“Whale time,” said Percy. The brown-skinned dad laughed again, enjoying the show. “Anyway, the second most dangerous species down here is the leopard seal,” Percy continued. “You see them now and then but not very often.”

  “I thought you said the wind is the most dangerous thing down here,” said Anders. Bobbi Sue nodded encouragingly, happy that at the very least her older child was listening despite the ear pods practically glued in their ears.

  “Well yeah,” Percy conceded. He reiterated that katabatic winds form hundreds of miles away as the air current sweeps down off the Andes. Once over the Southern Ocean, there was nothing to stop them as they gained speed and intensity in their push toward Antarctica.

  “Doesn’t katabatic mean ‘from below’?” asked Anders.

  “Affirmative,” said Percy.

  “Like hell winds?” asked the quietest dad.

  “Katabatics can form anywhere you have unimpeded wind sweeping down a landscape. Trust me,” Percy added. “If we run into some, you won’t even know what hit you.” He snapped his fingers as if to demonstrate.

  “Well that’s hella reassuring,” said the youngest dad.

  “But we don’t have to worry about that now,” screeched Taylor to Anders. “The algorithms put that at one in a million. So we’re good.”

  Anders didn’t seem any less angsty at the news. They were a teenager. Striker figured angsty was their default setting.

  “We’re more than good,” said Percy. “The katabatics are pretty much unheard of this time of year. Mawson Station clocked some six months back as high as 150 miles an hour. Never say never—that’s why we have you sign those indemnity forms, but this is summer. We’re fine.”

  Little Mikey wasn’t going to let the idea of disaster go that easy. “Any tunnels down here?” he asked.

  “You mean dug in the ice?” said Percy.

  “More like burrowed,” said Mikey. The three dads looked at each other, for once glad it wasn’t their kid everyone was staring at. “A long time ago, these big bubbles of ectoplasm called shoggoths built cities here in Antarctica for their overlords,” the kid said, the excitement palpable in his voice. Striker couldn’t help but notice both Bobbi Sue and Anders shaking their heads at the exact same speed.

  “Sweet pea,” said Bobbi Sue. “Remember what we said about all that being make-believe?”

  “My boy and I like us some Lovecraft,” explained Billy Bob rather sheepishly.

  “A what craft?” said the Baron.

  “H. P. Lovecraft,” said Billy Bob. “The sci-fi writer.”

  “And raging racist,” murmured Anders.

  “But Mom,” pleaded Mikey. “The shoggoths are shape-shifters. They can do whatever they want, be whatever they want.” He looked to his father for help, but Billy Bob was too busy making placating eyes at Bobbi Sue. “Right this second they could even be walking among—”

  “Michael Samuel Reeves. Stop,” said his mother.

  “You’re talking about At the Mountains of Madness,” said the quiet­est dad. Bobbi Sue threw up her hands. The Dame tsked-tsked sympathetically. Men and their monsters! They always had to be chasing something. The dad continued. “That’s the one where the guy goes insane from something he sees in the ice.”

  “Spoiler alert,” chimed his husband.

  The quiet dad ignored him. “It’s a pretty cool story,” he concluded, smiling at Mikey. “Just for your sake, I hope we stumble on some shoggoths.”

  “Well,” said Percy, “there are some pretty famous ice tunnels at McMurdo, but those babies were built with chainsaws and are mostly just full of pipes.” He shrugged. “Now and then early explorers dug larders in the ice to store fresh meat, but that’s about it.”

  “Still, this would be a great place to house a few alien corpses,” said Billy Bob, his apology tour apparently over, Bobbi Sue and Anders once again performing their synchronized headshaking. “I just mean it’s cold enough and plenty remote.”

  “Moving on,” commanded la Grande Dame.

  Striker could tell Percy was more than happy to comply. He pointed at a pile of rocks a few hundred feet from shore. “Let’s go check out how things would look if something really went wrong.”

  “That’s what I came for,” said the Dame. She cranked her neck from side to side, the sound like cracking walnuts, and headed out first as if she knew the way.

