Текст книги "Noah's Ark: Survivors"

Автор книги: Harry Dayle

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Fifty-Eight

JAKE WAITED UNTIL Zhang had mounted the steps and returned inside the boat before he moved. He could see Gunter’s discarded oar still floating some way away. He was being pushed towards the shore, and so was the oar, but the oar had a considerable head start. He crawled to the front corder of the raft, and leaning over the side he started to paddle. His movement was severely restricted by the pain in his side. He felt pathetic, splashing his hand in the water ineffectively. Every stroke was agony, and not only did not seem to bring him any closer to his immediate goal of the oar, also took him further away from the ship in terms of time. He knew the longer he took to reach the paddle, the less chance of ever catching the Spirit of Arcadia. So he kept on paddling like a puppy at sea.

When fatigue almost overcame him, and he was forced to his knees to relieve the pressure on his ribs, something remarkable happened. The oar appeared to stop dead in the water. It was no longer advancing, he was actually gaining on it, and without any effort on his own part. The wake of the bow thruster alone was propelling him forwards, but not the oar. Within a minute he was almost on top of it. He could see the reason it wasn’t moving. It was caught against one of the submerged pieces of pier. A jagged triangle of concrete and steel poking through the surface of the fjord like a spring shoot. Jagged, and very sharp. Easily capable, Jake realised with horror, of puncturing an inflatable life raft.

He hurled himself forwards, bouncing on the front inflated section sending a surge of pain through his side. With arms outstretched, he tried to grab the oar with one hand while simultaneously pushing off from the fragment of pier. His left hand closed around the shaft of the oar and he pulled it out of the water, threw it over his head and heard it land on the rubber bottom of the raft behind him. At the same time, a spur of reinforcing steel jutting from the smashed concrete caught him in the middle of his right hand, reopening the wound created during his battle with Ibsen. Blood gushed from the tear in his skin, but he couldn’t let the pain distract him from his task. With both hands, he pushed off from the pier with all the force he could muster. The raft floated away from the obstacle. Jake scramble to the other end, clambering over inflated air chambers that were designed to add buoyancy and redundancy and also to provide somewhere to sit. He collected up the oar on his way. Reaching the end, he started paddling furiously. The ship was now a considerable distance away and was executing a turn. The raft began to move, but by paddling only on one side it was not only advancing but also turning to the left. He shuffled on his knees to the right hand side, lowered the oar into the water and began paddling again, bringing the the craft back straight, and then round to the right. Shuffling back to the left hand side he repeated the operation. But it was no good. One man alone could not paddle fast enough. And a man with at least one broken rib, and who was losing blood through the gash in his hand, stood no chance. Jake fell back onto his back, splashing down into the water that was still swilling around in the bottom of the raft, and roared.

“Nooo! Lucya!”

His cries and screams carried across the water, bounced off the sloping remains of Longyearbyen, and echoed back out over the fjord. Jake was beaten.

In the distance, the Spirit of Arcadia had turned one hundred and eighty degrees, and was sailing towards the mouth of the fjord, and the open sea.

Fifty-Nine

23 HOURS LATER

Jake opened his eyes, frightened. Something had made a sound. This was odd, because since he had seen the ship sail out of the fjord and head south, there hadn’t been any sign of life, at all. No birds. No butterflies, or moths. No sea lions, or polar bears. Not even any fish. And certainly no people. The world was dead, and he had accepted that he was going to die here too. The wake from the ship and the current in the fjord had carried him further east, away from the open sea. There was no broken pier here, and no pulverised town. Just steep sloping hills on either side. Grey hills, thick with toxic ash. Nowhere to go on land, nowhere to go at sea. Jake was beaten and he knew it.

He had tried to make himself as comfortable as he could given the circumstances. He had succeeded in removing most of the water between two of the parallel inflatable sausage benches, making a third of the raft more or less dry. The wind had changed direction and was now blowing up the fjord, the mountains to either side offered no protection. So he had unrolled the bright orange hood and erected that, giving him some degree of shelter. A bright pink buoy had fallen out of the folds of the hood as he had unfurled it. It looked like it had been punctured and hastily repaired with silicone. He’d wedged it into the corner between the outer air chamber and an inflatable bench, and used it as a head rest. Staying down low, curled up, he was able to conserve a little body heat despite his wet clothes and the icy conditions. He’d even managed to go to sleep for a while.

