I sit on Mother’s knee captivated by her wondrous stories filling my head with pictures of home. Her words paint landscapes of tall trees, snow-topped mountains and swelling blue oceans. Beyond, I see tall white towers built to honor our Mother. I can’t move. I’m hurt. I’ve fallen and bruised my knee but Mother rubs it better and her soft voice sooths my pain.
My arm jerks in the small space that is mine. Stay awake! I clench my fists. I must not drift off to sleep. The next time I will not wake again. But I have to recover my strength and escape from this hole. I see Jared’s face as he’d left me. If I can keep his face in mind, I will have something to live for so I can drive my fists into it.
My dream comes back. Fool! I’d never sat on Mother’s lap – she doesn’t have one, she’s nothing but a machine, a deranged machine. Mother has left us to die. She’s banished us from the ship to fend for ourselves, knowing we couldn’t survive long in the harsh climate on the roof of this world. But even now I know the truth, deep down, part of me cannot accept she’d lied to us, and part of me still craves her love, no matter how false I know that to be. It’s as if the foundation she laid when we were so young still supports the older ‘me’ stuck in this snow.
I hold my breath, listening for sounds of a rescuer. But all I can hear is my heart, hammering faster as I hold back the urge to breathe, desperate not to miss a vital sound from the surface. Nothing. Rebekah and the others must have given up. They have no time to waste with their rations running low. I gasp and gulp in the air seeping through the small opening. I’ll never see Rebekah again. I scream at the grey wall inches from my nose. I scream until my throat is sore and my voice has gone.
My head drops forward. I’m stuck fast, I’m never getting out. This is where I will end my short life, joining the hundreds, perhaps thousands of my colleagues held until the end of time under the earth.
I look up to the tiny circle of sky but can see no stars. Perhaps if I’m patient, New Dawn will spin a little further and one will come in to view. I rest my head, there’s no rush. I have the rest of my life to wait.
Scratching? I wake. Did I imagine it? I tilt my head. There it is again. I force my eyelids open and glance up, but the effort is too much and my eyes close. More scratching. Something cold touches my arm – cold and hard. A spray of snow lands in my face followed by fresh air. Icy claws grip my arms and pull. I cry out, not wanting to be taken from my secure place. Again, I try to open my eyes. I mumble. ‘Spoons?’ The spider releases my arm and drills further down, freeing up my legs. I shiver as air rushes in to fill the gaps next to my wet clothes. I slump forward, leaving myself at the mercy of the metal arms waiting to take me. Spoons pulls and I emerge. He gently lays me down. I see another body lying close by but cannot see the face. The sudden chill is too much, I shudder, look up and watch the stars go out.
‘He’s waking.’ My hands and toes are numb, but my stomach feels warm. ‘Yes, his eyes flickered.’ I recognize Rebekah’s voice before I feel her arms wrapped around my body. ‘Noah? Can you hear me?’ I open my eyes and look into her face lit by the light in our shelter. My lips crack to form a smile and I try answer but my throat is on fire. She puts her finger to my lips. ‘Shush, don’t try to speak yet. You’re back and that’s all I need to know.’
Rebekah helps me to sit; she reads my thoughts. ‘We were hit by falling snow from the mountain side. We found Amos not far from you, he’s sleeping now and will be fine, but…’ she glances across to another in the shelter, ‘there’s no sign of Zach.’
Beth bursts in. ‘We can’t find him.’ She can’t hold back her tears. ‘If we don’t find him soon, he’ll… he might… Jared thinks he could be—’
‘Jared!’ I bolt upright. I cough hard. I see his face peering through the gap before he shoveled in more snow. ‘He… he tried to bury me.’
‘Jared?’ Rebekah shakes her head. ‘You must be mistaken. It was Jared who directed Spoons to where we found you. I know he’s a pain but surely he wouldn’t—’
I clutch her arm. ‘But I saw his face, he—’
‘Found you.’ Beth takes my free hand. ‘You were buried for almost an hour. You must have passed out and had a dream. We’ve all been having odd night stories without the headsets.’
