One day down, I tell him, trying to cheer him up, like he’ll snap back to his usual self. Only six more to go. And then Leadville. But the name that’s raised such excitement in him over the past year, that’s meant hope and a return to the veneer, does nothing for him now. He just moans again, acknowledging me, and then opens his mouth, like he’s hungry for more. I put in another bit of hardtack and repeat. I do it over again and again until it’s gone. I ask if he wants more out of the sack, or if he wants me to open one of the cans of beans. He shakes his head no.
I seal everything, float the bag back into the inch of water on the floor of the canoe, and then survey our surroundings. I expect to see a landmark for some reason, some sign of where we’re going. But there’s nothing. Even the enormous waterspout is gone, vanished into vapor and nothingness, like it never was. I have no idea which direction we’re going, or how far we’ve drifted. I look at Russell and wonder if he’s concerned about the route anymore. He had been very clear that we had to navigate by the sun—he said we just needed to go directly south. Keep the morning sun on our left, and the afternoon sun on our right. I look for the smear behind the gray after I remember this. It’s almost directly behind us. The swells have started to calm down, and the great canvas of water is nearly flat again, so I take the oars and give it a shot, trying to get the sun on our left side. After a few pumps we’re riding with the sun on the left, heading south again.
“Heading south,” I say.
He opens his eyes and starts to move for the first time in almost 24 hours. He hoists himself out of the cold floor of water and sits on the bench. You ready to take your turn? I say, more as a joke than anything else. I just need to get a reaction out of him, to know he’s getting better, even though that’s what the color of his face tells me. No more bright red. Regular pale. Yea, he says.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” I say, almost with anger. I’m disappointed he even considered dying, as if it was a choice that was his to make—the decision to quit. That he would leave me out here, stranded. Break his promise.
“It’s just a headache. It’s going away,” he says. He coughs after he’s done talking, which reminds me that he’s lying, and it’s way more than just a headache. He almost falls off the seat because he’s coughing so hard. But he asks for the oars anyway after he’s done hacking. No, just bail if the water gets high again, I tell him. He doesn’t argue, probably because he doesn’t have the strength to. Sun’s on our left, like you said it should be, I tell him. Good job, Tan, he says.
Time passes quietly except for the rain. I row for as long as I can, until the fiber of my arms is shredded, and the pain is long numbed, and now there is just the futile command I give my arms to work, but they simply refuse to comply. Nothing happens. I can’t push the oars anymore. Before they slip out of my hands and into the rain sea, I reel their length in and drop them along the center of the canoe. It’s your turn, I tell Russell. He’s fading out again though, and he hasn’t bailed one bit. He’s holding the sides of the canoe again, like he did yesterday, steadying himself so he doesn’t fall overboard or into the center of the canoe. I tread the several inches of water in the center of the canoe to get to him, put my hand on his shoulder and rub. I rub and I can’t feel my fingers. They’re as numb as my toes, my entire feet. I’ve forgotten how cold the rain is. All I want to do is go to sleep again, even though it’s the daytime, and it would mean breaking Russell’s rule, and drifting off course again, to god knows what emptiness.
Hey, I say. Russell opens his eyes and looks at me. You want me to give it a go? he says, like he’s been awake the whole time. I look at the rising water, the crack in the canoe, the sun that’s dead overhead now. Yea, you better. I can barely move anymore, I tell him.
It’s the truth. If I’m ever going to bail again, I need to rest. I pull Russell off his bench and help him get to the other one. Really slowly he grabs the oars, like his whole body is protesting it, and he pushes them softly into the water. I sit down across from him and watch. He pushes them in, but it looks like he can’t bring them back up. He tries really hard, and he grunts, and they finally return to him. He repeats this over and over, but so slowly that he’s not preventing the current from turning the boat. The sun is rotating above us, I’m sure, and we’re no longer going south. I watch the oars extend out again and Russell almost lets go and loses one of them. I move back to him quickly and steady his hand. You’re going to drop it in the water, I scold him. It’s hard for me not to be angry at him because he’s never shown any sign of weakness before. But he can hardly get the oars in and out of the water. I have to lie down he says. He doesn’t wait for me—he just moves in between the two seats and lies as flat as he can, his neck half underwater on the canoe floor, his legs rising up onto the rowing bench. Your head’s going to be underwater if you lie like that, I tell him. Lift it up onto the bench. I say this as I get the oars back in my hands. I sit between his legs, put the oars back into the water, and try to row. But it’s no use. My arms feel like gassed rubber. All I can do is get them back into the canoe without losing them.
