Beneath

In the hours that had passed, or days, they had lost sight of the ship’s lights and had not found a new bear­ing to fol­low. Only jagged ser­acs and ridges, the vast, open sky shift­ing from short-lived day to infi­nite dusk. Behind them, the doomed ship, bound in ice. Some­where on the blur­ry white hori­zon, the deep-drilling plat­form, voice­less and dark. Between, the creak and whis­per of frozen sheets press­ing against one anoth­er, the thin, shrill whistling of the wind. Every­where, the cold and ter­ror tak­ing hold, the desperation.

Out on the ice, Beck­ett could imag­ine him­self on the sur­face of a far­away plan­et. Per­haps one orbit­ing one of the pin­prick stars above him. A life­less cin­der, or a lump of frozen rock, hurtling through the bound­less gulfs. Spi­ral­ing to a slow death in the dark.

The ice moaned and crack­led beneath his feet. Black, frigid water beck­oned under­neath. Tried to lull him to lie down, to rest. It want­ed to trick him. One slip of atten­tion, one crack, and the dark­ness would surge up and seize him, drag him into the abyss. Tired and hun­gry, face numb with frost­bite and legs like lead, Beck­ett almost want­ed it to.

The des­o­la­tion remind­ed him of anoth­er waste­land. His two deploy­ments in that oth­er desert, arid and hot but every bit as eager to kill him. It remind­ed him of the way the skin between his shoul­derblades had tin­gled with the antic­i­pa­tion of the killing bul­let. How his balls had tried to crawl up into his stom­ach as the trans­port jerked over the ruts in the road, every bump a hid­den IED, slaugh­ter wait­ing for the men packed inside the vehi­cle. Hos­til­i­ty in the very shape of the land: the humped dunes, the bar­ren rock promon­to­ries. What he had come halfway across the world to forget.

Here there was noth­ing but the ice and the sky, the scratch­ing of his breath inside the mask, the mind­less rhythm of the trek. The empti­ness out­side reflect­ed the greater void with­in him, the two meet­ing at some unthink­able ter­mi­nus. Man was not meant to live in such a place. The ele­ments con­spired to destroy him, a slow, relent­less ero­sion of strength and resolve and spir­it. The desert stripped you of human­i­ty, scrap by painful scrap, reduced you to some­thing you could nei­ther rec­og­nize nor under­stand. The empti­ness got to you, the dizzy­ing unbound space reduced you to a speck, then to nothing.

There were five of them out here on the ice, one of them as good as dead. Four­teen more trapped on the Esper­ance. Two days out, with no idea where they were going. What had start­ed as a sched­uled resup­ply trip had turned into a res­cue mis­sion, then a mad scram­ble for sur­vival. After that final, pan­icked broad­cast, the sta­tion had gone silent. A vicious snow­storm had bat­tered the ship, forced her into an inlet off Vic­to­ria Land. Turned open water into pack ice overnight. With­in hours, a pesti­len­tial yel­low fog had set in, eras­ing the world. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions no longer worked and the engi­neers were baf­fled by the malfunction.

Beck­ett couldn’t under­stand any of it, but he had long ago learned that under­stand­ing wasn’t nec­es­sary. When it came to life and death, things took on a stark clar­i­ty. They had to find a work­ing radio. The plat­form had one. If they got to the plat­form and the radio, they could call for help. If they didn’t, they would die. What­ev­er dan­ger or acci­dent the rig­gers had tried to warn them about became a dis­tant concern.

He scanned the sky­line, exhaust­ed and dis­ori­ent­ed. Behind him, Del­ga­do and Cap­tain Tal­bot grunt­ed and mut­tered, their voic­es muf­fled by masks. It was their turn to haul the stretch­er with Lang­man on it, a bun­dled and strapped heap, lost to the world. Dead weight. His wound had puck­ered and almost healed, but his fever was ris­ing. With­out the bur­den of Lang­man, the remain­ing four would move a lot faster. Burn up less ener­gy, which had to be replen­ished from their dwin­dling food sup­ply. Hav­i­land, the bosun, had sug­gest­ed as much dur­ing their last meal break. The skip­per had refused, but Hav­i­land wasn’t about to let it go. Beck­ett was sure of that. Mutiny had been build­ing in the air since the ship left port, had only got­ten worse since the Esper­ance became trapped.

Then he saw it.

A tongue of flame up ahead, lick­ing over the ice. A gas flare crack­ing the dark­en­ing sky. The shape of the drilling plat­form swam out beneath it, so huge and ugly and loom­ing that Beck­ett couldn’t believe he had not spot­ted it ear­li­er. He must have stared at it for the past fif­teen min­utes or so with­out his sleep-starved brain con­nect­ing the dots.

The oth­ers halt­ed. They had seen the flare too. Hav­i­land pushed his gog­gles up onto his fore­head. Beck­ett watched the con­den­sa­tion freeze on the bosun’s eye­lids. Won­dered if Hav­i­land could feel his eyes become frost­bit­ten. Won­dered if the man cared anymore.

“There it is,” Tal­bot said, shout­ing over the wind. His voice wavered, its weak­ness undis­guised by the mask. “Let’s get mov­ing before we freeze out here.”

“How do we get him up top?” Del­ga­do asked, nod­ding at Lang­man. “He can’t climb. He can bare­ly stand up.”

