The Cold Beneath Page 13
The third day of my timorous leadership was spent in the midst of the exhausting battle. Snow and ice flew fast and furious the moment the signal was given to begin. I must confess, I couldn’t keep up with the old-timers and was forced to watch as my team operated with crisp efficiency, outmaneuvering and outsmarting their younger rivals move for move, attack for attack. It was apparent within the first hour who would win, but the youngsters put up quite the fight. Like a king, I rested against the hull of the buried ship, waiting for my soldiers to lead me to snowball glory.
It was then that I first heard the screaming.
The sound was muffled, as would be expected considering its source. I leaned into the noise, unsure what I was hearing. At first I assumed it was a rebounding of sound, the shouts and cries of the men on the battlefield, in the throes of mock deaths or playing up their less-than-serious injuries. The more I listened, the clearer it became that it was not coming from the men, but from the belly of the ship.
“Halt!” I shouted, waving my arms for attention.
The men ignored me as the snow continued to fly.
“Stop!” I yelled. “Cease fire!”
This caught the attention of one of my teammates, who cupped his hands about his mouth and hollered the order across the playing field. It took more than a few cries of cease fire for the enemy to trust us, but soon enough the battle ground to a halt. The pelting ceased. The men fell quiet. In the ensuing silence, I could hear the screaming much more clearly, though it was still but a muffled cry.
“What’s wrong, sir?” one of my teammates asked.
Again, I only knew him by his last name, in classic military style. “Bathos, gather all of the men. Now!”
The crewman ran off to do as asked while I made my way toward the tunnel that led to the ship. Shipman was already waiting for me at the mouth of the tunnel, wearing an amused look tinged with an air of distrust.
“What’s the matter, sir?” he asked, smiling wide. “Ready to forfeit so soon?”
“Be quiet,” I snapped. Standing at the entrance to the tunnel, I motioned for him to listen. “Don’t you hear that?”
Shipman leaned toward the ship, into the tunnel, where a steady shriek echoed through the icy walls. He slowly lost his smile. “What on Earth …”
“It must be one of the injured men.” In my mind, one of those six, all medicated to the point of catatonia, had awoken to find himself in dire pain. Hence the screaming. I ran into the tunnel, taking care not to slip as I scurried to the bottom. When I flipped back the heavy flap, the shrieking grew louder, though not by much. I took off down the hall toward the makeshift sickbay at the back of the ship. Halfway down the hall, Shipman grabbed me by the arm, and I turned in place to see what he needed.
“Sir,” he said. “The noise is coming from farther down.”
“But the injured are this way.” I pointed behind me.
“Be that as it may, the voice is coming from there.” He pointed behind him, to the stairwell that led deeper into the ship.
“Impossible, the only men down there …” I couldn’t finish my words, because the very idea was gruesome. The direction he pointed to led to the cargo bays. The very place where we stored the corpses of our fallen crewmembers. “Surely the sound is carrying through the ship’s ventilation and echoing up the stairs.”
Shipman looked unconvinced, but he released my arm and followed my lead.
Logic carried my steps to the sickbay, though my ears agreed with Shipman. The noise was coming from behind and beneath us. It was no surprise when we burst into the sickbay to find the six men unharmed. I had to stand amidst the injured and dying before I was forced to admit that the person yelling was not one of them.
“It must be from the cargo bay,” Shipman insisted.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How?”
Shipman furrowed his brow at me as if mystified by my confusion. “Sir, don’t you remember what happened to Morrow?”
The words were like a blow, striking me to the heart of my tender spirit. Remember what happened to Morrow. Remember the man who rose from his supposed grave to find himself left for dead and almost frozen. Remember the way we slaughtered him in cold blood for his ensuing bout of madness. I remembered Morrow. I would never forget him.
But what were the odds that such a thing could happen twice?
