Текст книги "Noah's Ark: Survivors"

Автор книги: Harry Dayle

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Thirty-Five

OUT ON DECK, passengers and crew alike crowded against the railings. Everyone was desperate to see this strange place they had come to. What kind of town was it? Would they be able to stay here? Were there other survivors here? If there were, that meant there could be more in other places too. A glimpse of this Arctic settlement promised so many answers. Ir promised hope.

But the answers it offered were not the answers anyone wanted to hear. The town was gone, destroyed by the asteroid. The total carnage and destruction visible on the coast was the last scene from the final broadcast. The part that had never made it as far as a camera or satellite feed. The part that many had imagined, but none wanted to believe. And now there was no choice. There was no hiding from the truth. Those last bubbles of hope that perhaps, just maybe, the broadcast hadn’t been real, or that the asteroid had not caused such destruction this far north, popped out of existence. Nobody spoke. Nobody cried. The devastation, and the consequences, what it meant for the rest of the world, for the families and friends left behind, it was too much to comprehend.

• • • • •

Jake gave the order to drop the anchors. He called down to engineering. “Can we cut the engine?”

“We’re staying?” Martin asked.

“We have no choice. We stay here or out there, it doesn’t change anything. Besides, we really should take a closer look.”

“We’ll reduce revs to idle. If we don’t stay long it will be more efficient than stopping and starting up again.”

A click, and the line went dead. Jake looked at the silent receiver in his hand, replaced it slowly.

“I’m sending Stacy with you,” Melvin said. Until that moment he had remained silent.

“I didn’t say I was going,” Jake replied.

“Of course you’re going. You’re really going to delegate this?”

“I’m coming as well.” Lucya joined Jake at the helm.

“No. If I go you have to stay here. You’re next in command, we can’t both leave the ship. If anything happens to me…”

“I may be being a bit stupid,” Silvia said, “but why is anyone going over there? I mean, look. Just…look. What do you expect to find?”

“We have to keep an open mind Silvia.” Jake was trying his best to sound positive. “For one thing there could be survivors. We might be able to help them.”

“We don’t have enough food and water for the people we’ve already got!” Melvin looked unhappy. “We can’t go taking on any strays.”

“For another thing,” Jake ignored him, “there was fuel here. I know it’s a long shot, but we’ve spent nearly twenty four hours cruising time getting this far. Without fuel we are dead. If there is even the slightest, most remote possibility there is diesel here, perhaps in a shelter or basement or something, then we have to find it.”

“There’s the airport too, don’t forget,” Lucya added.

“Lucya, the airport…we didn’t see it. It must have met the same fate as….” Jake looked out over the missing town.

“Undoubtedly. But isn’t it worth checking out anyway? It’s three kilometres, you could walk there in half an hour once you’ve landed.”

“Maybe. Let’s see how we’re going to get to Longyearbyen first.”

He picked up the phone and dialled.

“Martin? Jake.”

“Look, I’ve done the math. It really is better to keep the engine idling.” He sounded irritated.

“Sure, whatever. That’s not why I’m calling. The tenders, they were badly damaged in the fires. How quickly can you get a team to repair one, get it seaworthy?”

“Some of my guys already checked on them. One is a write off, total wreck, not worth pursuing repairs. We’re cannibalising it for spares though. The other was less badly burnt. Some damage to the hull, quite a lot to the engine.”

“How long before she can be ready?”

“Probably a day or two of work.”

“You have two hours.”

“That’s impossible!”

“We can’t sit around for a day waiting here, looking at…that, We have to get over there and take a proper look around, the people are going to demand it.”

“People demand all sorts of things, it doesn’t mean they can always get what they want.”

“Two hours Martin. She doesn’t have to be perfect, but she needs to be ready to go in two hours at the latest.” He clicked the phone down. He knew he was pushing his luck with Martin, but he would rather suffer the complaints of one engineer than the wrath of thousands of angry passengers.

He made two more calls.