  They trekked to the spot. It only took a few minutes. You could see the ruins from the water. It was gravelly though a faint path ran up from the beach. In the distance there were penguins waddling up and down the hillside. Patches of old snow glittered on the ground, a few icy slicks gleaming where the snow had melted and then refrozen. La Grande Dame plowed ahead in the lead, Lucy and her fathers in the back. The string of them like a line of ducks in their yellow dry suits. It was difficult to walk, their hiking boots encased in the dry suits’ legs. Lucy gave her brown dad the stink eye when he offered to pick her up and carry her.

  The shelter wasn’t even as big as Striker’s New York City living room. All that was left was its foundation and a partial wall. “This is a historical site,” said Percy. He explained that the two raised platforms made of stones heaped inside the ruin were ten-person beds. Striker tried to imagine spending a long, dark winter hunkered down at the ass of the world with twenty other people shoulder to shoulder in the unrelenting cold. It was crazy what human beings could survive. At least they’d had an amazing view. The waters of the Southern Ocean gleamed, studded with blindingly white ice, the view stretching on for more than fifty miles, maybe a hundred, maybe more. “Everything here’s protected,” Percy concluded.

  By what, thought Striker. There were no docents slouching around, no red velvet ropes, no security cameras. Just a plaque nailed to a post explaining the importance of this hole carved in the ground and lined with rocks, here and there a piece of old-timey trash preserved by nothing more than the cold. Case in point, a trio of Adélie penguins were standing around on the collapsed roof like hourly workers out on a smoke break, a few more wandering in and out of the shelter.

  Striker had read about this place in the prospectus. In 1903 the first Swedish crew to explore Antarctica wintered in this very spot after their ship got crushed in the sea ice. The expedition was led by Otto Nordenskøld, who survived the Antarctic winds only to get creamed by a bus back in Gothenburg. Years before Nordenskøld’s death, he and the other survivors of the lost ship dug a small foundation in the hillside, then made a simple shelter using the island’s rocks. Striker imagined the men supplementing their diet with penguin stroganoff and penguin oscar and penguin bolognese and omelets made from their endless supply of fresh Adélie eggs.

  “Some of the expeditions brought animals with them,” said Percy. “The Norwegian Amundsen was smart. He used dogs. Scott?” Percy shook his head. “He went with ponies. Either way, both dog and pony ended up in the hoosh.”

  “What’s hoosh?” asked Mikey.

  “It’s an Inuit word,” replied Percy, leaving the meat of the question hanging in the air. No one else stepped up to the plate as nobody wanted to be the grinch that tells a kid man’s best friend is sometimes also man’s main course.

  “Back then what kind of people would sign on to an expedition?” asked Billy Bob. There wasn’t much to see, but he was going to town anyway with his camera.

  “I assume they came down here in the name of science,” said Taylor.

  “Gimme a break,” said Kevin. “They were convicts and killers. They came down here to escape.”

  “Where’d you get that from?” asked Percy. “They were military men with commissions and sailors enlisted in the navy.”

  “So they did have a chain of command,” said Billy Bob. He seemed weirdly pleased by the news. “Folks like Shackleton and Scott must have been the big dogs.”

  “The expedition commander was definitely the boss,” said Percy, “but under certain circumstances, the ship’s doctor could become the de facto leader.”

  Billy Bob perked up even more, the muscle flexing in his jaw. “Because the power to save lives trumps all.”

  “Exactly,” said Percy. “Things go south, it’s the doctor who’s handing out rations, deciding who gets the last vial of morphine.”

  “That must have been fun,” said the Dame. “Having your life depend on a man with a god complex.”

  “What if someone went nuts?” said Kevin. “Like, what would happen if the good doctor was the one who lost his marbles?”

  It dawned on Striker from the way Taylor kept rolling her eyes that she and Kevin were in Antarctica to save their marriage. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book, second only to having another baby. Travel somewhere exotic and hope a little vacation magic might cause you to fall back in love with the putz you were legally shackled to.