Without giving my worry voice, I pushed past Shipman and took off for that dreaded place. Storage unit one. The scene of our mass burial. It was the last place I wanted to be, and after I helped to lay those ten unlucky souls to rest, including my beloved Bradley, I swore no amount of duress could force my return. Yet the possibility that one of those brave men had awoken among the bodies of his brethren, however unlikely, drove me to revisit. And as I followed the echoing screams, I prayed, from some secret place of shame, that the voice belonged to my manservant, come back to me from the brink of death.
Shipman was hot in pursuit, following me step for step to the source of the sound. We arrived to find the other men already gathered in the main bay, about the doors for storage unit one, ears pressed to the cold metal, curious faces teeming with a million questions. The depth of the ship was unheated and proved to be almost as cold as the raw outdoors. This was the main reason we stored the bodies down here. It was either hide them away or bury them in the snow. None of the men wanted to leave the fallen crew in the ice of the Arctic, so we stored them deep in the cold of the ship.
“What’s goin’ on?” asked Kidman, a fellow Brit and member of the engineering staff. He had to shout for his question to be heard over the shrill yells.
“I’m not sure!” I shouted in return. “Please, everyone. Step back and let me through!”
The men parted in a neat line, watching with interest as I produced the keys to the large bay doors. The brass jingled and jangled, my nerves leaving me shaking with such violence that I had trouble putting the keys into the lock. But I managed, and the huge lock released with a click that resounded beneath the continuing shrieks.
“I call upon you now!” I shouted at the men. “Remember Morrow and the shameful way we handled him! I want your word that such a thing will not be repeated here.”
Every man nodded in assent, more than a few wearing grim frowns. It would seem I was not the only one who felt guilty for the way we treated the old man. Nodding in return, I worked the lock from its seat. Before I could grip the handles, the doors slid open as if of their own accord, and sure enough, one of the fallen men stumbled past me, growing quiet as he joined our presence.
I realize this seems in poor taste, but in order for you to appreciate the situation, I feel I should illustrate the state of the ten deceased men stored in the cargo hold. Two were charred beyond reason, leaving behind nothing more than a pair of twisted, blackened husks. The fire had scorched four others not quite as badly, but still enough to take their lives. One somehow ended up with a broken neck, probably inflicted by the impact of the initial explosion or the ensuing rush of confusion. The remaining three were victims of asphyxiation, choking to death on the thick smoke before they could escape the burning bridge. Bradley’s had been such a death.
The man who stumbled into our midst had suffered a worse fate. He was mistaken for dead and laid to rest among the remains of the others. It was a terrible fate to be sure, but considering how shaken Geraldine was at the death of her staff and the loss of her lab, no one could blame her for such a mistake. But we had rescued him now. I was convinced that when Geraldine returned, she would suffer some initial shame, but her joy at the fact that the fellow survived at all would erase any further embarrassment.
Yet when the poor man attempted to lift his head, I knew no such thing would come to pass. We all knew. This wasn’t another case of mistaken diagnosis. The man before us wasn’t one of the asphyxiation victims or one of the burned bodies.
His badge declared him as Tipton.
His wounds confirmed him as the fellow with the broken neck.
I know how this sounds, and believe me when I say I couldn’t make up something as terrible as this truth. That man’s head righted itself for the briefest of moments, only to flop backward against the nape of his neck, coming to rest at an impossible angle. I bore the worst of this display, for I stood behind him. As his head tilted backward, just hanging onto his bulbous blue neck, his milky eyes met mine. His empty gaze sent a chill through me that was colder than any Arctic wind could ever hope to be.
Then he opened his mouth and screamed and screamed and screamed.
****
back to toc
****
Eighteen
The Impossible Made Possible
Due to the angle of his neck and the pressure against his windpipe, the man’s scream was a thin whistle compared to the shrieks he was making before. But even with the lowered volume, the crew was dumbstruck. Every man stood in silence, mouths agape, staring at the abomination that screamed in our presence. No one knew what to do. Was he screaming in pain or terror? What could we do for a man who should be, by all accounts, dead?
“What shall we do, sir?” Shipman shouted over the yelling madman. It was an honest request, the mark of a well-trained man to defer to the wisdom of his superior.
