He ended in a painful, contorted position, his right leg and arm twisted beneath him. He recovered, kneeled, stood up, stunned by what he’d just been through, amazed that he wasn’t injured.
Twice in the last twenty-four hours he had been in the hand of death and escaped before it could make its fist.
Hackley was coming for him, setting the chopper down practically on top of him.
Dodd looked a mess head to toe, like a monster made of mud. He glanced up at the slide, to that spot where he’d just been. Something, probably his fall, had disturbed the mud there, caused it to give way. Now, partially exposed, was a huge, three-dimensional letter E.
20
Gloria Rand, the time fighter, thought she needed Brydon to kiss her. Needed him to come over, take her head in his hands and draw a kiss from her. Do it without a word, be helplessly attracted.
To herself she told him, Do it.
She fixed her gaze on him, thinking her feelings were so intense that perhaps if she concentrated he might be influenced. Mind over mind. She was skeptical but if it did work it would open up all sorts of possibilities.
She had asked Brydon about the chances of rescue and he had said they were excellent. Actually, the word he used was good. Gloria expected any moment now someone would come breaking through a wall or the ceiling. Then her life could return to normal — but not the same as before, she had decided. First thing, she was going to rid herself of that Frisbee-catching Stuart. He’d be the last of that sort. What a foolish phase. She’d expected more from it. Oh well, she’d make up for it. With Brydon.
She saw no reason to tell him her true age. Her guess about his was early forties — say, forty-one. To make it less of a fib, she would tell him she’d be thirty-five come August. Of course, he would remark that she didn’t look it, looked younger. For substantiation she would arrange to have her birth certificate altered, something she’d been meaning to do, anyway. She’d pay someone to do it. That would allow her to have her birth date be August 12, 1941, on her passport. No one ever doubted a passport. She wondered whether or not the passport people would refer to her original application. If they did, she’d be caught in the lie. If. She refused to believe no woman had ever gotten away with younger than truth on a United States passport. She’d risk it, would have to. Because she foresaw a lot of happy, faraway traveling over the many years ahead. With Brydon.
She must have been attracted to him from the moment they were stranded together there on Island Eight. At the start terror must have numbed her. It had to subside before she could realize what she felt. From then on the attraction had steadily increased, nourished itself with the sight of him, his closeness. The courage he had shown when he was diving for food had inspired her to demonstrate a different kind of courage just a short while ago. She had taken his hand, and, thank heavens, he had responded and later, after her tentative questioning, told her, yes, he did want to see her when this was over. Something in the way he said it, and the seriousness she detected in his eyes, made her believe he meant more than a platonic or casual relationship.
A kiss.
Why didn’t he come take it?
She gave up looking at him, trying to will it. Evidently he wasn’t a man to be dominated, probably not in any way. Head up, she used the tips of her fingers to comb back her hair. She smiled faintly, unaware she was smiling, while she thought she had never been so optimistic.
Although it appeared that Brydon’s eyes were on Gloria, they were aimed beyond her, trying to make out Warren on Island Twelve. Warren was still alone there. Brydon had expected that by now the young man would have had enough isolation. He had forgiven Warren’s lashing obscenity long ago, chalked it up to panic, and periodically over the past hours he had looked in Warren’s direction. All he’d been able to make out was the vague, dark mass of a figure some forty-five feet away.
He decided against shining the flashlight in that direction. Instead, he got up, walked toward Gloria, passed her and crossed over to Island Nine, Ten, Eleven.
Another attempt to communicate with Warren from directly across from him. Even that close it was too dark for details, such as facial expressions. Warren was stretched out on his side. He didn’t move, except to prop up on his left elbow.
Brydon asked if he was thirsty.
No.
Hungry?
No.
Brydon had brought along a can of 7Up. “Here, catch.” He tossed the can with an easy lob at Warren, who made no effort at all, let it go by, off the island and into the mud.
That got Brydon’s temper up, almost enough to go over and give Warren some of it. At Brydon’s feet was the board he had brought along before. His notion of using it now as a bridge to Twelve was replaced by the thought that Warren was either mentally off and therefore perhaps better off, or else he was just a smartass and not worth the effort.
“If you get thirsty, you can yell,” Brydon told him, leaving it an open question whether such yelling would do Warren any good.
Warren said something then that Brydon didn’t get because it came out so sharply, like a spit. Brydon thought he misunderstood, what Warren said wasn’t “Nigger lover,” that didn’t make sense.
Warren watched Brydon turn away, watched him all the way back to Island Eight. Not until then did Warren let his grip relax on the Colt .45 automatic that he’d had concealed and pointed beneath the folds of his poncho.
On Island Eight Lois asked how her brother was.
“The same,” Brydon told her.
“Maybe I should go talk to him.”
“Maybe.”
She was thoughtful, as though considering it, and it seemed to Brydon that she had decided to go to Warren. But without saying more she turned and went in the opposite direction, to her chosen place on Island Five.
“She’s on something,” Gloria Rand said. “Can’t you tell?”
