The Winter Over by Matthew Iden
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.”
—1912 expedition recruitment ad attributed to Ernest Shackleton
PART I
FEBRUARY 12
TWO DAYS UNTIL AUSTRAL WINTER SHACKLETON SOUTH POLE RESEARCH FACILITY SOUTH POLE , ANTARCTICA
CHAPTER ONE
The woman’s arms were spread wide, open to the world, as though she were asking for a hug or just starting a snow angel.
One boot—ridiculously oversized—was turned at an obscene angle. The other, held rigidly in place by its thick plastic and neoprene, pointed toward a dishwater-gray sky. Reflective goggles and a thick balaclava hid her face, but a delicate lattice of ice crystals framed her mouth and nostrils, a ghostly “o” and two dashes where her once hot breath had frozen instantly in air that was forty degrees south of zero. Ramps of snow leaned against the body’s windward side, brought to rest against her by the constant Antarctic gales. Had they not found her, she would’ve been buried in eight hours, maybe less, and she could’ve been someone else’s discovery a hundred days or a hundred years from now.
Through the rising wind and flurries, Cass stared at the body. It was tempting to imagine that there wasn’t a person inside the cocoon of Gore-Tex and fleece, that it was just a pile of clothes stuffed into boots and gloves, a scarecrow dropped half a klick from the west door of the Shackleton South Pole Research Facility to frighten the crew. Not a woman named Sheryl Larkin who had been vibrant and warm and alive twelve hours before.
Each time Cass tried to wrap her head around the fact that she was looking at what was left of Sheryl, the thought wriggled away like an eel, refusing to be caught. Behind her own mask and scarf, her breath came in short, ragged plugs. Echoes of parting advice from her instructor back in Colorado Springs resurfaced now, counsel she’d laughingly taken for granted at the time. Never forget. Antarctica wants to kill you .
“Jennings.” She jumped and turned to face Jack Hanratty. The station manager’s voice, already gruff, came through his balaclava sounding like a wood rasp. “Help Taylor get that body on the sled or there’re going to be three more out here.”
Frozen, but not from the cold, Cass turned back to the figure sprawled on the ice. She did not want to touch it. The marionette-like lifelessness invoked another memory, and with it, a rising tide of fear and anger. I’m a mechanic, not a medic. I fix snowmobiles and broken engines, not people. What in hell am I doing out here?
“Jennings!” Hanratty’s voice crackled again. “I said, give Taylor a hand before we all freeze to death. I’m going to take a look around.”
Reluctantly, she helped Taylor maneuver the body onto a banana sled hitched to a 120-horsepower Skandic snowmobile. The cadaver felt like a piece of lumber—frozen solid or in the process of succumbing to rigor mortis or both. She’d hoped the mechanical stiffness of the corpse would make it easier to forget what she was doing, but the arms remained open and wide, still asking for that hug. Behind her mask, Cass bit down hard on her lip. Together, she and Taylor muscled Sheryl’s body onto the sled. Once it was balanced inside, he pulled a nest of nylon straps from the Skandic’s trunk and began the process of tying Sheryl down like she was a set of tent poles.
Dizzy and numb, Cass watched him work, unable to look away. Like Sheryl, all of them wore the polarized, reflective ski masks that were standard issue at the South Pole, a layer of protection that was necessary to stay alive, but which swallowed up most of one’s face and nearly all of the humanity. Cass knew she was just as devoid of expression as the others, but for some reason, Sheryl’s facelessness bothered her—the cold landscape, the cold death, the cold reality, combined with Taylor’s and Hanratty’s stilted, businesslike attitude. It seemed as if a great and ancient law was being broken or ignored. Not thinking, she reached to move Sheryl’s mask away.
Taylor’s hand shot out, grabbing her wrist. “You don’t want to do that.”
Cass flinched, then retreated a step. Taylor had a dark reputation—Shackleton’s chief of security was rumored to have history with everyone from Blackwater to Israel’s Mossad—but he was probably right. If the sight and feel of Sheryl’s dead body, hidden by layer upon layer of clothing, was almost too much for her to take, the image of her face would definitely send her to a place she didn’t want to go. She moved farther away and watched Taylor finish tightening the crisscrossed straps. The body rocked with each tug.
Hanratty approached, stomping through the snow. “Taylor, you drive the body back. Doc Ayres should be waiting for you in the garage. No one except you two are to look at it . . . at her . . . before I return. And not a word to anyone.”
“You aren’t coming back now?” Taylor’s twang—Southern Comfort with a hint of backwoods bayou—came through in the five simple words.
“I want to keep looking around. We’ll join you in a few.”
“The met report said the next storm is due at fourteen-thirty.” Taylor would never come out and chide his boss, but the warning was clear. “Con two.”
“I know it,” Hanratty replied, turning his face southwest into the thickening flurry. “The blow that caught Sheryl probably covered anything worth seeing, but if we don’t look now, for sure it’ll be gone in another hour.”