Someone was dragging a body toward the cabin.

  Suddenly the figure glanced up. A good ten seconds passed. Finally the person waved their arms in the air.

  “Help, help me!” the man yelled. He collapsed on his knees, the sound of his crying floating over the snow. “My wife fell. I think she’d dead.”

  It was Kevin. He of the black thought balloons. As she surveyed the scene, Striker could have sworn she heard music drifting on the wind. A Christmas carol playing on a distant organ, the song joyless and flat.

  Why had she wanted to come down here on behalf of a production about a band of early twentieth century white men who got stuck in the ice? Was the survival story of Ernest Shackleton and the men of the Endurance worth all this?

  Tell the truth, Ronnie. It’s no coincidence it’s Christmas and somebody’s dead.

  It was a free trip to Antarctica, she thought. Was that so wrong?

  But la Grande Dame and her yoga legs was already sweeping past her, following the bloody trail toward the man and what was once his wife.

  The body lay in the snow. The three of them huddled around it as if it were a campfire. What were they waiting for? Taylor looked dead. On film, the dead appeared to be made of ash, their pupils without color. Taylor was the same bloodless gray but her deadness went deeper than that. You could see it in the slackness of her face. All the light had drained out of the lantern, her inner fire burned up. There was no longer any there there, nothing to fan back into flame.

  “We need a mirror,” said Kevin. “The dry suit makes it hard to tell.”

  Striker herself was having a hard time looking. No, what the dead need is some privacy, she thought. That’s why we close the casket, bury it up tight in the cold, hard ground, seal it away in a mausoleum, set fire to it, then walk away.

  Or in your case, run.

  “Oh for Chrissake,” said la Grande Dame. She slipped off one of her gloves and bent over, gripped Taylor’s neck in her fingers, and began squeezing. The emerald on her finger threw green sparkles on the snow like a disco ball. At one point, the Dame felt around on her own neck for comparison. Finally she gave up. “My hands are numb,” she said. “I can’t feel my own pulse.”

  “That’s because you’re one of the walking dead,” said Striker. When nobody reacted, she breathed a little easier.

  “I don’t know what happened,” whimpered Kevin.

  “Just take it from the top,” said Striker. Her last long-term contract had been on one of the ubiquitous network cop shows. Each week the po-po asked random bystanders to give it to them straight from the top. On TV at least, The Top gave people structure, a way into the story. “Where were you headed?”

  “Up here, same as you,” said Kevin. He sounded like one of the weekly bystanders from the show. A man searching his memories for anything important, desperate to convince the fuzz he was only out walking his dog and had nothing to do with whatever was lying under those trash bags. “Taylor wanted to see if we could spot the boat.”

  Striker went straight for the jugular, no time for good cop/bad cop. She probably should’ve eased into it. Hell, it was Christmas Eve.

  “Who else is here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Anyone else here?” she repeated, thinking of the little stony-faced girl and her emotional support rat. “Anyone who could vouch for your story?”

  Kevin didn’t seem shocked by the insinuation. He took a deep breath. “It was just us,” he said. “After the sub breached—”

  “The what?” said la Grande Dame.

  “I thought it was a nuclear submarine,” he said. “Taylor thought it was shaped more like a submersible.”

  Striker let herself recall the main actor who played the sergeant on the cop show. The sound of his voice like a handsaw cutting through wood. Two seasons back they’d had a dalliance going, sneaking off to his trailer while his double did blocking. The actor liked it on the floor Greco-Roman style. All season long Striker’s skinned elbows burning every time she took a shower.

  “The sub surfaced, shit went haywire, we ended up here, then Taylor said we should trek up to the top and look for the ship.” Kevin stopped for a moment, glancing out at the breathtaking vista as he collected his thoughts.

  You mean stalling for time while he gets his shit together, Riley would’ve said.

  “We were hiking to the top,” he continued, his voice going shrill. (Ooo, a man could sound shrill. Striker found herself growing excited by the prospect.) “But we didn’t have the right gear,” he said, as he started to blubber. “You need hiking sticks, the right shoes, water, energy bars.”

