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【 U.S. RESEARCH OUTPOST 31 】
【 ANTARCTICA 】
【 MARCH, LATE SUMMER, 1982 】
It has been six hours and your watch is broken. The battery is dead and you only notice because of the wrist by your ear, your elbow on the table, and there is none of the soft tempo you’d know even in madness. You fall asleep to that ticking. Now there is nothing.
There are many things like the watch that you put in the pail of suitable sacrifice and ignore. Things that used to swim beneath the ice and now drown above it, mouths bloody. The helicopter has long been stowed and done with its own ticking and the men who brought you here have gone to their own stations and away. Named and nameless; faces you hardly know and those you couldn’t pick from a crowd.
You sit at the coffee table in the rec room and tap at the watchface and note that the glass sounds like a bell but nothing comes of it. You spend the time mapping the base’s layout on some crimped paper, pen loose in your hand, as there is little else to do until Copper finds you again. There was a brief tour of the cramped halls and the dogs and the canned food and now it is quiet. Outside the wind sings.
Someone drags the chair opposite on the concrete floor and it is loud and the feet knock hard on the legs of the table. You hold the top down and watch the pilot from before sit with a beer on the flat of his thigh. There is more of him to see, layers gone and glasses gone and he is handsome in a way that isn’t common. Eyes like the crack of sky through the thin cloud cover over McMurdo Station.
“You’re at the chess table,” he tells you, head angled back in some assessment. His mouth is somewhere near a smile but not quite while his thumb plays with the peeling beer label.
You fold your paper and put it in the pages of your notebook and he watches. Your eyes go to the monitor at his back. “Pretty sure that can play chess with you if you want.”
His stare is almost challenging. “It’s broken.”
“That’s a shame.” He takes a pull of his beer and the unwavering eye contact becomes uncomfortable so you hold out a hand he doesn’t take. “MacReady, right? I want to introduce—”
“You’re at the chess table,” he repeats. “Either play or sit somewhere else.”
There is no board here but you withdraw your hand with something like grace and smile at him a little awkwardly. “Okay,” you tell him.
So you play.
⊛ ⊛ ⊛
You forget the rules each time you play and this is to his benefit. He takes each bit of ivory with ease and you let it happen. The room is quiet and warm. There are men playing pool and another is reading by the wall and you come to relax in sizable pieces in the dim mire. There is no ticking but you feel the waves all the same.
“Just can’t figure it,” he eventually says.
Your arm is crossed over your torso, the other propped up on it with your palm under your chin and you sit and watch him. It has been twenty-four hours since Outpost 16 and the fog blunts you to most everything.
He takes your bishop. You remember how to speak. “What?”
The bottle clacks on the table when he sets it down and then there is a rumbling as he rolls it on its circumference. He is looking through the board in his own haze. The man with the magazine is snoring.
“Can’t figure what a woman—” he takes your last rook, “—would want to be at the edge of the world for.”
You stretch into the living and he leans back and looks at you strangely. “Job’s a job.”
“Not this job.”
You roll your wrist on the table. “I’m a soil analyst, I—”
“Don’t give a rat’s ass what you do,” he sighs and you sober up cleanly. “I read your file. Came from misery, right?”
“Missouri.” Your eyes move around his face and there is a disparaging hardness in it that is odd and unfriendly. “I worked for—”
“The government cataloging soil samples in bum fuck nowhere til the old man found you, I got it.” He gestures with his hand on the bottle. “‘Misery’ sounds about right.”
You sit up a little straighter. “I’m sorry, did I say something?”
“Like what?” He drawls, harsh, and your neck makes like rubber for how you recoil.
His eyes are heavy and blue and his brow is set. You itch at your hairline and dip your eyes as you take his pawn. “I don’t know.”
“What?” He rolls his shoulders, brings the bottle to his thigh again. His legs are hitched wide and crude and his eyes rake your face like there are places they haven’t been when he’s done nothing but stare since he sat down. “Speak, sure we all wanna hear what you’ve got to say.”
Someone looks on from the pool table and your face burns. You are not accustomed to drunks and your mouth goes sharp. “What’s a misanthrope pilot doing at the edge of the world? Seems like a bad place for one.”
You expect more fire for it but the corners of his mouth just barely pull and smooth back. He shrugs and looks around the room. “Pays well to drink until spring.”
“Boozer as well. Remind me to never fly with you again.”
He grins but it isn’t nice. He knocks a finger at the ceiling and the last inch of the beer rings against the inside glass. “Didn’t have any complaints when you were up there.”
