Stranded (22 page)

Hiking up his heavy tool pack, Noah followed suit. Connor—
this
Connor—was much thinner than he'd been when Noah knew him, but he was the same man, ready to attack a task with all his energy and effort. He moved with an experienced stride that kept him going at a good clip, but kept the sled from tilting, catching, or banging into him. It was movement borne of experience and practice. It was something Noah hoped he'd never become proficient at. That thought revealed to him a truth no one had yet acknowledged. They weren't headed to the platform just to satisfy Brewster's curiosity. It was the first visit to their new home. They could stay aboard their ship a while longer, but eventually the ice would shift. It would crumple and crush the hull, tilting and breaking them until they could stay with it no longer. The platform was a safer place to be. Although the ice was moving around it, too, it was bigger, more stable, and had longer legs under the surface to stabilize it.

As they walked along, Noah hazarded a glance up at the prow of the ship. Iced over, cocooned in the thick leavings of freezing rain, it was difficult to see the letters painted on the side. He fell back a step until Jack and Kevin caught up. “Shine a light up there, would you?” he said, pointing.

“Where?” Kevin asked. Noah pointed again and the man turned his head, revealing what the shadows and frost hid, a gap in the ice large enough to see, in three-foot-high letters, white against the red hull:

ARCTIC PROMISE

“Fuckin' hell,” Jack whispered.

“I hope not,” Noah said. He pushed forward, trying to catch up to his place in the line.

*   *   *

Connor's estimate of the day's remaining light was more or less accurate, but he'd undersold the depth of the darkness that followed. All Noah could see in the distance was the Niflheim's glowing lights. If it weren't for the increasing weight of his pack and his legs, he might have thought he was adrift in some ethereal suspension, wrapped in a shroud of mist. But the snow dragged at his boots like a living thing trying to hold him back. It was work to push forward and stay upright. The combination of ice beneath and heavy pack on his back competed against his balance, trying to topple him. Connor had helped him replace his mask with a cloth wrap around his face so he could wear his goggles and see. It was small comfort. The cold still made his eyes water, but not as much as they had before. His tears froze on his cheeks instead of his eyelashes, and the lenses remained unfogged and clear.

The wrap also blissfully deadened his hearing. He couldn't make out the echo of their footsteps on the ice or its groaning. He heard his own breathing and the wind and the rustle of his arms brushing against his parka. He didn't want to hear anything else. If the ice was going to open beneath him, hearing it crack and break wouldn't help. He could hear the occasional coughing of his shipmates behind him. He was satisfied that if one or more of them called out, he'd hear.

Ahead, Connor shoved on, his red-and-blue back growing smaller as he broke away from them. As badly as Noah wanted to catch up, he had to pace himself. By the look of it, after an hour or more on the trail, there was maybe another hour's walk ahead of them, at least. Time, however, was as much a guessing game as space in this void. The sun's trajectory was alien to him, the stars invisible, and the landscape bereft of marker or point of reference. He could look behind to see where they'd left the … other
Promise
 … but dead as it was, he suspected it was invisible in the distance. His own ship would be lit, but it was even farther away, and he was uncertain they could see it.

What if we can't find it again?
he thought. If they couldn't get back to Mickle and Nevins and all the rest they'd left behind with parts to repair the radio or to bring them to the platform, what then? Just abandon them? Leave them to find the Niflheim on their own? No, he told himself. He'd go back tomorrow. Once they got situated on the platform, and he had a little rest and a meal, he'd go back to organize the second team. First, however, they needed to know whether the Niflheim even offered the shelter they needed. If there were enough beds and blankets. And whether what Connor said was true: that there was another one of most of them aboard.

Noah couldn't even conceive of what that meant. The ache in his hands dragged his mind back to reality. He'd been hanging on to his backpack straps, and despite his thick gloves, the dropping temperature was cutting through them, making the backs of his hands hurt and his fingers numb. He shoved them under his armpits, hunching over them as much as he could, trying to conserve his body heat.

