Permafrost. M. Schwartz
his father where he estimated he should have been. Flailing his arms and legs against the current, holding his breath against the pressure on his chest, and ignoring all the warning signs a body could give to signal you were, in fact, drowning and get to safety, Jeremy pressed on blindly, searching for his father. As his lungs were warning to burst if he did not breathe soon, he found a pant leg and gripped it with vicelike veracity. Jeremy followed the pant leg down to his feet where he could feel the tangled web of plant growth and roots. With the last few remaining joules of force, Jeremy freed the leg and pulled his father back to the surface.
He was finally able to get his father halfway up on the small island before getting on it himself and crawling behind his father, holding on to his head. Jeremy looked around for help, tried screaming, but his lungs refused. He tried to find understanding in what had just happened. Instead, he found two men standing on the bridge looking down at him. They both had sunglasses on; they both were wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket. However, one had a distinct bird tattoo on his neck. They stared for a moment, down at him and his motionless father, but when the police sirens got louder, they jumped back in the van and took off away from the scene. Jeremy did not know any first aid, but he did have an idea what a person who had drowned look like from TV and movies. His father’s lips were blue; his glazed-over eyes were bloodshot and dilated. His chest was not moving, and with his ears up against his father’s mouth, he could not hear even the subtlest of breaths.
He sat there holding what he already knew was his dead father’s body and screamed. What came out was more of a guttural subhuman scream. It was all his oxygen-deprived and exhausted body allowed. Jeremy’s lips were dry and cracked. His face was flushed red, and his fingers were discolored with a blue-and-purple hue. He began to shake violently. What started as a small shiver from his neck shot down his back and made his whole body shake. He may not have been a medical professional, but he knew the signs of shock and hypothermia and knew his body was taking over going into survival mode.
He had not even noticed the policemen shouting at him or the ambulance crews who had jumped into the water to rescue him. His vision was an unfocused blur of colors that seemed to constantly shift, forbidding him to focus on any one object. His hearing was that of a high-pitched tone that reminded him of a tornado siren. When one of the paramedics grabbed his father’s body, his vision and hearing cleared in a sudden jolt, and Jeremy fought the man and screamed at him to let him go. Another paramedic came up behind Jeremy, put a heavy wool blanket over his body, and tried to calm him down and convince Jeremy that it was okay, and they were there to help.
“It’s okay, son, we got you. Come on, let us help you of out here and warm you up. Come on, son.” One of the paramedics kept repeating like a broken record. After a bit of coaxing, Jeremy finally allowed the paramedics to take his father across the river where some firefighters hauled the corpse up the berm onto the closed-off street. Once they brought Jeremy over and sat him in the back of an ambulance, he was in almost full-blown catatonic shock.
A cop came up to Jeremy very slowly and cautiously.
“Hey son, you okay? Are…are you able to tell me what happened?” the older man asked, almost condescending. Jeremy heard the words but was having trouble processing them.
Son? Is that my dad calling me? Why did he call me son? Why are there cops here? Am I in trouble? Why am I so cold? Where is my dad?
“S…sir?” Jeremy finally managed.
“Can you tell me, what happened here?” the officer repeated.
“There…there was a van, it chased us. I think it hit us and…the river… Where is my dad? I need to talk to him. Where is he?” Jeremy asked looking around, confused. The cop adjusted the thick wool blanket and tried to get Jeremy’s attention again.
“What’s your name?”
“Jeremy…Jeremy Baron.”
“Where are you from, Jeremy?”
“Al…Alabama.”
“Oh wow, you must be cold up here then, huh?” The cop was trying anything to keep the boy lucid and talking.
“Yeah…cold.”
“Who do you root for, son, Auburn or the Crimson Tide?” Jeremy smiled a bit at the absurdity of the question, then he frowned and started to cry.
“What’s wrong? Talk to me, Jeremy.”
“I tried to save him. I couldn’t swim hard enough. I wasn’t strong enough. He died because of me!” Jeremy screamed so loud a large group of first responders stopped what they were doing to look in his direction.
“No no no. It is not your fault at all! It is those guys who chased you and knocked you into the river.” The cop expertly consoled him.
“Two guys…,” Jeremy whispered. “Two white males, sunglasses. Blue jeans and leather jackets, short cropped hair.” The details were flowing back into his mind with clear recollection. He did not even realize he noticed their hair until the words left his mouth, and he knew they were fact. “Maybe six feet, athletic build, one had a tattoo of a bird on his neck covering his throat.” The cop scribbled the details down as quickly as Jeremy was saying them.
“Great work, son, thank you. Stay here. Someone is going to take you to the hospital to get checked out, then you can call who you need to. Okay?” Jeremy looked around at the cacophony of sirens, diesel engines, and a large crane lifting the submerged vehicle out of the river. He took it all in and searched for some understanding and meaning in all of it. Ten minutes ago, he was just another happy kid in school. Now his life had been ripped apart like some cosmic joke, as if some deity sat there upon high, shrugged, and said, “Wonder what will happen if we do…this?”
It was not fair. He had good parents; he was a good son, studied hard, worked on his swimming year-round, never used drugs, and volunteered most weekends he was free. Why did this happen to me? This can’t be real, can it? Why me? What the hell did I do to deserve this? You happy up there? Please don’t let this be real. I’ll do anything to have him back… Please don’t take him from me. Baron pleaded and prayed to anyone who would listen. Tears filled his eyes again, and he realized he never said goodbye or I love you to his dad before he died. The last thing his father heard on this planet was his son crying and blubbering on the phone to a 911 operator, and the thought enraged Jeremy.
Two paramedics hopped in the back of the ambulance with him; they closed the doors as they began to take his vitals and look after the many cuts on his face.
I’ll make it up to you, Pop, I promise, I’ll make it up to you. Jeremy thought. The police would say it was not his fault, and the fact he was able to get him out of the car in the first place was a miracle, but Jeremy had failed. After all of his swimming prowess in a warm clean-and-calm pool with clear lanes, he could not save his father when he needed to. He had failed in saving his father’s life, but in the back of that ambulance, he made a promise to himself and his late father that he would change.
1
Permafrost
The bitter, frigid northern Russian wind whipped and flailed on the scientist’s face like the mythical giant squid attacking an old wooden boat with its tentacles. Dr. Ji-Ho Park was not accustomed to the cold; and even though he wore the most expensive Columbia cold-weather jacket, pants gloves, knit hat, goggles, and balaclava that he could find, the vicious whips of the wind and snow cut him to his weak and aging bones. He carried his most recent deep-earth drilled core samples and opened the heavy metal door that led inside to his heated research building. Dr. Park may have referred to his shack as a “research building,” but it was nothing more than some plywood, metal, and cheap insulation. However, the one advantage he had was it would put a stop to the violent gusts of wind and had a propane-fueled space heater, which Dr. Park brought plenty of canisters for to last throughout the trip.
Inside the building were six large gray plastic shelves that contained hundreds of core samples that had been dug out from various locations in and near the Arctic Circle where the ground was so cold