Chapter Ten
Streams of Whisky
It's autumn, and although the sun hasn't quite left for good – there's another week to go until true Polar night – it no longer rises. Simon stands in the doorway, huddled in his parka, staring uneasily out at the dim twilight. He's hardly aware of the husky at his feet.
The sky is a deep cobalt blue, streaked with pink wisps of cloud. In the distance the ice-capped mountains shine, lit from below by the sun beneath the horizon. It's beautiful and terrifying all at once, because he knows what it means: one hundred days where the sun will not rise, and two months of that will be spent in total darkness.
The mountain casts an inky-black shadow upon the snow. It seems to stretch towards them, threatening to engulf the base. It looks almost like a living thing, creeping across the expanse of white, eager and ancient and hungry.
Simon closes his eyes and he's a child again, a frightened boy screaming for his mother in the night.
The dog whines, glancing behind them. Simon can't tear his gaze away from the streak of light on the horizon. From the remnants of the sun.
Faye comes up behind him, holding a glass of wine in each hand.
"You okay?" she asks, and he feels like laughing and crying, because how could he possibly be okay?
Instead he forces a smile, shivers inside his parka. "I'm starting to feel like Ned Stark." She raises her eyebrows, not getting the reference. Right, he'd forgotten she hasn't seen or read Game of Thrones."Winter is coming."
"Oh." She sighs, hands him a glass of wine. "That."
He doesn't take a sip. The liquid looks too dark, almost like blood.
How can he explain it to her, why he's so afraid of the coming darkness. He was alone for a year before the dog found him and the winter was the worst. The darkness, whole and absolute, with long stretches of no contact from Hammond. He'd had nothing to do, nothing to hear but his own voice, increasingly frightened, increasingly strained.
And the longer it went on, the stronger he started to feel the tug of hopelessness, the urge to take his gun and give himself mercy. Put an end to the loneliness and the silence, once and for all.
There's something primal about the darkness, the lack of light. With the sun below the horizon, the shadows are creeping closer. And these shadows have teeth.
He had thought it would help having Faye here, but he's not sure that it does. Despite the long months they've been together, the hours they've spent talking, sometimes he might as well be alone. She's still holding back from him, still keeping her distance and her secrets, and when Simon is on edge like this, the paranoia is starting to creep back in.
He feels like he's breaking up around the edges, that maybe she's not real, just another hallucination. A spirit of the Arctic who has taken on female form to lead him out into the empty wilderness of ice and snow.
He knows it's madness, knows it's just his fear talking. Faye is as real as she is. She's frightened, and vulnerable, and he's half in love with her, but when he looks at her now all he can feel is the dizzy sensation of standing at the edge of the crevasse between them.
Because he's tired. He hasn't slept properly in weeks. Maybe longer. And he's not sure he can do it any more.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Faye asks. She places her hand on his arm, and he has to fight the instinct to jerk away from her. He feels a hollow sensation within his ribs, a dull throbbing in his temple. The daydreams he's been nurturing are bitter and mocking: phantoms in flimsy paper masks. He slowly draws back from her.
"I said I'm fine."
Hurt flickers behind her eyes. Simon swallows, glances once more at the glow of the sun at the horizon, and then he turns and goes back inside.
He can't concentrate on his work. Can't summon the motivation to sit and try to contact Operation Bitemark. Instead he drinks and watches the sky, as if somehow he could stop the turn of the seasons through sheer will alone. But the longer he watches, the darker the sky becomes, and soon there isn't even the glimmer of twilight or the smear of light along the horizon to prove that the sun still exists.
Only darkness and the deadening weight of snow.
Faye goes out every day now, slipping out into the night no matter what the weather. He watches her sometimes over the monitors, as she walks the circumference of the base, her head bent against the biting snow. Sometimes she stops, and stares out into the distance, and he wishes he could see her face.
It's as if they've slipped back in time to the days when she was afraid of him. She watches him with that same cautious wariness in her eyes, as if she knows she can't trust him. Sometimes, when he's drunk and angry and afraid, Simon wonders if she isn't right.
Whatever it is between them, the friendship they've stacked up like a cairn of precariously balanced rocks, is starting to crumble, and he hates himself because he knows that he is the only one to blame.
The light from the door spills out onto the snow. Faye is staring up at the moon, her arms crossed, her hood back. Snowflakes gleam in her hair, and Simon's heart aches.
What am I doing? he wonders. Why am I doing this to myself?
He follows her gaze. The moon is fat and full, a silvery circle, surrounded by a gleaming corona of light. It gleams in the star-scattered sky, and beneath it the land looks dead, a patchwork of shadows and darkness. It's eerily beautiful but all he can think is how many places there are for the monsters to hide.
"It's supposed to mean bad weather," Faye says. She doesn't look at him; she hardly ever looks at him these days, and when she does, he wishes she wouldn't.
And she's right. The storm comes on the next day, a shrill, howling fury that goes on for days. Snow piles up at the windows and the doors, and together they shovel it away, their hands stiff and numb from the cold. They work in silence, barely looking at one another, working until they're drenched with frozen sweat beneath their parkas. And the next day they do it all again, the snow pelting their faces, blinding them. All the while, Simon is aware of the creeping shadow of the mountain. It seems to edge closer when he's not looking.