But then there had been the noise, loud enough to rouse him from his slumber. He pushed the orange cover back down into the raft, got to his knees, and scanned the landscape in every direction. Nothing moved except the water, rippling in the wind. Had he dreamt the sound, he wondered? Maybe it was the dehydration causing his mind to play tricks on him. When had he last eaten, had anything to drink? He had no idea. He’d beed adrift for hours, perhaps days? And before that he had hardly eaten on board. His mind wandered. How would he die here, what would kill him first? The cold? Or the hunger? Maybe a combination of both. Perhaps he should try and get to the land. Choose his own demise rather than let fate decide. He had options. The toxic ash could finish him off. The memory of Stacy writhing in agony flashed before his eyes. Too painful. He could deliberately drown himself, that would seem fitting for a sailor. But he knew he’d never have the courage to go through with it. The survival instinct was too strong.

There it was again, the noise. Jake snapped his head around in the direction he thought it had come from. He hadn’t imagined it, he had definitely heard something that time. A splash. Something in the water. Not loud, but its effect was amplified a thousand times by a total absence of any other sound.

Jake strained his eyes, stared at the water where he thought the sound had emanated from. Was it a fish? No, he didn’t think so. But there was something there. Something black, protruding from the surface, It was about a hundred metres away, small, difficult to see. He considered the possibilities; a fin of some kind? But it didn’t seem to be moving. Perhaps another piece of the pier, or other wreckage? But he had drifted a long way from Longyearbyen, he couldn’t image there would be any wreckage this far out. Whatever it was, Jake had a strange feeling that it was watching him. His curiosity was intense. If there was something alive over there, he had to find out what. He positioned himself in the tapered front of the raft, picked up his only oar, and began paddling towards the mystery excrescence. It was slow going. Two strokes. Pull the paddle out of the water. Shuffle to the right. Put the paddle in the water. Two strokes. Pull the paddle out. Shuffle to the left. All the time he had his eyes fixed on the mystery object. Inexplicably, it appeared to be growing. Rising out of the water. Where previously it had looked like it was maybe thirty or forty centimetres, now it was over a metre. It looked suspiciously like a head on a stick. Were those eyes? They certainly looked like eyes, but they weren’t aligned properly, weren’t symmetrical.

It was then that he noticed the bubbles. A million tiny bubbles breaking on the surface. He was now about fifty metres from the stalk sticking out of the water. The bubbles looked like they were radiating from it. They covered a huge surface area. While he looked on they grew in size and in intensity. The water around the object was no longer blue green, it was turning white, churning, fizzing like a gigantic jacuzzi. As the bubbles reached the raft and broke against its side, their inertia pushed it backwards. Jake stopped paddling. Whatever was happening, he didn’t want to get any closer.

The object in the middle of this aquatic chaos was rising again. Another protrusion joined it. Thinner, without a bulge on the end. A simple stick rising out of the water. And then a third, shorter and fatter. And then the white water turned black, as a gigantic fin appeared to rise out out of the fjord. As it broke the surface, sheets of water cascaded off of it. Spray flew into the air, rained down on Jake and the raft. But it wasn’t over. Because the fin was attached to a body. An immense, dark, hulk of a body. It too broke the surface with an almighty roar, torrents of sea water tumbling from its back. It must have been almost a hundred metres long Jake estimated. It dwarfed his little raft. The central fin itself was the size of a house.

And then, silence returned. The last of the water trickled down the side of the massive black beast. It was magnificent. It was unreal. It was, Jake knew, his saviour. He sank to back into the raft and stared up in awe, at the sight of the submarine in front of him.

Sixty

NOTHING HAPPENED FOR a few minutes. The periscope array that had foretold the vessel’s arrival still seemed to be watching Jake, now from on high. Once over the initial shock, he got back onto his knees and started paddling slowly towards the monster. As he got closer he could see that the surface was not as smooth as it looked from a distance. It was covered in thousands of square tiles, each one a slightly difference shade of matt black. It seemed to absorb light and sound, a hole in his field of vision. Rivets the size of dinner plates marked out sections. At one edge of the towering fin, a door opened up, and two uniformed men stepped out. Jake couldn’t help but be dismayed to see they were carrying guns. He had seen enough guns in the last few days. A third man stepped out, older than the others. Mid fifties, Jake guessed. Shorter than himself, and with a neat moustache.