“Grau, how’s the leg?”

“Further improved, thank you for asking. How is the captain?”

“As well as can be expected. Listen, do you think you’d be up to joining me in a landing party?”

“You think there could be survivors over there?”

“Honestly? No, I don’t. But if there are, we need you with us.”

“I don’t know Jake. Getting round this ship is one thing, but that is rough terrain, and it’s cold. I would slow you down, be a liability, and not much use to you even if you did find anyone. I can send Kiera though. David is sleeping, he ran the night shift.”

“Fine, Kiera’s a great nurse, she’ll be great. Tell her to be on deck two in a couple of hours, by the exit for the tender.”

Click. He swapped the phone for a radio headset, and punched in the channel number he wanted.

“Max, I’m taking a landing party over there. I could use one of your security guys. Someone strong. If we find fuel, or food, or anything we can salvage, we could use help bringing it back.”

“There must be a hundred sailors twiddling their thumbs, why not take one of those?”

“I’m bringing a couple of sailors too, but this isn’t just about carrying stuff. We don’t know who or what we might find.”

“Alright, what about the new guy?”

Jake considered this. “I’d rather take a company man. I’ve already got a passenger representative, I don’t want to be responsible for more than one cone.”

“Okay, I’ll send Reeve. You can’t miss him, he’s six foot six and bald as an egg.”

“Thanks. Have him meet me on deck two by the tender exit at oh-two hundred hours.”

“Will do.”

Jake sat back down in the captain’s chair, stared out over the mountains ahead, trying not to look at Longyearbyen.

“It’s midday,” Silvia said. “I’ll bring up some lunch. You need to eat before going over there.”

“Maybe,” Jake said. But nobody really felt like eating.

Thirty-Six

“YOU MUST BE Reeve,” Jake looked the man up and down. Mostly up. He looked more like a vigilante than a security officer, but he’d got through an interview with Max, so that was good enough. “Stacy, Reeve is our other regular security guy. Reeve, Stacey is here representing passenger interests.” Reeve raised an eyebrow, nodded at Stacy. Jake finished the introductions.

The group were standing by a large square opening. The chunky metal door cut into the side of the hull had been lowered outwards, and icy arctic air whistled in. The opened door formed part of a staircase; five white steps to where a telescopic stairway descended to the the right, down to a platform that sea hovered just over the sea. Moored at the bottom was a bright orange tender. It looked like a bigger lifeboat, and indeed could double as one in an emergency. Jack stepped outside, the cold air hit him full in the face. He reached the bottom of the stairs, and stepped on board the little boat through a sliding door in the middle.

An engineer was waiting for him. “We’ve patched her up the best we can Captain, but she really needs more work.” He gestured towards the side. “She took quite a bit of fire damage, parts of the hull were melted away.”

“So when you say you patched her up, you really patched her, that’s not just a turn of phrase.”

“Very much so. Martin isn’t happy, he wanted me to pass on his feelings that this boat was not ready to be lowered into the sea and that he wont take responsibility for anything that happens to it.” The young man clearly felt embarrassed relaying Martin’s words, and seemed glad he’d got it out of the way.

“Well, she’s floating, isn’t she? So I think we’ll be fine. Thank you, er,”

“Rigg, sir, Bryan Rigg.”

“Yes, thank you Rigg.” He waved at the others at the top of the steps. “Are you coming, or are you all just going to stand there?”

Reeve came down and boarded the tender, followed by Stacey, Kiera, and two sailors, Horace and Dante. Rigg was standing in the tiny wheelhouse at the front. He pressed a combination of buttons to start the engine. A puff of diesel smoke, the starter turned twice, three times, and then burst into life. From somewhere behind them came the sound of dirty water being spat out in puffs and wheezes as the bilge pump got going. The engineer retreated back through the boat, and stepped outside onto the platform. He untied the two thick blue ropes that secured the orange vessel to the Spirit of Arcadia, coiled each one individually and tossed them onto the little boat, casting them adrift.

