The Blue (The Complete Novel) (23 page)

            “Hey,” I say. “You there?”

            It takes a solid minute and another two tries until someone comes on. Only it doesn’t sound the same as before—it sounds as if she’s barely there, just a whisper against the deep wall of static and white noise. Finally, after three tries on her end, she comes on the line. I don’t even hear what she says, I just know that someone’s there again. And that it sounds like a woman.

            “Is there ice around Visitor’s City?” I ask. I wait for the reply. Nothing but white noise. Finally I hear her come in, loud and clear for just a moment, and then she’s gone again. I’m pretty sure she asked if I could hear her, and what I’m seeing, but it’s impossible to be sure. I think that maybe we’re trying to talk at the same time and nothing’s getting through, so I click the button again. I say “Hello, I’m here! Can you hear me?”

            When she doesn’t respond and all I hear is more static, I open the ceiling tarp again. A quick wind grabs hold of it as soon as it’s unlatched, startlingly fast, and rips it out of my hand and slaps it back into the ocean. Like the wind’s picking up again all of the sudden, and I hadn’t noticed it underneath. Standing as high as I can atop the center of the raft, Voley looking up at me like I’m a mad girl, I click the receiver and shout. Can you hear me! But the ceiling of nylon hadn’t been blocking the signal out. There’s nothing blocking it. We’re just out of range, I realize with my heart sinking down. We’ll never hear from her again, I tell Voley as I sit back down and look up at the sky. Everything is starting to grow dark, the natural darkness of nighttime as I’ve come to know it through the patch of open blue sky. And the thought of spending a night alone on the sea terrifies me. But with the ceiling closed, and Voley close by, I know it won’t be so bad. Nothing will be bad as long as the swells stay like this. Nice and calm and long and gentle.

I take the jug to try to ease my anxiousness and take a tiny sip. I’m almost ready to put it away but I catch Voley watching me intently as I twist the cap. Okay, one more sip boy. He laps up the few drops I let fall into my palm, and then keeps licking long after it’s all dry. I screw the cap back on and wait for the static to stop, but there’s nothing. How long should we listen? I ask him. He stands up, like in reaction to my question, and walks to the hard cylinder gunwale of the raft. His nose leads out into the wind and I watch him sniff. Like he’s catching something trailing along through the air. A sign of weather or something worse. What is it, boy? I ask. But he doesn’t give me any more signs than the intent stare and sniffs. That’s all.

            I stand up with him and work my way through a few more gusts to find the flap tossing around on the side of the boat in the water. Finally I grab a hold of it and reel it back in, and I then I have it all tied in again to the metal ring. Let’s get some sleep, boy, I tell him, trying to haul him back underneath with me. But he doesn’t want to come underneath. Maybe because it’s getting late, and it’s cooler now, but he just stays there, hanging right over the edge, smelling for something in the wind. I stop my imagination before it turns ugly as I try to think about what he could be sensing. I wonder how far he can sense things, and if he has a special sense, something that goes deep out into the horizon, far beyond my eye sight, beyond the power even of the radio. Eventually he joins me on the floor of the raft and we lie down together until it gets completely dark. Occasionally I lift the receiver again and say Hello, but no one ever comes back on. Finally I turn the radio off before all the battery is gone.

It takes me forever to fall asleep. The only thing I can think of is the fact that we’re heading into Kansas now. The last runway to our deaths, and the only kind of death I really never wanted to have. The kind filled with gigantic waves and foam and the ultimate wall of swirling white that will drown us. The storm-wracked skies and the waterspouts that rise into behemoth swirling vortexes that stretch out and consume the sky. I’ve seen them before from miles away. But from everything I’ve heard, even up to my last conversations with Visitor’s City, they are the weather of the Great Plains now. And there’s no other explanation in my mind as to where we’re going. It has to be that.

            Despite the constant swirling in my head, and the gnawing feeling that only food or drink will take my mind off of drowning, I don’t have the nerve to consume any more of our precious supply. I wait it out, the sickening motion of my brain, and tune myself in to the sound of the wind and the rhythm of the swells. They merge into one, and by some strange magic, or the increasing noise of the gusts and the rushing sensation as we drift down the long swells, I fall asleep.

Chapter 23

Before I hoist myself up, and push Voley off of my legs, I can already tell that the swells have grown longer. When I wake up, and see above me the dark red of the tarp, the long gliding hill pulls our raft along like it’s speeding down a slide. Then, just as I unhook the tarp, and poke my head out to see the shining stars, the raft eases up on the descent and starts to level out again.