“They’ll send down the cage. Or one of us goes first. Low­ers it for the others.”

Del­ga­do and Beck­ett glanced over at the bosun, expect­ing resis­tance. But Hav­i­land didn’t seem to have it in him any­more. His bear­like frame, made even bulki­er by the lay­ers of work­suit and par­ka, seemed shrunk­en and dimin­ished. What the oth­ers could see of his face was tired and shriv­eled some­how, as if the long, hope­less walk had hol­lowed him out from the inside, leav­ing a man-shaped husk run­ning on sheer inertia.

They trekked on toward the plat­form. To safe­ty. Beck­ett wished he could feel opti­mistic, but a fresh fear kin­dled in his guts. He remem­bered the dis­tress call received from the plat­form. Most of the mes­sage had been swal­lowed by the crack­le of sta­t­ic, but there was no mis­tak­ing the pan­de­mo­ni­um in the back­ground. The screams and prayers of the men. The groan of tor­tured met­al. That part had come through loud and clear.

He trudged behind the oth­ers. Alone and adrift in the wilder­ness. Already damned by the choic­es he’d made, unable to turn back.

#

The struc­ture loomed up above them, propped up on behe­moth pylon legs. Beck­ett had docked on plat­forms before, but from a ship they looked dif­fer­ent. Like piles of big con­crete box­es with pipes run­ning along and between them. Now it seemed big enough to block out the heav­ens. A mad city of sharp angles and bizarre geome­tries, its pur­pose unknown and unknowable.

Hav­i­land was already halfway up the near­est pylon, haul­ing him­self up the gang­way lad­der, toward the con­crete bel­ly of the mon­ster. Del­ga­do and the skip­per were stomp­ing their feet, try­ing to loosen up frozen hands and legs. Lang­man lay motion­less on the stretch­er, giv­ing no signs of life. Snow gath­ered on his mask and gog­gles, crust­ed the fringe of his par­ka hood.

Lights burned on the plat­form, but no one had acknowl­edged their arrival. No one had shout­ed a greet­ing, or a warn­ing. Beck­ett shook off his back­pack, grabbed the rungs and start­ed to climb.

When he got to the top, Hav­i­land was already crank­ing the winch, low­er­ing the cage – a big met­al bas­ket on a pul­ley – down to the ice. It descend­ed slow­ly, almost graz­ing the con­crete stilts. The bosun didn’t acknowl­edge Beckett’s pres­ence, only bent to the task, his breath white in the bit­ter cold.

Beck­ett leaned over the guardrail to catch his breath. An angry, inflamed band of red marked the death of the sun, the sky dark­en­ing in bands, going from pur­ple to deep­est black. Stars shone on the des­o­la­tion like spilled dia­monds. He squint­ed through the snow, but couldn’t find any trace of the Esper­ance. Either they had got­ten turned round, or the trek had been far longer than expect­ed. Or the fog had moved fur­ther inland. All he could see were miles of fea­ture­less, windswept ice. Below it the water. Below the water, noth­ing the human mind could fix on or comprehend.

Over the past decade, ris­ing tem­per­a­tures had dri­ven the eter­nal Antarc­tic ice sheets into full-blown retreat, expos­ing troves of pre­vi­ous­ly unex­ploit­ed trea­sures. Rare-earth ores and min­er­als with­in hand’s reach from the coast. Hun­dreds of bil­lions of bar­rels of oil buried under the tur­bid green waters of the polar seas. Old myths had come true, fuel­ing a mad scram­ble for the world’s south­ern­most con­ti­nent. Transna­tion­als and gov­ern­ments vied for a piece of the vast hoard, rein­forc­ing their claims with sol­diers and armed helicopters.

The ice had pulled back. But from time to time it would strike again, like a liv­ing, schem­ing thing, full of hatred toward its despoil­ers. Kata­bat­ic winds would bear down with the strength of a hur­ri­cane, ram­pag­ing tens of miles from the new coast. Encas­ing ships and plat­forms in thick ice overnight, freez­ing any­one caught out­side in min­utes. Still the gears of greed ground on, unde­terred. Lives and prop­er­ty could be replaced; lost prof­its were a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. Time was run­ning out for the men on the Esper­ance and the oil rig. If the fog didn’t clear, if the res­cue proved too cost­ly, both crews would be left to their own devices.

The cage rose with a creak­ing, ratch­et­ing noise. Beck­ett peered through the orange light, lik­ing what he was see­ing less and less by the minute. There was no sign of dam­age, or of the fire every­one had feared. Twice, in that oth­er desert, his squad had walked into what looked like an aban­doned vil­lage. A hand­ful of ruins pound­ed into obliv­ion by artillery. Both times he’d escaped by the skin of his teeth, the blast­ed stone com­ing alive with gun­fire, the bod­ies of his com­rades stain­ing the sand red. There was a feel­ing to those places, a sense of hid­den eyes fol­low­ing you, of impend­ing doom. He felt that way now, stand­ing in front of the heavy met­al door, wait­ing to see what hap­pened next.

“Care­ful.” Del­ga­do and Tal­bot lift­ed Lang­man out of the cage, pulled out the back­packs, gasp­ing and steam­ing. Hav­i­land paid them no heed. He was star­ing at some­thing beyond the blocky pre­fabs, head thrown back, arms hang­ing by his sides. Beck­ett fol­lowed the bosun’s stare, saw noth­ing but the night sky.

