Below Zero

35 OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA ^NOW

One end of the airstrip was ablaze. The Osprey was twisted like a broken toy, black smoke pouring from the wreckage, and there were huge potholes where the aircraft had exploded. But the soldiers didn’t waste a moment.

Within a few seconds of the Spiders’ destruction, the woman in black was signalling to her people, issuing new commands. After a pause, one team split away and headed back into The Hub. The other soldiers fanned out across the airstrip as if they were protecting the remaining aircraft.

Zak couldn’t breathe.

Sofia was dead. There was no way out of Storage, and there was nothing he could use to defend himself. Not that he’d ever be able to defend himself against her.

Outside, the woman in black raised the weapon to her shoulder and aimed it at Storage. Zak saw it clearly from where he was standing, and he knew exactly what it would do.

In a few seconds he would be nothing.

But as the woman in black prepared to incinerate the building, the ground began to tremble. At first it was a gentle sensation accompanied by a low rumble that made the woman pause and look back, but it was growing stronger. Louder.

Storage shook, the contents of the shelves rattling as they had done when the aircraft were directly overhead. The ground moved beneath Zak’s boots and, outside, the woman in black side-stepped and put out her arms like a tightrope walker trying to keep balance.

Zak stumbled too, grabbing at the wall, trying to stay on his feet. Containers clattered. Supplies shifted and fell over. Cans rolled off the shelves. Mum and Dad and May bumped into the red-jackets as they swayed together, knees buckling, falling in a heap.

An earthquake. The thought flashed through Zak’s head. Saved by an earthquake.

Outside, a sharp crack split the air and Zak clung to the edge of the window, peering out at the soldiers who had dropped low to avoid falling over. The woman in black had her back to Storage now and was signalling orders. The rumbling was growing louder by the second, and The Hub was shifting from side to side. The ground beneath it rippled like the sea.

No, not an earthquake. It’s them. They’re breaking through. They’re leaving. All they needed was more time. That was all they wanted. Time to protect themselves.

Zak saw a huge, dark shadow appear on the ground under The Hub. He pulled himself closer to the gaping window and squinted against the cold. As he watched, there was a sharp CRACK! and a massive split opened in the ice beneath the Hub’s legs. Powdery snow cascaded into it like a waterfall dropping into eternity as it tore open from one end of the Outpost to the other, a vicious zigzag snaking in both directions, separating the ground right across the bowl of the landscape.

The soldiers backed away towards Storage and watched as the crack grew like a lightning bolt tearing through the ice, heading right for The Chasm in the distance. The ground began to swell upwards. It bulged around the edges of the fissure, stretching and splitting apart. The Hub rose higher than the other modules, the tunnels creaking and groaning as they strained at the places where they connected to the buildings.

Zak heard the shouts of the men inside as the modules separated, upended, and turned over on to their sides like they were cardboard boxes. The Control Module slipped backwards, hanging over the edge of the ravine until the weight of it became too much for its fixings and it broke away from the East Tunnel and slipped into the darkness. The Medical Station followed it, tearing away and collapsing into the abyss. Two or three seconds later there was a loud thump followed by a plume of powdery snow billowing upwards, rolling out across the landing strip and smothering the remaining soldiers. It forced its way in through the smashed window of the Storage building, exploding like a wet sneeze, coating everything in snow.

When the cloud settled, most of Outpost Zero was gone. The Hub, the whole of the East Tunnel. The West Tunnel, too, had disappeared into the newly formed ravine – only one of the living quarters remained, lying on its side at the edge of the huge split in the ground, the walls crushed inwards. The Drone Bay was far away from its original position, upturned and blasted outwards by the swarm that was now exploding from the gaping hole in the ice.

The size of it was overwhelming. Right across the length of the crevasse, as far as Zak could see, the swarm erupted from the ice like a rising curtain of shadow. Oil-slick colours shimmered through every part of it, dancing in time with the Aurora flickering in the sky over the mountains. It hummed with the clatter and buzz of countless wings, lifting further and further. Even when it was towering over the place where Outpost Zero had been, there was still no sign the swarm was close to having risen completely from its burial site, but it began to shift.

