The Thing (5 page)

They slogged toward the camp. A large, prefabricated metal building loomed directly ahead. It was full of gaping holes not part of the original design. Macready searched but couldn't locate an intact window. Broken glass shone like diamonds in the snow.

Smoke rose from the surface. Like their own camp, most of this one should be snuggled beneath the ice. It looked like the ground itself was on fire.

Individual pieces of equipment burned with their own personal fires, melting their way into the ice and eventual extinction. A flaming ember whizzed by and both men instinctively ducked, even though fire here was usually a welcome companion. But conditioning dies hard.

Copper said nothing, just stared. Macready's thoughts were a flabbergasted blank. The place looked like Carthage after the last Punic war.

This wasn't what they'd expected. Not this total devastation. Macready turned and went back to the helicopter and thoughtfully pocketed the ignition key.

Eventually they located the source of the main blaze and also the reason for the unusually thick column of smoke. It rose from what appeared to be a makeshift funeral pyre. Books, tires, furniture, scrap lumber; anything that would burn had been heaped together outside the main building and set on fire. Discernible among the rest of the inorganic kindling were the charred remains of several dogs and at least one man. Mounds of black goo that might have been asphalt or roofing sealant burned fragrantly among the rest of the debris.

A small gasoline drum lay on its end nearby, its cap missing. A larger fuel oil drum squatted off to one side. Macready checked the smaller container first, then the larger. Both were empty.

He glanced to his left. Was that only the wind whispering in his ears? He exchanged a look with Copper. The doctor's face was pale, and it wasn't from the cold.

Macready made another trip back to the copter and opened the door. The shotgun slid easily out of its brackets behind the pilot's seat. He made sure it was loaded, took a box of shells from the compartment beneath and shoved them into his pocket, then hurried to rejoin Copper.

The doctor glanced sharply at the gun, whose purpose was so different from the instruments he carried in his satchel. But he didn't object to its presence. It seemed small enough insurance in the face of the violence that had ripped this camp.

They started in toward the center structure, or rather what was left of it. Glowing embers continued to waft past them. One latched onto Macready's shirt-sleeve and he absently batted it out.

The door was unlocked. Macready turned the latch, stepped back, and used the muzzle of the shotgun to shove it inward. It swung loosely and banged against the interior wall.

Ahead lay a long, pitch-black corridor. There was a switch just inside the doorway. Copper flipped it several times, without effect. He pulled a flashlight from his coat and aimed it down the corridor.

"Anybody here?"

No answer. The beam played off the walls and floor, revealing a tunnel little different in design and construction from those back at their own compound.

Only the wind talked to them, constant as it was uninformative. Copper looked to the pilot, who shrugged.

"This is your party, Doc."

Copper nodded, and started in. Macready followed and moved up beside the older man.

Their progress was slow because of the debris that filled the corridor. Overturned chairs, chests of equipment, loose wires, and cannisters of gas and liquid made for treacherous walking. Once Macready nearly went over on his face when his feet got tangled in an exploded television set. Copper winced, then gave the pilot a reproving look.

"Maybe I ought to carry the gun?" He extended a hand.

Macready was angry at himself, "I'll watch it. It won't happen again. Just watch where you point that flashlight."

Copper nodded, and tried to keep the beam focused equally on the floor and corridor ahead. It was as cold in the hallway as it was outside.

"Heat's been off in here for quite a while," he said.

Macready nodded, his eyes trying to pierce the darkness in front of them. "Anybody left alive would've frozen to death days ago."

"Not necessarily. Just because this one section is exposed and heatless doesn't mean the whole camp's the same way. Your shack has its own heat, for example."

"Yeah, but if the generator went out I'd be a popsicle in a couple of hours."

"Well, they might have portable propane heaters, then."

Macready threw him a sour look. "I love you, Doc. You're such a damn optimist."

Copper didn't reply; he continued to play his flashlight beam over floor and walls. The wind wailed overhead.

Macready stopped. "You hear something?"

Copper strained, listened. "Yes. I think so." He shifted the light. "Mechanical."

They followed the faint noise, which soon turned to an audible hissing. As they continued down the corridor the hiss became recognizable as static.

There was a door blocking the end of the corridor. The steady sputtering came from the other side.

Copper moved the light over the remnant of a door. Something had taken it apart. An axe protruded from the center, its head buried deeply in the wood.

Macready put the gun aside, grabbed hold with both hands, and yanked until it came loose. The cutting edge was stained dark. He studied it briefly, looking to Copper for confirmation.

The doctor said nothing, which was confirmation enough for Macready. There wasn't much blood on the axe, and what remained was frozen to a maroon crust.

Putting down the axe he retrieved the gun, holding it a little tighter now as he tried the doorknob. It rotated and the door opened inward, but halted after moving only a few inches. The pilot put his shoulder against it and shoved, but it refused to budge further.

"Blocked from the other side," he said quietly to Copper. He put his face to the slight opening. "Anybody in there?"

There was no reply. Copper moved up against Macready's side and shouted past him. "We're Americans!"

"Come to help you!" Macready added. His tongue moved against the inside of his mouth and he added, "We're alone!" Still no response. He steadied himself and leaned harder against the door.

There was a creak. "I think it moved a little," he told the doctor. "Give me a hand."

Copper added his own bulk to Macready's and pushed. The frozen floor of the passageway gave poor purchase to their boots. But by alternately hammering and pressing hard they managed to edge the door inward an inch at a time.

Eventually they'd widened it enough for Macready to stick his head inside.

