Dry, page 11
She leans against his back and puts her arms around his neck.
"Are you ready?" he asks, grabbing her wrists so she doesn't end up shutting off his airways when he stands up.
"I'm ready, Draft Wind."
"Draft Wind? Your horse's name is Draft Wind?"
"My horse's name is Draft Wind."
"Fair enough. Then hold on, Lady Bray, because we're saddling up now."
With those words, he pushes himself up, and once back on his feet, he moves his hands down under Jessie's knees and pulls her legs forward so they come to rest on his forearms.
"Are you sitting all right?" he asks, bouncing her up and down slightly as if he wants to check just that.
"Yep."
"Good."
His plan is to get it over with as quickly as possible. Tear off the patch in one swift pull so the agony isn't drawn out. Therefore, he doesn't count down or give any other kind of warning before he takes two quick steps forward and jumps.
He probably should have, because the shock makes Jessie react instinctively. And her way of reacting is to pull her arms backward … so they end up blocking Nathan's line of sight.
The result is that he can't see anything. So instead of landing on the dry, flat rock he had targeted, his right foot ends up on one whose surface is coated with the slippery body of a half-disintegrated jellyfish.
From the moment he feels his heel find ground and then lose it again, Nathan has only a split second to react. Yet, he somehow manages to shift his weight and spin around so that, instead of landing on his side, he lands facing the ground.
In other words, he ensures that it's his face and his hands that come into contact with the poisonous threads of the Pelagia noctiluca.
CHAPTER 26
"GET HER OFF! GET HER OFF!" Nathan hears himself weave into the steady stream of pain-filled screams that pour out of his mouth. "GET JESSIE OFF!"
Earl and Meredith could've already taken her off him. The truth is, he has no idea because he can't feel his back at all. He can only feel his face and hands. How they burn and sting. How his skin feels like it's melting.
In front of his face, the rubble starts to move … no, it's him. He is moving. Something is making him do it, lifting him and dragging him away.
The pieces fall into place as he registers movement at both extremes of his field of vision. Women's shoes on the left side, safety shoes, and the lower part of an old, worn plank on the right.
"J-Jessie?" he stammers.
"She's safe," Meredith replies from the bottom of a mile-deep well. "You took it all."
Nathan opens his mouth to express his relief, but before he manages to articulate a single word, the rock shards in front of his face begin to liquefy and run together, gradually forming an oil-black pool that slowly but surely consumes everything.
When he wakes up again, it's no longer rubble that he's staring at but the faces of his fellow travelers. All three of them are watching him with the same worried expression in their eyes.
And in Jessie's eyes, there's more than just that. In them are tears.
With difficulty—and eventually a little help from Meredith—Nathan pulls himself up into a half-sitting position, then lets his gaze drift to the ground between Earl and Jessie.
Two things catch his attention. One is that the rocks are dry. Ergo they must have gotten him out of the jellyfish's soup. The second thing is the Swiss Army knife next to Earl. Its blade is extended, and it's smeared in a sticky, pink mass.
Instinctively, he raises his hands and studies them, turning them from side to side.
Red, swollen lines crisscross them—and strangely enough, the pain seems to increase when he looks at them.
"We scraped it off as best we could," Meredith says. "But the pain will linger for some time, I suppose."
"Does it hurt a lot?" Jessie asks.
Nathan opens his mouth, intending to lie to calm her down, but he's caught in it even before the first word has come out because the mere act of moving his lips triggers an intense, fiery pain that ascends his cheeks and brings tears to his eyes.
"It … hurts pretty bad, yeah," he admits. "But the poison isn't lethal, so I'll be okay."
He glances around again, this time looking for something specific, and when he sees the emergency bag, he points to it with a quivering finger.
"The wine bottle?" Earl asks, and when Nathan nods, he adds, "We considered it, but we were afraid to use too much."
"Give it to me, please," Nathan moans.
