Hive

And then there was an explosion.

An echoing report and Sharkey was standing there with the .22 in her hands. All the noise suddenly stopped and there were no shadows mulling around them. There was nothing. Just those shocked faces and Holm standing there with a neat hole in his forehead about the size of a dime. Blood had spattered over his face from the impact and it looked like black ink in the semi-darkness. He tottered and fell over, striking his head on the treads of the Spryte.

People started getting out of there right away.

Hayes stood there, watching them leave. They all knew it was over with and they were rushing away.

“No, don’t worry,” Hayes called after them. “I’ll drive the Spryte off this stiff . . . don’t worry your heads none about it. Let me take care of it.”

Then it was just him and Cutchen and Sharkey standing there, not saying a thing. The wind kept blowing and the snow kept drifting and the polar night wrapped around them like it would never let them go.

Finally, Sharkey dropped the rifle. “I . . . I guess I just killed a man,” she said, seeming confused as to how she should feel about this.

But Cutchen just shook his head. “I don’t know what it was you killed, Elaine. But it sure as hell was not a man.”

36

Two hours later, they were all in the community room and La-Hune was holding court. For once, he didn’t have to tell everyone to pipe down so he could be heard. Nobody was talking. They were all looking at the floor, their hands, the tables before them. Anything but at each other and LaHune standing up there in front.

“For some time now,” LaHune said, looking oddly uncomfortable up there, “Mr. Hayes has been warning me and most of you, I would imagine, that we are in danger here. That those . . . relics Dr. Gates and his team brought in are somehow hazardous to us. Mr. Hayes believes . . . as some of you do, no doubt . . . that those creatures are not entirely dead. That there is activity in them. A sort of psychic energy, if you will, that they emanate. Up until tonight, I was not ready to accept any of that. But now, after what happened out in the compound, I’m not so sure.”

Hayes sat there with his arms folded, looking indignant. He wasn’t sure what LaHune was up to, but he didn’t care for it. The idea of having the man on his side suddenly was even worse than having him against him. He wasn’t sure why, but it irked him.

“Now, Mr. Hayes has taken care of those creatures out in the hut . . . put them back to sleep so to speak . . . “

Somebody tittered at that.

“ . . . but that’s hardly the end of the problem. It’s been five days now since we’ve heard from Dr. Gates’ party. I don’t care for it and neither do any of you. In fact, the only thing we’ve learned about them came in the form of that particularly ugly incident this evening.”

Ugly? Hayes liked that. No, ugly didn’t cut it. That business was a nightmare, a goddamn tragedy.

LaHune went on: “The bottom line is, people, we are very much alone out here. We can’t look for help from the outside world until spring and spring is a long way off. We have to send a party up to Gates’ camp to look for survivors. They may already be dead or worse. I don’t know. But somebody has to go up there, so I’m - “

“I’ll go,” Hayes said. “I think Dr. Sharkey and Cutchen will come with me. Anyone else that wants to tag along, well, I’d welcome your help.”

Hayes stood up and looked around.

Nobody would meet his eyes.

It seemed that for a moment maybe Rutkowski and Hinks were considering it, but they lowered their heads one after the other.

“Didn’t expect any of you would,” Hayes said.

LaHune cleared his throat. “Now, I can’t order you three to go up there.”

“You don’t have to,” Sharkey said.

She stood up with Cutchen and Hayes. The three of them scanned those dour, frightened faces in the room.

“I guess that’s it then,” Hayes said. “We leave in an hour. Any of you happen to grow a pair of balls by then, meet us out at the SnoCat.”

The three of them left and the gathering broke up. Broke up quietly. Nobody had a thing to say. They plodded back to the dark corners of their lives and looked for a convenient pile of sand to stick their heads into.

37

Two or three times on the way up to the tent camp, Hayes found himself wondering what in the hell LaHune was up to. His sudden about-face was worrisome. Troubling. There was no sense of satisfaction attached to it; none whatsoever. No, thank God you’re with us now, Mister LaHune, things is going to be better now, yessum. For LaHune, as far as Hayes was concerned, was a man with an agenda and Hayes had to wonder just how this abrupt turn of face might possibly serve the administrator and his masters.

There had to be something there.