Stranded by Bracken MacLeod Read Free Book Online Page B

the engineer’s cabin was open a crack. “Martin? You in there?” Noah knocked. He pushed the door wider and peered inside. The room was dark and he couldn’t see much more than what the light from the passageway allowed. He was about to leave and head for the machine room when Martin said, “Come in and shut the door, man.”
    â€œYou’ll never believe it, but I think I just slept like twenty hours. Do you know what time…?” Noah trailed off as he walked in. Martin lay on his bunk in the dark. He’d pulled the curtain over his porthole window and his pillow over his head. Lifting it away from his face, he waved a weak hand at Noah. “Sit anywhere,” he joked.
    â€œYou all right? You didn’t kill that bottle without me, did you?” Noah pulled the chair away from the desk and sat.
    â€œNot hungover. Definitely not all right, either.” He tried to stuff his pillow under his head but it hung up on the frame at the top of his bunk. Noah reached over and, lifting Marty’s head with a gentle hand, slipped and straightened the cushion beneath him. Marty let out a long sigh. It didn’t sound like relief, but rather suffering at the effort of lifting his head. “I’ve got whatever’s going ’round the ship. Fucking killer headache. Kinda want to die. You know. How ’bout you?”
    Noah’s headache was gone; a dim fuzziness was his only real complaint. Although he was a little achy, he seemed to be getting better. It seemed everyone else on board had caught his concussion … or had been poisoned by the same thing. “I’m on my feet,” he said. “On the mend, actually. I’m doing better than you and everyone else.”
    Marty rolled his head to the side, opening his eyes a slit. He squinted and shielded them with a hand. Noah got occasional migraines. He knew what it was like to feel light sensitive, how even dimness felt like staring into the sun. Marty abandoned trying to block the light and instead slapped his hand over his eyes, squeezing.
    â€œWas it something that burned in the fire, Marty? What the fuck have we been breathing that’s making everyone sick?”
    â€œWhat? Nothing, man. It’s the same material in every equipment panel. Shit catches fire all the time and nobody gets sick. There was nothing special in that one. At least nothing I know about.”
    â€œThen what?” Noah asked.
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t want to know. I just want to feel better.”
    Noah leaned forward, wanting to help his friend, but had no idea how. He couldn’t make it darker or pull a bottle of Tylenol from the æther. He sat back in his chair feeling frustrated and impotent. Bashing ice off the rails had felt pointless, but it was something. The satisfaction of it breaking under his hammer reinforced the effort and kept him swinging even as the ice built up in front of him. A day or two later, the joints in his fingers and hands were still sore and stiff, but the feeling was earned and had a purpose. By contrast, sitting still, watching someone suffer, struck at the heart of a man whose approach to a problem was to just get down and solve it. He could fix his car, he could repair a thing, he could build something out of useless raw material. But there was nothing in his skill set to help a person overcome suffering. That, too, he’d learned from painful experience.
    â€œYou have anything in your cabin?” Martin said. “Ibuprofen or whatnot?”
    â€œI forgot to pack ’em. I saw the doc … a while ago and he’s tapped, too. All he has left is the hard stuff.”
    â€œI’m up for the hard stuff. I could totally Rip Van Winkle the rest of this job,” Marty said.
    â€œIs it that bad?”
    â€œI’m seeing things, man. I just wanna go to sleep and wake up on the other end.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘seeing