The Blue (The Complete Novel) (2 page)

            He makes it all the way to the other end of the Resilience. Something goes flying up into the sky. Then something else. Then he falls to the ground. It was his shirt, sweater and jacket. And he stands back up with snow in his hands and rubs it all over his bare chest.

            “What are we going to do with him?” I ask Voley, and then we start back in toward the tent.

Russell jogs back to the center. I watch him come—every strand of muscle exposed and starving for food. The lines of his ribs and his stomach. Like he’s been stretched out and what’s left is working for more than just his stomach—like the strings of muscle are keeping him upright. I ask him if it’s time to fire up the stove. He ignores me and throws his clothes in a pile, then dips into the tent. When he comes out, he’s holding the thermometer. Thirty-three, he says. We can wait another hour. And then, like the maniac he is, he lies down right on the snow. His back right against it. I watch his chest rise and fall, fog rising from his rapid breaths, the bones and muscles working to suck in oxygen, and his hair mixing into the white. The steam jet of his breaths gradually slows down. You’re going to get sick, I tell him. And without protesting, he shakes the snow out of his clothes and puts them back on. You’re nuts, I say, and he just tells me that I should enjoy the cold while I can. Because you can always warm up. But you can’t cool down. And where we’re going, he says, his eyes drifting to the blue again, It’s going to be hot. And I think about it—
hot—
but I can’t really feel it. It’s like the concept doesn’t even register. But then my mind slips back to the hot water in Blue City. Dusty’s body. And I remember heat. And I go along with Russell’s belief, my eyes drifting back to the darkening blue splotch. And I think of the heat there, waiting for us.

            It’d do you good to clean up some, he tells me as he stands up and looks out over the floe, studying it like he wants to do another run. He’s right, but I don’t feel ready to peel off my clothes. I don’t want to see what my body looks like anymore. What I’ve turned into. I just want to get to the sun. But Russell seems to know I’m questioning things too much, even though I haven’t said a word. He reads it on my face. Knows that I’m worried about the dwindling food. And fuel. And the fact that we’re going to have to leave the floe if we ever really plan on reaching the blue before we die. And how the closer we get to it, if it’s as warm as he’s saying, the more the ice will start to turn to slush. And break apart and become the sea again. But we’ll have left the boat miles behind us by then. We’ll have nothing solid beneath our feet anymore. Sun and warmth and the dry all traded for the firm ground.

            I can’t deal with all the hardships when they roll through my mind at once, and instead of pushing them aside I conjure up the only immediate one of them all: the creature that’s hunting us. Russell must see all this come over my face, deepening the madness in my head, because he tells me again. Go, wash yourself up. You’ll feel great. And I know he’s not giving me a choice this time. I tell him that he better have the stove going when I get back, and with that, I head off to one of the small craters of ice melt.

I ignore the rumble in my stomach and kneel by the edge of the slush pool. My fingers dig out my layers, three in total, from underneath my waistband, and pull them up and off one at a time. Then my pants slide down, and I stand low to scoop out a piece of the wet slush. I raise it to my mouth and drink some of it, testing how cold it is. But seeing my stomach and my legs, and the grime darkening my skin, I close my eyes and just go for it: I shove the freezing melt along my stomach. The first shock rolls through my entire being, and I close my eyes and let out a scream. Glancing back, it doesn’t look like Russell’s noticed, or he just doesn’t care—he’s got his head back in the boat, rooting around for something. The numbness starts in and I slide the ice around, and then over my legs, and the last bits of daylight show me the clear color of my skin again. Still under there after all. It’s like a drug: once I see it, I want more—to see the clean skin, and I rub more and more melt furiously over every inch of my exposed body, shivering and shaking and letting out more animal cries. Part of the bandage on my chest is slimy enough that it just peels right off. At first I try to plant it back in place, but then it just comes right back off. I look at my wound, expecting something horrible, but the pink and white scar looks like it’s already starting to harden over.

            By the time I’m done, I’m sure I’ve given myself hypothermia, but I’m clean. And wide awake. As clean and awake as I’ve been in days, since we battled the fog. Then, when I stand up and wait to dry, and finally put my first shirt back on, regretting that we didn’t lift more of the gear the snow walkers wore, I see the shape. Black phantom with bobbing head, moving along the ice ridge. Half-naked still, I run toward Russell and Voley and yell. But by the time they turn, the thing hears me and splashes into the ocean again.

