Stranded (6 page)

He tried to feel the movement of the
Arctic Promise
with his body. He'd become accustomed to the movements of the ship beneath his feet—had his sea legs—and was conscious of the pitch of the ship and roll of waves in the same way he was conscious of his own breathing. If he stopped to think about it, it was there. If he focused on anything else, the feeling receded into the unconscious background where his brain filed the sensation somewhere between the feeling of wearing a shirt and knowing twelve came after eleven. But now, standing still and concentrating on it, he didn't even feel the subtle movements of forward motion in calm waters. He could hear the engines. They were working, but the vessel wasn't moving. He might as well have been standing on dry land.

The view out the porthole window was obscured in a gray haze that showed neither depth nor movement. For a brief moment, he wondered if he was still asleep and dreaming. He tried to reason himself out of uncertainty. The presence of the frost flowers meant that the Old Man would have to slow their progress to avoid damaging the ship as the ice in the water grew thicker. The
Arctic Promise
had a reinforced hull but it wasn't an icebreaker. If they went too fast, the ice would damage the ship. Noah knew they'd have to decrease their speed eventually. And in whiteout fog, moving at all was hazardous. He reminded himself that Brewster had years of experience in these seas with vessels like the
Arctic Promise.
He knew better than Noah how his ship would perform in all conditions. Intellectually, Noah understood that Brewster knew how it would hold together and how to proceed. But experience was a hard teacher, and Noah was certain of one thing: Brewster's clearest thoughts were about what he wanted, and never about what that would cost anyone else.

Noah pulled on his boots and walked out of the cabin hoping to find out where they were—and what time it was. First, however, he needed something warm to drink. Coffee had lost its appeal; he wanted the J&B Martin had offered. He headed down to the lower deck, hoping he'd catch the man in his off-rotation hours. As before, the typically busy ship was abnormally quiet.

The door to the engineer's cabin was open a crack. “Martin? You in there?” Noah knocked. He pushed the door wider and peered inside. The room was dark and he couldn't see much more than what the light from the passageway allowed. He was about to leave and head for the machine room when Martin said, “Come in and shut the door, man.”

“You'll never believe it, but I think I just slept like twenty hours. Do you know what time…?” Noah trailed off as he walked in. Martin lay on his bunk in the dark. He'd pulled the curtain over his porthole window and his pillow over his head. Lifting it away from his face, he waved a weak hand at Noah. “Sit anywhere,” he joked.

“You all right? You didn't kill that bottle without me, did you?” Noah pulled the chair away from the desk and sat.

“Not hungover. Definitely not all right, either.” He tried to stuff his pillow under his head but it hung up on the frame at the top of his bunk. Noah reached over and, lifting Marty's head with a gentle hand, slipped and straightened the cushion beneath him. Marty let out a long sigh. It didn't sound like relief, but rather suffering at the effort of lifting his head. “I've got whatever's going 'round the ship. Fucking killer headache. Kinda want to die. You know. How 'bout you?”

Noah's headache was gone; a dim fuzziness was his only real complaint. Although he was a little achy, he seemed to be getting better. It seemed everyone else on board had caught his concussion … or had been poisoned by the same thing. “I'm on my feet,” he said. “On the mend, actually. I'm doing better than you and everyone else.”

Marty rolled his head to the side, opening his eyes a slit. He squinted and shielded them with a hand. Noah got occasional migraines. He knew what it was like to feel light sensitive, how even dimness felt like staring into the sun. Marty abandoned trying to block the light and instead slapped his hand over his eyes, squeezing.

“Was it something that burned in the fire, Marty? What the fuck have we been breathing that's making everyone sick?”

“What? Nothing, man. It's the same material in every equipment panel. Shit catches fire all the time and nobody gets sick. There was nothing special in that one. At least nothing I know about.”

“Then what?” Noah asked.

“I don't know. I don't want to know. I just want to feel better.”

