Trial by Ice by Casey Calouette Read Free Book Online Page B

Kwesi, Crow and Tero. “We bring ‘em back.”
    He slid his mittened hand through the flap and felt the cold sear against it. With a slight hiss the door opened more, further than he wanted. Selim rushed to his side and pushed the bottom of the flap in, preventing it from flailing open.
    It seemed to resist, to want to drive him inside, before he erupted through the door. It was like standing inside a bucket of white paint. He turned his head, opened his mouth, gagged and focused on breathing. He stumbled a few steps out before he tripped and fell.
    A stiff hand pushed and he felt for the electrical conductor. It led forward into the white. He stood and pushed his head downward, fighting, gasping to breathe through the ice and wind. Drifts of ice had formed like sheets of concrete over the cable that they fought to free and continue.
    He dreaded finding a survivor and trying to get them back. They could barely stay upright themselves and he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore. A slight tear in the knee of his pants had ripped wide open and the wind had numbed it into a leaden slab. He was shivering now and began to hunch farther forward.
    The white had enveloped them all as they shambled into the maelstrom. Each could sense the other but could see nothing. A sudden wind slammed against them, dropping them to the ground. William lost his grip on the cable and felt himself tugged only by the waist cord. The wind slammed hard, pushing him down. The only bearing he had was his waist pulling against the cable.
    He gasped, slid, and clawed his way back to the main cable and found a hand pulling him back in. He knelt and tried to catch his breath before standing and stumbling forward. He was grateful for Kwesi, though it made him even more aware of those caught in the open.
    Finally the moment came that he feared. The cable ended. Kwesi pushed up against his back and halted. William turned and swung sideways in an arc. Nothing felt the same, he had no bearings, nothing to guide him, just the tightness of the cable behind him. His footsteps shuffled farther—it felt like he was moving upwards but he just couldn’t tell.
    The cable tugged and a hand slapped him heavily on the back. He turned slowly and crept forward until he ran into the other men. He leaned forward and felt the ground in front of him, patting gently on the drifts. There. A hard mass like a stone. He slid his face closer and tried to block the wind. All he could see was the whiteness.
    William slid one glove off and felt the mound before him. The skin was frozen tight with no hint of life below. It was like sliding his hand on a piece of frozen stone. His fingers were numb and he jammed his hand painfully back into the glove. A man frozen into an icy grave. All in under ten minutes.
    They couldn’t stay out longer, much more time and they would start losing fingers, toes, or worse. Already he felt his knee losing sensation. He clapped his hand on the man next to him and pushed him back. Failure was upon him just as harshly as the weather. He stumbled forward with the weight of command driving him on.
    He pushed himself through the opening and into the dark inside. Hands pulled him inside and dragged his quaking, shivering body near the heating coil. His eyes stung and burned as the ice melted and pooled as he stared upwards. Cold rough hands undressed him and stripped him into a fresh set of clothes. Dead man’s clothes.
    There was no need to tell everyone else what they had found as it was quite obvious. William sat and shook.  A heavy, warm, sleeping bag pulled tightly against him. His mind slid from one scenario to the next as he wondered what he could have done differently.
    Sebastien sat down next to him and passed a plastic dish with a thin gruel of ration bars and tepid water. William grasped it in hands cold and tight like claws. It tasted like sand with a hint of lemon.
    Sebastien shrugged. “Nothing that could be done, some freak wind.”
    William