Offshore Page 5

  Eddie grinned. “Love it.” He twisted the cap off the bottle and a crown of bubbles erupted, releasing the sharp tang of ginger. “Cheers,” he said, and put the bottle to his lips to take a deep, cooling quaff. The gas in the carbonated liquid made him belch loudly.

  “Begging your pardon,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Excused.”

  They sipped at their drinks in silence.

  “Are you happy with your digs?” he asked.

  “As I can be under the circumstances, thanks.”

  “And are you warm enough now?”

  “Yes, thank you. My nipples have gone all nice and soft, like little raspberries.”

  Eddie choked on the bottle, spluttering liquid down the front of his overalls and coughing fit to hack up a lung.

  A laughing Lydia patted him on the back until his spluttering fit settled down. His face gradually recovered its normal hue, his eyes stopped bulging, and he sooked slowly and carefully on the remainder of his drink. “Have you got all the gear you need?” he said, in an attempt to reclaim some of his lost dignity.

  “Provided I don’t need to carry out major heart surgery, I should be okay.”

  More silence.

  She rocked back in her chair. “The men don’t want me here, do they?” she said.

  Eddie screwed up his face, both agreeing with and dismissing her concerns. “You’ve been around oilmen long enough to know we’re like sailors; a superstitious lot. Women on board ship are considered the worst form of bad luck - like killing an albatross. A platform is nothing more than a ship on legs, with its own set of rituals and traditions. Don’t take it personally. I’ll look out for you and try and make sure they don’t give you too much grief.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate the sentiment, but you don’t have to. I might be small, but I’m no wilting wallflower.”

  “I never for one minute suggested you were–”

  “I can give as good as I get.”

  “I know. I heard what you said to Reynolds!” He chuckled quietly into his drink. “Needledick the Bugfucker. Good one.”

  “They might think they’re winding me up, but it’s really like water off a duck’s back,” she said. “I can handle them.”

  He tipped his bottle towards her in a mock toast. “Then I wish you all the luck. Can I give you a piece of advice though … in confidence?”

  “Sure.”

  “From what I’ve seen and read in the personnel files, Reynolds is the one most likely to give you trouble–”

  “I sussed that already, but he’s all mouth. I said I can handle him–”

  “And if you find you can’t, what then? You need someone you can turn to. Someone you can trust to back you up. Protect you if need be.”

  “And I suppose that someone would be you, would it?”

  “Me?!” Eddie snorted down his nose. “I’m probably the least reliable person here. The one I want you to look to is the prof, Brewer.”

  “Why him?”

  “Because although he might look a bit eccentric with his tweed suit and bow tie, he’s been in the business a long time. He’ll have dealt with people like Reynolds and his ilk before, knows how they tick, how to talk to them, how to put them back in their grubby little boxes. He’ll see you right.”

  “Now who’s playing the psychologist?”

  “I mean it, Lydia.”

  She could see he did, and nodded her agreement. “If you’re sure you don’t want the job, I thank you for the advice, and duly appoint Lawrence Brewer as my white knight, although I hope I won’t have cause to call on his services.”

  “I hope you won’t either.” Eddie stood to leave. “Time I got back to the herd and see how they’re getting on.” One last gulp emptied his bottle. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “If you come back up the galley in about an hour there should be some food ready, if the guys haven’t come to blows already.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  With a brief nod he left her to the peace and quiet of her medical bay, in his nose the remnant of her perfume, and in his groin the telltale tingle of interest in an unavailable feminine form.

  Chapter 8

  The harsh bellowing of the foghorn sounded at least once every two days, and had become such a regular occurrence that, for the most part, it went ignored and no longer disturbed the workshop dweller huddled in the dark.

  It took no notice of it this time either. It had other things on its mind.

  Being wakened from its state of semi hibernation by the arrival of the people upstairs had cranked up its metabolic rate from a condition of almost complete shutdown, through bare survival, all the way up to a semi alert standby, and all its bodily functions were now reactivating in preparation of something happening.

  It needed to take a dump; a piss too. Mostly, it thought as it rasped its leathery lips with a tongue as rough as sandpaper, it needed a drink.

  Dragging itself from its greasy bed, it crawled over to the washroom to lap stale water from the almost empty lavatory bowl.

  The water had been enough to prevent death by total dehydration, but only just, and saving it for drinking meant it couldn’t use the toilet for its intended purpose, forcing it to use the far corner of the room as its latrine. An unsavoury situation, but essential, and it had long since become accustomed to the all pervading stink of the waste; so much so that it no longer registered.

  In the corner it squatted and defecated, passing little dry pellets like rabbit droppings, while letting loose a thin yellow trickle of urine.

  As it had drunk very little and hadn’t eaten anything at all apart from a half starved rat for the past four days, its food supply long since exhausted, that there should be any waste at all was remarkable.

  Done, he, for indeed it was a male, scratched at its flaccid penis as if checking he still had one, before crawling back to his makeshift bed and settling down again to wait.

  They would come down here soon enough, the people upstairs. Human beings were curious creatures. They needed to explore. Someone would come and let him out.

