The Blue (The Complete Novel) (9 page)

It only takes twenty minutes for Russell to decide that he’ll die if he stands a watch. Without the stove, and wearing the icy, blood-splattered sweater, he needs our body heat if he’s going to live through the night. And we need his. He crawls over to us and lies down, without a word, or an explanation, and grabs my body. He pulls me in close to him, against his raw chest, and then Voley too, so that we’re all clumped together as closely as possible, just the smallest spaces for our mouths to breathe out from. And as we lie, tangled and frozen, together and silent, quietly breathing, I notice the motion of the floe beneath us. Steadily rising and falling. It’s the only thing to notice. Up and down. The ocean churning underneath, winning its battle, working together with the growing heat to upset the last resistance between us and its depths. As time passes and I fall in and out of sleep, the swells seem like they’re getting bigger, and I’m overcome with the strangest sensation: It’s as if we’re moving at a thousand miles an hour, in a car, and while my eyes are closed I can’t see where we’re going—way too fast, recklessly over the earth. And with each moment there’s a growing terror that we’re going to veer out of control and crash. I remind myself this isn’t happening, because I know we’re still and in one place. But I can’t stop the feeling as hard as I try. Only when I open my eyes does it stop. So I crane my neck to see the patch of stars. The bright twinkling calms me. And I notice the wind has started to die off. And we’re not really moving anywhere.

When I still can’t sleep, and it sounds like Russell and Voley are both long into their dreams, and I’m becoming increasingly envious of them, I press my ear to the ice floe. I prepare for the cold and let it ride into me, but I listen hard. Listen for the sounds of cracking. The slow, long thunder of a split, coiling its way silently through the massive iceberg. Fracturing the underside first, like a speeding spider web, and then seeping its way, through the blue fissures, to the top ice. But there’s no sign of the noise. And once I am satisfied the ice isn’t breaking up, and going to spill us into the sea in our sleep again, I decide I’m listening for the wrong kind of sound. I change my focus, and listen for the sound of flippers moving over the ice. Just a soft thudding, the purposeful glide of a deadly hunter. I listen very hard, and wait for the warning, the thumping intervals, to let me know ahead of time that the stalker is coming. But as much as I expect it, there’s no sign of movement. Nothing, and I’m wasting precious sleep. As much as I think I’m standing watch for us by listening into the floe, I start to think that maybe sound doesn’t travel through ice at all. And the pain in my ear starts to die off too, and my fear of frostbite spikes enough that I twist my head on its backside again. Not a single sound on a floe in Colorado but three quiet breathers. No wind or rain or snow. Just the rocking of a cradle. And a pocket of heat surrounded by the endless cold. And the steady, crawling consumption of hunger.

Chapter 10

When I wake up, the first thing I see is the seal. And the next thing I notice is how far apart its floe is from our own—it’s as if we’re on an island now, and there is no way we can make it across the gap between our own floe and any other. Stranded on isolated flats of ice—no way to keep going anymore. And the seal, from his safe distance across the brown, watches us. As curious as ever. Or mad from hunger, I can’t tell which. And he’s motionless—not a single sign that he wants to try to kill us again. And I can’t help but wonder why he didn’t do it while we slept. I get up slowly on my good leg and look over my calf—the hardening lines of blood streak down to my feet, and a light green pus pools on the cuts on the back of my calf. Near the edges a scab is already starting to form. I test the smallest amount of weight but there’s too much pain. So much more than yesterday, and it feels like all the blood in my body is beating right inside the cut, burning and ready to bust out of my skin. When I stop wincing long enough to search around for Russell and Voley, I see them near the edge of our floe. Staring out over the lead of water. And I see past them, the shiny reflection. They’re watching the silver. Studying it. I wait until the throbbing eases up and start to limp over to them. Each step bites every nerve under my knee, but still, I don’t make a sound. I can’t let him know how much pain I’m in. And Russell doesn’t even notice me when I come up behind him.  

