Stranded (30 page)

This was a fresh hell.

This was out of his control, and it threatened to take him offline again. But they couldn't afford another hour of half-catatonic indecision. He had to keep the system running.

It wasn't the smell in his nostrils that made him want to throw up, though. It was the fear. Fear infiltrated every part of him now. Not just his heart and his mind, but his spine and legs and hands. The room began to tunnel and pitch. He forced himself to inhale, taking in the polluted air. Tinctured as it was, it was good to breathe deeply. His vision broadened and he felt his feet firmly under him again.

“I don't get it,” Connor said. “I thought Henry was with him.”

Noah didn't want to say it. Unspoken, it could still be denied. He shook his head slowly, trying to deny it. But the body at their feet had volumes to say on the subject. He spoke as loudly and clearly as an emergency Klaxon telling them to run, abandon ship.

“He has to kill everybody in his way. First his twin … and then everybody from his own reality. When no one's left, he thinks he can pick his world.”

Connor dropped his crowbar, chipping a hole in the tile. He growled in frustration through gritted teeth and pressed his fists into his eyes.

Noah's skin tightened at the sound. His head whipped around toward the door, still ajar, waiting to see the barrel of a rifle pushing through. He ran across the room and pushed it shut, throwing the dead bolt. He held a finger to his lips for Connor to be quiet, but his friend didn't see the gesture, still pressing at his eyes as if he could dispel the images assaulting his consciousness with physical pressure. Noah knew that wouldn't work. He'd spent an hour already trying.

“It doesn't … make any sense,” Connor said. “Why would he think … What would make…” He doubled over and dry heaved. Noah tried to help him into a chair out of sight of the corpse, but Connor insisted on staying on his feet. Noah moved back to the desk, stepped over Henry's body and opened the drawers in the desk, rifling through papers and office supplies. The drawer on the bottom right was locked, but he popped it open with Connor's crowbar.

“What're you lookin' for?” Connor asked, drawing his sleeve across his mouth. He breathed a heavy sigh and stood up straight, seeming to have expelled what he needed in order to press on.

“I don't know. Something better than this.” He set the crowbar on the desk and yanked the hanging file folders out of the drawer, tossing them on the floor. There was nothing under them. He'd hoped for a lockbox with a pistol or even a dangerous-looking letter opener. But there was nothing. If the manager of the rig had secreted away a weapon or even a bottle of whisky, he'd taken it when they abandoned the structure.

He glanced down at Henry. Beside the knife sticking out of his chest were two wounds. It appeared to have taken Brewster a couple of tries before landing the lucky shot that slipped in between Henry's ribs into his heart. What must have been running through the senior deckhand's mind as he was betrayed?
Why me? Why now? Is this all?
Whatever it was, it was too late for his thoughts to matter. Still, Noah wanted to know them. It seemed important for some reason. He might have his own final thoughts soon enough.

Bending over, he grabbed the knife handle. It was cold and tacky. He pulled. It stuck. A fresh sense of nausea bubbled up in his belly at the sensation of pulling at the tool, making him want to let go and give up. There were other knives in the galley if he wanted a weapon that badly. He didn't need this one. Still, he pulled harder until it came free with a wet, grating sound—metal scraping against gristle and bone. He stood upright and stared at the blade in his hands, knowing what it had done, wondering if it was possible for an object to develop a taste for the uses to which it was put. Noah needed something to help him do the things he wasn't sure he was capable of by himself. A talisman for violence. Still, it felt wrong in his hands, like an artifact from another civilization that had been designed not only for purposes he couldn't conceive, but for an entirely other biology. It felt like something holding him, ready to do wrong, like he was the tool, not it.

He set the knife on the desk and opened his fingers. The tacky blood pulled at his skin as if the thing wanted to stay in his hand. It wanted him to possess it, to put it to its new uses. As much a likelihood it was that he would have to do violence, he decided he didn't want to do it with this tainted thing. It felt too eager for the work.

“You okay?” Connor said. “You still with me?”

“I'm here.”

“You were starting to worry me. You had a look on your—”

The lights went out and Connor's thought died on his lips. Noah heard what sounded like the other man tripping over something heavy and hitting the floor hard. He stumbled backward over Henry's feet as he tried to get away from the desk, get away from whatever was in the dark. He sought the reassurance of a solid and unmoving wall at his back. He banged his head on the empty cabinet behind him, barking incoherently at the pain as he ducked underneath.

Something caught around his ankle. He imagined fingers closing around his leg as Henry's corpse pulled itself up, blank eyes fixing him with hungry malevolence. He jerked his foot away and heard a clatter of plastic on the floor. He was caught up in a telephone cord, not a dead man's hand. It was hard to dispel the nightmare image from his mind as he struggled to unwrap the cord from around his ankle. His heart pounded harder as a fresh wave of adrenaline surged through his body. He forced himself to stand still against the wall and wait for his panic to subside. In his conscious mind, he knew he was alone in the room with Connor and Henry's corpse, but his brain screamed that danger had arrived and it was time to fight. He listened for the sounds of someone coming through the door. His ears strained to hear the clack of a rifle bolt being thrown. But all he heard was Connor's quick breathing and his own blood pulsing in his ears. Outside the office door, the faint sounds of crewmen shouting in alarm echoed in the halls. He sympathized. He wanted to yell at them to be quiet.
This is what Brewster wants. He wants us to panic, to leave our hiding places so it's easier to find us. Because he wants to kill us all.

It still didn't feel like a sane belief to hold, let alone embrace and make decisions using it as a basis. But proof was lying on the floor in the mess hall and on the floor in front of him in the dark and who knew where else. In the space of twenty-four hours, anything had become possible. The worst things imaginable were now probable.

“Why haven't the backup lights come on?” he whispered.

Connor panted. “I don't know. Lights've always worked 'round here. We never set up a detail for anyone to check and see if the emergency gennies were workin'.”

Noah untangled his foot from the phone cord and crept away from his hiding spot, following his friend's voice. He gave both the desk and Henry a wide berth. Narrowly avoiding a low black shape he assumed was the overturned guest chair that had tripped Connor, he still turned his ankle, stumbling over something else unseen underfoot. He went to a knee instead of trying to stagger and stay upright, risking a sprain or worse. He knelt still for a moment, trying to manage his frustration. With the lights on, he was outmatched; in the dark, he was utterly impotent.

“I know where we can find some flashlights,” Connor said.

“Flashlights seem like a bad idea. Holding one sounds a little like wearing a target.”

“What if
he
has a flashlight?”

“If he's got a light, then we'll be able see him coming.”

“Yeah? It's not like he's putting himself in any danger carrying one around; we can't shoot back at him, you know.”

Connor was right. The dark would to put the Old Man on better footing against men who knew how to easily navigate the rig's corridors—find its hidden places.

Another faint scream echoed in the hall.

Maybe it was just meant to increase their panic and make them run into the trap. Either way, they had to keep it together.

Noah pushed himself up and crept carefully toward the door. Hunched over with his arms out in front of him, he felt his way past the guest chair until he met the wall. He knocked against an empty coat tree, catching it before it could topple. Setting it upright, he moved to the side and brushed his hands over the smooth wood of the door, searching for the door handle. The faint click when he pushed it down made him suck a breath through his teeth that was louder than the sound of the catch releasing. He pulled the door open a crack and tried to peek out into the hall. It was as dark as the office. As dark as he imagined the entire drilling platform was. It was daylight outside, but inside, without windows, it might as well have been midnight.
Hell,
he thought,
midnight outside with the moon and stars would be brighter than this
. More shouts and a crash.

“All the emergency lights are out. You know where the generators are?”

Connor stumbled over to Noah, not wanting to have the conversation across the room. “Well, yeah. I know where everything is,” he whispered. “It's dull as dirt living here. I take walks.”

“Show me where, then. If the Old Man wants it dark, I want light.”

Connor fumbled past him into the hall. Noah followed, holding on to his shoulder.

