Chapter Eighty-Nine: It Lies Between Us

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The main door of the research station shook beneath the thunderous pounding, and everyone who had gathered nearby found themselves swallowing nervously.

Someone whispered to the person beside him, “Do you think a human could make that kind of noise?”

“I don’t know,” his companion said cautiously, shaking his head. “Back where I come from, not even the drunkest drunk could hammer that hard.”

The others said nothing, but from the look on their faces, none of them believed there was a person outside. The two men in charge had already drawn their guns.

They turned to glance at the room where the block of alien ice was being stored, then looked at one another and nodded. The man who had been giving the speech earlier began edging slowly toward the door.

Then, amid the pounding, another sound came through from outside.

“Is there anybody in there or not? I’m about to shout my throat raw!”

“Does anyone understand Chinese? If not, I’ll switch.”

“Damn it, even if you don’t understand what I’m saying, shouldn’t you at least open the door and take a look?”

The moment that voice rang out, everyone jumped in fright. The man heading for the door nearly threw away his gun in shock and hurriedly backed off.

But as soon as the words were heard, a young woman in the crowd spoke up. “It’s a person. He’s speaking Chinese.”

“Chinese?” The leader turned to look at the young woman who had pushed her way forward from the back of the group.

“Yes. There are many Chinese international students at Columbia University. I know what it sounds like.” She nodded.

Hearing that, everyone relaxed a little. Then the voice outside shouted again, “This time it’s English. Does anyone understand English? Don’t tell me a Norwegian research station doesn’t have a single person who speaks it.”

That reassured them even more, and they hurried over to open the main door.

With a rush, the door swung wide.

The person opening it was still afraid, so the instant the door opened he darted aside, and a dark figure flashed in with a swirl of snow.

“Whew, I’m freezing to death. Antarctic nights are unbelievably cold!”

Rubbing his arms through his thin clothes, Zhou Shu looked up and saw a whole crowd staring at him.

A little embarrassed, he reached back and shut the door. Looking at the foreigners before him, he decided English was probably safer than Chinese, so he said, “Sorry, does anyone here speak English?”

Now that they were sure he was a person—or at least looked like one—the people of the station finally relaxed.

“Oh, my God, how did you get here all by yourself?”

“Did you get separated from your team?”

“Man, thank heaven you found us. Otherwise you’d have been in real danger.”

“Quick, quick, get our friend somewhere warm. He must be frozen through!”

None of them found it strange that Zhou Shu was wearing so little. Instead, they urgently brought him over to a heater, wrapped him in a blanket, and tried to warm him up.

Research had shown that some people dying of hypothermia often feel as though they are getting hotter and hotter, then strip off their clothes one by one until they freeze to death entirely.

In their minds, Zhou Shu was obviously already half-frozen out of his wits.

He was taken to the heater in the recreation room. There he discovered they really had been holding a party: a group of scruffy, bearded middle-aged men and two women. At the same time, the whole scene struck him as oddly familiar.

Once they had settled him in, they went right back to the music and the dancing, all of them in extraordinarily high spirits.

Someone came over and offered him a drink, but he refused and asked instead for a cup of hot water.

The man lost interest at once and wandered off. A moment later, the young woman came over carrying two steaming cups.

She sat down beside Zhou Shu and handed one to him. “I don’t like drinking either. The liquor here tastes like cough syrup. I couldn’t find any... tea. Is hot coffee all right?”

She spoke entirely in English, but at the word tea, Zhou Shu distinctly caught the Chinese meaning in her pronunciation. Taking the coffee, he asked in English, “You speak Chinese? And you even know that we like tea?”

The woman smiled. “Only a little. There are lots of Chinese international students at Columbia University, and a few of them happen to be my friends. You people are always very serious about studying.”

As she spoke, she pointed to herself. “Kate Lloyd. You can call me Kate.”

“Thank you for the hot coffee. I feel like I’ve come back to life.” Zhou Shu lifted the cup in both hands. “My name is Zhou Shu. You can call me Zhou.”

She laughed. “I do know a little Chinese, you know. I can pronounce your full name perfectly, Zhou Shu. At first, my friends also wanted me to call them by just one character, as if they thought I wasn’t smart enough to say a proper name...”

“I never said that...”

And so the two of them fell into easy conversation. Zhou Shu learned that Kate held a doctorate in paleontology and had skipped grades along the way; she was only twenty-five this year, which was why her being invited here was so remarkable.

That excited him. Because his parents were paleontologists, he had absorbed quite a bit of knowledge in the field himself, enough at least to exchange a few professional remarks with a paleontology doctor.

Especially in such a jubilant atmosphere—could it be they had made some major paleontological discovery?

At that question, Kate glanced around at the festive room and lowered her voice. “Yes. We discovered an alien life-form, from about a hundred thousand years ago...”

Good Lord.

Just as Zhou Shu began to feel that something was very wrong, a man walked in laughing. “Hahaha! Derek went to check on our ‘honored guest,’ and I followed behind him and scared the hell out of him. He almost fell flat on the floor!”

“Hahahahaha—”

The others burst into laughter as well.

The boisterous mirth drowned out everything else, but Zhou Shu could still hear the booming crash of something exploding apart, the splintering of wooden boards, and then the sound of someone running unsteadily.

“Not good!”

He sprang to his feet.

Even as Kate was still puzzling over his reaction, one of the station members suddenly ran over and cried out in panic, “It escaped!”

“What?”

“Huh?”

At first, the others felt little urgency at his shout. But then the newcomer cried out, his voice nearly breaking, “I’m not fucking joking! That monster is still alive! I was in there watching the ice, and then that thing just jumped out at me!”

Only then did everyone realize something was terribly wrong. One after another they rushed out of the recreation room toward that other chamber to see what had happened.

Zhou Shu did not follow.

Wrapped in his blanket, he remained seated by the heater, because by now he knew exactly what story this was.

This was the plot of The Thing prequel.

Judging from the current situation, they had already transported the alien creature’s “corpse” back to the station and even drilled into it to take samples. The celebration earlier had been because they had successfully discovered extraterrestrial life and were rejoicing that their names would go down in history.

But this creature was no easy thing to deal with. After being brought indoors for a while, the ice encasing it had melted, it had “revived,” and now it had begun to feed.

The creature could devour and duplicate organic life, humans included. In the film, it disguised itself as people inside the station, slaughtered nearly everyone, and then escaped in the form of a dog.

And of course, since this was a prequel, there had to be an original story. That was The Thing: the dog fled to another research station, and there came another massacre. In the end, no one even knew whether it would spread across the entire world.

The reason Zhou Shu had not gone after them was simple: he could not be sure who was already the creature.

The film never clearly explained how the first few people had been infected. Perhaps from the very moment Kate and the others successfully drilled into the ice and took their sample, someone among them had already been contaminated.

The creature had not merely escaped from the ice. It was now hidden among every one of them.

So what Zhou Shu needed to do now was recover all his bodily functions and prepare himself to face whatever sudden danger might come next.

Postscript: Thanks to Special Air Service for the reward.