Below Zero

24 OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA ^NOW

Tick-tack-tick-tack. Zak’s ears were filled with the scary scurrying sound of tiny legs tapping against the solid floor. Any second now, they would be inside.

Dad went straight for the controls, slamming his fist on the button. ‘Close!’ he shouted as he pummelled at it. ‘Close!’ But the door remained open.

Tick-tack-tick-tack.

‘Manual override!’ Mum moved forward to join Dad, but he yelled at her to get back.

‘Stay with the kids!’

Mum retreated to stand in front of Zak and May, stretching her arms out like it would do any good. Dad fumbled with the panel to the override lever. In his panic, he struggled to get his fingers into the gap.

‘They’re coming!’ May shouted.

‘I know!’ Dad abandoned his attempts with the door and stepped back to face the invading creatures as they came into view.

The scuttling spider-things had patches of shining black armour on their backs, grey and fleshy joints, and legs edged with hard serrations. They were a mechanical skeleton with an organic – living – covering, but they looked as if they hadn’t yet finished becoming what they were supposed to be. They hadn’t finished growing.

They moved fast, reaching the door in seconds, and Dad stamped hard on the first to enter the room.

Bullseye. There was a crunch and a squish as the bug crushed beneath the tread of his boot.

His success gave Zak a sudden burst of hope, but when Dad raised his foot again, bringing it down hard, the second spider-thing leapt aside at the last moment, and he stamped on nothing but air and pale blue flooring. Unbalanced by his failure, Dad faltered, and the thing took advantage of his vulnerability. It jumped on to the top of his boot and darted upwards, its serrated legs clinging to the material of his trousers. Dad whirled around, stamping his foot, flailing to brush the monster away. As he struggled, another bug sprang on to his boot and began working its way up.

With a gasp, Mum rushed forward, beating her hands at Dad as if she were trying to put out a fire. ‘Get off him! Get off!’

More of the miniature monsters scuttled around them, and Mum took a couple out purely by accident, crunching them with the grim sound of cracking and squelching. But there were too many of them. They latched on to her boots and began racing up her legs. Others continued deeper into the room, heading straight for Zak and May.

‘No!’ May surged into action. ‘This is not happening!’ She dashed to the side of the room where a fire extinguisher was clipped to the wall. She tugged it from its fixings and pulled out the nozzle, turning to point it at the floor. Without hesitation, she squeezed the handle and WHOOSH! a burst of carbon dioxide shot from the extinguisher and engulfed the bugs in a billowing white cloud.

Small as they were, a direct hit from the extinguisher sent the scuttlers spinning away into the corridor. For a few seconds, they were disorientated, and May rushed forward to fire the extinguisher at Mum and Dad who were trying to swat the things from their clothes. With a WHOOOOSH! they disappeared in a huge cloud, and Zak heard the sound of the spider-things dropping to the floor.

As soon as she had done it, May raised the fire extinguisher and brought it down on the nearest monster, killing it with a sickening crunch.

By the door, the rest of them were beginning to recover and regroup. They were moving again, turning this way and that in confusion, their legs skittering on the floor.

Zak spun around, searching for a weapon, desperate to help.

What would Jackson Jones do? And then he had an idea.

‘May!’ Zak grabbed the Ranged Chemical Delivery System from the wall and held it like a rifle. ‘They’re coming back!’ He pointed it at the bugs and pulled the trigger and—

— nothing happened. He tried the trigger again, squeezing it four or five times in quick succession, but still nothing happened.

‘The red button!’ Dad shouted. ‘By the handle!’

Zak pushed the button and aimed the Ranger once more, pointing it at the creatures that were making their way back into the room.

‘You have to pump the slide,’ Dad yelled at him. ‘The part in your left hand.’

