When I wake, I feel the cold first. Then the wind. But something is strange. Above us, the sky is dark. It’s night. I see the deep gray clouds clearly, but they aren’t moving anymore. Then I see the snow around us. It’s not moving either. And then I listen. There’s no sound of crunching snow. The song that put me to sleep. The parting wave of Ernest hauling us through the sludge. I sit up, alarmed, only to jerk to a stop with the pain in my side.
I’m high enough to see it. Ernest is lying face down in the snow in front of the boat. And I don’t know how long it’s been. I yell his name and start to panic, and behind me Russell wakes up, but I bolt out of the boat before he realizes what’s wrong. All the pain in the world means nothing all of the sudden, and I rush over to him. I try to turn him, to lift him up, but I can’t. I call back in panic to Russell to help. Russell moves out slowly, and finally he stumbles up to join me. We turn Ernest over. But when we get him over enough to see his face, just for an instant, we let go, let him drop back into the powder. Because the pudgy red cheeks are gone, and so is the smile, and he’s just a pale coating of frost. No color or breath.
Russell wraps me up because I can’t help but start to cry again. I can’t control it anymore. And I hate crying. But it rolls from me like a storm. Like everything of the shield I’ve built up for the last fourteen years is completely destroyed at last. I’m open and raw and I can’t help but meet the exposure head on now. Let it right inside. He can’t die, I tell Russell. I want to turn him over again, but I don’t, I just yell at Ernest. You said you were sure! I yell. Russell doesn’t know what I mean so he just holds me tighter. I yell again, You told me you were sure! I beat my fists on his back to get a response from him. But it doesn’t mean anything. He’s gone.
And then Russell tells me to listen. To quiet down and listen. I try to stop everything up so I’m quiet, and I try to listen. My eyes lock onto something shiny in the snow as I hear the noise. Do you hear that? Russell ask. But I can’t even pay attention to him because of what I see there. Suddenly, it makes sense to me now. How Ernest was able to pull us all.
“It’s waves,” Russell says. “Tanner!” He tells me for a third time, and he stands up and starts to peer out into the abyss, trying to see where there’s nothing, to see the hidden shoreline that must be just a short hike from here. But I can’t concentrate on the waves, or that we’ve made it to the water, because I know why we made it. I see the tin box. The same one I had in my pocket yesterday. I reach for it and open it. Empty.
I put the tin into my pocket and turn to Russell, without telling him what I now know—Come on, I say. I say it like I think Ernest would say it. There’s no time to waste, I tell Russell, as if he’s the one holding us up. Because Ernest got us this far, and we can’t waste that. We have to get in the water. And then we disobey our frozen bodies that tell us we shouldn’t be able to move, and haul Voley and the boat toward the crashing surf of the wide canvas brown that’s somewhere behind the fog.
Part 5
Chapter 20
The rhythm of the waves rolls through my head as we battle over the last rim of powder and onto the wet rocks, and then into the brown. My feet already slosh through the cold tide and freeze as we pull the boat out deep enough that it catches water and starts to float. Got her? Russell asks. I nod and he splashes back to the snow bank to pick up Voley. I call out and tell him to hurry because my grip is slipping, but it’s all he can do to slowly wade through the icy water toward the shore. I watch the sky while I wait and try to figure out what time of day it is, but it’s impossible. Everything is gray and a deep mist covers everything up. Keeps the mountains from noticing our escape. And when I turn and look out to the sea, she shows me no more than ten feet of her. Everything else hides under the blanket of fog. And I know that navigating through this is impossible. Something tells me there will be no following the shoreline. Not through this smoke. And I turn again to Russell and watch him wobble over hidden rocks, hoping he stays upright and doesn’t spill Voley into the water. The razors underneath. My fingers coil around the tin box in my pocket. The memory of Ernest. The god who beat the snow. And Russell battles into the knee-deep surf and reaches the edge of the boat. He drops Voley inside, and then, with my arm to guide him, he hauls himself in.
