The Blue (The Complete Novel) (19 page)

I pull out the lighter and hold it up. It’s clear casing shows me a full tank. I roll the wheel and the flame shoots out again. Then, I hold it under the arm of a shirt. It only takes a few minutes for the smoke to turn into a flame, and then I use the shirt to light other pieces of clothing. Soon the whole pile is burning, and I tug on the loose end of a pair of pants to drag the flaming mass close to the edge of the plane wing. Once the fire is right next to the ice, I plant the long metal spear into the ground, angling the tip so that the piece of meat hangs in the smoke. Then, when I’m sure it won’t burn but it’s getting a lot of heat, I go back to the plane.

By the time I shoo off Voley again and carve out another piece of meat, I feel like I’m going to pass out. I drink from the ice melt near the cockpit and look out at the sky. It’s calm and clear and blue, and barely any wind blows. The wind that does shoot through feels unusually warm. Like there’s some kind of unusual climate change happening. And I push away the thoughts of the widening fissures at the sight of the meat on the spear—it almost looks like anything else I’ve ever eaten over an open fire. The color isn’t the shocking pink and red and white anymore, but a darker brown. And for a moment, I don’t know that it’s a person at all. I just watch it, wondering if I’ll get sick. If it’s cooked enough. When I walk over and kneel down next to the spear and really smell the meat, my stomach puts me into autopilot. I stuff the raw piece of meat I just cut out into my pocket and grab the spear by its base. Then, with Voley patiently watching it all unfold, hoping I’ll share with him, I hold the spear so that the cooked brown is right near my mouth. It smells delicious. Like any other meat I’ve ever eaten. And without even testing it to see how hot it is, I push it against my lips. My tongue burns as I try to taste it. I pull it back and begin to blow on it. Voley barks. He’s having trouble controlling himself being so close to the smell. But I know he’s already eaten, and that I have to get food into my own stomach. After a couple more blows I try it again. It’s cool enough and it tastes as good as anything I’ve ever eaten. Not the strange, awful taste that I’ve been expecting for the past hour. And that fast I chew it and swallow, and repeat. At the end, I offer the last bit to Voley. He eats it right out of my hand and then I take out the raw piece and stick it on the spear. I dig the metal into the ice and tilt it, and then it’s roasting again.

Until the sun fades, as if I’m some kind of machine, I repeat the butchering. Working over the leg, carving out chunks of thigh muscle, and then returning to the fire. By the time I start to feel nauseous, the fire has died down to almost nothing. The last piece of meat on the spear probably didn’t even cook through, and I can’t stand the thought of eating it. I slurp down as much of the ice melt as I can stand, and then, lie down on the cool metal of the plane wing. Voley looks content, having eaten more than me. He doesn’t look like he’s feeling any of the discomfort I am. Still, despite the new pains of having eaten too much, it feels much better than the wrenching gut pain of hunger. And when it truly starts to get dark again, and I feel as if I’ve drifted in and out of sleep a dozen times, I notice the temperature starts to drop. I go into the plane and put on another layer of clothes. Baggy and too big with a strange smell to them. And then I sit by the door of the plane, half outside, talking to Voley. I tell him we’ve got to figure out a plan. Now that we’ve got food in our bellies, and some supplies again, we’ve got to figure out what to do. And for just a moment, the guilt slides back into my consciousness.
What would he think?
And then, just that easily, it’s gone. And I know what he’d think. Russell would think that I did what he wasn’t ever strong enough to do. And that’s all.

I pull up the black box with the radio resting on top and turn it back on as I talk to Voley. Okay, I say, We can refill some of the stove fuel, we’ve got something to eat for at least another day, water to drink. And then, when I’m done telling Voley those three things, my mind draws a blank. Like there’s nothing else. Because we’ve come as far as we ever intended to. All the way to the blue, the place we picked to die. But there’s no way to get any farther. And nothing to get to. We don’t know where we are, or where there is to go. Tomorrow I’ll look through the plane again, I tell him as my hand runs along his back. He yawns wide and then I yawn. The stars already dot the wide stretch of dark blue above. Then the static white noise of the radio rushes in again. How much battery does this have left in it? I ask. Voley just rests his head on my knee and closes his eyes. Happy for a moment’s peace. My mind wanders onto the cracks again—how fast they’re opening, and whether or not we should sleep in the plane where it will be much warmer. At last I realize there’s no way I want to wake up in the ocean again. This time with no one to help get me out. So I get up and gather what’s left of the clothes inside in the plane and carry them out to where the fuel and the other bag of gear are, on the other side of the plane. But it’s too wet now to sleep right on the ground. So I haul everything back and around to the broken wing, and hope it’s far enough away from the plane that it won’t slide into the sea if everything opens up while we’re sleeping. And then, drizzling the fuel from the cup into the pilot stove, and hoping it lights, I hold a flame out from the lighter. Just like that the stove ignites, and a little spread of warmth pushes into the cool night. The static rings out against dead silence and we lie down together, waiting for something to come through the white noise. Slowly I turn through the knobs. One after the next. At first I try to keep track of what stations I’ve checked, so I don’t waste whatever battery power is left on repeating channels I’ve already listened to. But soon I give up because there are too many. There are a million stations, and if anything is playing on any of them, it would take me a year to find them with all the ones there are to wade through. It isn’t until I’m nearly asleep that I think of hitting the small buttons all lined in a row on the bottom lip of the yellow screen.

            The first one I hit instantly changes the numbers: they flash from 182.340 to 49.100. The same static crackles through the speakers. And then, wondering why I hadn’t thought of it sooner, I grab the small receiver and examine it. Against the light from the pilot stove I see only one button on it. When I press it, the static stops. Dead quiet. Think they can hear me? I ask Voley as I talk into the silence. And then, sure enough, when I release the button, the static returns. But there’s still no one saying anything. I try again. Hello? I talk through the small speaker holes. Anyone there? I release the button and the white noise is back. Taunting me. Was worth a try, I say, and then I press another one of the buttons. The numbers switch from 49.100 to 57.300. Preset channels. Someone must have picked these out for a reason. Put the radio on the plane for a reason. The spell of hope tumbles through my mind as I press the button again and try to speak to someone through the invisible web of radio waves. Hello? I say. Anyone out there? This is a girl and a dog floating on a rock of ice somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We’d really appreciate some company. But the only thing that joins us is the hissing crackle of dead air. One by one I switch through each preset channel. Sending out the same message. A night time call for company. Anyone want to spend a lonely night with strangers on the floes? I say into the last button. And then I wait—this time a full minute. Looks like we’re all alone I tell Voley as I hit the preset button that brings the radio back to the first station again, and it’s right after I do this that the voice comes on.

            “…Peak Visitor’s City.” I wait for the voice to come back but everything’s gone to static again.

            I hit the button on the receiver and talk, asking if anyone can hear me. My anxiety mounts as I wait for a response, but there’s nothing now. Not even static. And then I realize I’m still pressing down on the receiver. I slide my thumb off and the button releases to the sound of the same voice.

“…and clear. Can you identify yourself? How did you find this band?”

I pause, wondering how in the world I could be talking to someone where I am. It’s impossible to imagine who they are, how far away. What world they belong to, and if they’re face eaters or friendlies. It jolts through me. I’m a face eater now. But something inside me responds
no
.
This is different.
Somehow my circumstances are entirely different from all the face eaters I’ve ever seen.
You are not a face eater
runs through my mind again and again, like it’s the only thing that will give me the confidence to finally click the button again and reply. I start to smile for some reason as I look at Voley, peacefully asleep on my leg now as I talk.

            “I’m stuck on the ice in Colorado. I don’t know how much longer our floe will last,” I manage to say at last. And then, right away, I click off. The man’s voice wades through the static again to reach me, only disappearing for a second at a time here and there, clear enough that I understand every word he says.

            “How did you get this band?” he repeats. At once I’m alarmed. The tone in his voice is deadly, almost angry. Like I’ve done something terribly wrong by talking on this number. I look at the glowing screen and take in the digital numbers: 49.100. I have no idea what it means, and I’m not sure what to say. My eyes lift from the screen to the flat ice around me, the smoldering clothes on the plane wing, and then up to the stars dotting the strip in the sky. Finally it comes into me that I just have to speak the plain truth. That he’s not waiting for me on some nearby ice floe, ready to come kill me. He’s nowhere near here. There’s nothing to be afraid of. And I’d be better off if he was anyway, because at least I could try to kill him first, and take what he was riding in. So I answer honestly. I click the button and tell him about the plane crash, the black box, and the preset button that led me to this channel.