Your queen sneaks past his knight and it is your unintended white whale. Pool balls clack and sink. “Check.”
“Bullshit,” he snaps and sits forward and the chair legs grunt on the floor. His eyebrows go down and further and there is the fire. “Christ, deadweight that’s also a cheat. Great.”
The sacrifice pail rattles with its strange fish and you kick it still.
Take care of yourself, and mind the men, will you?
You can still hear him saying it and it hurts a little, winds the ball in your throat a little tighter. You swallow it down.
“Damn, Mac,” someone says, “girl just got here. Let her breathe before you browbeat her.”
“It’s okay,” you reply. Your voice is level. “He’s just feeling me out.” Your head knocks to the side and it is light, acceptably teasing. “This your version of hazing?”
“Haven’t got there yet,” he tells you pointedly, ego sore, and drags his palms down his jeans. “Still in my questioning phase.”
It is your fault for taking the lure. “Okay. What’s next?”
He looks at you and it is testing humor and clear blue sky for miles. “Twelve men and one woman. Take your best guess.”
You flinch to pieces. Someone whistles low and swears and you grab your notebook and the remnants of your grace and leave.
⊛ ⊛ ⊛
When he took you from Missouri to a place with no soil, you knew he would teach you the other things and he did but now you’re on your own. You take on whatever the base gives you. You report to Garry and Copper and it is not long before you are made the key keeper and the ledger holder and the several many other things no one wants to be. It is fine. It keeps your hands moving and your brain subdued just enough while the snow coats the windows and the wind sings and the dogs go rowdy and loud.
Winter is collecting at the mountains and coming down the valley. The storms gnaw on equipment and the antenna and there is suddenly nothing on the radio. It hitches some hysteria in your chest and you take great care to smooth it down with your thumbs and your palms every time you leave Windows’ station.
Anything for—
Not today. Not yesterday, probably not tomorrow. Stop asking. I’ll let you know.
Clark lets the dogs run the halls once a week and they visit you in the supply room you bed down in and it is wet noses and warm fur. They leave straw hay from the kennel and you let it be on the floor until someone complains. It is interaction for sanity while the humans of the base keep away to themselves or just away from you. It is fine.
Into the pail, it is fine. You remind yourself it isn’t abandonment. A simple relocation, allocation of resources requested.
It is lonely.
⊛ ⊛ ⊛
He is ripping through your cabinets. He is in his gear and there is a puddle under his feet that is growing and colder than death. He slams doors shut when he is done but mostly he leaves them open, goes to ransack another shelf for something that isn’t there.
“You’re getting snowmelt all over my floor,” you tell him.
Mac looks at you briefly and your stomach slides uneasily against itself. The things in the pail. You’re in it somewhere.
Snow sticks in his beard and eyebrows and eyelashes and his hair curls behind his ears and you begrudge it from afar. The lights are harsh and do nothing for you and you’ve started avoiding the mirror by the washsink altogether. But he is perfect and you hate him for it.
“I need the keys to the supply shed.”
You set your hip to the doorframe, socked feet away from the trail but one is already wet and evil. “Why?”
He stops completely. That blue is accosting. “Cause I need them.”
“Sounds like you want them.”
He turns to look at you. He shifts his weight on his feet and puts his hands on his hips. “You’re serious?”
You walk to the squat metal desk against the wall and flip open the ledger to last week and look for your inputs between Childs’ and Palmer’s scrawl. “Five flares, July the sixth, no entry. Two rappels and thirty yards of prusik cord, July the eighth, no entry. Three drawstring—”
“I got it,” he says flatly and loud and faces away and back toward the cabinets. “God forbid we don’t all use your little system, Missouri. Some of us have real jobs to do.”
“So what’s yours?” That fire in him is catching. “Last I checked, your file said pilot, not helldiver.”
He gets close and puts his finger at your face and you somehow know this is what he wants. All the needling from a distance, calling you deadweight within earshot. His face has some weird satisfaction beneath it that you aren’t fond of and he smells like the kennel and feels like the cold. “You got a problem, you better suck it up, sweetheart, cause it’s gonna be a long seven months together if this is how you want to play it.”
It is what he wants and he nearly pitches you headlong into it, but you step away from the deep cracks and take a breath. You can see all the layers that got you here and find yourself missing the red clay and peat moss you traded for ice flow and no sun.
Mind the men, will you?
You check your broken watch out of habit and sad hope that something is different or the same as it was and then take the key from the desk drawer. You toss it and he catches it overhand.
“Fine,” you say. “Bring it back tomorrow.”
