Stranded (16 page)

“What now?” Jack said.

Noah lowered the field glasses. Kevin held out a hand to have a turn and Noah passed them on. “Get some rest, like Holden told us to,” he said. “Eat and hit the rack. We're going to need our strength.”

“No, I mean, like, what do we
do
now? We worked for hours and barely dug out any of the ship. All that accomplished was wrecking the engines. We'd've been better off if we didn't do anything at all. It feels like we'll be stuck doing this shit forever.”

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” Noah mumbled.

“Say what?” Kevin said, lowering the binocs.

Noah shook his head. “I had to read this book in a philosophy class once. It was about how the fundamental question of life is ‘why shouldn't we just kill ourselves?'”

Kevin's lip curled up in a sneer. “
That's
fuckin' cheerful, dude. Why would you even take a class like that?”

“My wife was into it. She made me take it so we could talk about philosophy.” He remembered how excited Abby got when he'd get home from classes. She'd ask him about what happened, what the professor said, what did he think? Noah loved that last question. No one had ever asked him what he thought about things before. Or since. His smile shrank. He continued, “In the story, Sisyphus was punished by the gods for something—I can't remember what. He had to push this big boulder up a hill, and every time he got it up to the top, it'd roll back down to the bottom and he had to start over. On and on like that forever.

“We're going to be back down there tomorrow and all the work we did today is going to be undone. So what's the point?”

Jack shook his head and frowned. “You're depressing me, dude. What
is
the point if it's all fucked up and meaningless?”

“Living is the point. The guy who wrote the book thought it took more courage to keep on going than it did to just give up. He said something like living in revolt against meaninglessness gives life meaning. ‘One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' Then, he died in a car wreck.”

Kevin lowered the binoculars and punched Noah in the shoulder. It was weak and he barely felt the hit through his coat. They were all exhausted and apparently weren't going to be getting any better. In fact, some of them were getting worse with each passing hour. Still, Kevin smiled and tried to look like his old self, even if he didn't feel like it. Jack sniffed hard and made a face as what he snorted caught in his throat. He coughed it up and spat a crimson wad of phlegm over the rail. “They're right about you, you know? You're fuckin' weird, man.”

The corner of Noah's mouth turned up. “Yeah, I guess so. I didn't really understand it when I read it back then. I suppose, I only thought of it now because of the ice.…” He trailed off, staring at the spot in the distance. It wasn't the ice that was making him think of giving up.

“Earth to Noah,” Jack said, slapping him on the shoulder in the same spot where Kevin had weakly punched him.

“Huh?”

“You all right, man?”

Noah sighed. He stared up at the subtle pair of silver curves arcing across the sky like a child's ribbons dancing in the wind. Northern lights. He'd seen them before. Those had been more vivid and colorful. These lines were peculiar. Their soft beauty was somehow wrong when viewed from where Noah stood. A place of uncertainty and danger didn't belong under beauty so tender and ethereal. He imagined what it must be like to stand in Hell and look up to Heaven. The distance from it. The alienation it planted in his heart like a seed of despair pushed deep into fertile soil. He wished clouds would roll in, he hoped for a storm to blow the lights away. But they remained above, shining down with false hope.

“Sure. I'm all right. There was this other line by the same guy my wife printed out and hung up on our fridge. It read, ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.'”

“That's better than that other shit,” Kevin said. “I could use some summer right about now.”

“Me too,” Noah replied. As much as he wanted to believe in the invincible summer within, all he felt was the sting of the wind. His face hurt, and so did his hands. But his heart hurt most of all.

“Let's go in. I'm hungry,” Jack said.