“Where is it?” someone shouted from behind him. “I can't see!” Noah slowed and turned to look. Jack and Kevin also looked back, the sled lurching ahead between them. It hit the end of its line and jerked them forward. Behind them, Brewster and Boucher stood on either side of Henry. The senior deckhand had his arms draped over their shoulders, the rope abandoned. His head lolled and he cried out in blind panic. “I can't see!”

Noah trotted toward them. Brewster raised a hand, holding him back. “Don't worry about us, Cabot,” he said. “No one here needs you.”

He watched them move on without him. Henry howled and the trio trudged on toward the lights. Noah thought perhaps he could just stand there and watch them slip out of view as the night grew darker and the winds blew stronger. He could wait and let them leave him. Eventually, the cold would seep in and drop his body temperature. He'd go numb and lose consciousness. Fall asleep and that would be it.

No. All he needed was the will to take a step ahead. And another. And another until he was in motion again, walking toward the lights. There was warmth in the light. And where there was warmth, he imagined he could find the hope that had left him. Hope did not live in him. But that was the irony of it. To find the will to go on, he had to first take a step forward. The very action that required hope itself.

He lifted a foot. The snow pulled at him, demanding he stop. He swung his leg ahead. He found his footing and leaned forward. His back foot rose and followed, meeting resistance and then coming free. His body moved in spite of his resignation. For the second time in a single day, he fought the infinite ice and snow, stood against the wind and darkness in revolt. He pushed his rock up the hill again.

He fell in behind the crew, keeping his gaze trained down, looking for their tracks. Without a headlamp, he couldn't see them in front of him. Somehow they'd disappeared from sight. And their tracks were blowing over with fresh snow, kicked up by the wind. He felt panic growing in his chest as he looked for them in the sliver of difference splitting the surface from the sky. But in that line of lighter darkness there were no figures ahead. Noah searched for the lights of the Niflheim, the beacon guiding him. If they were still lit, the blowing snow obscured them.

His breathing got faster and his legs heavier. His arms floated up from his sides, ready to do something to aid him. But there was nothing for them to do. They couldn't help him see. They couldn't help him walk. All that was to be done was curse the darkness. Curse his shipmates for leaving him.

In the corner of his vision, he saw it. It separated from the night and darted toward him as it had on the ship. A portion of the darkness that moved. He held up his fists to ward it off. Leaning away, he slipped and the heavy bag slung over his shoulder pulled. The shade whipped itself at him and he fell on the ice. A loud groan went up from the surface, the echo of his impact stretching out through the frigid water beneath. And a crack, loud enough to break through the wrap covering his ears. He squinted his eyes shut and hissed a breath inward through his teeth, waiting for the stabbing pain of the dark thing.

Nothing.

He opened his eyes and looked up. All around him was the void, and he lay in it waiting to die.

The ice groaned and popped underneath him. It sang a low song, urging him to sleep. Unsure if he'd closed his eyes, Noah raised a hand in front of his face. He stared at his red glove. He balled up his numb fingers and made a fist.

In the distance, voices. And dancing distant lights. Head lamps.

“Over here! I see something!”

“Where? I don't see shit.”

The ice beneath him vibrated with the approaching footsteps. He drew in a long breath waiting for the shock of cold water enveloping him. Instead, he felt hands gripping him, pulling him up out of the clinging snow and setting him on his feet.

“Noah! Noah! Can you hear me?” Connor shouted. Noah blinked. He turned his head to see Jack and Kevin standing on either side of him holding an arm, keeping him upright. The men's headlamps made him squint and turn away. He couldn't see their faces. They were like what his grandmother had always said about angels: it hurt to look at them. “Jesus, man. I thought we'd lost you.”

“I'm … I'm right here,” he said. His voice quavered as a fresh shiver rocked his body. One of them stripped the heavy bag off his back. Where it went, he didn't know.

“Come on. Let's get him moving. I'll come back for the supplies.”

The men pulled Noah along. He wanted to object, to tell them there were no lights to follow. They had no idea where they were and there was nowhere to go. Then he saw it. Growing in the distance, maybe a half mile away, the drilling platform rising out of the ice like some kind of mad city in miniature. Its single gray spire reached upward like a Brutalist skyscraper, a red light blinking at the top.