He looks at you long and almost confused, like he might say something else, but then he goes. Straw sticks to his feet and you shove the pail under the bed.
【 U.S. RESEARCH OUTPOST 31 】
【 ANTARCTICA 】
【 AUGUST, MID WINTER, 1982 】
You found the radio in the storage shed. Mac returned the keys a week later and he did it while you were out of the room and the firn under your feet grew hard and became something else entirely.
He needed oil for the snowdozer but the rest of the shed was left intact and there was little you needed to catalog. You tripped on a cord on your way out and yanked the thing from the corner and across that gritty wood floor to where you straddled the doorway and then you took it with you.
Some sad strained part of you saw a face in the dials and tuner and another part nearly collapsed in relief.
‘Mind the men’, look at you. Sounding like a real chauvinist, Dr. Mallory. You think they’ll mind me?
Oh, darling, that is exactly my fear.
Now you’re looking at it like it might save you from the white hell and it just may; if you could speak to him for five minutes you would be fine. The pail would stop rattling and the fake fish would settle if you could get through where Windows couldn’t and then maybe he would change his mind. He always heard you out even at your most irrational.
It is a behemoth from the fifties and there is a microphone but no headset so you go digging. You know its function in theory but not practice but the purpose glosses over it while you think it all down to the inflections in his voice. You would tell him They don’t want me here. I request to be brought back.
He would say How have you come to this conclusion. Walk me through your process.
You drag a headphone jack from its place caught between the back of the rack shelf and the wall. It runs long and longer and when you pull it something snaps. You groan.
They avoid me. They don’t want to socialize with an outlier. The pilot hates me particularly and I can’t understand why.
The cord is frayed and the inner copper wiring splays open obscenely. Your elbow disturbs some bundled canvas and you find an old aviator headset tucked underneath, the vinyl muffs cracked all the way through to the components. The mesh is gone and the plastic is yellowed but you have found God.
Hm. Can hardly blame them, you know, they’re what they are. But have you spoken with the man?
A few times. You always want to find the best in those around you, but I think sometimes people just don’t get along. It’s natural.
You believe that is the case here?
“Yes,” you sigh when you find another coiled auxiliary cord on the shelf below. You climb off the rack and kneel by the radio and feel the hair raise up on your neck when the jack slides in smooth and catches.
Would you let me come back?
The plug rattles on the ground behind as you go for the outlet under the desk with the cord looped in your palm. There is a note taped to the wall but it is faded and you ignore it for the armchair at Outpost 16 as you snake the plug into your hand and slip the prongs in. It clicks and there is a hum then brief sparks until it all dies. It goes dark and quiet. You are stone.
“Fuck,” someone yells down the hall.
Would you?
“Who blew the breaker?”
Please, Hal.
You yank the plug from the wall in some panic and look at the black now painting the socket. It smells like ozone and burn.
I’m sorry, my dear.
You hear him so clearly.
⊛ ⊛ ⊛
Someone is running down the hall. Nauls skids and stops and haunts your doorway, hands on the frame while he breathes heavy and you only see him at all by the Antarctic winter sun from the small skylight behind the racks. He looks in the bluedark mire at you and at the cords and the block of the radio on the floor.
“You alright? What happened?”
You crack your head on the desk and everything rattles and falls over like the world does. “I did it. I’m sorry.”
“Shit,” he blows out some air. “Well. It happens. I do it all the time. That generator is on its last leg.”
You stand and pull on your boots. “I’ll go fix it. It’s my fault.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he tells you. “Mac’s heading out now. Lone ranger shit.”
The fish try to beach out of the pail and you choke them down. “It’s—it’s fine, I should help.”
Nauls holds the doorway. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Move, please.”
“No.”
“Why?”
He looks conflicted but it doesn’t last and it leaves him all in a rush. “He told me to watch you until he got back, copy? Told him I would.”
“What?” You unhook the coat he got you before you left Missouri and it was one of the few things he let you take from McMurdo. Nauls is unmoving. “Please, Nauls.” He looks down the hall. “T.K?”
He looks at you and sucks his teeth and backs off to the side. Your steps jump off the tight walls as you clunk your way to the exit by the rec room and then there is the crack and snap, snap, snap you know. A small flame holds over your shoulder.
“Thanks,” you say and take it. The Zippo’s cover is a faded Playboy and the little woman looks at you sideways while you look at her. “Nice.”
Nauls has always been kind and you’d consider him a friend if you could. He waves when you wave at dinner and that is that. It is fine. They are what they are.
“You like it? Got it from a bodega in Trenton before basic. Real shithole there.” He goes quiet. “I still don’t think you should go out.”