Brydon had long ago given up trying to figure out who was or wasn’t on drugs. So many people, young and old, seemed to go around in a constant lazy float or too full of energy.
“I saw her take one,” Gloria said.
“One what?”
“A yellow pill.”
“You mean a capsule.”
“No, a pill.”
“Maybe just a vitamin or something.”
“I think she’s on uppers.”
To end the subject, Brydon told her, “I’ll look into it.” He didn’t intend to. If during this desperate, really down situation Lois was on a high, let her be.
Four o’clock.
They had been trapped here for nineteen hours.
Brydon went to the end of the island to check the mud-level marker. As he kneeled at the edge, he heard several raps from somewhere above — the ceiling? The roof? And there they were again, several more raps, muffled, indistinct. Could it be someone was trying to signal?
“Did you hear that?” Brydon asked everyone.
“What?”
“That rapping just then,” Brydon said.
“I thought I heard something.”
“So did I.”
The hope of it had them all talking at once.
“Listen!” Brydon shouted.
They were quiet for a long while, heard nothing. Perhaps if they signaled in return. They beat on the island tops with the heels of their shoes and the ends of planks. At first excitedly, chaotically, and then, a more orderly, signal-like drumming.
They stopped and waited for an answer.
Nothing.
They signaled and listened again. And again.
After a while they gave up on it.
Brydon was positive he hadn’t imagined it. He’d heard it, all right, but perhaps it had been merely a loose part of the structure knocking against itself, or even some rocks falling. Still, he wasn’t entirely convinced it hadn’t been a signal. Such a regular, deliberate sort of human-made sound. He believed it had come from the upper front of the building, off to the left. Anyway, for whatever reason, it hadn
’t continued.
He checked the mud-level marker. The rise was a steady half inch an hour. The mud was now only a little more than a foot below the island top.
He returned to Gloria, sat beside her. She helped herself to the cave of his arm. To keep his mind occupied he opened the carton of dog food. It contained three cellophane packets of something that convincingly resembled chunks of fresh beef. Flesh-red color, whitish fat edging and perfect marbling. Brydon thought about it being made to entice customers more than dogs. A dog wouldn’t care if the stuff was green and blue as long as it had the right smell and flavor.
He tore open a packet, took out one of the chunks. It appeared wet, was dry.
Just for the hell of it, Brydon plopped it into his mouth. It tasted bland at first, then strong. Certainly it didn’t taste anything like meat.
He read the ingredients listed on the side of the carton:
SUCROSE
SODIUM CASEINATE
CORN STARCH
PROPYLENE GLYCOL
DICALCIUM PHOSPHATE
ANIMAL FAT PRESERVED WITH BHA
BHT AND CITRIC ACID
IODIZED SALT
POTASSIUM SORBATE
ARTIFICIAL COLORING
ARTIFICIAL MULTIVITAMIN SUPPLEMENTS
ZINC OXIDE
CUPRIC OXIDE
MANGANOUS OXIDE
COBALT CARBONATE
FOLIC ACID
POTASSIUM IODIDE
THIAMINE MONONITRATE
WATER SUFFICIENT FOR PROCESSING
Why would any man want man’s best friend to eat that? Cobalt carbonate sounded like something that would cause a combination of indigestion and radioactive poisoning. Maybe it would be better cooked. But then, considering the ingredients, if heated it would probably just melt.
Gloria Rand also tried a chunk, smiling like a conspirator. Her palate and stomach complained immediately, but she said, “I guess someone could survive on it.”
“If it didn’t kill him.”
She laughed. The laugh came out as though it had been waiting there in the back of her throat, anxious to be released. Although brief, it seemed startingly loud, out of place. It made her shiver, and she huddled closer to Brydon.
He lay back, taking her with him.
One of her legs overlapped his, possessively.
“Sleep,” he suggested.
“I might be able to now. You’ll — well, you’ll watch over me, won’t you?”
He assured her he would.
She closed her eyes and he felt her relax. Soon her breathing changed and he knew she had dozed off.
His eyes were tired, the sockets felt strained, drawn. But he didn’t close his eyes because he might sleep and he didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to see it if it came, think to the last moment.
He focused on the ceiling, the symmetry of the acoustical panels, a row of inset lights, and off to the left over the aisle one of the spherical black television fixtures. He knew what would be above the ceiling. Buildings of this sort were about the same. He could imagine the moment when some architect had decided on the dimensions of this supermarket, could picture him doing a rough draft, hitting on the feature of a higher-than-usual ceiling, and then carrying the feeling of expansiveness further by making structural allowances that permitted elimination of all interior upright beams.
Brydon cursed that unknown fellow and his inspiration.
Had some predestining force been at work — knowing it would come to this, when it would be absolutely necessary to reach that ceiling that was out of reach? Not that getting up there guaranteed anything, really, except perhaps a few more hours to live.
The will to survive.
