The desolate simple dock was illuminated by kerosene lamps and the headlights of half-track motorcycles. Seeing that Eric had calmed down, Wei Ran sighed and motioned for the other person to help carry the carcasses of the two reindeer to the sleigh. .
"What are you going to do?" Eric asked, looking at Wei Ran blankly.
"Stay alive"
Wei Ran pointed to the surging aurora above his head, "Whether we find the real murderer or return to Norway alive, we must be here. We have to hold on long enough. The food reserves at the weather station are running low. These two reindeer can make us hold on longer."
"I want to wait for Leo here." Eric said stubbornly.
"Maybe Leo has already gone to the weather station?" Weiran once again gave the other party a false target.
"Yes, he will definitely go to the weather station to find me! We know the weather station!"
The confused Leo thought for a while, picked up a piece of reindeer skin and spread it out , then he took out a pencil from his bag and wrote something on the hairless side of the reindeer skin. Then he took off the scarf around his neck and tied it to the sleigh.
Too lazy to ask what Eric, who seemed to have been abandoned by everyone, wrote this time, Wei Ran called for help and moved the body of one of the reindeer to the sled with difficulty, and then moved the other one. The carcass of the reindeer was carried to the cargo bed of the half-track motorcycle, which was not that big, and tied up.
"Let's go"
Wei Ran signaled Eric to get in the car, turned the accelerator, drove the severely overloaded antique, and dragged the equally overloaded sleigh, making a squeaking sound. Moving forward slowly on the snowfield.
Erik, who was sitting on the carcass of a reindeer, wrapped the animal skin blanket tightly around him and fell silent looking at the 1911 pistol he had just picked up in his hand. From time to time, he would raise the same I just picked up the telescope to take a look at the surrounding environment.
However, on this Bear Island shrouded in polar night, the only thing he could see were the auroras that once fascinated him.
Putting down the telescope, Eric took out the hand-cranked radio he found on the sleigh and put it to his ear, while at the same time he began to slowly shake the power lever on the door.
Amidst the noise, he could barely hear the Norwegian Christmas songs coming from the radio channel and the various blessings read out by the radio host. After trying to change the channel, he put the radio to his ear and continued to shake it, hoping to hear some useful information.
However, the signal that this palm-sized radio could receive was really limited. Most of the time, what he heard were all kinds of meaningless noises, as well as Soviet radio stations that he couldn’t understand at all. .
Under the slow dragging of the half-track, it took the two more than two hours to rush back to the weather station valley. But to Eric's disappointment, the iron door of the cave was still hung by a lock, with no sign of being opened at all.
Seeing Eric walking into the cave in despair, Wei Ran gave up asking him to help.Thinking, he pushed the carcasses of the two reindeer to the snow alone, then took out the anti-Japanese machete from the metal book, and roughly broke the frozen reindeer into large and small pieces of meat.
He didn't even waste the reindeer's internal organs. He took them all out one by one and threw them aside to freeze. It was while decomposing the reindeer meat that Wei Ran accidentally discovered the bullet still stuck in the meat.
Although these bullets have been deformed, they can still be distinguished as fat .45 pistol bullets.
This further confirmed Wei Ran’s previous suspicion. Since the two reindeer were killed by pistols, it was even less likely that it was Leo who did it.
Looking up at the direction of the cave, Wei Ran moved all the pieces of meat on the floor and other things on the sleigh into the cave, then cleaned the radiator tank on the half-track motorcycle, and then walked in the warm cave interior.
In the warm cave illuminated by kerosene vapor lamps, Eric was busy taking photos of weather data with his camera, as if he wanted to numb himself with work.
Sighing, Wei Ran picked up the hand-cranked radio on the table and looked at it, then looked at the two radio stations next to the stove. After thinking about it, he picked up the screwdriver he found earlier. , took the radio apart and began to try to assemble a large radio.
Compared with repairing the radio itself, this modification work is much simpler. After Weiran started the fuel generator outside the wooden door and connected the power to the circuits on the table, the disassembled radio The loudspeaker also made a tingling noise.
The movement here naturally attracted Eric's attention, and he immediately put down his work and came over.
Wei Ran looked at the other party, then gently turned the knob to adjust the radio channel. With the help of the antennas of the two previous radio stations that stretched all the way outside the cave, the signal of this radio was much better. It took no effort at all to receive the signal of the All-Soviet Radio Station.
Before Weiran finished listening to the Soviet songs on the station, Eric started to turn the knob and changed to a Norwegian channel that Weiran could not understand. Fortunately, this channel was also playing Although I can’t understand the lyrics of the song, I can at least hear the melody.