You hungry? I ask him. He doesn’t make a sound. He’s lying face up, looking right into the sun. Rain is hitting his nose, running into his parted mouth. I decide all I’m going to do now is bail. Rowing takes up too much energy. Trying to keep us in line with the sun so we’re heading south is pointless now. I can’t do it alone. And Russell isn’t really better. It’s a false hope. I get down in the center with him and grab the food sack. I open it and find one of our cans of beans. It’s rusted around the edges. I root around, praying the can opener hasn’t somehow been lost. I find it and open the beans. I don’t know how I’ll conserve the leftovers. I just start spooning beans into my mouth with my fingers, and the taste is indescribable. I put a little bit on Russell’s lips to make sure he won’t choke. He opens and closes his mouth to show me he can still chew. I feed him as much as he’ll take, then finish off the can. I know I should have conserved them, but I can’t help it. My whole body is dead. I look at the rain in the canoe, the crack, then the sky for signs of any storms. There’s nothing out there. And I still have time before I need to start bailing again. I lie down right in the middle on Russell’s chest so the rain will wake me up when it’s time to go to work again. I lean into him so I can hear his breathing. It doesn’t sound too bad. I whisper to him, Are you okay? He seems to murmur something in response, and I take it to mean yes. I look up for a moment, see the tent which is crumpled against the side now and grab it. I pull it over our heads to keep the rain off. Underneath the canvas, the sound of the drops is magnified a hundred times. As loud as it is, it helps to drown out every other thought I have, and my tired body does the rest of the work. I fall asleep again.
When I wake up, it’s to the sound of rushing water. I feel it hit my face, and I hear Russell coughing violently. It’s the crack. Water is flooding through it. It’s widened, so that it reaches almost halfway down the side of the canoe. A shot of adrenaline sends me after the bucket. It’s still in the boat, near the back, banging up against the wall. Russell sits up and wraps his arms over the edge of the canoe to sit himself upright and prevent water from going down his lungs. I start attacking the water, sending bucketful after bucketful over the side, hoping it’s not too late. The crack is pouring in the brown sea as fast as I can bail it out. We’re almost level with the water again, and if I stop bailing for a minute, we’ll go under. I can’t stop. I tell Russell we’re going to have to take turns. Or else we’re going to sink. He seems alert enough to understand. He starts cupping water out of the boat with his hands. He does it like he’s half frozen solid, and he doesn’t realize he’s not really getting anything out.
It feels like an hour passes by, but it’s probably only been a few minutes. I see that I’m getting ahead of the crack, and the canoe is rising above the sea again. If I keep it up, I think I’ll get us light enough so that the crack is above the water line again. Russell’s all but
given up on cupping the water out, instead rubbing his temples like his headache has come back. He asks me, You didn’t give me any antibiotics, did you? I tell him no and keep bailing. The smear of the sun is on our backs again, so we must be drifting west. I keep going, my numb hands and arms ready to fail again, but I get more and more water out. I’m making progress. At last, just as I’m about to let Russell take over or drown trying to get him to, we’re above the crack again. The canoe is light enough that the level of the sea is lower than it. It gives me energy to keep bailing. I don’t want anything on the floor of the canoe, not a single drop of rain.
I want it all out so I can go to sleep again. But this time for a long time. Russell is one step ahead of me, lying against the seat, arms spread over it, his head resting against his shoulder.
Within half an hour I’ve gotten as much rain out of the canoe as is possible. I can’t even scrape the bucket along the bottom close enough to collect anything, so I drop it and sit up on the seat. I can’t believe we’re still winning against the rain. Is this all you’ve got? passes through my head. It’s directed at Poseidon. I regret it as soon as I say it, remembering how fast the swells can come. And there haven’t been any real waves yet. Reminding myself of the sea’s temper, I scan the horizon for a sign of dark clouds, anything that seems like it might be a storm. There’s nothing. But the small rise of dark gray protruding from the distant muddiness where the clouds meet the sea. It’s a long sliver of a bump. But it’s protruding, higher than it should. I think it’s the tidal wave I heard Cap’n Wallace talk about. It’s passing round the Earth every three months, hits a random spot each time, and it wipes away anything in its path. Could that be it? Its darkness seems much darker than the water’s though, the more I look at it. We’ve only been at sea for two days, but my brain starts to tell me that I see land. It’s land. Unmoving.
