Stranded (35 page)

Mickle and Kevin disappeared into the fissure.

Connor grabbed Noah and yelled a final time at him to run. Far off, the burning Niflheim tilted and crashed. The world pitched beneath their feet and rumbled again. Along with it, a new sound howled in the dark from another direction. Noah turned to look. Connor's ship shuddered in the distance, pitching upward, its bow pointing increasingly toward the sky as it slipped backward into the ice and the sea below. The rig explosion had freed the ship from the ice that nipped it. He could feel the vibrations of the PSV sinking as the frozen surface beneath his feet rumbled and heaved. The void was claiming it, just as it would claim them all if they didn't run.

He turned and fled into the night behind Connor, moving as quickly as the snow and shifting ice would allow. The flare behind them extinguished and the distant light of his ship seemed a little brighter. “This way,” he shouted, redirecting Connor toward their goal. It was more than a mile away. A piece of him felt certain he would fall long before he ever reached the ship. Even if he didn't slip into a fissure or collapse in exhaustion, he couldn't outrun a bullet.

Noah ran, hoping his terror would give him the endurance he needed to outpace Brewster's madness.

 

36

By the time Noah could read the name painted on the bow of his ship, his legs didn't just burn, they were threatening to crumple beneath him. His hips and back hurt and he tripped and stumbled as often as he stepped surefooted. He could barely take a breath. Despite his protective gear, the frigid air infected every inch of his body, inside and out, with suffering. He had no idea how far they had run, but he knew he wouldn't have made it without Connor. When he fell, his friend stopped and picked him up.

The fast rescue craft that had borne them down the day before had been raised back into place. Noah tried to call out, but the breathless cry died in his throat. He grabbed Connor and dragged him around to the port side of the ship, putting the vessel in between them and their pursuer. Though the shooting had stopped with the bullet that tore a trench in Noah's face, he hadn't counted the shots. Even if he had, Noah had no idea how many rounds the rifle even held. All he knew for certain was if Brewster still had bullets to shoot, they couldn't penetrate the
Promise
.

He pounded on the hull with a fist and tried shouting again. His gloved hand made no more sound than his weak cries. He looked around for something to improvise as a knocker, but there was nothing to pick up. Everything they'd used to break the ice days earlier, they had taken aboard at the end of the work. And everything they'd taken with them to the Niflheim was now gone forever.

His eye came to rest on three dark lumps in the snow near the Rescue Zone. He lumbered toward them, hoping to find a forgotten stash of tools, but stopped short when he saw they were human sized, laid side by side in a row of snow-dusted graves. He dropped to his knees beside one and brushed it off, revealing a body in a canvas shroud. Fallen shipmates wrapped and left outside for the ice to preserve. He counted three, and while he wanted to uncover faces and know their names, doing so wouldn't get him inside and out of danger. He knew Brewster was still behind them, getting closer, if only because it was too much to ask that the Old Man had fallen into the void with Mickle and the others. Noah assumed one of the bodies belonged to Felix Pereira and another, Sean Mickle. The identity of the last dead man would have to wait.

Standing, he approached the Rescue Zone. The bottom rail of the safety gate was perhaps twelve feet above him. It was too high and the side of the ship too smooth to climb. He looked at Connor and said, “I think I have enough energy left to give you a boost. Think you can pull yourself up?”

Connor shook his head and bent over, making a stirrup with his hands. “You're in better shape than I am.” Noah looked unconvinced. Connor added, “Plus, those men up there know you.” Noah couldn't argue with that. He had no intention of leaving Connor behind for even a few minutes, but it was better his remaining shipmates see a familiar face first.

Lifting a weary leg, he placed his foot in Connor's hands and tried to find the will to put some spring in his standing leg. “You sure?” Connor nodded. He counted three, and pushed off as Connor straightened his back and sent him up. Noah reached for the approaching rail, knowing this was his only shot. If he missed, or his fingers slipped, they would have to find another way. Another way before death closed the distance. Time slowed as he rose, the rail growing closer, his heart seeming to stop. His ascent slowed, and soon would turn to descent and failure. He wrapped his fingers around the steel pole as his body regained its weight. Gravity pulled, the wind pushed, the entire world conspiring against him. He held on.

