“The way this wind is breaking? There are storms brewing ahead, somewhere beyond the ridges. The weather here is unpredictable. If we don’t get cover and fast, we might not be around long enough for you four to start digging up bones. Get ready for what’s coming.”
“But what
is
coming?” Dogan asked. Gauthier laughed.
“A storm, man. A storm.”
In the time it took to tell them, thick smoke-like clouds had rolled across the clear sky, casting a long shadow across the top of the world. Somehow, from somewhere, the men found the energy to erect their shelter, and Wendell silently admitted it felt good to have Dogan as an ally for once.
The storm arrived as the last peg was hammered in place. The five of them huddled beneath the tarpaulin tent, one of the tall water-carved rocks acting as both anchor and partial shield from the winds. Inside the enclosed space their heat quickly escalated, but Gauthier warned them to keep their coats on in case the wind wrenched the tent from the ground.
Strangely, Isaacs was the most at peace during the ordeal. While Dogan and Wendell held down the edges of the tent, their knuckles white, Isaacs had his eyelids closed and head tilted back to rest on his shoulders. He sat cross-legged, his body moving with the slightest sway. Wendell thought he also heard him humming, but convinced himself it was only the wind bending around the sheltering rocks.
They stayed hunkered for hours, wind howling outside, pulling at the thin barrier of canvas standing between them. The sound of it rippling back and forth was a terrifying thunder, and even after hours enduring it, the noise did not become any less so. Each clap was an icy knife in Wendell’s spine, and as he shook under the tremendous stress he used every ounce of will he had within him to maintain his rationality and tamp down his fear. Deep breaths, slow, long, continued until the knot inside his chest slackened. It was only when he felt he could look again at his fellow captives without screaming that he dared. Isaacs remained blissfully distant, his mind cracked, and he was simply gone from it to another place. Gauthier and Dr. Hanson spoke among themselves, planning and debating the next course of action, all at a volume that was drowned by the howls and ripples. Only Dogan noticed Wendell, and the scowl across his face suggested that whatever truce the circumstances had negotiated for them was fleeting at best. He stared directly at Wendell with a stubbly, twisted face and did not bother to look away when Wendell caught him, as though he wore his disgust with pride. Wendell took a breath to speak and tasted the most noxious air. Dogan shook his twisted face, but it was no use; the fetid odor filled their lungs. Wendell covered his nose and mouth with his gloved hand. Whatever it was, it was sickly and bitter and smelled not unlike dead fish.
Outside there was a long sorrowful howl that sounded so near their shelter that Wendell prayed desperately it was only the wind echoing between the stones.
Sleep did wonders for Wendell’s demeanor, and when he emerged from the battered shelter a few hours later he stepped into a world canopied by a cloudless sky punctuated at the horizon by a single glowing orb. Gauthier was already awake, and Wendell found him prepping their equipment, beads of moisture frozen in his unkempt beard. He did not look pleased. Something was wrong.
It was only once outside the tent Wendell noticed it—something in the post-storm air, some excess of electricity, or maybe a remnant of the foul odor that stained his clothes. Whatever it was, it was troubling.
Dr. Hanson emerged a few minutes afterward with an eagerness to meet the glaciers head-on.
“You’re up early. Good man! Why don’t you hand me one of those coffees?”
Isaacs, too, joined them, and when the thick-set Dogan finally emerged from the tent, the look on his face upon seeing the rest of the team gathered made Wendell certain any ground gained the night before had been lost. Dogan was the same man he’d always been, and Wendell did his best to deal with it. He was frankly too tired to keep caring.
“After we’ve made our breakfast,” Dr. Hanson said, blind to the turmoil of the students around him, “let’s start our search for some ichthyosaur fossils. Right now, we are most concerned with locating those.”
“Dr. Hanson?” Isaacs said.
“We should start at those ridges.” Dogan pointed into the distance opposite, where a slightly elevated ring circled the land. “Water would have receded soonest from those areas, leaving the earliest and most complete fossils for us to find.”
“Good thinking, Dogan. I applaud that.”
“Dr. Hanson?” Isaacs repeated.
Dogan may have gotten the Doctor’s attention, but Wendell was not going to be outdone.