 

31

Connor and Noah fumbled along pitch-black corridors for a few minutes, trying to both make forward progress and not give themselves away, until a sound brought them to a halt. From around a corner, they heard something irregular and hollow. Thumping. Each impact accompanied by a breath of exertion. Connor stopped, holding out an arm to hold Noah back. For a moment, they listened while it continued, staccato and arrhythmic.
Thump. Thump. Thumpthump
. “What is it?” Noah whispered. The shape that was his companion shifted in a way he chose to interpret as a shrug. The silent language of shades wasn't something he had the luxury of learning at his leisure. They had to interpret hand signals and body language despite the near total darkness through which they navigated.

He stared ahead, trying to distinguish between hues of black in the hall. He thought a somewhat darker patch to their left suggested another bend in the corridor. Noah's eyes played tricks in the gloom. Gradations of darkness that seemed to suggest obstacles or turns in the path never materialized. He felt worse than blind; he felt deceived by what slight eyesight he did possess.

Another thump echoed. This one was followed by a muffled crack and a long sigh. Noah stiffened as his imagination filled in the blanks his vision couldn't. Connor raised a hand in the dark and pointed in the direction they'd come in an exaggerated pantomime of “go back.” Noah shook his head, trying to say he didn't want to find another way. The gesture was too slight to be seen and Connor, reversing direction, bumped into him. Noah grunted and clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Who's there?”

Noah's muscles tightened. Boucher's voice carried around the corner. Running wasn't an option, not unless he wanted to knock himself out again, dashing into a wall or an unseen door.

“God damn it! Who's there, I said?” Heavy, even footsteps moved toward them, as if the bosun could see despite the gloom.

“It's Boucher.
Your
Boucher,” he whispered to Connor.

“How do you know that?”

“Listen. He can walk.”

Connor stood up and said, “Serge? Is that you, brother? It's Connor.”

“Come out where I can see you.” His voice was low and his footsteps slowed.

“What are you doing, Serge? What was that sound?”

“Sound? Oh, that. They're right. I feel better already.”

The blanks filled in—the thumping, the crack, and the sigh. In his mind, Noah saw an image of Boucher kneeling over his reflection, bashing his head against the floor until it split between his hands. The man at arm's length letting out a final breath as the last of his life was smashed against tile. He imagined he saw the other Serge's hands, dripping wet with the work. All this he gathered from sound.
This is what it's like to be a bat.

He ducked to the opposite side of the hall and waited, staring into the darkness. The void shifted and a figure emerged, larger than he remembered. It moved like smoke, pulling apart from the blackness and shifting back into it. He felt the weight of Connor's crowbar in his hands. In his excitement to get to the generators, he'd almost left behind both the knife
and
the crowbar. Once he clumsily located the bar, he stopped looking. The knife wasn't anything he wanted to have with him—no matter how much he could have used it. It was tainted.

“Someone with you?”

Connor said, “Just me. What do you mean, ‘feel better'?”

The shade stopped. Although all of the men in Connor's crew had lost weight from rationing food and inactivity, the bosun seemed to loom as large as ever. The shadow shifted, seemed to grow slightly thinner.
He turned,
Noah realized. Serge had been tracking his own shadow moving in the darkness until Connor drew his attention away. He waited for the next echo that would bring his form into focus.

“The other one. Get rid of him and it feels better.”

“Jesus, man. What did you do?”

Boucher's voice changed from soft to hard. “He came into
my
room. He tried to get me first.”

Noah lunged at the sound. He connected hard with what felt like a hip. Something struck him in the back of the head, an elbow maybe, and he saw bright stars. The crowbar slipped from his hands and went clanging down the hall. His momentum carried him forward and he and the big man hit the wall hard. He fell away and heard Boucher collapse with a grunt a few feet to his right. He thought for a second about going after the bar. But he knew he'd never find it in time. The bosun was going to be on top of him in a second. He thought,
one more mistake like that …
but looking for the thing would be the mistake that was his end. There would be no others to follow. He had to let it go.