A trickle of sweat rolled down her brow.
The grendel swung back toward her, sniffing, huffing. It seemed to stare right at her.
Amanda tried not to scream.
It didn’t matter.
The grendel rose to its feet, lips curled in menace, and slunk toward her hiding place.
Jenny still lived. Somehow…
She lay with her father atop the ice, but he had long since stopped responding, though his cold arms remained locked around her, holding her. She didn’t have the strength to move, to check on him. Already their clothes had frozen together, fusing father to daughter. The blizzard blew around the pair, isolating them. She had lost sight of the two Navy men: Fernandez and Kowalski.
She tried to shift, but she could no longer feel her limbs. Her shivering had stopped, too, as her body gave up feeding blood to her extremities. Her systems were in pure survival mode, expending all resources to keep the core alive.
Even the cold had vanished, replaced with a deadly sense of calm. She found it hard to stay awake, but in sleep lay only death.
Papa…She could not speak. Her lips would not move. Another name arose, unbidden, unwelcome: Matt…
Her heart ached, thudding leadenly.
She would have cried then, but her tear ducts had frozen over. She didn’t want to die this way. For the past three years, she had trudged through life, going through the motions of living. Now she wanted to live. She cursed the time lost, the half-life she had lived. But nature was immune to wishes and dreams. It simply killed with the determined heart of any predator.
Her eyelids drifted closed. They were too painful to keep open.
As the world faded away, flares bloomed through the swirling snow. One, two, three, four…They were hazy glows through the blizzard, flying back and forth, sailing through the air. Snow angels…
She squinted, struggling to hold her eyes open. They grew brighter, and after another few breaths, a growling whine accompanied them, piercing angrily through the wail of winds.
Not angels…
From the snow, strange vehicles rode forth. They looked like snowmobiles, but they moved too fast, skimming over the ice with a gracefulness and speed that belied ordinary Ski-Doos. They reminded her instead of jet skis, flying over the ice.
But the vehicles here were neither snowmobiles nor jet skis. As they grew from illusion to solid reality, the machines glided over the ice, not deigning to touch the surface of the world. Jenny had seen such craft before, at shows, experimental models.
Hovercraft.
But these were small, no larger than two-man jet skis, open on top, ridden like a motorcycle. The windshield of each bubbled back to protect the driver and passenger. And like jet skis, the underside of each bore ski runners, but the machines seemed only to need them as they banked and slowed. Each craft settled with skill to the ice, landing on their runners and sliding to a stop a few yards away.
Men unmounted. All dressed in white parkas. Rifles were leveled.
Jenny heard Russian being spoken, but the world remained blurry, lit only by the headlamps of the personal hovercraft.
The soldiers wore face masks, storm troopers. They approached with caution, then with a bit of urgency. Some checked the blasted ice pit. Others came forward. One knelt before Jenny. He barked something in Russian.
All she could manage was a groan.
He reached for her. She blacked out a moment. It had taken all her strength to utter even that small sound. When next she awoke, she found herself strapped into a bucket seat, harnessed in place with shoulder and belt straps. The world was a blur around her. She was flying.
Then enough awareness cut through the haze for her to recognize that she rode behind a soldier. He didn’t wear a parka, only a thick gray sweater. She realized she was wearing his coat. The fur-lined hood pulled almost over her head.
They were heading back to the drift station. A fire burned from the cratered ruins of an outbuilding.
It made no sense, so she simply passed out again.
She woke next to a world of pain. It flared over every inch of her body. It was as if someone were flaying her alive, as if acid streamed over every inch of her body, agonizing, stripping away her skin. She screamed, but no sound came out. She thrashed against the arms that held her.
“It’s all right, Miss Aratuk,” a gruff voice said behind her. “You’re safe.” The same voice spoke to someone else holding her. “Turn the water slightly warmer.”
Jenny snapped a bit more fully into awareness. She was naked in a shower, being held under the stream. She managed to free her tongue. “It…it burns.”
“The water’s only lukewarm. Blood is just returning to your skin. You have some patches of mild frostbite.” Something jabbed her arm. “We’ve given you a bit of morphine to dull the pain.”
She finally glanced back to the speaker. It was Lieutenant Commander Sewell. She sat on the fiberglass floor of a communal shower. A handful of Navy men were in the room, busy. Other showers steamed.
After a few moments, her agony dulled to simple torture. Tears flowed down her face, mixing with the shower’s water. Slowly her temperature rose. Her body began to shiver uncontrollably.
“M…mm…my father,” she chattered out.
“He’s being taken care of,” Sewell said. “He’s actually faring better than you. Already into towels. Tough old bastard, that one. Only a little frostbite on his nose. He must be made of ice.”
This raised a smile. Papa…
She allowed her body to shake and quake. Her core body temperature slowly struggled to normalcy. Sensory feeling awakened with a million pinpricks in her hands and feet. It was slow crucifixion.
Finally she was allowed to stand. She even warmed up enough to feel slightly ashamed by her nakedness. There were uniformed men all around. She was led out of the showers, passing by Kowalski, bare-assed and shivering under his own stream of water.
As hot towels were wrapped around her, she asked, “Fernandez?”
Sewell shook his head. “He was dead by the time the Russians reached you.”
Her heart heavy, she was walked over to chairs in front of space heaters. Her father was already there. He sipped from a mug of hot coffee. The morphine wobbled her feet, but she managed to reach the chairs.
“Jen,” her father said. “Welcome back to the living.”
“You call this living?” she asked dourly. As she sat there, she pictured Fernandez’s quirked smile. It was hard to believe someone so alive was now dead. Still, a dull buzz of relief seeped through her, perhaps partly due to the morphine, but mostly rising from her own heart.
She was alive.
As the space heater blew humid air in her face, a mug of coffee was pushed into her trembling hands.
“Drink it,” Sewell said. “We have to warm up your insides as much as your outsides. And caffeine’s a good stimulant, too.”
“You don’t have to sell me on the coffee, Commander.” She took a burning sip. She felt it slide all the way down. A shudder — half pleasure, half pain — shook through her.
With coffee warming her hands and belly, she glanced around. She was in some large dormitory room. Cots lined both walls. Tables and chairs in the center. Most here were civilians, scientists…but a few Navy personnel were mixed in.