Killer

He looked back to where the others were, automatically flinching before he realised that the shooting had stopped. He recognised Ross because of the tattered sleeve of his anorak. Ross was beckoning him, urgently. He got up and walked unsteadily over the ice of the floe. At the edge he found the edge of a second, larger floe only five or six feet away. He paused, looking at the unsteady gap, walked back a little, then ran up and jumped. This time he didn’t even get his feet wet. The ease of the jump, however, seemed to trigger a reaction to his terrible fear. As he walked across the floe his knees began to quake, and he found he couldn’t breathe properly. He fell, picked himself up, fell again. The edge of the ice seemed further away than ever. He began to crawl towards it.

The killer thrust itself out of the water perhaps twenty feet from the crawling man. It rose for over fourteen feet before hooking its flippers on to the edge of the ice, adjusting itself to compensate, for the movement of the floe settled into the water under its weight. It breathed out. Warren turned his head at the sound, and what he saw drove him to his feet again. He began to run in earnest. The whale turned its head slightly, and the brightness caught the puckered lines and scars on its face. It watched him with all the detached indifference of a pagan god, then it sank again. Warren gasped and wheezed; his head reeled with the effort of running. He stumbled over the rocking floe. The ice seemed to be breaking up around him. He reeled forward, drunk with panic. The floe lurched again as another of them threw itself out of the water, skidding along the ice, reaching for him with huge teeth. The rifle spoke three times in rapid succession, and gouts of blood blasted loose from the killer’s head with a crisp slapping sound. It shivered and sank away. Warren ran on, his legs shaking, making each step an enormous victory of the will. He blotted everything out except the necessity of putting his right foot before his left, his left foot before his right. The floe began to heave again, but he hardly noticed. He lurched from one foot to the next, oblivious of everything, nearer and nearer the edge . . .

CRACK.

Ice kicked up in front of him. The ricochet whined. He froze, confused, jerked out of his nightmare; he looked up. He was only feet from the water. Another step, maybe two, and he would have been in. The edge of the big floe was ten feet away. His legs gave out, and as the floe lurched again, he sat down. He looked stupidly at the gap he could never jump. There was a roar close by him. He looked round. A smaller one, drooling water, teeth like white fingers grasping. He watched it reach over the ice at him, as birds are said to watch snakes, unable to move.

Job jerked up the rifle again: he had changed the Weatherby for the Remington with its big, soft-nosed bullets and magnum power.

The first shot blasted the killer’s eye into a bloody cauliflower. It began to slide back, screaming. The top of its head blew open: it became silent.

A rope slashed across Warren’s face. He grasped automatically, still watching the dead whale.

“Tie it round you,” called Ross’s voice. He did as he was told, then he suddenly slammed forward. His shoulder crashed against the ice. He slid forward again. The edge of the ice appeared under his bemused face, passed.

The icy water closed over him.

The shock drove the breath from his lungs.

He blacked out.

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SIX

BOOM.

Ross sprang awake. He began to fight with his recalcitrant trousers. He was never at his best first thing in the morning. It felt as though he had grains of salt under his eyelids. He blinked, and pulled grotesque faces trying to clear them. Job was dressed and heading out the tent.

“Coming,” said Ross, and also got to his feet, only to stagger and fall as the next whale hurled itself against the underside of the floe.

BOOM!

“Seems to be standing up OK,” said Job.

“More than I am, I tell you,” said Ross, struggling to get up again.

“Can I help?”

“No. See what’s happening outside.” Ross was on his knees now, shirt in place, the solid club of his left arm supporting his trousers as he zipped them up with his right hand. Job wriggled out of the tent, and Ross followed him in a very few moments.

BOOM!

Ross came out into the snow and the sun stabbed his eyes with vicious force. “Oh HELL!” he said with feeling, surveying the rest of the party through a burning golden haze. He took a step, and tripped over the net.

“Snow-blind!” said Quick, a world of disgust in his voice. “And only the girl had the sense to wear dark glasses.” To her face he called her Miss Warren; behind her back, it was always the girl: that was how he actually thought of her – not a person, but as a collection of physical parts which he was finding increasingly attractive. She was not there now because she would not leave her father.