Moments lat­er, a light tremor passed through the con­crete, fol­lowed by the dull crack of ice. Beck­ett was remind­ed how high up they were perched. How the pylons ran to untold depths below the ice. A sud­den rush of ver­ti­go went through him, the stars wheel­ing mad­ly above.

“What was that?” Del­ga­do asked, arms out like a tightrope walk­er. The oth­ers grasped the rail­ing, brac­ing for a sec­ond tremor. But noth­ing hap­pened. The out­side lights stayed on. Snow con­tin­ued to swirl, blur­ring the distance.

“See if you can get the door open,” Cap­tain Tal­bot said.

Beck­ett wres­tled with the half-frozen hatch wheel, his mus­cles trem­bling. He tried not to think about the plat­form top­pling over like a ham­strung ante­dilu­vian beast, crash­ing to the ice with the five of them trapped inside. Tried to dis­miss the sud­den and unwel­come image of the unlit space yawn­ing on the oth­er side of the door, of a face, pale and bloat­ed, ris­ing out of the dark­ness, grin­ning, show­ing him a mouth full of sharp teeth. There was no fight left in him. Every fiber in his body cried out for rest, for nour­ish­ment, for warmth.

The hatch swung open, releas­ing a gust of stale air. Beyond it was a red-lit space with a drop ceil­ing, door­ways cut into the bulk­head. The men filed in, Del­ga­do hur­ry­ing to pull the door shut behind them. Out of the bat­ter­ing insis­tence of the wind, their spir­its lift­ed a lit­tle. Even Lang­man seemed to stir and moan, although he remained unconscious.

“That way,” the skip­per said, steer­ing them down a nar­row cor­ri­dor. “That’s the liv­ing quar­ters. If there’s any­one around, we’ll find them in there.”

But they found no one inside. Not in the rec rooms or the bunks, where a movie played sound­less­ly on the huge plas­ma screen and pos­ses­sions lay scat­tered across the floor. Not in the mess hall, where cold, crust­ed-over food sat in the buf­fet serv­ing area and half the tables still held plas­tic serv­ing trays. Not a soul in sight.

Hav­i­land scoured the trays metic­u­lous­ly for left­overs, winc­ing with pain. The tips of his fin­gers were black­ened with frost. A smell of cook­ing lin­gered in the air, and Beck­ett felt his stom­ach rum­ble. Break­fast had been half an ener­gy bar washed down with snowmelt.

“Where did they go?” Del­ga­do asked, glanc­ing round.

“Maybe they’re in the well bay.” The skip­per walked behind the serv­ing counter, seemed to inspect the dish rack. “Maybe out drilling. There aren’t many places to hide on a rig. We’ll find them.” 

“They can’t all be away work­ing,” Beck­ett said. Now that his brain was no longer pre­oc­cu­pied with sur­vival, his sens­es were pick­ing up what they had ignored at first. The unnat­ur­al silence between the walls. The odor that per­me­at­ed the place, hid­ing under­neath the aro­ma of food. His short-lived relief was replaced by a name­less dread that trailed up his spine like ici­cles. “Some­one would have stayed behind. One of the mates, or the engineers.”

“We don’t know what hap­pened.” The skip­per glared at him. With­out the mask, his bushy beard made his face seem even broad­er, his eyes fierce in the light. “Some of the crew might be injured. Or trapped in some oth­er part of the station.”

“All the lights are on.” Beck­ett jabbed a thumb at the rec room, with its silent screen. At the recessed over­heads. “What­ev­er hap­pened didn’t knock out the pow­er, or the heat. There’s no dam­age here.”

“Maybe they had the same idea that we had. Suit­ed up and struck out across the ice. Try­ing to find the ship. We could’ve walked right past each oth­er in that bliz­zard and nev­er known it.”

“Thir­ty-plus men can’t just dis­ap­pear with­out a trace,” Del­ga­do said. He shut up abrupt­ly, look­ing fear­ful, as if he’d spo­ken a blas­phe­my in a church.

“If we’re done shoot­ing the shit,” the skip­per said, glar­ing from one man to the oth­er, “we should get Lang­man to the sick bay. I want us to take a look at that wound of his. If the lights are on, the radio could be work­ing. The soon­er we find it, the soon­er we can get evacuated.”

“Suit your­selves,” Hav­i­land said, appear­ing with a steel tray loaded with food and a bot­tle of water. He sat down and start­ed shov­el­ing it in, chew­ing mechan­i­cal­ly. “I’m not going any­where until I’m done.”

“Get your ass up, Haviland.”

“You want to do Lang­man a favor, throw him back out on the ice.” The bosun ges­tured with his fork, washed a mouth­ful down with a gulp of water. “Mat­ter of fact, you can all go. It’ll be dark soon, and I’m tak­ing care of the liv­ing first.”

Del­ga­do and Beck­ett car­ried the wound­ed man behind the curs­ing skip­per. The sick bay was big­ger than the tiny com­part­ment on the ship, clean­er, with sev­er­al neat bunks set against the wall, a counter, an exam­i­na­tion table and sev­er­al med­i­cine cab­i­nets. Yet the order­li­ness only made Beckett’s spir­its sink low­er. No one had lain on the bunks in a while; no bloody ban­dages, or used syringes. No cat­a­stroph­ic explo­sion, or plague, had dec­i­mat­ed the crew. He kept his thoughts to him­self as the skip­per helped them hoist the injured engi­neer onto the exam­i­na­tion table. Lang­man mum­bled and gri­maced, but didn’t wake up.

