Stranded (37 page)

The ax handle shoved into Noah's gut as Brewster propelled him backward against the rail. The hard barrier behind him sent all-too familiar pain shooting through his body while the handle pushed the air out of his lungs in a vapory breath. But he didn't let go. Unlike the night he'd fought with the shade, Jack and Kevin weren't here to catch him this time. There was no one to stop him from going over the edge. The ax was all he had to hold on to.

Brewster's breath billowed out of his mouth in a stinking cloud as he howled his inarticulate aggression into the darkness. He shoved and fought with one hand gripping Noah's jacket, the other raising the gun to his face. Its dark hole turned on Noah like a dead third eye about to blossom with the brilliant light of extinction. Noah shoved upward, driving the pick of his weapon into Brewster's elbow. The gun fired. Noah's left ear went dead. It didn't even ring. He felt the heat of the gas flash and burning powder residue searing his face. But the bullet flew into the void instead of shattering his skull.

He jerked the ax up into Brewster's elbow a second time before pushing him away with the handle, trying to create some distance between them. Brewster held on with his left, but his weapon hand sprang open, dropping the pistol over the side. He roared again, baring bloody and crooked teeth, and lunged at Noah's neck. Noah flinched and shrugged his shoulder to protect his jugular. He hit Brewster in the stomach with the ax handle and felt the man's jaws loosen. He shoved as hard as he could, using the rail behind him for leverage. He felt Brewster's jaws open. The Old Man staggered away, his feet slipping on the frozen deck. His eyes rolled and he lurched forward again.

Noah sidestepped and Brewster slammed into the rail. He turned, ready to lash out, but the ax blade stilled him as it buried itself deep into his chest. Noah tried to pry the weapon out for another swing, but Brewster gripped it tightly. His eyes calmed and he looked for an instant like the man Noah had tried so hard to love for his wife's sake. He looked like a man who did the best he could for his family and was protective of his only daughter because she was the star he needed to steer home on unquiet seas. He was the William Brewster who wanted the best for his child and regretted losing her to adulthood, where he could no longer shelter her from all the pains of the world. And all he wanted was to see her a last time.

A long breath drifted from his mouth and was blown away by the wind. Noah let go of the handle and Brewster tipped backward over the side, plummeting to the ice below. Noah heard the fleshy thud and crack of bone with his good ear. He shrank back from the rail. He was a single father of a daughter. How would he behave when she grew up and fell in love and left him to grow old alone while she lived the best years of her life with someone else? Would he be a better man? Would he take Brewster's lesson and be the father she deserved, no matter how painful that would be? Could he do it alone?

Warmth crept down his neck and turned to chilling cold. He staggered toward the door. Toward shelter. He had to get out of the night. At the door, he cast one last glance over his shoulder. The distant candlelight flame of the Niflheim had died and gone dark. The
Arctic Promise
sat in a black void in which not even the stars shone anymore.

He let himself inside and locked the door behind him.

 

38

Connor stood in the doorway to a crew cabin on B-Deck. Although he'd always been fair-skinned, he had gone ghostly pale. Noah gently pulled him away from the door and peered in. In the far corner, Theo hung from a belt looped around his neck. It was fastened to a bar meant to keep his things from sliding off the high shelf above the desk. A sign pinned to his shirt read in shaky letters,
I'm so sorry
.

“We're all mad here,” Noah whispered. He pulled the door closed.

He thought he heard Connor say something in reply, but the man was standing on what Noah was already starting to think of as his “dead side.” He neither felt nor heard anything on that side of his body. He turned his good ear—although “good” was an overstatement as it was missing a piece from yet another near miss—to Connor and said, “Come again?”

“Is it over?”

Noah shook his head. “The Old Man's gone. But we're still stranded.” He took a step and paused. “Are we the only ones left?”

Connor sighed. “Yeah. We're it.”

“We should see about the radio.” Noah wandered off.

*   *   *

Although they had a wider range of view from the wheelhouse, Noah and Connor retreated to the forward day room two decks below. They'd moved Nevins' and Boduf's bodies outside where they would be better preserved, but the blood in the command compartment was drying and tacky underfoot and the room smelled like wet copper and gun smoke. Noah couldn't bear to keep watch from there. He hailed the Coast Guard and set the silent beacon. He checked it three more times to make sure it was sending its signal to the satellites or wherever. Then he fled downstairs.

He sat in the day room chair where he'd last seen Sean Mickle talking about plans and risk and getting everyone home safely. His friend, Sean Mickle. Dead. Like all the others. For what? For a madman possessed by regret and guilt and hate to have a second chance? Did it matter why anything had happened? Noah was pretty sure it didn't. No matter how he thought of it, men who should be alive had been sacrificed for nothing.

Connor took the seat opposite and offered to take the first watch. Noah said, “I'm exhausted, but I don't think I can sleep. I'd rather stay up and keep watch, for a while anyway.”

Connor nodded his agreement and pulled the chess table near. “Something to make it go faster then.”

“I'll drink to that.” Noah opened the bottle of J&B he'd taken from Nevins' room and took a long pull off of it. He offered it to his friend.

Connor took it and tilted the bottle back, closing his eyes as he drank. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and said, “Thirty men died for us to sit here.”

“Thirty died, or fifteen men died twice. Which is worse?”

“I don't know.”

“Neither do I.” Noah stared at the window. A reflection of him and Connor sat in the black glass looking back. The sight of his reflection sent chills up Noah's spine. “Do you think Brewster was right?” he asked.

Connor leaned back, a look of concern on his face. “Fuck no. There was nothing right about that man.”

“No, I mean about being able to choose. About the odds of which world we go to being better now that there's only two of us.”

“Don't even think about it, brother.”

