The Blue (The Complete Novel) (6 page)

When I get out and help him gather everything together so we can march on again, I look at the blue. It doesn’t look any closer. And I want to tell him the ice must be drifting in the wrong direction now. That something’s changed. When we start to plod forward over the thinning crust of slush, I feel the wind start kicking up again—snowless and soft—but directly at us. Blowing us away from the blue. And the silver.

I tell Russell the wind is probably pushing the ice floes the wrong way. That we might be marching in place. He just tells me to keep my nose to the ice, and to look for hidden fissures. I watch the ground and let Voley go ahead, between Russell and me, and we snake around about a dozen pockets of water, drinking from some of them, before we come to the next gap in the ice. But we’re so worn out from hunger that neither of us bring up the bet. It’s like our humor’s been destroyed already by just a day without food. We toss everything over in silence and I jump first. Then Voley. Then Russell. That’s when I see the seal watching us again. I almost don’t say anything because it’s like he’s always there now. A fixture on the ice.

There he is, I say. Russell raises the rifle and looks down the scope. I think I can get him, he says. Then, after an agonizing moment of concentration, he fires. The seal drops, and I think it’s been hit in the head, but it pops back up, only stunned from the loud bang. Then it hurries off the ice as Russell readies his next shot. But something looks funny about how the seal gets over the edge of the ice. Like he’s struggling to do it. Even to just fall back into the ocean.  

            I think you got him, I say. And I think of the seal’s face, and how it looked like a dog’s, and I feel sad. Like I didn’t mean for us to come all this way, across the whole country, thousands of miles, and then down south, and across this pack, just so we could run into the seal and that it could die because we can’t eat. But it’s a short-lived sadness, and my stomach flips again and tells me to sprint out to where it fell into the water. I start to go until Russell calls me back. He says to wait, but I tell him I’ll be careful—I know how to spot all the ice pockets. He tells me it’s not that. Look, he says. And when I turn around to see what it could be, unsure from his tone whether it’s good or bad, I see the most horrible thing I could ever imagine. The blue is slowly disappearing. Smothered by a new gray, much darker than normal daytime clouds. And all at once, I notice that rain has started up again—so soft you can barely feel it, but it’s rain, and I tell Russell. He’s already felt the first drops though, and he says what it is: storm’s coming in. And I know we have no way to stand up to a storm. I completely forget about the seal, and my stomach, and think about the churning ocean underneath of us. From my imagination or not, I can’t tell, I think I start to already feel the ice maneuvering up and down over a long, slow swell. And we’re riding its thin crust. The last few feet of fractured pancake. And as far as my eyes can see, the ice looks so strong still, so pure and white. Like it’s a hundred feet deep. But I know better. The darkness is real, and the strength of the pack is all an illusion.

            My eyes fall to the silver glint as it fades out, disappearing, now just a memory in the growing darkness. The long tendrils of the sunlight withdraw into the heavens and it becomes in only a few minutes like the eternal dusk that I’ve always known. The tug of a good place to die vanishes. We have nothing.

I want to tell Russell that our plan’s over. We can’t even die the way we want to. But by his voice, I know he’s not in the mood to hear it. Because he starts to look around, frantically surveying every angle, trying to see if there’s anywhere we can hide. But the nearest pressure ridge looks like it’s three or four miles away. In the end, his stare breaks and it turns into a fast-paced walk toward the ridge. The spot off to the west, half into the wind, where a giant iceberg rises up and clashes with the low-lying pack shards of the Ice Pancake.

            How the hell do you plan on climbing that? I ask him as he leaves me. Come on boy, Russell says. Voley starts after him. And then he tells me, stopping to see that I haven’t started to follow: We’re not climbing anything. We’re getting behind it. Come on.

For the life of me I can’t figure out why, because it seems like getting behind the enormous cliff will just put us under its weight, one side of it or the other. Either way, I see it collapsing on our heads after an enormous wave, or grinding down into the sea, carrying our low ice into the cold brown. But I don’t say anything else, because I don’t have a single better idea. Anything to not die in the waves. And all I have is my trust of Russell.

We jump gap after gap, more quickly and recklessly now, like we’re in a race against time, and I learn to ignore my stomach. The wind kicks up more, blowing at our sides now, and I keep checking the sky, hoping the blue will miraculously return. But it doesn’t.

After an hour on the ice, when I feel so raw that I almost beg Russell to stop so that we can put the stove on and rest, I realize the rain is slowing up and the wind hasn’t gotten any worse. I tell him I think it’s letting up, but he’s not so sure. He says it might be, but we shouldn’t change course yet. And so I march on, and look back, wondering how the seal is doing with the new weather. But he’s nowhere to be seen.

When the night comes, we barely speak a word. Just plant the tent about thirty feet away from the ridge. It’s about ten feet higher than the pancake ice, and if it was somehow climbable, I’d convince Russell that we should try and make the effort. But its walls are like sheer mirrors, and as strong as it looks, and as much as I know it’s probably immune to the long, rolling swells, I crawl into the tent without a word about moving anymore.