You bank left and he follows. “Why’d he tell you to watch me?”
The flame whips in tunneling wind coming down the hall but then it evens out and stops licking your fingers. There is a mechanical groan and hiss and then the overhead lights flicker on slowly in some suffering. You cap the lighter and it rings loud and you hand it back.
He takes it and he looks confused. “Cause he watches you.”
Your mouth opens but then there is a loud slam that ricochets like a fresh round and you flinch to pieces.
“Missouri,” Mac calls from further on and your body goes stiff and flushes cold with sweat. You unfasten your coat.
“Watches me,” you repeat quietly, both of your sights fixed down the long hall. You hear footsteps and some prey drive long subdued itches at your skin.
“Yeah. Never noticed?”
“No. Thought he hated me.”
“He does,” Nauls supplies. “Maybe. Dude’s got PMS. Think he likes you, too.”
Oh, darling, that is my exact fear.
You look at him but then there is MacReady stomping your way, kitted out and frosted, and you subconsciously drift closer to Nauls who whistles and palms the back of his neck.
Mac brushes past and leans in the supply room. “Well, shit,” he snaps. “You overloaded the grid with that crap. Knew it was you.”
“I gotta go,” Nauls cuts in and you grab his sleeve but he is air and gone.
The fish are jumping up your throat. “I’m sorry,” you tell him. “I didn’t—”
“Didn’t know, huh?” He rips around and he is smoldering despite the cold on him, eyes bright and hard with that almost smile on his face. “Well, damn, sweetheart,” he demeans, “ask before fucking around with equipment you don’t know about.” He hooks a thumb behind, posture slanted. “That’ll save me from freezing my balls off out there fixing a generator that already has some mighty precarious trust issues with this building from hell.”
You shrink. “I’m sorry."
“Sorry,” he echoes. He reclines and straightens out with a laugh like a bark before dragging a hand through his beard. He looks in the room and knocks his head at the radio. “Who’re you trying to contact?”
It burns in your mouth. You stop and start a few times. “Windows, he told me he hasn’t been getting any chatter, so I thought—”
“Thought you’d take it upon yourself to take another man’s job, that it?”
“No,” you frown, “I just.” You pause but there is no point in lying now. “I wanted to talk to my old outpost.”
His eyes flicker but slink back into that uninterested flat stare. His thumbs loop in his pockets while he adjusts the weight on his feet with a long sigh out of his nose. Blue sky for miles. He looks at you like you’re simple and the firn that is not firn but glacial and hard breaks further in hairline fissures.
“Don’t like toughing it with the boys anymore, huh?” He nods his head and his hair falls around his face before he drags a gloved hand through it. “Sure are more well suited to the old farts and dames and Swedes of McMurdo, that’s for sure.”
Fissures stretch. “I was asked to come here. Garry and—” You stop and squint at him and the full weight of five months of this comes to sit on your chest. “What did I ever do to you? Did I say something on the ride over here? Piss in your oatmeal?” He just looks at you and the humor in his face is aggravating. “I just don’t understand.”
He rolls a shoulder. “Seems to be a recurring theme for you, Missouri.”
They stretch and pull and things fall apart. No red clay but ice flow forever. Mind the men, would you?
“Fuck you, MacReady.”
You shove past him and he stumbles back half a step and steadies while you retreat into the room. The lights are brighter than they were and they sing in an odd tone and you know he overclocked the supply but you say nothing. You set about gathering the cords into a neat pile before kicking them under the rack.
“Real nice mouth for a woman,” he tells you, back to the wall by the empty med kit that now holds records.
There is some relief in reaching this point and where there was dread there is flat acceptance. Water cuts through rock and it takes time but it is done. Summer will come and there will be a thaw and you will leave. Until then the dogs will visit and Nauls will slip you Mars bars on occasion at dinner and things will be fine. It is fine.
You continue as though he isn’t there and he scuffs his feet on the floor just for the sound. You feel his stare as you pick up the headset and put it away. You feel it when you kneel to push the radio under the bed but you take your time and he gets worse.
“You know what your problem is?” You say nothing and it bothers him. “You think we’re the same. You’re naive.” He leans away from the wall. “You think men and women are the same and the old man you latched onto back in Missouri all the way to Sixteen is no different than a woman and never set you straight.”
The plates shift and the world goes strange. “What did you just say?”
He sets back on the wall sideways with his arms crossed and his hands under them. “You heard me.” He nods at the cabinet you keep locked in the back. “I read your logs. You live in some fairyland where a twenty-some-year-old woman can waltz into a base of twelve lonely men in the middle of nowhere and expect it to go well.” Your face is slack and the fish are dying and he just continues. “You wonder why they treat you different? You’re missing some vital equipment, sweetheart.”