“Russell,” I shout. I scream his name again. I run to him, almost too fast, and rock the boat so much that water pours through the crack for a moment, until the boat rolls back to center. Look, I say over and over again until he’s half conscious. I grab his shoulders and start to turn him until he realizes what I’m trying to get him to do. Finally he commits on his own and turns to look. Leadville, he says scratchily. I look at him and see a smile flash across his face. I can’t bring myself to tell him it isn’t Leadville, and that I have no idea what it is. Even if it really is land. But it’s not moving, and it has to be land. Russell tells me not to let us drift by and miss it. Then his smile fades and he’s out again. His face is beat red again. He looks like death. I won’t miss it, I tell him.
I take turns with myself, rowing and bailing, renewed energy burning in me from the vision of hope on the horizon, even though I can’t feel anything. My hands are numb, my feet are numb, my face is numb. I’m convinced I feel the rubber forming like a crust over my leg at the same spot where Russell had it happen. I know when I peel off my plastic suit, the pants, and finally look at my naked body, I’ll see the markings, the rubbery pink welts, the sign that the skin is ready to pry loose at the slightest prodding. But I see the blue on the land, a blue stretching back and out of view, just on top of the rise of the land. The sun is setting behind us, but we might make it there before it gets dark. As long as the water stays calm, and the current doesn’t pull us too hard, I think I can steer us into it, like a train wreck coming out of the abyss. The blue is the roofs of tarps, and there ahead on the island is a tarp city like I haven’t seen since Sioux Falls. Face eaters don’t live in tarp cities. People do. Real living people. A small piece of the veneer is on that muddy rock, I tell myself, and I intend with every fiber of my power to get us there alive. I bail, and then I row. We’re on our way, Russell.
Chapter 5
The blue tarps spread across the top of the island, which was once a great mountain, but now is just a long slope rising out of the water and I can’t see where it ends. Near the edge of the land, where it glides down into the water, there’s nothing. The tarps are near the top. I think of how warm it must be under them, how dry, and how much food there must be for so many to be living together. We’ve been alone for so many weeks now that the thought of company almost frightens me, and I don’t even know if my muscles will hold out to get us there. Russell is still incapacitated, so I sacrifice my body, because it’s all I can do to get him off this godforsaken boat. I start getting ahead of myself. I think about the tarp dwellers. I’m not sure if we should go right up to the tents—or at least I’m not sure if I should make the call without Russell’s input. But he’s in no condition to advise me. Even though I’ve never heard of face eaters living in organized tarp cities like this one, that doesn’t mean they can’t exist. Communities of death. And there are plenty of non-face eaters who hate strange folks coming on what they consider their own piece of the warm and dry. Russell and I know all too well how thin supplies are, especially in the West. There’s only so much to go around. I debate what to do as I row, digging with the last bits of my strength into the rain sea, pushing us along much slower now, but with the last of my energy making sure we don’t drift past the bank I’ve been eyeing for the last half hour. It’s the only spot where the rise looks gradual enough that I won’t lose the canoe if I try to park it there. Everywhere else it’s like the land rises straight up, like on the mountain there had been a sheer face. As we get very near to the bank where I intend to put us in, I lose sight of the blue tarps. They are only visible from a distance because they’re so high up on the land, along the top ridge. I wish Russell was well enough to help me land the canoe, because I’m no good at it. But I’ve seen him do it enough, and I’m happy to hear the sound of his breathing, which is shallow but steady.
I stroke in, then push the oar into the water and hold it broadside to try to slow the boat down. Rain punishes the muddy rise that I wedge the canoe into. She sticks into the bank on the first try and I collapse. It’s like I don’t even have the energy to get out of the canoe. I slump down in the seat and take it in—we’re off the water. No more swells. No more bailing. At least not for the moment. But the sooner we get onto the land, the sooner we find out if we have to go right back into the sea, and I can’t bring myself to get off yet to find that out. Lying down as best I can I turn to Russell and tell him we made it. He responds by trying to get up. Hold on I tell him, and he obeys. I rest. I need to rest before moving onto the land. I check for my knife, and thankfully, it’s still in my pocket. I have no idea if Russell has his, but it doesn’t matter because he couldn’t use it even if he did. He’s much too weak now. If this is an organized dwelling of cannibals, it’ll be just me to defend us now. And my best defense is pushing out to sea again, as shitty as our boat is. Maybe I can take one face eater, if I sneak up on him. But we can’t take an ambush, and that’s how the face eaters usually operate—surprise attacks from behind rocks, bushes, trees, from anywhere where they have an unfair advantage.