It's almost a relief that he can't sleep because of the endless thunder of the storm. When he sleeps, he dreams, sweat-soaked nightmares that leave him weeping and tangled in the bedclothes. The dog returns, slinking back, and he guesses he has Faye to thank for that. Even so it doesn't help him sleep, so he sits up and drinks whisky and watches the rime of snow forming on the window-panes, shrouding the darkness outside like a curtain.
He doesn't realise he's crying until he looks up and sees Faye standing in the doorway, wrapped in a blanket. Her hair is loose, spilling over her shoulders. She looks drained, exhausted, her eyes sunken and dark with shadows. "Couldn't sleep either," she says. It's not a question.
He lifts the glass, more tears burning trails down his cheeks. He can't stop them, and he's not sure if he even cares any more. "Whisky helps," he lies.
She stands there for a long time, staring at the window, listening to a flurry of snow striking angrily against the glass. For a moment, he thinks she's going to leave, and he suddenly, desperately wants to keep her with him. He licks his chapped lips, and tilts his head towards the sofa. "Join me?" He's ashamed to hear a note of begging in his voice.
For a long while, he doesn't think she will. Then she comes slowly into the room, her bare feet padding on the concrete as if she barely feels the cold. His gaze fixes on her left foot, the foreshortened toes she's lost to frostbite. She sinks down beside him, lifts the blanket to wrap around his shoulder.
They share the mug of whisky, passing it back and forth like a chalice. Where her bare arm rests against his, her skin is cold. He studies the dark shadows and the lace-like traceries of wrinkles around her eyes, wondering how long it's been since she last slept without nightmares. Whether either of them will ever sleep easy again.
"How did you get through last winter?" he asks, because he can't listen to the storm any longer. "Did you spend it on the boat?"
She sighs, and at first he thinks she isn't going to answer, that she's going to sidestep the question like she always has before. Only then she turns her head to look at him. "We holed up in an old trappers' cabin, waited it out."
"'We?'"
Her eyes are dark. "Lars and me. The Arctic Fox was his boat." And she sips the whisky, her expression unreadable.
Lars. The man in the video.
"Were the two of you..." He can't say it. The words catch in his throat. Faye isn't looking at him; she tops up the whisky with several of the miniatures. Holy shit. We're going to get drunk tonight. She isn't going to answer him, but he knows the answer. It's written in the flash of sorrow and regret that crosses her face. "Sorry," he says, feeling his cheeks burning. "None of my business."
She closes her eyes. "I wish this fucking storm would end."
"It will soon," he promises. He's been checking the weather satellite. "Another day or so. Least we're warm." He accepts the mug of whisky, takes a swig, feels it burning its way down his throat. "And I'm not alone. Not like last winter."
She takes a breath. "Last winter was the first time I ever killed a polar bear," she murmurs. "They came in with the pack ice, came close to the hut. Curious, I guess. One climbed on the roof and tried to rip out the chimney."
He listens, feeling cold. "Jesus."
"Lars taught me how to use the rifle. I'd never shot a gun before. But it was food, as long as we managed to finish them before they turned. Americans hunt a lot, right? You ever go hunting?"
He shrugs. "Dad took me and Matty a couple of times. I wasn't very good at it."
"Well, turns out I am. I never would have thought it, but I guess the threat of starvation is a powerful motivator. So that's how I spent most of last winter, sitting in the hut at the window, waiting for the bear to come close enough to get a clean shot, kill it outright without it turning. So we could eat. Since you asked. Mostly they were already dead, but we did get the odd live one to stave off death for a little while longer."
"Faye..." He trails off, not knowing what to say. He's had too much whisky; his head is reeling.
"The point is, I got through it. I survived." She reaches up, wipes a tear away from his cheek. "We'll get through this, Simon. I know maybe it doesn't feel like it at the moment, but this storm will pass and this winter will end."
"I know that."
"Do you? Sometimes I wonder."
He sighs, staring at the window. At the darkness. He's glad for the lattice of ice that crusts the glass; it means that he can't see if there's anything out there, staring in. "I just..." He hesitates. "I feel like something bad's gonna happen." She raises her eyebrows and he makes an impatient gesture with his hand. "I know, I know. The apocalypse. But something else. Something worse."
"Like we're being watched?"
"Yeah, exactly." He lifts the whisky to his lips, but stops, staring down at it. Suddenly he's not sure he wants any more. "Ah, don't listen to me. I'm talking out my ass. It's just the darkness. And the dreams. And this damn storm."
"And the whisky?"
He grins, ruefully. "Yeah, that too." He pauses for a moment. "Faye, will you tell me one thing?"
"Mmm..."
"This Lars guy?" he says, and she stiffens beside him. "You, uh... you didn't eat him, did you?"
There is a long moment of silence. Then she bursts out laughing. "You mean am I a cannibal?"
"Hey, it happens. Wish it didn't, but it does. Just, if you are, I'd appreciate a heads up."
"You got me," she says, smiling. "Total cannibal. I'm just waiting until I can get you fattened up."
And now Simon laughs, for the first time in weeks. For the first time since the onset of the darkness. "Yeah?" he says. "Well, good luck with that."