Hell Rig (15 page)

“Me and my crew were well out in the Gulf when Katrina turned north on us. We had located a large school of shrimp and didn’t want to leave it. The season had been bad and it was the first bit of luck we had. The sea was rough by the time we iced down our catch and headed in. After that, it was one foul up after another, as if the devil himself had it in for us.”

Sims’ chuckle at his joke gave Jeff goose bumps.

“One engine caught fire. We managed to put it out but with just one engine we couldn’t make much headway. The storm caught us. The winds were furious, ripping the breath right out of your lungs. It shredded our nets and yanked the winches right out of the deck, taking a three-foot section of deck with it. The waves pounded us so hard we spent more time underwater than above it. We took on all the water the Gulf had in it and then some. I went below to check on the bilge pumps. I left Kluge, my first mate, in the wheelhouse. A big wave hit us broadside. The boat heeled over on its port side ‘til I was lying facedown on the corridor bulkhead. I thought we were done for, but slowly she righted herself, groaning like a dying animal. I rushed back to the bridge. The windows were smashed and Kluge was gone, washed overboard.

“The pumps couldn’t keep up. We were going down. Our skiff was smashed. I passed out life vests and ordered everyone over the side. I was the last one in. We were out of vests, so I grabbed a float marker and jumped in. I watched from the crest of a fifty-foot wave as my ship groaned out her death throes and slipped below the waves.”

Sims stared at Jeff at moment before continuing. “The others never made it, but I did. I was determined to live. I would have made a deal with the devil if I thought it would save me. Somehow, I stayed afloat and alive and the Coast Guard picked me up after the storm had passed. I lost my ship and my crew. You don’t know how that feels, Towns. I was responsible for their lives and my greed killed them. I should have come back in. If there’s something alive on this platform, it’s me it wants but I ain’t ready to go.”

He turned and walked back down the hallway to his room, leaving Jeff somewhat ashamed at his earlier estimation of Sims, but not quite forgiving. His story explained a lot. A man who had lost everything and held himself responsible could easily become a cynic, but Jeff suspected there was more to Sims’ story than he had revealed. His story sounded too rehearsed, relayed too coldly. Jeff still didn’t trust him.

Restless, Jeff alternately prowled the hallway from the front office to the kitchen, or sat immobile in the dark staring out the front office window. The fog was growing thicker by the hour. By morning, he knew it would blanket the entire rig. Fog in September was common enough in the Gulf but this fog felt different. He recalled his high school science teacher, a skinny man named Mr. Gwaltney who droned monotonously.

“Fog forms in many different ways. First, advection fog occurs when cold moist air crosses a cool surface, like water. This type of fog is common in the Grand Banks but should not happen in the warm Gulf unless an upwelling of colder water occurs. Second, radiation fog, and no, I don’t mean a glowing cloud like the one in the
Amazing Shrinking Man
, Mr. Towns, forms when land heated by the sun during the day cools off after sunset. Next, sea fog forms along coastlines when water droplets condense around sea salt churned into the air by crashing waves.”

Except the sea was at a dead calm and this fog did not move like other fogs. It seemed to pulse forward rather than flow smoothly, as if propelled by some internal force rather than the wind. It was also eerily luminescent, like St. Elmo’s fire.

He was so intrigued by the movement of the fog that at first he did not hear the footsteps in the hallway. Rather than switch on the lights, he grabbed a flashlight. Perhaps it was someone going to the john. He shined the light down the hallway but saw no one. He peeked in the rooms. Everyone was asleep. He looked again—Gleason was gone.

He shook McAndrews awake.

“Big Clyde’s gone,” he said quietly.

“What?” McAndrews replied, peering up at Jeff still groggy with sleep.

“Clyde’s gone,” he repeated.

McAndrews threw off the covers, raced to Gleason’s room and saw the empty bunk. Easton was still snoring softly in the bunk above. “Damn.” McAndrews grabbed a second flashlight from his room.

