Stranded (32 page)

“If we can't stop him, we've got to get everyone off the fucking rig,” Noah said. “Get everyone we can find and get to the
Promise.
From there we can make a plan how to deal with Brewster and flush out the spilled oil. It's not safe to stay here anymore.”

“Boucher and Henry are out of the picture. It's us against him.”

“There's still the oil. It ignites like you said, the whole place is fucked. If that happens, I want the only person aboard to be the Old Man. We need to fall back to my ship and then come back to clean house after we get everyone else out.”

“My ship is closer,” Connor said.

Noah shook his head. “You forget your ship is nipped? Plus, half my crew is already on mine. They need to know what's going on. We're going to
my Promise.
”

Connor didn't put up any more of an argument. Instead, he fell in behind Noah and they started up the long hall, toward the killing.

 

33

After the first two cabins, it was clear what finding an open door meant. Staring down at Heath's body, Noah clenched his fists, feeling the nails dig into his rough palms. He told himself that without a universal key, he couldn't have locked in the men too sick to get out of bed to protect them. He had saved two crew members. He hadn't gone around rousing bedridden men trying to get them to lock their doors, though. And now it was too late.

He tried to tell himself he wasn't responsible. While he knew it intellectually, emotionally it still felt like a failure. It felt like finding Connor dead on the cargo deck all over again. Dead because he didn't do something himself that he could have done.
Should
have done.

Shining a flashlight on Heath made him seem unreal. His skin was too waxen, the blood painting his throat and chest, too bright, too vivid.

His eyes open and fixed, throat open and wet, heart stopped, there was nothing to do but cover him.

Theo, in the room they'd first visited, was in the same state—beyond concern.

Noah was almost ready to give up and suggest they head for the
Promise
alone when he heard the faint rustle in the closet. He froze. Brewster was stalking the halls, slitting the throats of every man too weak to rise from his bed, not hiding in closets like some childhood nightmare.

He quietly pulled the door closed and held a finger to his lips. He then pointed to the left of the closet. Connor tiptoed around the side, waiting to follow his friend's lead. Noah took his place squarely in front of the glorified locker and whispered as loudly as he dared, “Who's in there?” He heard shuffling movement and then silence. “It's Noah. You're safe. I'm going to open the door.”

“Don't,” Jack said from behind the door. “Find your own fuckin' place to hide.”

Noah let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. “We're leaving, Jack. It's not safe to stay here. We're heading back to the
Promise
to figure out how to deal with the Old Man. Come out.”

More silence. The door cracked open and Jack peeked out, squinting against the light. “No shit it's not safe. What was your first clue?” Noah suppressed a smile at the absurdity of Jack's uncontrollable sarcasm. He wanted to laugh and fully let himself feel the relief that he'd found at least one living crew member, but the threat of the man stalking them weighed too heavily on his conscience. Instead, he pulled open the door and grabbed Jack by the shoulder, giving it a squeeze, assuring him they were in this together as much as convincing himself that the man was real. Jack held a hand up to his eyes. “I don't want to go back out in the cold.”

Noah considered telling Jack about the spill. He didn't imagine it would make him any less afraid of another trip across the ice. “You know where anyone else is hiding?” he asked.

Jack tilted his head toward the door. “Kevin's two rooms over, I think. That's where he said he was going. We figured if the Old Man had already been here, he might not come back looking right away.”

It was as good a plan as any Noah and Connor had conceived so far. “Anyone else?”

Jack shook his head.

“Okay,” Noah said. “Grab Kev and meet us in the gear room where we stowed our stuff yesterday. You copy? We're going to find as many more men as we can and then we're leaving.”

“No way. I told you, I'm not going back out there. We can take him out if we all go after him together, right? He's not the fuckin' bogeyman or some shit.”