Beck­ett smashed one of the cab­i­nets, held out a bot­tle of painkillers. Del­ga­do shook his head. “He’s out for the count. Let’s just get this over with.”

The engi­neer had wok­en them all up in the mid­dle of their first night on the ice. Scream­ing and call­ing for help, say­ing that he’d been bit­ten. It came through the ice, he’d kept repeat­ing, over and over. Black. Like a snake. It’s inside me now. Beck­ett and Hav­i­land had held the thrash­ing man down as Del­ga­do exam­ined his wound. A scratch on his side, and bare­ly even that. Lang­man had drawn blood claw­ing at his skin. There were no snakes for thou­sands of miles around; none could sur­vive in this envi­ron­ment. It had to have been a night­mare. They had calmed the engi­neer down, and he hadn’t brought it up in the morn­ing. But lat­er that day he’d col­lapsed on the march and start­ed run­ning a fever. No one believed Langman’s sto­ry about the snake, but the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an infec­tion of sorts could not be ignored.

Maybe that had been the dan­ger the rig­gers had tried to warn them about. Beck­ett didn’t want to voice the thought, but he couldn’t help think­ing it. Antarc­ti­ca had nev­er been a ster­ile envi­ron­ment, and the warm­ing had released long-buried microbes from the frozen soil. Instead of a gas pock­et, the rig­gers could have hit a sub­ter­ranean cave rife with some unknown virus. If that was the case, the five men had just walked into an incu­ba­tor. Which spelled trou­ble. Del­ga­do could stitch a cut and change ban­dages, hand out a pre­scrip­tion for diar­rhea or a toothache, but in the face of dis­ease he was of no more use than the others.

Now he used sur­gi­cal shears to snip Langman’s gar­ments away from the wound. He peeled off the edges of the ban­dage. Beck­ett saw him recoil, his eyes grow wide with ter­ror and confusion.

“Is he going to be all right?” The skip­per couldn’t see the wound, but he’d sensed some­thing was amiss. “Is he?”

“Fine.” Beck­ett man­aged to keep his voice steady as Del­ga­do bus­ied him­self with the ban­dages and iodine, spared from answer­ing. The wound was wider now, almost wide to fit his hand into, and deep. A dark red, glis­ten­ing cav­ern open­ing into the depths of the body. Yet there was no blood, and the few drops on the old ban­dage were dry. Black strands stretched from the hole, pulsed right under the sick man’s skin.

Like a par­a­site, Beck­ett thought, nau­seous. Feed­ing on him. He sup­posed it could be gan­grene, or some sort of flesh-eat­ing virus. But there was no smell, and Langman’s fever seemed to have abated.

Del­ga­do fin­ished dress­ing the wound and stepped away. He dropped the old ban­dages into a waste dis­pos­al bag, went over to the sink and scrubbed his hands. Scrubbed them for a long time, then washed them in dis­in­fec­tant, as if try­ing to remove any trace of what­ev­er had seeped out of the sick man. As if its very touch had soiled him to the core.

“He needs help,” he said, with­out turn­ing to look at Beck­ett and the skip­per. “A real doc­tor. I have no idea what’s hap­pen­ing to him. We have to get him out of here.”

“We have to get the radio work­ing.” The skip­per nod­ded to him­self, scratched at his beard. “Amund­sen Base is the clos­est. They could get a heli­copter over inside a few hours. Get him-”

A noise crashed through the silence, shat­ter­ing the last remains of their calm. A noise so famil­iar to Beck­ett that he didn’t reg­is­ter it at first. It belonged to that oth­er desert, to a life he’d left behind in the swirling sands.

A gun­shot. Then anoth­er, ring­ing along the met­al walls of the plat­form. Com­ing from the direc­tion of the mess hall.

They were frozen for a moment. Then the skip­per rushed out into the cor­ri­dor, Del­ga­do and Beck­ett on his heels.

#

When his dreams had any coher­ence beyond frag­men­tary images and unfo­cused ter­ror, Beck­ett always found him­self back in the vil­lage. Mov­ing through the ruins the way one moves beyond the veil of sleep, inex­orably pulled for­ward toward the antic­i­pat­ed con­clu­sion. Know­ing what was about to hap­pen, but help­less to pre­vent it.

Sen­sa­tions intrud­ed into the dream, rarely the same ones twice, no rhyme or rea­son to the ones that made an appear­ance: the crunch of rub­ble under his boots, the inar­tic­u­late hiss of the radio unit, the weight of his pack dig­ging into his shoul­ders. Recon had con­firmed a major insur­gent strong­hold, and the local fix­ers had been in agree­ment. Yet all Beckett’s cleanup squad had found when they went in were the dead, slaugh­tered next to their cook­ing fires, and the man­gled car­cass of what may have once been a dog or a goat.

Pieces of the slaugh­ter lin­gered in his dream-mind’s eye, far more vivid than they had been in life. Yel­lowed linen still flap­ping from a dry­ing line, colan­dered by shelling and gun­fire. A child’s pic­ture-book in Ara­bic, torn and mud­died in an army truck tread. Black­ened pots and pans scat­tered in a latrine ditch.

