Noah's Ark: Contagion (16 page)

“Sure, be a pleasure.”

Lucya left the bridge, giving a little wave to the girl, who smiled back. She felt sick to her stomach about hiding the truth from her.

The ship was still mostly deserted. A few people had found the courage to come out of their cabins, mostly spurred on by a need for food that was greater than their fear of contracting the virus. But their bravery, or desperation, went unrewarded as the restaurants remained closed. As she passed the kitchens she found a small crowd had forced open the door, looking for anything they could find to eat and to feed their hungry families. But the shelves were empty, the kitchen deserted. Lucya knew that the last remaining supplies had been moved to another store room following the fire; that the group would never find anything. But she wasn’t about to tell them that. Instead, she passed on by, heading lower into the ship, down to the engine room. By the time she reached deck one, there was no light. Below the waterline the deck lacked windows. With the batteries out, even the emergency lighting was off. Lucya had to feel her way along the corridors to try and work out the correct route from memory.

“Martin? Are you down here? Anyone? Can anyone hear me?” Her voice echoed down the metal passageways, bouncing off bulkheads and ringing through store rooms. It met only silence.

It wasn’t until she reached the door to the temporary morgue that she realised she had been heading in completely the wrong direction. A thought popped into her head, and she banged on the door.

“Janice? Are you in there?”

She heard the sound of footsteps on the other side. The door clanged, and opened a little way. For a second she was blinded by a brilliant white light.

“Gosh, sorry, hang on! There, that’s better. I’m so sorry about that.”
 

Lucya blinked and rubbed her eyes, trying to see who was speaking. “Are you Janice?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Lucya, from the bridge. I’m trying to get to the engine room, but without lights it’s not easy. I thought maybe you might have a torch or something. Looks like I was right.”

“Yes! I have a couple. Some of the nurses managed to find them from somewhere. They’ve been very helpful; the light down here is far from ideal. I can get close in on organs with these. Here, take this one. I’ve opened up enough bodies. Doing any more isn’t going to tell me anything new.”

“Thanks. So, have you, you know, discovered anything? Is this cure they’re talking about going to work?”

“Captain Noah briefed me on the idea, and it sounds reasonable. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. Vaccines usually take years of development. Even if Vardy’s magical machine can manufacture something that tackles the virus, we won’t know if there are any side effects until it’s too late. It’s a big risk.”

“Not a bigger risk than doing nothing though.”

“No, that is true.”

“Are you going to go back to your cabin, if you’ve finished here?”

“You know what? I think I’ll sit it out down here. My cabin is on deck eight, and it sounds like they need all the space they can use up there.”

“Don’t you have someone waiting for you, wondering where you are?”

Janice smiled, but it was a sad smile. “No, I don’t.”

“Oh I’m sorry. You lost your husband to the ash?”

“No! Not at all. I came on this cruise on my own, I didn’t lose anybody.”

Lucya was about to ask a question, but thought better of it. “Right, well thanks for the torch. I’m going to try and find out what’s happening with the power.”

The two women smiled at one another, and Janice pushed the door closed. Lucya walked away slowly, lighting the path with the tiny pocket torch she’d been given. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for the pathologist. Choosing to spend her time in a room full of dead people struck her as very odd indeed, even if the living were hardly in a much better state.

• • •

Ewan extracted four torches from the crate and distributed them among the landing party. He flicked his on and a powerful beam cut through the darkness inside the concrete pillar. Leaving the box outside, and with the L85 rifle in one hand, torch in the other, the submariner stepped into the darkness and began to descend the staircase. The rubber protection on their feet meant that as they followed, none of the men made a sound as they moved underground.

The air was noticeably warmer inside, out of the wind that whipped across the loch. To Jake’s surprise the stairs did not go very deep. They ended in a narrow grey corridor, just wide enough for two men to walk side by side. It sloped away gently, almost imperceptibly. Ewan continued to lead the group, with Eric bringing up the rear. Their torch beams flashed around the featureless concrete walls, but there was nothing to see. After fifty metres they made a sharp turn to the right. Facing them was another door.