“Maybe, Dr. Hanson, we should use a grid pattern closer to where Dr. Lansing and his students made their discovery? I mean, it makes sense to me to start with a known quantity and radiate from there.”
Dogan shot Wendell a look, and Dr. Hanson laughed at them. “Both good ideas, men, but don’t worry. I already have a plan. You see, based on my expectations, the fossil—”
“Dr. Hanson?”
Hanson sighed.
“Please don’t interrupt me, Isaacs.”
“Dr. Hanson? Can you come look at this?” Isaacs was kneeling by the tent, staring into the ground.
Immediately, Wendell was certain it was another finger. Another pale white digit trapped beneath the ice. Or perhaps it was a whole hand. Something else lost for which there could be no reasonable explanation. Dogan approached, as did Gauthier, both alongside Dr. Hanson. Wendell remained where he was, worried about what they would find, though their faces suggested it wasn’t anything as mortally frightening as a severed finger. But it was also clear no one knew if it was far worse. Wendell hesitated but approached Dr. Hanson, his heavy boots crunching the ice underfoot. When he reached the four men, any conversation between them had withered.
Something impossible was caught in the tangle of boot prints surrounding the tent: an additional set of tracks in the crushed and broken snow. They differed from the team’s in size—they were smaller, hardly larger than a child’s, and each long toe of the bare foot could clearly be traced.
“Is it possible some kind of animal made them?”
“No,” Dr. Hanson said. “These are too close to hominid.”
“They
can’t
be, though. Can they?”
“I thought this island was deserted.”
“More importantly, what was it doing standing here in front of our tent?”
“I don’t like this,” Isaacs said. For once, Wendell agreed with him.
“Dr. Hanson, what’s going on?”
“I wish I knew, Wendell. Gauthier, what do you think?”
Gauthier looked at them over his thick beard. It was the first time Wendell had seen puzzlement in the pilot’s eyes. Gauthier looked at each of them in turn as they waited for him to offer an explanation, but he had none to offer. Instead, he turned away with a furrowed brow.
“Where is everything?”
Wendell didn’t initially understand what he meant, not until he walked into the center of the camp. He looked back and forth and into the distance, then pushed the insulated hood off his head.
“It’s all gone. Everything.”
It had happened while they slept. Someone or something had come into the camp and stolen all their food and most of their supplies.
Things became scrambled. The men spoke all at once, worried about what had happened and what it might mean. Wendell was no different, a manic desperation for answers taking hold. Dr. Hanson did his best to calm them all, but the red rims around his eyes made it clear he too was shaken.
“I don’t understand it,” he repeated. “There aren’t supposed to be any visitors here beyond us.”
“It looks as if you were wrong. There
is
someone here. Someone who’s been following us.”
It sounded crazy, and Wendell fought to keep from falling down that rabbit hole. Perversely, Dogan was the one Wendell looked to for strength, and only because he could imagine nothing worse than failing apart in front of him. Isaacs on the other hand suffered no such worries. He was nearly incapacitated by terror.
“We can’t stay here. Didn’t you guys hear it? Last night? That muffled creaking? And the crunch—I thought it was something else. I thought it had to be. It couldn’t have been footsteps, but all I see on the ground are thousands of them, and all our stuff has vanished. We can’t stay. We have to go. We have to go before it’s too late.”
“Calm down. Nobody’s going anywhere,” Dr. Hanson said. “This expedition is a one-time event. It took all the grant money to send us here. If we don’t bring back something, we will never return to Melville Island.”
“Good,” Isaacs said, his whole body shaking. “We shouldn’t be here. There’s something wrong.”
Dr. Hanson scoffed, but Wendell wasn’t certain he agreed. Dogan certainly seemed as though he didn’t, but said nothing. After the journey they’d taken and what they’d seen, they had to trust Dr. Hanson knew what to do.
But what he did was turn to Gauthier for an answer, only to receive none. The pilot was more interested in sizing up Isaacs. When he finally spoke, it startled all of them. Isaacs almost screamed.
“The kid is right. We can’t stay here. Even if we wanted to. Our supplies and rations are gone. We wouldn’t last more than a few days.”
Dr. Hanson shook his head. Wendell could see he was frustrated. Scared, tired, and frustrated.