Earl nods, then opens the emergency bag, takes out the wine bottle, and hands it to Nathan.
With hands that feel like they're covered in frantic, stinging wasps, Nathan lifts the bottle, looks at the contents behind the glass … and breathes a sigh of relief. There is still plenty left of Escama ferosa's viscous, green poison.
He pours a couple of drops onto his palm and quickly hands the bottle back to Earl. Next, he gently starts to rub the poison on his hands, forearms, and the sorest areas of his face.
Then he waits.
"It isn't working at all?" Jessie asks, seeing tears begin to roll down his cheeks.
"No, no, sweetie," he says, sniffling. "It works perfectly. That's why I'm crying."
CHAPTER 27
The bottom of the canyon is at the same time majestic and miserable. Majestic because it's so huge, so intrusive—like a dark gray version of the Grand Canyon stretching across the desolate, parched seabed. Miserable because it's now nothing more than a faint echo of the intriguing world it once contained.
The life it once contained.
In many ways, it feels like standing in the ruins of a war-torn city, surrounded by shattered dreams and demolished homes. Here it just isn't buildings that have been cleared of life, but the many large caves in the cliffside, which before were masked by the ocean's blanket of darkness.
You can almost hear the desolation of the caves. A faint hissing sound. Like a hoarse, ghostly laugh.
As they sit around the fire waiting for the vegetable soup to boil, these are the sort of gloomy, philosophical thoughts that roam in the back of Nathan's mind.
Conversely, they should probably consider themselves lucky that the caves aren't full of life. They are deep down at the bottom of the sea, after all. So deep that there may well be things down here that Nathan, despite his field of expertise, has never seen or heard of.
A shiver runs over his neck at that thought, and he instinctively puts his arm around Jessie, who is sitting next to him.
"Are you tired, sweetie?"
"Not really, it's more that I'm hungry … and thirsty. How are you doing?"
"You're so sweet," he says, kissing her hair. "And thank you, I feel much better. It will be completely gone by tomorrow, I think. But I might have gotten some pretty cool scars."
He raises his hand and turns it to show just how cool they are, but it's clearly too soon for the girl to joke about, so he quickly lowers it again.
"We didn't find any sea turtles," Jessie says.
"No, not today, but … but we won't give up. We'll try again tomorrow, okay?"
"Food's ready," Earl says, and Nathan—eager to change the subject—hurries to pull his sleeves out over his hands and accept the hot can of soup.
He succeeds in changing the subject … in a way. Because even though he and Jessie don't talk anymore about their failed search for a sea turtle during the meal, it stays in the back of his mind for the rest of the evening.
And when he wraps himself in his blanket—and its bittersweet aroma of tomato sauce—and closes his eyes, it's still there.
The sea turtle. His promise.
CHAPTER 28
"Are you out of your mind?"
Under normal circumstances, asking such a question to your partner is rarely more than a rhetorical attack. A provocation, used as lighter fluid for the flames of anger when a discussion is about to turn into a fight.
That's only partially the case this time as part of Nathan means what he's saying quite literally. Part of him wants to know if his wife actually has lost her mind. Because more and more often, it feels like Michelle is a complete stranger. As if some invisible force has pushed her usual happy-go-lucky spirit out of her body and assigned a bitter, life-weary replacement to take its place. A stranger with whom he tries to communicate, but who doesn't speak the same language as him at all.
At this moment, especially, it's an eerily fitting metaphor, since Nathan finds it hard to understand the words she has just said to him—and even harder to accept them.
"I'm serious, Michelle," he says. "Have you gone insane? You must be to say something like that!"
From her spot in the hospital bed, she stares at him with a look that is close to pushing him over the edge into a fit of rage. Because the eyes in her pale, anguished face show no signs of anger or defiance. More than anything, they look sad—but on his behalf. As if she pities him for taking so long to realize that she, obviously, is right.