“Russell?” Ewan looked at the doctor. “I’ve never used this entrance. How does it work?”

“It’s been a while, but there was a security pass system. You had to hold your badge up to the scanner, there.” With his torch, he picked out a small box mounted on the wall. “But without electricity, that’s clearly not going to work.”

“How thick is the door?”

“Not very, not that I remember. Don’t forget, this whole compound was high security. You needed to go through three checkpoints just to get to that outer door, which was permanently manned too. By the time you got down here the security was less tight. You thinking of blowing this one too?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Ewan was tracing the door frame with his own torch beam. “Best to avoid that sort of thing in this confined space.” He pulled off his gas mask and took a deep breath.

The others did the same. There was no ash underground, and little danger of any making it this deep into the complex. The air was stale. Not like the recycled air on the
Ambush
though, Jake thought. This air was musty and humid.

Ewan pulled open a pouch that he had tied around his waist. Jake hadn’t noticed it before; it was the same colour as the wetsuit. Inside was a selection of tools, and he selected a tiny electric screwdriver. Eric stepped forward and focussed his light on the door hinges, while Ewan began removing them.

• • •

With her little light to guide her, Lucya found the engine room with ease. She didn’t knock but went straight in.

“Martin? Are you in here? Where are you, Martin?”

The engine room was a huge space. Three massive diesel electric generators dominated the tunnel-like chamber. Lucya found it quite eerie being in the bowels of the ship without the familiar howl of these dirty engines. The stillness and silence gave the place an unreal quality, making it feel almost as if time itself had stopped.

She found Martin where he had fallen, sprawled over the coiled black cable. His head was thrown backwards at a frightening angle and her immediate thought was that his neck had snapped. On closer examination it was clear that wasn’t the case, but it was still a delicate operation to move him into a more suitable position on his side.

With no means of communication, there was no way to call for help. Lucya knew she needed to get him to medical, and the only way to do that was going to be on wheels. Once she was happy that he was in no danger of choking on his own tongue, and that his pulse was stable, she began to search for suitable transport.

Her eye was drawn to a glow coming from a panel directly opposite where Martin was lying on his side. It was emanating from a little red light, just bright enough to be noticeable. It seemed odd to her that in a ship without power, one light remained on. Curiosity got the better of her and she went to take a closer look.
 

The light was a warning indicator, labelled
“Batt. Cool.”
As she stood there trying to work out what it could mean, a second indicator lit up. She leaned over and shone her torch on the panel to read its markings. It was labelled
“Critical.”
 

To the right of the warning lights were a set of four meters. Lucya thought they looked a lot like the speedometer from a car, each with a needle swinging around a round scale. The meters were also labelled
“Batt. Cool.”
Most of the scale was black, but to the far right was a section in orange, marked
“Danger”
and another section in red, marked
“Critical. Risk of Explosion.”

Three of the dials were in the orange sections. The fourth was in the red.

Seventeen

A
S
THE
SCREWS
came out of the door hinges, the door itself appeared to try and push outwards, towards the little landing party. It was as if it was straining to burst open. Instinctively, Jake took a couple of steps back. The last hinge gave way without warning, flying off the frame with a pinging sound. The door was flung open from the hinged side. The bolts—still shut on the other side—twisted and buckled, filling the passageway with the sound of metal being wrought out of shape. At the same instant, a cloud of white gas erupted out of the doorway, swirling and eddying around the men.

“Masks!” Eric shouted, pulling his own gas mask over his head.

The three navy men dropped to the floor automatically. Jake followed their lead, all the while scrambling to get his own mask back on. His haste caused the straps to become twisted and tangled, and the urge to breathe was overwhelming. He could hold out no more, and gulped in a lungful of the seething cloud. The gas reached his lungs in a second, and for the briefest of moments he thought he was about to drown. Then the burning started. It was like someone had lit a fire inside his chest. Every filament of his lungs felt as though it was individually exploding, and searing pain flushed through him. He lost his balance and fell back against the wall, his head thumping against the concrete.