  “You mean what would happen if the doctor went insane,” repeated Percy. Striker could tell he was eager to get off the worst-case scenario train. In a place like Antarctica, it was probably a train with no end. “Well I suppose they had protocols” was all he said.

  “What about women?” asked Anders.

  “What about women?” said Percy.

  “Were there women down here?”

  “Excellent question,” said Taylor.

  Percy adjusted his sunglasses. “It’s well documented that in the late 1800s women would sometimes dress up as men in order to sign on to a whaling ship to be with their lovers,” he said. “But there’s no proof any woman overwintered on the continent among the early expeditions.”

  “But that doesn’t mean they didn’t, right?” said Anders.

  “How would you pull that off?” mused the Dame. “Women have specific—”

  “Demands,” interjected the Baron.

  “Any babies born down here?” asked Kevin.

  “Honey.” The exasperation was evident in Taylor’s voice. “The man just said there’s no proof women overwintered on Antarctica.”

  “I’m not deaf,” said Kevin. “But I still say some of those early explorers were bad hombres. I mean who else would sign on?” Striker was wondering where he was going with this. “Let’s face facts. We all know how much women love bad boys.” Ah! The subtext hung plainly in the air. “No, I wouldn’t put it past some goggly-eyed lass to follow her man down here. Bad boys get all the loving.” He gave his wife a look that could drill through steel.

  “Listen,” said Percy, cutting to the heart of the matter. “You know what one of the first questions any prospective sailor was asked by the expedition leader?”

  “Boxers or briefs?” said the youngest dad. Striker was surprised she still found him funny.

  “Nope,” said Percy. “‘Can you sing or dance?’”

  “My people,” hallelujahed the dad.

  “Seriously,” said Percy. “They needed the crew to be highly sociable folks with sunny dispositions. You don’t sail down to the ends of the earth with depressives and misanthropes.”

  “Well maybe you don’t,” said the Baron cryptically.

  “You think they’re still down here?” asked Kevin.

  “Honey,” repeated Taylor in a tone of voice Striker could tell she used a lot.

  “No, I mean it,” he said. The guy was definitely goading his wife. “Ghosts, spirits, angry sailors pissed off at their countrymen for abandoning them. They could be floating around somewhere.”

  “Why don’t you overwinter in Antarctica and let us know who you run into?” said Percy.

  “If this ice is anything like the ice in our Sub-Zero,” said Billy Bob, “then it absorbs every smell, every flavor.” He patted his son on the head, rested his hand there, the kid a banister. “Betcha there are some tall tales down here just waiting to be thawed out.”

  The conversation was beginning to make Striker feel like she was back in elementary school touring around some musty historical site. The kids daring each other to ask the guide questions like did anyone ever die right here? I am too old for this, she thought. She left the group standing by the ragged hole and began to wander around.

  Overhead the day throbbed blue and cloudless. Striker stepped cautiously, careful not to twist an ankle. Admittedly it was a little freaky. This island probably looked exactly the same as it had a hundred-plus years ago when Nordenskøld and his half-starved men dragged themselves up on this stony beach. To think there was a comfortable berth just offshore waiting for her to come lay her head, the ship resplendent with a sauna where, deep in the pale blue night, consenting adults might play steamy reindeer games together. What a difference a century makes, Striker thought.

  Suddenly the wind shifted. The air smelled of rot. Striker was less than fifty feet from the ruin but the world had gone silent. She could no longer hear Percy explaining the area’s history to the group. I must be upwind, she thought. In the silence she had become the last person on earth, every other living being wiped out of existence. Even the penguin rookery seemed still.

  She stopped and peered around. She couldn’t see the others. They were probably gathered behind the shelter’s one remaining wall, the youngest dad asking some stupid question just to make Percy look at him. Either that or they’d abandoned her and paddled back to the Yegorov, forgetting all about her. White people were like that. Out of sight, out of mind. Ha ha. Striker turned back to her wandering, but the strange tingling on the back of her neck was intensifying, the feeling that something was tracking her every move.

  Quickly she whipped around in a circle.