Rebekah strokes my face. ‘That makes more sense than him trying to bury you.’
‘But I’m sure he…’ I close my eyes. Could it have been a dream?
The door opens. Rebekah turns as Reuben and Jared enter followed by Spoons. ‘Have you…?’ She doesn’t have to finish; it’s obvious they’ve failed.
Reuben brushes snow from his overalls. ‘It’s impossible. The snow is soft on the surface and now frozen solid just beneath, even Spoons is struggling to walk in that stuff. Noah!’ He rushes forward, almost tripping and landing on top of me. ‘Great to see you’ve recovered.’
Jared joins him. ‘I’m so glad we found you. For a moment, I thought you were lost,’ he bites his lip, ‘I don’t know how we could have carried on without you.’
I watch his face. ‘Thank… thank you. Beth tells me it was you who found me.’
He pats my shoulder. ‘You’d have done the same for me.’
Rebekah’s eyebrow rises. ‘See.’ She stands. ‘Right. Beth and I will continue the search, we have to find Zach.’
‘Is that wise?’ Jared removes his hand from my arm and climbs to his feet.
‘What do you mean?’ Rebekah frowns. ‘We can’t leave him in the snow.’
‘But it’s been almost ten hours.’ Jared lifts the lid on the ration crate and peers inside. ‘He’s probably dead already and we can’t afford to waste any more time. The food won’t last until the dawn if we stay much longer.’
Rebekah slumps against the other crate. Her head drops into her hands. After a minute, she looks up. ‘What do the rest of you think? Do we leave Zach for… dead?’
Beth is the first to answer. She sobs ‘I don’t think we have a choice. If Spoons can’t find him, what chance do we have?’
Reuben sighs. ‘They’re right. If we sit around and wait for the snow to thaw, it will be too late. There’ll be seven bodies instead of one.’
‘But,’ Rebekah looks to me, ‘we’ll have to wait for Noah and Amos to recover fully to travel. That gives us time for one more search.’
I hold up my hand to Reuben. He pulls me up. ‘Reuben’s right. We have no time, we can’t wait.’ I stagger forward but regain my balance. ‘We have to go now.’
Rebekah wipes something from her eye. ‘Wake Amos. We go now, but,’ she places her hand on Spoons, ‘we promise to come back one day, find Zach and give him a proper burial.’
The going was heavy over the snow that had fallen from the mountain side. We sank up to our knees with every step and the sledge constantly tipped over, slowing our progress to a crawl, but worse, it drained the energy from our limbs. Even Spoons seemed to have difficulty pulling the sledge and got stuck several times so we had to dig his feet out of the packed snow.
But we tramped on in silence determined to see lighter skies ahead. I thought of Zach. I tried to reason that he would have felt little pain. My body had numbed in minutes and I know I would have drifted off to a deep sleep, never to awake. But all I can see is poor, trapped Zach, entombed in snow waiting for the end to come. Yet Jared was right – we had to leave. And the more I think about it, the more I believe I’d dreamed he’d tried to bury me.
The ground feels harder. I raise my head and see we’ve rounded the bend and passed from beneath the ledge that had dumped its burden on our heads. I check ahead. My spirits rise. ‘Look!’ The team stops. I point. ‘There, between those peaks. I can see open sky, we must be close to the other side.’
Rebekah stumbles to the front and grabs my arm to prevent her fall. She straightens and peers through the gap. She gasps. ‘He’s right. We’re nearly through.’
Reuben and Amos join us. Amos stands on tiptoe. ‘It has to be easier going once through. We’re going to make it, we’re going to see the dawn.’ He glances to Rebekah. ‘Aren’t we?’
Rebekah nods, tears of relief beading on her eyes. She wipes them with her sleeve. ‘We will, Amos. Let’s hope the land is flat beyond. We’ll reach the dawn in no time at all.
’