The Winter Over(90)

Biddi shook her head. “I know the good doctor meant well, but . . . huddle together with everyone else in a single room so we could all die a slow death on some lunatic’s timetable? No thank you.”

Cass shuddered. “You made the right decision. It was . . . terrible.”

“I can’t imagine what seeing that was like. How are you holding up, dear?”

“I don’t know if I am.” Cass put her hands to her face. “It’s hitting me, but the pain is coming from a thousand miles away. I think I’ve suffered as much shock as I can at this point. Something inside me is saying, get out of here first, then deal with the madness.”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Biddi said, then paused. “How do we do that?”

“You don’t have a plan?”

Biddi flapped her arms like a giant stuffed bird. “You’re looking at it. I thought maybe I could set fire to the powdered milk and live off dried jerky until the cavalry came.”

“We’d probably kill ourselves if we tried to set a fire. Assuming whoever did this doesn’t come for us first.”

Biddi hefted the ice axe. “Let him try, dearie. But I get your point. Can you think of anything better?”

Cass paused. “Orlova.”

Biddi looked at her blankly. “What about it?”

“We head for it.”

“On foot?”

“Yes.” Cass explained herself in a rush. “It’s far, but with good gear, the right supplies, and two of us checking for crevasses, we have a chance.”

“A chance is right. You didn’t happen to grab a GPS before you stumbled in here, did you?”

Cass shook her head. “But the SPoT highway passes within a few hundred meters of the Russian base. If we keep an eye on our watches and keep track of the stars, we should come close using dead reckoning. Then we’ll just have to look for Orlova when we think we’re near.”

Biddi stared at her. “Dead reckoning? You want us to re-create Ernie Shackleton’s bloody fucking journey, is that what you’re after?”

“No, he did it in a boat,” Cass said calmly, and with more confidence than she felt. “We’ll be walking.”

“So, you’re saying at least we won’t drown? Fantastic.”

“It’s either that or stay here and freeze to death. Or be killed.”

“My God,” Biddi said in a whisper, looking at the supply racks. After a moment, she said, “I suppose there’s nothing for it. Is there anything of use here?”

“Grab a few MREs to eat, but not too many. More than a couple will weigh us down and if it takes any longer than a few days to reach Orlova, well, more food won’t really make a difference.”

“Well, you’re a cheerful one, aren’t you? Where does it come from?”

“Some deeper inner reservoir of strength,” Cass said. “Also, I’m scared shitless.”

They grabbed rucksacks, threw a few dried meals in each, then shouldered them and headed out of the ECW cage. Biddi turned to face her in the aisle. “How do you want to get outside?”

“I remember the engineering schematic showed an old station tunnel leading east for a hundred meters or so before it exits out a stub-up on the surface. It’s going generally toward Orlova. If we use it, we’ll be out of the wind the whole time.”

“With just over forty-nine and a half kilometers to go.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No,” she sighed. “Let’s go.”

She and Biddi headed down the central causeway of the warehouse to the door. Just before they passed through, Cass glanced back. The hangar-sized cavern seemed isolated and safe in comparison to the rest of the base. But at sixty below, they would both slowly die of hypothermia and frostbite, no matter how many layers of ECW they put on. Assuming they weren’t murdered in their sleep. As crazy as it sounded, walking overland to a base fifty kilometers away made more sense.

They trudged back down the corridor that connected the arches in silence. The smell of gas began to increase and Cass pressed her scarf closer to her mouth and nose. As they pulled even with the side tunnel to the VMF, Cass asked over her shoulder, “Who set fire to my garage?”

“I wish I knew, dearie,” Biddi said, her voice muffled by her scarf. “It was already like that when I separated myself from the Lifeboat group. No doubt it was the same whacko who dreamt up this nightmare we’re going through, this Observer Hanratty spoke of.”

“Do you have any guesses as to who that is?”

“Personally, I’d nominate Mr. Gerald Keene.”

“It’s not him.”

“Oh? And how can you be so sure?”

“Someone cut his head off and put it in one of the shrines.”

“I see,” Biddi said, pausing briefly to absorb the news. “Only his head?”

“The rest of him was in one of the Jamesway huts.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. How do you know that ? I thought Hanratty had you locked up this whole time.”

Cass hesitated, faced with a strange reluctance to reveal her last secret. But there was little reason to hide anything now. As they walked, Cass explained how she’d discovered the shaft up to the abandoned Jamesway over the summer and made it her sanctuary. Guilt assailed her as she described the little shortwave she’d managed to cobble together.