Noah took another drink, then reached over and pulled the photo of his wife and daughter out of his pocket. When he went to get the bottle, he'd gone to pick that up as well. He didn't care about losing the rest of his things, but not this. Not this copy. Never again. “Would it be so wrong to choose your reality or plane or whatever? Abby's alive, we have Ellie, and you're there with Sheila. Everything that's wrong about my world could be right in yours.”

“But there's only one of you.”

Noah said, “So?”

“So, in my world, Ellie has Abby to take care of her. They miss you, but they're makin' it work, you know? Together. If you decide to be with them, then what happens to
your
Ellie? The one you promised to come home to. She has no one left. It ain't fair to her.”

Noah sat and thought about that for a long time. Connor didn't press the issue. Instead, he made a move on the chessboard and had another drink while Noah worked it out.

Connor was right but it took all night and almost all the bottle for Noah to accept it. He'd told his daughter he'd be back. This was his last job out to sea and then the two of them would go home to Massachusetts. He'd find something else to do and never leave her alone again. He'd promised to be there as long as she needed him.

In the distance, a long red line of light appeared behind the horizon. The sunrise. Along with it, a pinprick of white that grew larger as it approached. Their ride home.

*   *   *

The Coast Guard copilot shook her head and shouted over the
whup whup
of the rotor blades as the helicopter idled on the ice. The pilot kept glancing over his shoulder, looking nervous and ready to lift off as soon as he felt any shift, no matter how slight, in the surface beneath him. “No way! This isn't a taxi; it's a rescue. My orders are to pick up
all
survivors and take them back. I can't make two trips unless there are too many crewmen to make it safely in one.” She pointed an authoritative finger toward the door to the copter and demanded they board.

“But what about—” Noah tried to argue, but the copilot pointed again, this time with more force.

“Climb aboard yourself or I will
put
you on that bird,” she said. She wasn't armed, but he believed she could make him board anyway.

Connor shrugged and climbed in. He extended a hand and helped Noah in after him. Noah held his arms out of the way while the copilot secured his harness like a child in a car seat. He stared out the opening and squinted, trying to see as far as he could in the daylight. He thought maybe he could see the smoke from the Niflheim. Maybe not. It was hard to tell with the rising fog.

As the copilot strapped Connor in, Noah shouted a question at her. She shook her head and tapped the side of her helmet. She plucked a pair of clamshell headsets off a hook and dropped them on the bench beside him. Noah fitted one over his ears while she finished securing Connor's harness. He clicked the switch on the side and a burst of static erupted in his right ear. He thought for a second his left clamshell was malfunctioning before he remembered. Dead side.

“Are we going to fly over the Niflheim on the way?” he asked, adjusting the mic.

“The drilling platform? Are you fuckin' kidding me?”

He shook his head. He wanted to see it. Make sure there was nothing left of either it or the other
Arctic Promise.

“Even if I wanted to take you to see that environmental garbage heap, it's two hundred miles west of here. A little out of the way for a flyby.”

“Two hundred miles?
West?
”

“Yeah! This bird is out of Prudhoe Bay not Barrow. You guys
really
don't know where you are?”

“This isn't the Chukchi Sea?”

The copilot laughed. But there was no humor in it. Only contempt. “Fuckin' oil boys. You ever see ice like this in the Chukchi?”

“We gotta get out of here. Fog's coming in,” the pilot announced over the radio.

The copilot said, “Copy that. We're ready.” Without another word of instruction or disdain for the PSV crewmen, she jumped out, slammed the door and hustled to the front of the chopper. Climbing in to take her place beside the pilot, Noah could see her jerking a thumb over her shoulder and saying something animatedly. He couldn't hear them anymore. She'd changed channels.

He got that queasy feeling in his stomach as the blades spun up faster and the copter lifted off the ice. He had never flown in a helicopter before. He soon discovered he hated it worse than flying in a plane. He gritted his teeth and held on to his seat with white knuckles.

They rose into the air, tilting and wavering as the pilot set their course and corrected against the wind. Below them, the fog drifted and he lost sight of the
Arctic Promise
before they'd even traveled a mile. He tried to focus on his photograph and not on the white void surrounding them.

“You know what, Connor?”

“What's that, buddy?”

“It's really hard. I miss her so much. I'd just like to see her healthy again. Have one more kiss.”

Connor leaned forward and took the photo from his friend's hand. He looked at it and smiled sadly. He stuffed the picture inside Noah's peacoat, next to his heart, and patted it. “I hear you. But keeping promises is more important than second chances, brother.”

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Christopher Golden. Without your constant support and confidence in my work, I would not be where I am today. Also, thank you Brendan Deneen, for your enthusiasm and faith in my ability to tell this story. Thank you both so much for believing in me. And thank you Alexandre Ilic for the soul of
Stranded.

I owe special recognition to Captain Jon C. Bergner, USN (Ret.), and Debra Whitehead Bergner, for their technical assistance in better understanding shipboard life and nautical detail. If I got a maritime element right in this book, it is due to their help. All errors herein are mine alone.

To my influences, colleagues, and friends, Chet Williamson, John Dixon, Paul Tremblay, Jonathan Maberry, Brian Keene, Nicholas Kaufmann, Adam Cesare, Thomas Pluck, John Mantooth, James A. Moore, Errick Nunnally, Christopher Irvin, K.L. Pereira, Jan Kozlowski, Adrian Van Young, Brett Savory, Sandra Kasturi, Michael Rowe, Kasey Lansdale, Joe Lansdale, Andrew Vachss, and Dallas Mayr, you all inspire me to work harder and be better at what I do. Thank you.

Finally, and forever, my abiding love and gratefulness go to my wife, Heather, and my son, Lucien. They fill my sails and are the ever-constant stars guiding me home.

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR