Noah's Ark: Encounters (27 page)

Jake waved a hand. “It doesn’t need to. Do what you have to.”

They looked sceptical, but they didn’t question. Pushing hard, they buried the spears until almost half their considerable length had disappeared into the white plastic. Satisfied with their efforts, they picked up the strange construction and inserted the exposed section of the harpoons into the launcher, squeezing them together so that they both fit in the small tube. The raft wobbled precariously, but it held.

“How far do you think it will go?” Jake asked.

“Never used one of these. The raft don’t weigh much, just bulky is all. No way of telling though.”

“No,” Jake said thoughtfully. “No, you’re right. Probably best you get yourselves to the back of the ship. On your way, collect up the other two and Bodil. Stand by to launch that lifeboat if necessary.”

“Captain, what are you planning?”

“If we can’t find that submarine, then we’re going to make it come to us. Now, go, quickly!”

The men nodded, and scarpered. They passed Daniel coming the other way.

“Found some duct tape. Every engine room has some!”

“Perfect.” Jake took the tape and unrolled a length. He placed the radio he was still holding onto the top of the raft capsule, and stuck it down in such a way that the controls were accessible. With both hands now free, he peeled off more of the tape and wound a full length all around the capsule. Finally, he pulled on the radio to check it was secure.

“Daniel, thank you.” He stuck out a hand. Daniel shook it uncertainly. “You’ve been a great help and it’s been an honour. Now, please get to the stern with the others. If need be, launch the lifeboat and get out of here. Don’t wait for me.”

“How will I know if we have to launch the boat?”

“You’ll know.”

Daniel patted Jake on the shoulder. “Good luck, man. Whatever it is you’re planning.” With that, he was gone.

Alone at last, Jake turned back to the strange raft assembly. He switched on the radio and set the frequency from memory. He found the delayed transmission function, and set it to fifteen seconds, the highest it could go. He silently thanked Lucya, his chief radio officer and his beloved partner, for her insistence on keeping all bridge officers up to date on the workings of the radio equipment.

He checked his watch. Six minutes to the deadline. There was no more time, but he had to choose his words carefully. He bent over the little radio, pressed in the transmit button, and began to speak.

• • •

Dan Mitchell was getting desperate. He’d arrived in the medical centre to find a sign on the door that said
“Back soon. In case of emergency, please try cabin 845.”
How soon, he’d wondered? He banged on the door anyway, but nobody came. So he had gone back to the lift, back up to deck eight, and found cabin 845.

That room had had a sign on the door too. “
Quarantine: Strictly No Admittance.”
And again, he’d tried banging on the door anyway. This time someone had come. They’d shouted out the same message as the sign outside; they weren’t letting anyone in.

“My wife is having a baby!” he had cried.
 

There had been a pause, then: “Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?”

“No! Really. Surely you must know about this if you’re medical?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help. This is a quarantine area. Nobody in or out without permission from Doctor Vardy.”

“Where is Doctor Vardy?”

“Probably in the medical centre.”

“I’ve just come from there.”

Another pause. He’d thought he heard voices, a discussion behind the door. Then: “He might be on deck two. By the classroom.”

“Thanks.”

Deck two wasn’t an area Dan had frequented. There had been no conferences on the cruise, he didn’t gamble and so had not been to the casino, and since the asteroid he’d had no call to visit the classrooms. So he wasn’t sure what to expect when he had gone down there, but it certainly wasn’t being met by an armed guard.

“I need to see Doctor Vardy.”

“Nobody goes in or out. Sorry.”

“But my wife is having a baby!”

“Try medical.”

“I have. There’s nobody there!”

“Sorry, mate. Can’t help you then.”

“But…she’s having a baby!”

“You said. P’raps you should be with her?”

“But we need a doctor, or a midwife. Is Carrie down here?”

The man had not answered the question, but Dan had been sure the answer had to be yes. “We have an ongoing situation here, mate. Nobody goes in or out. I’m sorry I can’t help. I must ask you to leave.”