Shove her off, he tells me. And from the snowy bottom of the boat I uncover one of the oars and lift it over the rail. It slides through the water, and then I find the hard rock underneath and dig with everything I have. The boat heaves out, a goodbye to the long white mountains and the East Harbor that we never found.
Russell takes the oar and starts to row hard, powering through the small foam tips that want to run us back in and split us. Finally, he breathes, loud and then into a sigh. He pulls the oars in some and lets them go. And there’s not a word to say.
Snow falls and piles on the floor and the rails. I wonder how heavy it is, if it will sink us, if I’ll have to bail it as often as the water. Russell leans out so far I think he might fall, and he sticks his finger into the ocean. Then he comes back in, takes off his right glove, and leans out again. He dips his hand back in and swirls it around as I hug Voley. He puts the finger into his mouth. Tastes the brown. And it’s like I can taste the metal salt too. Then he’s in again and craning up, looking at the sky like it’s a puzzle. What is it? I ask. Tastes clean, he says. No chemicals. There’ll be fish, he says, like he has solved the riddle of the fog and it’s given him our future. And then he falls silent, closing his eyes. I don’t remind him that we have no way to catch fish. We only have the three bags. And I think that maybe he means to just shoot them and dive in after. Haul them in with his hands. And that’s why he’s testing the water. But I let it alone and sit, watching the white shore become smaller. I think I can see where we climbed down from, and where the snow is still darkened by our path. The last hundred feet. A grave marker.
Three guns, I tally. Two handguns and the rifle. Like listing off our supplies will bring me back to solving the impossible job of escaping the fog alive. The stove, a tarp, rope, the pills, and the dog food. There’s more in the bags that I haven’t seen yet. Everything we need to survive. Stuffed in those bags while I slept.
The boat cuts through murky brown water. Foam sprays us from below and the snow from above. I feel the endless weight of exhaustion return, and the small throbbing pain in my side reminds me I’m probably dying on the inside. When it all becomes too much, and the fog starts to cover up the shoreline, I ask—I ask in desperation, because we can’t waste this chance. The one Ernest gave us.
“How the hell are we going to follow the shore?” Five minutes go by, like Russell needs time to answer that, time to wait out the fog, to test how real it is, how malignant. But it’s clear. The fog isn’t going anywhere. I want to scream it at him. But I’m patient. It’s the only thing that’s clear. We’re lost in smoke.
Russell finally says we just have to follow the shoreline, and we can hug her all the way around to the Resilience. I can’t begin to tell him he’s wrong, and that the shore’s already out of sight. That the fog isn’t changing. Because there’s nothing else to do. Instead, when I think the anger will roll out, I grip the tin box. I open it and rub inside, thinking about the powder that was there. The incredible energy it brings those who take it. And then I wonder if there’s some left. I take it out and stare at it, turning away so Russell won’t see me. It’s clean silver. Dry. Nothing left.
And when I turn around again, Russell sits on one of the benches and tells me to row. I grab the oars and start, but then I stop because I don’t know which direction to go. I tell him we don’t know which way we’re rowing, and we’ll split if we’re going backwards. We haven’t been turned around yet, he says. Give us some distance. Straight line. The fog will burn off. And then, as softly as he says this, I realize he does believe himself. That the fog will burn off, and we’ll see the coast, and reach the warm beds under the deck of the Resilience again. The safety of the strong hull bobbing somewhe
re impossibly far away. I dig into the water and pound the oar against the sea.
I row and watch Russell. He takes out a map from his pocket. It’s only after he manages to get it open, spreading it out with both hands and leaning his head in to read the lines of the coast, the mountain elevation marks that might warn us about the shoals, that it flies out of his hands. Ripped right up in a strong gust. Then it dances, like it might fall back to us, but it doesn’t. It only taunts us, fluttering close for a moment as I lean out with my hands to grab it, and then flies away to the mist and salt. I sit down again and stop rowing for a moment, hoping it might land close enough in the water so that we can row to it, but it never reappears. The mist won’t let it.
