The dying man got dressed.
Not that dying was going to be very hard, Bill Carter thought with a weak thread of his old humor.
Easier than dressing, at least.
Pain hampering every move in his hands and wrists, he managed to zip and button his heavy parka. A thick wool cap was forced over his head and ears, and he pulled the hood of his coat over it all. He eyed his boots with a malevolent glare, then bent down to force them over his numb feet.
Lastly, the gloves. Using his teeth to aid his clumsy, frozen fingers, he pulled them on, grateful that the weak light from the electric lamp did not show him the ruin of his once-healthy body. Breath steaming in the brutally cold air, he shuffled over to Olaf and nudged him with his foot. Once, then again. Outside, the raging wind howled inland from the Kara Sea, shrieking its fury at anyone who was stupid or foolish enough to dare to challenge it.
Olaf's eyes blinked open. The large Swede looked up, frost crystals in his beard.
"I am just going outside, Olaf," Bill said shakily, keeping his voice low so he didn't wake the others. "And I may be some time. Make sure you close and tie the door flap behind me. I can't do much with these anymore," he said with a weak wave of his hands.
"My friend," Olaf said, his voice weak, "Are you sure?"
Bill did not trust himself enough to speak. Instead, he nodded. Olaf slowly crawled out of his sleeping bag and staggered over to the front of the tent. Silently, he gripped Bill's shoulder. Frozen tears formed on his cheeks as he wept.
"May the good God bring you home safe, my friend."
"And you," Bill replied, though he had given up his belief in the almighty on this hellish journey. "Get back safe to that pretty wife of yours, and give her a child or two."
"If I do, one of them will share your name. Go now, before my heart breaks." He knelt on the frozen canvas and unzipped the front flap.
Bill Carter took one last deep breath, and committed suicide.
%%%
It was easier than he thought. The powdery snow did not hamper his movements much, and he was able to set a good pace. It was only a matter of moments before he had left the ragged, windswept camp which was all that remained of the once proud Russian-American Novaya Zemlya Expedition.
A tribute, Bill thought bitterly, to American arrogance and Russian incompetence and corruption. The expedition had been the brainchild of a consortium of oil and mining firms, who were convinced that vast amounts of precious metals and petroleum could be found and extracted along the hostile coast of Arctic Russia. They had underwritten the costs, and forty men and women had been chosen to take part in an expedition to Novaya Zemlya, a pair of islands off the northwest Russian mainland.
However, the expedition had been grounded for weeks by foul weather. With the narrow window to do fieldwork closing, the lead American, a geologist for the petroleum industry, had insisted that they fly in on a huge Chinook helicopter, and wait for the supporting water craft to meet them where their base was to be established. He had ignored the advice of the mission meteorologist, a bright young man from St. Paul, Minnesota, named William Carter.
Well, I showed him, didn't I?
Bill thought morbidly, stumbling through a drift. McKenzie had died when the helicopter crashed, gale force winds throwing it down onto the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean like a wad of paper. Only eleven of them had survived the crash and the terrible days that followed, when they realized that most of the emergency supplies and medical equipment had been stolen or sold on the black market, and that the electronics and radio had been irreparably damaged.
And that for some crazy reason, no one had bothered putting in cell phone service at the top of the world.
Despairing, the survivors had made a grim bid for life. Using whatever tools they could scavenge or make, the had peeled away part of the hull of the helicopter to use as a sledge to pull their supplies across the ice in a desperate attempt to reach civilization. But they didn't have enough food or fuel or anything else, and three of them had already died of exposure and malnutrition.
Four,
thought Bill. He looked for a sheltered spot.
They had made it to the southern of the two islands, but the food situation was growing desperate. Bill had come down with severe frostbite in the fingers of his right hand and in both feet. When the wounds turned gangrenous he knew his time had come.
Simple math, really. If I'm gone, there will be more food for everyone else. Maybe Olaf and Ludmilla can get them to Belushya Guba. I doubt it, though.
Better chance than you do, Carter,
he snickered.
God, I'm tired.
The sun must have come up behind the clouds, for the thin light was growing stroner. Through the veils of blowing snow, Bill saw a finger of stone jutting up from the arctic plain. It was at least fifteen feet tall, and four or five feet wide. At its base, on the side away from the wind, a small patch of bare ground was in view.
That'll do.
With fading strength, he lurched into the lee of the stone. He sat down and curled his legs up into his body and crossed his arms across his chest. For a moment, his shivers eased and he felt almost warm. He looked up into the sky. The storm must have been breaking, because he could see thin streaks of blue between the ragged gray clouds.
He felt oddly calm.
Does it hurt to die?
he thought.
I don't think so. Remember when you had the lower GI a few years back? One second you were on the gurney, waiting for a doctor to shove a camera up your butt. The next you were awake in the recovery room putting on your clothes.
I hope it's like that. God, I would have liked to see my folks again. And Jim and Nancy. And sit out at night with a beer and watch the sun set.
I wish...
The last thing that Bill Carter felt, before Death came walking up to take him, was the false warmth of hypothermia.
He smiled.
%%%
Grandmother Snegurochka sat listlessly in her old rocking chair by the pale fire. Her head drooped, and the bone needles nearly fell from her grasp. The gray shawl she was knitting sat uselessly in her lap.
So tired,
she thought despairingly.
I am so tired. So long without someone to talk to. No one to share a cup of tea with in the evening. No one to play with in bed.
She snorted indelicately. As if anyone would want to engage in bed-sport with her now. Old, wrinkled, gray and spotted. She was missing teeth, and her fading vision told her that soon she would be blind as well.
Give it up,