I finally decide we have to get off. I’m tired again. The boat’s sinking. I need to sleep. Russell needs to get out of the rain. Hypothermia is setting in, I’m sure I feel it in my bones. I thought I saw a lot of green near the blue tarps, like there were trees, or some other kind of vegetation. If that’s the case, the tarpers will have some of it, as much of it as possible, under their tarps, dried out. That means there will be fires. The thought of fire pushes my legs down into the floor of the canoe and makes me stand up. I take the nylon rope out of the food sack. I walk up through the shallow water and find a large root slicing through the mud. It pokes out at just the right spot for me to tie the nylon around it. A root is never as good as a rock, but I don’t care. The canoe seems stable enough. Come on, I call to Russell, as if he’ll just get up and walk off with me. But he’s much too sick now to do that. I take the tent off of him and bring it with the poles up onto the first flat patch of earth I reach. It’s about twenty feet up the bank, but still way down from the tarps, out of sight. I get to work setting up the tent, realizing that this t
ime Russell will have to get in it himself. I can’t pitch the tent over top of him while he’s lying in the boat. The tent is set up in no time, because the thought of being under a roof surges in me. To rest under all its leaky canvas spread like a haven of the dry and the warm.
We used to carry fuel with us all the time. But we haven’t had any in weeks. There’s not much fuel left in Wyoming it seems. I wonder if they have fuel up in the tarps, and if I could avoid interacting with them at all, and just sneak up later and try to steal some gasoline.
I check the tent poles to be sure they’re in where they won’t slide out while we’re sleeping. They seem sturdy enough. I head back to the canoe. It’s starting to collect too much rain, losing its buoyancy. I step in again and walk up to Russell. I touch his face, but I give up trying to tell if he has a fever or not anymore. His eyes open at my touch. Hey, come on. I can’t get you out of here on my own. You have to help me. He obliges without so much as a groan. He stands up like his bones need oil, and he’s rusted beyond repair. I let him keep his left hand on my shoulder for balance and together we tread the low water up the muddy rise toward the tent. He does pretty good, only stumbling once, but leaning on me to prevent the fall. When we get to the tent flap I pull it open for him and he is really slow to get down on his knees. He gets wet and dirty again moving in, because he’s too spent to move carefully. He drags a long patch of mud and water across the bottom of the tent, but it doesn’t matter too much because cold rain is dripping in from the two holes in the roof anyway. I get in behind him and close the tent flap immediately. I ask if he still has his knife. I think so, he says. Then he curls up in the fetal position and faces the far wall of the tent. The sky is gray, and so gray that I can’t even tell what time of day it is anymore. But the idea of real sleep overtakes all other thoughts. On the sea, sleep was a temporary fantasy, where water would eventually rush in to remind me that I can’t really leave. But now, we’re on solid ground, and the lack of motion, the pure stillness beneath my body, puts me into a trance. It’s almost like I’m done, and I can stop struggling now, and I can finally go away from this all. There won’t be nightmares this time, I know. Just a dream of warmth. I miss having a blanket. But I have hope for the tarps. Even if it’s just stealing some gasoline. At least we’re not on the water, I tell myself. Then I pull my body in close to Russell’s, loop my arms around his chest. I think I feel warmth again coming from him. It’s a sign that he’s getting better I tell myself. We made it, I whisper in his ear. He utters a long mmmm, and I think he’s as content as me to be off the water. I pull myself even closer into him, sharing my own heat, pushing us further into the tent wall so we’re not touching the rain that’s pooling in the center of the tent. For a moment, I think the hypothermia is setting in really hard now, and the rubber skin, and everything else, and it’s no time to go to sleep. It’s time to panic. Something screams in me to go get help right now from the tarps, and risk everything for the chance to be saved. But my closed eyes are like an elixir that I can’t escape from, and the blackness pulls me like a vortex into the cusp of the sweetest sleep I have ever known. We breathe in sync, and the sound of the rain on the tent fades away.
What Tomorrow May Bring Page 238