Did you see it? I ask Russell as I get to the tent, stumbling to put my pants back on. Just now? he asks. I point at where the thing was, and then he lifts the rifle and he’s gone, running toward the edge of the floe. Be careful, I holler, and as soon as I have one soggy layer on I run after him, steeling myself against the light wind. But when I get there, Russell is staring blankly over the edge of the floe, watching the thin brown slit of ocean. He’s gone, he tells me. Did you see it? I ask. He tells me no, still didn’t see it. But one thing’s for sure, he’s starving the same as us. And first chance he gets, he’ll eat us, whatever he is. And then, after Russell’s certain there’s nothing coming back over the lip of the ice, at least not when his rifle is pointing down into it, he turns and we head back to the tent. Get in there, he tells, before you freeze. And like that, I’m jogging back to the stove and the softly glowing tarp, bent up in a high diamond by the poles dug into the ice. It takes half an hour, but finally, my body starts to warm up again, and my other clothes get warm enough to slip back into.

Dinner, Russell says, and he digs into the bag and sorts out our small wad of dog pebbles. The bag seems close to empty. I know that he and Ernest packed more than one bag of dog food, but when I tell Russell it’s about time to open up the next bag, he doesn’t lift his head or react at all. His eyes stay down, covered in shadow in the corner of the tent. And all at once, the joy of the warm and the dry and being clean disappears, because I realize he’s been keeping something from me—something is much worse than I thought. It comes to me, and I have to ask: We lost the other bags, didn’t we? I ask him. He just tells me to open my hands, and then he drops in half the normal amount of pebbles. He lets some fall for Voley, and then he starts to eat his own. The only noise is the crunching. I ask again, Did we lose the rest of it? Must have been when we washed out fighting the ice, he says. What are we going to do? I ask. And then, he shovels the rest of his food into his mouth and tells me to wait here. Then he walks out into the new darkness toward the boat. When he comes back, he’s got one of the tent poles. On the end of it, he’s curled a piece of a tin can. And all I can do to hold back my immense fear that we’re finally going to starve to death is laugh. Wild and delirious laughter. Because all we have now is a few cups of dog food and Russell’s horrible excuse for a fishing pole. And not but a slit of the brown to dip it into.

I didn’t realize until yesterday, he says. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. You were down, so I waited until I built this. I think our stalker’s a good sign. Means there’s got to be fish.

            I don’t even tell him that that thing won’t catch any fish. He has to know that already. All I manage to get out is that the thing wants to eat us because there must
not be
any fish. And it comes like a fire into my mind that the only thing we can do is dig out the boat, try to free it from the ice somehow, so that we can haul it out toward open ocean. Open ocean that neither of us has seen in days. I tell him that’s what we have to do, and we have to start tonight, because we’re going to starve to death.

            She won’t budge, Russell says, And, she’s split. What? I say in shock. Anger rises up in me because he’s been holding back more than just one thing, trying to trick me into thinking everything is better than it really is. The false belief that we’ve got a fighting chance still. The way he’s talked the last few days it was like all we had to do was bide our time and we’d be under the sun in no time. But it’s all been a lie. I don’t wait for him to explain about the split, I just run out into the twilight, barely scanning for signs of the creature’s silhouette on the rim of the floe where it might be waiting to pounce on me, and start to examine the boat. I step inside and kick the bags around but don’t see a single crack. No damaged wood. What do you mean it’s split? I ask. Russell slowly leaves the tent and walks around to the stern of the boat. He bends down and shovels away a pile of snow and tells me to come look. When I get around, I see the split. Clear as day. About a foot down on the hull, right where she’d sit in the water, if she ever met the water again.

Before I started the fishing rod, he says, when I found out about the food, I tried to dig her out. Thought we might try to drag her to some open sea somewhere past the Pancake. But the pressure must have broken her up when the ice locked in.

            I curse as loud as I can and watch the ghost of the blue. It’s about gone, a shadow, its bright show of hope silenced until tomorrow morning. And then Russell tells me what our final plan has to be.

The way I see it now, we have to start out. We’re healed up enough now, he tells me. But all I can do is reply in emptiness, telling him that there’s nowhere to go to—not without the boat. That we’re walking to nothing, even if we get to the blue. The ice will break apart and we’ll drown. And the forced smile on Russell’s face vanishes, and he reveals his true intentions at last.