Given what Brewster had accomplished in very little time, Noah wasn't so sure. He didn't believe in supernatural evil, but then again, he hadn't believed in a lot of things earlier this week that he now had seen firsthand. Connor, standing behind him, was his strongest vaccination against blanket denial. For a moment, Noah considered it. The halls were narrow. There wasn't room for more than two or three of them to stand abreast. They were mostly blind and Brewster had guns. Trying to bum rush him would end up a turkey shoot. Someone, likely more than one of them, would die trying and Noah wasn't willing to sacrifice anyone else. All he could think of was getting away to safety. Afterward, they could come up with some kind of plan. As a strategy, it was only half-formed, but he hadn't had a moment to think of something better. He was reacting to Brewster, not taking his own steps. Just like always.

“You volunteering to be in front for the bum-rush? You bulletproof?” Jack's eyes widened and he shook his head. “Then go get Kevin and meet us where I told you to.”

Connor pressed his flashlight in Jack's hand. “Only use this in little bursts, off and on, so you can get an idea what's ahead of you. Don't leave it on. And try not to make any sound.” Jack stood frozen in place.

Noah gave him a little push, but the man didn't move. “I'm not dragging you out of here. You've got to move if you're coming with us.”

“I'm fuckin' scared, man.” Jack and his best friend were slender, wiry goofballs. But they worked hard and had proven themselves on the cargo deck more than once. The Twins weren't the toughest guys he knew, but they weren't weak by any means. In that instant, however, Jack seemed to lose ten years; he looked like a little boy afraid to go on the big ride. It tore at Noah's resolve like sharp claws.

Noah grabbed his wrists and squeezed again, trying to reassure himself as much as motivate Jack. “Good. Stay scared. Stay alive. Get dressed and wait for us. If you hear anyone try to come through the door without … knocking three times, brain 'em with a wrench or something. You got that?”

Jack nodded fast and turned for the door. Connor caught him by the arm. “Whatever you do, try not to make a spark.”

“The fuck, dude? What do you mean, ‘a spark'? Like a
spark
spark?”

“Trust us,” Noah assured him. “Fire bad.”

Jack slipped through the doorway as if the turn in the conversation scared him more than being caught out. Noah listened for the sounds of him collecting his best friend two cabins down, but he couldn't hear a thing. That was good. Jack was being careful—that was, if he wasn't paralyzed with fear right outside the door. The only way to find out was to get moving.

Connor pulled the stained sheet up over Heath's face. He whispered something under his breath that ended with “Amen.” Noah didn't want to stop him praying, but they didn't have time to give every victim his due. They had to take their own advice and go.

*   *   *

In the hall, they found two more doors ajar. Noah didn't have the heart to do more than shine his light in each to confirm what he already knew and move on. One room was mercifully empty. The other, however, was the worst yet. Inside they found the reflected Twins. Brewster had shot them both. The room was a mess. Noah hoped that they'd put up a fight and got a good piece of him before going down. If he was hurt and licking his wounds, it might explain why they hadn't seen him yet. But Noah told himself he couldn't count on it.

Connor didn't repeat his last rites. Instead, he backed out of the room, closing the door. He tried his best to keep an eye behind them, but it was more difficult than before. The light, even in short bursts, undermined the slight adaptation of their eyes to the darkness. They couldn't make out shapes and distance anymore without it.

Around the bend was Connor's room, and hopefully Felix and David. Noah wanted to check other cabins for more survivors hiding in closets and bathrooms, but the rig was too big to do a thorough search for everyone, especially if some had retreated to areas beyond the dormitory. Noah struggled to think of a way to get a message to them.

He clicked his light on and off to get a glimpse of how close they were to the bend in the hallway. A glint of something high up caught his eye. He turned it back on and shined the light on the wall, finding a red fire alarm. “That's it,” he said, pointing.

Noah peeked around the corner, tracking his light along the length of the wall looking for the alarm system pull handle. “If it has its own power source—a battery, not a gennie—it might still work, right?”

“Maybe. Who knows what works and what doesn't.”