But Beck­ett had learned to ignore these phan­toms, in spite of the guilt and shame they instilled. The dream shrank to a tun­nel, ter­mi­nat­ed at the hov­el on the far edge of the vil­lage, no more than a pile of brick around a dark open­ing. It was toward this dark­ness that he was drawn by the tidal pull of the night­mare. A pas­sive observ­er, resigned to his fate, he couldn’t resist it, couldn’t flee, could do no more than watch as the hole enlarged, yawned wider, as wide as the hori­zon, as vast as the world.

Some­thing was wrig­gling inside the dark­ness. The pale death’s head of a face, impos­si­bly gaunt and wrin­kled, blood stream­ing from the holes where its eyes should be. An old woman, blind­ed and deaf­ened by the explo­sions, dri­ven insane by the destruc­tion that had blown over her and her vil­lage out of a clear sky. A squall of blood and death that had per­verse­ly spared her. A bent and scrawny appari­tion, white with plas­ter-dust and fear, stum­bling out of the open­ing with a shriek of grief and hor­ror that seemed to rip open the heav­ens, to cleave the arid ground.

Beck­ett had lived through this moment a hun­dred times, a thou­sand, play­ing and replay­ing it both in his wak­ing thoughts and asleep. Train­ing and instinct tak­ing over, lin­ing up the shot, a burst of fire direct­ed into the bogey’s cen­ter of mass. Only some­times, in his dreams, the gun refused to go off, the old blind woman didn’t crum­ple into a pathet­ic heap of rags and bones. Some­times there was no gun and his feet refused to move. Some­times the crone’s thin arms wrapped around him, no thick­er than sticks, but strong, so very strong. He could smell her on him, dust and dirt and old sweat, like a doll that had lain for­got­ten in a musty attic for decades. Her mouth would hinge open, wider than any human mouth could ever do, and he knew he was on the brink of rev­e­la­tion. Of a glimpse into the hid­den, awful gears of the world.

He would wake up from the night­mare and sit up in his hot, sti­fling room, or the even more sti­fling berth of the ship. Relieved that he was no longer in the desert. Yet know­ing, in his deep­est heart, that he had not escaped, that he would nev­er escape that scorched vil­lage under the bale­ful sun. That he would for­ev­er feel those blind eyes on him, that hid­den, mali­cious scruti­ny. That it would nev­er be over, no mat­ter how far he fled, or how fast.

#

Now it had found him. Ran him to ground at the far­thest end of the earth.

They burst into the mess hall to find Hav­i­land and the skip­per fac­ing each oth­er over a long plas­tic table. The skipper’s face was red with wind­burn and anger, but his hes­i­ta­tion told in his stance. Hav­i­land was hold­ing a pis­tol, a big .45 auto­mat­ic. He wasn’t point­ing it at the skip­per, but he didn’t low­er it either.

“He’s here,” he said, so qui­et­ly that Beck­ett strained to make out the words. His gaze, glassy and unfo­cused, roamed the far-flung cor­ners of the mess hall. Rebound­ed with­out com­pre­hen­sion from face to face, as if try­ing to reach beyond his com­pan­ions’ ter­ri­fied fea­tures, expect­ing to find some­one dif­fer­ent. Haviland’s fin­ger rose slow­ly, point­ing down one of the small­er cor­ri­dors, past a blaz­ing EXIT sign.

“Put the gun down,” the skip­per said. The entreaty sound­ed weak and hol­low, thinned by fear. “Jason, look at me. Put it down.”

“Is some­one else here?” Del­ga­do asked, reflex­ive­ly cring­ing from the point­ing fin­ger as if from the bar­rel of a gun.

Beck­ett held his breath. A noise like the pat­ter of foot­steps, like the clos­ing of a heavy door in the dis­tance. He looked at his com­pan­ions. None of them seemed to have heard it.

“They won’t stop.” Haviland’s face was a mask of despon­dent ter­ror. “They won’t stop until they’ve devoured us all.”

“Give me the gun, Jason.” Slow­ly, the skip­per advanced round the table. Past the over­turned food tray, the con­geal­ing mass on the floor. He held his hand out at Hav­i­land. “No one’s killing any­one. We’ll put the gun some­where safe. Lock it up. There’s no dan­ger to us here.”

The bosun nod­ded. But not in agree­ment. More like a man who was try­ing to reach a dif­fi­cult deci­sion. “We shouldn’t have come here.” A tear streaked down his wind-scoured face, dis­ap­peared into his thick red­dish beard. “This is a bad place. A wrong place. Now we’re lost, and we can’t find our way out.”

“What’s he talk­ing about?” Del­ga­do said, his eyes nev­er leav­ing the pis­tol. “We don’t have time for this. Langman’s in bad shape. We have to get him help.”

“I found him like this,” the skip­per said. “Stand­ing there. Look­ing into the cor­ri­dor. At noth­ing. He almost shot me when I walked in.” To Hav­i­land again, try­ing to sum­mon author­i­ty. “Let it go, offi­cer. You got spooked. It hap­pens. We’re all spooked. We want to go home. But there’s noth­ing out there. Nothing.”

The over­heads buzzed and flick­ered. No longer than the blink of an eye. Beck­ett couldn’t be sure, but he thought he could see move­ment beyond the blink­ing sign. Stealthy. Furtive. As if the air itself had thick­ened and wavered. Then nothing.

But Hav­i­land had seen it too.