As I walk, my eyes trace little streams that run through the ice—light blue lines wedged into the floe where the slush pools drain. Signs of the cracks starting. Slow and spreading like a network of veins throughout the whole berg. When I get right behind them, Voley turns around first. He wags his tail, and then turns around again, as if he can’t be bothered by me, and what he and Russell are looking at is very important. And as Russell notices me and says, Good morning, I feel the waves. The slow tilt, drifting up a long crest, and then the lightest sensation of a drop. Our floe a raft on the ocean. And the leads too far apart now to cross. But that’s not what Russell wants to tell me, because that much is obvious, that we’re trapped on this floe now. And there’s no way to get over the ocean leads other than swimming—and there’s no way we’d all make it across safely. He tells me what it is: The plane’s getting closer—or we’re drifting closer to the plane—and look at the floe it’s on.

I shield the glare, drawing my eyes down from the wide patch of blue in the sky, down onto the triangle wing of the plane, pitched up into the sky at an awkward angle, and then follow the line of the floe it rests on. At first the pack blends together into a mirage of white ice, and it’s hard to tell where one floe ends and another begins. But then I see the ridge—a definite rise from the other floes. And Russell makes his hypothesis: They must have crashed her on the biggest one they could find. I’ll bet it’s half a mile wide. If the wind stays at our backs…

            He trails off, and for the first time of the morning, I notice the steady wind hitting my back. It’s strange—almost warm. Paranoia grips me and I search the ice around where we stand, but it’s rock solid. No traces of crack veins by the lip. But the wind—it must have worked hard throughout the night to push us toward the plane, because Russell’s right. We are much closer than we were the day before. I can see the plane in more detail—and at what a weird angle it pokes up from the pack. I know now—they never landed that thing. It crashed. And he’s right—they must have picked the biggest floe they could see. And as the day winds on with nowhere to march to, and as the initial enthusiasm about the steady wind pushing us toward the big sturdy floe with the plane on it fades away, the day passes into nothingness. A slow retreat back into hunger and madness.

Russell helps me around a couple times, just to walk down to the big pocket of slush on the floe. I tell him I can do it myself, but he says I better not. Not yet. Save it for when we really need it, he tells me. Like I only have a little bit of real strength left, and I need to keep it for when the seal comes back. I drink the cold water and then sit, putting my face into the wind. Not cold enough that it stings. Warmer than anything else in the pack. I ask Russell where it’s blowing in from. He tells me it must be coming all the way from Mexico. And that’s where we’ll go, he says, As soon as we get ourselves in order—as soon as we get to the plane. And it becomes clear to me that the plan to die under the blue sky has been abandoned now, replaced with his absurd idea. Mexico? I ask. I tell him that’s thousands of miles away. And that we need to find a place here, in Colorado. He tells me there’s nothing left in Colorado. No Leadville, nothing. Just getting to the plane before it’s too late.

            I realize it must be sinking in hard for him today—that getting closer to the blue can only hurt us now—sink us faster—break up the floes and send us down into the sea. Because all he focuses on is the plane. Like the sunlight and the mission to die under it is gone. And he goes through the possibilities: the food, weapons, ammunition, fuel, maps, inflatable raft. He talks about the plane like it’s a storehouse or something. I know it’s fantasy and I start to block him out. I start to think he’s only doing it to forget the hunger, and it must be working some magic for him, because as soon as I block out his fantasies, the hunger grows more severe in my body. In my own head.

            I start to think of food—all sorts of food. At first it’s pasta and rice and bread, but then it becomes meat, and with blood dripping on it—bodies—the bodies left in the cellar in Nuke Town. I try to push the thought away, but it’s like the thought knows I’m rejecting it and wants to prove me useless, and the images come back stronger—carved out ribcages floating by in the sea, screaming at me to eat them before they go to waste. And then, with a series of pangs in my stomach, I start to visualize my organs eating themselves, unhappy that I won’t give them what they want. The stomach and my intestines living off their own walls, until it all becomes too brittle and there’s nothing left, and the blood breaks right through, just like the ice cracks, and spills into everything else. Flesh melts, and even if we killed the seal and ate it, its body couldn’t fix the damage already happening with each stinging bite of my stomach. I wonder if I’ll feel it for sure—the final collapse of my body’s insides. Or if it will be a slow fatigue. Something that gently puts me to sleep. But the thoughts all spin back to food, as hard as I try to push them away.