Your face burns hot and it takes a minute to say anything but he waits.
“I know the differences,” you start, mouth dumb, “I guess, I guess I was just hoping you all would see past them.”
It is pathetic how small he’s made you and the satisfaction runs thin on his face. Something indignant takes over. “Well, we can’t.”
“Won’t,” you correct.
He scoffs and cocks his head. “I definitely won’t.”
Then there is the silence. You hear people shuffling and low talking and that is that. The ground is broken open and you sit in the hole and freeze. Wait for the thaw.
You clear your throat. “I think I’ve got it figured out now.” You pull the chair out from the desk and it grinds heavy on the concrete. “Don’t need to keep an eye on me anymore.”
“What?”
“Nauls told me,” you supply, tone oddly even. “Please leave now.”
He does nothing for a moment, just stands there before pushing off from the wall. “Shit,” he says between his teeth.
And that is it. He leaves.
⊛ ⊛ ⊛
It is dark and the lamp does little. You rewind the tape again because you only have two and you hate the other to death already. The tape squeaks and stops and clicks and you hit play just to pause it when you hear steps coming down the hall.
You sit the desk by the wall and wait quietly. The notebook had to be folded to fit in the suitcase and it is still hell to write in all these months later and even more of a hell now that you know he’s read it. Most damning things you keep in your head and that is some relief.
You know it is him before he makes it to the cracked doorway. The kickplate rattles under his foot and the hinges hiss. He is dressed down to his long johns and boots and there is an intimate quality to it that you can only look at once.
“Hey,” he says.
You pull your hand from the tapedeck and feel at a dent in the desk. “Hey.”
He enters and leans a shoulder on the metal rack across from your bed. His head is toward the floor but you catch him looking from the corner of your eye. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“No.” The truth is easy. Sleep is hard here. The ticking is gone and every day is the same.
He runs a hand through his hair. “Me neither.” His hands drop to his hips in his lean on the unit and the silence is sinewy, gamey. “I want to,” he starts. “Want to apologize. For yesterday.”
“Okay.”
“Right.” He clears his throat. “I’m sorry.”
You run a corner of the pages across your thumb, eyes off and away. “Thanks.”
It is quiet for a time after and he sniffs and idles and looks out the skylight like there is something there. “That old man—doc,” he corrects, “he uh, he told me to look out for you. Keep an eye on you, but not to bring you back. Even if you asked.”
You turn in your seat and curl your arm over the back of it. “What? Dr. Mallory?” You go timid; you remind yourself it is not abandonment. “Why?”
He shrugs. “Didn’t ask.”
“Oh.”
He moves a little closer, hands tucked between his biceps and torso. “What’s he to you? You never said.”
The knot in your throat you forgot about goes tight and sore. “A lot,” you tell him. You pause and he waits. The blue skies are dark. “He found me after his daughter died in seventy-four.” The chair is a searing cold on your arm but if you concentrate you feel the sun. “He’s taught me everything I know.”
Mac is quiet and his face is neutral for the first time you’ve seen. “He doesn’t have long by the looks of him. Sure you know that.”
“Yeah, I know.” You turn back to your notebook but you see through it. “Cancer. I think it’s part of the reason why he jumped when Garry asked for any spare personnel.”
You remember the other part he never talked about, the layers of ice, thick and old as they brought it back to base. Nothing as anything ever was. They carried it in pieces, excavated it. One of the Norwegians was sick that day and you stayed behind and then you never went out again because he said.
“I think they found something out digging. I don’t know what it was.” You angle back and he steps around to come stand by the desk. “Did he mention anything to you?”
Why do I have to go?
Because you are our youngest and you’ve yet to spread your wings, darling.
I hate when you talk like that, Hal. Be honest. You’re getting rid of me.
“Yeah.”
I want what is best for you.
“Really?”
He nods, idly fits his thumb in the same dent in the desk you had. “Said he didn’t know what they found but it was something.”
“Something,” you echo. He hid things from you and you understood that. He always encouraged your questions but toward the end he stopped giving you answers and then it was nearing the end of summer and you were preparing to leave.
His eyes walk your face. He sighs and sets a leg on the edge of the desk and bridges his fingers over the top of it. A dog barks far away.
“I’m not gonna stop looking after you, you know. Gave my word.”
You stare at the bowing pages under your hand. “Okay.”