“They’re back,” he said, his voice quiv­er­ing. Beck­ett had nev­er heard such despair in a human voice, such absolute renounce­ment of sal­va­tion. “They got lost, but now they’ve found the way. The only way. They’re not going to let us go.”

“Shit.” The skip­per took a step back as the hand hold­ing the gun rose shak­i­ly. “Lis­ten to me, Jason. No one’s out to get you. We’ll find the radio and be out of here in a few hours.”

“We’ll nev­er leave. After it’s all over, we’ll keep com­ing back too.”

The bar­rel of the pis­tol changed direc­tion, the muz­zle com­ing to rest against Haviland’s temple.

“They saw it,” the bosun said. “That’s why they did what they did. Because they saw.”

The skipper’s scream was washed out by the report of the shot. Haviland’s body crashed to the floor. Del­ga­do stag­gered back, arms raised as if to ward off a blow. Fell to his knees and was sick.

Stunned and numb, Beck­ett watched the blood pool under the bosun’s dead face. A fat black string trailed across the floor, drawn by some inex­plic­a­ble trick of grav­i­ty. Mean­dered into the join of the floor and wall and was greed­i­ly sucked out of sight.

#

Del­ga­do, in the dark. “Can you hear them?”

Beck­ett turned on his cot, giv­ing up the last pre­tense of sleep. They were in the rec room, hud­dled under blan­kets, lis­ten­ing to the roar of the bliz­zard out­side. Ice press­ing against the oil rig like a liv­ing thing, a malev­o­lent pres­ence trap­ping them, steel and con­crete groan­ing on the brink of destruc­tion. Noth­ing but obliv­ion on the oth­er side of the walls.

He could hear them. He’d been hear­ing them for hours now. Ever since they’d car­ried out Haviland’s corpse, wrapped in sheets, to give the bosun a bur­ial in the snow. The storm was on them now, the sky and land­scape lost in a gray swirl. Shapes had risen from that swirl. Shapes that could only be illu­sions. Up on a ridge of ice under the plat­form, a line of human fig­ures, stand­ing in the dri­ving gale. Fac­ing them. Then a drift of snow had lashed across the ice and when Beck­ett blinked there had been no one there. But their silent scruti­ny remained, burned his skin like cold fire.

“They don’t want to hurt us.” Delgado’s voice was filled with awe. “Only to show us what they’ve seen. It was in the ground for a long time. Sleep­ing. But we’ve wok­en it up now.”

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Beck­ett said.

“It’s beau­ti­ful.” Del­ga­do didn’t sound afraid. “It under­stands us. Knows what we’ve lost.”

Cap­tain Tal­bot lay under the bar, a lumpy, shape­less sil­hou­ette. A neon Bud­weis­er sign blinked, paint­ed him in dull shades of red. Beck­ett won­dered what the skip­per had seen out there, in the shift­ing patch­es and skirls of snow. Out on the ice, where the eye could be eas­i­ly deceived, where the brain, ener­vat­ed and starved of stim­u­lus in the white­ness, began sum­mon­ing phan­toms from the blur. What­ev­er it had been, the skip­per had gone inside with­out a word, with­out paus­ing to join Beck­ett and Del­ga­do in a mea­ger sup­per. By the time the oth­er two fol­lowed, he was already under the blan­ket, qui­et and unresponsive.

The rig was a trap. Bait­ed and set, wait­ing for them to walk in. Up in the radio room, they had found only smashed instru­ments and ripped wiring. Black sludge choked the pas­sage to the pump room. Vis­cous and cor­us­cat­ing like oil, but alive, its thin black ten­drils quest­ing across the walls. Reek­ing of cor­rup­tion and sick­ness and buried places untouched by the sun.

It had learned guile and patience dur­ing its long sleep, or it had always known that its time would come. That the ice would melt and the drills push through the stone, fueled by mankind’s curios­i­ty and greed and that inde­fin­able some­thing that drove it toward uncon­quered shores. A mim­ic, shape­less and voice­less, yet capa­ble of bor­row­ing the appear­ance of any­thing it absorbed. Loom­ing like a specter over the rig­gers, study­ing until it had learned enough about its prey. Until it could imper­son­ate it at will.

Beck­ett assumed that some of the crew had real­ized what was hap­pen­ing, had dis­abled the radios to pre­vent it from cast­ing its lure out into the world. But some­one would be back. Some­one would always be back, drawn by the promise of rich­es at the end of the world.

He rolled over, thought about the pis­tol the skip­per had locked up in a desk draw­er. Thought of all those black fath­oms beneath the rig, beneath the ice, and deep­er still, in the silt and rock under the skin of the world. Thought about what had lain in the bow­els of the earth, undis­turbed for mil­len­nia. About the acci­dent in the well bay, some­thing vast and dark and shape­less surg­ing up to the sur­face, hun­gry after its infi­nite sleep. Unstoppable.

Fur­ther down the cor­ri­dor, behind the sick bay doors, Lang­man, or the thing that had once been Lang­man, shift­ed with a greasy, slith­er­ing noise. It sighed and mur­mured, sang a dron­ing, sub­au­r­al song of the abyss.

Some­where, a hatch door creaked open.

He sat up. Del­ga­do had thrown off his blan­ket and was tak­ing ten­ta­tive steps toward the door. Beck­ett couldn’t see the man’s face, but heard the smile in his voice. “They can take it away. All of it. For­ev­er. But we have to go right now.”