            Out over the horizon everything is too dark to see. It’s the middle of the night. But still, I think I spot the thin breaking lines of foam where what must be mile long rollers reach their summits and begin to churn downward again. The raft lifts just a little bit and we begin to rise as another long monster passes through us. But the waves go by gently, and I know it’s not from a storm. It’s the sign of the open ocean again, and maybe the beginning of the long run through the Great Plains.

Out of mindless hope more than anything else I turn on the radio again. There’s nothing but white noise and static. I call out into the night, asking for anyone. And then, when the woman from Pike’s Peak is surely gone forever, I switch off her band. My fingers turn the knob and switch one by one through random numbers. Then I remember the presets and try them too. One by one, pausing to click the receiver and let anyone who’s out there know I’m here. But no one answers. And when Voley stirs, awake now too from all the commotion I’m making, I turn the radio off again.

“You want to eat something, boy?” I ask him. And then, without waiting for his reaction, I claw my way through darkness to retrieve the stove and draw it up against the rail. It takes me another minute to get the lighter, and then, she’s lit. The glowing flame is all it takes for me to dig into the farther bag, tucked behind all the others, and wrapped in a bit of plastic from the plane. It’s the meat. And then, using the knife, I stake a piece and hold it against the tiny pilot stove.

            Nothing happens for the longest time. When I hold the meat up to my nose after what feels like twenty minutes, it smells very strange. Like it’s not cooked enough or something. Not ready yet, boy, I tell Voley, and I put it back against the flame, just a little closer this time. And then, feeling the strong running breeze hit against my head, and continue to hit, I lean out into the night and take in the fresh air. Everything is quiet and beautiful almost, with the blanket of glitter overhead and the long swells the only other sight under the great darkness of cloud cover. I smell the metal salt in the air. Voley joins me, his tongue out, hanging into the wind, feeling the tremendous cool air blow through us, almost chilling me to the point that I want to dig out more of the clothing and throw on extra layers under the black rain suit. Together we watch the merciless expanse of the Colorado rain sea, endless forever in every direction, but not drowning us with rain or burying us under snow, or even freezing us anymore with icy wind. And it’s like a powerlessness that I have to accept. We are entering the Great Plains. The hyper warm disaster that will turn into a frothing blender. And I know—this is the calm before the storm. So I lean against the rail and pet Voley as we watch together the dark night. And the meat bakes slowly, and we drink water, and finally, the food doesn’t smell so bad. Together we eat and I can’t help but get the sense that he’s at peace too. I almost forget to ration the meat, and partly I rationalize that the smell means it’s going bad from the heat. And that if we’re too careful in rationing it will just spoil anyway. But then the fear of starving to death gets the best of me and I save a small piece of the cooked meat and put it back into the bag. We both drink from the jug one more time, and then we lie, wondering if we’ve slept for weeks or just a few hours.

The night wears on without a sound. I don’t talk, and neither does Voley. We listen to the wind and calm movement of the long rollers underneath us. It’s a perfect dream, a place I could be forever, when everything is shattered by the sound of a bark. I’m almost asleep, but I’m alert enough to jerk my head and watch Voley’s eyes, and where they’re pointed. I follow the line and lead my own vision out to sea, and there, riding a great long swell, is a high white dot of light. Something like a lighthouse on the sea, riding through blackness to no destination, just moving forever like a ghost ship. Shhh—quiet Vole, I tell him. And with a few pats of my hand, he quiets down for me. We sit in electric tension watching the white light move high over the sea. It’s so small that it could be a mirror of one of the brightest stars in the sky, but as the night goes on, it only seems to be getting bigger.

            The sight of the light increasing in size is enough for me to turn the radio back on. Clicking the receiver and whispering along with the gentle gusts, I ask if anyone’s on the line. I start with the Visitor’s City preset and work my way through every other button, and then come back to the first channel, wondering if the light out there could be the woman’s gas-powered ship. You think it’s them? I ask Voley. But he’s too tense to listen, his hair on end, no longer barking, but watching the sole star upon the sea. And already I know it’s impossible for it to be the gas-powered boat. There hasn’t been enough time. And it’s heading toward us in the direction we’re drifting, I realize. Like it’s trying to escape the direction we’re being sucked. More than likely coming from the long rushing suction of Kansas and its boiling lane to the Atlantic. But how could it be coming from that way? It dawns on me that maybe we’ve been turned around. And either way, a big part of me wants the blackness of night to keep us concealed from the ship. Because I know you don’t come across two Ernests at sea, and this ship can’t be friendly. But there’s no other shot now—evil or not, we have to hope they see us.  

This time there’s only a knife. It rolls through my mind as I relive the sighting of the white flag fluttering above the Resilience, Ernest’s ship, back when Dusty had the rifle. And we had firepower. But now there’s just the knife, and not even a way to make a loud sound. And all of the sudden, watching the white light get much bigger now than the stars above, I tell Voley to bark so they know we’re out here.

