She won’t budge, Russell says, And, she’s split. What? I say in shock. Anger rises up in me because he’s been holding back more than just one thing, trying to trick me into thinking everything is better than it really is. The false belief that we’ve got a fighting chance still. The way he’s talked the last few days it was like all we had to do was bide our time and we’d be under the sun in no time. But it’s all been a lie. I don’t wait for him to explain about the split, I just run out into the twilight, barely scanning for signs of the creature’s silhouette on the rim of the floe where it might be waiting to pounce on me, and start to examine the boat. I step inside and kick the bags around but don’t see a single crack. No damaged wood. What do you mean it’s split? I ask. Russell slowly leaves the tent and walks around to the stern of the boat. He bends down and shovels away a pile of snow and tells me to come look. When I get around, I see the split. Clear as day. About a foot down on the hull, right where she’d sit in the water, if she ever met the water again.
Before I started the fishing rod, he says, when I found out about the food, I tried to dig her out. Thought we might try to drag her to some open sea somewhere past the Pancake. But the pressure must have broken her up when the ice locked in.
I curse as loud as I can and watch the ghost of the blue. It’s about gone, a shadow, its bright show of hope silenced until tomorrow morning. And then Russell tells me what our final plan has to be.
The way I see it now, we have to start out. We’re healed up enough now, he tells me. But all I can do is reply in emptiness, telling him that there’s nowhere to go to—not without the boat. That we’re walking to nothing, even if we get to the blue. The ice will break apart and we’ll drown. And the forced smile on Russell’s face vanishes, and he reveals his true intentions at last.
“We’re going to die there then. Under a blue sky. With sun falling down on us and nothing else. Nothing else. Because that’s all we have left in the world to do. Die how we want to,” he says. He stares into my eyes, and I can see the veneer burning there, as bright as ever, even while the imaginary bit of hope he’s been carrying around the past few days evaporates.
I see in his eyes what it’s come down to for him. Just a better place to die. That we can choose our own place to die, and do it on our own terms. Not the ice’s, not the rain’s, not the cold’s and the wet’s. Our own terms. It’s so horrible I can’t accept it. But after the silence, where neither of us say anything, it settles over me like an absolute truth. Like I’ve known this all along. And the real veneer has been hope itself. And now that we’ve gotten rid of that, we can die free.
He’s right. It’s enough to push on for. One last fuck you to a world that couldn’t kill us after all, even with all its years of unending effort. I push myself into his chest and wrap myself around him and tell him I don’t want to die. Our own making or not, I don’t want to. But he doesn’t back down from reality for me this time—he knows it’s the only comfort we have left, and he lets me have it: “Not here. Under the sun, okay?” he says. He waits until I nod my head so that he knows I’m with him. All the way. Until the end. And I start to think about it—that if we can all die together, it would be alright. We wouldn’t have to know or wonder or think that anyone’s suffering anymore. Under the warm and dry sunlight. As the ice breaks away, out from under us. But we can’t let the ocean do it, I tell him. And all I can see in the back of my head are the guns, and that if anything’s going to take us out, it’ll be them. Something we have control over. Not the ocean, not the exposure. We can’t let them take us in the end. From over Russell’s shoulder I see Voley’s shadow moving inside the tent. He shifts onto his hind legs to get a better view of us. Trying to figure out what the heck we’re doing out past dark. Sitting in the cold. Already he’s used to the routine on the ice. And he wants us to head back to the stove to cuddle up with him.
You have first watch tonight, he tells me. Together we walk back to the tent, like nothing’s changed. Everything that I cling to is finally changed, and I push it away just as fast as I accept it and turn to the thoughts of the watch. You see it, you get me up, okay? he says as we get inside the tent. I nod my head, letting him know I will.
I want more than anything to prove to him I’m not imagining the thing—but he knows I’m not. He’s seen the tracks already. And I know he’s not wondering about if it’s real anymore, and neither am I. But it’s something to rent space in my head. Something concrete. To prove to him we’re being hunted.
Chapter 2
Russell and Voley finally start to fall asleep. Voley buries his nose behind Russell’s knee. The fishing rod, which Russell hasn’t stopped playing with for the last hour, slips from his grasp. And it’s just me, alone, with the pistol in my hand. I kneel at the entrance to the tent, forming a wall so the cold air and snow won’t blow in on them as they sleep. I cross my legs and sit down, same as I have the past two nights, and stare out at two layers of darkness. The first layer is the floe itself, a darker mass that covers everything along the bottom of my vision. The only thing that breaks it up is the outline of the boat and a distant set of pressure ridges that are on some ice floe way out beyond the Ice Pancake. Above the first layer of darkness is the second layer, the softer, deep gray glow. I’ve mastered its sky consuming shade and shape, so that I can detect even the slightest shift in it: The dark form I’ve seen the past two nights that bobs up and down along the distant edge of the ice floe, blending its blackness with the first layer, letting me know he’s watching.
