by RJ Corgan
“Who is it? Who did we miss?” Tony asked.
Kea let out a long breath.
“Bruce,” she said dully. “Bruce is still out there.”
Forgotten in her pocket, her phone finished its boot cycle and started to chime repeatedly with a flood of text messages and voicemail notifications.
Chapter 5
“Everyone back in the jeep, now!” Kea pounded on the back of the vehicle. “Tony, shuttle them back in this one, get them out of the other one and leave it here. Julie, wait here until Tony comes back for the others.”
She ran to the other jeep and started pulling the dazed volunteers out of it telling them to ‘Go! Go! Go!’ She tore off a corner of the trailer’s tarp and dug for her pack. Marcus was at her side, phone crammed between his chin and shoulder as he related the situation to the authorities, all the while helping her dump the scientific gear out of the packs to lighten the load. Julie handed them the extra food and clothes they kept stashed under the seats, plus spare radio batteries, water bottles, and emergency blankets.
How is this happening?
She scanned the outwash plain but saw nothing but endless gravel and dark gray sand. Skeiðarárjökull lurked in the background, but its black-encrusted ice gave up no secrets, no sign of a high visibility vest, no sign of a jacket.
Bruce, where the hell are you?
The question screamed in her head, over and over again, making it hard to concentrate. Her hands refuse to obey her commands, her trembling fingers slipping and fumbling with the claps as she tried to strap on her pack. Too panicked, too cold, too weak.
God dammit.
She turned back to the jeeps and saw Corvis volunteers clustered around one of the trailers, whispering to each other. The T3 team was still in the second jeep, their pale faces peering out of the windows. They all looked confused, frightened.
“When was the last time anyone saw Bruce?” she asked repeatedly, moving from one group to another. They all shook their heads. No one had seen him since they had been on the ice.
Swearing, Kea pointed to Jon and Erik. “We’re going to need your help. Julie, help them get packs sorted.” She moved back to the cliff edge and stared out across the plain, hoping to make Bruce appear by sheer force of will.
Nothing.
Marcus joined her, putting away his phone. “They’re sending out a search team, but it may take some time for them to get here.”
“We have to go back,” Kea said, her throat dry. “He could have fallen in a kettle hole, slipped off a ridge… he could be anywhere.”
He was on your team! she wanted to scream at Marcus. How could you let this happen?
Not now, she reminded herself and forced three long deep breaths to steady her temper.
Why Bruce? Why not someone else?
Stop. Shut it away, shut the ugly thoughts away. Bruce first, recriminations later.
Footsteps crunched on gravel behind her. Jon and Erik. “Right guys, we’re going to head back the way we came, back to the lake, but spread out. Brisk pace, but be careful.”
“Cole give me a hand.” Zoë’s voice carried across the parking area. Kea turned to see her unstrapping the tarp of the jeep. The jeep Kea had tried to order Tony to drive away. The jeep with the drone equipment in the trailer.
Stupid, I’m so stupid.
Kea jogged over to the trailer and helped Zoë pull off the tarp. Together they lifted the crate out onto the gravel and popped open the lids. She caught Zoë’s eye.
“The batteries have some juice in them, but I can’t make any promises at how far they’ll go,” Zoë said in response to Kea’s unspoken question. “We’re probably out of range of the ice margin here, but I’ll get as close as I can.” She laid out Remus and began to prep the blade assembly.
“Right.” Kea nodded to Julie. “Radio us if you see anything. We gotta go.”
Kea jogged back over to the cliff edge and saw that Marcus and the other two men had already started downslope to the outwash plain, their dark forms obscured by trailing clouds of dust. She went over the edge, half-leaping, half-falling down the soft sands of the slope.
Just hold on, Bruce, we’re coming, just hold on.
***
Marcus kept ahead of them, driving at a furious pace as they hastened their way across the sandur, his strides urgent while Kea stumbled across the uneven terrain. Much younger and fitter, Erik and Jon kept a measured pace, either wisely conserving their energy, or because they knew that their efforts might be in vain.
