“Rutkowski and some of the contractors are down there now.”
Hayes looked over at Sharkey and she was spearing him with those blue eyes of hers and they seemed to be saying to him, this is probably unrelated. But already Hayes was thinking otherwise.
He walked over to one of the east windows, peering out into the claustrophobic darkness of an Antarctica winter’s day. Sheets of snow lifted, blowing through the compound in whirlwinds and torrents, engulfing the buildings and then retreating, backlit by pole lights and security lights whose illumination trembled and shook, casting wild shadows over the white. As the latest deluge played out, Hayes could see Hut #6 out there all by its lonesome, a tomb shrouded in ice.
“Anybody check the hut?” he said to Cutchen. “Gates’ hut?” Cutchen shook his head. “Why the hell would he be out there?” But Hayes didn’t say.
All he knew for sure was that he had left the door wide open when he left last night and now it looked to be closed.
16
Anybody could have closed it, Hayes was telling himself as they followed the guylines and drifted walkway out to Hut #6. Somebody could have passed, maybe one of the maintenance guys or somebody doing a little plowing early this morning.
Could have happened.
Yet, he didn’t believe it for a minute. The weather was bad . . . it hadn’t stopped snowing and gusting for three days now and the temperature was hanging low at a near-constant seventy below with wind chills pushing it down near a 100 below. In that kind of weather, you didn’t go out of your way looking for extra outside work. And just about everyone was steering clear of Hut #6 and what it contained now. Maybe if it was summer and there was light, but in this perpetual screaming blackness . . . no way. Even if someone saw the door swinging wide they would not have gone over there anymore than you would go into a graveyard at midnight because a vault door was left open and creaking.
Superstitious or not, there were limits to what you’d do.
Hayes was leading the charge, battened down in ECW’s, eyes wide behind his plastic goggles. Cutchen and Sharkey were behind him. All of them were gripping the guylines, feeling that wind trying to knock them down and sometimes lift them up, up, and away into the frozen night.
Hayes paused outside the door to the hut.
Yes, it was closed, all right. And he had a pretty good idea that the wind had had nothing to do with it. There was no point in looking in the snow for tracks because the wind erased them every ten minutes. Right now, there was a three-foot drift pushed up against the door and Hayes had to kick it away with his boots so they could get it open.
Then he undid the latch, grinned secretly at the length of chain and Masterlock dangling from it, and pulled it open, feeling that warmth coming out at them.
You step in there and they’ll eat your mind down to the bone.
But Hayes stepped in and clicked on the lights and the others came in with him, Cutchen shutting the door behind them. They pulled off their mittens and goggles, smelling that room right away. After the ultra-fresh air on the walk over, the stench in the hut was offensive and roiling. It was a thick and vaporous green odor of rotting marshes and sun-bloated fish.
“God . . . what a smell,” Cutchen said. “Why in the hell would Gates let these things decay like this? They’re priceless.”
“Look,” Sharkey said.
Neither Hayes nor Cutchen had seen it, the angle of the wall blocking most of the lab except for that decaying, meaty mass on the table. But now they got a look.
“Meiner,” Cutchen said.
Yeah, it was Meiner, all right, missing no more. They would never know exactly what got into his head or what he’d been thinking and that was probably a good thing. For Meiner had decided to pull himself up a chair about four feet away from the thawed—and decaying—specimen and stare at it in the dark. Hayes had some ideas as to why, but he did not voice them. He just looked down at Meiner as the wind blew and the shack trembled and an uneasy silence hung thickly in the air.
“What . . . Jesus, what in the hell happened to him?” Cutchen wondered out loud, the color drained from his face.
Sharkey didn’t need to get very close to make her diagnosis. “Dead,” she said. “Probably four or five hours, I’d guess.”
“Dead,” Cutchen said as if it were some surprise. “Oh, Christ, he’s dead.”
And he was.
Just sitting there in that chair, reclined back in his parka, mittens still on. His big white boots were crossed over each other and his mittened hands laid primly in his lap. He looked rather peaceful until you saw his face, saw the way his mouth was contorted in a silent scream, dried blood running from his lips and nostrils like old wine stains. And his eyes . . . just hollow purple cavities with clots of trailing gelatinous pulp splashed down his cheeks like slimy egg whites.
“Holy fuck,” Cutchen said as if he was just now getting it. “That snot . . . those are his eyes.”
He turned away and Hayes followed suit.
Sharkey didn’t care much for what she was seeing either, but medical curiosity and the upcoming post she would have to perform made it mandatory that she belly up to the bar and drink her fill.
Cutchen looked like he was going to be sick, but had changed his mind. He was looking at the mummy on the table, scowling, not liking it very much. Those glaring red eyes at the ends of the fleshy yellow stalks were still extended and wide open.
“I wouldn’t stare at it too long,” Hayes warned him. “Give you bad dreams.”
Cutchen barked a short laugh and looked away. “Crazy goddamn thing. Looks like it was thrown together by some Hollywood special effects people, you know? Reminds me of those bug-eyed monsters Gary Larson draws.”
Hayes was thinking more along the lines of Bernie Wrightson, but he kept that to himself. He was getting good at keeping things to himself. While Sharkey gave Meiner the once over, he stood there trying to fill his head with nonsense so the thing would not try and get at his mind again. Finally, he gave up, opened himself up, but there was nothing. The thing was dead and he had to wonder if he wasn’t going insane. There was nothing in his head but the neutral humming of his neurons at low ebb. Nothing else, praise God.
The door opened and LaHune came in with St. Ours and a couple of contractors. He looked from the mummy to Hayes, wrinkled his nose at the stink and stripped his goggles off. As yet, he hadn’t seen the body.
He shook a finger at Hayes, casting him a feral look. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing out here? This hut was locked and chained, it’s off-limits to anyone but myself and Dr. Gates’ team. You don’t have the authorization to be out here.”
St. Ours flashed Hayes a little smile as if saying, yeah, good old La-Hune, ain’t he just the King Shit himself?
Sharkey looked like she was about to say something, but Hayes stepped forward, something in him beginning to boil, to seethe. “I made my own fucking authorization, LaHune. They’re called boltcutters. But I’m glad you showed up, because I want your high and mighty white ass to see something.”
“Jimmy . . . “ Sharkey began.
But Hayes wasn’t listening. His eyes were locked with those of La-Hune and neither man was breaking the staring contest. They faced off like a couple male rattlesnakes ready to go at it over a juicy female.
“I want you out of here,” LaHune said. “Now.”
“Kiss my ass, chief,” Hayes told him and before anyone could stop him or really even think of doing so, Hayes took two quick steps and grabbed LaHune by the arm. And hard enough to almost yank that arm right off. He took hold of him and yanked him further into the hut until he could see Meiner plain as day.
LaHune shook himself free . . . or tried to. “Meiner . . . good God.”