Dad tapped the image of the Control module, the first building off the East Tunnel, and looked back at Mum. ‘You work on communications; you’re better with that stuff than I am.’
‘Nice to hear you admit it,’ Mum said.
‘You’ve already been in Medical, but check it again. And make sure you check the Science building – see if you can find anyone. I’ll take the West and North Tunnels, and when we’re done, we’ll meet back in Control.’ He tapped the map again. ‘They have to be here somewhere.’
‘OK, you come with me.’ Mum touched May’s shoulder. ‘Zak, you stay here with Dima while Dad checks the—’
‘No way. I’m not staying here. I’ll go with Dad.’
‘Is that a good idea?’ Mum asked. ‘Do you feel OK?’
‘Yes. Why do I have to keep telling you? I’m fine, Mum. No one ever listens.’
Mum paused. ‘OK. You go with Dad.’ She turned towards the East Tunnel. ‘May and I will go this way.’
‘Ooh,’ May said. ‘A girl team and a boy team. That’s very modern.’
Mum stopped her. ‘Let’s not go there, May, this isn’t a competition. It’s about getting out of here.’
‘What about me?’ Dima sounded half out of it. ‘Who do I go with?’
‘You stay right where you are,’ Mum told him. ‘The last thing we want is you falling over again.’
‘I am starting to feel better after my healthy meal.’ He raised a hand holding the partially eaten Snickers.
‘Good, because I’m sure we’ll need you later.’
‘Aye aye, captain.’ He saluted, took another bite, and sank back into the sofa.
‘Come on then.’ Dad nudged Zak. ‘Let’s get this done.’ He raised a hand to the others. ‘See you in a minute.’
Zak followed Dad, pausing by the West Tunnel entrance. Dad hefted the torch from his left hand into his right. He was trying not to show it, but Zak could tell he was nervous. Zak was too. They were about to make their way further into the base, and they had no idea what they were going to find.
‘You ready?’ Dad asked.
‘Sure,’ Zak replied. ‘Are you?’
Dad pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘No.’
10
OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
The West Tunnel was a long, windowless corridor with pale blue walls and a pale blue floor. White light flooded from spots embedded in the ceiling, giving it a clinical atmosphere.
The dull ached prodded behind Zak’s right eye again. It nudged him, reminding him of hospitals and how much more time he would have to spend in them. He checked Dad wasn’t watching, and pressed the palm of his hand against his eye, waggling it about, trying to get rid of the ache.
‘You OK, dude?’ Dad stopped.
Dude? Zak cringed. It was so awkward when Dad tried to be cool. Dad was tall and lean with the beginning of ‘middle-aged spread’ as he called it – or a ‘pot belly’ as Mum called it. He had short silver hair that was thinning on top, and was partial to brown corduroy trousers and brown shoes. He sometimes wore a jacket with elbow patches – like Zak’s geography teacher – and in the summer, he was even known to wear socks and sandals. Zak loved his dad, but he didn’t believe he had ever been cool.
‘Everything OK?’ Dad asked again.
‘Yeah.’ Zak blinked hard. ‘Don’t you start.’
‘OK…’ Dad watched him. ‘It’s just that you seemed a bit spooked when we arrived. And I guess the blood made you queasy, so I was wondering if—’
‘I’m fine, Dad.’
Fine, fine, fine. Zak was sick of telling people he was fine. Why did they never listen?
‘All right. Well… I guess we’ll check the sleeping quarters first,’ Dad said. ‘Maybe they’re all taking a well-earned nap.’
At the far end of the tunnel, Dad stood with his hand hovering over the door-control button, and grinned at Zak as if he was ashamed for being nervous. He pressed it, and when the door to the living quarters hissed open, he raised the torch like he was expecting trouble.
But the short corridor beyond was empty. Dad let out his breath and switched on a light that flickered once, twice, then illuminated a central aisle with three large, round windows in the ceiling. In the summer months, light would flood through those windows, but for now Antarctica was in darkness twenty-four hours a day.
On either side of the corridor, five doors gave access to the separate quarters. They were all open.
‘Hello?’ Dad’s voice wavered slightly.
No one replied.
Of course no one replied. There’s no one here.
Entering the corridor, Zak noticed more of the broken shards glistening on the floor. ‘Just like in The Hub,’ he whispered.
Dad considered the fragments before turning to the first door on his left. ‘Let’s see if anyone’s here.’
The small, basic living quarters were made up of a tiny sitting room, a bathroom that wasn’t much bigger than the kind Zak had seen on aeroplanes, and two narrow bedrooms with bunk beds and built-in wardrobes. There was a handful of paperbacks on the shelf in the sitting room, and a few photos in frames on the wall. In one photo, a family of four stood on a snowy mountainside, wearing skis and smiling for the camera. In another, two of them – Mum and daughter, Zak guessed from the likeness – were posing in front of Outpost Zero, where the sky was bright blue in contrast to the whiteness of the ice. Other photos showed the son holding some kind of certificate in front of him, and the daughter, about the same age as May, dressed in a school jumper.
In one of the bedrooms, there was a single piece of white paper stuck to the wall. In simple black lettering it said ‘Be Prepared’ and right below that were the words ‘Improvise, adapt and overcome.’
‘Come on,’ Dad said. ‘This place is empty, let’s check the others.’
So Zak took one last glance and followed Dad along the corridor checking the rest of the living quarters. Each one was identical in design, and each one was brightened up with a few personal items. In the last room, however, the contents of the shelves were scattered on the floor, and the chairs were overturned. Tiny black fragments lay everywhere among the personal belongings.
‘What happened in here?’ Zak said. ‘Looks like there was a fight or something.’
Dad raised his eyebrows and shook his head. When he turned to Zak, he smiled and said, ‘Nobody home, I guess. Let’s check the—’
‘I know what you’re doing. Pretending you’re not worried. Pretending everything’s OK.’
‘Everything is OK,’ Dad said. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this. You let me and Mum worry about it. It’s not your job to worry about things like this.’
Zak glanced round the last room again, his gaze coming to rest on a bobble head figure of Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy lying on the floor among all those weird black fragments. ‘So where do you think they are?’
‘Well, they have to be somewhere. People don’t just disappear.’
‘And what about the MRV? And the plane? How did that happen?’
Dad shook his head. ‘The storm, I guess.’
‘The storm? No way. The wind couldn’t do that.’
‘So what do you think it was?’
Zak thought about polar bears that shouldn’t be there, and ghostly explorers, but he shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know.’