The Blue (The Complete Novel) (30 page)

    Every fifteen minutes I go back up and spend a half hour watching the mountains, making sure they stay far away. Once in a while I pull the ship away across the flattened swells, but never much, and I go back down to keep Voley company. The thought crosses my mind to dump the bodies overboard, but I know there’s no way I can move them up the steps. And just like that, back and forth and tormented by projection, the night dissolves into dawn.

Chapter 31

With bleary eyes I stare out at the gray horizon in every direction, looking for some kind of sign. The slit of blue wakes up in the sky above, first crossing through its color patterns of pink and orange. By the time the golden disc is too strong to look at, I’m starting to fall asleep. I didn’t sleep at all during the night, and now the boat seems to be lurching a bit, drawing too close to the range. I turn the wheel sleepily and punch the throttle until she runs a bit, and then let off and watch. When I catch myself waking up from small dreams, I force myself to my feet and start pacing. Up and down the entire deck, and then, I start running. As fast as I can to wake my heart up. Get the blood flowing before I fade out and the ship is sucked in upon the rocks. It’s the only thing I can do. It dawns on me I’ll need to figure out how much fuel is left, and where extra fuel is stored. Just in case all of this falls through—in case no one comes and I have to run us away from the land. But then, on my fifth lap, rounding the stern and turning back up along the starboard gunwale, I see the shape. A lightning bug on the water, shooting a white trail and zooming along in a line. At first I think it has to be pirates, but then, I see the color—bright red. The cutter. All I can do is scream for Voley over and over, until I lose my calm. And then, everything comes crashing back down to reality and I gather up the guns. Two from downstairs and one on the deck and I bring them all into the wheelhouse. And from there, with one in my arm, I watch out through the glass and mirror sea, through the mist of drizzling rain, as the boat jumps right over the swells toward me. The next thing I know, the thing is slowing and pulling up alongside of us.

I stand over the rail and look down, and it dawns on me that this is a mirror in reverse of the situation two days ago, as the men of this ship had stood and looked down at me, with their guns in their hands, watching, knowing exactly what prey they had stumbled upon. Not knowing that the girl they thought they could take for a bounty would kill them all. And the feeling of my power comes into me, almost too much, but necessary to deal with whatever is about to happen. And then, with a long gray beard, so old that he looks like he could hardly be a threat, steps out from the rain tarp of the cutter an old man. Next to him is a younger man, and they’re both wearing dark green rain suits. Together they wave up, but it’s clear that the younger one has a gun in his hand. He’s trying to keep it tucked under his side, but I see it and call out to them, keeping my aim steady and pointed right down on their heads:

    “You throw the gun into the water,” I say. And then, the old man speaks up before the younger one can do a thing. He asks me if I’m the one from the plane, and when I don’t reply, he asks me how I came to find a ship. It’s too many questions, and all I do is keep the machine gun trained on them and repeat what I started with, telling them that I want the gun over the side. I see them start to talk to each other, and then, the old man tells me to watch.

            “See?” he says. And then, the young man holds up the pistol and drops the cartridge out.

            “Not good enough,” I tell him. And then, after they talk more, the old man convinces him to throw the gun into the water. I watch it drop, but I know they’ll have more.

            “No guns are worth anything close to what you’ve brought us,” the old man says. The wind rushes up and blows away part of his cap, and I see the worn smile come over him. I know he means the equipment that I don’t have, and that it’s the only reason that he could convince the younger one to throw away the gun. But I realize that since I’m going to follow them back, and they’ll be in front, I don’t have too much to worry about. They won’t be boarding the ship.

            “The woman,” I say. “I want to talk to her.” My mind is racing a mile a minute and I’m cursing myself for not thinking the whole thing through ahead of time. And then, the old man tells me to get back on the radio if I want to talk to her, because that’s the only way I’ll get her. She’s not with us, he says. And then I realize that the reason I’m stuck, unsure of what to do, is because I don’t have any trust left to give out. Not even when they’re five feet below me on the cutter, far enough away that they can’t jump on board and without a gun that I can see. And I know what I have to do. I have to trust them, after all that I’ve been through, I have to let them take me.