Russell stares into the gloom for a long time, watching me row, then watching the fog, then looking back to me. Checking to make sure I’m okay. Not twisted up from my gunshot. I tell him I’m fine, and it’s not hurting so bad anymore. And he rummages through one of the bags and hands me more pills. Antibiotics, he says. I pause the rowing and take them. They smell awful, like the radiation got inside them. I want to ask Russell how his leg is, if it’s really infected and the sprain was a lie. But I can’t. The fog closes in.
Everywhere fog. Finally, it sinks in for him, and he curses quietly. But then he says it doesn’t matter that we lost the map, and that the fog is choking us, because all we need to do is follow the shore. We can wait this out, he says. I want tell him that when everything around us stops looking like smoke, we’ll be nowhere near the coast anymore. Then we’ll come back, he says. Turn her around. And then he tells me to keep rowing her the way I am. You’re doing good, he says. Get us a little more distance from the shore, and we’ll wait for it to burn off. Won’t be long.
I row like he tells me to, and keep watching the sky, waiting for something to open up. The snow drifts into my eyes and my mouth and I look away long enough for it to melt off. Then I look up again. Waiting to see if it will ever be clear again. I know in my heart that we’re stuck in a cloud. A cloud that goes on for miles and miles. And that we’re on the east side of the Rockies now. Waterspout Alley’s doorstep. If we drift too far, I start to ask Russell. Do you think we’ll get sucked in?—to the Waterspout Alley? He tells me we won’t. We’re not going that far to the east. That’s Nebraska, he tells me. We’re going nowhere near Nebraska.
I row and row, and wait for Russell to tell me to stop, because I feel like we’re getting too far. Another fifteen minutes pass and each arm starts to tell me no. That they won’t be able to cooperate with me much longer. But it gets worse, because the rowing starts to cause the same pain as walking did in my side. The lightning burn. It happens a little slower, but then it turns into the same fire as before. I tell Russell it’s coming on. And I don’t know how long I can keep rowing. Russell looks at the water right at the edge of the boat, the only thing that’s still visible, then he dips his hand in again. He drops a piece of paper from his pocket into the water, watching it drift with the current. The paper disappears into the gray. I’ll take over for a while, he tells me. And he slowly stands and takes the oars.
I know he’s hardly able to row either by the way he puts them into the water. So slow and careful, like he’s afraid they’ll slip right out from under him. Like the undercurrent will suck them out of his hands. And then we’ll wreck on some gray shore, like Clemmy and him did. Finally dead after all. Because there’s no getting back to Nuke Town now. Not with his broken leg and my broken ribs.
Russell asks if I can rig the tarp up. I say I’ll give it a shot. But I know I have to get it up, because he means to get the stove going. So we don’t freeze. All the adrenaline of reaching the sea has started to fade, reminding us that it’s too cold out here without a flame. That frostbite is working over all the farthest parts of my body.
Voley’s in the way of the bag. I lean over him and brush some snow off of his head. I tell him that maybe we’ll find a place where it’s raining again. That’d be nice, hey boy? Voley seems to like the idea, because he licks me and watches me dig through the biggest bag, like I’m going to find the button that changes the weather. I find the tarp and the rope and a couple collapsible aluminum rods. The tarp comes out in a bundle and I start to unroll it. Something thin and hard is inside. My fingers climb through the tangled web and find Ernest’s thermometer. I hold it up, trying to get a reading. The red is hard to see until I turn it to just the right angle. The red stops at 30. I tell Russell and he says that’s a good sign, because it was damn sure colder than that in the mountains.
