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| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
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Blood Falls
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The following was found written in pencil in a small snow cave 70 yards from the Blood Falls base camp in Antarctica.
My name is Henry Bentham, and I’ve been a biologist for fifteen years. I’ve known Charlie Astrid most of my adult life. So his text message of a few weeks ago had all the immediacy of a telegram: “Taylor Glacier cave-in, Blood Lake exposed. Expedition!” Charlie was an extremophile-phile, the weirder and more resistant the organism the more excitable he became. I tried to convince him, back when it still mattered, to get into marine biology- under the sea there are creatures that survive in and near volcanic vents, who survive extreme cold and extreme pressure. At the time I thought he wanted to share classes with me, but he later explained that it was the fast evolutionary turnover that turned Charlie into an extremophile microbiologist. We’d talked about Blood Falls, a constantly running spigot from an underground lake sealed tight by a glacier from outside influence for nearly 2 million years. There were microorganisms living in that lake, thought to be responsible for the blood-red color of the water in the falls, evolving independently, sealed off from the rest of the world in one of the most inhospitable corners of the world. This was his Valhalla, which was sort of funny, since the falls were very near to the Asgard mountain range. Charlie wanted desperately to study the falls, but had never gotten his chance, because the’d been explored time and again, samples taken time and again. But when I called back, he explained how this was different: “The collapse has sectioned off about a third of the underground lake, and exposed it to the air. We have a unique experience to not just look at the piss seeping out of this lake’s urethra, but we can stick our fingers in its guts and see what squirms out of the primordial ooze.” Charlie already had funding lined up- he’d always had funding waiting for anything to justify a trip to the falls- but this was big- huge¬- this was a once in a species type of scientific event. I couldn’t have said no if I’d wanted to. As our expedition ramped up, more and more donor money flowed in, and with more money came further expediting, until after what seemed like an impossibly short amount of time we were standing on the edge of the Antarctic ice shelf. I’d been to Antarctica once, spent a season in McMurdo. Charlie’d been three times before, only once in an American base- he spent a summer at a Japanese station even though he speaks none of the language (80% of their staff spoke English- but still). Anne Ashworth was a geologist from the University of North Dakota, and our meteorologist was named Sam (and he had enough of a speech impediment that I never could quite catch his last name). I never saw our guide outside his winter gear, but his name was Alex (though I can’t honestly be sure Alex was a he- if he was, he had a slight frame, and one of those androgynous faces that, especially when covered by a parka and goggles made it impossible to know for sure. We’d brought along Yamaha Vikings (I’d nearly fallen over laughing when one of the Finns who’d come along on the supply ship referred to the snowmobiles as “scooters”- though she didn’t seem to understand what was so funny). I felt poorly for Scott and Amundsen and the rest, making the slog on foot- and we weren’t going anywhere too near the pole. We made good enough time that we reached the site of the cave-in with time to set up our camp for the night. After we’d pitched our tents and secured our gear, my heart raced as we all started undressing, and I thought I’d definitively learn Alex’s gender, but as she slid out of her parka and goggles she turned away. She kept on enough layers that neither a masculine nor feminine frame became apparent. The next morning we set out onto the ice. Alex was an experienced ice climber, and he (or possibly she) reminded us that we were practically walking on ice now, and to be accordingly cautious. That reminded me of my childhood, when my father had pulled my arm from the socket pulling me off a frozen lake we were playing on, for fear that we’d fall through. I asked Alex just how dangerous it was walking around on top of an already partially collapsed glacier. “Ridiculously,” she said, with a laugh that truly terrified me. Alex walked us through the basics of climbing, and we were beginning our approach of the cracked lip leading down to the lake when there was a loud crackling sound. “Shit,” he said, “I’d hoped this wouldn’t happen.” We saw a crooked line of lightning flash through the ice beneath our feet, and then the world titled. I was the farthest back towards the edge of the glacier as our section sheered off, and dug in my heels and flung myself at what was to be the new ledge. I swung my ice ax, and it caught, and for a long moment there was stillness, until the ice we’d been standing on smashed onto the icy floor some 400 meters below. I took a moment to breath, but knew I wouldn’t be able to hold too long (or worse, have the strength to pull myself up). I couldn’t gain traction with my boots. I smiled through a beard that always made me look older than I was, but thankfully