“Look at me.” You don’t. “Missouri.” He is leaned down, hand on the desk, and a part of you cowers. His skin is like cream even in this light and it comes at you again how striking he is. His hair is feathered and full around his face and it brushes his shoulders and it is unfair.
Your eyes fall on his mouth and you trip yourself up and away and the chair caterwauls as you move out of it and toward the door.
Into the pail and it is back to its racket. It is fine. It is lonely.
You cross your arms and put your back to the wall. “You hate me because you gave your word. You think I’m stupid for assuming I’d be welcome.” You take your pack of cigarettes from the top of the med kit and tuck a stick between your teeth and burn it until it catches. You snap the lighter shut. “I would, too.”
He moves your way.
“Partially,” he tells you. After a minute he takes the cigarette from your mouth and puts it in his. You stare. “I don’t hate you for it, that’s where you’re wrong.” He sucks on the stick until his cheeks hollow and then his mouth opens for the smoke. He ashes it on the floor by his hip. “You’re idealistic, sweetheart. I wanna teach you pragmatism. It’d do you some good.”
“What do you mean?” He hands it back and your fingers touch.
His eyes are bright but heavy-lidded. “A man ever teach you how to feel like a woman?”
You choke on a take and cough. You swallow rapidly and his eyes flick to your throat before setting on your face again and you flush.
“Are you—you asking if,” you clear your throat, “I’ve had sex before if that’s what you’re asking.”
He grins at you and his teeth are perfect and the fish are leaping.
“Not sex.” He closes most of the distance and he is only a handful of inches taller but your hands start to shake. “Has a man ever shown you the differences between you? Made you feel the way only you can?”
The cigarette burns down in your hand and ash falls on your feet but it is nothing and you don’t notice. His hand comes to set on the wall by your head and you’ve only seen men do it from afar, in movies, and you sink into the concrete at your back.
“I don’t know,” you eventually say. Your heart is breaking up your ribs.
He tucks a bit of hair behind your ear and his fingers brush the shell of it and it is summer sun. “I could change that.” He takes the cigarette from you and drops it and snuffs it dead under his boot. “You want me to?”
Do you know anything about them?
Your neck creaks when you nod but then he is leaving, closing the door and you shovel in a breath.
Some. They’re an intelligent group of men, you’ll do well.
He returns and his hand goes to your shoulder while the other travels to the side of your neck and it is warm as nothing ever was. You’re pliant; the world has been wet noses and fur and no skin and no touch forever.
Are you sure?
“Yeah, you want it,” he tells you and it is low and self-satisfied and something in you catches and starts to burn. Ice streams form. His other hand slides down to your waist and feels the outline before going under the sweater and your own long johns and you heave when he touches the curve of your ribcage. “Cmere.”
Take care of yourself, and mind the men, will you?
Mouth on yours; warm and hot. The beard itches your skin but then it settles and he tongues at the seam of your mouth until you fall open. He holds you to the wall, holds you together as you drop the pieces and nothing breaks.
It is summer so you hook your arms around his neck and drag him in and he rumbles in your mouth. He pulls away just enough for your lips to graze.
“Needy,” he says and you nod because it was said before and it is the truth now. He makes a sound at that and fumbles his other hand beneath your shirts to skin. He grabs at you and it is rough and your head knocks hard against the wall. “Christ, knew you were hiding something good under there.”
You fist his shirt between the shoulderblades as he mouths along the cords of your neck and it is almost gentle. Open-mouthed wet things that leave you cold when he breathes. He withdraws his hands and hooks them up under your legs to tilt your hips at him and you feel it immediately.
“Feel that?” He draws the hard line of him against the soft line of you. He kisses under your jaw and travels up and you nod and hold onto him for dear life.
You think they’ll mind me?
His tongue slips on yours and it is wet and slick and tastes like nicotine and spearmint. Your mouths make noises and so do you when he jerks his hips at you into the wall. Ice falls into the ocean.
Oh, darling, that is my exact fear.
He gains a rhythm and it is a facsimile that is lovely as it is horrible. You dig your fingers in his shoulders under his shirt and he groans low.
His mouth is by your ear and you hear the coast in his breath. “Did you ever think about me?”
It takes you a moment. “Yes,” you tell him. You hated yourself for it but it helped the sleep come when there was no ticking and he was a haunting.
“Shit,” he grunts. He stops and the look he gives you is raw before he peels off his boots and lifts you and takes you to bed. The frame moves on the floor and screams. He jacks your shirts up to your chin and the air is cold and cold and his hands are blistering as he feels every part you have. “Beautiful. Jesus.” He takes your hand and puts it over his need tenting his pants and your back draws up as he squeezes your grip. “Thought about this a lot, Missouri. You exactly like this.”