Insects started moving towards the centre of the swarm, focusing themselves into a massive column of shifting colour, growing higher and higher, turning like a vortex, a never-ending swirl that dragged the remaining insects towards it until they were all together, rising high into the glowing sky.

The only sound was the tremendous rattle of billions of tiny wings.

‘An Ark.’ Zak didn’t even know he said it aloud. ‘It’s an Ark.’

Lights blinked inside the dense column of insects, erratic at first, like a fluorescent tube light coming on, flickering, flickering, then moving with more confidence. Bright yellow streaks appeared as more and more of the insects illuminated the spots on their backs, and those which were alight began to spiral upwards within the main column. More and more of them followed, thickening the spirals, making an endless cord of movement along the length of the column.

Zak couldn’t look away from it. The sheer size and perfection was mesmerizing. He recalled the images he had seen when he touched the thing in the cavern and he knew what it was. It was pure life. Everything anyone knew – or had ever known – had started here, with them, and they had been waiting billions of years until they were needed again. But they had been discovered. Uncovered. Disturbed and threatened. And now they needed to find somewhere new. Somewhere safe to wait until they were needed again. Until the life here on Earth had faded and gone, and new life was required.

They were life. They were hope. They were everything.

The remaining soldiers stood on the ice with their heads back, watching the swarm become a huge sleek slab of black, with double spirals endlessly spinning upwards. It appeared to be solid now, defying all logic, simply floating above the gaping hole in the ice.

Zak felt his connection to the hive – the Ark – grow stronger. He felt a billion minds merging with his own. It was gentle at first; the same darkening around his vision that he had felt many times already since coming here. But the intensity of it grew and grew until, with a jolt, white-hot pain filled his body. Zak put back his head and screamed as it raged through him. It fizzed and burned like a world on fire, leaping from one cell to the next, engulfing his body, and ripping into his mind with the agony of a world of thoughts and images.

Somewhere beneath the pain and the sense of being utterly possessed, Zak had a thought of his own.

I’m dying.

But even as the idea formed, the pain stopped.

It was as if it had never been there.

Above the ice, the spirals within the column flickered and disappeared. Time had stopped. The small world of what was happening right there in that spot in Antarctica, the most isolated place on the planet, was holding its breath as it waited to see what the Ark was going to do next.

Zak’s heart had time to beat three times before a stream of insects burst from the Ark as if it had grown a limb. Still connected to the main column, the limb rushed across the airstrip, over the heads of the soldiers, and burst though the Storage window.

Zak flinched from it, turning his head and closing his eyes as the limb touched him, and insects swarmed over his body. They poured across him, finding gaps in his clothing, crawling in his hair, clattering in his ears, covering his face, smothering his mouth. He tried to move, to get away from them, but there were too many of them. Some began to shed their armour and force their way inside him. Through his ears and mouth and nose, suffocating him, and he knew he was going to—

No. I’m not going to die. They’re not killing me. They’re making me whole.

Zak relaxed and surrendered to the weirdest feeling he had ever experienced. The fleshy insects were inside his head, breaking down into their life-giving components. He felt them melting into his brain, their cells knitting together with his, becoming part of him. It was a soothing sensation, followed by a release of pressure, as if a splinter was being drawn out from inside him. And he knew what they were doing. They were taking away his illness. They were curing him.

When the limb of insects withdrew, the floor around Zak was littered with the discarded remains of those that had crawled inside him. Those that had cured him. Outside, the Ark began to glow once more, spinning faster and faster until every insect illuminated itself at once, emitting a tremendous pulse of light that flashed outwards across the ice.

Zak put his hands to his face and squeezed his eyes shut against the light that burned with incredible intensity. And then it was gone, leaving an image of the Ark burnt into his vision.

As the image began to fade, Zak forced his eyes open and looked out at where Outpost Zero had been.

The soldiers were now sprawled across the ice. Some lay like they had been frozen while making snow angels, others were bundled with their arms tucked under them. The woman in black was on her front, legs splayed as if she were a rag doll cast aside by a grumpy child.

Zak turned his eyes to the sky, but there was nothing more to see. There was no sign of the swarm that had been buried beneath Outpost Zero.

The Ark was gone. It had moved on, searching for a new place to hide and wait.