Page 100 of Dead Mountain

He made us that cocoa. So solicitous about it. Jesus, was Alex testing something on us? Did he drug us?

My thirst is so bad I’m having trouble thinking clearly. It’s a funny thing—when you’re thirsty, you don’t get hungry. Right now I’m not hungry at all, even though I probably haven’t eaten for more than a day. I’m going to search this place top to bottom. There’s got to be something here. Got to be.

Okay, first round a failure. At least I found the tunnel leading to the front door of the bunker. It’s got to be a mile long, at least. Man this bunker is deep. The front door is like the back one, only larger: painted steel with a keypad. Once again I tried a thousand possible combinations. I banged on the door. No one came. I found a length of metal pipe and pounded on the door. NO. ONE. CAME.

There’s weird stuff abandoned in here, like a grand piano. But no food or water. My headlamp was getting dim. I can’t let it go out—otherwise fire would be my only source of light. So I came back and lit a fire in the fireplace, and turned off the headlamp. I’m going to save it for an emergency. At least I have a lighter and a canister of waterproof matches—and there’s plenty of wood around here. But I’ve got to do something about the thirst.

Later. I slept for a while, and when I woke up the fire had gone out. My thirst was just awful. I had to find water. So I made some firebrands out of chair-legs, string, and toilet paper from the bathrooms. (No water in the toilets.)

I searched the kitchen again. Thank God!! Behind a broken pantry shelf, I found a can of peas in water. I opened it and drank the water and ate the peas. Need more.

But the peas gave me hope. I searched every last nook and cranny of that kitchen and pantry, then the closets, storage areas, tunnels—everything. There has to be a cache of supplies somewhere, but I can’t find it. Back in the kitchen, I tried all the taps. I traced the water pipes and turned on all the cocks. I even excavated into the stucco of the walls to get at the main water pipes and punctured them. DRY AS A BONE.

I’m now sitting on the sofa in the living room, in front of the fire, writing. Three days have passed. Maybe four? The drug has completely worn off. I’ve gone back over this and corrected stuff that I scrawled earlier, half out of my mind, and tried to make a narrative that’s somewhat cohesive.

If I don’t find water soon, I’ll get too weak even to search. I wonder—could I really die in this place? Rescue parties will find the tent. And then what? There won’t be a trail leading away—not with that blizzard. And what about the explosion? The ALIEN? Paul, murdering Gordy? I’m sure I can separate the hallucinations from the reality—at least, I think I’m sure.

CHRIST IM SO THIRSTY.

55

CORRIE CAME TO the end of a page. She stopped reading and glanced over at Nora. The archaeologist looked stricken. “How awful,” she said.

“Do you want me to keep reading? There’s not much more.”

Nora nodded.

Corrie went back to the journal. The writing had increasingly deteriorated into a scrawl.

SIX DAYS? SEVEN? LOST ALL TRACK OF TIME

CALM DOWN. WRITE. Chronicle. Someone will read this.

Headlamp dead. No water. I never imagined how awful it could be without. You can’t think, can’t sleep, no longer human. Just a monstrous craving thirst-beast. Tongue is cracked, bleeding. Eyelids sticking. STICKING. Drank piss.

ALEX DID THIS. Some experiment. Everything else must be hallucinations—crash. murder. explosion. light.

Tried keypad till fingers bled.

Journal + camera = PROOF. Develop film.

Once again, the rest of the page was blank. Corrie turned one page, and then another, to find a final, terrible scrawl.

DONT DIE IN DARK — LIGHT FIRE BEFORE.

TOO WEAK

The rest of the journal was blank.

They stood in silence at the bedside, the desiccated corpse lying peacefully in the tomb it had arranged for itself.

“What an end,” said Nora, choking with emotion. “Oh my God.”

Corrie felt sick. But her mind was racing ahead on its own. “It all fits together,” she said. “Alex DeGregorio was a graduate student at NMIT. A pharmaceutical engineer.”

“And that’s what pharmaceutical engineers do—design drugs.”

Corrie nodded. “That’s where he made his fortune—close to a billion dollars. Looks like he was messing around and, after trying an experimental drug on himself, tested it out on some friends. And it all went very wrong.”

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