Noah leaned forward, wanting to help his friend, but had no idea how. He couldn't make it darker or pull a bottle of Tylenol from the æther. He sat back in his chair feeling frustrated and impotent. Bashing ice off the rails had felt pointless, but it was something. The satisfaction of it breaking under his hammer reinforced the effort and kept him swinging even as the ice built up in front of him. A day or two later, the joints in his fingers and hands were still sore and stiff, but the feeling was earned and had a purpose. By contrast, sitting still, watching someone suffer, struck at the heart of a man whose approach to a problem was to just get down and solve it. He could fix his car, he could repair a thing, he could build something out of useless raw material. But there was nothing in his skill set to help a person overcome suffering. That, too, he'd learned from painful experience.

“You have anything in your cabin?” Martin said. “Ibuprofen or whatnot?”

“I forgot to pack 'em. I saw the doc … a while ago and he's tapped, too. All he has left is the hard stuff.”

“I'm up for the hard stuff. I could totally Rip Van Winkle the rest of this job,” Marty said.

“Is it that bad?”

“I'm seeing things, man. I just wanna go to sleep and wake up on the other end.”

“What do you mean, ‘seeing things'?”

Marty rolled over on his side, sliding his hand down, covering his eyes. He lay there still and silent for a long while. Noah watched a vein on side of his neck throb. “I don't know,” he finally said. “Things. At first I just thought it was the storm messing with me, you know? Lack of sleep with a little seasickness sprinkled on top. But my eyesight got a little blurry, and … I started to notice weird shadows and shit moving in the corners of my vision. It's like there's somebody there, but when I turn to see, they're gone. Like ghosts. Except I don't believe in ghosts. I figured I was just catching glimpses of the guys, you know? But I'm still seeing things since I came in here to lie down by myself. I don't know what it is. Hallucinations or whatever.”

“Jesus, man.”

Marty tried to laugh, but the noise was strangled and weak. It started as a breath, became a cough, and died a hiss. “Whatever I'm seeing, it ain't Jesus. Seriously, I think I'm going crazy.”

“You're not crazy.” Noah thought back to the crewmen in the hallway and in the day room both seeming to look at something over his shoulder that wasn't there. He wondered if the crew had been poisoned by something other than the fumes from the fire. Noah had breathed more than his share of that shit putting it out and he wasn't seeing things. At the same time, he'd eaten with everyone else and was drinking the same water, breathing the same air. He did everything the other crew members did, and wasn't suffering like they were. He was, relatively speaking, feeling fine.

“Look, I'm going to go find Doc, okay? I'll bring him here.”

Marty reached out and grabbed Noah's forearm. “I'm not a horse.”

Noah didn't laugh. Everyone knew Sean Mickle only had a minor amount of medical training—enough to care for a cut or rope burn. He wasn't a real doctor or even a nurse. He was a merchant seaman who'd been shown how to glue a laceration together and dole out pain pills. The joke was ‘don't break your leg or he might shoot you.' But he was as good as they had, and Noah had to do something to help. Including Marty, he could count the number of friends he had on board the
Arctic Promise
on one hand—with fingers left over. He couldn't spare even one.

“Nobody's getting shot. Don't go anywhere; I'll be right back.”

Marty let go of Noah's arm and waved 'bye without opening his eyes. Noah retreated from the room uncertain now whether everyone was covering their eyes because the light hurt, or because they couldn't face the movement in the shadows.

*   *   *

With a full complement, the ship's crew would operate on a three-shift schedule of watchstanders. Noah, before he was relieved, would have been expected to work two four-hour watches, one at eight in the morning and the other at eight p.m. But OrbitOil was in the business of making a profit, and this run to resupply the Niflheim deep sea drilling platform could be accomplished with a skeleton crew. The ship's master had therefore implemented a “sevens and fives” two-team schedule to compensate for the lack of hands. Each team worked one long shift followed by a shorter one after a rest. On a normal day, any merchant sailor's time was filled with whatever job needed done, checking whether the lashing gear holding the cargo in place needed tightening or greasing, sanding away rust and repainting, or cleaning. Workers aboard ship earned money working overtime and most found as much to do on the clock as they could. The salt in both the water and the air was corrosive and an enemy of steel. There wasn't a day when something couldn't be fortified against its constant assault. Today, however, the ship felt deserted. Aside from the few manning their stations, the crew seemed to be down for the count. Not even the deckboss, Serge Boucher, was carrying on the way he usually did. Noah couldn't remember a time when he'd known that man to be sleeping. If he wasn't working, he was playing cards or holding court telling embellished stories of his adventures in ports around the world. Not today.

