It had taken him years of effort, mule-headed determination and a conscious betrayal of paternal hopes to break out of this place before. No way was the town letting go that easily today. Not when she was as trapped as the rest of them.
Morgan heard Derm stamping up to present himself for orders. "Kind of the meteorological equivalent of a noose, wouldn"t you say?" he asked his 2IC.
"Sir?"
Morgan directed the man"s glance, past the vehicles, between the buildings and the trees, to where the street broke apart in h.o.a.ry pixels. In all the blowing whiteness, it was difficult to make out with any solid certainty, but tangible enough to close around their throats with chill fingers. Down along the road by which they had entered the town, there lay a new-formed barrier. Like a shifting dune of white, angry spumes of snowflakes blowing over the uppermost ridge to fall at its base and pave the way for its slow - but definite - advance.
Not as dramatic, he imagined, as the swollen tidal wave of snow that Kristal had reported up on the mountain and by no means an avalanche. But in many ways, it augured more menace, like a B-movie zombie, perhaps, safe in the knowledge that no matter how slowly it progressed, no matter how fast its victims attempted to flee, it would ultimately have its prey. And above the advancing drifts, which Morgan now knew had to be actively encircling the town, the skies themselves were thickening and filling with a frozen swarm.
Snowflakes teeming like gla.s.s mosquitoes in a hurricane, any number of them carrying a deadly bite.
"What do we do?" asked Derm, and Morgan knew he"d recognised it too.
How in h.e.l.l did anyone hope to defend this town?
And then it struck Morgan, hard, like a slap in the face from his old man, that he couldn"t hope to do anything of the kind. Not really. He"d set the townsfolk going through the motions, hadn"t he? Now he had to do the same to his men.
No, for for them. them.
They were soldiers and they had to be doing something when they saw the enemy charging at them over the hill. And when the enemy was the winter? Well, it wasn"t a situation he"d ever encountered, but he was guessing you just dug yourselves in and prayed for spring.
Houston, we have ignition. Parker shoved through the lab doors like a plough through a s...o...b..nk. He dumped the laptop and all the other gear and doc.u.ments in a heap on the nearest table. Parker shoved through the lab doors like a plough through a s...o...b..nk. He dumped the laptop and all the other gear and doc.u.ments in a heap on the nearest table.
"Pydych," he snapped his fingers loud enough to break the name in two. "Would you kindly step outside and fetch in some equipment from your electronic a.r.s.enal?"
Pydych hovered in a wanna-be helpful way just behind Melody at her microscope. "Uh, sure," he did a half-a.s.sed job of sounding alert. "Did you have anything specific in mind, or is this just a means to get rid of me to talk about secret stuff?"
"Actually," smiled Parker tautly, "the latter. Find something to do for fifteen minutes. Who knows, maybe the Captain can use you in his defensive preparations."
"Unless it"s piling me up with the sandbags, I kind of doubt that."
Parker thrust an arm out wide to point the man to the exit.
Pydych departed promptly.
"You sound a little agitated, my love," commented Melody, turning from her microscope to Redeker"s corpse. "You think you could channel all that nervous energy into setting up the computer?"
"In a minute," grouched Parker, and he rested his hands either side of the corpse"s feet. "Remind me again why we"re working away on all this research at the Doc"s beck and call?"
His partner turned liquid blue eyes on him, traces of sympathy swimming in their depths. "That should be obvious, Parker. This thing is everyone"s enemy here. And even if if we wanted to be entirely selfish about this - which we don"t - it has the Stormcore." we wanted to be entirely selfish about this - which we don"t - it has the Stormcore."
"Oh yeah: Parker gaped into the open corpse. That living storm."
"For sure." Melody clearly didn"t like being right this once.
"Lieutenant Wildcat"s report made it pretty clear to me: like the ent.i.ty was flexing a brand new set of muscles right after it grabbed the Stormcore."
"Okay, but how come it failed on its first attempt? You know, when it attacked the jet."
"Don"t know. Can"t say for sure, can we?" Melody pursed her lips, as if tasting an idea. "Except that aircraft wasn"t just an aircraft, was it? That entire plane was alive with psychic energy, functioning as an extension of Lieutenant Wildcat"s mind. Its circuits were a crude artificial relay for the psychic equivalent of a nervous system, and we know what happens when it gets its hooks into one of those."
Her gaze dropped slowly to indicate the ice still laced throughout the dead man"s innards.
"Sure, right." Parker was getting it now. "So it eats up the electronics, the plane takes a nosedive and the ice-creature-virus-thing perishes in the crash, I guess."
"Good work, detective. Trust me, the Doctor will have worked all this out already."
Parker was just waiting for that name to come up. "So do you think he wants the Stormcore?"
"No, why would he? He strikes me as something of an altruist."
"And what if I told you your altruist has driven into the mountains with our graviton tracer."
Parker was satisfied, if not altogether cheered, to see that he could still surprise his partner once in a while. She looked about as happy as he"d looked when he"d been out to the car.