            “I’ll follow you,” is all that I can get out, and when I see that the old man just nods, and then nothing more, I take it he’s going to play along. I get back to the wheelhouse and wait for the cutter to pull away. And then, just like that, I’m chugging along behind them, tracing their wake through the ocean, all the way through noon and into the afternoon, the mountains long out of sight. Not once do we stop, and every minute I feel heavier and heavier, as all the adrenaline of my run and the encounter is fading away. The night without sleep is catching up to me. The journey is endless and monotonous, and the blue strip above looks like it’s hardly moved at all, as if we haven’t gone anywhere—like we’re going in circles. I have no idea in hell how they’re navigating, and I don’t even care. I’m too tired to care anymore. Finally, when I start to nod out, I turn the radio on to try and wake up. The static comes through the wheelhouse, and then, after only one try, the woman’s voice comes on.

            “I’m following your men,” I tell her. Her voice lights up and she says if the ship I’m in is anywhere close to as fast as the cutter, she’ll see me tomorrow. She tells me that she knows I must be close to dead, and that the last thing I’ll want to do is explain what happened to me, and she says I won’t have to do any of that until they get me cleaned up and fed. And Voley too, I tell her. And she asks what I mean. She’s forgotten.

            “Voley. My dog. You’re going to clean him up and feed him too.” And she tells me yeah, him too. I admit to her that I can barely stay awake. She tells me to flag down the boat and that they’ll help me, but I tell her no, I can’t. I can’t because Voley’s trapped downstairs and I can’t keep an eye on him and them at the same time. She asks me what I mean, and I can’t muster the energy to explain. All I can do is keep asking her questions about Pikes Peak. What’s the elevation?
14,500 feet.
Do you really have running water?
Running hot water.
What do you eat there?
We have enough canned food here for a thousand people to live for five years.
What about the face eaters?
They don’t come here. Or I should say, we don’t let them in. Stay awake now, alright? You’re almost halfway.
What about the weather?
Since I’ve been here, we see the blue most of the year. Sometimes storms cover it, but sometimes the rain stops completely. And sometimes it snows bad and the ice closes around us. But it’s not the rain of the East. And it’s not the hell of the far West. From what we’ve heard anyway, this is the best place still going.
I ask her about other places, if she’s heard of Blue City out in Utah.
Never heard of Blue City. But I wouldn’t doubt there’s more than a few encampments out there.
What about Mexico? I ask in a thin voice.
Once we have the equipment you’re bringing us, we’ll know about what it’s like in Mexico. At least we’ll have a good shot to know. Hell, we might know what’s happening in Europe.

            I just keep rattling them off until the line gets quiet. I can’t ask any more questions and she doesn’t have anything left to tell me. But something comes into my head. One last question. And right before I fall asleep, I ask her:
Why do you trust me?

            There’s a long silence, and I think the battery is dying because the white noise rises and falls abruptly in volume, and I almost slip into a dream before she finally comes back. She sort of clears her throat, like she doesn’t really have any kind of answer. A sign of guilt I think, maybe the truth now coming out that she really doesn’t trust me. That Pikes Peak can’t handle any more living bodies. That I’m only good for running her the cargo, and then they’re going to kill me. Store me for food. There’s no moral weight to a lie anymore. So there’s no moral weight to trust. In my mental fog it makes sense to me before she finally croaks out her answer.

            “Because we want to,” she says. “Because it’s a risk we decided we wanted to take. Something worth the potential reward. That’s all. Don’t think it’s because you sound innocent or like you’re telling us the full truth about things. And don’t think there won’t be guns on you for a while. Until we separate the fact from fiction about your story. But, just the same, that’s how most of us came in here. I think you’ll do alright here. Pikes Peak is just about the best place on Earth to live as far as I can see it. You there?” Her voice drones on, telling me to wake up, and talk back, but I don’t have the power anymore. And I can’t keep my eyes on the wheel or the black night either. Instead I have to lay down on the floor of the wheelhouse and close my eyes for just a minute.