I think of the face eaters. And how they must have known this feeling before they came to cannibalism. That it could only have been something this severe to get them to turn to that. Just as human as anyone else, but with less luck. And then, the dark thought comes to me, as clear and obvious as the patch of blue: the plane will have bodies. If it crashed, it will have bodies. And the only thing we’ll need will be a working lighter. Something to get a fire going. To cook them. But it rolls through me like it’s shockingly obvious—I don’t need a fire. I’d eat them anyway. Rip the pieces off with my own fingernails. Raw and frozen. Anything to make the hunger stop. I want to tell Russell, but he’s too obsessed with hope. He thinks the wind is going to take us right in like a paid driver. That we don’t have to do a thing but wait here. And he goes on, like he knows every single thing that’s waiting for us.  

            The thoughts of eating human flesh—the desire to do it, my imagination walking through how it will taste, how I might feel different about myself—all evaporate as I make eye contact with the seal. He’s doing a dance on the next floe over. Strange and alive looking—back and forth, slow and bobbing, his head corked to the side, and then spinning once in a while back to us. There’s enough light to see the thin lines of his ribcage lead down to his emaciated tail. So much closer to death than I’d thought. But his flippers push through the slushy ice and his eyes catch mine only to look away. More energy in him than I’ve seen in days, like he’s been revived by something. And then, I figure it out. I almost become delirious because of how much it makes sense. I tell Russell what it means—
fish!

Russell looks at me like I’m nuts, maybe surprised that I’m talking about something unrelated to his fantasy, because he was still in the middle of rambling about what we’d do with the gear we’re going to find on the plane. Then, he turns his head and I tell him to watch the seal. He’s got his energy back, I say. He must have found some food. The pack must have opened up enough that there are fish, I tell him. Russell watches the seal for just a moment, and it’s enough to convince him too. He’s feeling so hopeful already that he buys right into it. He runs to the bag, opens the tight cinch around the first half of the fishing rod, and wiggles it out. Then he’s gone, practically hopping, quick cautious steps over the light blue veins of top slush, and Voley follows him, ignoring my command that he stay. I want to come, I shout, but Russell ignores me, or he doesn’t hear me, and then, before I have a chance to really get going after him, he’s hanging right over the edge of the floe, sticking his pole out.

I squeeze my stomach tight as I trail their footprints with my slow limp, the painful lightning stabs rocking me with each mini-step as the right leg briefly holds my weight. I pause to bend down on my left knee, grabbing some of the top snow and rubbing it into my cuts. At first it stings. I rub so much in that it stings more before it feels better, but the feeling takes my mind off of everything else. Just pure burning. I watch the sky, the gray light, the emptiness, and then the bright strand of blue above as I feel the nerve fire. And I push my fingers against the broken grooves of flesh. I pack more of the driest snow I can find on and finally the burning fades to numbness. And then, I keep walking, and with each step, there’s a little less pain.

By the time I get to the edge, Russell is on his belly, arms extended down into the wide river of ocean between us and the seal’s floe. The seal slides away a little bit and stops his funny walk, alarmed for a moment, but then he just watches us out of curiosity, wondering what we think we’re doing trying to catch fish with the sorry aluminum rod with a crumpled excuse for a hook and no bait. The seal’s eyes follow Russell as he leans out a little farther, so much that as each wave hits the underhanging cliff of our floe, he gets hit with a spray of foam. Back up, I tell him, but he ignores me. As if he sees the fish, knows they’re waiting for him, and his rod can actually hook one of them. Voley starts to walk back and forth as Russell starts a chant.

            “Come on, fish fish fish,” Russell says, possessed. “Come on, fish fish fish.”

            His voice rises and becomes melodic, drifting over the pack in strange and ancient tones, like he’s summoning up the great history of our race, our ancestors ability to command nature through prayers and chants and sacrifices. To trick ourselves into believing we can do something impossible. And he loses the beginning of his refrain, and proclaims loudly, as if in time with the rise and fall of the swells, “fish, fish, fish, fisheeee!”