Dan had done as he was told. He thought about Vicky. She would have argued, forced her way through, armed guard or no armed guard. But he wasn’t Vicky, he was Dan. The shy one, the weak one, the one who avoided conflict at all costs.

After deck two he had tried the bridge, but was told to get lost. He’d tried to find someone from the committee, but none could be found. He’d even gone to the security office in the hope that a security escort could find Vardy, or indeed anyone medically trained to help, but that office was locked up and empty.

Now, after exhausting all ideas, he decided to try the medical centre one more time. Dan never ran, but he walked very fast down the corridor of deck five. Faster than he remembered ever having walked before.

The sign was still hung on the door.

Back Soon

He tapped politely, then when there was no reply, he banged harder. “How long is soon? Is nobody there? My wife is having a baby!”

Nobody answered.

Thirty

T
HE
PAIN
WAS
becoming unbearable now. Her legs were in danger of getting cramp, and if that happened, Lucya knew she wouldn’t be able to avoid crying out. She tried to stretch them, to bend them, to do anything to help improve the circulation, but her movement was so restricted, the tiny movements she could manage made almost no difference at all.

The legs were only half the problem. Her arms in front of her had gone completely numb. After the sneeze, she hadn’t dared try and replace the plastic vial in the neck band for fear of making a noise and drawing more attention to herself. Now it sat precariously in her hands. She couldn’t feel it, so just gripped it tightly, an action that was bringing her more pain as her muscles cried out for some respite.

Finally, the cold was making the whole ordeal twice as agonising. Vardy had warned her. He’d said the cold would bite, that she would go through hell. When the fans had restarted, it hadn’t seemed so bad. The air was chilled, but hardly up to the Arctic conditions they had experienced at the North Pole. She’d been moving then, though. Exerting energy, generating body heat. Now, motionless in the coffin-like tube, the chilly air was slowly refrigerating her. Her body shivered involuntarily, desperately trying to create warmth, and she fought it constantly for fear of making noise.

There was one upside to the torment, one positive aspect to the situation that kept her hanging on: the Koreans were suffering even more.
 

She focussed her mind on listening to what was going on in the classroom, trying to picture the scene playing out so close by yet out of sight.

It had started with mumbled complaints. At least, she assumed they were complaints. It was hard to tell; the men sounded pretty upset all the time anyway. Since the virus had been released, there had been a definite downturn in the vibe. There had been coughs and sneezes. Lucya didn’t think she’d heard any of those before releasing the fine spray, but she hadn’t been paying attention then either. A better signal had come when the leader’s voice, easy to pick out because it sounded somehow angrier than any of the others, had made some kind of demand of one of his men. The man had replied, and then an argument had ensued. This had resulted, she had deduced from sound alone, in the man being hit by the leader. Whatever reaction he had been expecting, he didn’t get, and the other men had all gasped. After that there had been a bit of a panic, and the men talked among themselves, their voices filled with fear. The leader had brought them to attention, and snapped more orders. The man who had been struck was carried into a corner. Not the same corner as Erica, but a corner that Lucya could just about see through the grille. Luckily for her, the man was, by this time, unconscious. Had he been awake, he would have been looking directly at the grille and would likely have seen her hands. As it was, Lucya could see his head. Not clearly, but enough to be sure that his hair was falling out and his face was covered in deep red blotches.

She was stunned. These were unmistakable effects of the advanced stages of the virus. It was working incredibly fast.

No sooner had the man been dumped in the corner away from the others, than more bickering had started up. The leader was losing control as fear and uncertainly gained the upper hand.

The children remained quiet. Those who had the unfortunate idea to speak or to cry were rapidly shouted down. They’d learned quickly, and kept their noise level to a minimum.

Lucya started to shiver again. She battled with herself to stay still, to stay silent. Her concentration was broken by a voice.

It was Erica.

“Excuse me? I think you should get a doctor.”

“Quiet!” The angry bark of the leader.

“Sorry. It’s just, you’re all sick, aren’t you? People on this ship were sick like that. Lots of them died, but the doctors saved the rest. If you don’t see a doctor, you might die.”

