Death of an Expedition

by Mr. David R. Dorrycott

Doctor William Fletcher coughed, tasting blood. It mattered not, there was nothing that could be done to help him now even were he in the best hospital. With great effort he raised his head enough to look around. Dead, all dead. Their tents torn to shreds as though by the wind, all the supplies gone. Not one had survived, and he himself would not be among the living much longer. A second cough splattered the white snow with ruby red blood. No, not long. His only pleasure was that Professor Lustig, if that were truly the Germans real name, had not found Mindy’s real records.

Cold bit at his soul as he remembered what the Germans had done to his three female students. Had done to Mindy when she refused to give up her secrets. They had lived but a few hours after the Germans were through, their cooling bodies tossed over a fissure’s edge to the depths below. Perhaps one day a future exploration party would find their bodies. He hoped not. Better that they lay in peace, forgotten.

He knew that there was nothing to do now but die. With four broken limbs and only one working eye his chances for survival were zero. Abruptly he winced in pain, curling up into a ball of fur as his heart abruptly stopped. Minutes later his own body began to cool. As it did two sets of booted feet walked up, stopping in front of him.

“He never broke” one voice said in German. A voice Fletcher would have cursed had he heard it again. “Had I ten as strong. As intelligent. Ah, but that is not to be. Let us go. Our amphibian will be waiting tomorrow and we must have our reports. Our evidence to Germany most quickly.” Those two sets of boots turned, walking away to a waiting dogsled just over a nearby snowbank.

Over a day later snow again fell from that fissures edge as a bare paw clasped its edge. Ruined or missing claws made little grip on the hard packed snow. Then another paw joined the first as Mindy Saracen dragged herself from the depths of death. It had taken most of two days, and all the training that Sandy Doecan had given her to make it this far. Gasping knife sharp cold air, the housecat dragged herself over the edge, searching for the campsite she expected to see. It was there, snow blown, torn down, empty. Exactly as she expected to find it. It would be three hours later before an again clothed housecat sat inside a makeshift tent, a small alcohol stove she had hidden away warming her body. Her blood and a frozen can of soup mixed with snow around her.

She grimaced as her body warmed. Movement was bringing with it intense pain, for both her feet had been shattered by the Germans. She remembered her two friends gruesome deaths. Only the fact that she had been thrown over last had saved her life. Her friends shattered, still warm bodies both breaking her fall and keeping her warm as they slowly cooled. Until the Germans had left. And she was no fool. It was at least forty miles to Neue Suden Thule. It was, as she remembered, just starting prime tourist season there right now. If she could make it that far, then perhaps transportation to Nunui Hale. There she could wire for help through the American Consulate, or whatever her country had on those island for representation.

Another day saw Mindy ready. She had bound her shattered feet together, making a pod of warm fur about them with her now dead companions torn clothing. An aluminum plate would serve as a sled, upon it she had packed the alcohol stove, a single pot, all the food that she and Professor Fletcher had managed to hide. Hidden beneath that pitiful pile her records and a box of the smaller metal artifacts lay as protected as she could manage. Professor Fletcher had ordered her to hide them. To hide food. It was a great deal more than the Germans had thought that they had missed, but would it be enough she wondered. About her she wore her travel tent. Water resistant silk that would hopefully keep snow from packing into her clothing. From now on she was on her own. Had it not been for Professor Fletchers guidance, she would still be laying at the bottom of that crevice. Frozen solid.

Five long days later Mindy came to the realization that she would lose her feet. Even though she had covered them as best she could and warmed them carefully each night, the constant cold had frozen both. “I’ll never dance again” she cursed as she re-wrapped her ruined feet. That would be a great loss to the housecat, for she loved to dance. It had been the morphine she was using to kill her bodies pain that had done the evil deed. For had she been able to feel, she might have saved her feet. Re-packing her gear she paused just long enough to check her cracked compass. She was on course for Neue Suden Thule, but had managed only ten miles in three days. “I’ve not enough food” she admitted to herself. “Not even on starvation rations. Still I must do the best I am able. I promised Professor Fletcher.” Wrapping the rope around her body like a belt she started crawling towards her destination. The tiny red flag that stood upon its pole above her makeshift sled fluttering in the wind.

Four days later Mindy Saracan did not awaken. She did not open her dark eyes to the tiny tent she was laying in. She did not start her nearly empty alcohol stove, or warm one of the last cans of soup in her inventory. It was not the cold that had killed the housecat. A few days more would have been enough for that. No, it was the poison that had entered her blood from her rotting feet. Entered her blood and stopped her heart with its toxins. Beside her lay the diary she had been keeping since leaving America on this trip. Its last page a confession of her love for her long lost Professor. Outside her tent a lone red flag fluttered in the wind. Fluttered less than five miles from Neue Suden Thule and all the medical care she would have needed. Fluttered as snow slowly covered that small tent, and the forgotten body that lay within. In a month only the flag, by then a tattered remnant of its former self would remain. Still fluttering. Still marking a secret the world searched for.

Unlike in the movies, the hero does not always win.