Hive

At least, that’s how the Glory Boys — Rutkowski, St. Ours, and a few others — were seeing this little scenario.

“We can sit here and hold each other’s dicks while we piss,” St. Ours told them. “Or we can zip our flies shut and do something. We can show that fucking monkey-skull LaHune which side his bread is buttered on.”

Maybe it was the loss of Meiner and too much whiskey and maybe it was just plain poor sense combined with isolation and confinement and that frustration they’d been gathering up like wool, but it made sense. St. Ours talked and the others listened with an almost religious rapture and plans were laid and not a one of them questioned any of it. Like a swift-rushing river they let it flow and carry them along, never once thinking of damming it.

At the far north end of Targa House, at the end of the corridor that split off the community room, you could find the radio room and supply lockers. You kept going, just around the bend, you’d find an Emergency Supplies Room that held extra radio parts, survival gear, freeze-dried food, ECWs, just about anything you’d need if the going got tough. You’d also find a weapon’s locker there.

And if you wanted to get into it, then it was only a matter of kicking through LaHune’s door across the hallway. Maybe going in there with three, four tough boys with liquor in their bellies and taking the keys.

LaHune never really saw them come in.

He was sleeping and about the time his eyes started to flicker open and register a vague shape standing over him, a fist had already collided with his temple. There was about enough time to cry out and then another fist caught him just above the eye and the lights went out. LaHune fell into blackness and his last sensory input was of pain and the stink of cheap whiskey, body odor, and machine oil . . . a very working man kind of smell.

“Tie that fucking puke up,” St. Ours said, toying with a flap of skin at his knuckle that he’d torn on LaHune’s head.

Rutkowski and the others — a couple maintenance jocks named Biggs and Stotts—just stood there like toys waiting to be wound, maybe considering for the first time that they were involving themselves in some real deep shit here. The sort of shit you could and would drown in when the whiskey left your brain.

“With what?” Rutkowski said.

“Cut up some of those bed sheets,” St. Ours said. “Tie and gag him, then we’ll get some guns and kerosene and have ourselves a wienie roast with Gates’ pets out in the hut.”

And maybe the others weren’t crazy about the idea of hurting LaHune or being an accomplice to an assault, but they liked the idea of torching the mummies. Yeah, they liked that just fine. Using pocket knives, Stotts and Biggs trussed LaHune up and that poor boy was out cold as a salmon steak in a freezer. When they were done, they were sweaty and maybe even a little confused.

“C’mon,” St. Ours told them.

In LaHune’s desk, they found keys for every lock at the station, but all they wanted were the keys to the Emergency Supplies Room and the gun locker in there. When they had them, they went across the corridor and let themselves in. The room was about the size of a two-car garage. Crates and boxes, medical supplies and laboratory equipment marked fragile, drums of fuel, just about everything else. Because down there at the South Pole during winter, if you didn’t have it and you needed it, you had to make it.

In the gun locker they found flare guns, .22 caliber survival rifles. They were hoping for some bigger hardware, but they figured the rifles would be enough. They found the shells easily enough and loaded the guns. Then they stood in a tight little circle, holding up those guns and liking the feel of them . . . their weight and solidity, the way weapons always made a man feel somehow more like a man. A hunter. A warrior. They stood there looking at each other, seeing the lights in each other’s eyes, but not knowing what it was, only that it was strong and necessary and good.

It was all up to St. Ours now.

They would do what he said.

“All right,” he told them. “We’re going to get ourselves some kerosene in the Equipment Garage . . . maybe gas or even diesel fuel, then we’re going over to Hut Six and you know what we’re going to do then. Anyone gets in our way . . . “

They seemed eager a moment before, but now something in them was weakening and wavering and St. Ours didn’t care for it. “What? What the hell is it?” he put to them.

Rutkowski opened his mouth to say something, but the words didn’t want to come. He’d been feeling something the past few minutes, but he wasn’t really sure what it was. Only that it was in his head.

Biggs was rubbing his temples. “Damnedest thing . . . got me a headache, I’m thinking.”

“A headache? So take a fucking aspirin already. Jesus.” But St. Ours was looking at the other two and seeing it on them as well. Something was afoot. “Well? Are we going to do this or sit around pissing about our heads?”