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

shock. Then I hear the bang—the loud missile of the rifle blaring through the dead night air. More barking. And when I pull myself up enough to look around, staring at me, level with the ice, is the creature—and it’s shiny even in the darkness, it’s teeth white and bared, and I finally realize what it is. It is a seal. But not like any I’ve ever seen or heard about—it’s too big, too many teeth, and it looks like a monster more than a seal. But I can’t even register that I know what it is now—as if that might bring relief since I’ve never heard of seals being man-eaters—because with lightning speed he draws himself over the lip of the slush pocket and bites down on my arm. When he rips his head back up he hauls me out with him, and I expect the searing pain of tearing flesh, but there’s nothing. His jaws are on my jacket and sweater, and he’s pulling me with them.      
                Everything is a blur—the white and the dark gray and the seal’s maniac body barrelling toward something. And then I realize where I’m being dragged—right to the edge of the Resilience, right down into the murky ocean beneath the ice floe. I twist and turn and struggle, trying to rip my jacket off, but it’s no use. I claw at the snow and the ice and the melt but it’s no use—nothing grips and we go faster than I thought the thing could possibly move. My gun is gone, lost in the pocket of water. When I get a split second glimpse of the stove glow, it’s just in time to hear the sound of another rifle blast. And I know it has to count this time, has to stop this thing dead in its tracks, or I’m dead. But the seal doesn’t even pause. Not for a second. We barrel on as fast as ever—it jerks and tugs me full speed toward the drop of the Ice Pancake and there’s nothing I can do. All I can do is listen to the mad barking and the sound of Russell’s holler as I crash into the freezing water and everything goes dark.
     
    When I pull my head up above the water again, I realize my jacket’s gone, ripped from the force of the drop right from my body. My sweater too. Sucked right over top of my head. Just one last layer on me, soaked, covering my torso as I bob in the dark crack. My eyes dart up at the cliff wall of the Resilience, too high to climb. Then I look down but there’s nothing but black metal salt water splashing, driving into me like a thousand knives that cut through my muscles and my bones and it’s the same as when I had to swim from the ship to the shore.
                I realize that the seal will know it only has a jacket, no taste of blood, and it will come back up to the surface to drag me down. It will only be a moment. I can’t see its form coming through the water, and I kick out my legs at nothing, half trying to stabilize myself so I can breathe, and half trying to gouge out the thing’s eyes. And when I raise my eyes to the cliff of the Resilience floe again, hoping to find something to hold onto, something I missed that I can climb up with, I see Russell’s head looking down. Turn around! he yells. And when I do, panicked breaths wracking my chest, I know that I’ll see the seal. But I turn and it’s not the seal. It’s the low cliff of the Ice Pancake, just low enough that I might be able to haul myself up. Climb! Russell yells. The barking gets louder and Voley appears at the edge too, but I block it all out and dig my fingers into the icy shelf. They slip away as soon as I get them locked into a crevice, and nothing holds. I try to go up again and I slide right back down. My head dips under and I wait for the bite. Then I’m up again, thrashing, and I hear Russell shout at Voley to back up, to get away from the edge. But they can’t come in after me—I know. The crack is too small. There’s nowhere to fit more bodies. If they follow in after me, they die too. Everything slows down. I wait in strange calm for the feeling of the teeth, the lock of