You grab the rail of the headboard and he removes your hand from him and puts it by the other there. He hangs over you, hands in the pillow you rest on while his hair comes down and blocks out the rest of the world.
A hand snakes down and cups the place that aches and your legs kick. He rumbles in his chest and the grin on his face is good-humored. “A man ever make you come?” He digs the butt of his palm into something good and your mouth clicks open. His head tilts.
“No.” You turn ragged when he does it again. “God.”
“Good,” he tells you and retreats. “Keep on calling him. Maybe he’ll get us those flares they forgot last supply run.” He yanks your bottoms down and down and leaves it all at your shins and it is frigid where you were warm. He reclines on his ankles and looks and then his fingers are on you. Exploratory, charting a new continent, but he finds exactly what he was looking for. Your eyes roll into your head. “There you go. Just like that, baby.”
It is slick and a firm glide and the name sets fires up and down the rolling coastline of your spine.
“Mac,” you whine and let go of the headboard but he is up over you again, sticking your humid hands around the rail.
“Let it happen.” It is deeper and different and finally something blooms in that early summer and it is the deep thaw.
The pace is steady and consistent and you are nearing an edge; he is burying you in the wet loam and clay and your back draws tight. He sinks a finger inside and it is thick and blunt and no one has ever been that gentle. He is unwinding the spool and it has a sound and it burns and you kick the pail over.
“Good,” he murmurs and draws you through it. Then he slows and stops while your insides flutter and tick around him. His hand goes to your flank and pets you and the trail he leaves is wet then cold. Again, his mouth finds yours and it is a hunger you nearly gag on as his hardness digs into your stomach.
You kick the bundle off your feet and spread your legs and put him between them. Hands slip in his hair. His breath flushes hard on your face and his hands roam to grope every slope of your body and it is easy how you butterfly open while he grabs your thighs like he means to take them from you.
When his mouth parts from you it is audible. He sets his forehead on yours before looking down and thumbing you apart to the air. Your bones rattle.
“Missouri,” he starts quiet and licks his lips. He sighs and it is raspy. “I don’t think I can go another day without fucking you.”
The thaw is fast and wicked and you are burning in his fire. You press your front to his and put your legs over his narrow hips and invite him to the dirt. “Please.”
He lets out a clipped groan and withdraws to remove himself from his pants. Then there is a branding iron where he was spreading you open.
“You want it,” he asks and drags it against you and you fracture further.
“Yes, Mac—”
The sky cracks and it is bright blue forever. It sears and hurts and he is forced to stop. Pads of his fingers play at your hipbones and the other place and it is gentle and your insides calm in grades. You give and part and he slides in slowly, fingers digging through fine topsoil, the feeling foreign and familiar.
“Fuck,” he breathes and sets his cheek to yours, body held over your own. He sounds genuine, strung out in that half-a-year way. The skin on his back is tacky against your palms and your grip is scrabbling. His hips twitch and pull back and it is almost a nice drag; dry for that first pass and then wet to excess. It has a clicking sound when he sets himself to it and it is mortifying.
The rail rings when his hand slaps it and holds. His hips roll and hit something good and your insides crank around him. He makes some sound. “Tight,” he says.
The ache bloats and winds and catches in your pelvis. “Thick,” you manage and he laughs once.
“Feel good, huh?” You bury your nails in him until he winces. He shunts forward hard and the bed squeaks and you bark while your head rolls back; he grazes something tender and sore and the sky hangs lovely over you. “Cmon baby,” he drawls and you shudder, “tell me how it feels.”
Your mouth opens but he grinds against you and what comes out is mewling and pathetic. “Mac.”
He moves the hair from your face but his own just falls right in it. Still that posturing, but he is sweating and flush, breath humid and rapid as it brushes over your face. “Taking care of you, aren’t I?”
You meet again and he goes slow, buries you deeper in the ground, hand on your hip pulling you where he wants.
“Yes,” you whine. There is little thought other than the thaw. Pandora is out and dancing in the wastes. There is no going back to the life from before now that you know it and that is his care. The pail is gone.
The bed creaks and groans and so do your bones as he presses down while his hips start to go from rhythm to something else. Your fingers card through his hair and his eyes shut. He groans and his face goes to your neck as he hauls your legs up his sides. A hand snakes between you and it draws circles with his thumb and the plates beneath you shift. The world goes lopsided and he is to blame.
