Page 25 of Love Below Zero

25

SNOWSTORM

BECKY

MacKenzie

Attached picture of Mr Spock asleep on the couch.

I saw Anne’s email. Don’t let her scare you. I’ll try to buy you some more time. How are things going in there?

James and I hike to a small outcropping of rocks a little ways away from the dome. We want to get clear of any light pollution coming from the habitat, but I don’t think that will be a problem.

The sky is already lit up in brilliant reds and blues.

I trip over a rock, James reaching out to steady me.

“Sorry,” I mumble. I’m too engrossed in the sky to watch my feet.

“Here,” he says as we reach the outcropping. “Sit down before you do any damage to yourself.”

I sit, and he plops down next to me. The hazmat suit is especially annoying tonight, blocking my view when I look too far up. We have the standard comms in our ears, but Frances said she wouldn’t monitor the channel. Still, I’d rather not have her hear anything embarrassing accidentally, so I turn my mic off.

I sigh, flopping down onto my back. The snow is fine and powdery, cool against my back and the ungodly amount of layers I put on. I am not going to freeze.

James chuckles, removing the supply pack he’s carrying before laying down next to me. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?”

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I breathe. Colours dance across the inky black. Frances was right, Earth really is one-of-a-kind. I mean, it’s also the only planet with chocolate, but the aurora is nice too.

“I agree,” he says softly, and I turn my head to look at him. Green eyes dancing with reds and blues meet mine.

“You’re not even looking up,” I point out.

“I wasn’t talking about the aurora.”

I laugh, but heat creeps up my cheeks. “What a cliché way of telling me I’m pretty.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “‘Pretty’ is such a useless adjective. You don’t look up at the Milky Way and call it pretty, do you? You are magnificent. Stunning. Beyond comprehension. Otherworldly.”

I stare at him, stunned. My heart stops, then starts going a thousand miles a second. No one has ever compared me to the beauty of the entire solar system.

Anxiety claws its way up, wrapping around my throat and cutting off my air.

I can’t let this go on. I can’t keep staring into his stupid, devastatingly handsome face. Can’t let him keep telling me I’m beautiful and that he’s attracted to me. It will cause me to do something catastrophically stupid, like fall in love with him.

I sit up fast, practically leaping down from the rock.

I’m in love with him. Fucking damnit, how did that happen?

“We should go. This was a bad idea.” I say, and it feels like someone stuffed cotton in my mouth.

I start for the dome, the light coming from it barely a speck at this distance. Did the visibility drop? A few snowflakes drift around us. The forecast didn’t say anything about snow.

A hand wraps around my arm, stopping me in my tracks. I gulp down air before turning to face James. The aurora reflects in his suit’s visor, but I can still see the concern on his face.

“Rebecca, what’s going on?”

How do I even begin to explain to him that I’m just not good enough for him? No matter how hard I try, no matter what I do, I always fail. And I can’t stand the thought of failing him. I’ll only hold him back.

“Whatever this is”—I gesture between the two of us with my free hand—“it’s not real. You don’t want me and I definitely do not want you. Your voice has been in my head for months, telling me I’m not good enough, that my work is derivative and unoriginal. And now you wanna come in here and tell me I’m the Milky Way and write me stupid notes and make me want you ?” I’m aware my voice has taken on a Fran Drescher-like pitch, but I can’t seem to stop. “I can’t take it anymore.”

James looks at me for a long moment, his expression blank.

Fuck, why is he so hard to read at times ?

“I didn’t mean for my words to have such a terrible impact,” he says, his voice soft. “I was wrong. I see that now.”

“But what if you weren’t?” I pull my arm out of his grip. I don’t want him to touch me. “You’re one of the smartest people I know. You’ve seen right through me from the start.”

“Darling, being intelligent never stopped me from being an absolute idiot.”

I laugh despite myself. Why does he have to be so funny and sweet and charming? It isn’t fair. He looks like he wants to reach for me, but stops himself.

“You are good enough,” he says. “I think you’re good enough. To write the book, to be on the mission.” To be with me.

The last part is unspoken, but I see it in his eyes. He’s just as screwed as I am.