“I heard footsteps back there,” Jeff told him, pointing toward the rear of the building.

“We’ve got to find him,” McAndrews said. “He may be delirious with a concussion.”

They checked the bathroom first and every room off the kitchen but did not see him. Jeff noticed that the back door was unlocked.

“He went outside.”

When they opened the door, a wall of fog, warm and clammy, fell over them, burning their flesh like fire.

“What the hell?” Jeff exclaimed, staggering back into the kitchen. His face and arms burned where the fog had touched his exposed skin. Small red blisters were already forming.

“Shut the door!” McAndrews yelled as he examined his own arms in wonder.

“What about Big Clyde?” Jeff asked.

“We can’t go out there. Look at that stuff.” He pointed out the window.

McAndrews’ voice had a note of hysteria about it. Jeff wondered what the man had seen that he had not. He shined his light out the window. The fog was gray and menacing. It lifted in large masses before falling and flowing against the door. It glowed with a wan, sepulcher light. Where normal fog looked benign, this fog looked puissant and menacing. Where it cleared, Jeff could see patches of decomposed metal, like rust forming on the deck and railings.

“It’s like an acid, eating the metal,” McAndrews said.

“What is it?”

“Who the hell knows?” McAndrews continued to stare at the fog, mesmerized. Finally, he said, “We should wake the others.”

As soon as Jeff turned on the hall lights, he could hear people stirring in their rooms. One by one, their lights came on.

“Gleason’s gone,” he told them when they poked their heads out of their rooms.

“He must have awakened and wandered off,” Tolson said. “He probably went outside to take a piss. His family didn’t have indoor plumbing until he was fifteen.”

“We have to look for him,” Lisa suggested as she laced up her boots. She had taken off her work shirt, leaving on only a short tube top. Jeff noticed how nicely it hugged her breasts.

“We can’t,” Jeff said as he tried to bring his mind back to the present problem. The others looked at him as if he were crazy.

“Jeff’s right,” McAndrews said. “There’s a strange fog outside.” He held out his arm, covered with tiny red blisters. “It burns to the touch. We can’t go out there.”

“What about Clyde?” Lisa asked. She examined McAndrews’ arm. She was close to tears.

“Maybe he found another place of shelter,” McAndrews said. “If not, I don’t know.”

Tolson shook his head. “This is too damn much. First Bale and now Gleason. We’ve got to get off this damn platform.” He nervously twisted the end of his Fu Manchu moustache.

Easton had not gotten up. Upon hearing about Gleason, he curled up in the fetal position on his bunk and pulled his blanket over his head, whimpering. Jeff saw that Sims’ face was expressionless.

“You don’t look too surprised,” Jeff snapped at Sims.

“Nothing surprises me. That’s how I’m gonna get through all this. Gleason’s a big dude. He can take care of himself.”

Jeff stiffened and stared at Sims.

Ed tried to calm them. “Now, now. We don’t know if anything has happened to Clyde. In the morning, when the fog recedes, we can go look for him.”

“He may be dead by then,” Lisa offered in a wail of anguish.

“Anyone that goes out there now will die,” McAndrews stated flatly.

He picked up the first aid box and removed a tube of burn ointment. He poured a dab on his arms and face handed the tube to Jeff. Jeff rubbed it onto his burns. The cream soothed the pain and stopped the terrible itching on his forehead but did not stop more tiny blisters from forming. Whatever was in the fog was not natural. Too many unnatural things had happened since they had arrived to put it down to rumor and simple superstition.

“He’s right,” Jeff told them. “That fog is alive and dangerous. Somehow I don’t think it will harm Gleason or Waters.”

“Why not?” Lisa asked.

“They’ve both been touched by whatever is going on here. I think the fog is here to keep the rest of us inside, away from them.”

“Why?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeff admitted.

“What about me?” Easton asked, clearly troubled by Jeff’s news. He peeked out from under the blanket with wide, tear-stained eyes. “I’ve been touched, haven’t I?”

