Whatve you done, Palm? What the fuck have you done?
Vic crossed the room and grabbed the jar of stale beer with its shriveled green lime. She chugged the bitter breakfast down and grabbed her dive bag. Damn, she was tired. But hopefully Marco hadnt left town without her.
24 A Mad Dash
PalmerDive light and diver were extinguished as one. Palmer felt the wild man sag lifeless to the ground, and the light around his neck threw out one last spurt of red rays before it too gave up the ghost. He was left shaking and terrified in the pitch black. His dive knife felt heavy in his hand.
Palmer wiped the blade on his thigh and placed a hand over his belly, holding the coins there. He remembered that a coin had spilled out, and bent down, patted the floor until he found it. There was a tear in his suit. He felt to see if any of the wires had been severedcouldnt be positive but didnt think so. The knife went back into his boot. He arranged the folded map in his
belly pocket so it was against the tear, outside of the coins, stanching the costly wound.
Reaching for his dive light, he switched it off, shook it, and tried it again. Popping the battery out and touching its leads to his tongue didnt resurrect it. He felt for his visor, wanted to check the charge in his suit, then remembered it getting knocked off. Palmer felt around in the darkness and tried to retrace his steps. The air was fucking awful in there. It was the stench of the dead mixed with the stale and too-weak oxygen. His knees were wobbly. He bumped into a desk. Felt around the corner. Went too far and placed a hand in the gore of the other diver.
Fuck. Fuck.
Palmer backed up, wiped his hand on the ground, wiped again on an office chair, was bumping into things and making noises, ghosts everywhere. He practically crawled on his belly, swept his arms across the floor, found random knick-knacks, lost a coin from his pocket and chased after it, wasnt able to find the damn thing, when he bumped into his visor.
Tank of air , the madman had said. Tank of air but no charge. Palmer had some battery left but no air. Fucking Hap. He tried to remember where the tanks had been. Couldnt see shit. Couldnt see his hand in front of his face. His fins were back in the other room. Vic always made fun of him for using fins, said only beginners wore them, that once you really learned how to flow sand you could do it in your boots. You could do it barefoot.
Palmer strained with his other senses. He listened for the sound of sand tumbling across sand, little tiny rocks the size of pinpricks whispering in diminutive avalanche. He searched for that noise of his life, of his entire goddamn existence: sand on sand.
He heard a sigh. A hush. Barely more than a rustle, maybe the sound of him breathing or his heart thrumming or the brush of fabric between his trembling knees.
But noit was sand moving. Sliding toward him.
Palmer slid toward it in return.
He crawled through the desks, straining to remember the layout of the room, where the tanks had been, where in relation to the drift. There were chairs and desks everywhere. There were tangles of wires and a keyboard. Palmer considered trying his visor, using it to navigate, trying to see by the pulsing purples of open air, but the dead dive light around his neck was a reminder to not waste his charge. His suit had held enough juice to get him down to that building and back to the surface, and he was only halfway through that dive. This is what he told himself as he fumbled around in the darkness: he was only halfway through this dive . He had stopped for a few days, a few hours, who knew how long? He had starved at the bottom of his plummet, had scrounged longer than any living soul ever had, and he wasnt through. Weak and exhausted and terrified, he wasnt through.
Palmer felt sand beneath his palms. He nearly bent and kissed the stuff, those cool granules that reminded him of home. He turned to the side and kept one hand in touch with the slope of drift, the other waving out in space, shuffled along on his knees, when his fingers hit that cool metal.
The tears came. Palmer cried out in relief. But he dared not hope, dared not hope, not until he knew. He felt around the dive tanks for the valveseverything in a different place, a strange arrangement, a different model, three damn tanks to lug, to flow around. No way he could lift all three. He cracked the valve at the top of one tank and felt down the hose to the regulator. With his heart pounding, unable to breathe or think or swallow, he touched the purge button in the center of the regulator.
Nothing. Empty tank. He tried the next. Prayed. Really fucking prayed to the old gods, the ones he didnt believe in, but he promised them now that he would. He would. He would believe. Just give him some air.
But the regulator made no sound. He tried sucking on the mouthpiece to make sure. All he got was dizzy.
Last tank. There was no hope now. No promises to the gods. Nothing but weariness and despair. Anger and fear. And thena blast of air.