Seeing that Eric had diverted his attention, Wei Ran temporarily put aside his worries and started busy preparing to get some food. He also thought about waiting for the other person to calm down, and then summarize his previous analysis and speculation. Tell the other person.
Behind him, Eric had already changed the channel of the radio station and listened carefully to what the host on the radio was saying in Norwegian. At the same time, he His face also became paler.
Turning to look at Wei Ran, who was heating the food he had prepared earlier, Eric gently picked up the pistol on the table and pressed the muzzle of the gun, still stained with blood, against his chin.
"Leo is not a murderer" Eric said with tears streaming down his face.
"Of course he didn't kill anyone...What are you going to do?"
Wei Ran was startled when he raised his head. He threw away the small stainless steel pot he was about to put on the stove and ran over.
However, before he could touch the opponent's body, Eric had already closed his eyes and pulled the trigger with unusual simplicity!
"Bang!"
The deafening gunfire echoed in the warm cave for a long time, and the lifeless Eric fell to the floor with his head up. At the same time, intense white light also filled Wei Ran's vision.
"Why...why did you commit suicide?"
When he recovered from his shock, he realized that he had returned to the bedroom on the second floor of the studio .
With the sound of turning pages, the metal book automatically stopped on page 14, and the metal quill wrote the subsequent story under the black and white photo as if no one else was there:
Conspiracy under the polar night
Leo, a gold prospector, was shot dead by his best friend Captain Martin on December 17, 1988. He used the radio to send a distress message and framed Leo for killing Jonah. Professor Si then escaped on another boat.
Captain Martin, Professor Jonas, died on December 17, 1988 when his fishing boat hit an ice floe.
Eric committed suicide on December 21, 1988 after he burned all the meteorological data in the cave left behind by the weather station because he misunderstood the arrest warrant issued by the radio station against Leo. His body was found in 1989 Found in the summer and brought back by family.
At this point, the metal quill pen wrote another line briefly, "For the treasure, some people choose to weave lies, some choose to betray their friends, and some people waver in desperate situations after choosing to trust."
Under Wei Ran's gaze, the page turned to the back, and the metal quill continued to write under the slowly rotating red vortex, "Your cooking skills are actually as good as Leo."
Stupefied, Wei Ran was about to reach out and take out the things in the red vortex, but found that the metal quill pen continued to write on the blank page 15:
Not all stories are touching, and not all stories contain conspiracy, but the characters in each story were once a living life.
When the photographer behind the lens presses the shutter, what should he insist on in his heart: justice, kindness, or objective truth? For those people forgotten by history, did they insist on justice, kindness or their own beliefs or dreams until death? What price did the characters in front of and behind the camera pay for their inner perseverance?
Writing this, the metal quill paused for a moment, and then a red and blue vortex appeared directly below the text.
Under Wei Ran's gaze, the metal quill pen wrote under the quill pen, "Ten survival rewards, 10,000 kilometers warranty."
Wait until the metal quill pen When it hit the table with a clang, he had already roughly guessed what the reward was.
Tip slipClimbing downstairs with the metal book in hand, Wei Ran checked the locked rolling shutter door, and then took out the things in the red vortex.
What made him dumbfounded was that the red swirl contained a Heinze pie oven and matching stainless steel pot that were used on Bear Island at that time. And in the small stainless steel pot, there was actually a small piece of smelly pickled herring.
"Compared with pickled herring, my cooking skills are as good as Leo's?"
Wei Ran couldn't help but pick up the lighter-sized piece in the stainless steel pot with a strange expression. The sour fish meat was stuffed into his mouth.
After eating the gift Eric left for himself, Wei Ran breathed a sigh of relief, resisting the rising nausea, and then summoned the ten survival reward items.
Both expected and unexpected, the reward this time was really the half-track motorcycle. It's just that the front wheels of this white-painted half-track are not sleds but normal wheels from the original version. At the same time, there was a thick and heavy polar bear skin placed on the driver's seat, and in its rear bucket, there were rolled canvas tents and reindeer skin blankets.
"Profit with blood!"
Weiran circled around to observe the half-track motorcycle, which was almost in factory condition, and then opened it again as if he remembered something. In the metal book, he took out the only negative in the paper bag next to the black and white photo.
Looking at the light on the workbench, the content of this film is not the meteorological data, but the scene when they were in the cave celebrating the discovery together. Not only is there no trace of Wei Ran in this negative, but this negative was not taken by him or any of the other three people.
It’s a pity that shortly after this photo, Eric and others had completely different experiences but reached the same destination.