  Fleece. GPS. A satellite phone. Sherpas.

  “Next thing I know, Taylor slipped, went down hard. There was blood, so much blood. That’s the last thing I remember. The rest is a blank. Like I got roofied. Guess I’m in shock,” he said.

  Silently the two women caught each other’s eyes. A lot was said in that glance.

  Guy’s a coward. Mashing his wife’s head on a rock like the rock’s a lemon juicer doesn’t seem like his style.

  Agreed. He’s more the type to use poison.

  Plus, if he was ever hoping to be rescued, she would’ve been his best bet to get out of here. Alone, little Lord Fauntleroy’s a popsicle within the hour.

  Was that an actual historical person?

  Can you stay on track?

  Roofied? What’s up with that?

  Agreed, it’s creepy.

  Wait, in this thread, which one of us is which?

  “Okay,” said Striker. “For now, where should we stick her?” Once it was out of her mouth, she realized it wouldn’t kill her to show a little sympathy. The guy’s wife was dead.

  At least he wasn’t down on the beach shaking each penguin that wobbled past by the shoulders and demanding, “Where are they, what have you done with them?” his uterus crammed into his amygdala.

  There wasn’t much more to discuss. In an hour or two the Yegorov would find them, the kayaks a line of stoplights on the beach. The Yegorov would deploy a throng of big strapping Russians to come striding up the volcano. Striker would finally be free to stop thinking, stop making decisions, stop fighting whatever inner darkness was rising to the surface. One of the Russians might even fold her in his arms later that night. Grigorii of the green eyes. After all, it was Christmas Eve. She and Grigorii could pretend they were Joseph and Mary, his teen bride, following a shining star toward paradise. Why the hell not?

  You know why not.

  A plan was hatched. They would put Taylor in the cabin. Kevin and the Dame would head down to the beach and get the others. Without a watch, she couldn’t be sure, but Striker put it at a twenty-minute walk back to the penguin rookery. She didn’t see any reason why she should go. The Dame was in killer shape—for her, twenty minutes there and back would be a walk in the park. Kevin said he needed to get some things from his dry bag. The way he said it, hurrying over the phrase some things while trying to act casual.

  “What kinda things?” Striker asked, imagining a needle and a piece of rubber tubing, both of his inner arms stained black and blue.

  “Just stuff,” he said. She could practically see the dark clouds racing behind his eyes. She had known guys like this in her past. The best route forward was to give him just enough rope and then wait it out.

  “Whatever,” she said. “Let’s just get this done.”

  The door to the hut was secured with a rusted bolt that hadn’t moved in a hundred years. The women watched as Kevin toggled it in place, trying to get it to slide open. After a few minutes Striker lost interest and turned to examine the shelter. Unlike the one on Paulet, this one was a small cabin made of wood. The chimney was built with stones, some of which had fallen out, creating a patchwork of holes in the side, allowing the inner dark to pour out into the day.

  “Let me,” said the Dame, stepping forward.

  “No, I almost got it,” said Kevin. The Dame rolled her eyes. Striker wandered off to do more reconnaissance.

  The shelter was roughly twenty by thirty, the materials obviously scavenged from the survivors’ ship. The surface of the hut appeared feathery as huge flakes of wood splintered off. At the other shelter on Paulet, she had sensed a heaviness blanketing the air, a stasis like walking through the eye of a storm. But up here the stillness went further. The silence was suffocating, as if the living had been driven out. Maybe it was due to the distance between this hut and the penguin rookery, the isolation total. Striker had sensed the same feeling once walking through an abandoned village on the outskirts of Chernobyl. Children’s toys abandoned in the yards, clothes hanging on the line. The sense that humans are impermanent. The resulting quiet smothering in its vastness.