“I say quiet, girl!”

Erica ignored him. Lucya shut her eyes and silently begged the girl to do as the man said and shut up, but in vain. “If you’re dead, you won’t be able to get on your ship, will you? I thought you wanted to get on your ship? You should see Doctor Vardy. He helped lots of people.”

“Stop!” His voice got louder; he was coming closer to Erica. Then he cried out in pain. One of his men said something and he shouted back at them twice as loud. Then, silence once more.

Lucya waited for someone to move or say something, but it seemed they were all in fear of their leader, who, by her best estimation, was somewhere close by, near the ventilation grille.

At that moment, her arms gave up. Tired, numb, devoid of feeling and ignoring the instructions from her brain, her hands fell open. The empty vial rolled silently across her right palm, then clattered down onto the shaft, bouncing three times. The sound echoed all the way back to the plant room.

• • •

He released the transmit button and repositioned himself behind the launcher. Out loud, he counted down the seconds.

“Fifteen elephants, fourteen elephants, thirteen elephants, twelve elephants…”

His hands gripped the wide handle. The cannon swung easily, even with the unwieldy package protruding from the end. He held it fast, pointing out to sea, away from the
Spirit of Arcadia
. The trigger mechanism was operated by a secondary handle. Jake thought it looked like a bicycle brake; a strange association for such a potentially deadly device. He pushed the thought aside and realised he had almost lost count.

“Seven elephants, six elephants…”

No time to lose. He stretched his fingers out and curled them around the lever. Without another thought, he squeezed.

There was a one-second delay.

“Five elephants…”

Then, a muffled crack as the explosive charge fired. The twin harpoons forced themselves deeper into the capsule, and for a split second Jake was afraid they were going to come right out the other side. His fears were for nothing though. As the spikes pushed against the compressed raft inside the plastic cocoon, they could bury themselves no more, and their momentum was transferred to the capsule itself. With a strange whoosh like a dud firework going off into a crazy spin, the whole bizarre assembly launched itself forwards and out of the cannon.

“Four elephants, three elephants…”

It flew better than he had expected, and whilst it didn’t exactly soar like a bird, it did travel a good ship’s length, maybe more, all the time arcing downwards towards the sea.

He scrabbled around in his pocket and found the second radio. Realising he should have switched it on before launching, he poked at the power button repeatedly.

“Two elephants, one elephant…”

The radio popped into life. He twisted the dial and watched as the digital readout counted up to the frequency he was desperate to hear.

“Zero!”

One more turn.

The capsule hit the water.

The radio remained dead.

“Shit!”

Then he heard his own voice from the little speaker, tinny and compressed. At the same time, he watched as the white plastic cocoon split in two.

“
Spirit of Arcadia
, this is Captain Coote of HMS
Ambush
. The enemy submarine has disappeared, we are surfacing. Prepare for docking.”

The black-and-orange raft spilled out of its shell. Even from his position on the
Lance
, Jake could hear the hissing of the compressed-air cylinder filling its chambers. Folds of rubber unfurled and expanded, growing and taking shape at incredible speed.

Jake’s voice echoed from the radio once more, the auto-repeat function doing its duty perfectly. The radio hissed static for a second, then squelched itself silent. The raft was fully inflated, drifting freely, a dark blob on a darker ocean.

“Come on…see it. See it!”

He moved to the very bow of the ship and leaned over the handrail, scanning the sea, looking for any sign of activity, of life.

It didn’t take long.

From his port side he caught sight of movement. Below the surface of the water, a slender object moving at high speed. In another time, another place, it could have been mistaken for a dolphin, riding alongside the cruise ship, playing in the wake. But this was no dolphin. This was death in a tube. It was headed directly for the life raft.

Thirty-One

D
AN
FOUND
HER
on the floor on all fours when he returned. Her strained expression told him everything he needed to know.

“Where….argh!” A scream, then panting, before she could speak again. “Where’s Carrie?”