“Get away from the door,” Beck­ett said, half­heart­ed­ly. Past Del­ga­do, shapes hov­ered in the door­way, or the sug­ges­tion of shapes. A woman hold­ing a small child. Shad­ows against the mut­ed light. “Rob. They’re not what you think they are. They can’t be. It’s a lie. All they want is to hurt you.”

But how could he know what they want­ed? What was real and what wasn’t?

Del­ga­do shook his head slow­ly. “They say it won’t hurt that bad. If we go now. That’s their gift to us.”

Bare­foot, he shuf­fled out­side. Beck­ett thought he heard a low chuck­le, words mur­mured straight from lips to ear. Heard Del­ga­do respond, togeth­er, or for­ev­er, and then there was a sick­en­ing crunch and Del­ga­do was scream­ing. A name, or the frag­ment of a plea, then just a huge sound of agony, scream­ing not like a man at all, but a mor­tal­ly wound­ed ani­mal. Dragged down the pas­sage, thrash­ing against an infi­nite­ly greater strength.

Beck­ett clasped his hands to his ears, but still the shrieks filled the red dark­ness behind his eyes. Even after the hatch slammed shut they lin­gered, merged with the glee­ful howl­ing of the wind.

“Tal­bot,” he said, once he could hear him­self. “Cap­tain. We have to destroy this thing.” A last hope remained: the plat­form kept explo­sives in the case of well­head fire. All he need­ed was some dyna­mite, a blast­ing cap, a few bar­rels of crude. In anoth­er life, he’d been a demo­li­tion man, one of the best. “I can rig up a bomb. Blow the plat­form up, and the crea­ture with it. If it cross­es the ice, there’s no stop­ping it.”

He didn’t think the skip­per would respond, but his voice drift­ed over, dis­em­bod­ied in the dark­ness. “We can’t do it. If it’s what we think it is, it will have absorbed the mem­o­ries of the crew. Every­thing they knew. It won’t let us get any­where near the magazine.”

“We have to try.” The more Beck­ett thought about it, the more he was con­vinced he could pull it off. “If you won’t come, I’ll do it myself. But togeth­er we have a bet­ter chance. It’s hard­er to keep an eye on us both.”

The cot creaked as Tal­bot lev­ered him­self upright. “The explo­sives are out­side,” he said. “In a sep­a­rate mod­ule. But we won’t be able to see any­thing out there now. We’ll get lost in the whiteout.”

“We can rig a line. Like ice climbers. You lead and I’ll follow.”

“If it works,” Tal­bot said, “we’ll all die.”

“I can time the explo­sion.” Beck­ett had no idea whether he could, or what he would find in the mag­a­zine. But he was deter­mined to go through with it. There was more at stake here than their lives. “We’ll get down on the ice. Head back for the ship. Be a mile away when it goes off.”

A pause as the skip­per mulled it over. “Lang­man can’t walk on his own. We’ll have to leave him behind.”

“We can car­ry him.” Last time Beck­ett and Del­ga­do had checked on the engi­neer, they had found him awake. His body swollen and black­ened from what­ev­er was wreak­ing the change upon him. Some­thing mov­ing under the taut skin, like fin­gers rac­ing back and forth, seek­ing a seam to rip open. Langman’s eyes had rot­ted and sunk in their cav­i­ties, but his mouth was open. A rhyth­mic whis­per emanat­ed from his engorged throat, a steady jab­ber of insan­i­ty drift­ing toward the ceil­ing. Deep inside, Beck­ett knew he wasn’t let­ting that thing off the plat­form. A pil­low over the face, or a deft twist of the neck before they left. “Put him on a stretch­er. Low­er him down in the cage. It’s the only way.”

If Lang­man died, the skip­per wouldn’t ask ques­tions. He already knew the answer. He just didn’t want to acknowl­edge it.

“Okay,” Tal­bot said, reach­ing for his work­suit. “Okay.”

#

It was the desert all over again, only encased in ice, the storm needling Beckett’s face with sharp crys­tals as soon as he fol­lowed the skip­per out of the hatch. He braced him­self against the blasts, hold­ing fast to the rope attached to the skipper’s waist. The oth­er end was tied to the hatch wheel. If they became sep­a­rat­ed, or lost their way in the white­out, at least they could make it back to the dubi­ous safe­ty of the crew module.

Up ahead, Tal­bot had already been swal­lowed by the bliz­zard, the rope unwind­ing into empti­ness. Noth­ing exist­ed around him but the night and snow, the roar of the wind issu­ing from a throat as wide as the sky. Beck­ett tried to nav­i­gate by the blink­ing red lights of the out­board struc­tures, quick­ly gave up. They were vul­ner­a­ble out here: a wrong turn or a lash­ing ten­ta­cle, and they could be swept over the edge, sent into a long plum­met down to the ice.

But under his hor­ror and exhaus­tion, Beckett’s mind ran unhin­dered, cal­cu­lat­ing. The crea­ture in the rig couldn’t pre­dict their every move: it couldn’t repli­cate all human thought process­es. The pow­er, for instance. It would have been easy to manip­u­late the sup­ply, kill all the lights on the plat­form while leav­ing the pumps run­ning. Hunt down the new arrivals one by one in the dark. But either it didn’t know how, or was afraid it wouldn’t be able to start the pow­er back up. Which meant it still thought like a beast, even though Beck­ett sus­pect­ed it was supe­ri­or to humans in every way. The thought kin­dled a small flame of hope that warmed him as he fought his way for­ward, half-dead with cold and fatigue, cling­ing to the line like a drown­ing man.

