Infestation

- 10 -

It had all happened so fast Svetlanova had barely had time to think. From the sudden death of the Irishman, meeting the British team outside the engine room, to the battle on the top of the superstructure and now, back in the control room, it had all happened in a blur of movement and a roar of sound and flying bullets. Now her ears rang, like church bells, too close, inside her skull and she wondered if she might not be permanently deaf.

The thinner man, Hynd the captain had called him, bundled her, first out of the small room below the hatch, then down a spiral staircase to the control room. He took one look at what was left of Nolan in the chair then wheeled the body, chair and all, through to the small scullery and closed the door on it. He couldn’t disguise the mess on the floor; green goop, hardening, almost resinous, the last remains of the man she’d spoken to less than half an hour before.

Hynd took the hot rifle from her and said something but although she saw his mouth move, she couldn’t hear a word, only the ringing in her ears, accompanied by a dull headache threatening to turn to pounding at any moment. She motioned with her hands at her ears.

“Deaf,” she said, hearing only the faintest whisper of her own voice in her head but he got the message.

The rest of the men came down the stairwell into the control room. She saw them reload their weapons with magazines from their webbing belts but didn’t hear the clunk as the new mags were rammed in place. There was only the constant ringing in her ears and no sign it was fading.

She needed to distract herself from her fear of deafness. She saw out the main window that the beasts had forgotten all about them again and were either milling aimlessly around the forward deck or feasting on the scraps and remains of their fallen.

What could have set them off?

She might have an inkling of an answer but the thought was driven away as she looked at the men; there was one missing, the stocky quiet one whose name she hadn’t caught. And the others were ashen-faced and stern; she knew the look only too well.

They lost another man.

Then that thought too was dismissed; the last man down held his left arm in his right hand and dripped blood on the steps. The captain was already getting bandages from the wounded man’s backpack. Svetlanova remembered the green slime running in the dead Irishman’s wounds.

“Wait,” she said and they all turned sharply; she’d spoken too loudly. “Don’t bind the wounds yet,” she said, trying to be quieter and headed for the scullery. She avoided the chair and the mess lying in it and went straight to the sink and the cupboard below it. She found what she wanted almost immediately and hurried back through to the control room.

“Bleach,” she said, trying to keep her voice low. “Disinfectant.” She heard her words stronger in her head now; her hearing might be coming back. The captain looked at her, then at the bottle in her hand and nodded; he’d got the message this time.

“This is going to hurt,” she said to the wounded man – Mac, they’d called him – the one who’d called her ‘lass’ earlier. He put out his arm, rolling back the sleeve of his parka. The wound ran across the top of his wrist, white bone showing; he’d been lucky not to be cut any deeper; he’d either have lost the hand or bled out quickly. As it was, the wound gaped badly and bled profusely. They needed to get it bound up fast but she knew the pain the bleach was going to bring and hesitated to pour it.

“Just do it, lass,” the man said and she heard him this time, as if he was speaking from the next room and behind a door. “Before I bleed all over you.”

But I heard him.

She poured the bleach; and she heard his curses, then a long yell of pain clearly enough.

She took over nursing duties, closing the wound as much as she could with butterfly clips and binding it as tight as she dared with several layers of bandages. The man suffered it in stoic silence and smiled at her when it was done.

“Fine job, lass,” he said. “Not bad for a Russian spy.”

The captain took her off to one side.

“Thanks,” he said. “He sat quieter for you than he would for one of us. Good idea with the bleach too. Will it be enough?”

Her hearing had got better. She heard the captain’s question, only slightly muffled, although the bells still rang, albeit farther away in the distance now.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “It might be bacterial, or viral, or it might be a toxin. And the Irish boy may just have been unlucky to be caught by a sick beast. All we can do is wait. There’s no way for us to tell without a lab; and mine was out there, on top of the drilling rig.”

They both looked out; the large creature still sat there on top of the rig among the bent metal, like a resting cat, its stare equally as implacable.

“I need to know what you know about these beasts,” the captain said. “And I need to know it fast.”

“The isopods?”

“Is that what they are? Where did they come from?”

She still wasn’t hearing quite right and rather than continue the conversation she tapped his pocket where he’d put the Dictaphone when he took it from her

“It’s all on there. You should listen to it. Do you understand Russian?”

The captain nodded. The thin man, Hynd, checked Mac’s wrist. So far, there was no blood, or green, seeping through the white. The Glaswegian flexed his hand and winced.

“Luckily, I wank with the other hand,” he said, then looked up at Svetlanova and smiled. “Pardon my French, darling.”

She smiled back.

“Call me darling again and you’ll be scratching your arse with a stump,” she replied, in her best Glaswegian accent.

Everyone except Mac laughed. He looked too surprised at first, then he too joined in.

“I like your new girlfriend, Cap. I think she’s a keeper.”

The captain was busy trying to figure out how to work the Dictaphone. She reached over and pressed the rewind button then, when there was a click, the play. Her own voice echoed back at her.

“I have decided to tell the tale here of our failure, in the hope that anyone who comes across this will not make the same mistakes we did, mistakes that have got us all killed…or worse.”

She turned away – she didn’t need to hear it. She looked out the window, only to see the beasts all looking straight at her. They weren’t moving, weren’t coming forward but their stares were unnerving. And yet again, Svetlanova had a feeling there was something she should be seeing, or remembering, something she needed to know. But as the bells continued to ring in her ears, so too did the thought elude her.

She took a smoke from the injured Mac when he offered one and smoked it down as the captain played back her statement, all the way through to the end.

“A large patch of the sea beneath the rig glowed, blue and silver and green, a pulsating shimmer like an aurora under the surface, one that was rising fast. And this time it was bigger still; much bigger.

“The swarm came up and over the gunwales like a giant wave.”

She heard her last words, then a click as the Dictaphone turned off. She happened to be staring out the window at the time. The creatures had been still, staring at the window of the control room but as soon as the Dictaphone was turned off, they lost interest again and went back to their random milling and feeding.

The thought that had been eluding her was suddenly there, big in her mind.

They’re reacting to electrical fields.

The captain put the Dictaphone down and turned to Hynd.

“I don’t think we need them now but let’s get these computers fired up anyway. Might as well take everything we can get while we’re here.”

“That’s a very bad idea,” Svetlanova said in reply.

Everyone turned to look at her. She quickly outlined her theory, finishing with her conclusions.

“They reacted violently when you turned on the satellite phone,” she said.

The captain caught on first.

“And again to the Dictaphone, only less so?”

She nodded as he continued.

“And it would explain their behavior.”

“It would?” Mac said. “I wish somebody would explain it to me, because I’m fucking lost here.”

“At the post office, they didn’t really come at us until we switched on the generator. And in the engine room; they’ve torn out all the electrical cabling and fittings completely. And they didn’t come onto deck again until we buggered about with the control panel.”

“You’re saying we did it? We brought the fuckers back aboard?” Mac said.

“Afraid so,” the captain replied. “But maybe we can get them to bugger off again by switching off what we switched on.”