But it was the very same request that got the man killed.
At his voice, Tipton flung his head forward again, and it lolled limply against his chest as he lurched toward Shipman, blue arms outstretched, chilled hands clawing the empty air between them. Had the first mate been a few more steps away, he might have had a better chance to react. But as it was, he was so surprised by the attack that he had no time to retaliate before Tipton set upon him. I stood in shock, fixed to the spot by the unbelievable sight of what was happening. The other men moved as one, rushing the struggling pair to lend a hand to their fellow crewmember. Several men grabbed the first mate while the others pulled away his attacker.
But it was too late.
Shipman gave a sloppy, wet gurgle, a sound only dwarfed in horror by the sights that followed. Just below Shipman’s jaw, from chin to chest, ran a yawning, crimson hollow like a sideways smile peeking out from inside his once-intact neck. While Shipman clawed at the bloody gash where his esophagus used to be, the bulk of his soft throat dangled from Tipton’s gnashing teeth. By God above, the man had torn Shipman’s windpipe from his very body and was eating it!
The men dropped their hold on the chewing maniac, backing away as they shouted in a unified disgust. This sudden freedom left Tipton to lurch forward again, and he fell upon the dying first mate, biting and tearing and rending the man to shreds before our very eyes. All the while Tipton screamed, and I swore, once again, that I heard words inside those shrieks, between the mouthfuls of flesh.
“Cold!” I heard him yell. “So cold!”
One of the larger men, a sailor by the name of Greenway, rushed Tipton again, and without help, he pulled the crazy man from the first mate’s bloody body, yelling, “For God’s sake! Someone fetch some rope!”
The details grow foggy at this point, as so many things happened almost simultaneously. I will try my best to relate the general matters, but forgive me if I jump about as I do. There is no easy way to describe what happened next.
I watched as if in a dream as Herron snapped to attention at Greenway’s order, shuffling to the side of the cargo bay where plenty of the requested rope rested. He gathered a length, then returned at once, but as he did, his steps slowed. His eyes grew wide as he stared at me, almost through me. “Dear Lord …” Herron said, then dropped the rope and turned away, fleeing the room.
“Coward!” Greenway screamed. Still holding the struggling maniac in his arms, the man turned his attention to the others. “Somebody help me bind him!” Several men moved to help, while others stayed back, unable to bring themselves to touch the blood-soaked offender.
In the meantime, the spell that rooted me was broken by Herron’s unexplained shock. It dawned upon me that he wasn’t staring at me, but rather past me. Without thought to the consequence, I turned in place, to see what had driven him from the room. As I turned, pivoting on my left heel in what seemed like a slow arc, I heard a whisper rise behind me.
“Your … warmth … so warm …” a man hissed.
It was a voice I recognized.
As I rounded my turn and cast my attention to the open doors behind me, my eyes bulged at what I found there. Lurching from the shadows of the chilled cargo hold was my friend, my companion, my once-dead manservant. The world seemed to narrow to encompass only our reunion. I could still sense the ongoing struggle behind me, but it was lost in the focus of the bizarre sight before me.
“Bradley?” I asked. I would like to say that he seemed well, that his presence among the deceased was an obvious error. Even though I hoped as much, it wasn’t the case. As he moved into the low light of the open room, I could see the specter of death about his person. His face was a swollen mask, a ghostly pale blue with the chill of the grave. His eyes were glazed over in a fresh layer of frost.
“Give me your warmth,” he demanded again in a feral croak. “I’m cold, Philip. So cold.” His voice was raspy, raw from breathing in too much smoke. The smoke that killed him.
But he wasn’t dead. He was alive. Wasn’t he?
It was impossible. I carried the man’s limp body to this very place and laid him to rest myself. He was dead. Had been dead. There was no sign of life left in him when we closed those doors. But now he swayed on unsteady feet, demanding my warmth with the snarl of a greedy thief.
“Bradley?” I asked again. “You’re alive?”