            “Jesus…it’s down? Is anyone alive?” he says through the endless void of crackle and static. I think for a moment about whether to lie or not, and then I continue on with the truth, telling him that everyone is dead as far as I can tell. It passes through my mind as he replies with a moan and clicks off the air that I might have sounded guilty. That maybe he knows what I did. That I ate one of the people he knew on the plane. And then I wait, holding out as long as I can, for the voice to come back. I’m sure he never will though. That all he cared about was the people lying buried in the snow behind me. Lying carved open on the plane floor. But eventually I can’t take anymore and I click on again. Hello, I ask. Again and again, and finally I plead. Please come back. Hello?

I’m loud enough to wake up Voley, and with a mild look of annoyance he moves his head away and walks a few steps, then plops down again, closer to the stove. Sorry boy, I tell him, and then I watch the ice. I stop trying to get through, almost ready to try other channels. But something tells me that no one else is on any of the other channels. So I keep the radio on this one and wonder about how much battery power is left. How long will the little yellow screen stay lit up?

            The static blends into the Colorado wind and I look out at the sea and the bits of ice scarring the surface here and there, deep in the distance, speckling the dark sea beyond the cracking Plane Floe. It’s when I think I’ve seen Spots again that I hear the voice come back on. I almost don’t listen, because the sight has me so startled. He’s dead for sure, you’re imagining things, I tell myself. And as the voice talks to me over the radio, I stand up and peer out at the murky ice jags. And there’s nothing. Just my imagination. Spots is long dead, a floating carcass bashing up against a dark ice shelf somewhere in the rain sea. But by the time I realize I should click the button and talk back, I realize I’ve missed what the radio said to me.

            “Hello, I’m here!” I say. Then I click off and wait. When the voice comes back, it’s changed to a woman. She asks me how I came upon the plane wreck. After I tell her just enough—that I was caught in bad weather and my ship went down, and I’ve been drifting and just came onto it by accident—she asks me who’s with me. I can tell by her tone that she’s digging. Digging for a read on me. Something I’ve seen Russell do a million times. And most all of the time, his reads came up with exactly the information we didn’t want. Information that told us we couldn’t trust someone. Had to steer far and clear from them. Or in the best cases, could negotiate a trade of some kind. But she does it to me now, asking the same questions to get her own read, and I can’t help but laugh. The laughter rings over the quiet, still ice. The idea that I could be any kind of threat to her, that she’d need to get a read on me at all, for some reason seems like some cosmic joke. But then, for a moment, I’m seized by panic, thinking she’ll cut the line off, until I realize that I’m not holding the receiver button and she can’t even hear me. Again her voice comes over the line, asking for more details about me, the people I travel with.

            “I’m not a face eater,” I tell her. And with that she stops her line of questioning. Like it’s somehow enough that she can trust me. And then I find out why she’s desperate to trust me. She tells me she needs me to do something for her. And at first it doesn’t seem possible that she could be asking me to do something, because all I feel confident enough to do is survive on this slab of ice until it breaks up and then die under the blue, knowing I fought for as long as I could.

            “That was one of our families on that plane,” she tells me. “And they were bringing us very important equipment. We need you to try to bring it to us—at least get it close enough to a mountain range—we can pay you a very steep reward.”

            All the warnings of danger I’ve ever known go off like sirens with her promise of a reward in return for the impossible favor. But it’s easy enough for me to dismiss them because I can’t do her favor anyway. I can’t do anything but sit and float. All I can do is tell her the truth. Remind her of what I’ve already told her. So I do. I explain in just enough more detail so she can picture it. I’m on the ice, I tell her. No ship. No anything. Just stranded. Sorry, I say. I can’t help you. With that, she tells me to wait. Wait a minute, she says. And I can’t imagine what would stop me from waiting. For all the things I have to do out here, alone, by the metal shell and the graveyard that’s keeping me alive, with my only friend left in the world and the fire. So I sit in the silence and wait, thinking about the possible reasons why she might think I couldn’t wait for her. And after my mind goes through all the nonsense, I realize there is only one real reason why I won’t be able to wait until she returns. As I listen to the static, I know it’s the noise itself. The life of the band we’re talking through. It would take the battery dying to make me stop waiting. But it’s much more than a minute before she comes back, and I’m afraid she won’t come back at all by the time her voice emerges again from the white noise.