“Mask! Get his mask on!” he heard someone shout. He was being pulled in a thousand directions at once, a hundred hands were scrabbling to get the gas mask over his face. All he wanted to do was breathe in cold air, to put out the fire in his chest, but the fear of making the pain worse paralysed him.

“Jake! Breathe! Take a deep breath! Come on, Jake, breathe!”

His head was swimming. Logical thought abandoned him, and with it the fear that prevented him from acting. His body took over, and he began to draw tiny breaths. The filtered air tasted of charcoal and plastic, but it didn’t burn. Oxygen reached his brain, and his mind started to clear. The pain had eased and was replaced with an intense irritation. He wanted to scratch at his insides, to rub away the itch, but it was impossible. All he could do was cough and splutter, but the mask made even that simple action difficult.

A pair of hands grabbed him under his arms and dragged him around the corner, away from the door. His mask was pulled off and he immediately gulped down the cleaner air, coughing and heaving between breaths.

Slowly, he regained control of his body. His lungs felt ready to burst, like he had just run a marathon, but he was breathing normally. He tried to focus on the men sitting around him, although his head was still swimming.

“Wha…” He tried to speak, but only a croak came out. “Wha…” He puffed and wheezed, replacing more of the gas in his lugs with humid, stale air. Someone put a small bottle of water to his lips, and he let the cool liquid run into his throat, cleansing it of mucus and slime. He opened his mouth to speak again: “What happened?”

• • •

Lucya stared at the meters. There was no doubt about it, the needles were definitely creeping upwards towards the red section. She looked back at Martin and make a decision.

“I’ll be back,” she said quietly.

It took her two minutes to run most of the length of the ship, back to the temporary morgue. She hammered on the door with her fist, shouting as she did so.

“Janice! Open up, it’s an emergency!”

The door opened a crack and Janice looked at her, worried.

“Lucya? What is it?”

“I need your help. Martin is injured, and I don’t have time to get him upstairs to medical. You have to take a look at him, see what you can do. There is a problem in the engine room and I’m worried it’s serious. I have to find someone who knows what to do!” The words tumbled out breathlessly.

“Alright, calm down, Lucya. Tell me where to find Martin and I’ll see what I can do.”

Lucya gave directions to the engine room and explained where she would locate him.

“Okay, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Janice said, stepping out into the corridor.

“Don’t you have a bag? You know, a medical bag or something?” Lucya pointed at the doctor’s empty hands.

“My equipment isn’t much use on the living I’m afraid.”

“Right. Of course. Look, I have to go. Take care of him okay?” Without waiting for an answer, she sprinted off towards the stairs.

On reaching deck two her first thought was to try and find some of the other engineers. The trouble was she didn’t know many of them, and had no idea where the cabins could be of the few she might at least recognise by sight. The place was still deserted, every door firmly shut. Knocking on doors to try and find someone qualified could take forever. Instead, she carried on running to the walkway for the
Ambush
.

Lucya had only been inside the submarine once, on a tour given by Coote for the bridge crew. She hadn’t enjoyed the experience, finding it quite claustrophobic, and had avoided any further visits. Looking across the walkway she tried to bury her fear. She reminded herself that Jake was counting on her. He had left her in charge. Three thousand souls were at risk; there was no time to waste hesitating. She gulped, and set off over the bridge.

Brian was standing guard on the conning tower of the
Ambush
. He smiled kindly when she arrived, out of breath and flushed red.

“Morning, ma’am,” he said cheerfully. “Are you expected?” Access to the submarine was controlled. All members of the committee could come and go as they pleased. Anyone else needed to be accompanied by a crew member of the
Ambush
.
 

“I need to see Coote,” Lucya said. “It’s urgent.”