  He pulled one of the dirty packing blankets over his shoulders, dropped his weary head onto stick thin arms and closed his eyes.

  They had to come soon.

  Much longer and there would be no hope.

  Chapter 9

  The crew’s first day on Bravo passed without incident.

  After a hearty breakfast courtesy of Messrs McDougal and McAllister, who had drawn the shortest pieces of broken spaghetti to see who would get the cooking roster rolling, the crew assembled in the control room for Eddie’s first mandatory safety briefing and to be allocated their jobs for the day.

  He and Shaw had been busy already, dividing the white board on the wall into columns, each headed with a crew member’s name in a different colour, and rows labelled with the time. In meticulous detail they constructed a timetable for every day of the next week, so that everyone knew where they would be at any hour of the day.

  Every minute of every shift was accounted for, 8 to 12 hours of hard graft – scrubbing, painting, checking, testing, fixing, sorting, as well as cooking, cleaning and laundry duties.

  Even medic Lydia was expected to come out of sickbay a couple of hours a day to wield a mop or a paintbrush.

  “Fuck me,” declared Reynolds. “I’m allowed ten minutes to take a crap on Thursday morning. Alert the media!”

  Before dispersing the team to their allotted tasks, Eddie issued each one of them with a rechargeable radio.

  “These are for local use only. Signal doesn’t carry any further than about half a mile. They are simply for keeping in touch. Anyone not know how to use one?”

  No reply.

  A quick signal test and they were connected, to each other and to the control room. They clipped the sets to their breast or sleeve pockets, then stood around awaiting further instruction.

  “Off you go then, t
ime’s a-wastin’,” said Eddie, and shooed them on their way.

  After lunch Eddie submitted his checkin radio report to Longdrift Headquarters, basically telling them what they wanted to hear - equipment and stores had been checked and stowed, nothing out of the ordinary seen on their first tour, everyone was fit and well and would be getting to work in earnest without delay.

  “Because of your pettifogging, prevaricating tightfistedness putting us on an impossible schedule with insufficient manpower, we’re going to be working ourselves into an early grave as it is, so to save us all a lot of wasted time and effort and allow us to get the job done and go home, I won’t mess about blethering with you wankers on the phone every day. Unless a problem arises that warrants communication, consider no news to be good news and leave us alone. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

  Not exactly what he said, but rephrased with polite succinctness, the point was still made.

  Before he left the control room to make his second walkthrough of the day, he noticed an addition to the whiteboard. Someone, Shaw maybe, had drawn a box in the corner, scribbled in ‘Days to Salvation’ and added in red the figure 98. Less than a full day on board and they were all already counting down to leaving again.

  On the afternoon of the second day the weather took a turn for the worse when the wind picked up, driving the rain almost horizontally across the deck. It was forecast and prepared for, and so those working outside were switched to alternative duties indoors according to the chart.

  In the evening, with light gone and with work and dinner over, those designated kitchen duty took care of their chores while the others slouched in postprandial contentment in the lounge.

  Eddie Capstan retreated to his cabin to make notes for his new novel, and so while the cat was otherwise occupied the mice took a chance to play.

  Lonny Dick, not interested in lolling on a sofa watching a boxing match on television, took himself off to find something else to entertain him. He rode the service elevator down to the workshop two floors below the main deck.

  •

  Twenty-four hours the people had been on board, and he was still stuck here. And now they were torturing him.

  The extractor fans in the kitchen sucked in the scent of frying bacon and eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, burned toast and hot coffee, distributing the aerosol far and wide, and when the atomised particles reached the nose of the resting workshop resident, they set up a fresh gnawing agony in his stomach, one so strong it made him nauseous. If he’d had the liquid to spare he would have shed tears of pain.

  He rubbed his hands over skin like wrinkled parchment, rendered so paper thin as to be almost transparent, below which the blue veins traced a macabre roadmap, clearly visible now that practically every gram of stored body fat had been utilised. To keep his metabolism barely ticking over, his body had already begun to break down and consume its own muscle mass, although these wasted slabs of flesh could sustain him for no more than a few days longer.

  Soon his liver, kidneys and heart, would fail. He suspected his brain to already be in the first stage of collapse, having felt the first stirrings of mental disease in disjointed, disturbing thoughts, and dreams, his once perfect recall corrupted. Gaps appeared in his memory like moth holes in an expensive cashmere sweater.

  Synapse function reduced, reactions slowed. Soon the threads would unravel completely.

  An unthinkable waste, and all for the want of a single good meal, a helping of the abundance of food and drink the others were enjoying just feet away above him.

  He prayed silently, despairingly, to a being higher than he, if such a being existed, for just one of them to come down here, to open the door, to admit some much needed light and air, to let him out and end this injustice, but most importantly, to feed him.

  Instinct kicked in. Noises?

  Yes. Footfall. Heavy and regular. Getting closer. Stopping right outside the door. His prayer answered with the sound of scraping, a metallic clank and a creak of hinges.

  Chapter 10

  Lonny Dick employed all his brute strength to shift aside the heavy crates of engine parts blocking the outward opening door to the fabrication workshop.

  With room to manoeuvre he wrenched the door open, picked up a cardboard box from the floor, tucked it under a meaty arm, and stepped over the sill.

