I did it, and they’re looking at me like I’ve just won some great race. A prize. And I know it too—it’s my life. We’ve all won our lives. I’m exhilarated. I turn to face the sea and I feel Ernest slap me too hard across my back. I cough out of my laughter and when I finally have my breath, I roar out at the ocean, throwing my hands up and dropping the bag. I say to the thing that has conspired for years to kill me: That’s it? And if Ernest is Poseidon, I haven’t offended him.
Ernest says we better start moving or we’ll freeze. And the motorboat is inaccessible, we can’t go there. Just up, into the brown. Dusty wraps me up for a moment. I can see that he wants to kiss me, but he doesn’t with Ernest watching. Come on, no more time for celebration. And just like that we start marching up an unending slope.
Chapter 5
Finally we reach the top of the mountain. There’s nowhere higher to go. The cold is almost paralyzing. The rush of the swim is gone. But I forget all of it and die at the sight of the mountains before us. I fall to my knees. Because I hadn’t noticed that the rain is gone. It’s become snow. It’s falling gently and slowly and softly, and I look up from the ground and let it dance above my face and land. Some of it goes into my eyes, and I open my mouth. It falls in and it tastes just like the rain. And the whole stretch of ugly brown that I’ve known mountains to be for all of my life is gone: In front of me is a long unending valley of snow. And it continues forever, walled in by the towers of rock and mud that have become white. Really far in the distance, so far that I can’t imagine we’ll ever reach it, I see the top of a building. It rises like God between two mountain ridges, barely visible.
When I shout out, just a grunt, exhaustion and awe mingled together, I look at the others. Voley has already run down the valley ahead, planting his head into the first layer of snow. He’s rolling around in it, shaking his whole body, and then doing it again, like he’s cleaning off the filth of the sea. And Ernest already has his binoculars and thermometer out. He’s pulled them from one of the wet bags, first unrolling a tightly taped rain suit which he used to keep everything from getting wet. And he’s searching in the distance. He’s studying the building. It registers that he’s shouting—There! There! he yells. And Dusty and I stare, enamored by the beauty of the white and the building—our savior. I always thought that somehow, the frozen rain would look brown, just like the sea is. But it’s crystal pure white. And then, Ernest makes it clear he’s not shouting about the building or the snow. He’s seen something else.
“Tracks!” he says. I rip the binoculars out of his hands. He’s right—there’s a line of indents that start just a couple hundred feet away, depressed patches in the snow. The blotches wind away toward the building. They don’t look like footprints, but it’s clear: something was moving through the snow. Russell! I shout, as if he’s in earshot. We found him, I think, well before there’s any real reason to think that. But he has to be here.
We start down and Ernest looks above, trying to find the location of the sun through the pearl sky. It’s no longer a mess of streaking gray bands, just one singular mass of white. Eternal blankness. And we all stop before long, because we catch up to Voley, and the temptation to touch the snow on the ground is too much. We ball it up and put it in our mouths. Dusty lies in it, rolling around just like Voley. Even Ernest takes off his gloves to touch it. He picks a pile up and runs it right across his face. Then he does it again. I do the same thing. It’s a completely different kind of cold—somehow warmer than the wet cold. Dry powder cold.
Once Ernest remembers we’re wasting daylight and the last of our warmth, and that ice is hardening our wet clothes, he insists that we push on. Down into the valley so we can follow the track until it disappears over the next ridge.
They must have headed for the building, I say. I ask what kind of building that is, because it looks very strange to me, different than anything I’ve ever seen before. It slopes in at its center, and then curves out again at the top. Ernest doesn’t say anything, so I assume he doesn’t know. Dusty just says he’s never seen anything like it either, and he asks if there will be other buildings near it, because we don’t see any. He asks whether or not people are living there. Tucked deep in the heart of all this white. I say that I think there are, and that maybe Russell’s going to meet us on his way back from the city. Then I remember his boat was wrecked, and they’d have no reason to come back this way. If they were going to return to the Resilience, it would have been by going straight forward and around everything—through this valley, past the building. To somehow travel all the way back in a circle, back to the outside mountain we anchored near, the edge of the great wide ocean.