“Our ships are filled with redundant systems. Multiple backups for the engines and controls. Why wouldn't the rig be set up like that, too?” Noah found the alarm pull station halfway down the hall. It looked like the same kind he remembered his friends pulling in high school as a joke. He never thought it was funny, and his gut feeling now was to leave it alone. Respect the reason for it being there. But while it hadn't been installed for this exact situation, this was precisely the reason for its existence: to alert people in an emergency. “It's worth a try. Let's get Felix and David first and then we'll pull it. The strobes will help us see, and if the alarm is loud, maybe it'll deaden the sounds we make getting the hell out of here.”

“It'll keep us and everyone else from hearing Brewster, too, you know.”

“It's the only way I can think of to get the message to everyone.”

Connor waited a beat and then said, “Let's go.”

The men crept around the corner toward the room in which they'd first hidden. The door was jimmied open. Noah's head ached. He reached out and held on to the door jamb to ride out the new sensation. He thought he heard Connor ask if he was all right, but he didn't have it in him to answer. He handed the light to his friend and put his back to the wall. Connor let himself into the room. The retching sounds he made inside confirmed Noah's worst fear.

Rage bubbled up inside of him, pushing acid into his esophagus, making his chest burn and a spike of pain lance up his neck. He didn't want to leave the rig anymore. He wanted to find the Old Man. Find him and put him down. Mete out endless punishments for all the Old Man's sins until he couldn't play the Devil anymore.

Connor shook him, shocking him back to their present torment. That other thing—the one he'd felt overtake him back in the manager's office when he held the knife that killed Henry—receded again. Connor nodded toward the gear room. “Let's go.”

Noah shoved off the wall. He'd come back. He'd come back and hunt Brewster down.

He reached for the handle on the fire alarm. He feared that it was as dead as the radios and the lights, and they'd have to keep stepping lightly, clicking the light on and off in a signal for
over here, shoot me,
while they cowered like mice trying not to wake the cat.

Connor grabbed his forearm. “It's just you and me. Do we need it now?”

“We haven't accounted for everybody. There are others still hiding.” Connor nodded. Noah took a deep breath and pulled the alarm.

The fireworks started.

The strobe flashed a blinding white and a rhythmic Klaxon sounded that made both men wince and cover their ears. They had been in near silence so long with only their whispers and footsteps, the siren was a banshee wail that stunned them. A woman's voice boomed out of the red box.

“ATTENTION! ATTENTION! AN EMERGENCY HAS BEEN REPORTED. ALL OCCUPANTS WALK TO THE NEAREST STAIRWAY AND REPORT TO YOUR ASSIGNED REENTRY STATION.”

Then it repeated. But Noah and Connor didn't do as they were told. They ran for the exit.

The flashing beacon light illuminated the hallway, but it also made their own movements feel like slow motion, half of time lost in the dark between pulses. It took precious seconds for them to overcome their disorientation. Noah hoped the unexpected assault on eyes and ears disrupted Brewster longer.

Although he didn't need it anymore, Noah couldn't bring himself to drop the flashlight. He wasn't letting go of this tool, no matter how useless. Gripping it like a relay baton as he ran behind Connor for the door ahead, he knew when he reached the finish line on the Niflheim, the longest leg of the race still lay ahead. And he would have to carry it all the way. But it was a good thing he kept it. The sun would be setting and they'd need a light on the ice.

The flashing beacon made the shadows in every nook and corner seem to shift and jerk along with them as they ran, threatening death and pain. He pushed on, thinking that if Brewster was having as hard a time making out what was real and what was shadow as he was, they might be able to make it at least outdoors. Once on the ice, Brewster was the least of their worries.

The platform shuddered and Noah stumbled. His feet hurt from the crude and chemicals that had soaked into his shoes, but he tried not to let it slow him down. In another second, the blast of heat from the explosion on the other side of the door would take him and his feet would no longer be a problem. The hall to the prep room was cool, though. It wasn't an explosion that had rocked them. Not yet anyway. He pressed on, even though he felt like he might finally be breaking. The culmination of everything that had happened was exerting too much pressure, and he was afraid his mind would give way to the same madness that claimed his father-in-law.