"Give me the light." Copper handed it over and the pilot directed its beam inward. The static was loud now.

"See anything, Mac?"

"Yeah." The flashlight revealed banks of electronic instrumentation, most of it shattered. One console appeared to be the source of the steady humming. "Communications," he told the doctor; "Looks a lot like Sanders's bailiwick, anyway." He gave the light back to Copper, wedged himself into the opening, and pushed. The door gave another couple of inches.

Copper followed him through, shining the light around the little room. Wind kissed their faces, unexpectedly brisk. He leaned back and picked out the holes in the ceiling.

A Ganz lantern rested on a corner table. Macready dug out a match, struck it carefully and applied the flame to the lantern as he turned the control knob. The butane caught with a rush, forming a little circle of light.

Lifting the lantern, he turned in a slow circle. The soft light picked out the top of a man's head, showing just above the back of a swivel chair.

"Hey, Sweden," he called to the figure, "you okay?"

The chair rocked slightly in the breeze from the ceiling. Both men moved slowly toward it. Macready put out an arm and halted the doctor a yard short of the chair, then poked at it with the shotgun.

"Sweden?"

Copper's gaze moved to the arm resting on one arm of the chair. A thin red line fell from it, a frozen crimson thread that ended in a pool of coagulated blood on the wooden floor.

Macready poked the chair again, stepping around it. Copper moved around the other side.

The man in the chair was lightly dressed, too lightly for the subfreezing temperature in the room. His eyes were open, fixed on something beyond their range of vision. His mouth was frozen agape. He seemed to have been petrified in the act of screaming.

Macready's gaze traveled down the stiff body. The throat had been slit from ear to ear; both wrists were also slit. An old-fashioned straight razor lay in the man's lap. It was stained the same color as the axe that had been buried in the door. The razor seemed out of place in the communications room, an antique among solid-state technology. It had done its job, however.

Macready reached past the wide-eyed corpse and flicked a switch. The radio's steady hiss died.

There was a door in the far wall, which also turned out to be blocked from the opposite side. Macready rammed his shoulder angrily against it, banging it inward. He paused to catch his breath, and saw his companion gazing in fascination at the corpse and its multiple slashes.

"My God," the doctor was muttering half to himself, "what in hell happened here?"

"Come on, Copper," Macready growled at him impatient. "This one's blocked, too."

"What?" The doctor stared blankly at the pilot, then snapped out of his daze and moved to help. Together they battered at the new obstacle until it moved enough to let them through.

A metal storage cabinet had been used to brace the door. Beyond lay more blackness. The wind was stronger.

Copper switched off the flashlight and took the lantern from Macready, freeing the latter to hold the gun with both hands. He held the lantern high, revealing a series of wooden steps leading downward.

"Hey, Sweden!" Macready shouted into the blackness as be started downward.

"They're not Swedish, goddamn it," Copper corrected him irritably. "They're Norwegian, Macre—"

Something swished out of the darkness and smacked into his face . . .

The lantern fell from his startled grasp and went bouncing down the stairs like a runaway jack o'lantern. Copper stumbled and felt himself falling as he flailed at something whipping around his head. Macready leaned back against a solid wall and extricated his own flashlight, holding it in one hand and the shotgun in the other as he tried to locate their assailant.

But Copper had recovered his equilibrium and subdued his attacker. He held it up, letting the wrinkled paper flap in the breeze that carried it down the stairwell.

Macready walked over and took the paper. The notations at its bottom were in Norwegian, but it wouldn't have made any real difference if they'd been Chinese ideographs.

"Norwegian-of-the-Month, Doc. Harmless." He started to toss the centerfold away, thought better of it and pocketed it for detailed inspection later on.

An embarrassed Copper self-consciously adjusted his clothing and descended the last couple of steps to recover the still burning lantern. He waited there until Macready had rejoined him. Together they started down the subterranean corridor.

The support beams holding up the ceiling were wood. They were twisted and buckled from the steady pressure of the ice around them. This was a more glacially active area than the plateau where the American outpost was located.

The recent conflagration that had seared the camp further strained the strength of the woodwork. They could hear it creaking and complaining around them as they made their way up the tunnel. Bits of ice and silt trickled down, landing in their hair and tickling their cheeks.

A broken beam lay crossways ahead of them, blocking the tunnel. It still smouldered. Macready ducked to slip gingerly underneath, brushing it gently. A shower of fine debris rained from the arched ceiling.

"Easy here, Doc. This one belongs in the roof, not on the floor."

Copper crouched and passed under the beam. It groaned but held steady. They continued onward.

"Hey!

"Mac? Something wrong?" Copper whirled, shining the light toward his companion.

Macready was searching the wall behind him. "Bumped into something. Didn't feel like wood. I thought it moved when I hit it. Holy shit." He grimaced.

The arm was sticking out of the edge of a steel door set into the corridor wall. The elbow was about three feet off the ground. The door was shut tight. Fingers clutched a small welding torch.

Copper leaned close, examining the trapped limb.

"Watch it, Doc," Macready warned him. "Might still be gas running to that sucker."

"I don't think so." Copper indicated the torch controls. "The switch is in the on position, I think. I don't smell anything." He licked a finger, held it under the nozzle of the torch. "Nothing. Fuel burned or leaked out long ago."

Macready tried the door. It was unlocked and unlike the previous two they'd had to wrestle with, this one opened easily. The arm dropped loosely to the floor. It wasn't attached to anything anymore, having been severed as well as held in place by the door. There was no sign of its former owner.