Absolute Zero (3 page)

“What the hell?” Sommer looked up as the feeble light drained from the sky and left the day in shadow. There was no warning.

The air and water puckered as the wind set its cleats. The treetops bent, the forest dulled from white eye candy to dirty ash. The straight-line gale just smashed down through the clouds.

“Get serious, people . . .” Broker rose in his seat and yelled to warn the other canoe. The blast tore the words from his mouth and threw them away.

“Ahhouuu.”

Milt gave a dare-danger howl as he and Allen sculled in place until Broker and Sommer pulled abreast of them. Then Milt brandished his paddle at the storm. This show of bravado rankled Broker who was gauging the power of the onrushing wind in the way the pines were cranking at the north end of the lake.

“Cinch those vests tight,” he shouted.

Milt sat up abruptly as the full might of the squall exploded around them and the lake erupted into something like a horizontal rapids. Wide-eyed, chastised, he turned to Broker. Ten yards away across the bucking water, there was no mistaking his sober assessment:
This is some serious shit we’re in
.

“No mistakes, no mistakes,” Allen shouted.

“Dig it,” Sommer yelled. Half turned, with one hazel eye flaring over his shoulder, he raised his paddle to drive it into the gray slope swelling up to his front. The stiff wave—three feet high—crashed over the bow and showered him in ice water. The next wave reared, coiled, and Broker leaned into his paddle and watched it come. It had never been warm. Even in summer. For thousands of years that gray water had cherished a geologic memory of its glacier mama.

“Paddle,” Broker yelled. “Stay into the wind.”

“No shit,” Sommer yelled back, his voice giddy with excitement, and they met the wave head on, riding a choppy boost of adrenalin.

Milt swung in so close the canoes bumped gunwales. His powerful twelve-inch wrists drove his paddle in a foaming sculling motion and, freed from his landlubber plodding, he danced on the water. His face clenched in a diagram of practical fear under taut control and formed a question:
What do you think
? His eyes measured Sommer and Allen, who wore braced but game expressions.

Broker looked from Allen to Sommer, back to Allen:
What about Sommer’s guts?

Allen shrugged:
Have to
.

“Fuck you guys,” Sommer snarled, digging in with his paddle.

They sailed on the plume of a wave, dropped into the trough, and the plunge set them all paddling furiously to keep pointed up wind.

They had less than ten inches of freeboard on the heavily loaded canoes. One slipup abeam of these waves and they’d take a boatful of water. If they capsized, the wind would batter them back down the lake. The life jackets would keep them afloat but hypothermia would do them in before they washed up on the far shore.

One look into Milt’s eyes confirmed it: dumping a canoe in these conditions, this far out, was a death sentence.

“Can’t take a chance on turning back,” Broker shouted. He stabbed his finger toward a blur in the distance where a rocky point jutted into the lake, about a quarter mile to the left front. Milt nodded, concurring. He could see the waves peter out on the lee side.

“Tricky. We’ll have to quarter . . .”

“What?”

“Quarter. Off the wind,” Milt shouted again.

“Understand,” Broker nodded vigorously. Then he braced himself and paddled into the freak storm as sleeting rain slashed at his Goretex parka and threatened to freeze, turn white, and blot out his vision.

Jesus. The plunging winds split sideways, sheared off, and scissored slapdash patterns through the water—moguls here, herringbone there. Broker tried to line up Sommer’s green parka with the end of the point that appeared, then disappeared, playing peek-a-boo. This practical exercise in dead reckoning did nothing to mitigate the swooping ant-on-a-twig sensation as the tiny canoe rode the big water.

Abruptly the wind shifted and they found themselves in an eerie acoustic shadow. Sommer threw a look over his shoulder and his expression was vital, happy almost; danger had peeled years from his face. “Hey, Broker, tell me . . .” his voice boomed in the lull.

“What?”

“You voted for Ventura?”

“You’re fuckin’ nuts.”

Sommer’s wild eyes flashed and his reaction to a world that was determined to kill them was to grin, as they wobbled in the belly of a wave with the next crest coming at eye level. Tons of gray-green lake water slid an arm’s length from their faces and they were . . . laughing.