Noah agreed it was time to get out of the cold. They'd have more than their share of it in the morning. He took one last look at the northern lights before turning his back to them. He spun on his heel and took a step toward warmth. A dim shape behind him darted forward, disappearing in a blur that blackened his vision and stole his breath like plunging into nighttime water. Noah jumped, and the small of his back slammed against the rail. His feet skidded and slipped on the slick deck. Trying to find purchase, he felt himself pitching backward, about to go over. His center of gravity shifted, climbing up his body and the distant surface below pulled at him like hands on his shoulders. He wished he could just drop to the deck, bend his knees and collapse, but his legs were scuttling with instinctive movement away from the thing that had rushed at him. Equally uncontrollable, his arms struck out, trying to grasp something, anything solid and unmoving. All they found was air.

He felt hands clamp down on his shoulders. He thrust his arms forward to grasp at his friends as they pulled him back from the brink. They held on, their pallid, slick faces distorted with panic.

Noah looked around, trying to see what it was that had almost killed him. But it was gone like a wisp of black smoke, dissipated and spread thin on the wind. All that remained were his friends and the darkness.

“What the fuck is happening, man?” Jack asked. Noah shook his head, trying to get his thoughts straight and his feet beneath him. He'd survived the storm, made it through the fire and the hit on the head. But he almost died jumping at shadows.

“I wish I knew.” All he could tell for certain was that he was cold and afraid. His summer had already turned to fall. And winter was howling right behind it, hungry and vicious.

 

PART TWO

To the Home of Mists

 

18

“Papa, build me a snowman! Make him as tall as you.” Noah smiled at his daughter, so excited to be looking out the window at the lightly falling snow. Sometimes he missed the weather in New England; it wasn't the same in Seattle. He missed seeing the creative things people put out to save their excavated parking spots and watching children climb the tall drifts pushed to the side of the road by plow trucks while their parents pushed the blower. Deep snow was a pain to drive in, it shut down business, and it got old after the second or third nor'easter piling on an already limping area. But looking at Ellie, he realized a child's perception of it was different. He remembered. It was magic falling from the sky. You could slide on it, jump in it, ball it up and throw it. Build forts and caves, make snowmen and angels. Catch it on your tongue. Watch a single flake, crystalline and sharp, a thing of delicate beauty unlike any other while exactly like every other, melt on the window while you sat inside, warm and safe.

“I can't, honey. There isn't enough.”

“Why?”

“You just need a whole lot more to be able to make stuff out of it. If we can't roll it into a big ball, we can't build a snowman.”

“But why can't you roll it?”

Abby laid a hand on Noah's back as she leaned over her husband's shoulder. Her scarf slipped back, exposing her high, pale forehead. She tapped their daughter on the shoulder and said, “Do you want some hot Tang, pookie?” The little girl's eyes lit up and she sprang to her feet shouting that she'd
love
that. Noah had always thought of the drink as something people pretended astronauts drank to justify buying orange-flavored sugar water. His wife treated it as a refuge in cold weather. The sort of thing that not only took the edge off, but was as comfortable as curling up under a favorite blanket in a pair of sweats. It was an indulgence from which she took a kind of sensual enjoyment. She'd passed that simple yet lush pleasure on to their child. He could watch the two of them sit with their steaming cups, cuddling under a fleece throw in front of the television, forever.

Except he couldn't. Not forever. No one gets that.

She straightened her headscarf and held out a hand to lead their child away. “Come with me, pook-kid. Let your papa relax.” In the archway to the kitchen, she looked back, wordlessly asking her husband if he was going to come sit with them. He smiled and told her he'd be right behind them.

And then he looked out the window at the snow and wished enough would fall so he could make his girls a snowman.

*   *   *

Noah felt a pit of anxiety in his gut. In the change room, donning his cold weather gear, it felt like business as usual. Another in a string of days where he struck at futility, aiming to break through to hope. Without a tool in hand to do battle with the ice, however, the reality of what he was about to do set in. They were leaving the Gumby suits behind. The
Arctic Promise
wasn't equipped with everyday work suits, but rather “quick don” vessel abandonment dry suits. The baggy, one-size-fits construction made them difficult to walk in under ideal conditions. Standing in place and swinging a chisel, they were restrictive, but not completely inhibiting. Like their namesake, the fixed boots were a straight line from the legs, and not well-fitting. They'd make a walk at least twice as difficult. Noah thought there were as many good reasons to leave them behind as there were to wear them. Ultimately the choice wasn't his. Holden made the decision to leave them behind. Given the thickness of the pack holding the ship, he was willing to take the risk of going without them.