            “Bark!” I tell him, raising the stove in one hand, hoping they catch the small light it’s sending out over the waves. And then, when he doesn’t understand, I start barking. Trying to get him to follow my lead. Over and over, all different pitches, staring out at the white light of salvation. But Voley doesn’t bark. So I stop barking and start screaming, as loud as I can: “Over here! Hey!”

            I keep calling on and off for half an hour. But the light begins to recede into the blackness on our right, passing us in cloak of night and diminishing in size. And my voice grates and hurts with each holler, but still I scream. And no sound reaches them over the long table of swells. They pass by us and I’m sure the white light is about to disappear altogether, down to the size of a star and then to nothing. Voley loses interest and crawls toward the supplies in the corner of the boat. It’s all I can do to stay sane after breaking apart my vocal chords to have some water to drink. I cup my hands for Voley, letting him go first. Some of it spills, but I don’t even care. I’m too angry and frustrated and defeated by the passing ship to care. Then I take a sip that turns into a gulp. I only stop myself when I put the jug up to the stove light and see just how much is left. Only about three-quarters, and we haven’t been at sea for more than a day.

            It feels impossible to go back to sleep. The overwhelming sensation of loss revolves endlessly around in my head. It’s when I fight my way into half-sleep, only to wake up in what feels like an hour, with the sunlight starting already to beat down and give me a headache, that I see that the ship from the night hasn’t gone anywhere.

Chapter 24

It must have spotted us, or heard my calls, or gotten stuck in place because we’re both being sucked into the heart of waterspout alley. I don’t know for sure, but when I take in the metal cruiser, hanging still on the water only about a mile away, I see no white flag.

            “They see us boy,” I tell Voley, and then I start to sort through our supplies, part of me feeling as if I have to hide the meat now. Because they might be the ones who are wondering if I’m the face eater. And once everything is in order, I decide to pull the ceiling tarp about halfway over the raft, leaving just enough room for us to peek out. I wish more than anything for a gun, or something to defend myself with other than the small knife, in case they’re going to try to take us in by force. In case they’re psychopaths, face eaters, or whatever worse things there could be in Colorado. But eventually the situation settles peacefully over me, just like the calm wind and the long endless swells, that we have nothing. No way to fight back now. Whether they come and try to take us or talk to us or not pay any attention to us at all. We only have our words. Our ability to con our way into a sturdier ship that has the ability to steer itself. The false promise of a shared reward in Visitor’s City.

When my head pokes back out from inside the raft, where Voley has nestled in against me, totally ignorant of the ship that’s been watching us since dawn, I know for sure. They’re coming closer. The long metal hull descends a longer swell, pointing itself directly toward us. I think for a moment I see someone walking around in the wheelhouse, and then I’m sure. He comes out onto the deck with something in his hands. It only takes another long rise and fall, and another, before it’s clear that he’s got a gun. I’ve seen those before, I tell Voley. Automatic weapons. Voley doesn’t seem to care yet, and he’s tired from the sun. You’re thirsty, aren’t you? I ask him, and then I go for the water. To hell with rationing, I tell myself, but when it comes time to pour, I only offer him the tiniest slurps. I take a drop on my tongue and seal the jug again. And while I do all of this I feel the greatest sense of resignation come over me. The feeling that there’s nothing to do now. Nothing we can do. And whatever happens will happen. It won’t be much better or worse, one way or the other. But my mind refutes that right away—what if they want to eat us? And rape me before or after or while they do? But even that thought passes through me, like a faded fear from a different life. I’ll do what I can and that’s all I can do. I reassure myself over and over, now taking the knife in close and watching the metal hull and the man pacing at the bow, his long automatic rifle in his hand. His skin is so burnt by the sun that he looks pitch black. And then another man emerges from the wheelhouse, and then two more. All of them look like they’ve been at sea for far too long. Their clothes are ragged and dirty and ripped and worn. They all watch eagerly our red raft, like they’ve found some enormous treasure, and I think for a moment they’re all staring directly at me, and not the boat or Voley at all. And it’s when we’re almost right up against the metal hull, and I can see the grimy lines in one of their dark faces that I hear a voice. She’s young, one of them says. And another one agrees with it. Very young, pretty. And now, under the blue and gold scar of the sky, it seems that three of the four men have the same kind of gun. You okay? one of them calls out, loud and clear. And I don’t know how to answer, or whether I should at all. Whether I should play dead. Because it’s all too clear to me already. Even before I’ve met them. From their sunburnt, hungry cheeks I sense the urgency and the intentions.