“Hold on.” He stopped her from going out, head cocked. “You know what I hear?”
She shook her head, though what she wanted to do was cover her ears and hide.
“Nothing,” he said. “No wind, no ice. Storm’s gone.”
She hurried out into a flat white landscape, pleased to find it as still and quiet as death. Days like this had bothered her back at the station, too much ice, too many clouds, too much endless nothing, but perspective was everything. With a laugh, she turned to Ford. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah?” He eyed her quizzically before sliding his dark goggles into place.
She packed up her sled, feeling lighter than she had since this trip began, stepped into her skis, and lined herself up behind Ford’s sled. Just before he zipped up the contents, her eyes caught on the sample tubes, stowed like five enormous, sharp-ended sausages, gleaming in the dim light. All that buoyancy sank in a fraction of a second.
What the hell was it about those things that made everyone so crazy? What about that virus was worth so much time and money and effort? What was worth so many lives?
Chapter 27
Day 6—209 Miles to Volkov Station—16 Days of Food Remaining
Coop heard them again the next day.
With the storm out of the way and the cloud cover almost gone, those assholes were up there for the second day in a row, searching for them. Had they somehow spotted them and figured out that they were headed to Volkov, instead of the more obvious South African station? Part of Coop’s reasoning in choosing Volkov had been to avoid pursuit, but if they’d been spotted before the storm, then that advantage was gone.
Given their slow pace, they needed all the advantages they could get.
Just thinking about Angel behind him sent a rush of anxiety through him. He couldn’t hide or cover or protect her. All he could do was push himself more, go faster, get to shelter sooner, and make sure she kept up. And she was keeping up remarkably well.
He couldn’t have wished for a better partner.
He did, however, wish they weren’t such easy targets.
His muscles strained as he pushed, his knees tense and weak, his face burning from the wind, his eyes barely open, even behind the dark goggles’ protection. The snow blindness would get worse if the sun came all the way out.
What they needed right now was another flat white day like yesterday, not a clear sky. It would force the plane to land. Although any pilot crazy enough to fly a small plane in winter here might not worry about things like an overcast sky… No. Flying in flat white was suicide, as a pilot couldn’t differentiate between ground and sky.
They had to hurry, dammit. These ten-mile days would kill them.
He turned to check on Angel and stumbled. The ice behind him was absolutely empty as far as the eye could see. Disbelief made his brain stop working as he stared at the place where she should be. How many times had he glanced back in the last six days? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Under the harsh sun, against the beating wind, through ice and clouds and every other type of weather they’d traveled with, she’d been the only constant.
Her absence was wrong, like a missing puzzle piece.
He swung left—nothing but choppy, water-like surface. He swayed, as lost at sea as a sailor looking in vain for a familiar lighthouse. Was he hallucinating? Where was she?
Shit.Shit.
He swung back, frantic, her name already out of his mouth, once, twice. “Angel! Ang—”
“Yeah?”
She stood beside him, as if she’d grown tired of following him and decided to keep pace. He shook his head and blinked at the puffy red-and-black shape of her, intimately familiar now.
The sun turned the smooth horizon rough, gave it details and shadows and depth. Through a cold, wheezing breathing cycle, he focused on those variations—followed snakelike shapes to their abrupt ends, moved from one short series of lines to a larger pointed protrusion. Once he’d steadied himself, he focused back on her. Behind her, the sky was clearing to a bright, crystalline blue, the sun breaking through to limn her the way it did the dips and divots in the ice. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Good.” He put his hands to his face and exhaled hard.
“How about you, Ford? You seem—”
Annoyance bubbled over, replacing the anxiety from moments before. “Why do you call me that?”