Zak knew exactly what he meant – it was just like the Nerf gun he had at home – so he racked the slide once, took aim and fired. This time there was a loud POP! and a fraction of a second later, a cloud of grey powder exploded on the ground by the door. It sprayed outwards like a burst bag of flour, instantly becoming a thick, cloudy gas that billowed out, obscuring the door. It lasted only a few seconds before it thinned and disappeared but, once again, the bugs were stunned by the attack.

‘Quick! Before they try again!’ He rushed forward, stamping his feet, and the others joined him like it was some kind of weird dance. The spider-things died under their boots with such a satisfying crunch that Zak was filled with a sense of power – of actually doing something. ‘In your face, bugs!’ he shouted as he stamped on another. ‘In. Your. FACE!’ The bug popped like a fat blueberry.

Gas drifted around him like smoke on a battlefield. The hard remains of bug shells and mechanical parts lay like broken machines of war. Sticky pools of disgusting grey mush were splattered around the floor. And Zak continued to stamp at the scuttlers. To stamp them out of existence. To kill, kill, kill.

‘I think that’s enough now.’ May touched his arm. ‘You can stop.’

Zak scanned the room. ‘Did we get them all?’ His blood was up, his adrenaline raging. ‘Are they all dead?’ He was out of breath, and sweating inside his coat. ‘Is that all of them?’

‘I think so.’ May stepped back, holding the fire extinguisher like a weapon.

‘That was quick thinking,’ Mum said. ‘Well done, you two. Are you all right?’

‘Yeah.’ May nudged Zak. ‘“In your face”?’

Zak grinned.

‘What are they?’ Mum was staring at the mess on the floor. ‘They were alive.’

‘I told you,’ Zak said. ‘It’s something to do with those insects. This grey stuff is the same. It’s like it’s adding to them, or something. Growing on them. It’s making them alive, and—’

‘It’s not over yet,’ Dad said. ‘That big one is still by the entrance. We need to shut it down.’

‘How?’ Mum asked.

‘Maybe this’ll work.’ Zak gave May the Ranger, and grabbed the fire extinguisher from her hands.

He strode out of the room and along the short corridor.

‘Zak? Zak!?’ Mum called after him, but he didn’t answer; he kept on going. Didn’t even flinch when Mum called his name. He marched right up to the thing that was cobbled together out of parts from the Magpie and the plane.

As he approached, he saw more of the grey stuff in its joints. Threads of it snaked back towards its brain, but he didn’t care. And the strange thing was, it didn’t look as if the spider-thing cared either. It just sat there, and as Zak came closer to it, he fired the extinguisher in front of him.

WHOOSH!

A cloud of carbon dioxide shot out, filling the doorway and spilling into the cold Antarctic air. For a second the spider-thing was invisible, but Zak didn’t hesitate. He continued forward, picking up his pace, and turned the extinguisher in his hands so it was a solid steel battering ram. He stepped out on to the walkway and slammed it into the creature’s camera.

With a noise like two cars colliding at speed, the base of the extinguisher smashed into the thing’s lens, crushing glass and bending metal. The living machine shuddered under the force of the blow, moving its legs back to brace itself when Zak hit it a second time. Again came the sound of metal against metal, and the thing staggered backwards, its front legs faltering at the complicated joints. But Zak didn’t stop there. He forced it to retreat further and further along the walkway, raising the extinguisher again and again, denting metal, crushing glass, and cracking the weird beetle-like armour as he broke through to its fleshy, electronic brain. And each time he hammered it, the creature staggered back a little further, its legs weakening as Zak beat it into submission.

Halfway along the metal walkway, the monster’s front end tipped forward under the onslaught, its back legs skittering, trying to keep its body upright. And with a final killer blow, Zak raised the fire extinguisher high above his head like a pile driver and smashed it into the monster as hard as he could.

Pieces exploded in all directions, scattering across the walkway and shooting over the edge to fall to the ice below. The monster collapsed on to what was left of its face, then the back legs gave up, and the whole thing came crashing down like a piece of useless junk.