The single pull-up was harder than anything he'd attempted since setting out. More difficult than loading freight or bashing at the gunwales with a sledge, and definitely harder than running a five-K in the snow, because if he failed at this, there would be no fight left in him, body or mind. And that would be the end of it all.

He swung a leg over the lip of the hull and hooked the inside of his elbow in the rail. He hung there for a second, catching his breath and trying to find the energy to pull the rest of himself aboard. Before he found that inner reserve of strength, a pair of hands grasped his arm. He cried out, afraid they were going to wrench him free of the gate and drop him. But then he heard John Boduf cry out, “They're back. Somebody help me.” Boduf leaned over the rail, grabbed a handful of Noah's immersion suit, and pulled. Once Noah was aboard, he set to unfastening the straps holding the net ladder in place.

Boduf rattled off a series of questions without waiting for answers. “Is that you, Cabot? What the fuck happened to your face? There are only
two
of you?”

Noah said, “Shut up and help me.”

The deckhand pulled back the gate while Noah pushed the net over. It rolled down, thumping heavily against the hull. He was afraid he wouldn't have the energy to pull it up again when they were through. And they couldn't leave it down. Connor climbed slowly. The cumulative effects of their flight across the plain and boosting Noah to the rail appeared to have robbed him of the last of his energy. When he was close enough, Boduf and Noah grabbed hold of him and pulled him the rest of the way. He rolled over on his back on the deck, clutching his head. “Permission to come aboard,” he said, gasping.

Noah got down and started to pull up the net. “Help me with this,” he said.

“What if someone else makes it? There's gotta be more than just you two.”

There is,
he thought. “You have to trust me. You don't want what's after us getting on the ship.”

“After you?”

Having shipped out with Boduf three times, Noah had never seen him move as quickly as he did that minute. Boduf rattled off more questions that passed through Noah's mind, unheard, as they worked. They got the ladder up on the deck, but didn't bother rolling or lashing it, leaving it piled in a heap. Noah slammed the gate shut, figuring that should be enough. Brewster couldn't jump high enough on his own, and had no one to give him a boost. He was stuck outside. That suited Noah perfectly. Once upon a time, he had tried to think of Brewster as family, tried to love him for being the father of the woman who had meant so much to him. He had tried, and every time he had been pushed away. He'd never wanted to kill anyone in his life. Not before. And he wasn't sure, even with the present desire, he could do it. Noah felt sure he could let Brewster die of exposure and hypothermia, however. That seemed easy enough.

He pulled Connor upright. His feet and fingers were numb again and he wondered how many times he could freeze himself to the marrow like this before the cumulative effects left him with stumps. His lungs hurt, and since they'd had a moment to catch a breath, he had a growing headache. He understood too well why Connor held his skull in his hands. “C'mon. Let's get inside.” Wrapping Connor's arm around his shoulder, he gestured for Boduf to take the other and help. He asked the deckhand, “Who's in charge now?”

Boduf groaned with the effort of shouldering Connor's weight as they stood together. “If there ain't any officers with you, nobody is.”

“Is Mickle down there?” Noah nodded toward the gate.

Boduf grunted an uh huh. “Him, Felix, and Delgado.”

“David?” Noah understood what had happened to the first two, or at least he wasn't surprised. He'd already suspected they were dead when he saw their mirror selves on the rig walking around in better shape than he'd seen anyone since the storm. But that final name was a surprise. “How did he die?”

“We better go inside. You can ask Nevins. He's up in the wheelhouse. I guess he's as close as we got to an officer now.”

*   *   *

Marty Nevins nearly jumped out of the command chair to greet Noah. Flinging the binoculars hanging on a strap around his neck out of the way, he embraced him tightly. “Good Christ, it's nice to see you.” As they parted, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “What the holy hell is going on out there, man? What the fuck was that just blew up?”