  The world stayed silent. She was still alone. Weird. It was probably just a case of the Antarctic creeps. In one scene in 90° South, Shackleton and two of his men had a bad case of extra man syndrome as they tromped over South Georgia looking for rescue. The screenwriter had explained that it could happen anytime, anywhere, though it was most likely under periods of extreme duress. People reporting the sensation that another person was with them. “There’s even a line about it in The Waste Land,” the writer had said. “‘Who is it that walks always beside you?’” The writer was desperate to save the scene, afraid the director would cut it before they’d even started filming. Striker tried to imagine being so stressed that you conjured up a companion out of thin air.

  That’s when she saw them. Winding haphazardly up the beach.

  From what she’d seen, the penguins left shallow marks in the snow, their prints as if stamped by a three-pronged fork. But these tracks were different.

  The footprints were more like hands. A child’s hands. Hands that had been seriously disfigured. Striker felt the discomfit spread up her throat. At best it meant some weird-ass bird was slinking around Antarctica. At worst—she wouldn’t let herself come up with other possibilities. A morbid wave of fascination drew her on.

  The thing was lying in a patch of snow at the end of the trail. The rock’s bluish-red hue startling, a color she’d never seen before. Somehow the two primary colors were fused yet it was only one color and without a hint of purple, a shade she could only describe as blue-red. The other rocks were dark and flat like pieces of slate. Even without the trail of baffling footprints leading to it, there was no way she could have missed it.

  She flipped the rock over with her foot. The air rushed out of her lungs. It was hard to tell what she was looking at. Was it simply scratched up from the natural wear and tear of Antarctica, or had a human hand consciously done this? And why did the engraving seem so familiar, like some sinister logo or religious symbol, something Judas Iscariot might have etched in the trunk of the tree before he hung himself?

  Striker closed her eyes. Sometimes voluntary blindness was the best way to go. She thought of the time at a county fair when her sister Ama had handled a tarantula. Just pet it, Ronnie, Ama had cooed as the tiny beast sat cupped in her palm. It’s like a handful of eyelashes. How Striker had squeezed her eyes shut, then willed herself to run a finger down one of the creature’s many legs, her frightened heart beating like a bird’s. Her sister was right. The spider was softer than anything she had ever touched.

  And now she was standing in the silence of a rocky beach in Antarctica. In some ways it felt as if no time had passed. Just do it, you big chicken, she thought. She kept her eyes closed and edged forward, kicked the weird rock back over, hiding the odd symbol. A jolt shot through her foot. Sound rushed back into the world, her lungs once again filling with air. Already it seemed like some dumb overreaction on her part, her mind intent on scaring itself silly. Still, she couldn’t help but scurry back to the others.

  She was glad no one else had seen her, especially that creepy little kid. She thought of the night out with Riley and their friends and all that talk about what scared them the most. Riley had said her number-one fear was the fear of looking.

  “Looking?” someone asked, incredulous.

  “Yeah,” said Riley. “You can’t just tell yourself there’s no monster under the bed. You actually gotta get down on your hands and knees and look. That shit’s scary as hell.”

  “Scopophobia is the fear of being seen,” said the only doctor in the group. “Schizophrenics often have it. But I don’t think there’s a fear of just seeing.”

  “Ommetaphobia is the fear of eyes,” said Striker. She couldn’t remember how she knew this.

  “That’s gotta suck,” said Riley. “But everyone’s got something they don’t wanna see. You ask me, there should be a name for that.”

  “There is,” said one of the women. “It’s called denial.”

  The waiter came around and announced last call. The group began ordering one more drink for—

  Striker came around a bend just in time to hear Texas Mikey ask, “Did the crew get rescued?”

  “They did, but only after ten months.” Percy pointed to a tower of rocks piled on a hilltop. “They built that cairn so passing ships would know there were people here.” He explained that there were historical preservation spots like this all over the peninsula, huts built by early explorers, many with roofs and fireplaces, the foodstuff still visible along with tools and survival supplies left behind in the men’s happiness to be rescued. “It’s important we leave these places the same way we found them.”