Brydon had always thought of it as an instinct, but recently it had occurred to him that it wasn’t. An infant human was helpless. It did not naturally think of its life as something desirable that it must, above all, preserve. Self-preservation was a realization and, honestly, not the first. It came after the first fear of death, after the first awareness, perhaps unconscious, that the body was vulnerable, destructible. So the will to survive became a reflex. More primary was terror.
Small children rarely cried in grief at a funeral. While millions wept, John-John was entertained by the many uniforms and the November trees on that hillside in Arlington. But the fear of death grabbed hold early and, insidiously, never let go.
People tried not to admit it. By praying to God in mandesignated sacred places, by trying to accumulate worth, by waving flags of certain color arrangements, by fitting their sexual organs together for what seemed at least temporary transcendence.
Brydon recalled seeing somewhere, probably on television, a herd of water buffalo grazing, being shot at. No alarm as one by one, one next to another, the animals were dropped dead. No concern, none of that awful human fear and desperate reasoning that understandably led to the conclusion — the hope — of an afterlife.
Or in this situation, merely to escape, to be rescued. Brydon wanted it as much, maybe even more, than the others — whatever time he had coming.
Gloria, in her sleep, increased her embrace, pressed as much of herself as possible to Brydon. It seemed she was drawing what she needed from him, and he believed he felt that and it was good to be able to supply it. Then the feeling reversed, and it seemed he was taking from her — a recharging energy that dissolved much of his bitterness.
He lay absolutely still, figuring an architectural diagram and the geometric equations it required on the slate of his mind.
Gloria stirred.
Brydon turned his head to see if she was awake.
She was and was quick to take advantage of the easy proximity of his mouth. The kiss began too eager and a bit awkward, but became, with confidence, very tender.
He regretted that he had to lie to her.
He wished he could lie to himself.
After a while, he got up. Using the flashlight, he examined closely the surface of the island, its planking. He found eight-foot lengths consistently, except at the front end where several shorter planks had been used to finish off construction. He used the span of his spread hand, which he knew was ten inches exactly from tip of little finger to tip of thumb, to measure the length of those shorter planks. They were six feet. He measured again to make sure.
His mental calculations had been based on lengths of seven feet. The eight-foot planks would be too long, cumbersome. Would the six-foot ones be too short? Without any way of cutting evenly, as with a saw, he had to make do with whatever length there was. He figured it out again. Conclusion: six feet might be adequate, but just barely — if he was correct.
He got Spider and Peter to help pull up the six-foot planks, told them to be careful, they needed the planks intact.
“What for?” Spider asked.
“We’re going to try for the ceiling,” Brydon said.
“Don’t you think we ought to wait to be rescued?” Peter said.
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Let’s go for the ceiling.”
The idea hadn’t just come to Brydon. It was one of the first things he’d thought of — and rejected because it was practically impossible. Thinking it out thoroughly hadn’t made it any less so, but Brydon had decided it was as good a chance as anything else and the time had come to take it.
The activity on Island Eight attracted the other survivors there, except, of course, Warren.
Judith and Marion wanted to help.
Phil Kemp said he didn’t think Brydon’s idea would work, and he wouldn’t waste any of his energy on it.
Brydon told Kemp he didn’t need him or his comments.
Elliot Janick volunteered to do whatever he was told. Marsha avoided him. Each time Elliot tried to be near her she moved away.
Dan Mandel said he was willing to try anything.
Lois Stevens tried to stand still, and just watch.
Brydon stacked the shorter planks that had been gathered from this island and from o
thers, to make sure they were all of equal length. Six feet. Two were a few inches too long, two more as much too short. Brydon discarded those. That left him eleven planks. He needed ten.
First, from a mark he made on the island surface, he measured off twenty feet, again using his hand span. That twenty would be the base. He divided it into thirds, making marks six feet, eight inches apart.
At each end of the base, perpendicular to it, he placed an eight-foot plank. He told Amy, Gloria and Judith to stand on one of the planks, Elliot, Marsha and Marion to stand on the other. Marsha exchanged places with Gloria. Brydon told them that from then on they must remain where they were. Their weight was vital. Those end planks had to stay put.
Next Brydon put the six-foot planks to use. He butted one tight against the perpendicular edge of an end plank, raised it diagonally until it seemed right. Meanwhile Spider placed another six-footer upright on the nearest third-way mark and lowered it diagonally until it met Brydon’s plank at an equal angle. Spider held his plank at its base to keep it from sliding down.
The opposing weight, the lean, of the two planks kept them together at their apex.
With Peter’s help, Brydon repeated that procedure exactly at the other end of the base. Then he added two more planks, simultaneously butting them at the bottom, one against Spider’s plank, the other against Peter’s.
So far, good.
What they had formed were three triangular supports of equal height. By adding two eight-foot boards across the peaks of the triangles, they had a tier five feet high — for the most part holding itself up, like a house of cards.
And like a house of cards it seemed a mere blow of breath would bring it down.
Brydon was pleased, somewhat excited, a spark of what he usually felt whenever he saw the materialization of a concept.
Kemp scoffed, shook his head and said: “What a piece of shit.”
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