The Blue (The Complete Novel) Read Online Free Page B

the jaws on my leg that will drag me down between the two slabs of impossibly heavy ice and drown me. Or kill me with shock from the cold first. But the jaws never come. Maybe it’s choking on the jacket, too stupid to figure out what it got. And it comes into me, what I have to do. It’s a flashback, when I was last to get ashore—I see the faces on the spit, cheering me, telling me I can make it. They’re Dusty and Ernest, and the freezing water’s the same, but this time I don’t have a backpack to push. This time I’m free. Just me and the water. And when the voices split again over the air and I recognize them, they aren’t Dusty’s and Ernest’s at all, they’re Russell and Voley’s, telling me to climb—Climb! Climb Tanner!
     
    I dig in again and throw my leg up along a shelf that’s half underwater. Then I grind my elbow as hard as it will go into a crack. And with everything I have, I hurl my body over the lip, just enough to plant my weight and press down. Then I find purchase with one of my knees and rise up. Water slides off me, pours back into the brown. You can’t kill me tonight, I tell the sea. Voley barks behind me. Another rifle shot. And when I fling myself forward, toppling into a thin layer of fresh powder, safely on the solid mass of the Ice Pancake, I close my eyes. Alive. I made it out. Freezing to death but not enough to stop a friend of Poseidon’s.
                When I open my eyes, I see the long stretch of the Ice Pancake, and then, to my right, the black seal, eyes shining as it pulls itself up from a nearby ridge. Without giving me a moment to even rise to my feet, the thing unleashes its full speed, looking as fast out of the water as it must be in. I barely get to my feet when I hear the metal clicking of a gun jam behind me, and Russell curses loudly. I whip my head around and yell that I don’t have my gun, but he’s dead silent, trying to work out the misfire so that he can take another shot. But the seal races on at me, its pounding flippers ripping along the Ice Pancake, driving headlong and without so much as a snarl, white mouth coming straight for me.
                With the couple seconds left before it gets me,  I realize Russell won’t get another shot off in time. I turn to see how high the cliff to the Resilience floe is, and I know right away I’ll never make it if I jump. But I have to try, there’s nothing else. It’s a good five feet at least, and nothing to hold onto—no more tiny ledges of slippery ice. Just sheer vertical ice. And Russell at the top struggling with the gun. And then I see it—the madness of Voley. His barks gone, and his body no longer visible, comes racing back into sight from atop the floe. And he leaps out, right into the air, straight toward me, over the ocean, and right at the killer seal. No! I get out just in time to watch him soar, and in another instant, he’s skidding along the ice right toward the seal, landing with only three good legs and losing his balance. I hear him continue to bark as he slides, out of control with no balance, slipping along and unable to right himself or stop. Then the seal backs up, just for a moment, not knowing what to think—it rises up on its barrel chest, almost as tall as me, and watches us. Like he’s weighing things out, seeing if Voley is a threat to him. And then, with Voley’s barks turning to short, pinched whines, the seal starts again, racing toward me. Ignoring Voley where he lies because he’s unable to stay up on the slippery ice and complete his act of heroism, instead left to watch me jab out my arms in my best defensive effort, hoping I can punch into one of the thing’s eyes before it latches onto me again. And when it’s just about ready to strike, it’s head up and jaw open, the white row of fangs glaring, the rifle ignites again—Bang! and the seal slips. I sidestep out of its way and nearly trip over the edge of the ice and back into the crack