After twenty minutes Russell can’t row anymore. He pulls in the oars and helps me get the poles pointed up on angles that will give us about three feet of space to squish ourselves underneath the tarp. My fingers work to tie the rope against the knob on the rail but they keep slipping from the cold. Numb rubber and useless to me. Russell finally gets the knots, and then he tells me take out the stove. Do it carefully he says, keep it under the tarp. He stabs some holes in the tarp with a tiny knife from the bag so the smoke will escape. In another five minutes, he finds the lighter in his own bag and starts to grind the flint. I listen to the noise and watch the sparks flare and disappear. Nothing happens. The world around us darkens a shade, pressing the fog so close that we’re locked inside it. Just the tiny sparks and the snow from above, appearing out of the gray a few feet above our heads. Like it’s forming right above us. The white covers us and I brush it off again.
The grinding lighter sounds faster and faster with Russell’s frustration. I wait without words, wiping away the snow as soon as it hits. Nothing else to do.
Voley starts to squirm, and pretty soon he’s crawled his way under the tarp, just in time for the flame to light. The stove is going, Russell says, trying to hide the relief in his voice. Like there was never a doubt it would work.
And then, he tells me we should be careful not to fall asleep. Not at the same time anyway. If we do, we’ll wreck on the shore. You need it more, I tell him. I know he does, because he wasn’t in the boat as long as me when Ernest was pulling. And I remember last night. The man in the corner. And how that could have been more than just a nightmare, and if it had been, we’d have been dead. All because Russell fell asleep on his watch. I don’t want to tell him I trust myself more, but he protests, saying he slept for the last part of the haul. I tell him I was in the boat twice as long as him, or more. And that he needs to sleep first. I do my best imitation of Ernest when he told me I had to stay in the boat. Russell doesn’t argue anymore after that, but tells me to wake him up if the swells get rough, or if the fog starts to clear, or if I see land. I tell him he’ll be the first to know, and that I’ll even wake him up if I see an ice cream store. If you let me sleep through that, you’re going in the water, he says. I try to force a small laugh. The most I get out is a smile, and right away, I regret calling food into my mind. It starts to appear, candy and ice cream and sweets I haven’t thought about since Indianapolis. A new plague of my imagination.
Russell crawls into the bottom of the boat, squeezing most of his body under the tarp next to Voley. And then he falls dead. Sound asleep. I sit by the edge of the water, open to the snow and spray, the oars crossed over my lap, and watch the gray haze shape into cupcakes and then an apple pie. I can’t stop the thoughts. I try to trick my mind into tasting the flavors. Like I can really fool myself into thinking I’m eating it if I just try hard enough and believe. Then, when I think it’s really happening, and the sugar is rolling through my mouth, and the crust crumbles and washes down my throat, I snap awake. Because it’s a dream I’m fading into—not dessert. And if I want to stay awake, I can’t risk daydreaming anymore. But it’s too hard to shut my mind down and at the same time keep it alert. Just the gray and the slow warmth coming from the tarp. Calling me.
I watch the big gray nothing, waiting. Waiting for anything. A sound, like water hitting against rocks. Or crashing of waves against a reef. The death sound that will tell me we’re going to split. Wreck
the same as the motorboat did on the western shore.
Through the gray I imagine Clemmy’s leg. What Russell must have seen after the boat split. Torn open and bleeding in the cold with nothing around to help. How that meant he would have to leave him behind in the snow. If we wreck now, no one gets left behind. No one goes on. We just stop. One way or the other, what I’ve always wanted is to stop. All the beautiful versions of my dream, the ones I don’t ever talk about to Russell, with the friendly people and the home and the happiness, they’re all built on top of stopping. They can’t happen without stopping. And I realize that death is stopping, too. It’s one or the other, but I will eventually stop. It hits me like a ton of bricks. The thought comforts me, like death itself might be the long relief at last. I let it wash over me, the thought of peace in dying, as I wait for the noise that will spell our doom. Any sound of the shore. But nothing comes. My eyes roam the fog, leftover adrenaline from Ernest and his last heroic act making sure I don’t miss one patch of gray. But nothing comes. Not a sound and not a change in the smoke pack surrounding us.
The Snow (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) Page 19