“Horace, would you?” Jake asked.

The sailor took the wheel. Dante went back to the door, clasped a grab rail on the roof, pulled himself up and outside, where he walked carefully round to the front. He sat on the roof and took up a watch. The tender eased away from its mooring and set off across the last kilometre to the shore.

Despite the breeze the water was calm, which was fortunate because there were obstacles to avoid. Before long Dante had spotted something dark and straight edged lurking just beneath the surface. All the while looking forwards, he tapped on the window below him and signalled to Horace to steer clear. The tender was easily able to change direction quickly, and it glided past. Looking down on the menacing shape hidden just below the water, Jake saw it was a huge chunk of the concrete jetty that they had been hoping to tie up to. He looked on in awe as the little boat tiptoed around more pieces of the pier. Some were hidden below the water line, others rose out of the sea like sheer sided rocks.

“What could do this?” he said to nobody in particular. “What kind of force could rip apart something like that?”

“I once saw a tornado,” Reeve said. “Blew right down the other side of the street in front of me. Picked up the roofs of houses and sent them flying into backyards half a mile away. Picked up cars and dumped them down again a block later. It was an awesome sight, the power of that twister. But even that couldn’t have done this kind of damage. Man, if that asteroid did this, then how the hell did we survive?”

“It was higher. When it went over us, it was going up. Something made it change direction, and it happened before it reached us. Who knows, maybe it was gaining altitude the further north it got? We were anchored very close to the magnetic pole, perhaps the earth’s magnetic field interrupted its orbit and sent it spinning off back into space?” It was a pet theory Jake had been toying with for a while.

“If that’s right Captain Noah, and it levelled a town like this from a higher altitude, then I can’t even begin to imagine what damage it did further south when it was lower.”

Jake closed his eyes, swallowed hard. He saw Jane, couldn’t get her out of his head. He’d avoided thinking about home, had been too busy when on duty, and too tired in his brief rest periods. But seeing the destruction, he could no longer hide from the truth, the inevitable truth that Jane must be dead. His parents, dead, Everyone he knew, everyone he had ever known, they were all dead. He felt tears welling up in his eyes, was fighting for breath, tried to open his eyes but they felt like they were glued shut. His legs gave way underneath him, and that was the last thing he remembered.

• • • • •

“Captain Noah? Can you hear me?”

Jake tried again to open his eyes. The light was strong, they stung. He was lying on his back, but wasn’t sure where. A figure was bent over him, looking at him. A woman.

“Jane? Is that you?”

“Captain Noah, it’s Kiera. No, don’t try and move, not yet. You fainted Captain, you hit your head on a bench.”

A tiny light flicked on, shone directly into his left eye, then the right. A pair of hands turned his head to one side, very gently. Fingers probed around the back, carefully, gently. A jolt of pain stabbed at his skull. He cried out.

“Sorry Captain, I didn’t mean to hurt you. There’s some blood, and you’re going to have a heck of a lump there for a while, but I think you’ll live.”

The pain had somehow brought his vision back into focus. He looked up at the nurse. She actually looked a little like Jane, he thought. Similar short blonde hair, thin face, long neck,. He didn’t feel so bad about having said the name of his wife. He did however, feel intense embarrassment at having passed out, and in front the others. Not Kiera, she was a nurse, she’d seen it all before. Not even the sailors, not really. What really upset him was that Stacey would have witnessed it. A moment of weakness. He had a nasty feeling he wouldn’t be allowed to forget it.

“Can you try and sit up for me a bit Captain?”

“Only if you stop calling me that and call me Jake.”

“If that’s what it takes. Come on, let me help you.”

She put her hands behind his shoulders and helped him lift his back from the floor. Another jolt of pain shot through his head. He winced, but didn’t make a noise. Once in a sitting position he shuffled back until he was leaning against a bench. The opposite bench bore a dark red stain. His blood. His eyes swivelled around as he scanned the interior of the boat.