I cling to his words like a sailor clinging to a piece of rope in a storm. But it’s too late. The ship is sinking, and I am being dragged under with it.

For the first time since the mission started, I want to go home. I want to burrow into my space pyjamas, annoy Mr Spock, and eat one of Mac’s brownies. That is my life. Not this. Not James.

I laugh, but the sound comes out flat. “You don’t even know anything about love, Doctor Reid.”

It’s an echo of the words I said to him all those months ago at the romance convention. Hurt flashes across his features, and my stomach drops. That was such a dick move, but some twisted part of me wanted to burrow under his skin like he had burrowed under mine.

I am a horrible person, even further proof that I don’t deserve him. Who says things like that to other people, knowing how much it will hurt?

He sighs, his fists clenched tightly at his sides.

“You’re right, this was a mistake. Let’s return to the dome.” His voice is ice, cutting through me like a serrated knife.

You wanted this to happen, you idiot.

Well, I guess I don’t know anything about love either.

“Reid? Baxter?” Frances’ voice comes over the comm and I jump. I wasn’t expecting that. Did I not turn the mic off properly? Oh god, did she hear all of that? Maybe an orca will magically appear and swallow me whole, saving me from having to deal with facing the others. I can live in a fish, Pinocchio style. I’m going to need a new place to live after the author thing fails.

“Yes, Commander?” James already has his mic unmuted in the time it takes me to have another minor existential crisis. Always the professional.

“You better get inside. The storm warning’s been upgraded. It’s heading right for us.”

I didn’t notice the aurora disappearing behind dark and angry storm clouds. The snow is falling thicker around us, and I can’t see more than a few paces in front of me.

As if directed by some sadistic maestro, the wind picks up, blowing a flurry of snow around us. The clouds block out the moon and the stars, leaving us almost completely in the dark. Panic creeps in, different to the anxiety I felt when James called me beautiful. Dread hits my stomach like a pound of bricks.

It’s like we took a sharp turn right into an episode of Unsolved Mysteries . We’ll be up there with the Dyatlov Pass incident. The podcasters are going to have a field day with this. Theories from alien abduction to murder-suicide will abound. Of course none of them would account for plain old panic and stupidity.

James grabs me by the shoulder, shaking me lightly.

“Deep breaths. Here.” He hands me a flashlight, pulled from the small bag of supplies he brought. Right—we aren’t completely stuck.

“Frances, our visibility is bad. We can’t see the light from the dome anymore,” he says over the comm, digging in the bag before pulling out another flashlight and a piece of rope.

“I’m turning on the floodlights. Can you see them?”

A pinprick of light pierces the dark to our left, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Affirmative,” James says. Another gust of wind blows around us, snow covering my faceplate. I wipe at it, but the inside has started to fog.

“I can’t see,” I tell him softly, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. He uncoils the rope, slim fingers working fast to untangle it. He steps forward, wrapping it around my waist before tying the other end to his. “At least buy me dinner before you bring out the bondage.”

He shoots me what I can only assume is a glare, but I can’t make out his face properly anymore.

“It’s a precaution to keep us from being separated. It’s dark, and this storm is quickly turning into a blizzard. Keep walking toward the dome’s light, and don’t stop. Alright?”

I nod, my mouth dry. My palms are sweating despite the cold.

We set off at a gruelling pace, fighting snow and wind. The walk over was so easy, so pleasant. Now darkness presses against us, and soon the only thing I can see is the light from my own flashlight. James stops beside me, cursing under his breath.

“Frances, we’ve lost visual.”

“Shit,” the reply comes. There is more static on the line than previously. Her next words are lost in a garble of noise.

“What do we do?”

“We can’t have been too far from the base, but without stars or any sort of guidance, we’d just be stumbling around.” He sounds a lot calmer than I feel. One of us has to keep a level head under these very dire circumstances. I try to let his calm soothe me.

“Is there anything else in the bag? A compass?”

He shakes his head. We didn’t bring any of the usual gear, considering it was supposed to be a clear and well-lit night. If we make it out alive, I’m going to have stern words with the ESA about their weather reports. You can send people to space but you can’t track the path of a storm? Amateurs.

I squint at our surroundings, trying to look for anything that can help us. A flash of red catches my eye.