He round­ed the cor­ner, into a flut­ter­ing cir­cle of light. Tal­bot was nowhere in sight. Only the rope, lead­ing into the black depths of the storm, tug­ging at Beckett’s hands. He want­ed to shout out to Tal­bot, tell him not to stray too far, but the wind would drown out all sound.

Then he saw them, and the flame of hope gut­tered and died.

They were wait­ing ahead, at the edge of the light. A chain of men wrapped in cold weath­er gear, masks pulled up high on their faces, gloved hands linked togeth­er. Bar­ring his way. Beck­ett swore and shift­ed his grip, pulled out the ice pick he’d brought for insur­ance, and pre­pared for the confrontation.

The fig­ure in the mid­dle dropped its com­rades’ hands. Raised them to its face. They weren’t linked hands, Beck­ett real­ized: they grew togeth­er, a black, ropy mass, the strands woven togeth­er into the sem­blance of hands. Before his unbe­liev­ing eyes, it flowed and shift­ed, became two sep­a­rate hands again, per­fect­ly shaped inside what looked like Neo­prene gloves.

The crew­man lift­ed his gog­gles, pulled down his mask. Behind it was more of the flow­ing dark­ness, crude­ly shaped into a fea­ture­less man­nequin face. The mouth gaped open, tooth­less, deep. A sound came from it like the crack­le of sta­t­ic, like the howl of a bro­ken tele­phone line, like the scream of throats drown­ing in dark water.

Beck­ett dis­trib­uted his weight on the slip­pery con­crete, swung the pick overhead.

I can rig up a bomb. The voice came in loud and clear over the howl­ing of the wind. His own voice, from the hole in that face. Time the explo­sion. Head back for the ship. It changed, became sly, mock­ing, mor­phed into Talbot’s.

We’ll all die. The false voic­es gar­bled, meld­ed togeth­er, became a sin­gle phrase repeat­ing itself over and over. All die. All die.

The line jerked, snapped upward, dropped to the floor.

The ice pick clat­tered in front of Beckett’s feet. He glanced over the shoul­ders of the con­joined crew­men. Saw what could only be the mag­a­zine, the door thrown wide open, the light blaz­ing. He didn’t need to look in to know that all the explo­sives were gone.

In his mind’s eye, an image formed. A long chain of men, weighed down by equip­ment, trekking across the ice. To where a crevasse yawned, a blue-black abyss. One by one, the men descend­ing a great stair­case, the sky shrink­ing above them, the dark­ness open­ing up below.

He shiv­ered all the way back to the hatch. Shiv­ered long after he’d peeled off his gear and gloves, after he’d coaxed his lead­en limbs back to life.  All things had to change, and soon it would be his turn. There would be hor­ror in the trans­for­ma­tion, and pain. An infin­i­ty of pain.

But life hurt too. Once the lights were out, once the false promis­es of hope and love and rea­son dimmed to noth­ing, it left you with noth­ing but dark­ness. A dark­ness far worse than the one prowl­ing the pas­sages of the rig, call­ing him to the deep.

#

Lang­man lay exact­ly how they’d left him. Twitch­ing and bulging, singing in his sleep. The wound in his side was immense now: black threads criss­crossed his ele­phan­tine bulk. There was bare­ly any­thing rec­og­niz­able of the engi­neer in it, or even remote­ly human. Ichor seeped from cracks in its bruise-col­ored skin, trailed into the cor­ners, into the vents, the cracks and seams in the walls. Either feed­ing the squa­mous mass beneath the plat­form, or nurs­ing on it.

Beck­ett peeled the sod­den ban­dages away. Leaned until his face was inch­es from the wound. The womb, he under­stood, with cold, detached hor­ror. The thing Lang­man had become – this cocoon, or chrysalis – knew noth­ing of fear, of cold and des­per­a­tion. All it want­ed was to feed and thrive. To dream hazy dreams of a future in which it emerged into the world, ful­ly grown, rampant.

But it was a long way to sal­va­tion, and uncer­tain. Two of them would have twice the chance, dou­ble the like­li­hood of survival.

Beck­ett opened his mouth as wide as he could and inhaled the darkness.

A sin­gle moment of abject pan­ic. Then calm, immense, infi­nite. It felt like he’d often imag­ined drown­ing would feel: a grad­ual release of life, a sur­ren­der to the invad­ing water. What he had wished for all those times in the desert, but could nev­er quite sum­mon the courage to make real.

When it was over, he wan­dered out into the corridor.

The old woman was wait­ing for him, every bit as wrin­kled and stooped as he remem­bered her. Bony hands held out, nei­ther in threat nor to com­fort. Beck­ett didn’t mind. There would be time to come to terms with what he’d done.

He knelt before her and closed his eyes. Rough hands caressed his mat­ted hair, his wet cheeks. The old woman’s lips rasped next to his ear. He couldn’t make out the words, but they no longer need­ed lan­guage to under­stand each oth­er. They were one now, the for­giv­er and the for­giv­en. He let her whis­per draw him in, releas­ing him from his sorrow.