“Where did everyone go?”

“Horace and Dante went to tie us up. The other two have gone ashore.”

“Damn. Damn! Ouch!” his hand flew up to the back of his head.

“Careful, no sudden movements, Jake!” Kiera smiled cheekily. “I need to dress that, then you can go out and play too.”

“They shouldn’t have gone without me. Oh what the hell, I never asked to be captain anyway, so what if nobody listens to me.”

“To be fair, I don’t think you gave any orders to remain aboard while you fainted.” Kiera regretted the words the instant they left her mouth. She looked nervously at the captain, worried she had overstepped the mark. He started back at her, and a grin spread across his face.

“No, I don’t suppose I did. Now, about that dressing.”

The nurse pulled out some sterile swabs from her medical kit, doused them in antiseptic, and dabbed at the wound on the back of his head. It stung when she touched it, but not as badly as before. Once clean, she did her best to bandage it. She looked at the dressing on his hand.

“Well, you’ve got matching bandages now.”

“Don’t. I must look like some kind of confused pirate with this stuff wrapped round my head.”

“I don’t think anyone is going to worry about that. Do you think you can stand?”

“I can try.”

There was a blood curdling scream from outside. A woman’s voice. Stacey’s. It wasn’t just a single scream, it went on and on.

“What the…?” Jake tried to scramble to his feet, but the sudden movement sent more shockwaves of searing pain through his head, causing him to fall back onto his backside. “What’s happening, what’s going on?”

Kiera rushed to the open sliding door and looked out. At the exact same moment there was another scream, a man’s.

“What can you see?” Jake was still trying desperately to get to his feet. He hauled himself onto the bench and looked out the window. They were tied to the remains of the pier. Horace had found a spot between the broken concrete that littered the sea just large enough to get the tender in. The pier was much higher than their little boat. It had been designed for cruisers and tankers, not small craft like this. Most of the window was obstructed by concrete, just a thin slot at the top was clear. Through it Jake thought he could make out Stacey. She was on her hands and knees, screaming apparently in pain. It was hard to tell why, she was too far from the boat to see. In front of her was one of the sailors, he had also been on his hands and knees but as Jake looked on he saw him roll over onto his back.

“It’s Stacey,” Kiera called back from the window. “Wait there, I’m going to try and help.” She grabbed her medical bag and climbed out of the boat onto the roof, and from there jumped onto the broken pier.

Another scream, but this time not pain. It was Reeve, he was running towards Kiera.

“No! Get back on the boat! Don’t go any further! Get back!”

Jake tried again to get to his feet, this time successfully. Adrenaline was coursing through his body, and it blocked out much of the pain in his head. He wobbled over to the door. From behind him came a terrible cracking sound, and then another noise, like someone had opened a gas bottle. He turned to see a crack opening up in the hull. Just a hairline fracture, but enough that seawater was spurting through at high pressure. The force of the water was opening the crack wider. The hastily applied patch was breaking apart. He steadied himself, climbed through the door and grabbed the thick concrete of the pier. His shoulders were level with the ground outside and he didn’t know if he had the strength to pull himself up.

“Get back on the boat Kiera, now!” Reeve had nearly reached them. Stacey and the sailor were now both writhing around on the ground, still screaming.

“No, Kiera, don’t get on the boat!” Jake called up to her as she turned round to jump onto the roof. She looked down at him confused, and turned back to Reeve. He was beside her now.

“Captain! Stay on the boat, it’s too dangerous,” Reeve called.

“Get me out of here Reeve, this boat is sinking!”

The security man looked over at the others on the ground. Their screams were weakening. He sprinted to the end of the pier, grabbed Jake’s hands. As he pulled, Jake pushed off as best he could. He landed on his knees, felt he was about to collapse.

“Get up, now!” Reeve cried, adding, “sir!” Without waiting, he pulled Jake onto his feet. “Don’t move. Either of you. Don’t move from this spot.”

