Hive

There was a set of double doors against the far wall. They were encased in twining, thick roots of ice. Summer melt-water from the barrier that had frozen up come winter. Desks and furniture and battered file cabinets had been piled up against it. They had to use the ice-axes to free the wreckage.

“What do you suppose the point of this was?” Cutchen said.

Sharkey started hammering ice away from the doors. “Only two possibilities, isn’t there? They were either trying to keep something in or something out.”

Cutchen paused, resting his axe on the shoulder of his red parka. “I was thinking that and, you know, I wonder if certain doors shouldn’t be opened.”

“You scared?” Hayes asked him, because he knew he was.

Cutchen tittered. “I don’t know the meaning of the word. Still . . . I think I might have left my electric blanket on. Maybe I should pop back to camp, come back for you two wide-eyed intrepids later on.”

“Chop,” Sharkey told him.

But it was really getting them nowhere, for the ice had puddled beneath the door and locked it tight as a bank vault. Hayes dashed out to the ‘Cat and came back with a propane torch. He ran the flame along the bottom of the door until it loosened. Then he hit the hinges and the seam where the two doors came together.

“Okay,” he said.

Cutchen looked from one to the other, then pushed his way through, stepping out into a larger room that held a variety of equipment, mostly portable ice drills, corers, and air tools. The far wall was collapsed and a foot of snow had blown over the floor.

“Looks harmless enough,” Cutchen said. “You two coming in or -”

There was an instantaneous cracking and ripping sound and Cutchen let out a cry and disappeared from view. They heard him land below, swearing and calling the Russians everything but white Christians.

Hayes and Sharkey crept forward. They put their lights down there and saw Cutchen sitting in a drift of snow, a gleaming wall of blue ice behind him.

“Are you all right?” Sharkey asked him.

“Peachy. Why do you ask?”

Hayes went for the ladder they’d seen when they first came in. Sharkey stayed there, hanging her lantern over the edge of the hole. “Looks pretty big down there. Must have been their cold storage,” she said. “I bet you stepped on the trap door.”

“Do you really think so?”

Cutchen dug his flashlight out of the snow, stood up, slipped and dropped it farther away. He cursed under his breath and dug it out from a drift. “Hey, what the hell?” he said, down on his knees, digging through the snow. He was uncovering something with mittened hands, brushing a dusting of white away from it.

“What is it?” Sharkey said from above.

“I’m not sure,” Cutchen said, his voice echoing out in the cavernous hollows below. “Looks like a . . . oh Jesus, yuck.” He stumbled away from whatever it was, breathing hard. “Where’s that goddamn ladder? Tell your boyfriend to hurry.”

“What?” Sharkey said.

Cutchen put his light on it.

Even from where she was, Sharkey could see it just fine. It was sculpted in ice, but there was no doubt what it was: a human death mask. A face peeled down nearly to the skull beneath and frosted white.

Cutchen wasn’t liking it much. “I’m hoping this is just evidence of a Halloween party that got out of hand.”

He stepped away from that leering, hollow-eyed face and made it maybe two or three steps and cried out. His leg had sank nearly up to the knee. His flashlight took another ride, this time landing about ten feet away, just under the trapdoor. It spun in circles, casting a magic lantern show of vast and twisted shadows over the ice walls. Cutchen went down on his hands and knees, struggling away from whatever he’d gotten himself stuck in. His knee sank once and his hand dropped down a foot another time. But he got out of there.

Whatever it was he’d been on . . . it was not made for walking.

Hayes came back with the ladder, banging it into walls and getting it hung up on the door. He saw the look on Sharkey’s face, said, “What? What now?”

“Never mind, Rapunzel,” Cutchen said, an odd edge to his voice. “Let down you fucking hair already.”

Hayes fed it down into the hole and he’d barely gotten it balanced before Cutchen came scrambling up it like a monkey up grapevine. His foot slipped once and he banged his chin, but he never slowed down. He lay in the snow on his back, breathing hard, looking like he’d been inflated in his bulky ECW’s.

“I found out where they keep the Halloween decorations,” he said to Hayes.

Sharkey started down the ladder and Hayes went after her, taking the flashlights and leaving Cutchen the lantern.

The room they found themselves in was about twenty feet in width, maybe thirty in length. The floor was hard-packed snow and the walls were ice and you could clearly see the chopping and hacking marks in it. The Russians had cut it right down into the ice.

Hayes played his light around.