Chapter 32

When I wake up, the young man from the cutter is standing right next to me. He’s looking down in the darkness, watching me, and then I realize he’s talking and that I fell asleep. It snaps into logic what I’m seeing: he’s boarded the ship.

            “You okay?” his words become clear. I dart back into the corner and look all around for my guns. They’re nowhere around. He’s taken them. He asks me again if I’m okay, and then he tells me he’s just going to turn the boat for a moment, keep her lined up with the cutter. I watch him, deciding if I have enough alertness to pummel him through the glass. But then, as quickly as I finally begin to see clearly, after rubbing my eyes, he’s watching me again.

            “You’re going to be okay,” he tells me. “Calm down.” But I can’t calm myself. Right away my thoughts race away to the downstairs—where Voley is sitting in the dark and alone and thinks I’ve abandoned him. I listen through the night wind and rain trying to hear his voice, but there’s nothing.

            “You fell asleep and started to lose us. And the sea is picking up a bit. We didn’t know what happened and didn’t want you to roll,” he tells me. I stand up and watch his eyes dart back and forth from me and then out to the dots of light that must be the cutter on the black ocean. He continues to explain and I drift in and out through a headache, wondering how long I can stay still.

            “Jen told us you’d be beaten up. That you might hardly be alive,” he says. And then he smiles and hands me something. When I look closely at it I realize it’s a candy bar.
Snickers.
“I don’t think anyone guessed you’d look this bad. But you’re going to live.”

            And then, like he trusts me completely, he turns his back. Completely away from me and then looks out to the sea and doesn’t look back. Like a mad man. But then, just when the urge to attack him rushes through me again, because I know he wouldn’t see it coming now, I go blank. I quiet down inside. Everything disappears. And I can’t do a thing. It’s like I’m done. Done fighting. And this is it. And instead of doing anything about the man who’s boarded the ship and taken it over, I open the candy bar and smell it. The chocolate smell is overpowering. I haven’t had something like this in a year. And then, I just tell him I have to check on my dog. And like that, without anything more than a nod, he lets me go. I walk out into the darkness, across the deck, over the lines of rain that strike down and splash back up at me, taking a giant bite of the candy bar, and then another, until I reach the hatch and realize there might not be enough left for Voley. And then, I sneak down and find him. Still there. Still okay. And he licks me and I let him have the rest of the candy and then I lay down next to him and fall back to sleep.

Chapter 33

When I get up, the light of the sun is pouring down through the open hatch of the deck. Men’s voices are shouting, calling out commands. Something about anchoring and something about the girl. Right away I jerk up to see the dim light revealing dead bodies all around me. I look at their faces and they all look like they’re alive still. Just taking a short nap, and ready to spring up at any moment. And then I stand up and get a better view. I see their open eyes, hollow and empty. Cold and plastic skin and dead-looking like they really are. I remember the younger one coming aboard, taking over the wheel in the night. And then when I scramble for one of the machine guns, instincts taking over again, I hear the call.

            “Hey!” comes the voice. It sounds familiar. And then, the light coming down through the hatch cuts out, just where someone would stand to look down. “We’re docked.”

            Somehow I drag my body to the bottom of the steps and look up, expecting a barrel of a gun pointed in my face. But there’s nothing but a black silhouette standing still and watching me. Then, when I start to rise, his hand comes out. I take it and he pulls me up. What I see puts me into shock.

            A long wooden road of dock stretches all the way to an enormous slope of smooth mud and gray rock. But then, there’s something else. Something incomprehensible. The ridges along the mountain in front of me look green. I ask him if those are trees. They are trees, he tells me, helping me along the deck. And there by the dock, standing on a plank of metal acting as a bridge, is the old man from the cutter.

            “We made it,” he says. And as I’m pushed along, his hand slaps me gently on the back. Like he knows who I am and what I’ve done. Everything seems awfully unreal. And then he says to the other man to get the equipment off the ship. The younger man starts to ask me where it is, but I just hang my head and play along, trying to seem sicker than I am, and the old man instructs him to just search and find it himself.