They were halfway to the copter now, and
 Dmitriy 
was wheezing. His body was dry. Every bead of sweat that his body produced evaporated. A loud
 
crack
 
drew his eyes back to the forest. He saw a tree falling to the ground, pushed over by the punishing winds, but what shocked him was the state of the trees. The needles, moments ago vibrant green, were now tinged brown, dried out.
 Dead.

A rising cloak of darkness, like an evil apparition, caught
 Dmitriy’s 
attention as it plumed into the sky above the forest. It assaulted his nose first: acrid smoke laced with sulfur. The trees were burning, and while he couldn’t see it, he suspected a volcano had erupted. The blackness poured out from the tree line and rolled over the beach.
 Dmitriy 
found it impossible to breathe.

He struck out for the helicopter again,
 Viktoriya 
now a dead weight in his arms. He glanced down to check her condition, but found his eyes blinded by the heat and smoke. A jagged boulder caught his shin and he fell forward, dropping
 Viktoriya 
and landing on top of her.