But she would be scared.
Later.
She would be scared to death.
2
APPROACHING OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
The DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft lurched and rattled with a violent sensation of falling that startled Zak from his book. He had been trying to lose himself in the adventure story in front of him, but it was becoming harder and harder as they flew further into the storm.
Everything about the plane was ‘no-frills’ and rickety. Half the interior was lined with fold-down seats – six on either side, facing each other – and the rest was filled with steel cargo containers secured with nylon webbing straps. The exposed metal walls and floor were freezing to the touch.
The plane shook again, dropping in the thin air, and Zak’s heart dropped with it. Cold and fear were all he could feel now. His hands were shaking so much there was no point trying to read. Even the latest Jackson Jones adventure couldn’t take his mind off it, so he closed his book and stared at the cover.
Jackson Jones and the Ghosts of the Antarctic.
In the picture, two brave adventurers were standing in front of a jagged cave cut into a wall of ice. One of the adventurers was Jackson Jones himself; wearing a heavy orange parka similar to the one Zak was wearing right now. Jackson was also dressed in black windproof trousers, and had a black hood over his head. He was stepping back in surprise, with one arm raised, brandishing a vicious ice axe. Following close behind was a boy dressed the same. The cave was dark, with a clawed hand gripping one side of it, as if something was about to leap out. From the black shadows inside, a pair of glowing red eyes glared at the approaching adventurers. But Jackson Jones and his companion weren’t afraid. Jackson Jones was never afraid – something Zak Reeves wished he could say about himself.
Zak held the book flat and jammed both hands between his knees.
The ancient aircraft carried just five of them, including the pilot – the only five people crazy enough to be flying out to Antarctica in the middle of the worst storm in years.
Sitting opposite, Zak’s sister May was also holding a book – one of those relationship books she always read – but Zak could tell she wasn’t concentrating on it. She looked ill at the best of times, with all the pale make-up and black eyeliner she liked to wear, but she looked even worse right now. The colour had drained from her face and her brow was scrunched into a deep scowl. Resting on her thigh, the index and middle fingers of her right hand were crossed.
May was fifteen – three years older than Zak – and she was one of those kids at school who was proud to be different. ‘Why fit in when you can stand out?’ she always said. May liked to wear black. In fact, she loved to wear black. Black jeans (ripped, of course), black T-shirt with either a band logo or a picture from a horror film on it, and a black leather jacket. She had three piercings in each ear – Mum wouldn’t let her have her nose or lip pierced – and she darkened her eyes with thick eyeliner. Her black hair usually hung down and hid most of her face, and she could scowl like a champion. May called herself an ‘emo-punk-half-Chinese-horror-fan’, and she was unlike anybody else at West Allen School; she ‘customized’ her uniform with badges, covered her books in pictures cut from horror film magazines, and carried a backpack with The Evil Dead printed on it. She had a handful of friends but most of the other kids thought she was weird, and kept out of her way. One girl in particular was just plain mean because May wasn’t like her and her friends. Vanessa Morton-Chandler said nasty things to May and spread rumours behind her back. May usually just made some kind of sarcastic remark, gave Vanessa a withering look and did a good job of pretending it didn’t bother her, but Zak knew it hurt her when they were unkind. That’s why the black clothes and the leather were important to May; they were her armour.
Zak would never admit it to her, but he thought his sister was cool.
When she caught sight of him watching her, May brushed away the wisps of straight black hair falling over her dark eyes. She tightened her bow-shaped mouth and nodded once.
Beside her, Dad took off his glasses and winked at Zak. ‘You OK, my young Padawan?’ The words came out as a wispy cloud of warm breath in the cold air. ‘Quite an adventure we’re having, eh?’ He pinched the bridge of his nose, then put his glasses back on. ‘And we haven’t even got there yet. You’ll have a good story to tell your friends when you get back.’
‘I’d rather tell them about the sun in St Lucia,’ May said. ‘Can’t we just turn around and—’
‘We come up on it now.’ The pilot’s thick Russian accent crackled over the intercom system. ‘You will be seeing Outpost Zero at any moment.’
The plane shook again and Zak gritted his teeth, trying not to think about dying. He’d had enough of thinking about that, and he was sick of it. It would be kind of funny, though, if after everything the doctors had said, he ended up dying in a plane crash. Funny strange, that is, not funny ha ha. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that; all of them dying together in some kind of horrible accident. It was supposed to be just him, slowly fading away in a hospital bed, the disease eating away at his brain. Zak was supposed to leave them behind, so he was sure that today they were all going to be fine. It was just turbulence. In a storm. Over Antarctica. No problem. Nothing to worry about.
Yeah, right.
He glanced at Mum, sitting beside him with her lips clamped so tight it made the tiny zigzag scar just below her nose go white. The scar had come from the time she fell off her bike when she was growing up in Hong Kong – Zak had heard the story a million times – and when it went white, it was always a dead giveaway that she was either worried or annoyed. The usual twinkle in her brown eyes was dull too, and when she smoothed her dark hair back from her narrow face, she forced a smile at him. ‘Be there soon.’
Zak turned to watch through the window behind him. On the other side of the small circle of glass, the propeller was a blur. Beyond that, there was nothing. Just black. No light at all. Zak knew that when the sun had dipped below the horizon at Outpost Zero three weeks ago, the people who lived there were prepared for a long night. It would be months before the sun would rise again. If the sky was clear, Zak guessed there would have been stars, but for now the storm smothered everything.
Dad had told Zak that Outpost Zero was in a natural dent in the landscape – like the top of a long-dead volcano. It was a kind of a shallow bowl, with low mountains to the west and a wall of ice to the east, before the world dropped away into The Chasm. But from what Zak could see, they might as well have been over London – or Mars, for that matter – because there was nothing to see but black. Or, as May would say, there was literally nothing to see but black.
‘We are heading down,’ the pilot said. ‘Into the storm. It will be bumpy. Ve-ry bumpy.’ As soon as the words left his mouth, the aircraft lurched to one side and dropped.
Zak’s insides squashed up into his chest, and his bum lifted away from the torn padding of the seat. The safety belt dug into his waist, keeping him from tumbling into the cabin, then he thumped back down as the whole plane shook like a washing machine on full spin.
‘You see.’ Dima laughed. ‘What I tell you? Bumpy!’