As fast as they were moving, Kea judged that it would still take forty minutes to reach the raft, at which point the search and rescue teams should have their helicopters out, or at least Zoë’s drone would be airborne.
Unless Bruce had fallen into a kettle hole or was waiting at the base of the glacier margin they would have spotted him already.
She forced herself to walk faster. If he was spotted, she wanted to be there on hand to help. She couldn’t just wait at the parking area and do nothing but wonder what happened to him.
The marching helped her re-focus. This wasn’t the first emergency they’d faced. In the past, they had dealt with broken legs, rolled ankles, and sprained shoulders. All avoidable, all people just being careless. They had never lost anyone, not with the buddy system they used. Well, only once, but that had been a couple who had thought it was romantic to squirrel themselves away in a kettle hole for an hour of fun. Then, as now, panic helped no one, yet she had a nervous fear twisting her stomach into knots, causing bile to scald the back of her throat.
She scanned the skies. Nothing. Still nothing. “Moron.”
“Sorry?” Jon asked.
Kea shook her head, realizing she had verbalized her thoughts. She had been so focused on looking ahead, she hadn’t noticed that she had edged closer to Jon who had overheard her cursing. “I called him a moron. Bruce, I mean. The last time I saw him…”
“I’m sure he’s fine.” Jon placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find him.”
Part of her wanted to smack away his hand, while another part of it wanted to hold it tight. She settled for walking faster, letting his grip fall away as she moved ahead.
“You were with Bruce up on the ice, right?” Kea struggled to remember the teams. Bruce had been on Marcus and Tony. “With Reynard and Derek? Did you see anything, notice anything?”
“Yeah.” Jon increased his pace to match hers. “I mean, no, didn’t see anything. Nothing really happened. He drilled a few holes,” he waved at Marcus’s form in the distance, “’til his equipment broke. We mostly just waited around a lot.”
Kea mentally cursed Marcus and his precious new gear. He hadn’t mentioned anything about a malfunction. Not that they had any time to talk since Gary’s episode. “Waiting around?” she fished, knowing from experience that volunteers rarely waited patiently anywhere for long, not in a playground as fantastical as this.
Jon shrugged. “We had to wait a long time, more than once. I’m not sure he really knows how to use that gear of his.”
What a surprise.
“Anyone go wandering off?” Kea pressed.
“Yeah, a little,” Jon considered. “We messed around taking some photos and stuff, plus bathroom breaks. We kept together though.” He sounded defensive, and she thought she heard a that-wasn’t-my-job tone in his voice. “Until we heard about you and Gary.”
“The lake,” she pressed. “Did you see him cross in the raft? Who was the last one over?”
“Not sure, honestly.” Jon sounded annoyed.
Kea wanted to scream, to swear, to hit something, but in truth, her own memories were far from certain. She hadn’t wanted to bring Jon and Erik along on this search, but she was worried that if they found Bruce, he might not be in any condition to walk. There was no way she and Marcus could carry him out if he were injured. She mentally flinched at the thought.
They hurried on as fast as they could, spreading out in an arrow formation. Marcus pressed on a
head, while Kea, Erik, and Jon fanned out in his wake. When she was certain that the cousins couldn’t hear, Kea listened to the messages saved on her phone again, the receiver pressed tight against her ear. Joanna, their main liaison with Eco Observers, sounded faint and breathless. Kea could barely hear Joanna over the wind of the outwash plain. “I’ve been getting calls from the wife of Mr. Bruce Thompson. His wife is very concerned that he could be-”
Kea tripped, the toe of her boot catching the tip of a large rock. She caught herself with the palm of her hand as she hit the ground, her skin stinging from the gravel. Shaken, she squatted on her heels, she took a moment to survey the land ahead. They were within the lower drainage basin now, walking across the last wide floodplain that abutted the lake. Remarkably, they had made excellent time. However, there was still no sign of the rescue teams behind or above them.