“Stephen Crane. Great line. End of
Red Badge of Courage
,” Sommer shouted sentence fragments in the gusty wind.

“Huh?” Broker strained to hear.

“They met the Great Death . . .”

“Hey, fuck your Great Death.”

“. . . and found that . . .”

“Found?”

“. . . was just the great death,” Sommer roared.

“Fuck him, the horse he rode in on, and the colonel who sent him,” Broker shouted.

“See, it goes easier when you lighten up,” Sommer shouted back.

Which was true. They fell into a powerful slot, pulling together, riding rather than fighting the water. The wind shifted back full force, plugging their ears; but a hot fear now greased their muscles and they were gaining distance. Broker saw the point much clearer now. “Hey, we’re almost . . .”

Sommer answered with a wild bray of pain. Teeth bared, he braced his arms on his paddle athwart the gunwales and trembled.

Fear flipped in Broker’s chest from tonic to paralytic. “You gotta . . .”

“Jesus,” Sommer bellowed.

“Paddle . . .” Broker screamed.

Sommer’s eyes revolved, immobilized by the pain. The bow started to swing. The next wave . . .

“Don’t quit on me, goddammit!” Broker roared.

Sommer gritted his teeth, straightened up, bent stiffly to the work, and powered them into the wave.

Broker hollered, “You okay?”

Teeth clenched, Sommer swore, “Fuck you, paddle.”

“We have to . . . quarter. Off the wind,” Broker yelled.

Sommer looking over his shoulder at Broker, shook his head.
Can’t hear
. Broker stabbed his paddle through the air to give the angle and direction.

“Angle left,” Sommer shouted. Broker nodded his head vigorously.

A wave battered them every two seconds, the crest pulsing in one direction, the trough pulling in another. As they teetered on the crest, they were shoved back by the stiff-arm wind. Leaning forward, they muscled a hole in the blast and plunged down. The waves clubbed Broker’s arms as he extended his J-stroke, adding a sweep to propel the canoe to the left, to cut an angle across the trough. Then he reversed sides and swept his paddle to straighten up into the wind as they climbed the next roller. He was trying to compensate for Sommer’s reduced strength, and the added torque invited tendon and bone to separate.

But they had the technique, and Sommer settled into a jerky but steady paddle as, wave by wave, with total concentration, they crabbed to the left.

They went blind in the drenching needles of spray for whole parts of minutes and could only cling to the direction of the wind. Squinting into the gray shuttles of water and foam, Broker saw Milt’s canoe heave up out of a trough with Allen, a resolute figurehead, paddling doggedly in the bow as Milt bent with grim power in the stern.

Reach, dig, pull, recover. Reach, dig, pull, recover. They clawed for the point on a parallel course.

Five minutes of progress. Ten. Then another spasm crippled Sommer and he cringed over in the bow. His paddle absent, they wobbled, broached a wave, and took on water. Broker’s arms and shoulders cracked as he redoubled his paddling to plow back into the wind. They were losing forward motion, slipping back into the belly of the wave.

They seesawed in the trough and suddenly it was Broker’s turn. For a long, terrible moment he sat frozen, gripped by vertigo and muscle strain, unable to lift his paddle. His forearms were bowling pins, the muscle and tendon fused in spasms. He couldn’t feel his hands or his fingers. His arms had gone numb below the elbows.

They were going to swamp on the next wave.

Sommer turned in the tossing canoe and saw Broker struggling to raise his stone arms. Broker would never forget the way Sommer’s raging eyes willed themselves calm.

Strict with duty, Sommer faced forward and stretched his long arms to the paddle in a powerful sweep. The canoe nosed up into the onrushing wave. The muscle spasm passed and Broker raised and swung his paddle. But he was mostly on the rudder. Hatless, parka hood cowled at his throat, blond hair streaming, Sommer’s powerful arms dug a zigzag trench up and down the waves.

Broker couldn’t tell the time and his head was a clutter of migraine splinters. He knew they were soaked and freezing and way past complete collapse. Water sloshed in the canoe up to their shins and made the boat handle like an iron barge. But they were close, within fifty yards of shore, in among geysers of spume breaking off the rocks. Then it was thirty more yards, then twenty. The waves played tricks with Broker’s eyes and the rocks heaved up around them like huge pitted molars, salivating foam. But strength was flowing back into his arms. When he heard the keel scrape on granite he knew it was going to be all right.

“Sommer, man; you saved our ass,” he shouted in relief.

Sommer had nothing left but a growl of pain. Spent, he pitched forward and crumpled into a ball.

Then he dropped his paddle.

Broker watched the paddle vanish, a streak of yellow in the gunmetal foam. Now the bow rose, swung around without Sommer’s paddle to nail it down, and they rolled sideways and took on a gunwale full of water, and the next wave crashed over them. A ton of ice water slammed into Broker and squashed the air from his lungs.

And they went under.

HOLYJESUSFUCKINCHRIST!

The ice water shattered his blood into red pins and needles. But it was ice water ten yards from shore because Broker felt the reassuring slip-slide of mossy stone under his boots. He pushed up and shot the surface. With his heart and lungs booming too big for his ribs, he bit off chunks of glassy air. Then he hugged his life jacket, checked the snaps to make sure they were tight, and blinked up into streaming snowflakes. Couldn’t see where the snow stopped and where the stinging water started.

So he thrashed toward the shore, swung his head around, and located Sommer’s straw-colored hair bobbing on a crest closer in, among the rocks. He punched through one wave, two, reached out, and got a grip on the swamped canoe that heaved up, buoyant with built-in floatation. Gotta think. Survival bag.

He grabbed the red waterproof duffel bag bouncing from the thwart in front of the stern seat, popped the pressure clasp, and yanked it free, as the canoe wallowed deeper. Using the bag for a float, he kicked over to Sommer who rolled up in the water, coughing.

“Hurts,” Sommer cried out.

“Quit whining.” Broker tried for levity through chattering teeth and a voice that rattled like a snare drum. “Not the end of the world. You’re on top the water. You got air.”

“Hurts,” Sommer said again.

Clutching Sommer’s life jacket, hugging the bag, pumping his feet, he surged through the thrashing surf until he felt his boots scuff solid stone. Having terra firma under his feet backed off the freezing panic, and he forced a deep, shuddering breath and fixed on the problem of survival.

Hypothermia made simple demands on humans who’d evolved in tropical savannahs. They needed fire to get warm and dry, and shelter from the wind. They had to stabilize the body’s core temperature.

Or they would die.

Coughing, puking lake water, he manhandled Sommer’s loose body up on the slick granite. He had to get Sommer’s brain and vital organs out of the water. Seconds were precious now.

Sommer was injured and in shock. Broker went the other way and was on fire with adrenalin. For now, he did not feel the cold or even Sommer’s weight. The wind blazed on his sopping clothing and the snow zinged like white-hot sparks. But it wouldn’t last long. So he quickly checked Sommer for broken limbs and bleeding and found nothing. Which meant it was something internal, something far worse.

He dragged Sommer across the granite slabs up to a loose cobble beach, dropped him, and staggered up the shale. He needed a protected nook in the granite bluff, out of the wind. And found one among a jumble of tall boulders. Better, the broken rocky base of the ridge had trapped tangled piles of almost dry driftwood.

He tossed his duffel into a slant of boulders that formed a broad cranny ten feet deep which stopped the wind on three sides and provided some overhang against the snow. He ran back, seized Sommer’s life vest, dragged him to cover, peeled off the life vest, opened the duffel, dug out a space blanket, and quickly tucked it around Sommer. The reflective wrap would hold some warmth until . . .

Broker shook his head, getting disoriented.

He should gather wood, start a fire. But he had to look for the other guys. He started shaking. Which meant he was losing his fiery edge to a vast, cheerful fatigue that so loved the shelter. So he forced himself out and ran from the bluff, scanning the wind and snow. Milt wore a red parka, Allen’s was blue.