“You’ll be all right here with us,” Jeff reassured him, but he had his doubts any of them would be all right for long.

“Maybe we should hold hands and sing
Kum Ba Ya
,” Sims suggested, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Roast marshmallows or make S’mores.”

Jeff turned on him. “Maybe you don’t think this is serious. Why don’t you stick your head outside and see what happens to it?”

Sims simply smiled and walked away, irritating Jeff even more.

“Enough,” Lisa said, tugging on Jeff’s sleeve while frowning at Sims’ back. “Save the hostility for Waters.”

Jeff looked at her and nodded, but he would have preferred to punch Sims’ grin off his face.

Chapter Thirteen

Clyde Gleason regained consciousness lying in his bunk. His head throbbed and his body ached almost as badly as the aftermath of one of his infamous barroom brawls. He barely remembered the falling pallet but did remember someone yelling at him. A vague sense of suffocation, as if being buried alive. He tried to sit up but a wave of dizziness forced him back down on the bunk. He reached up and explored the wound on his head. He felt stitches and his fingers came away wet, startling him.

“Where is everyone?” he asked, looking around the room. The only light came from a single bulb down the hallway.

Slowly, using the power of his massive body, he shrugged off the pain and sat up.

“I gotta take a piss,” he said to himself. He got up and saw Easton asleep in the bunk above him. “Little bastard,” he tossed at the sleeping form. Using the wall to brace himself, he went into the hallway. Raised on a small farm in Picayune, Mississippi, he had grown up using an outhouse or convenient nearby tree long before he ever saw indoor plumbing. Out of habit, Gleason made his way down the hallway and out the back door, passing the freshly scrubbed bathroom.

He walked to the edge of the deck and leaned against the railing, emptying his bladder over the side of the platform. It felt good, like he hadn’t peed in a month. He closed his eyes and rocked gently urging the urine to flow. His task completed, and opened his eyes. It was then he noticed the heavy fog cloaking everything, disguising the angular outlines of the platform under mounds of corpulent mist like kudzu in the spring. He stood in a small clearing surrounded by the swirling, gray, slightly glowing mass.

“What the fu-?” he exclaimed, watching the fog do things fog should not be able to do. He reached out to touch the mist and jerked his finger back quickly. A small blister popped up on the tip of his finger. The fog stung like battery acid, very cold battery acid. “Son of a bitch.”

He began to panic. He looked around and saw the fog rising up the stairwell and over the railings. It reared and swayed like a snake, or a mass of snakes coiling about each other. When the lights suddenly flashed on in the main building, it startled him so badly he almost yelled. The fog receded under the lights but it still covered the deck between him and the door. He looked around and saw a light coming from beneath the radio shack door. He decided to seek shelter there. The fog parted invitingly like waters dividing, providing a clear path to the shack.

Where the fog had rolled back, he was astonished to see layers of rust, even in some of the spots that he and Towns had just blasted and primed that morning.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Shadows moved in the fog. The outlines looked human but oddly misshapen and distorted by the mist. Sounds, moans and ragged breathing, drifted from the mist. Frightened, he reached the radio shack door, jerked it open and slammed it shut behind him. Tendrils of fog seeped under the door. He looked around, spotted a blanket draped over a chair and stuffed it under the door. The wooden door bowed inward as if pushed by some massive force outside. The hinges rattled but held. He leaned against the door, jerking away quickly as the immense cold hit him. White frost outlined the spot where he had leaned. He grabbed a folding metal chair and jammed it under the doorknob. It held.

“Stay away from me!” he yelled. He didn’t know who or what was out there trying to get in, but Bale was dead and he was taking no chances.

Fog covered the single window, leaving an icy rim around the edges. After a few minutes, the fog halted its attack on the door and swirled around the shack like a waterspout. Gleason sat down on the desk with his back against the wall. The cheap metal desk bowed under his immense weight. He drew up his knees and rested his aching head on them. He tried to remember a prayer from his youth.

“Now I lay me down to sleep,” he began. By the time he finished, he felt better.