“Over there—look!” I tug on his arm, pointing to our left. “Do you see it?”

He squints, then nods. “Looks like the spare storage container. Hurry, before we lose sight.”

We pick up the pace again, moving as fast as the building snow will allow us. At some point, James grabs my hand, and both of us are breathing heavily.

“... can you hear me?” Frances’ voice cuts back into the comm. We must be close enough to the dome to get a signal again.

“Yes. We managed to spot the storage container. We’ll bunker there while we wait out the—” James’ voice cuts off abruptly, and there’s a sharp tug at the rope on my waist, pulling me to the ground. His hand slips out of mine, and I hit the ground ass first. Which is unfortunate, since I don’t have a lot of padding left on my butt after losing weight. Pain shoots through me, and I see stars for a moment.

James. Something happened to James.

“James!” I yell, turning over to follow the rope. “James, can you hear me?”

I lost my grip on the flashlight when we fell, but luckily James’ flashlight is still on. I can only see his feet, and his body is at a weird angle.

Fear clenches in my stomach and I scramble over to him.

He fell head first into a crevasse, one that must have been hidden by all the heavy snowfall.

“Becky? What’s happened?” Frances’ voice is calm in my ear, but I can barely hear it over my own pounding heartbeat. James isn’t moving.

“James ... fell. He’s not moving,” I gasp out.

I finally reach him. The crevasse isn’t that deep, but he must have hit his head on a piece of rock or ice. I can barely see his face through the hazmat suit’s visor, but a smear of red is clearly visible.

Fuck.

What should I do? What if he hurt his neck? I need to get him out of the hole and to shelter, but I’m too scared to try and move him.

“Can you check his pulse?”

I can’t reach his neck, so I go for the wrist instead. It’s faint, but likely not a good indicator of his actual state.

“I think he’s just unconscious. He hit his head on something. ”

“Okay, can you lift him? Your first priority is to get to the container. We can reassess from there.”

“I’m scared of moving him,” I whisper over the comm. My body is frozen, the wind and the snow battering against us. The storm is getting worse, and if we don’t move, we’ll die.

You don’t really want to die, but every part of you is betraying that instinct because it’s just so cold, and you just want to lie down for a while.

His voice rings in my ears, from the night he described freezing to death. No, I will not let that happen.

“He’ll be alright,” Frances says, “but you have to get out of the storm.”

Okay, deep breaths. I can do this. I haven’t been lifting all of those weights for nothing. Luckily, we are about the same height, and he’s slender.

“You have to move, Rebecca.” Frances’ voice is still calm, but the urgency is clear. Move or die.

I make my way around the crevasse, testing the snow before putting my full weight on it. If I fall too we will be royally screwed. I grab him by the shoulders, doing my best to keep his head and neck stable as I push him out of the hole. He doesn’t wake up, even with all my huffing and puffing, which sends another cold bolt of fear through me.

One thing at a time, Becky , I tell myself. First I have to get him up. I briefly consider dragging him by his feet, but the snow is too deep, and he might hit his head on something again. I can’t take that chance.

“Okay, we’re just going to pick up a fully grown man. By ourselves, in the middle of a snowstorm in Antarctica.”

A nervous laugh bubbles out of me, but I tamp it down. It’s now or never .

I grab him by his armpits, lifting him up. The suit is slippery, but my grip is like a vice.

“You are heavier than you look, buddy,” I huff. Sweat pools on my brow and runs down my back, the cold air freezing it instantly. That isn’t good, but I can’t worry about hypothermia and frostbite now.

There is no way I will get James over my shoulder, so dragging will have to be it. I keep hold underneath his armpits, positioning his head firmly against my chest before starting for the container.

“You’re lucky there are no Tauntauns around or I would have stuffed you inside one with zero hesitation.”

Every muscle in my body protests. My shoulders burn, my arms ache. My legs are wobbly, but I keep going, one step at a time. My world narrows to a pinprick. There is nothing but the drive to get him to safety.

After what feels like an eternity, I reach the door of the container. I pull it open with one hand, the other still holding James, before dragging him inside. The wind slams it shut, and James and I collapse in a heap on the floor.