I watch patiently, knowing the night’s just getting started. That it will be a long one tonight, with the new information about the boat’s hull, and the loss of the rest of the dog food. The thoughts of dying start up every few minutes, but each time I push them away. I tell myself it’s nothing to die, that Ernest and Dusty have already done it before me, so there’s nothing to fear. That dying will be easy, so why think about it? But each time I manage to push it away, and imagine some version of the future where we can get out of this alive, the vision comes back into my head, slapping away my optimism—it’s a vision of Clemmy, for some reason. Out of all the dead bodies I’ve seen. His slides back into my mind the easiest. Like I haven’t let anyone else really be dead in my mind, just him. Like the rest are just waiting somewhere, like the crazy religions that Russell used to make fun of. Finding something to pray to is one thing, he used to say. You’re just centering yourself. Deluding yourself into nonsense is another. And it’s been a long time since he’s mentioned anything like prayer or God. No one’s waiting for you, I hear Russell’s voice say in my head. They’re gone. And we’ll go too. Nothing unpleasant about it. Just the way things work. But we’ll do it under the sun. Our terms.
And if the sun’s anything like it was in my dream, I tell myself, then I can’t wait. Can’t wait to die in the sun.
My mind rolls into darker thoughts. How can we all shoot ourselves? Somehow, someone will have to go last. And I don’t want it to be me. But at the same time, I want to know everyone else is gone. To know the ocean and the rain didn’t take them. That we all left on our own terms. But then it hits me—it’s the vision of Voley’s eyes and his warm kisses, and I know I could never go last. I could never live to see us do that to him. And I know that I’ll have to go first. Russell will have to be the one to do it all. I’ll have to convince him to take me out first. And maybe then, maybe then I’ll have to pray again. For him to have the strength to do it. He’ll need to pray for himself too. How else could you go through with something like that, if you didn’t trick yourself into courage? The thoughts race in and out, and I start to imagine the beginning of our trek down into the Ice Pancake, and what it will be like on the thinner ice.
You’re healthy again, says a voice in my head, interrupting the others. It comes out of nowhere. It’s Ernest, talking to me. All of you, he goes on, healthy again. That’s a miracle, isn’t it? Enough of one that you don’t need to be thinking about killing yourselves. You all c
an just about walk again! he says. And then, as I realize the delirium of my imagination setting in, I push Ernest out of my head. But as hard as I try to keep quiet, something else pops back in, something I didn’t want to remember. It’s him, sitting with me at the top of the Nuke Building. He’s telling me how many times he’s been shot. Four times. And that he’s got me beat by two. And it becomes clear that I can’t kill myself, because then I’ll be stuck at three. It seems to make sense for a moment, like it’s some reason to stay alive. To hope, even when there’s nothing ahead but open ocean and nothing to get across it with. Even with the canoe, in Wyoming, crack and all, we at least had something that floated. Bail all day, but we could still bob on the canvas sea.
The worries in my head start to spin in on themselves, compounding into an anxiety attack, and right when I think I’m going to explode, I stand up and breathe in a lungful of cold air and step away from the tent. Alone and out onto the floe, with the tent glowing softly behind me. Nothing disturbing the two layers of the darkness. No sign of the thing that’s hunting us. And I have to clear my head, so I begin to walk toward the edge. A night round.
When I get halfway to the edge of the Resilience, and my nerves have started to calm down with the motion of my feet, I realize that it’s probably not a good idea to get too far away from the tent. When I turn around at last to head back, there he is. Crawled all the way from the edge of darkness, from the deep brown sea underneath of us, to nearly twenty feet away from the tent. Silent and standing erect, watching me and the tent. Perfectly still, waiting for a trigger. And I can’t scream or make a sound, or even raise my pistol, because I can’t believe how enormous it really is—twelve feet long if it’s a foot, and even in the darkness, I can see the mouth open and close gently, and within the mouth, a glimpse of razor teeth.