Open your mind. Open the window, let the light in and see beyond your walls. The danger: the beyond can see inside you, the window shatters under its glare, laying you bare to the currents and the undertow of streams with all the power of the oceans combined.
Kristal never stood a chance.
A spirit quest was never a matter of lengthy meditation for Kristal. She could cast her mind into that other-realm with the briefest focus of her mind and heart and soul, like the deft flick of the wrist as an angler casts out his line. Except, here, her catch was pulling her in.
She could never have pinpointed the moment when she lost her hold on the earth, when she had crossed over - even if she had been granted the chance to tell anyone, which she knew she would not be. She knew that with the clarity and certainty with which she could suddenly see through the tempest; through the natural storm and into the spirit that had invaded it.
The same spirit that was driving hairline cracks through her consciousness.
She imagined rolling her mind over in the air, to look down and see all that she could of the sh.o.r.e she had left behind.
And there it was: the rescue scene being played out on that lonely wooded slope. The Doctor casting the rope like an expert fisherman, laying his line dangerously close alongside the crashed truck. Her friend, friend, Leela, dutifully moving in to pour the gasoline. And the Doctor, igniting the flare pulled from his pocket; holding it a moment before tossing it into the petroleum stream, channelled along the right flank of the pick-up by the rope. A rail in the snow, along which the fires sprang up like a torched fence. Leela, dutifully moving in to pour the gasoline. And the Doctor, igniting the flare pulled from his pocket; holding it a moment before tossing it into the petroleum stream, channelled along the right flank of the pick-up by the rope. A rail in the snow, along which the fires sprang up like a torched fence.
Kristal felt sad that she couldn"t feel the heat on her face.
She felt it instead like a blinding light that blanked out every sense she had left to her. And she couldn"t hold on to her last thought, because it splintered into a billion fragments, scattered on the winds with the snows.
Tunnel vision. Except the tunnel looked to be collapsing under some incredible pressure. Martha wiped the condensation from the inside of the windshield and carried on driving right through. The shadow-buildings of Melvin Village were lost in their wake, engulfed in the cold inferno that blazed in the rear-view.
Buckled into the seat next to her. Amber blazed too.
It had been a battle, as always, to get her to the car. She fought harder than ever this time, as if her opposition was pitched specifically to match her mother"s desperation.
Martha had argued it out with her until she"d flipped at the sound of her own voice repeating itself; and then she"d shaken her child violently - unforgivably - until all she could hear were the screams digging their claws in on the way up her daughter"s throat. At that sound, Martha"s violence had turned to tearful pleas, while Amber"s protests broke down into the same.
Bustling her into her coat and out of the hotel, Martha had ignored the looks of the few soldiers charging by as she had installed her daughter, still crying, in the truck. Since this wretched drive began, they had each fallen into their own silence.
Amber"s silence was the kind that made the loudest noise of all. It filled the vehicle with a darkness that cut Martha deep, and so between blinks, she stared hard and fixed out through that tunnel of night and falling snow.
A ma.s.sive body, like a beached Beluga whale but too white, rolled under the beams. Only after she swerved left did Martha realise it was a drift. A drift the size of Moby d.i.c.k.
"Merciful Lord!" Martha offered up a prayer of thanks for her quick reactions.
Too soon.
A sudden b.u.mp almost jolted the wheel out of her hands and the 4x4 bounded off the road into a rocky, stuttering downhill slalom. Martha held on to the wheel like it was Amber"s life in her hands and she fought to steer, the sides of the vehicle slamming against tree-trunks and shaking loose clumps of snow to play an evil percussion on the roof and hood.
"Mom..." The appeal was so remote, so plaintive; had it not been Amber"s voice it might have gone unheard. Martha wanted to cry right there in the midst of the nightmare.
The 4WD dipped and hit something hard, then bounced level on its suspension, only to skid into a drunken spin. The engine growled frantically but nothing was happening.
Then the earth cracked underneath them.
The 4x4 lurched to the left and stayed that way. Martha sat statue-still, shaking on the inside.
"Honey," she said, nervous of the damage her voice could do, "we"re on the lake. We need to get out of the car, real careful. We need to get out on your side, okay, honey?"
Amber nodded stiffly. The truck seemed to be lodged fairly securely, and that was helping to gradually steady their nerves. Martha focused on breathing while her daughter unfastened her belt and worked the catch on the door. She shut her eyes in sheer relief as she saw Amber step safety out and enjoyed, for just a second, the cold air blowing in against her cheek. Now it was her turn.
She reached down for the belt release. Clicked it free.
Murmuring prayer after prayer, she slid over to the pa.s.senger seat, thinking she could almost hear the sloshing of the chill waters under the vehicle. Then she swung her right leg outside, then her left - and stood, expecting the truck to sink suddenly behind her.