Noah pulled his gloves and hat off and pushed his greasy hair away from his eyes. Over Nevins' shoulder, he could see the small, flickering smear of orange that was the Niflheim floating in the window like a ghostly flame without a candle. “It's a real long story,” he said, knowing he would have to tell it, no matter how much he wanted to push down his recollections of the last two days—even the last several hours. “It was the rig.”

Nevins' head whipped around to look and he ran back to the windows, fumbling to get the binoculars off his back and in front of his eyes again. “The Niflheim blew up? Where's everybody else?”

“Some of us made it off, but then…” He thought of the reflected Nevins bleeding out on his lap in the snow and the others disappearing into the black water. “Only two of us made it back.”

Nevins' head dropped. “Shit. That's it? You and who else?”

“That's the thing,” Noah began. He stepped back to open the door, gesturing for Connor to follow him in. “You have to see for yourself for it to make sense.”

Nevins lowered the binocs and looked over his shoulder at Noah. “Don't be cryptic, man. Just tell me who.” He looked confused as he tried to suss out the identity of the thin, unkempt man standing in the doorway. A look of astonishment and fear grew on his face. “What the
fuck
,” he whispered.

“I'll explain everything, Marty, but everyone should hear it at the same time. I don't want to tell it twice. We need to round up the crew in the forward day room.”

“Jesus, man. Not even the Old Man made it?” When Noah didn't say anything in reply, Nevins sighed. Noah hated to tell him it was worse that he was imagining. Nevins pushed up from the chair. “I'll make the announcement, but … we've had trouble here, too. Not everyone can meet.”

“I saw, outside. Felix, Sean…” Saying Mickle's name brought up a mixed bag of emotions. He was still trying to reconcile the Sean Mickle who had been Noah's ally before they left, and the one who'd almost killed him on the way back. “And David Delgado, John tells me. Did he get sick, too?”

Nevins winced. His face flushed red and he gritted his teeth as he backed up to sit in the command chair. “Felix died the same day you guys split. Mickle went in his sleep the next morning. And then … motherfuckin' Theo got in a fight with Delgado over some bullshit and shoved him down a ladder. David broke his neck at the bottom. We locked Mesires up in his cabin. Everyone else can muster.”

“God damn it!” Noah raised a fist to pound on the communications panel.

Nevins yelled, thrusting his hands out, “Be careful! It's working again.”

Noah thought he hadn't heard right and paused a moment with his arm raised, trying to parse the words. “You fixed it?”

“No. It's just working again. When we saw the rig blow, I ran up here to get Brewster's binocs for a better look. The radio was crackling and making noise.”

Noah's mind flashed on the other
Arctic Promise
pitching up and sinking into the ice. At that moment, it had filled him with enough panic to run all the way to his own ship, adrenaline and dread providing the fuel. But sinking that ship was what he and Connor had talked about and hoped for. Scuttle one vessel, and hope the other will heal itself, just like the men. Everything here needed its sacrifice—needed to be the only thing like itself. He didn't understand it, but however it worked, it did. There wasn't any more time to ponder it. The time for theorizing and planning had long passed. Now they had to act to secure their rescue.

“Have you tried calling anyone yet?” Noah asked.

Marty looked at him like he was stupid. “I sent out an S.O.S. the minute I saw it working but no one's responded. I've been up here keeping watch, retransmitting the signal.”

“I guess you should stay at the conn to answer the call, then.”

“Tell me what happened first.”

Noah began with the fissure that claimed the first Holden and his race to get him to the other ship. Connor took over, explaining how his ship had become beset and its crew decamped to the rig. Nevins shook his head through the entire story as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing, but had no choice. Looking at Connor standing there, listening to him speak, was a kind of confirmation of every unimaginable thing. Noah kept an eye on the flame in the window. Beyond that, he couldn't see a thing outside.

He started to recount their first meeting with the mirror crew when the outside door of the compartment opened and John Boduf pushed through, a gust of freezing wind and blowing snow intruding behind him. “Guys! Guys! You'll never believe who I found on the weather deck. He climbed up by hims—”