“Come on, one more time,” he urges. It is a live wire and it is rough like his hips and what he rips out of you isn’t kind. You claw at him and your legs kick and the sky bleeds white. Ringing somewhere.
He is saying something then grunting and everything is wet as it slows and stops. The bed is quiet and done its suffering.
There is breathing in your ear and you hear the beach and think of seagulls overhead. You barely feel when he withdraws from you over the vibrating everywhere but you hear it and you wince.
He pats your leg and comes to lay by your side and it is a tight fit with his shoulders. He is half on the wall, gaze fixed on the ceiling and you wonder what he sees.
“Well, shit,” he sighs and puts a hand through his hair. “Sorry.”
You feel what he left trailing out of you and it is warm then cold. Some hysteria climbs up your throat but you smell wet dirt after the rain and the world is comfortably heavy.
He looks at you and removes the hand from his hair. “Cmere.”
He pulls you into his chest and this is the warmest the ground has been since Missouri. You tuck your nose into his neck and you smell dog and stale booze and something else. “Don’t know how you’re still cold after all that,” he says and your smile is stupid and low.
A hand rubs up and down your back beneath the shirts and the licking haze is dragging you under. “Maybe you oughta be warmer.”
You feel his head shift back but then he is holding you to him fully and you melt down. He throws his leg over yours and pets your hair and it is oddly gentle and that is your last thought before you disappear completely.
⊛ ⊛ ⊛
You wake to distant gunfire and an empty bed. The world comes at you strange and heavy and under the haphazard blanket you are naked from the waist down. It filters in slowly.
You trip into pants and boots as you move down the hall. There are voices and you feel the air suck forward when the door opens. The popping grows loud and clear until it shuts. The hysteria comes back for you as you turn the corner and find a group at the door. Nauls turns and knocks his head over to Garry at the window thumbing the gun on his hip.
“What’s happening?” You look around. “Where’s MacReady?”
“Out,” someone says.
“Lone rangering?” You count the men and find yourself short a few. “Who’s shooting?”
Nauls points out the window and you crowd around Garry. You fog the glass and brush it clear with your sleeve and see the gunmetal dragonfly out there in the wastes. Sunlight catches on something bright and it blinds and then there is the loud crack of a rifle.
“The hell are they shooting?”
“Don’t know. Look.” You see Mac by the snowdozer and the panic slides down a few notches. “It’s getting pretty close. Think it’ll land?”
You squint and can just barely make out the stencil on the body of the helicopter. Your heart leaps to your throat and it hurts and you grab Nauls for reality. “That’s—”
“‘Norge and McMurdo Station’,” he reads. He looks at you. “Thought your guys’ chopper was in the shop.”
“It was,” you tell him, eyes on the back of that head that means more than the others now. Oh, darling, that is my exact fear. “But it’s been months,” you continue quieter. “Why wouldn’t they radio?”
“They couldn’t,” Windows tells you.
Garry points at the ceiling. “Shouldn’t be up there regardless with this storm coming in.
Something black darts out from a snowcrest and forward and the helicopter comes in so close it sounds like it’ll break through the roof. It banks hard and continues on down the valley toward the mountains.
You’re a daughter to me. I want you to, to go out; discover the uncharted. The farther, the better.
“Did you see that?”
What?
“No.”
The helicopter banks again and the sun sinks and flickers into something small in the gunner’s hand. The rifle’s muzzle tips up again to fire and then it is just the sound of the blades out there. Black flashes in that sea of white and you stand on your toes but it is gone.
“It was just there.”
Come summer, you’ll have the opportunity to leave Outpost Thirty-One. I want you to go, as far as you can.
I don’t understand.
Then it happens again, and you see it.
You are aware of a Lazarus Heart, yes?
“No…” Nauls trails off and then Clark is putting his head between yours at the window. He pulls back and stomps on his boots and is gone out the door. Cold flushes fast and a few people hiss. “Wait,” Nauls leans on the window pane, “is that..?”
Out there Mac looks back at the base and at the window and there is the summer thaw. Down to the substratum.
It is categorized as a syndrome wherein a patient’s heart autoresuscitates after being pronounced dead. Named after Lazarus of Bethany, who was brought back to the living by Jesus Christ himself.
Why are you telling me this?
“It’s a dog,” you say.
Forgive an old man for prattering on, but well—my dear, you have given me that which Lazarus was given. And I am giving it back. Please, take it.
The gunner drops the thing in his palm and Garry is up on his feet. “Thermite charge. What—”
Then the ground shakes and there is fire in the white. Men bark and leave and there is a great calamity where there will be no more calm.
See the world for me, would you?
And the watch starts ticking again.