  Finally the bolt slid open. “Got it,” Kevin said. Beads of sweat sparkled on his brow. He gripped the iron bar soldered to the door where normally a doorknob would be and pulled. Nothing happened. He kept pulling. Striker had to hand it to the guy. He was pulling for all he was worth. This wasn’t about him forcing open some hundred-year-old door. It was about him establishing himself, proving his strength in front of women, being the alpha male when every other marker definitively stated he was a beta at best. For a moment she felt bad for him. The guy was gonna pull his freaking arms off.

  “Lemme know when you’re in,” she said, and disappeared around a corner.

  The cabin’s only door was on the leeward side facing the volcano. It was a smart move, protecting the door from the winds that would whip up the side of the cone. The outward-facing side of the hut had the million-dollar view. Two tiny windows looked out toward the Southern Ocean. The panes rattled in the breeze, the glass encrusted with grime. Striker reached out and worked a finger under one of the frames.

  Girl, why you bugging? Riley would’ve asked in the dated lingo she used to annoy her friend.

  “Cuz we may need a place to crash.” Carefully Striker slipped more fingers under the wood, trying to pry it loose. She could hear the Dame and Kevin grunting on the other side of the cabin, the door not wanting to budge.

  Once you in, ain’t no going back, Riley would’ve said.

  Striker stopped in her tracks. She remembered her friend’s fear of peering under the bed, of seeking out the thing that goes bump in the night.

  What if they were still in there? What if these castaways stranded at the ass of the world had been among the unlucky ones who were never rescued? What if something was slumbering inside these four walls? A cabin full of bones, or worse, a cabin full of bodies that had never decomposed, their dead eyes forever open and waiting in the dark?

  Something flashed in one of the windows. Striker’s breath caught in her throat. What is going on? She squeezed her eyes shut and didn’t move. Finally she exhaled and took another look.

  It was still there.

  Reflected in the filthy glass was a face. Its skin was shrunken and tight, strips of it hanging off the bone like old wallpaper, skull dotted with ratty twists. Both lips were gone, teeth permanently exposed in a mad grin. Striker violently shook her head, but the terrible vision remained. Please, anything but this. She knew without a doubt it was her own face, eyes lidless and bulging, each iris white as salt. Was it a premonition of what the island would reduce her to? She glanced in the other dirty pane.

  A stranger stared back. It was obvious he was starving. The gauntness of his face gave his features a delicateness, every bone visible, the scalp of his badly shaved head nicked and scabby. Striker sensed he was much younger than the creases gouged in his forehead would suggest, eyes sunken and bruised. A weak grin rippled over his cracked lips. Slowly he opened his mouth. Several teeth were missing. The rest appeared loose, gums inflamed. The remaining teeth coated with blood.

  “My god is godly,” the man whispered, voice soft and painfully hoarse. “Doctor says in Him, all things are possible.”

  Suddenly both windows blew open out toward the sea, as if a strong gust of wind had originated from inside the cabin.

  Riley would’ve said this is the part where you turn around and march your Black ass back down the volcano, the whole way down holding a palm up in front of your face and telling the world to talk to the hand. Instead, Striker placed both palms on the windowsill. She could only describe it as a compulsion. The way she would come home to her apartment late at night and throw open the door to the bedroom closet before crawling in bed. Sometimes it was better to just get it over with and look. It gave you the upper hand plus it kept stuff from creeping up on you later.

  Guess I’m really doing this.

  Thankfully there was a table pushed up against the wall. She wriggled through and sat on its edge. She could hear Kevin and the Dame still working on the door. “I’m in,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. Nobody’s set foot in this place for a hundred years, she thought. She imagined a beautiful princess lying asleep in a glass coffin, the realm growing thorny and wretched around her.

  She put a foot down on the floor. Instantly her knees weakened.

  It was like riding the New York City subway during rush hour. The sensation of being packed in tight, of standing shoulder to shoulder, the air heavy with the heat of bodies, their exhalations. She was all alone in a cabin at the bottom of the world yet it felt like the room was crammed full of people.