She pressed rewind and tried to catch Joanna’s words. “But his ex-wife is very concerned that he may be about to do himself some harm.
Ex-wife??
Kea shook her head. One crisis at a time.
“I’m still not clear on the exact details, but his ex-wife apparently came home unexpectedly and found a rather troubling letter addressed to her.”
Kea imagined Joanna looking side-to-side to see if anyone was within earshot. “I don’t think she was supposed to be there. I bet she broke in, but anyway, she thinks he may be… suicidal.” Joanna made the term sound like a particularly exotic disease and, while concerned, she could hear the excitement in Joanna’s voice.
Suicidal.
That was all she needed on this trip. She forced herself to stand up and continue walking, edging around a twenty-meter-deep kettle hole and searching the wide basin for any sign of her missing friend. Nothing.
He had seemed troubled, it was true. Kea remembered the brief time they had spent together last night. His eyes had been haggard, lined with deep circles, and he seemed worn, beaten. Angry, even. Yet today he had seemed energized, excited to be on the glacier and to see part of her world. The two Bruce’s seemed at odds with each other.
What do I know? she considered. I can barely keep track of what’s going on in my own head.
Ahead, Marcus had reached the lake’s edge, and she could see him starting to inflate the rafts. Kea scanned the empty skies above.
Where was the drone? Where was the rescue team?
Frustrated, Kea looked back to the jeeps. They had descended so far into the basin that they were out of sight of the parking area. Waving Erik and Jon on, she hiked up to a small rise overlooking the lake’s edge and raised the radio above her head, hoping for reception. After a moment of clumsy semaphore motions, the radio gave a burst of static and then relayed the clipped syllables of Cole’s voice.
“There you are,” she heard Cole reply as she managed to secure the signal. “Wondered why you weren’t responding.”
“Any luck with the drone?” She turned to look out across the lake, searching desperately between the floating blocks of ice for any sign of Bruce.
“Yeah, mom’s driving,” Cole said excitedly. “She said she had to use the inverter to give it a little charge from the jeep first. Doesn’t think it’ll last long though. Heading toward you now, but she says it hasn’t seen anything yet.”
“Roger,” Kea said, relieved. “We’re going to wait here by the lake.” She headed back down the hill where the men were gathered around the raft. “Stop that, stop that, stop that, stopthatstopthat!” She called, her words running together as she skidded to a stop in the sand. “We’re not going across.”
Marcus didn’t respond. Instead, he shoved the raft into the water. Jon and Erik stood by awkwardly, looking between the two leads.
“Marcus, we need to wait for the rescue team,” she implored. “We’ll just be making things worse if we’re all scattered across the ice.”
Marcus glared at her, his eyes dripping with pure hate. Or so Kea thought at first, so used to his venom. Instead, she saw an expression she had never seen on Marcus’ face before: guilt.
She felt it too.
“Okay. We go, but we stay together.” She nodded to the two other men, and they clambered into the raft. They pushed off the shore, and with all four manning the oars, they slid quickly into the middle of the lake.
The mists that had clung to the dark waters in the morning had fled with the heat of the day. Instead, a cool wind stroked the surface of the lake into low ripples that rocked against the prow of the boat. The ice blocks that had appeared almost mystical in the morning fog were now ominous and threatening. They loomed over the little craft as the boat threaded between them.
Glancing south again, Kea caught a glimpse of the drone flitting back and forth across the sky. She put down her oar and pulled out the walkie-talkie again. When she judged that she’d have enough time between bergs, she tried Cole. “What’s up, any sign on the plain? Can you check out the ice? Over.”
There was a long pause before Cole finally answered. “Nothing yet. Mom’s worried about going out on the ice, that’s out of range. She’s going higher up to see if she can see anything on the glacier. So far nothing, over.”
“Kea.” Jon put a hand on her arm. This time she didn’t pull away. “Over there.” He pointed across the lake, to a space between two of the bergs. She felt her heart clench in dismay. There, she saw a flash of bright red bobbing in the water: Bruce’s hat.