“Hello there!”

The cheery way the man flanked by two armed ratings spoke, took Jake by surprise.

“Well don’t just sit there staring, come aboard, come aboard! Throw that man a line, help him on will you?”

The younger men put their weapons down on the deck and set about getting a rope from inside the tower, attaching it to the sub, and throwing it to Jake. His condition meant he wasn’t fast enough to catch it, but it landed inside the raft and he was able to pull himself in.

“Just you then?” the older man called out as he waited for Jake to close the gap. “Nobody with you?”

“Just me,” Jake called back. His voice was hoarse, his throat dry.

“Good good. Well I’m sure you have a story to tell. But it looks like you’ve been out here a while. I expect you could do with something to eat and drink? We’ll get you sorted out my friend. You’ll find it a jolly sight warmer inside too!”

The front of the raft nudged the black hull. The junior sailors reached out and grabbed a hand each, heaved Jake on board. He couldn’t help but cry out in pain as they did so.

“Gosh, are you injured?” the senior man asked. “Well I think we should get you down to the medical berth as quick as. I’m Coote by the way, Captain Coote. You’re not Navy are you?”

Jake shook his head.

“So you can call me Coote. Or Captain. Whatever you prefer. We’re quite informal here. Life on a submarine works better that way. Mutual respect and friendship, that’s the ticket. These men will take care of you. This is Able Seaman Ewan Sledge, and Able Seaman Eric O’Brien. They will take you down to the medical berth, get you patched up, then we can have something to eat and you can fill me in on what has happened to the Spirit of Arcadia.”

Jake looked at the Captain with surprise. Not only had he miraculously found in him in the middle of a remote fjord, he somehow knew where he had come from.

The two seamen helped Jake in through the door before he could introduce himself properly. They had to climb down a ladder to the main deck, something Jake had trouble with. He was led through a room packed from floor to ceiling with beige computers, screens, and flashing lights. A number of officers who were manning the equipment watched him pass through. They wore expressions of curiosity, but there was something else there too. Jake realised it was hope. These men saw him as a reason to hope that not all was lost.

“The medical berth is down on the next deck,” O’Brien said

He took Jake down a narrow metal stairway, through more densely packed rooms and thick bulkheads, eventually arriving at a tiny cabin dominated by a single bed covered with a deep red blanket. Sledge had carried on deeper into the submarine.

“Sit yourself down there sir,” O’Brien said. “Ewan’s gone to find Surgeon Lieutenant Vardy.”

“Please, call me Jake.”

“And you can call me Eric. Like Coote said, we’re like a big family on this boat. A brotherhood. Have to be, you couldn’t survive it otherwise. Ninety eight people living in a tin can for months on end, it’s the only way to be.”

Ewan appeared at the door with another man, tall, blonde, he looked a lot like Gunter the recently deceased German. Jake got the impression the man had just been woken up, his eyes were red and puffy.

“Right, what have we here? A survivor! There’s hope for us all. I’m Vardy, medical officer.” He stuck out a hand, Jake shook it with his left, hand, at the same time holding out his right to show the deep cut.

“Jake Noah,” he croaked simply.

“Well then Jake, looks like we need to start with that hand. And you look like you need some fluids in you too. That makes two of us. Eric, get me some coffee would you? And some water for our friend here, lots of water.”

Eric nodded and disappeared off back the way they had come with Ewan in tow. Vardy opened a cabinet above the bed, took out antiseptic and sterile gauze pads, and with a delicate touch he began to clean the wound.

“Anything else I need to look at Jake? Or just the cut?”

“I think I have a broken rib, maybe more than one.”

He rubbed his side with his free hand.

“Okay, I’ll take a look at that. We have some strong pain killers, but I don’t want to dose you up too heavily. I expect Coote will want to talk to you. That will be easier if you’re conscious.”