"It's not like I'm asking you to do it," she says as if that was supposed to make it better somehow. "All I ask for is your blessing, Nathan. That's it."
"My blessing? You w-want …"
Halfway through the sentence, his voice loses its strength so that the last few words are never articulated.
For a while, Michelle says nothing. She just sits there, reclined in her bed, while the monotonous beeps of machines fill the semi-dark room. Then she leans to the side, reaches her small, bony hand over to the bedside table, and pulls out the drawer. From it, she picks up a little white pill bottle and places it on the countertop.
BENZODIAZEPINE it says on the label.
"Sleeping pills," she explains. "According to the internet, it's one of the most effective and … pleasant ways to do it."
"According to the internet?" Nathan repeats, and straightaway he's struck by a terrible insight.
She has researched it. She's actually been sitting with her smartphone or at a computer at some point, spending time looking for the best way to take her own life—which must mean that …
"You're being serious?"
She gulps with an audible click and nods, but her gaze doesn't fall downward in shame afterward. As it fucking should do. She just stares at him calmly. He, on the other hand, must keep all the muscles of his face in tight reins for it not to crack completely.
"But you … why, Michelle?"
"Because I can't do it anymore," she says. "I don't have the strength to keep fighting. Not physically, not mentally. Besides, there is no point in fighting anymore. You know that too. All the doctors have given up … so why can't I?"
Nathan's throat narrows, and his mouth becomes bone dry as if he hadn't had a drink in days. He tries to swallow, tries to clear his throat, tries to cough, but nothing works. His pharynx is closed, strangled by the pressure of the invisible hands that grasp it.
A wave of dizziness and nausea floods him, and he leans forward. Like that he stays, sitting on the edge of his chair, his eyes closed and his head down between his knees, until the room has stopped tilting back and forth like a ship's deck during a storm.
Then he lifts his head—and lets out a startled gasp.
Michelle has kicked off her duvet. Now she sits with one leg outstretched on the mattress and the other pulled up to her chest.
It's this bent leg that her hands are clutching. Except that they aren't holding it, but rather tearing and ripping at it. Pulling off strips of rotten, bluish-black skin, digging her nails into the infected flesh so that the big, inflamed blisters burst and a glistening, yellowish liquid seeps down her hands and her shins.
She doesn't even notice. She just continues to tear, rip, pull, twist, and slash until the mattress below her is completely soaked by—
"OH GOD NO! NATHAN, WAKE UP! WE HAVE TO HELP EARL! WAKE UP, NATHAN!"
DAY 5
CHAPTER 29
After being torn out of his nightmare by Meredith's panicked cries, it takes a few seconds for Nathan to make sense of the events unfolding before him.
Part of the reason is that his eyes have to get used to the semi-darkness as the only sources of light are the glow of the moon and a few stubborn embers from the dying campfire.
Another part of the reason is that his otherwise extensive knowledge of marine animal species offers him no help identifying these two.
Their stalked eyes, jointed backs, and large, serrated claws echo the features of lobsters, but if that is indeed what they are, these are far bigger than any lobsters Nathan has ever heard of. Because they're large. So large that they would match his height, or possibly even surpass it, if they were able to stand upright on the back two of their ten legs.
The third—and most important—reason Nathan's brain has suffered a temporary meltdown is that he's in shock. He's simply so frightened by what the animals are doing that he's unable to move.
But he can see. He can see their claws burrowing into Earl's infected calf muscle, ripping off large chunks of meat. And he can hear. Although it ought to be impossible because it's drowned out by the screams of Earl, Meredith, and Jessie, he can hear the squishy, smacking sound as they throw bloody pieces of flesh into their disgusting mouths and chew them.
Something grabs his arm, and for a split second, he's convinced it's another one of those terrifying lobster creatures that has crept in on him unnoticed.
It isn't. It's Meredith. An eerie, distorted version of her, so steeped in horror that her face looks bent and warped. Like an abstract painting.