            “We’re going to die there then. Under a blue sky. With sun falling down on us and nothing else. Nothing else. Because that’s all we have left in the world to do. Die how we want to,” he says. He stares into my eyes, and I can see the veneer burning there, as bright as ever, even while the imaginary bit of hope he’s been carrying around the past few days evaporates.

I see in his eyes what it’s come down to for him. Just a better place to die. That we can choose our own place to die, and do it on our own terms. Not the ice’s, not the rain’s, not the cold’s and the wet’s. Our own terms. It’s so horrible I can’t accept it. But after the silence, where neither of us say anything, it settles over me like an absolute truth. Like I’ve known this all along. And the real veneer has been hope itself. And now that we’ve gotten rid of that, we can die free.

            He’s right. It’s enough to push on for. One last fuck you to a world that couldn’t kill us after all, even with all its years of unending effort. I push myself into his chest and wrap myself around him and tell him I don’t want to die. Our own making or not, I don’t want to. But he doesn’t back down from reality for me this time—he knows it’s the only comfort we have left, and he lets me have it: “Not here. Under the sun, okay?” he says. He waits until I nod my head so that he knows I’m with him. All the way. Until the end. And I start to think about it—that if we can all die together, it would be alright. We wouldn’t have to know or wonder or think that anyone’s suffering anymore. Under the warm and dry sunlight. As the ice breaks away, out from under us. But we can’t let the ocean do it, I tell him. And all I can see in the back of my head are the guns, and that if anything’s going to take us out, it’ll be them. Something we have control over. Not the ocean, not the exposure. We can’t let them take us in the end. From over Russell’s shoulder I see Voley’s shadow moving inside the tent. He shifts onto his hind legs to get a better view of us. Trying to figure out what the heck we’re doing out past dark. Sitting in the cold. Already he’s used to the routine on the ice. And he wants us to head back to the stove to cuddle up with him.

You have first watch tonight, he tells me. Together we walk back to the tent, like nothing’s changed. Everything that I cling to is finally changed, and I push it away just as fast as I accept it and turn to the thoughts of the watch. You see it, you get me up, okay? he says as we get inside the tent. I nod my head, letting him know I will.

            I want more than anything to prove to him I’m not imagining the thing—but he knows I’m not. He’s seen the tracks already. And I know he’s not wondering about if it’s real anymore, and neither am I. But it’s something to rent space in my head. Something concrete. To prove to him we’re being hunted.  

Chapter 2

Russell and Voley finally start to fall asleep. Voley buries his nose behind Russell’s knee. The fishing rod, which Russell hasn’t stopped playing with for the last hour, slips from his grasp. And it’s just me, alone, with the pistol in my hand. I kneel at the entrance to the tent, forming a wall so the cold air and snow won’t blow in on them as they sleep. I cross my legs and sit down, same as I have the past two nights, and stare out at two layers of darkness. The first layer is the floe itself, a darker mass that covers everything along the bottom of my vision. The only thing that breaks it up is the outline of the boat and a distant set of pressure ridges that are on some ice floe way out beyond the Ice Pancake. Above the first layer of darkness is the second layer, the softer, deep gray glow. I’ve mastered its sky consuming shade and shape, so that I can detect even the slightest shift in it: The dark form I’ve seen the past two nights that bobs up and down along the distant edge of the ice floe, blending its blackness with the first layer, letting me know he’s watching.

I watch patiently, knowing the night’s just getting started. That it will be a long one tonight, with the new information about the boat’s hull, and the loss of the rest of the dog food. The thoughts of dying start up every few minutes, but each time I push them away. I tell myself it’s nothing to die, that Ernest and Dusty have already done it before me, so there’s nothing to fear. That dying will be easy, so why think about it? But each time I manage to push it away, and imagine some version of the future where we can get out of this alive, the vision comes back into my head, slapping away my optimism—it’s a vision of Clemmy, for some reason. Out of all the dead bodies I’ve seen. His slides back into my mind the easiest. Like I haven’t let anyone else really be dead in my mind, just him. Like the rest are just waiting somewhere, like the crazy religions that Russell used to make fun of. Finding something to pray to is one thing, he used to say. You’re just centering yourself. Deluding yourself into nonsense is another. And it’s been a long time since he’s mentioned anything like prayer or God. No one’s waiting for you, I hear Russell’s voice say in my head. They’re gone. And we’ll go too. Nothing unpleasant about it. Just the way things work. But we’ll do it under the sun. Our terms.