The Glaciermen #2: Amanda

Early access prepublication manuscripts of "The Glaciermen"

Welcome to the second preview installment of The Glaciermen. I hope you’re enjoying it so far.

If you missed Chapter 1, you can read it in full here. Otherwise, let’s get to it…

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Amanda

Nuuk, Greenland.

“Come on Amanda, time to get up. Adventure awaits!” A hand gently shook the girl’s shoulder, pulling her from a warm dream. Amanda sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and looking around the small rented room she was sharing with her father. 

‘Adventure’, she grumbled in her mind, More like ‘you had to drag me along because it was your week with me this winter break’. My friends are going to the beach, and here I am in lovely, freezing cold, Greenland. I can’t wait til I’m eighteen and can say no to these stupid trips.

“We’re losing daylight, Mandy, gotta get up and get after it. Today’s the big day!”

“Da-ad!” she groaned. “I haven’t gone by that in forever—I’m sixteen now, remember?”

Amanda’s father, David, sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck.

“Oh yeah, sorry. I’m just excited for our father-daughter excursion. Plus, I could finally prove my theory, which reminds me, I’ve got to prep my equipment.”

Amanda’s father looked like who he was, a middle-aged scientist and father. He had medium length brown hair, loosely parted in the center, the beginnings of wrinkles around his eyes, a ruddy nose, and salt and pepper stubble covering an endearing, but not particularly handsome, chin. He smiled and left Amanda to dress, stepping out to the small kitchen of their rental apartment.

She put on a pair of thick pants, a sweater, and a white zip-up fleece. Standing in front of the mirror with so many layers on, she thought she looked like a marshmallow. In reality, she shared the features of her mother: auburn hair, a lithe figure, and freckly, fair skin. As she brushed her hair, she looked out a frosted window at the modest capital city of Nuuk, Greenland.

A light snow had fallen since the night before when they had landed on the single-runway airstrip that served as the city’s international airport. Buildings sparkled with frost as rays of morning sunshine poured down. The room had a good view, as Amanda could see the Atlantic stretching to the horizon to the west, and pressing up against majestic, coastal mountains to the east.

Why did Dad have to be a nerd and study things in such a backwater part of the world? She thought. It is pretty, though.

When she was ready, Amanda walked into the bland kitchen of the apartment to see her father locking the clasps on a heavy duty trunk filled with his scientific equipment. She spotted a steaming pot of coffee on the counter and went to pour herself a cup.

Her father raised an eyebrow and said, “Since when do you drink coffee?”

“Since I started highschool, and plus, we had a red-eye flight—gotta be ‘up and after it for our big day’ right?” Amanda said with a wry smile, sipping at the coffee. She grimaced.

“Hey, can we get some better coffee, and maybe something to eat? I’m starving after that crappy airplane food. Is there a Starbucks here? I could go for one of their frappés over this stale bean water.”

“Sorry,” David said, “Nuuk doesn’t have a Starbucks, or even a Mcdonalds'. There’s less than twenty thousand people living here, you know. We wouldn’t have time anyway—we’ve got to get to the heliport. There’s biscuits in the cabinet if you want some breakfast. We’ll be out all day, and might even spend the night at the station on the glacier, so pack a bag with some extra clothes. Oh, one last thing, you’ll want to put on a thicker jacket.”

• • •

Amanda sat in the passenger seat of the rental sedan as David drove them across the quaint peninsula toward the airport. On the way, they passed a dozen rows of identical apartment buildings lining the street.

“Until relatively recently,” David explained unsolicited, “all housing was managed by the municipal government, so private homes are rare here. Plus, the land is still technically owned by the crown of Denmark, so even if you get approved to build a house, you don’t get the land it’s on…”

Bor-ing! Amanda thought, ignoring the rest of her father’s spiel andleaning her elbow against the window to rest her face in her palm as she zoned out.

The drive to the airport was just a few minutes, and after David showed his credentials to a guard at a side gate, they drove directly onto the tarmac toward a waiting helicopter. As Amanda stepped from the car onto the pavement, a cold gust of wind made her pull the heavy down jacket tight around her body.

A tall, bulky man was standing by the helicopter. Long yellow locks streaked with early gray hairs stuck out from under a knit hat, and a bushy blonde beard fell below his reddened nose. A healthy paunch protruded underneath the bright orange jacket he wore. A toothy smile spread within the beard as he came forward to embrace David in an aggressive bear hug.

“My favorite yankee! David, how are you, my friend?” the man said, laughing.

David freed himself from the man, a happy grin on his face. “Mikkel, it’s good to see you too, old friend. I’ve been well—and look who came with me! Meet my daughter Amanda.” He gestured an arm toward her, so she smiled politely at Mikkel.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” she said.

Mikkel laughed again, “Nonsense! The daughter of my friend is my friend. You will call me Mikkel. I am the pilot. I will be flying you two back and forth from the station, and perhaps I will do a few air tricks to see if you can hold onto your breakfast!” He stuck out his hand.

Despite herself, Amanda liked the boisterous man and could not hold back a chuckle at his warm affectations as she took his hand, only to have him shake it vigorously.