  Stop being silly, she told herself. There’s no one here.

  Even with the windows open it was darker than she’d anticipated but something was shimmering in the far corner. Slowly she approached the spot.

  A steady hiss was pouring out of a hole in the floor, the air faintly glowing. The constancy of the sound like white noise. She edged closer, hand outstretched in a dream. Soft tendrils of light floated up into the air.

  Suddenly she heard a shuffling.

  The sound was stilted. Its gait asymmetrical as it lurched toward her. Something was creeping across the wooden slats, dragging itself closer. The room cast in darkness except for the small square of light pouring through the open window and the long, misshapen shadows thrown up from the hole in the floor.

  The thing was almost at her feet. The sound of its breathing ragged and labored, a sound she had heard once long ago. The sound of life fighting for life. Pulling itself into the tiny swatch of sunlight and forcing her to acknowledge it, take its bloodiness up into her arms.

  Just then the door flew open.

  “What is that?” asked la Grande Dame. The old girl didn’t sound scared so much as awed.

  “Poor little guy,” said Kevin. “Wish I had my dry bag with me.”

  It must have wriggled in through one of the holes in the chimney. The creature searching and searching for the perfect spot. It was probably one of the last to come ashore. Then finding this place, warm and dark and tucked away from the skua with their tearing feet. Who knew how long it had been shuffling around in the dark? The same stones that had shifted and created a way in had likely shifted again and blocked the way out. And so it was left dragging itself around the room, smearing its guano on the wooden floor until there was nothing left inside it. The golden egg it had laid in the corner all but forgotten.

  Already Kevin is striding forth holding something old and iron overhead. But Kevin is no Percy. When he attempts to bring it down on the small, feathery skull, he misses, striking the thing in the body, its shriek wet and both sorrowful and angry. He tries to hit it again, but it’s a moving target, the light pitiful, Kevin pitiful, both Striker and the Dame shaking their heads, the Dame frowning, Striker wondering why he doesn’t just herd the poor creature outside—if the Yegorov doesn’t come soon, they may have to sleep in here—wondering what it is he’s really beating to death, some poor penguin that stumbled into a hundred-year-old cabin and couldn’t get out, or something darker and harder to kill, a part of himself he wishes were different.

  In the end, the best-laid plans of mice and Kevin.

  The penguin manages to duck his blows. Striker can hear it scampering about in terror. The sound of its breathing frenetic. Kevin never lets up, but the creature somehow finds a way out, disappearing back into the chimney mottled with holes and out into the daylight where it’s free to waddle back down the volcano to the safety of its kind.

  Or not.

  Bird or no bird, they stuck to their plan, dragging the body into the shelter. It might have been easier with just her and the Dame. After the debacle with the penguin, Kevin’s only contribution was getting in the way and criticizing their progress.

  In life, Taylor couldn’t have weighed more than a buck and a quarter, but in death, it felt like the two women were shuttling a block of pure ice thousands of miles across the tundra. Lucky for them the cold had stopped the bleeding. There was only a light pink smear left in places where the back of Taylor’s head kissed the snow. Like lip gloss, Striker thought. She wondered if the Dame had anticipated this on her Antarctic bingo card. Sheltering a dead body.

  She remembered the story the Yegorov’s historian had told about the discovery of Robert Scott’s corpse by his crew seven months after he and his four companions had failed to return. One of the men present at the interment later described the eerie sound of Scott’s icy arm snapping as the men worked to free his journal from his frozen grip. Striker was grateful this body wasn’t anywhere near cold enough for that. The lip gloss pinking the ice was bad enough.

  Once Taylor the Tech Titan was inside the shelter, it began to seem like a bad idea. Under the hole cut in the floor, the jagged vent gleamed like an ember, issuing a stream of warm air. The glow was mesmerizing, the flickering like starlight, the hut balmy, even tropical.

  For a second time, Striker stood by the hole and held out her hand. “Must be from the volcano,” she said. “This could change everything.”