Borealis(20)

“Bryan, please—”

“She’s drilling holes,” Bryan said. His teeth rattled in the cold. Charlie watched as the cigarette dropped to the foredeck and smoldered on the planking. “Holes everywhere.” In a terrifying mimicry of McEwan, he brought up a set of fingers and jabbed at his temple. “In here,” he said. “In the boat too.” Looking briefly out over the roiling sea, he added, “The goddamn world, Charlie.” He managed a half-curled lopsided grin—again, just like McEwan’s. “You get it, man? The whole goddamn world.”

In a whisper, Charlie said, “What about the world, Bryan? What is it? Tell me.”

Eyes wide and rimmed red with terror, Bryan Falmouth whispered back, “Infected.”

“Infected by what?” When Bryan didn’t answer—he just stood there, his eyes afire, his entire frame quaking in his slicker—he said it again. “Infected by what, Bryan?”

There came a sound similar to metal sheeting being crushed under a great weight, followed by a rumbling from beneath the boat. The whole trawler shook. Bryan lost his footing and slipped on the wet deck, his arms pinwheeling. Charlie ditched to the side and grabbed hold of the railing. Looking down over the side, he watched as a small drift of ice was sucked underneath the boat. He heard a snapping, recoiling sound and looked up in time to see the trawler mow through a second sheet of ice closer to the bow. The sheet literally split down the middle and parted in half by the cutting trawler.

At the bow, Bryan had righted himself against the railing and was also leering over the side of the boat, although he seemed unimpressed by the fact that the Borealis was currently cutting through an ice field. As he looked, a length of salt-encrusted fiberglass siding, perhaps two feet long, snapped off the ship’s hull and flipped end over end in the air until it crashed onto—and slid along—a shelf of frazil ice.

Charlie looked toward the darkened pilothouse. Sea salt had calcified on the paneled glass, making it impossible to see inside…and, he thought, impossible to see out. Nonetheless he began waving his arms high above his head, suddenly shouting Mike’s name.

“No use, Charlie,” Bryan called to him. He was fumbling another cigarette from out of his slicker. “He’s locked on course now. You guys will be home soon.”

He almost didn’t pick up on it. “What do you mean ‘you guys’, Bryan?” he asked. “What about you? You’ll be home too, Bryan. We’ll all be home.”

Unable to light his fresh cigarette in the strong wind, Bryan flicked it over the bow. “No,” he said. “Not me. Ain’t supposed to be me.”

“Bryan, please, what—”

Bryan appeared to crouch, lowering his center of gravity. For one bone-chilling moment Charlie thought the man was preparing to rush him. And in fact Bryan did lower his head, ready to charge. Had it been his intention to execute a full-on rush into Charlie’s solar plexus, he would have accomplished just that, as Charlie Mears was too slow getting out of the way. But as it turned out, such was not Bryan’s intention. Head lowered, eyes ablaze, Bryan charged like a locomotive straight past Charlie, his all-weather boots slamming on the foredeck, his arms and legs pumping like machinery. He ran straight across the planking toward the stern where, in a bluish cloud of exhaust, Bryan Falmouth spread wide his arms and, without pause, launched himself over the side of the trawler.

Charlie shrieked his name, already running in Bryan’s direction. But by the time he reached the stern, there was no sign of Bryan—not even the ripples in the ice-black water. Still, he kept screaming his name, as if mere recital would affect the man’s return, his own hands biting into the framework of the stern. As the trawler peeled away, carving a white-capped tract through the frozen sea, Charlie saw—or imagined he saw—one of Bryan’s boots briefly bob to the surface.

Holes everywhere, Bryan’s voice echoed in his head. You get it, man? The whole goddamn world…

He spun around and ran for the pilothouse, mounting the steps in just three giant strides. He slammed his considerable weight against the pilothouse door, which, once again, was bolted from the inside. Shouting Mike’s name, his breath blossoming on the filthy pane, he rattled the doorframe with his fists.

Mike, stock-still behind the control panel, did not turn and look at him.

“Goddamn it, Mike, open the f*cking door!”

“Mears!” The voice boomed over the snarling engine, just barely audible despite the urgency of tone. It was McEwan, his features muddied by the low-hanging thunderheads trembling with snow. He was wearing only an open chambray shirt and, beneath, an unwashed wife-beater—no coat. The bristling tufts of his hair, unraveling in every direction, rustled like oak leaves in the strong wind. In his hands he held an ice axe.

Charlie took a step back, his blood freezing in his veins. “Bryan’s dead,” he heard himself say, his voice flimsy and paper thin. “Jumped off the stern.”

“Come on down from there,” McEwan said. There was a calculated levelness to his voice, Charlie noticed—a noticeable restraint. Something was trembling just below the surface. “Leave Mike alone.”

Another grinding, peeling sound as jagged fingers of ice cut into the hull—

“He’s gonna sink us,” Charlie warned.

McEwan placed one heavy boot on the first iron step. His eyes settled hard on Charlie, dull like the heads of iron spikes driven into his skull. “He’s a good, strong captain,” said McEwan. “Said it yourself. He knows what he’s doing.”