Below Zero

22 OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA ^NOW

When the screen froze, Zak and the others stared at the fuzzy picture of Sofia Diaz. Zak had about twenty-five billion thoughts in his head, but the one that floated to the surface was about her. She was tough, resourceful, confident – everything he wished he could be – and even though he’d never met her, he knew he liked her. But they hadn’t seen any sign of her since arriving at Outpost Zero.

Because they got her, Zak thought. She didn’t escape.

She wasn’t in Refuge, so those bug things must have got her and she was in Storage, right now, standing like a zombie with the others. She probably had one of those disgusting things inside her.

‘They were like the things we saw in the lab,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ May asked.

‘Those bugs coming out of his clothes. And the thing in his nose. They’re like what we saw in the lab. And when the Spider attacked me before, I saw stuff underneath it like… like something was growing there. And it looked the same as that grey thing.’

‘Growing?’ May pulled a face. ‘On the Spider?’

‘Yeah.’ And the more Zak thought about it, the more positive he was that those sinews hadn’t been growing into the main body, they had been growing out of it.

‘How could something be growing on it?’ Mum asked. ‘What could be growing on it?’

‘It’s those insect things,’ Zak said. ‘The things they brought out of the ice.’

‘Zak…’ Mum gave him one of those sympathetic looks, but there was something else beneath the expression. Her mouth tightened and the zigzag scar under her nose had gone white. It looked to Zak a lot like fear. ‘There has to be a rational explanation for this.’ She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘There has to be.’

‘It’s those things; I know you can see that. You don’t have to pretend you’re not scared. You saw them coming out of his clothes. One of them was inside him, we all saw it. Those people are being controlled and it’s got something to do with those insects. And if they can control a person, why not everything else? The whole base. The communications and—’

‘Insects controlling people?’ Dad took off his glasses. ‘That’s… no, this has to be something else.’

But as he said it, they heard a sound from out on the walkway.

Tick-tack-tick-tack.

They froze.

Tick-tack-tick-tack.

When it stopped, all they could hear was the faint bluster of the dying storm.

‘I think they’ve come for us,’ Zak said.

‘No.’ May pushed back against the desk. ‘It’s the girl from the video. Or the others have woken up and now they’re all right.’

‘Sh.’ Dad pushed in front of them. He engaged the lock and put his face close to the window in the office door.

‘D’you see anything?’ Zak asked.

‘Sh.’ Dad raised a finger to his lips.

‘I don’t want to be like them. Like the people on the video.’ May spoke quickly and quietly. ‘I don’t want those things on me.’

‘You won’t get anything on you,’ Mum said. ‘Dad and I won’t let that happen.’ She moved to stand in front of her.

May peered at Zak through strands of black hair. ‘I won’t be like them.’ A cold strength settled in her expression. ‘I won’t.’

Zak’s mind was a jumble of all the crazy things that had happened over the last few hours. He felt like he had slipped out of his body and was watching from somewhere far away.

‘And I won’t let them get you either,’ May said. ‘I promise.’ She clamped her jaw tight, and Zak saw a determination in her eyes he had never seen before, and for some weird reason it actually made him feel more secure.

‘It’s all right,’ Dad whispered. ‘The door’s locked. That thing’s not getting in here.’

‘Thing?’ Mum asked. ‘What thing?’

One by one, Zak and Mum and May crept towards the door and peered out. What Zak saw filled his veins with ice.

A smaller, cruder version of the Spiders was standing in the doorway to Refuge. About the size of a large, heavy dog, the main bulk of its dark metal body was raised a few centimetres off the ground; its legs poised either side. What could only have been a CCTV camera was mounted at the front, watching them. It didn’t come into the corridor, but waited, each of its six legs tapping the ground in turn.

Tick. Tack. Tick. Tack.

One at a time.

Tick. Tack. Tick. Tack.

‘What the hell is that?’ Zak whispered.

‘It looks like a crude imitation of the Spiders.’ Mum glanced at Dad.

‘Built using parts from the Magpie?’ he said. ‘And the plane?’

‘That’s what it looks like. There are composite components too,’ Mum said. ‘That’s incredible.’

‘You think they did that?’ Dad sounded unsure. ‘The Spiders? You think they took parts from the plane so they could build that… thing?’ He shook his head. ‘That’s impossible.’

Impossible. Can’t be. Doesn’t make sense. Another explanation. Impossible, impossible, impossible. That’s all Zak was hearing from Mum and Dad.

He couldn’t believe they still sounded like this was all so fascinating. Yeah, the robot thing was amazing and everything, but it was dangerous. It was covered in patches of grey yucky stuff that looked alive, and he was sure it wanted to do awful things to them. It wanted to control their minds, turn them into zombies and… what? That was the worst thing. They just didn’t know.

Outside, the drone thing settled back and turned its camera directly at Zak.

As it did so, he felt a deep warmth expand behind his right eye. It spread like ink in water, washing over him, pulsing and aching, exploding in a powerful jolt. A brightness erupted inside him, filling everything. His muscles tingled, his blood fizzed, and his thoughts were wiped away by a busy hail of white noise. It was as if his whole body was caught in an electrical storm. Zak was paralysed, and there was the strange sensation again, of something being inside his head, crawling over his thoughts.

Images erupted in his mind.

Bam! Zak was sitting in Mr Anderson’s office – not Doctor Anderson because consultants prefer Mister – listening to why he had been getting so many headaches and why he’d had that the seizure during French. There was something growing in his brain, so the doctor was going to put Zak to sleep and drill a small hole in his head and take a sample of what was in there and…

Bam! Zak was wearing a pale blue hospital gown – why is it always pale blue? – and he was watching himself from the corner of the room as the doctor touched the drill to the side of his head and pressed the trigger and…

Bam! He was back in the doctor’s office, Mum and Dad with serious faces as Mr Anderson explained the treatment that would follow and…

Bam! He was in Antarctica, staring at an old-fashioned explorer who was standing by a huge crack in the ice, beckoning to him with both hands and…

Bam! He was floating above a shimmering sea of insects crawling over one another, taking flight, rising in two never-ending spirals of fluorescent yellow and…

The images stopped. A flash of white, and the presence inside his head began to move away like a silk sheet slowly slipping away from a table to reveal the wood beneath.

Zak blinked and the drone-thing was still there in the doorway to Refuge. May was still beside him.

Whatever had just happened to Zak, no one had noticed. They had either been too busy watching the thing outside, or it had happened too quickly for them to see, but his legs felt weak and when he put a hand on May to steady himself, she turned to look at him.

‘I’m…’ Wasn’t it time to tell them? About the polar bear? About the explorer? About the feeling that something was trying to get into his head? It was important. He was sure it had something to do with what was happening here. But he didn’t know where to start. How could he even begin to tell them?

‘It’s moving,’ Mum said. She tightened her lips and her zigzag scar went white again.

Zak looked back at the window to see the mechanical monstrosity lift itself a little higher off the ground and shift backwards.

‘Is it letting us past?’ Mum asked. ‘Is that what it’s doing?’

Before any of them could answer, a group of small spiders came into view, scuttling into the corridor like an army. At least twenty of them, they swept across the pale blue floor. They were similar in size and shape to the scuttling thing that had attacked them in the Drone Bay, and the things they’d seen attached to the people in Storage, but these were different. They had evolved.

As they advanced into Refuge, the lock on the office door disengaged with a quiet click, and the door slid open.