"WE HAVE TO HELP HIM!" she chants, shaking Nathan's arm as if she were still trying to wake him from sleep. "WE HAVE TO HELP EARL!"
"Get Jessie away from there," Nathan says, after which he, without shifting his gaze from the disgusting lobster monsters, tumbles up into a crouching position. Then he slowly starts moving the opposite way around the fire, keeping it as a barrier between them and him until he has gotten all the way over behind Earl's back.
The monstrosities don't seem to register his presence at all, and neither does Earl, for that matter. He's too busy screaming and trying to pull away from them. He kicks at them too, but it doesn't look like there's much power left in his legs. It has probably leaked out along with the large amount of blood pooling on the ground beneath him.
The crutch lies to the left of Earl. That's what Nathan wants to get his hands on. The problem is that it's also lying very close to one of the monsters. So close that three of its legs occasionally step on it—with a horrible cla-cla-clack sound—as it leaps forward to rip another chunk off the ship mechanic's leg.
With the sound of his own pulse rumbling in his ears like a freight train, Nathan stares at those repulsive, serrated spider legs—and as soon as he sees them move backward, he leaps forward.
Barely have his fingers closed around the plank before the animal finally notices his presence. It locks its small, stalked eyes on him, lets go of the raw, torn-apart lump of meat in its claws, and utters a rattling wheeze.
In the blink of an eye, it shoots forward toward him, claws lifted and clicking, legs ticking away like the needle in a sewing machine.
Nathan takes a swing with the plank, but he hasn't gotten a proper grip on it yet, and although he hits the front legs of the animal's right side, the blow is only enough to push it off balance temporarily. A second later, it's back on offense with the claw shears jabbing relentlessly at his legs as he staggers backward, constantly tripping on loose rocks.
He attempts to kick it, but it results in nothing other than the monster grabbing his pant leg and tearing a hole in it.
He kicks again, this time higher—and even though it wasn't his plan, the result is much better this time as he hits one of the animal's eyes and breaks the stem that holds it up.
The creature lets out an eerie, gurgling cough and starts clawing wildly in the air with feverish and seemingly random movements … which makes Nathan realize something vital: the animal has lost its sense of coordination.
He grabs the plank, lifts it up—and brings it down on the crustacean.
The first blow causes the animal to hiss again. The second blow causes it to squirm and run in circles, while its hind body twitches up and down. The third blow causes its jointed back to crack with a crunching sound.
It's dead. Yet it takes all of Nathan's willpower to suppress the urge to keep pounding away at it. But he has to because he still has the creature's mate to think about.
He turns around—and lets out a gasp.
Earl is lying on his stomach with one cheek flat against the ground, swinging his arms from side to side, trying to find something to grab. His left hand is colored a dirty black, as if at some point he has had it buried in the ashes—and the last, glowing pieces of coal—from yesterday's campfire, perhaps hoping to find something in there that he could use to pull himself to safety.
Earl's pursuer is no longer interested in his infected leg. Instead, it has shifted its focus up to his back, where it has cut its way through both the blue fabric of the boiler suit and Earl's pale skin.
Dash forward, cut, and rip. Pull back, chew, and gurgle. Dash forward, cut, and rip. Pull back, chomp, and chew.
Relentlessly—and with an eerie, almost rhythmic precision—the crustacean monster follows this pattern, gradually digging deeper and deeper into Earl's back.
"LEAVE HIM ALONE!" Nathan screams, swinging the plank at full strength into the side of the animal so it rolls sideways across the rocky ground and lands on its back, halfway lying on a rock.
Attempting to turn itself around, the lobster starts squirming violently, while all ten legs twitch back and forth, thrashing against each other's hard shells with the same cla-cla-clack sound its buddy made when stepping on the plank.
Fueled by anger and desperation, Nathan raises the plank above his head with both hands, after which he leaps forward and drives its end down with such force that it penetrates the shell—and the monster's belly.