At the question, my manservant parted his swollen lips and began to shriek, howling out a high-pitched wail, just as Morrow and Tipton had done before him. With the sound, he lunged forward, clawing for me, his jaws working the empty space as he prepared to sink his teeth into my flesh. I stood in shock, unable to move even though I was well aware of the fate that awaited me. Thank the heavens that the other men were quicker than I.
“Grab him!” someone yelled.
“Fall back!” came another order.
There also arose an ear-piercing scream from a third party, but none of this could move me from my stupor. Bradley had pinned me in a trance, his cloudy stare holding me still with cobra-like efficiency, all while he made his way toward me. Before my captor could land a blow, someone gave him a mighty shove, knocking the man to the floor and away from me. Without ceremony, I found myself jolted from my fixed spot and herded toward the exit. The men were retreating. They were falling back to a safer position, and they had saved my life along the way.
Just as we slipped through the egress, I glanced back one more time, still unconvinced of what was happening. My manservant was on his feet again, giving chase and closing fast. Behind him lay the fallen body of Shipman, motionless in a widening crimson pool of his own blood. Greenway was on the floor as well, having fallen under the powerful attack of Tipton.
“Don’t leave me, you bastards!” Greenway yelled.
At this cry, Bradley shifted his attention to the struggling man. He turned away from our escape, instead joining Tipton in his attack on their fellow crewmember. I lingered in the entryway, unsure where my loyalty lay—my safety or my honor? One of the men in the doorway behind me tugged on my collar, deciding my path for me as he yanked me out of harm’s way and slammed the door closed. In the split second before it shut, Greenway gave another short shout, then fell quiet.
Once outside the main bay, we stopped to secure the door behind us. One of the clever lads thought enough to grab the lock, which he used to seal the door. We then hustled up the steps, meeting Herron on his way back down.
“You!” shouted one of the men. “Where did you run off to?”
“I went for this,” Herron answered, holding aloft a pistol.
I would like to take credit for the arming of the men, but it was Lightbridge’s doing. I despised the idea of the already edgy men having weapon
s at hand, and begged that the offending objects remain in the weapons locker in Lightbridge’s quarter. Despite my loud protestations, each man was equipped with a firearm or blade before Lightbridge left for the North. At my request, the men agreed to leave their firearms and swords on the ship during the snowball battle. In my usual air of anxiety, I worried the men would become so agitated with the faux fight that they might resort to real weapons instead of snowy ones. The last thing we needed was an accidental shooting.
But all at once I praised Lightbridge for his forethought and agreed with Albert’s mutilated adage. Forearmed was forewarned. Weapons were just the thing we needed now that there was a genuine threat to our safety. “Good thinking, lad. Everyone do the same. Arm yourselves and regroup in the infirmary. Now!”
As we returned to the main level, each man set on fetching his weapon, a keen howling rose from the cargo bay beneath us, filling the ship with an eerie wind of mad screams.
****
back to toc
****
Nineteen
A Brief Respite
We spent the remainder of that day grouped in the infirmary, cowering like sheep to the tune of those wolf-wild bays. It was also a day spent in argument over our next course of action. There were five men besides myself, as well as the six injured still in their drug-induced catatonias.
“I say we go back,” Herron argued. “We have our weapons now. We should attack now, subdue them and try to find out what in damnation is going on.”
Most of the men agreed, but I wasn’t as confident and was unwilling to risk more men just to silence those ongoing shrieks. “No. We will remain here.”
Herron was infuriated by my orders. “But listen to them. They are calling for our blood!”
“And you would rush to give it to them?”
The man snarled at me, yet said nothing more.
I took his silence as a victory on my part, and drove my point further home. “Though maddening to be sure, those shrieks are just noise. Nothing worth risking our lives for. Those … things are well-kept under heavy lock and key. And they will stay that way, just as we will remain here until Lightbridge returns. Understood?” I am certain that more than one counted me a coward, but my word as acting captain was enough to still them.