protected from some of the cold, and told myself it was time to stop acting like a doddering old bastard and pull like a man, damnit (I was certainly nowhere near old enough to die for want of a pull-up). I gave one last good yank, and the ax shifted as I rolled over the edge and to relative safety. I used the radio to call the ship, but they said the weather wouldn’t allow for help just yet, and I looked at the sky and understood completely. Yesterday, Sam had told us the weather looked fine for the week; this morning he told us he’d been wrong, but that we should be able to batten down at base camp come nightfall and be fine. I was beginning to suspect Sam was an asshole, because the sky was already a dark gray, and I could tell that not a mile away a harsh snow was falling, and getting closer. But I knew that if anyone survived the fall down there, they wouldn’t survive the snow- I had little choice but to climb down. Alex had been a good guide, and we had more than enough rope, even though our first anchor had slid down with the rest of our team. I set an anchor as far back as I could while still leaving enough rope to get down to the bottom. The ice was nearly sheer, but I was cautious to move down slowly, chiseling out footholds that I knew would be my salvation on the trip back up. Less than a quarter of the way down snow began to pelt me, and I began making only one foothold every ten feet, then twenty, then fifty. My eyes were beginning to sting, and only then did I realize that I hadn’t pushed my goggles down off my forehead. I was cursing my own stupidity as I slid them down, certain I would be of no use to anyone because I’d never reach the bottom alive when I hit the knotted end of the rope, and could slide down no further. I looked down, and the ground was eight feet below. Damned son of an overcautious bitch. I unhooked from the rope, and fell- I tried to roll, but my ankle caught a moment too long on the ice, and I sprained it as I tumbled. It hurt pushing myself back onto my feet, but I told myself I could still jump high enough to catch the rope- after all, I had to. I saw Alex’s body first, twisted horribly by the way she fell. She had sunk her ice ax into the ground at her feet, and held on until the ice broke in half, and her ax came loose with a four-foot chunk of ice. Her hood and goggles had fallen back, but this only served to deepen the mystery that for all its inappropriateness now seemed all the more important. I peeled down her coat and checked for a pulse, and my imagination nearly convinced me to check beneath her clothes to be sure- until the full macabreness of the idea hit me. The ice flow had fallen in a jagged pile of crystalline stone- not entirely unlike a collapsed building. Blood was beginning to pool along the edge of the fall, and as I followed it I was able to make out pieces of Sam and Anne’s clothing underneath the rubble. I dug furiously, and was surprised to find how close they’d ended up together; but neither of them had a pulse, either. Charlie. My heart stopped in my chest a moment. I knew he was probably dead, too, but scanning the collapse I hadn’t seen him. I turned around, and for the first time took in the beauty of the underground lake inside the glacier. The entire cavern glowed red from the reflected color of the water, and amid its milky ochre there was a spot of blackness, near to the shore- and I realized it was Charlie. I rushed down the snowy shore, not thinking then that it had been hours since the fall, not thinking that if I’d gotten myself soaked there was no way in all the hells I could have survived the climb back to the surface of the glacier. But I had slipped my Wellington boots over my climbing shoes before I dug out Sam and Anne, and the water never splashed over them. I pulled Charlie up out of the water, dragged him up the shore to where it flattened out. I checked for a pulse, but there was none, so I started CPR. I gave him fifteen compressions, then two breaths- but there was water in his lungs, and they wouldn’t go in. I was starting another round of compressions when Charlie’s eyes opened wide, and he sat bolt upright. He started to gag. “You have water in your lungs, and probably stomach,” I said. “It needs to come up.” I helped roll him onto his side, into a rescue position, and he started vomiting. Mixed with his food, it looked like blood and meat, and it rolled down the shallow incline towards the water. “I guess we’ve contaminated the uncontaminated pool,” I said, and laughed though I didn’t feel like laughing. But Charlie was silent. “Charlie?” I put my hand on his shoulder, and when he didn’t respond I shook him. “Charlie?” He put his hand on mine and squeezed it, and I let out a relieved sigh as my head rolled back. Snowflakes fell onto my forehead, and I suddenly realized how cold it all still was. “Charlie? Charlie, you need to get out of your clothes.” He didn’t move, but I walked back towards Alex. “Charlie, your clothes are soaked. You’ll freeze to death if you don’t get out of them.” I stripped off Alex’s outer layer, coat and pants, not even thinking anymore about what I’d pondered so much earlier. “Here, put these on. We’re going to have to climb out of here. There’s a storm, and we need to get to camp before we freeze.” Slowly he pushed himself off the ground, wiped the vomit from his cheek, and started to remove his clothes. I glanced back at Alex, wondering if some of her (his?) inner layers could be salvaged, but bodily fluids had already started to soak through them- which rather would have defeated the point of changing Charlie out of his wet clothes, so I removed some of my extra layers to share with him, and suddenly the world was much colder still. “The rope is about eight feet off the ground. I think we should be able to jump up to it- I guess I could try carving some footholds if we can’t. Now we should hurry- we’re both in danger of freezing to death, now.