They gathered as many things as they could to make up for the absence of the suits' protection. Extra layers of gloves and socks. Two pair of pants and shirts under latex and rubber weather deck gear. They pulled reflective work harnesses over their coats and jerry-rigged beacons from the survival suits onto them using duct tape. Each man was given a headlamp and a pair of safety goggles. Holden wanted them to be able to see each other no matter what conditions presented themselves. Finally, they brought as long a length of rope as they could find so they could tie themselves together in the event visibility went completely to hell. Differences aside, they had a common goal, and Holden was determined no one would be on his own out on the ice.

The noises of the ship were gone. What had been assaultive and disorienting his first time aboard a ship like the
Promise
had later become understandable and readable. An experienced seaman could tell what the engines were doing by the noise echoing through the ship. Noah knew where he was in the vessel by the clang of pipes and the humming of ducts and vents. Now, it was quiet except for the creaking of the hull being pressed upon by ice. The men dressed in similar silence, all unsettled by the death of the din.

They left the change room and filed out onto the deck where the fast rescue craft awaited. As they climbed aboard, Noah observed that a night's rest hadn't done the men much good, if any. Holden presented the appearance of being more or less ready for their adventure, although he couldn't hide his increasingly frequent cough. Every subtle hitch of his shoulders betrayed what he tried to hide behind closed lips. Henry, Michael, Jack, and Kevin all looked a little more road weary and not one appeared well rested. Noah understood. The anticipation of the day ahead had awoken him every couple of hours. He'd lay in his bunk counting backward from a thousand until he drifted back off into restless sleep. On a tough night of sleep, he'd get as far as eight hundred and fifty, or maybe even seven hundred and ninety before losing count and slipping under. Last night, he'd had to start over once he reached one.

Theo Mesires never showed, and no one bothered to fetch him. Holden insisted they had enough hands mustered for the job. He didn't say it, but all the men knew Theo would pay for his absence when they got back.

Michael Yeong appeared the worst off. Noah thought about suggesting they leave him behind as well. Seven would be enough. But unless someone else brought it up, he assumed no one would listen. Yeong shoved his hand aside when Noah tried to help him into the FRC.

Serge Boucher was doing his deckboss act by the numbers, but his neck remained bent, his head hanging like a weight. And then there was Brewster. If he hadn't known better, Noah would have said he was seventy or more, not a fit fifty-eight. The Old Man climbed in last, closing the gate behind him. It caught with a loud clack.

Holden engaged the crane arm and winch to lower the craft. For a moment, nothing happened. Noah imagined them all having to climb down using the net ladder dropped over the Rescue Zone near the cargo deck. It'd be a quicker way down for the men as individuals, but meant they'd have to find another way to get their gear to the ice. The motor fired to life and the FRC jerked downward. If there was a final thing that functioned for now on board the
Arctic Promise,
it was that.

While he alone among the team seemed to feel like himself physically, mentally he was struggling with pessimism, and emotionally he was swirling the drain. Healthy fear was giving way to terror as the FRC was battered against the side of the ship. The flat-bottomed boat settled on the ice and Noah let out a long breath of relief as Holden killed the motor. The neoprene face mask he wore pushed his breath up into the goggles and steamed the plastic lenses opaque, blinding him. He pushed the eyewear up on his forehead. Clouds had moved in overnight and the day was gray and dim. The northern lights were gone and the sun was a pale circle just above the horizon. It wouldn't rise much higher before it started to descend again.