Hive

But St. Ours and the other boys were too busy looking from the putrefying husk on the table to Meiner, a guy they’d lived with and drank with, played cards with and laughed with. This was one of their own and when the shock started fading, they put their eyes on LaHune.

“Fuck you gonna do about this, boss?” St. Ours said. “Or should I fucking well guess?”

“Nothing,” another said. “He won’t do a goddamn thing.”

St. Ours was big and he could’ve smeared a guy like LaHune all over the walls, used what was left to wipe his ass with. “Tell you what, boss. I’ll give you a day or two to take care of this business here. You don’t get rid of these butt-ugly motherfuckers, we’ll dump about two-hundred gallons of hi-test in here and have ourselves a fucking wienie roast.”

He meant it and there was no doubt about it.

Hayes and Cutchen followed St. Ours and the others out, leaving Sharkey looking helpess and LaHune trying to find his balls, trying to figure out how he was going to crunch this one on his laptop.

17

It was the dinner hour and the scientists and contractors began to arrive at the community room in twos and threes, bringing with them the smell of machine oil and sweat and exhaustion. A smell that mixed in with the stink of old beer and older cooking odors, smoke and garbage and musty tarps drying along the wall. It was a hermetic, contained sort of stink that was purely Antarctica.

The room wasn’t too big to begin with and it quickly filled, people grumbling and complaining, joking and laughing, dragging in snow and ice that melted into dirty pools on the floor.

“You got any good ideas, Doc, on what can boil a man’s eyes right out of his head?” Cutchen was saying, watching the room fill.

Sharkey shrugged. She’d completed the post on Meiner and had listed his death, far as she could tell, due to a massive cerebral hemorrhage. What that had to do with the man’s eyes going to jelly and exploding out of their sockets was anyone’s guess.

Hayes was watching St. Ours, Rutkowski, and the boys at their usual table near the north wall. They were a grim lot with set faces and weary eyes, in mourning of a sort for Meiner. Other contractors threaded past them, said a word or two and kept right on going.

They looked, Hayes decided, like a bunch of roughnecks looking for a fight.

You could almost smell it building over there, that raw stink of hatred and fear that was smoldering and consuming. It was a big odor that rose above everything else, feeding upon itself and growing geometrically out of control. And if something didn’t give at the station pretty goddamn soon, it was going to vent itself and Hayes didn’t think he wanted to see that.

But it had to happen, sooner or later.

It had been a bullshit winter so far and it showed no signs of getting any better. The entire place had lost its sense of camaraderie and brotherhood that you usually got from living practically on top of each other, depending on each other and knowing there was no one to turn to but the guy or girl sitting next to you. That was all fading fast and in another week or two, you could probably bury it proper and throw dirt in its face. The entire station was starting to feel like some sort of immense dry cell battery storing up fear and negativity, all that potential energy just looking for a catalyst to set it free. And when that happened, when it finally arced out of control, it was going to have claws and teeth and dark intent.

“It’s going to be trouble, Doc,” Hayes said, “when that happens.”

“When what happens?”

Hayes looked at her and Cutchen. “When these people feel like their necks have been strung as tight as they can go and they decide they’ve had enough. Because you know it’s going to happen, you can feel it in the air.”

“They’re afraid,” Sharkey said.

“I am, too. But I’m thinking at least so far, I can see reason . . . but some of them? I don’t know. You keep an eye on St. Ours. He’s dangerous. There’s murder in his eyes and if I was LaHune I’d be sleeping real lightly.”

“You think it’ll go that far?” Cutchen said.

“Yeah, I do. Look at them over there. They’re all having crazy fucking nightmares and they’re scared and they’re not thinking right. It’s coming off of them like poison.”

And maybe it was.

Because already it seemed like the crew was forming along class lines . . . the scientists were keeping to themselves, the contractors staying with their own. There was no mixing up like you generally saw most winters. Maybe it was a temporary thing, but maybe it hinted at worse things waiting. Waiting to spring.

“LaHune could stop it or slow it down at least,” Hayes said. “Give these people their Internet, radio, and satellite back, let them reach outside of this place to the real world. It would work wonders.”

“I don’t see that happening anytime soon,” Sharkey said.