He clambered up the rocks to gain a vantage to overlook the point. If they’d missed the end of the promontory and swamped, they’d be blown back across the open lake.

But he saw Milt almost immediately, a red blur in the surf two hundred yards away on the edge of the point. Knee-deep in the foam, Milt was trying to land the canoe. Allen’s blue jacket moved to shore and back, carrying packs. The canoe was hard to haul because it was full of water. Broker ran toward them. They needed that canoe.

A surge of waves pounded the two men out of sight, and when they appeared again the canoe was tipped, draining. Milt staggered, fell, stood up, and Broker realized he had wrenched the canoe on its side and shook it out through sheer force. Broker scrambled to them and saw three paddles stacked safely ashore against a pack. Good.

“Sommer?” Allen gasped, dragging another pack.

“Bad shape. Don’t know. He’s up the beach, a kind of cave. Need a fire,” Broker yelled.

“Fuck!” Allen scowled. “My medical kit with some decent pain killers. Lost it on the way in.”

“Your canoe?” Milt grimaced to Broker. His right arm hung at an odd angle.

“Swamped. At the other end of the lake by now. What’s wrong with your arm?” Broker asked, getting them moving.

“Can’t move it,” Milt said, wincing.

Allen started to check the arm.

“Not now.” Shivering uncontrollably, out of fire, Broker was naked before the maw of shock. He felt over the packs. They had lost the tents, one of the food packs, and some personal stuff, but they had the sleeping bags and half the food. They’d be all right if they could warm up.

“Get out of the wind. Move.” Shouldering the food pack, giving Allen the sleeping bags, he herded them over the slick rocks. In minutes they were in the dry granite pocket, a magical zone of calm compared to full exposure.

Allen bent and stripped off Sommer’s parka, yanked up his shirt, and pulled down his trousers. He kneaded the bulge in Sommer’s groin.

Sommer screamed.

Broker looked away, spooked. Milt moved close beside him.

“You all right?” Milt asked.

“My arms seized up out there; he busted his gut on account . . .”

Milt cut him off. “You swam him in. Let it go.”

Broker nodded, pawed through his survival pack, cast aside a folding saw, grabbed a small axe, and found what he wanted: the fifteen-minute red highway flare that would save their lives.

Broker and Milt tore into the tangle of driftwood rammed into a rock fissure ten feet away and dragged out pieces. Really shaking now, Broker kicked off branches, grabbed his hatchet, hacked slivers, coring down to dry wood, and tossed it into a small pile. Then he peeled back the flare’s cover, ripped off the friction cap, and struck it along the tip of the fuse like a match. A spout of incandescent flame erupted in a sulphurous cloud. The wood crackled.

“Aw right,” Milt coughed and cheered, seeing the instant blaze. Ignoring his injured arm, he dragged branches, propped them against the rocks, and stomped them into smaller kindling.

The fire was irresistible and Allen joined them. He had the first-aid kit from Broker’s bag in one shaking hand, a plastic vial in the other. “This is all we have. Fucking Tylenol,” he muttered. He pulled himself away, returned to Sommer, and carefully finished removing his wet clothing.

Sommer was snake-bellied, with zero body fat. The baseball-sized bulge in the left side of his groin was unmistakable.

“What is it?” Broker called out.

“Not good,” Allen said as he coaxed Tylenol down Sommer’s throat. “He wouldn’t listen. Won the lottery and just had to go hunting with a hernia.”

Sommer’s grimace was bathed in firelight. “How bad?”

Allen composed himself. “You ruptured yourself, Hank. My index of suspicion is a strangulated intestine.”

Sommer sought out Broker’s eyes with a perverse, painful grimace. “Sit tight,” Broker blurted, “I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Not going anywhere,” Sommer said weakly as his head dropped back down. The three shivering men locked eyes and moved closer to the fire.

“The cell phone,” Allen said in a dull voice.

“Don’t go there,” Milt said.

Broker looked from Milt to Allen. They had gotten their wish. They were on their own.