We fall silent and march. It’s long and silent, and soon, I realize how hard it is to walk through the snow. It gets deeper, and it’s soft and sinks in all at once with each new step. As we get near to the bottom of the valley and the sun sets somewhere behind us in the white sky, the snow gets suddenly much deeper. We sink in to our knees with every step, and Voley is having trouble going at all. His entire body is in the snow and he’s trying to force himself out in a frenzy. Ernest seems to realize we won’t make it far like this. He says he’s brought a small tent, but it’s big enough for all of us to jam inside if we can just make it up the next hill. And I realize—there’ll be no more warm bunk below the deck.
I hadn’t thought that far ahead, as if we were going to run into Russell right away, find him and bring him back all in a few hours. That it could be that easy. Our breaths become a chorus of grunts as we shovel ourselves deeper along the bottom of the valley.
Dusty asks if anything could live in these mountains. He stutters from the cold when he talks. I get the feeling he means face eaters, but he clarifies that he means animals. There were no wild animals anymore in Blue City, he says. And he’s sure he hasn’t seen any in a long time. Besides the whale, I haven’t seen any either—not since Chicago. Ernest dwells on the thought and says maybe. He talks about wolves. And bears. But he says he’s pretty sure they’re extinct. But then again, he goes on, he thought the snow was gone forever too. And that the world had gone into a fixed temperature somewhere above freezing but below warm. He’s got his thermometer out again. He tells us the temperature is now thirty degrees. It’s the coldest temperature he’s known since the rain first started.
The only thing I know for an endless hour is the sound of the crunch. It comes with each new and giant step forward. Ice has started to form under my plastic suit, hardening my hair into crusted mats. I’m sure my feet must be frozen too, iced over and frostbitten, because I can no longer feel any of my toes. But a thought crawls through my head, maybe by delirium from the cold: I think that Ernest is the God of the snow as well as the sea, because as if in reaction to the thought that I’m freezing to death, he says we’ll have the stove going soon, and to just keep moving. A little bit farther.
You brought a stove? I ask. And he tells me I carried it ashore. Wrapped and taped inside a plastic rain suit. And unless it’s too iced over, it should work. A small primer stove, like the one you had on the motorboat, he says. We have enough fuel to keep it lit for three days. And that buys us one and a half days to march inland. We either find them in one and a half days, or we don’t, he says. And I know it means that if we don’t see Russell by then, it’s over. All useless. Because we won’t be coming back. There won’t be any returning to the ship for more fuel and trying again. No second rescue attempt.
With the thought that we’ve already used up half a day, I feel urgency set upon me again. We only have one day. One day to find him. I move my stiff body through the endless pattern. Lift one leg, drag up a pile of snow, and then fall forward, like dead weight, and sink in again. I watch Dusty, and he looks like he’s doing good. Not even tired. Voley has figured out that he has to fall in behind us, and he’s using Ernest’s wide path to move freely again.
At last we come upon the trail of Russell and Clemmy. Ernest pauses to catch his breath, and we all stop.
I put my hands on my knees, bent over, sucking in stinging breaths. The snow is still light, barely noticeable, but it has lost its magic. It’s just as deadly as the rain. Or worse.
Footprints, says Ernest. I don’t see them, because the old trail is covered so much by new snow. They’re just oval craters. But Ernest says he can tell. People left these tracks. I never had any doubt they were Russell’s, but he says it again to confirm that any doubt he had is gone. And then, just when I have my breath back, and feel like my thighs can’t take any more, and my body is useless, and I’m starving again, Ernest says we have to go on. Up the big slope ahead. It will lead us out of the valley.
The beginning of the trip up the slope is a bit easier, and I think I can make it now. We’re following the old trail, and it’s easier than making a new one. Ernest tells us it’s night now, but it’s hard to tell. The sky is still bright, like some kind of lamp is shining from behind the pearl film of clouds. Does the sky stay like this all night? I ask. Ernest doesn’t know. He says it might. And if it does, we’ll be better off for it. He doesn’t say why. Maybe he does believe in bears and wolves.