Chapter 3
At first I think the creature’s frozen to the ice—he doesn’t move a muscle. No gesture toward me or the tent. And then, it starts to slowly slink toward the glow of the stove, and I know it’s after Russell and Voley. Russell! I scream, and I raise the pistol and steady it, but it’s no use—my line of sight has blended the creature in with that of the tent and the boat. There’s too much darkness and I can’t risk shooting in. I’m not that good of a shot, so I have to run.
My feet race over the ice toward the tent and the monster crawls slowly, but Russell still hasn’t stirred inside the tent. Then I hear a bark. Loud and piercing, and then shadows inside the tent moving. Voley’s barks wake Russell. He kneels and pokes his head outside the tent and sees the beast. Then he bends down again and Voley jolts out past him, growling as I run. My feet pound harder and I know I shouldn’t sprint on the slush but I do it anyway because I don’t want anything to happen to them. I keep the gun up in case I get a clear shot, but just like that, the black form stalking us moves directly behind the tent and I can’t see it at all. I shout one more time to warn them.
Russell stands up over the tent, rifle rising, just when I slip hard on the ice. I yell and dig my elbow into the snow and start a long slide. My body rolls and dips into a pocket of icy water that rises up to my waist. And I think I’m going all the way down, underneath a thousand tons of solid ice, when my feet hit solid again. I start to hoist myself out despite the shock. Then I hear the bang—the loud missile of the rifle blaring through the dead night air. More barking. And when I pull myself up enough to look around, staring at me, level with the ice, is the creature—and it’s shiny even in the darkness, it’s teeth white and bared, and I finally realize what it is. It is a seal. But not like any I’ve ever seen or heard about—it’s too big, too many teeth, and it looks like a monster more than a seal. But I can’t even register that I know what it is now—as if that might bring relief since I’ve never heard of seals being man-eaters—because with lightning speed he draws himself over the lip of the slush pocket and bites down on my arm. When he rips his head back up he hauls me out with him, and I expect the searing pain of tearing flesh, but there’s nothing. His jaws are on my jacket and sweater, and he’s pulling me with them.
Everything is a blur—the white and the dark gray and the seal’s maniac body barrelling toward something. And then I realize where I’m being dragged—right to the edge of the Resilience, right down into the murky ocean beneath the ice floe. I twist and turn and struggle, trying to rip my jacket off, but it’s no use. I claw at the snow and the ice and the melt but it’s no use—nothing grips and we go faster than I thought the thing could possibly move. My gun is gone, lost in the pocket of water. When I get a split second glimpse of the stove glow, it’s just in time to hear the sound of another rifle blast. And I know it has to count this time, has to stop this thing dead in its tracks, or I’m dead. But the seal doesn’t even pause. Not for a second. We barrel on as fast as ever—it jerks and tugs me full speed toward the drop of the Ice Pancake and there’s nothing I can do. All I can do is listen to the mad barking and the sound of Russell’s holler as I crash into the freezing water and everything goes dark.
When I pull my head up above the water again, I realize my jacket’s gone, ripped from the force of the drop right from my body. My sweater too. Sucked right over top of my head. Just one last layer on me, soaked, covering my torso as I bob in the dark crack. My eyes dart up at the cliff wall of the Resilience, too high to climb. Then I look down but there’s nothing but black metal salt water splashing, driving into me like a thousand knives that cut through my muscles and my bones and it’s the same as when I had to swim from the ship to the shore.
I realize that the seal will know it only has a jacket, no taste of blood, and it will come back up to the surface to drag me down. It will only be a moment. I can’t see its form coming through the water, and I kick out my legs at nothing, half trying to stabilize myself so I can breathe, and half trying to gouge out the thing’s eyes. And when I raise my eyes to the cliff of the Resilience floe again, hoping to find something to hold onto, something I missed that I can climb up with, I see Russell’s head looking down. Turn around! he yells. And when I do, panicked breaths wracking my chest, I know that I’ll see the seal. But I turn and it’s not the seal. It’s the low cliff of the Ice Pancake, just low enough that I might be able to haul myself up. Climb! Russell yells. The barking gets louder and Voley appears at the edge too, but I block it all out and dig my fingers into the icy shelf. They slip away as soon as I get them locked into a crevice, and nothing holds. I try to go up again and I slide right back down. My head dips under and I wait for the bite. Then I’m up again, thrashing, and I hear Russell shout at Voley to back up, to get away from the edge. But they can’t come in after me—I know. The crack is too small. There’s nowhere to fit more bodies. If they follow in after me, they die too. Everything slows down. I wait in strange calm for the feeling of the teeth, the lock of the jaws on my leg that will drag me down between the two slabs of impossibly heavy ice and drown me. Or kill me with shock from the cold first. But the jaws never come. Maybe it’s choking on the jacket, too stupid to figure out what it got. And it comes into me, what I have to do. It’s a flashback, when I was last to get ashore—I see the faces on the spit, cheering me, telling me I can make it. They’re Dusty and Ernest, and the freezing water’s the same, but this time I don’t have a backpack to push. This time I’m free. Just me and the water. And when the voices split again over the air and I recognize them, they aren’t Dusty’s and Ernest’s at all, they’re Russell and Voley’s, telling me to climb—Climb! Climb Tanner!