“Let me get your packs,” he said, “we must be getting airborn to not waste daylight.”

All three loaded into the six-seat helicopter. Mikkel said it was named ‘Vita,’ patting the dashboard affectionately before gesturing for Amanda to take the copilot seat ‘for the better view,’ with a wink and a smile. He directed them to put on their headsets, and after a sound check, Mikkel went on for some time describing the various specifications of the aircraft. He was clearly a man interested in sharing his knowledge with any audience. 

Ugh! Now there’s two of them, she thought, but not as annoyed as before.

As the chopper ascended, Amanda was too distracted by the stunning view of the coast and mountains below to pay much attention to Mikkel’s ramblings. She looked down as they passed over browns and grays of the rocky coast stretching around the dark blue of ocean inlets like giant fingers. After about twenty minutes flying south, Mikkel turned the helicopter inland and the gray and blue gave way to the white of the mountains. Soon all below was white, a mixing of snow capped peaks and the terminus of the massive glacial sheet that covered the country.

• • •

After watching the scenery below for a while, Amanda spoke into the headset, “So Dad, what are you even looking for down there? It’s just ice.”

“Weren’t you listening during the flight yesterday?” he asked.

“Honestly, not really. I was too tired.”

“Well, I’m happy to tell you again! As you’ve no doubt heard me go on about before, I have a strong hunch that there are extreme physiological adaptations hidden within the human genetic code, and that the key to unlocking, or ‘activating,’ them is for human beings to be exposed to extremely harsh conditions over a long period of time, generations even.”

“Yeah, that sounds vaguely familiar,” Amanda said.

“Good! There’s precedent for this, of course,” he continued, “like that guy who can withstand freezing temperatures with just the power of his mind and body. But I’m thinking of more profound changes than that, along the lines of the transformation of the domestic pig. Did you know they are the exact same species as feral hogs? When a farm pig gets loose in the wild, within just a few weeks physiological changes begin to occur, such as the lengthening of the snout. Within a few months, the skin and hair thicken and tusks have grown. All that from what we think of as a friendly farm animal—all these changes buried in their DNA waiting for the right environment to activate.”

“Do they really change that much so fast?” Amanda asked, now somewhat intrigued.

“Yes, they do. And I believe there is the same potential within human beings, but I suspect it takes much longer for the full changes to take effect. This could explain how humans survived the first ice age, and provide a scientific foundation for certain myths like bigfoot, sasquatch, and yeti.”

“But what does this have to do with the frozen wasteland down there?” Amanda asked, interrupting.

“I was getting to that,” her father replied, “Nine years ago a commercial flight from Helix Airlines disappeared in an electrical storm over this part of Greenland. Until now, it was completely lost. With the warm summers the last few years the ice has receded enough for the plane to be picked up in satellite imagery.

“The weird part is that when the coast guard first searched the wreckage, the passengers and crew were unaccounted for—the plane was completely empty. My team and I suspect they abandoned it to seek shelter in a nearby glacial cave, as they would have had a better chance there at surviving until rescue than in a thin metal tube exposed to the elements. But rescue never came, since their mayday never made it out of the electrical storm, so they must have perished in the extreme cold somewhere in that cave when their emergency supplies finally ran out.”

“You sound pretty confident about something that happened almost a decade ago,” Amanda said.

“I am,” David said, “We already confirmed the existence of glacial caverns near the crash site using ice-penetrating radar, and the advanced team at the site just breached the uppermost cavern yesterday evening, reporting preliminary evidence of human presence—frozen luggage and whatnot.”

“So we’re looking for dead people?” Amanda asked.

“Precisely. They’re somewhere in that cave system, perfectly preserved in nature’s icebox, along with any genetic changes that took place in response to the environmental extremes. Once we find them, I can take tissue samples and analyze them, hopefully revealing signs of genetic transformation, and possibly even subtle physiological changes, though I think these are less likely given the timeframe. These passengers are the smoking gun I need to prove my theory.”

• • •

Mikkel spoke up, “We’re five minutes out, so get prepped for landing. That means don’t fall out.” 

He laughed at his own joke, then flicked a switch on the helicopter dash and said, “Come in,  base camp, this is Mikkel with helo transport. We are incoming, five minutes to touchdown, over.”

A woman’s voice replied over the radio. “This is base camp, Erika speaking. Roger that. Touchdown confirmed, five minutes out, over.”

Mikkel said, “Copy… Hey, I’m thirsty up here, any chance there’s a hot drink waiting for me in the mess? Over.”
Erika laughed over the radio, saying, “Still thinking with your stomach, eh, Mikkel? Well, you're in luck—I just brewed a pot of coffee. You can pour it yourself though, you big oaf. Over and out.”

Mikkel chuckled, then switched back to the helicopter’s internal channel. “I very much like Erika. She is a beautiful woman, and still unwed. I think we would make very fine children together.”

“Woah there, tiger,” David said, “Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of yourself a little bit?”

Mikkel laughed again, his large torso bouncing in the seat. “Nonsense! I am Mikkel, of fine Danish stock. A woman such as her will be entranced by my endless guile in no time. You will see.” He winked again at Amanda.