  He screwed up his face in a sour grimace when the overpowering stench hit him.

  “Fucking hell! What died in here?”

  In the airless fug, the underlying pongs of methylated spirits and engine oil were as roses compared to the acidic throat burning stink which reminded him of cat piss, rotting meat, and dog shit.

  He pressed one of a series of switches on the wall at the door and a single fluorescent tube in the centre of the ceiling flickered into life, producing a harsh blue-white light sufficient for him to move about in, but leaving corners and alcoves in deep, intimidating shadow.

  The rank smell burned his nose and nipped his eyes. Having previously worked in hot and putrid swamp, replete with mouldering vegetation and the decaying corpses of dead animals, this was more than even he could bear and he took to breathing through his mouth, the foetid air tasting marginally better than it smelled.

  “Bloody rats! Filthy buggers!”

  Another switch operated a powerful extractor fan which whirred into life, sucking the miasma out and drawing in a draught of fresh air through the still open door.

  It did a good job and in a few minutes Lonny could breathe through his nose without feeling sick. He closed the door but left the fan running to carry errant wisps of the fragrant smoke he would soon be producing out of reach of the detectors.

  Dragging a wooden packing crate from an alcove by the washroom, he sat on it, balancing the carton on his knees. From it came a smuggled can of beer, a small metal box, a packet of cigarette papers and a cheap disposable - and illegal - lighter.

  He popped the ring on the can and swallowed half its contents in a series of convulsive swallows, belched, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Another quaff and he set the can on the floor beside him. He then took the metal box and carefully prised it open, taking a deep appreciative inhalation of its densely packed contents.

  As the sweet sweaty scent of his tobacco marijuana mix reached the back of his nose his ears picked up a sound behind him - a soft, muffled scratching, like nails on wood. He froze and listened closely, his entire attention concentrated on identifying the sound.

  There it was again. A barely there skittering. The hated rats, or someone in the room with him?

  Had one of his workmates followed him down to spy on him; to deprive him of his little pleasures?

  He snapped the box closed.

  Let them try.

  Without moving his head he tracked his gaze over the adjacent workbench and the tools lying on the shelf beneath it. He immediately picked out the unmistakable shape of a Stillson adjustable pipe wrench. A big one too.

  On the pretence of accidentally dropping the box, he lowered himself to his knees and shuffled the three feet to the bench, wrapped his hand around the handle of eighteen inches and five kilograms of forged steel, and eased it out.

  With it snug against the palm of his hand, his long legs unfolded, he drew himself to his full height, tool in hand. Another soft scratching; a little louder this time. Back rigid, he turned to face the direction of the sound, ears keen, eyes trained on the patch of gloom in front of him. He took a step forward, peering into the shadow, the wrench now raised like a club ready to strike.

  “Who’s there? Show yourself.”

  He screwed up his eyes as if it would sharpen his focus on an area of shadow somewhat darker than the rest.

  “Is that you Reynolds, you prick? Come out where I can see you proper.”

  Silence.

  “Come out Reynolds, else I’ll come in after you and then you’ll be sorry.”

  A murky patch within the shadow shifted, quivered, and then shra
nk back into the dark with what sounded like a sigh.

  Lonny stood stock still, his damp hand rigid around the wrench, ready to defend himself against imminent attack. His tense jaw twitched as a bead of cold sweat rolled down his temple.

  “Last chance, Reynolds. Come out or I’m coming to get you, and when I do I’m gonna smash your face in!”

  •

  The dweller tried, but found he could not stand, managing only to get halfway to his feet before his legs failed, too weak to support him. They folded at the knees, and with a sigh of fatigue he dropped to the ground.

  He had no choice. Desperation overrode dignity, and on all fours he crawled like a baby, forward into the light, towards the man.

  •

  Lonny could not believe his eyes. A dog? Down here? Nah!

  He squinted at it out of a contorted India rubber face, trying to work it out. If this was a dog, it was no breed he knew.

  At first glance it looked more like a rat, a bloody big rat at that. Although … not that either. A combination creature? A rat/dog blend? Yeah, that would do it, if there was such a thing.

  Maybe it was some weird foreign dog species, misshapen by uncontrolled inbreeding. Whatever it was it was the skinniest beast he had ever seen alive.

  The animal raised its strangely elongated head, and with blank white eyes like pickled eggs looked up at the massive man.

  Blind?

  On the side of its head where its ears should be, cartilaginous crescents twitched around dark openings.

  Deaf?

  It had no nose, no snout, only holes in the middle of its face. Neither did it have a tail, and its back looked curiously hunched, as if the hind legs were bent out of shape and tucked underneath it.

  How had anything so deformed managed to survive at all?

  The beast heaved itself forward as if to get a better look at the man, its nails scratching on the chequer plate composite flooring.

  The source of the skittering sound?

  In the light Lonny could see where the beast’s ribs, spine, and hip bones protruded, painfully stretching its parchment-like hide to its limit, creating sharp angles over which the skin had broken into open weeping sores, around which random mangy patches of dark hair clustered, rendered stiff with dirt, oil and faeces.