I dig in again and throw my leg up along a shelf that’s half underwater. Then I grind my elbow as hard as it will go into a crack. And with everything I have, I hurl my body over the lip, just enough to plant my weight and press down. Then I find purchase with one of my knees and rise up. Water slides off me, pours back into the brown. You can’t kill me tonight, I tell the sea. Voley barks behind me. Another rifle shot. And when I fling myself forward, toppling into a thin layer of fresh powder, safely on the solid mass of the Ice Pancak
e, I close my eyes. Alive. I made it out. Freezing to death but not enough to stop a friend of Poseidon’s.
When I open my eyes, I see the long stretch of the Ice Pancake, and then, to my right, the black seal, eyes shining as it pulls itself up from a nearby ridge. Without giving me a moment to even rise to my feet, the thing unleashes its full speed, looking as fast out of the water as it must be in. I barely get to my feet when I hear the metal clicking of a gun jam behind me, and Russell curses loudly. I whip my head around and yell that I don’t have my gun, but he’s dead silent, trying to work out the misfire so that he can take another shot. But the seal races on at me, its pounding flippers ripping along the Ice Pancake, driving headlong and without so much as a snarl, white mouth coming straight for me.
With the couple seconds left before it gets me, I realize Russell won’t get another shot off in time. I turn to see how high the cliff to the Resilience floe is, and I know right away I’ll never make it if I jump. But I have to try, there’s nothing else. It’s a good five feet at least, and nothing to hold onto—no more tiny ledges of slippery ice. Just sheer vertical ice. And Russell at the top struggling with the gun. And then I see it—the madness of Voley. His barks gone, and his body no longer visible, comes racing back into sight from atop the floe. And he leaps out, right into the air, straight toward me, over the ocean, and right at the killer seal. No! I get out just in time to watch him soar, and in another instant, he’s skidding along the ice right toward the seal, landing with only three good legs and losing his balance. I hear him continue to bark as he slides, out of control with no balance, slipping along and unable to right himself or stop. Then the seal backs up, just for a moment, not knowing what to think—it rises up on its barrel chest, almost as tall as me, and watches us. Like he’s weighing things out, seeing if Voley is a threat to him. And then, with Voley’s barks turning to short, pinched whines, the seal starts again, racing toward me. Ignoring Voley where he lies because he’s unable to stay up on the slippery ice and complete his act of heroism, instead left to watch me jab out my arms in my best defensive effort, hoping I can punch into one of the thing’s eyes before it latches onto me again. And when it’s just about ready to strike, it’s head up and jaw open, the white row of fangs glaring, the rifle ignites again—Bang! and the seal slips. I sidestep out of its way and nearly trip over the edge of the ice and back into the crack of ocean. But the seal’s momentum is too great. And a blood-curdling cry comes from it as it slides past me, throwing its flippers into the ice in an attempt to turn, like even though it’s been shot, it wants to change its course to continue after me. But it’s too late, and it flies off the edge, so fast that it smacks against the cliff of the Resilience floe and then splashes down into the dark water. Stay back, Russell shouts. And I step away from the edge and run over to Voley. He looks at me and quiets down, and then, like it’s only a bruise, he stands up and resumes his three-legged trot, getting as close as he can to the edge, like he’ll fight off the seal himself if it wants to come back up. I run to him and tug him back away from the open water. Then Russell calls out that he only clipped it on the arm. No death shot. And we wait, Russell leaning out, aiming down into the darkness and constantly searching the perimeter in case the seal comes up on the side again and tries to sneak around. I tell him to watch his own back too. But nothing happens. We wait and wait, and the water droplets on my body start to turn hard and my shirt stiffens into a sheet of frozen crust. And all I can think of is that Voley and I are on the wrong side of the ocean. And the stove, the only thing that will save me from hypothermia, is impossible to reach.
The Blue (Book 3) Page 2