Noah checked the clock on the wall in the empty day room; it was approaching noon and the change in the watch schedule. Mickle was on the second team with Noah. Under normal circumstances, as an officer, Doc would likely seek out some rest in his cabin or try to pass the time in one of the day rooms. He didn't need the OT. Given Pereira's condition, Noah assumed he'd be working in sick bay until they reached their destination. He hoped he was, and that he'd found something he could take back to Martin.

He returned to the hospital to find Pereira alone, still doped up and sleeping. That hopefully meant the second officer had the conn. He knew better than to look for Doc up there. If he walked in to find Brewster at the wheel, Noah was as likely to be left behind on an ice floe as he was to reach the platform. He glanced at the safe in the far end of the room. If painkillers were in high demand, the second officer might have stashed what little he had left in with the tramadol he'd given Felix. But if there was anything in the locked compartment, it might as well not exist at all. Noah would have a hard time jimmying open a simple locked cabinet, let alone cracking a digital safe. And if he was caught trying, not only was he out of a job, he'd be arrested once they returned to port and blackballed from work on any other ship. Not that the last part mattered. He intended never to set foot on a ship again as crew or passenger once he returned to Seattle. He desired the life of a landsman, with unmoving, solid ground beneath his feet. Sure footing and steady. Out of grace with the sea.

He heard the engines wind up, working harder, but no sensation followed their vibration. If the ship was moving faster—or at all—he couldn't tell. As he tried to make sense of what he wasn't feeling, heavy footsteps echoed in the passageway outside. Noah leaned out to see Serge Boucher stomping away from the wheelhouse ladder. He had what Noah's wife had referred to as “resting bitch face.” In the absence of any other expression, he looked sullen and angry. Upon seeing Noah, however, his normal expression soured and twisted even more.

“Cabot! Where the hell have you been?” he asked, his voice bouncing off the steel walls like buckshot.

“The Old Man told me to stay in my cabin.”

“So what the fuck are you doing in sick bay?” The bosun narrowed his bloodshot eyes, sunken above dark bags. He had a sheen of sweat on his pale skin that made him look like sausage left out on the counter.

“I'm looking for Mickle. Have you seen him?”

Boucher's brow furrowed and he ignored the question. “Come with me,” he ordered. “I've got a job for you.”

“I told you, the Old Man relieved me of duty.”

“This comes right
from
Brewster. I'm not telling you twice, Cabot.” Boucher's face flashed malevolence and Noah felt himself falling into step behind the man, trailing in his wake. In the change room, the boson opened a locker and began suiting up for the weather. “Get into your gear. Brewster wants you outside.”

“What's going on? There's no way we've reached the platform already.”

“That's what we're going to find out. You and me, we're going out to have a look.”

Noah didn't ask. He didn't want to know. “I've already been outside,” he said, zipping up his red insulated jumpsuit.

“Yeah, and? What did you see?”

He debated saying more. He didn't want to have to explain that he'd had the opportunity to see ice in the water because he'd been snooping around, double checking the officers' work. But if he could save himself the duty outside, it might be worth the scolding he'd endure. “I saw ice.” Noah had seen frost flowers, not “young” ice or even thin crust “nilas.” Neither are a hazard to a ship like the
Promise,
but they can be signs of more treacherous water to come.

“Huh. So when you were strolling along the Promenade Deck, did you think you should tell someone? You try using one of the phones?”

Noah gritted his teeth. “No.” Distracted as he was, he hadn't fully comprehended what the combination of fog and small ice in the water meant. It was bad. The presence of small fragments typically meant larger ice ahead. It meant they were headed into dangerous water with a higher concentration of thicker masses in the water. Ice that could damage the ship. Or sink them. He'd gone to sleep assuming if Brewster was moving ahead, he was able to track obstacles in their path using radar. But what if, like the communications systems, that wasn't functioning, either? His guts knotted at the thought of it.