“That's it,” Connor said. “Home.” The word hurt worse than the wind and the cold. Worse than the fall from the side of the ship and the struggle to free Holden from the water. It
wasn't
home. He wouldn't allow that to be true. Noah resolved never to accept it. Home was Seattle. Ellie waited for him there. He had promised he'd come home for her.

He put his head down and pushed forward.

 

24

Noah was uncertain he could climb the steel rebar “ladder” embedded in the thick pylon leg of the island above him. He'd seen drilling platforms up close before, but never quite like this. Not from this perspective. Not in these conditions. Standing beneath it without a ship to give it some kind of contrast, the edifice was oppressively large. In the dark, even more so. It loomed over him like a hallucinatory beast on building-sized stilts. At its four corners, enclosed lifeboats jutted out like heads. Monstrous things shaped like gargantuan komodo dragon faces waiting to lunge out and bite. Boom arms and platforms, odd cages and spiky protrusions all around robbed the structure of the appearance it had from far away as a miniature city and gave it an otherworldly animal look. It was the astrobiological dream of a madman made real in concrete and steel. And it promised nothing but hardship and pain.

His body shook with stress as he pulled himself up. His arms shuddered, his legs quivering and rubbery from the walk, but he held on as tightly as he'd ever gripped anything. The island city stood on concrete pylons rising from the ice forty feet up, and descending who knew how deep into the water beneath the surface. The ladder was a series of rebar rungs pounded into the concrete pylon like giant staples, and although none were actually loose, it wasn't hard to imagine one coming free. There was no safety harness, no ladder cage. If he fell from higher than a few feet up he wouldn't get a second try. Not at this, not at anything again, ever.

Connor explained that there was once a more secure gangway ladder designed for off-loading the crew onto a rescue ship in the event of a disaster, but that had fallen away. All that remained of it were the mounts. The rebar ladder was one of only two ways in, and the second was only accessible once someone made this climb. Connor had insisted Noah wait for him to lower the “elevator,” but waiting with Brewster and his companions was more daunting than a forty-foot fall, so he opted to climb. The wind whipped and pulled at him. It bit at the small exposed pieces of skin that peeked through when he reached for the next rung. At least he didn't have a rucksack stuffed with heavy tools weighing him down. He'd left that with the others.

At the top of the ladder, Connor disappeared into an open hatch. A second later, his hand extended out of the opening. Noah wanted to take it, but distrusted in his own ability to maintain his grip on both the last rung and his friend's hand. He kept ahold of the rebar and pulled himself up, shoulders shaking with the effort. Connor grabbed the back of his parka instead and helped haul him through the opening. Inside, Noah collapsed on his back and breathed through his fear. “This way,” Connor said, not waiting. He opened a door leading to a hall illuminated by hanging work lights in plastic cages strung along the ceiling. The light spilled into the antechamber, illuminating a path away from the hatch. Noah followed, hoping the light would also eventually lead to warmth.

Outside, the Niflheim looked like a city in miniature—a starlit skyline compressed into a single square block. Inside, it felt like a space station. Pipework twisted in all directions, disappearing down hallways, into ceilings, and plunging into the grated and corrugated metal floors. Rubber-coated cables lay everywhere in a tangled, chaotic mess. Blue oil well standpipes and yellow railings separated them from another gap-spaced grate covering some kind of equipment covered in small handwheels and pressure gauges. Connor led the way along a tight hallway into a wider, open room. “Elevator's over here,” he said.

The “elevator” was a conical metal basket hanging from a hand-crank winch. It was big enough for three or maybe four men to ride in if they huddled together. Leaning his rifle against the wall, Connor moved a portable guardrail out of the way. He swung the arm of the jib crane over a closed hatch in the floor. “This here used to be attached to an electric winch, but … you know. We hooked it up to this hand crank when that died.” Connor pulled open the hatch and cupped his hands on either side of his mouth to shout. “Coming down!” Unlocking the catch on the winch, he began cranking the handle, slowly lowering the basket with a noisy clacking. “You ever get the chance to use this, be careful,” he said. “You hit that switch right there, it drops the thing. Whatever's in the basket gets a real wild ride and ain't walking out at the bottom.”