By the time we reach the top of the slope, the light has faded. Before us lies another long valley of snow, impossible to comprehend. And none of us can see any more tracks. But against the dim sky we see the beauty of the building. An eyesore to the mountains and wind that beat us into the snow. It’s so much closer now. And there has to be more buildings around it. They’re probably in the city, Dusty says suddenly, echoing my thoughts. And he wants to get inside those buildings as much as I do. He wants to push for them tonight. Ernest says we have to stop to get warm. We’ll only rest a couple hours. Eat something and warm up. Otherwise we’ll be no good to anyone. He opens both the bags we brought. He gathers all the rain suits he used to seal everything from the water. Then he lays them on the ground for a makeshift floor. He tells us to walk on them as much as we can, to sink them down. But it’s gotten colder and the snow isn’t as soft as it was at first. The flooring doesn’t go down. Then he takes out the tiny tent. He unsnaps extendable poles, one by one, and then slips them into the thin tent cover. In a couple minutes it’s up—a tiny hut atop the darkening crest of snow. We all get inside and Ernest starts to chip ice off the stove. He tells Dusty to do the same to the nozzle on the fuel canister.
The fish won’t rot now, will they? Ernest says, somehow managing a smile. Then he says he hasn’t brought any anyway. They’ll wait for us, frozen on the ship. We have hardtack, he says. And we’ll have to make do with that. Dusty takes out some of the tightly wrapped crackers. Some on the end are brittle and discolored. He throws them out into the snow. Don’t waste them, Ernest says. Dusty brings them back inside.
Ernest gets the fire going and we sit and eat a few crackers. We have a single thermos of water between us, but Ernest says we should save it. We should drink the snow, he says. So we bring in frozen chunks and warm them by the stove until we can crush them in our mouths. But it doesn’t kill my thirst. It’s like I’m barely getting any water out of the giant ball of icy white. But the tent starts to capture our heat, even though Ernest has to puncture the roof so we don’t suffocate. Snow falls in through it and blows around inside the tent like dust. The four of us can barely fit, and we’re all lying on top of each other. I don’t know how I’ll sleep at all like this, but soon my body reminds me that it’s spent everything and sleep will come no matter how I’m stuffed in here. There’s nothing left, not even the swirling fears. I pull near to Dusty and wrap myself up with him. We lie together, waiting for sleep to take us.
Dusty asks to no one: What did you like to do? I can tell that he’s having trouble falling asleep because he keeps moving his legs and kicking me. Neither of us say anything. I’m so tired I can’t think, and I’m not sure what he means. I wonder if he means before we had to do this—before we had to move all the time, just to stay alive. Ernest is wide awake, and he answers.
“Ride horses,” Ernest finally says. He tells us about his farm. He used to have fifty acres in Montana. He grew up on his parents ranch, and he inherited it. I had one horse, he says. Man, was he one stubborn son-of-a-bitch. He laughs. It’s a laugh that seems so out of place for where we are, but he’s there. He’s back on his ranch. I can tell from the way his voice has changed. One time, he says, that horse went and took off, right up into the mountains. A lot like these ones. Except without the snow. Almost got himself killed before I wrangled him and brought him back. Almost killed myself too, trying to get him back home. I look over at Ernest, whose body is pinned between the wall and the stove. He’s lying on his back, his face up, looking through the small hole in the ceiling at the muted sky. He did that a lot, Ernest says. Was never happy staying still too long on the ranch.
What happened to him? asks Dusty. Ernest draws deeper into his memory, and after that he makes a series of sighs. He died, says Ernest, died right on our ranch. Thirty years old, I swear. Old and stubborn as hell still. Didn’t want to take any more water. Just wouldn’t drink anymore. He knew he was ready to go. He lived a long life. All adventures. But his body wouldn’t let him escape anymore. He couldn’t run free like he loved to. And I tried to force him, boy. Did I try to get him to drink. He put up a hell of a fight. Could’ve knocked my teeth out still. But I let him go. He was ready. Had nothing left to do. Lived happy and free as he wanted to for thirty years. But you know, as much as he loved to roam, he always came back to the ranch. Ernest laughs again and says, Boy I must have been about seventeen years old before I learned to stop chasing after him. That that’s what he wanted—what made him happy. It’s just that, he says and then pauses. What? Dusty finally asks. I think I saw myself in him, you know? So I didn’t want to lose him. Didn’t want him to get stuck somewhere and never make it back home. Funny to see yourself closest in an animal, I guess. Stubborn as hell, just like me. But he needed adventure like I didn’t accept yet that I did. I was stuck in the farm life my parents wanted for me. Jack got out in the world and saw things. So many folks, they stay put. Where it’s warm and dry and comfortable. And there’s no need for them to go searching for trouble, or discomfort, or adventures of any kind. Hell I don’t blame them now. I’ve had too many since the rain started. But there was a time when you could count on your home still being there after the journey was over. And he showed me all of that. Damned Jack. A big son-of-a-bitch. And then Dusty laughs too, like he knew Jack too or something. I look at Dusty’s smile and somehow it makes me think of the question again, whether or not there’s anything I liked to do. I look back to Ernest and he’s turned over, and he’s petting Voley. When did you learn to sail? asks Dusty. That was my first adventure, he replies. I left home and joined the Navy. Was a long time before I came back home. And Jack, hell, he was still there. Happy to see me, and from what my parents told me, still raising hell. Ernest breathes in deep and lets out a long sigh. I hear sadness in it. Well that’s all gone now, he says. The horses are gone, the coyotes are gone, and the wolves are gone. He goes on, And my parents, they’re gone. All of it—the ranch, the whole damned idea of a ranch. I’ll tell you. This fucking rain. For all the planning and sorting and caring that people did, back before the rain, they didn’t stop to enjoy much of it—the beauty of the old world. I tell you, it was a beautiful world.