It stayed put. but Martha sank. Down on her knees on the ice. she pulled Amber to her for a year"s worth of hugs. "Oh my G.o.d, I"m so sorry baby, I"m so sorry."
Through her harrowed gasps she could hear the creaking ice and the lapping water and she knew she couldn"t keep the embrace forever. Just a moment more.
Martha opened her eyes, seeing over Amber"s small shoulder through a screen of tears.
She tensed. And Amber"s heart beat a note of panic against her breast.
The Lord had no mercy. None.
Impossibly, the drift had unfurled and piled its snows down the banks of the lake after them. Now, it was reaching out with spiny fingers, talons of th.o.r.n.y ice that stretched out over the frozen lake towards them. To kill a mother and daughter in cold blood.
Chapter Seventeen.
A blade of ice cut cleanly down Parker"s spine. He leaped up, kicking his chair backwards, and nearly knocked the laptop clean off the table. "Jesus! Oh my G.o.d! What the h.e.l.l was-?"
While he was in mortal contortions, his partner was m.u.f.fling her giggles poorly behind one hand. She also happened to be standing right behind him.
"Ice," she smirked. "Honestly, just the common on-the-rocks variety from the ice bucket on the bar." She playfully twirled the ice-tongs. What"s it doing right now?"
Parker took a moment to be sure he"d heard right. "What do you think? Introducing my coccyx to the concept of absolute zero! G.o.dd.a.m.nit!" It took a good deal of squirming to work his hand inside his coat and yank his shirt loose in search of the offending cube.
Meanwhile, Melody was saying, "It"s melting. Parker. Heat is transferred from your body into the ice and it"s effecting a transformation between states."
Parker winced as a cold sting dropped into the centre of his palm. "Ow."
"You big baby. Think how cold he feels." Melody sauntered over to the corpse. She was still fiddling with those tongs, tapping them against her lips. "Now I didn"t take a body temperature, since it wasn"t exactly important to establish time of death; but I can pretty well a.s.sume it wasn"t anywhere near zero, based on the fact that he was a little too lively and animated. Before I shot him, I mean."
"Okay I"m with you so far - but how does that justify-pulling a stunt like that?"
"Parker, let it go. The point here is that this invader looks exactly like ice - it shares an identical crystalline structure, but is selective about the properties it shares."
"Yeah, so you"re saying that stuff wouldn"t melt if you dropped it down my back." Parker could still feel the sliver of cold as he went about tucking in his shirt.
Melody afforded him a candy-coated smile. "No, it would probably burrow into your spinal column and head straight for the cerebral cortex, reconstructing your nervous system as an intricate and fully functional ice sculpture."
Parker decided he would let the matter of the ice-cube prank go. "Sure, we know that much."
"It would have to be colder than the surrounding bioma.s.s, so heat transference has to take place. Simple physics. The question is. where does that heat go?"
Parker was seized by a thought and rolled with it.
"Something in the ice stores the heat, uses it somehow.
Energy, maybe, used to power movement and multiplication."
"Well, I don"t think you"re far wrong. Except movement and multiplication are effectively one and the same where this beast is concerned. Adding particles to itself is the only way it can effect any level of controlled motion. Otherwise it"s subject to air currents, I guess."
"Blown on the winds." Parker was nodding vigorously now, caught up in his partner"s reasoning. They were travelling the same track now. "So, okay, let"s cut to the chase. What can we do against it?"
"I don"t know. Alter its structure somehow." She gave a shrug, undeniably more fetching on those rare occasions she was stuck for answers. "Recrystallise it, effectively, and in so doing alter its basic nature."
Parker offered a facial shrug in support of the idea. "Sounds good. Let"s do that."
"Parker, we"d need some form of neural interface in order to tap into the ice, coupled with a governing processor capable of molecular level reconfiguration."
Parker realised, suddenly, he was ahead of her. He took a pause to savour his moment, then perfected his delivery. "You mean." he said, "sort of like cellular regeneration?"
"Oh my G.o.d," said Melody. And she was suitably awed.
Joanna couldn"t explain where it had come from, but now there was a heat-haze to add to her confused and murky senses.
Fire was the least of her worries, though.
Jacks stopped screaming long ago. Maybe that was when Jacks had stopped being Jacks. Or was there something of the woman"s Kevlar heart left in there? Beating away and crying out inside that thrashing ma.s.s of ice that looked like nothing more than an insane man"s portrait of his own nervous system. Staring at what had become of Jacks, Joanna prayed to every G.o.d there was that the fuel tank would blow before she found out what that felt like.
Tendrils zapped across the air like neural pulses and started tearing the dash and the seating and the wheel down to basic lines; stripping the wrecked vehicle back to the designer"s original drawings, sketched spasmodically in ice.
White lines, boxing her in.
Suddenly the door behind her was wrenched open, the outside hurling in cold and heat in one breath. Strong, paternal hands grabbed under her arms and hauled her out.
Icicle contours flashed out at her but recoiled just as instantly.