Amanda rolled her eyes at the facetious bragging from the jolly man as he maneuvered the helicopter in a wide arc around the research station. The station comprised two spartan structures. The main building was made up of three modular sections that had been flown in by a cargo helicopter. The gray and black panels were a stark contrast amidst the vast expanse of white. A few paces away was a large canvas tent structure. Amanda could just make out the glint of steel girders inside the entrance flap. About forty yards from the station was a red-painted circle on the ice with a large ‘H’ in the center. 

The most eye-catching feature, though, was the partially buried wreckage of the commercial jetliner a hundred yards or so past the station. Halfway along the fuselage, an ugly break split the plane in half like a great fractured bone. The nose and tail ends of the plane angled downward away from the break, so both the cockpit and tail were completely buried in the ice, leaving only the broken middle section of the plane sticking out above the surface. Frost had been melting off the exposed metal, making it glint in the sunlight and revealing the faded red letters of the Helix Air logo on the fuselage. The logo ran directly across the break, split exactly between the letters ‘L’ and the ‘I’ in ‘Helix.’

“Hel,” Amanda mouthed, sounding out the letters automatically as her eyes passed over the logo.

Below, two figures were standing on the landing of a short metal stairway leading to the door of the station. Both were sporting the same style of thick orange jacket as Mikkel. The shorter of the two was waving toward the new arrivals. Mikkel pulled the helicopter out of the arc and brought it down slowly onto the makeshift helipad. Gusts from the chopper rotors blasted loose snow away from the circle and rippled the canvas of the tent. The two figures jogged toward the aircraft clutching their hoods as Mikkel shut down power to the rotors.

Amanda witnessed a second round of bear hugs as Mikkel went in for his signature greeting. He then happily introduced the new arrivals to the waiting pair, who had pulled back their hoods and taken off hats. The shorter one who had waved was Erika, the woman from the radio. She was a graduate student from David’s lab and had come out as part of the advance team, selected for her basic fluency in the local language. Amanda found that she agreed with Mikkel—Erika was a pretty woman. She had a round face with a cutesy smile and straight blond hair pulled back into a neat ponytail.

The second of the two was introduced as Rolf, who didn’t speak much English. Rolf looked to be in his mid-thirties. He had a rugged face, with strongly protruding brows over piercing blue eyes and a wide, square chin. Short spikes of blond hair were matted back from wearing the hat. He handled the station’s mechanical affairs. Amanda did not feel she liked him as much—he was mean looking and had not spoken a single word in greeting.

Once they were inside the station, and Mikkel had poured himself a coffee, the group gathered in the main unit around a plain table covered in charts and printouts. Light poured down onto the table from a skylight in the center of the ceiling. There were two hatchways going to the other units of the station, one being a bunk room and the other a cramped mess hall along with storage and the washrooms. David was looking intently at the papers on the table.

“So what’s the latest update?” he asked, to no one in particular.

Erika pointed to one of the charts and said, “Here’s the initial scan of the ice cave we breached yesterday. The uppermost cavern is about twelve meters down in the ice. Striations in the walls of the shaft we cut out indicate there was a crevasse here some time in the recent past which has since been filled in, so it’s plausible the passengers could have made their way down then—which we confirmed when we found evidence of their presence inside. Runa’s down there at the moment setting up lighting.”

“Who’s Runa?” Amanda interrupted.

“She’s Rolf’s sister. Carbon copy of him in terms of looks, but a damn good biologist. She’s also our medic in case someone gets hurt,” Erika replied. “Now as I was saying, Runa is setting up lights. Once she’s done we’ll start logging everything, which from a quick glance around with flashlights is mostly frozen luggage and things from the plane’s emergency kits. I’m sure we’ll find more once the lights are up.

“As of yet we’ve just been in the uppermost cavern, but there’s lots of small offshoots in the ice, so we did a deeper scan and found there are further cavities all around and below the initial cavern. It looks to be a whole system of ice caves. We think this was probably an opening into glacial melt streams. As for the passengers, the weird thing is—”
David was nodding eagerly and cut in, saying, “Great work Erika. I want to get down there right away, but I’ve still got to unpack my gear.” He paused, then looked at his daughter, “Hey, why don’t you take Amanda down there now while I’m getting ready. I can meet you in a few.”
“Sounds good to me,” Erika said.

“Wait, what?” Amanda said, “Hold on, I’m not going down there. That’s where the dead people are, right?.”

“You’ll be fine. I’ll be right there with you, and Runa’s down there already,” Erika said with a soothing tone. “And we haven’t found any bodies yet, just some old luggage. No dead people. Once we get the lights on, it’ll be nice and bright. It’s pretty spacious down there, too, and quite beautiful actually, with the way the light plays off all the ice around. C’mon, you’ll like it. Plus, would you rather just hang out up here with Mikkel and Rolf?”

Rolf grunted at the mention of his name, looking to Erika, but she just chuckled and spoke a few words to him in Danish. He nodded, then turned and exited the station.

“What’d you just tell him?” Amanda asked.

Erika smiled. “I told him to get the lift ready. Now let’s go. It’ll be fun.”

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Continue the story here:

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And that’s it for now folks

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