“Marcus!” She nearly swatted him with the oar. He and Erik had already changed course to intercept. “Cole!” She barked into the radio. “The lake, can she get coverage of the lake? Over.”
Another agonizingly long pause before Cole responded. “She’s going to try, no promises. Over.”
“We think we see… something of his,” she finished cautiously, unwilling to say anything more, terrified to draw any further conclusions. “We think we see something that may belong to Bruce,” she repeated. “It’s in the center of the lake, just east of the Double Embayment. Over.”
As they drew closer, she couldn’t see any other sign of her friend in the water, causing her to feel simultaneously relieved and disappointed. She watched in horrified fascination as Erik fished the hat out of the water with his oar. She plucked it off and carefully examined it for any sign of damage or injury but found nothing. With a peculiar scientific detachment, she used her phone to mark their discovery’s GPS on the map.
“Now what?” Erik asked.
“We keep going, all the way to the landing site.” It was the first thing Marcus had said during the entire boat ride. His voice was so low and hoarse that she didn’t recognize it.
“Guys,” Cole’s voice crackled in the air between them. “Good news, bad news.”
Kea thumbed the radio. “We copy. Go ahead. Over.”
“Well, good news, bad news, worse news,” his voice trembled, exacerbated by the static.
“Cole,” Kea snapped, “out with it. Over.”
“Hey, Kea,” Zoë’s voice emerged from the receiver, calmer but layered with sadness. “Look, we’ve spotted the relief team, looks like choppers on its way, they should be there in five. I lost the Remus though, batteries gave out. Think it landed in a lake, but before it went down, I think I found him. Julie gave me your number. If you have any signal there, I’m sending a screen grab to your phone now. It’s not good, I’m afraid. Kea, I’m sorry. He’s in the water.”
Kea yanked her phone out of her pocket. One bar of signal registered. She held it up to the sky, willing, and dreading, the text message to come through. It took only a moment before the friendly ‘ding’ chimed to tell her it had been received, but it seemed to take forever for her phone to display the image. It took her even longer to process what it held. Although taken at an oblique angle and slightly pixelated, it was enough for her to discern the form of her friend floating in the icy waters of the lake. Face down.
Bruce.
Chapter 6
Day Three
A delicate sail of ice drifted
across the lagoon, its serrated ridges glistening in the sunlight, its angular reflection mirrored in the still waters. Inside the crystalline skin lay bubbles of air trapped from centuries ago, or even longer. A frozen breath, trapped in time.
Behind it, thousands more icebergs drifted lazily across the lagoon. In the distance, the low front of the glacier Breiðamerkurjökull lurked on the horizon, its low front shedding gigantic blocks of blue and white into a lagoon that was now twenty square kilometers across, the deepest lake in Iceland.
“Vodka?” Julie slapped a plastic cup into Kea’s hand.
Kea peered at the clear, warm liquid within. “Wherever are we going to find any ice?”
Julie snorted, then stalked down to the water’s edge. She broke off a large chunk of translucent ice and huffed and puffed her way back. She snapped off a couple of smaller chunks and plopped them into Kea’s cup.
“Thanks.” Kea stared blankly into her drink.
“No problem.” Julie waved out to the lagoon. “Next round is on you.”
“Thank you for bringing me here.” Kea nodded at the majestic landscape.
The lagoon, Jökulsárlón, was ‘just around the corner’ from Skaftafell. It was only a half-hour drive, but it seemed like another planet. Unlike Skeiðarárjökull, with its massive outwash plain, Breiðamerkurjökull abutted the ocean before retreating upslope, and the deep basin filled with water, forming the vast lagoon that stretched before them.
They had parked the jeep by the road and wandered away from the rest of the tourists until they found a spot where they could pretend that they were alone to escape the claustrophobia of the tents and the questioning stares of the volunteers.
Cause I have no idea what to say to them, Kea thought.
“What on earth are you holding?” Julie asked.
Kea looked down at the small plush toy clenched in one hand. It was brown and furry with bright blue hands, nose, and tail.