The wailing had stopped, and the only noise was the sound of water flooding into the failed tender. It groaned, creaked, then lurched over onto its side, sinking until just the upturned side protruded from the water. Air bubbles gurgled up and popped on the surface, and then, there was silence.

• • • • •

“Reeve, what the hell is going on here?” Jake’s head was throbbing, and he was bruised on his chest where he had been pulled out of the boat so quickly and aggressively. “What’s happened to Stacey and whoever is with her? Kiera should go and help!”

“No, nobody should move. It’s the dust, the ash. It’s dangerous.”

“What do you mean? It can’t still be hot, not after all this time.”

“It’s not the heat, there’s something else. Look around, it’s not the same ash. It’s thicker, we didn’t see this on the ship.”

Jake and Kiera did as instructed. Where they were standing, on the very edge of the broken pier, there was no ash. It had been blown away, probably into the sea. The pier opened onto a wide flat area. Jake could imagine how normally it would be filled with vehicles, coaches taking cruise parties on tours of the town, or trucks loading and unloading supply boats. The ash gradually increased in thickness in this area, until it became impossible to tell where the hard standing ended and the road up to the town began. Stacy was about fifty metres away, where the ash was several centimetres thick. Something was wrong with her though, something more than the fact she wasn’t moving.

She was shrinking.

Jake stared, his mouth open. There was no doubt about it. She was lying on her front, and she was deflating like a balloon. The sailor next to her was the doing the same, it was just less obvious due to the size difference.

“That ash,” Reeve said, “is dissolving her flesh.”

“I don’t…how…what?” Kiera seemed unable to say any more than that.

“I told her to wait for you two, but she ignored me, said she was going up to where the wreck of the town is. I sent Horace after her and waited here a while. Then I sent Dante to try and find the airport, and I followed after the other two. She screamed, and when I got to her, her feet were…melting.” Reeve had one hand on his hip and the other on his forehead. He was swinging slightly from side to side, like he was debating with himself about whether to continue.

“Go on,” Jake said.

“I could see it was the ash. She was wearing flip flops, she must have just kicked through the ash like sand on a beach. And it dissolved her feet, I mean, it just ate away at her flesh. I’ve never seen anything like that, not like that….”

“And Horace?”

“He tried to get it off her. Brushed it off with his hands. His bare hands. As soon as they touched it, the same thing happened. It’s…it was…I’ve never seen anything like it. That’s why we can’t go any further. If that stuff touches your skin, you’re dead. I don’t know what the hell it is, and I don’t want to know. We need to get away from here.”

“We need to find Dante,” Jake said, looking up at the security officer. “Which way did he go?”

“No! It’s too dangerous.”

“Reeve’s right Jake. Besides, you’re in no state to go after anyone.”

“We can’t just stay here and wait for him to find out for himself what that ash can do! Besides, look at that.” He pointed to the partially capsized tender. “We’re not going anywhere, we can’t!”

Reeve reached inside his jacket pocket and extracted a radio. He pressed a button and it crackled into life. “Max, this is Reeve, over.”

A tinny voice replied. “This is Max, go ahead.”

“We have a problem. This environment is extremely hostile, I repeat, hostile. Too dangerous to stay. Our transport is no longer functional, we require alternative transport back to the Arcadia A.S.A.P., over.”

“Understood. I’ll get on it. Standby, I’ll come back to you. Out.”

“Maybe we could swim it?” Kiera suggested. “Although,” she looked at Jake, “no, maybe not.”

“We don’t know if the water is toxic. There must be ash in there too, who knows what it could do to us?” Reeve shook his head.

“We’ve been drinking water from the desalination plant since that ash cloud hit. We haven’t had any reports of anyone melting in medical.”

“Yes but like I said, this isn’t the same ash that we saw further north.”

“Well I think we might have our answer,” Jake said. He had turned and was looking at the water. About a hundred metres away he could see Dante, swimming towards them.