And now I know—he’s not Poseidon. He’s just a farmer, homesick without a cure like the rest of us. Trying to get back when there’s nowhere to get back to. And I’m sad that I never knew Ernest’s old world.
Dusty volunteers to go next once he realizes that Ernest is finished. I always wanted to work on electronics, he says. Electronics? laughs Ernest. Boy, you were born in the wrong century. I know, says Dusty, but, I’m good with them. Or I think I would be. Look, I got the radio working didn’t I? he slips into an argumentative tone. You sure did, Ernest says. For a moment, we all stop and think about the message, the one they heard through me. Radiation. Invisible death. You know what that building is? Ernest says. W
e pause and remember there’s a building so close we could march through the night and kill ourselves to get to it right now. What is it? I ask. It’s like he’s been reminded of something that he’s held back from us. And the mentioning of the radio has called it back into his mind. It’s a cooling tower.
What’s a cooling tower? I ask. It doesn’t have space for people to go in it. That’s for damned sure. So there better be other buildings around it. It’s used to cool the reactor. Nuclear power. Your radiation message. Looks like we can all apologize for not believing you now.
But what does it mean? Is it dangerous? asks Dusty. I don’t know, says Ernest. I don’t have any idea. But Clemmy told me, just before he left, he thought you were full of shit, says Ernest, looking at me now. Because he says the Fort St. Vrain power plant was 200 miles to the north, somewhere called Platteville. He had remembered that much. And he said there was nothing to worry about anymore. That the recording, or you, was bullshit. Well I’ve seen the thing with my own eyes now. So we’re either outside of Platteville, the wrong place by two hundred miles, and the map is a hoax, or…
Ernest trails off and Dusty fills in the blank: Or they built a new one, like you heard, he says to me, and we all wonder if we’re marching toward some kind of invisible death now. But no one brings the topic up again, because we’ve invested everything we have in our search, and there’s no going back. Invisible death or not, we’re headed for the tower. And with one more day to do it.
Well, what about you? says Ernest. Tanner, he says, like he needs to voice my name to know I’m really here. You haven’t told us yet—what did you like to do? I rack my brain trying to remember. I try to recall Philadelphia. Jennifer and Delly. And when things first started to slide. Stuff used to go missing, all the time, when I was little, I say. And it kept happening, has ever since. I knew something bad was happening to people, a change. It’s so obvious what it is now—desperation because of the rain. But, when I lived in Philadelphia, I can remember thinking about it. Like I couldn’t believe it was happening. People were just stealing to stay alive, I understand that now. But then, I couldn’t understand why anyone would take from people that had so little, and each of us seemed to have barely anything. Just enough to live on most of the time. And so every time we’d lose something—stupid stuff like pillows, pictures, food, medicine, toys—I’d go looking for them. Try to solve the mystery. Find out who was behind it all. Like it was one person, I say. I find myself laughing. I continue, I wanted to find out why they were hurting people. Like I could stop them and get the stuff back for us and fix them too. I liked searching. I thought I was doing something good. I guess I was trying to find the bad people. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted to help them. Or just get my stuff back.
The Snow (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) Page 4