I wish Russell had his guitar. Or just that he’d sing. Or anything. Even touch me. Hold me. But he just curls up into a ball, holding onto anger—about the weather or the seal, I can’t tell—and falls asleep after telling me it’s my watch first. I want to curse at him, and tell him he’s the one who’s giving up. That it’s his idea to stay hopeful, and that I can’t do it without him. And when I look at Voley, knowing he’s always hopeful, no matter what the situation is, he just whines. The long, high whine that means he’s hungry. And I can read his mind. He’s been walking all day, and his muscles are sore, and we’ve used up everything we have, and he needs to eat something. But there’s nothing to eat. I tell him this softly. Sorry boy, we don’t have anything right now. He doesn’t seem to understand, and keeps on whining, so I just pet him. I wonder if Russell will come to life and get angry if I start the stove up. I remember he told me that we only had a night’s worth left. If that. But I want to use the last of it now. It’s the only thing I can give Voley. I start to work my way toward the bag, trying to sneak the stove out, but then Voley whines louder, like he wants to give me away, even though I’m trying to help him. I decide we’ll just freeze and return to him empty-handed. I’m sorry, I tell him again. And then, I just pet him. For the longest time, I don’t even go out to stand my watch. I just sit by him and pet him until he stops whining. And I tell him that I know, I feel it too. What I would give for another pebble of dog food. And finally, soaked along his chest, Voley lies down in the cold slush. And the rain starts up again, nearly to medium, and the patter begins on the tarp. But the tarp barely shields us. Voley slides along Russell, the only warmth left to him in the world, and I escape into the darkness.

The wind hits my face. I walk away from the tent and the ridge and invite the weather to come. Bring it on. I feel the cold steel in my pocket and my aching joints and make my way over to one of the small cracks of open ocean. I don’t even know where I’m going. I take the gun out and raise it toward the sky. Like I can shoot the blue open again. But I know there’s a monster out there. Brewing behind the gray clouds. A storm that’s coming to swallow us up. Ice and spray and metal salt death. Me and the last friends to ever know.

I get so far away without realizing it that when I look back, the tent is almost gone from my view, cut off by part of the rise of the ice cliff. And for some reason that I can’t explain, I burst out at the rain. Right up into it. I scream. At first it’s nothing but primal sounds, dark emotions that could never have words. I express my darkest remorse at having lived, at having had to come through this all. All of it pointless. A dream before I die. Some memory that I lived a life, and all those things in it, the people that I shared it with, will all just be a flash of remembrance, and then it will be gone. I scream because I want it all to mean more than what it means. The love I’ve felt. It should mean more than this. And finally, from my guttural moanings come words. I shout the names of the people I miss. Every single one that ever touched me—I call out for Jennifer and Delly. I tell them that this is where we are now. This is what happened to your old friends. Washed out by the rain finally. I holler up to them, and ask if they’ve already been taken by it. I ask the rain too. And then I tell them goodbye. I call for the Cap’n, who always knew how to keep us alive. For the longest time, and why couldn’t you get us through one storm? You fought storms your whole life. I tell him it was just a storm. And that I loved it on the
Sea Queen.
Then I come to Ernest, and I tell him that he’s got to do something. He’s got to get us through this. Just one more time. Get us through it. That this is the real spot to sacrifice yourself for. Come out from wherever the hell you’re hiding. And haul us on again. You can’t leave us here, I tell him. And then I think of Dusty. And how much I loved him. I tell him as loud as I can that he shouldn’t have come after us from Blue City. He shouldn’t have done it. Are you happy? I yell. And I apologize because I don’t mean to yell at him, but I yell at him anyway. Is this how you wanted to end up? I yell at him like he’s dying right in front of me again. And when I catch myself from my tantrum, I look back toward the tent, sure that Russell will be glaring at me. Awake and watching me lose my mind. With Voley next to him, baffled. But I’ve walked too far away. They don’t hear me.   

I reach into my pocket and take out the metal box. The red powder tin. I push it into my mouth and lick it. Nothing but cold steel. And then I roar into the wind and throw it. As far as I can. And watching me, like I’m some sort of curious attraction, is the seal. He stares at me, wide awake and alert, about fifty feet away. I tell him not to move, because we need him. Need your body so that we can live. Yours for ours. I tell him it’s just the way it goes, and finally, when I’m crazed enough that I forget that it’s the seal that chased me last time, I charge at him. Right on with everything I’ve got, not even worrying about the cracks and the ocean gaps and the splitting ice beneath me. Far from the sight of Russell or Voley or anyone in the whole world. Just me and the seal. And just when I’m picking up real speed, and I think I can take a shot with the pistol, I trip, bang my elbow hard against the ice, and sink up to my waist in a pool of frigid water. When the daze clears, and I look up, I already know what I’ll see. The seal will be crashing down on me. Ready to devour me. It’s body winning out over mine. And why not. Isn’t that the way it goes anyway? Aren’t the face eaters the ones who really understand how the world works? But when I raise my head from shock and look at him, he hasn’t moved. But then I realize that I’m wrong—he is moving, only very slowly. He’s coming to get me because he knows I’m down. But he can’t run anymore. And when I claw out onto firm ice again and get to my feet, and he sees that I’m not dead or paralyzed like he thought, he turns around. I start my mad chase again, but then he rolls over, right into a crack of the sea.

            I don’t even make a sound. Just turn and head back toward the tent.

When I get back, and Russell and Voley are still sound asleep, completely ignorant of the mania that’s taking over my head like a virus, I lie down quietly. Just lie with them. And listen to the rain, and feel it slip through the tarp onto me, and let it all go. I don’t even remember to wake Russell up for a watch. The wind whips up and dies back down, whistling against the poles. I squeeze my body against theirs but all of us together hardly produce any more warmth. It’s only a single, stretched out moment that I remain awake, and then everything fades away into a deep sleep, until I hear Russell screaming. I have no idea why he’s screaming, or where he is, but all I know is I’m awake again. Like it’s only been a minute. And that I’m falling. The tarp coils in around me, and I see Voley shoveling away, feel him kicking off of my legs, trying to climb away from the collapsing tent. And before the chaos makes any sense, a cold wave of ocean falls over everything. And in one shuddering moment of terror, I know: The ice cracked apart right beneath the tent, and the sea is taking us at last.

   Part 2

Chapter 8