“I told you: we can’t go back. This is it. There’s no time to spare, not even a few days. Not if we’re to complete our tasks in the window. We have to stay here.”
“Do we
all
need to be here, Doctor?” Dogan asked. His voice wavered with uncertainty.
Dr. Hanson hesitated a moment. “No,” he said, “I expect not. At least, not all of us.”
Dogan looked directly at Wendell. Wendell swallowed, outsmarted, and prepared himself for the inevitable. Instead, Dogan surprised him.
“Send Gauthier back to replenish our supplies while we stay here and work. It’s only a few days. We can hold out that long, but we can’t go on forever without food.”
“Maybe Isaacs should join him,” Wendell added, nodding when Dogan looked over. “He sounds on the verge of cracking, and for his sake as well as ours he should be off this rock if he does.”
“Yes, we should go. Can we go? Can we?” Isaacs looked ready to swallow Gauthier. His bug-eyed face was slick and pallid, and Wendell wondered if Isaacs was too sick to travel. Then he wondered if it might be worse if he stayed.
Dr. Hanson did not seem entirely convinced. None of them did. None but Isaacs. Wendell had to admit, thinking about the strange footprints in the snow outside the tent, he wasn’t sure if he’d rather be the one leaving.
“Maybe we should vote?” Dogan said.
“No point,” Gauthier said. “I’m leaving. The kid can come if he wants.”
Isaacs looked as if he were going to dance. Hanson nodded solemnly while Dogan said nothing. Wendell wasn’t sure what he felt.
They split what little food they had left among them before Gauthier and Isaacs loaded their packs and left. There were six energy bars, a bag of peanuts, and four flasks of water. The two men took only half a bar each—as little as they could to get them back to the landing strip while Wendell, Dogan, and Dr. Hanson kept the rest to help them last until the plane returned.
“I want you to get back here as soon as you can,” Dr. Hanson said. “We can’t afford to be down this many men for long.”
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Gauthier said, then handed Dr. Hanson a small leather bag. “Take this. In case of emergency.”
Dr. Hanson looked in the bag and shook his head.
The two men waved at them as they started back—Isaacs nearly bouncing on the ice, while Gauthier’s gait remained resolutely determined. They passed the tall, smooth rocks without trouble, and the crunch of their boots on the icy snow faded quickly once they were out of sight. The three remaining men stood in uncomfortable silence. Wendell worried they had made a grave mistake.
“I’m sure they’ll be back before we know it.” Dr. Hanson tried to sound upbeat and reassuring; Wendell wondered if he was as unconvinced as he sounded. “But in the interim, we have the equipment, and we’re at the primary site. I know the situation is not as fortunate as we would have liked, but let’s see how much we can get done before Gauthier gets back. We are here for another three days, so let’s take the time to gather the information necessary to salvage this expedition.”
The three of them trekked out from the base camp on Dr. Hanson’s suggestion despite all they’d seen, right into the bleakness of Melville Island. Trapped, they needed something to occupy their minds, distract them from disturbing sights like the severed finger, like the worrying sea of bodies that had mysteriously surrounded them as they slept. The only thing the three could do was resume their search for the elusive evidence of ichthyosaurs in the Arctic Ocean. They spent what hours remained in the day scouting those locations Dr. Hanson highlighted, turning over rocks, chipping through ice and permafrost, doing their best without tools, a researcher, and a pilot. And with each hour that passed they discovered nothing, no sign of the ichthyosaurs they were certain had once swam there. Dr. Hanson grew increasingly quiet as he brimmed with frustration, and Wendell decided to stay out of his way until they finally retreated to the base camp. Dogan, however, was the braver man. Or more foolish.
“Dr. Hanson, I have to tell you, I’m concerned.”
“Oh, are you? What could possibly concern you?”
Dogan didn’t hesitate.
“I’m concerned for our safety. I’m concerned our emergency transportation has left, that we’re undermanned, and that neither Wendell nor I truly have any idea where we are. We’re just following you blindly. I’m worried about our safety.”
“Well, don’t be, Dogan. Let us return to the base camp. We will reassess our plans there. Perhaps you and Wendell can help determine our next course of action. There is something on Melville Island worth finding no matter what the cost. I intend to stay until we do.”