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Wait. We/I did not know how to address you/use the meat puppet/Charlie to communicate.” The voice was Charlie’s, but wrong, like he was talking with a hand around his throat. I turned. “Charlie, this is not funny and completely not the time.” “We/he was your friend. We- no, I, am sorry for his loss. I did not kill him. He had taken in too much fluid and cold. There was nothing I could do. I wanted to leave, and see the world away from the lake. But we had evolved to live here, without sunlight; I could survive outside, but would die without iron. Charlie has iron.” My eyes went wide as my mind raced. It had been hours since Charlie had ended up in that lake- he’d been dead for hours, either drowning or from the exposure. And it was then I noticed his veins and arteries, all of them, sticking up and out, not pulsing as blood flowed through them, but engorged, full. Had I not been holding the ice ax, anticipating our climb, perhaps I’d have reacted more diplomatically, but I swung the ax into the center of Charlie’s chest, and he stumbled back. The wound didn’t bleed, though there was a splash of orange ochre on the blade. “Give me back ourselves.” Charlie grabbed the ice ax from me, and another hand, orange-red like rust, extended out of the chest wound and touched the blade, slurping the red off the ax’s edge. I ran, and I knew instinctually that Charlie was behind me; there was no time for footholds, no time to pile up ice for a stool, so I simply leapt. I smashed face-first into the ice wall, and for a moment I thought that was where I would die, strangled by the corpse of my friend, but then the pain in my face and chest subsided, and the rope in my fingers registered. I pulled myself up, just as Charlie’s fingers swiped at where I’d limply hung. But even as I started my climb, I noticed the rope go taught- he’d managed to grab a hold of the end below me. As fast as the adrenaline made me climb, he seemed to gain on me. More than once he grabbed my boot, but could not keep hold as I kicked him- though not so much from a lack of strength as a certain unwieldiness. Remarkably, I reached the top ahead of him by enough that I was able to unhook the anchor. The rope slid across the ice, and disappeared over the darkened edge of the abyss. But when I looked down, I saw that he had only fallen a few tens of yards, and was still climbing up using my footholds. I tried throwing heavy things from the camp, but every impact only seemed to give him further energy. The snowfall had become so thick it was difficult to navigate. I could scarcely make out the yellowed blobs of the other tents though they were scarcely six feet apart. I felt my way inside the equipment tent and tried the radio again. This time, the storm was throwing up enough interference that I could not be heard (or at least could not hear their reply). It was only then that I remember that Sam had been carrying the satellite phone- that it was at the bottom of the cavern with his corpse. I knew then that Charlie must be close. We had no weapons to truly speak of, more axes, but I’d seen how well those did the job. So I grabbed a pencil and a handful of papers and ran out into the snow. At five paces the tents disappeared, and I was counting on that to keep Charlie from me. I found a hole in the snow large enough to shield 2/3 of my body from the wind, and began to write. I wasn’t certain when I began that I was going to have the time to write that all down. I’m freezing to death, after all, and Charlie’s out there, somewhere. I believe I heard him a few hours ago thrashing around the campground. I don’t know what he wants, what he plans. Perhaps it’s nothing more sinister than a walk about- perhaps he’ll discover me any moment and murder me. But I’ve run out of things I had to say, now to things I want to, and I hope I’ve strength enough to finish. Beverly, Teresa, I’m sorry. I always told you it would be later. That after college, I’d have more time for you, or after my postgraduate work, after my doctoral thesis, after my internship, or my research. I wanted that later to happen; it was a light at the end of a tunnel, and though I enjoyed thoroughly the journey I never wanted to miss out on my destination. But I’m not sorry that I will miss it, because that’s my own doing; I’m sorry that I’ve deprived you of me for so long, and in the end, that you will be deprived of me from this moment onward. I love the both of you endlessly; T, be nice to your mother. It was never her fault. Loving husband and father, Henry Neither Charlie Astrid, nor any of the other members of his five person team, has been seen since the expedition to Blood Falls set off from the SSMikucki.The Mikucki confirms the request for assistance at 0935 AM local as the last contact from the expedition. |
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