• • • • •

Vardy spent twenty minutes with Jake. He stitched the cut in his hand, and bandaged it. He checked for broken bones and concluded that he had almost certainly cracked a rib, but it wasn’t broken. Most of the pain came from the bruising, the whole of his side was very tender. There wasn’t much to be done, he mainly needed rest. The painkillers took the edge off. Eric had come back with water, and Jake downed more than a litre. He would have kept going but Vardy told him to take it easy, he needed to get some solids into him before he flooded his gut. When the medical officer was happy, he escorted him back through the submarine to the officer’s mess where they found Coote, alone. The captain stood as soon as the men entered, beaming at Jake.

“Ah, here you are! Sit down, sit down. Take the weight off. Now then, we didn’t have time to be properly introduced before. You are?”

“Jake Noah. First officer aboard the Spirit of Arcadia, and until recently, I was acting captain of that same ship.”

He extended his newly bandaged hand, the captain shook it heartily causing Jake to wince with pain. All three men sat at a long table.

“Welcome aboard HMS Ambush, Captain Noah. Dreadful name if you ask me. A nuclear submarine fleet is an excellent deterrent against acts of war, but they gave us such an aggressive name. That’s the admiralty for you. But I digress. We followed your message in the buoy. I must say we were rather hoping we might find an entire passenger ship, not just a single raft. Not that we’re not pleased to have you aboard you understand! Delighted, yes, delighted to have you here.”

“The buoy?”

“Yes, the buoy. Very clever by the way, putting an emergency transmitter in a buoy like that. Who knows if we would have found you otherwise?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I follow. What buoy are you talking about?”

“Russell, would you find Eric and get him to bring us the buoy? Good chap, thank you. Ah, excellent doctor our Mr Vardy, very experienced. Splendid bedside manner. Poor chap doesn’t get to practice much medicine here of course. A few cuts and bruises, minor things. Quite a lot of burns. Not from the engine room as you might expect though, it’s our chef. Awfully accident prone. He does make particularly good curry on Wednesday’s though, so we can forgive him for the odd saucepan of soup ending up on the floor!”

Coote roared with laughter. Jake smiled politely.

“Captain Coote, my ship, Spirit of Arcadia, it’s in real danger. This is going to sound crazy, but it’s been taken over by a madman. He’s a religious nut case. Sorry, I don’t mean to suggest all religious people are mad…” Jake flushed red, worried he had just insulted the man opposite him.

“No no, of course not. Don’t worry Jake, you can speak freely here. All views are tolerated. We have had many a debate about such matters. Passes the time when we are stuck at the bottom of the ocean! Carry on.”

“This man, Flynn he’s called. He framed me for murder, became captain, and is now sailing the ship off goodness knows where. He plans to starve most of the passengers to death. All except the women, and a few of his friends. He says he’s doing God’s work. Starting again. Building a new Eden he says.”

“I see. Yes, I can understand your choice of words in describing him as a madman. Ah, here’s the buoy!”

The doctor had returned. He handed a bright pink buoy to Coote. He had also brought a tray on which was a bowl of soup and a couple of bread rolls.

“Here we are. And something for you to eat too, excellent. Now let’s see. Yes, very clever. An emergency radio transmitter inside, and a note.”

As Jake tucked into the soup, Coote pulled open the flap that had been cut in the side of the buoy, pulled out the piece of paper and read from it.

“Spirit of Arcadia. Cruise liner. Approximately three thousand survivors. Departed from this location for Longyearbyen, second of May 2014. Then some coordinates for Longyearbyen. So you say this wasn’t you?”

“No. But I think I can guess who. May I?”

Coote handed the paper to Jake.

“Lucya. It’s the handwriting of Lucya Levin, our chief radio officer. She never told me. She must have dropped this when we left the pole. That explains how you found me. There’s one of these in the life raft. She must have stuck it in there before he took her. I had no idea there was a transmitter inside.”

“We picked it up this morning,” Coote said. “We were heading back to our base in Scotland. See if there were any survivors.”

“How much do you know about what happened?” Jake asked. “I mean, if you were submerged, do you get to see the news? I have no idea how these things work.”

“Just as well!” Coote laughed heartily. “We can’t have every Tom Dick and Harry knowing military secrets now! No offence, no offence. Well you’d be surprised. Provided we don’t dive too deeply, we can pick up a lot of communication traffic. That is a lot of what we do, intercepting communications. As soon as we started hearing reports of that damned asteroid, well we surfaced so that we could get a better picture of what was happening. We saw the television images. I expect you did too. Terrible business. Terrible. We dived again before it reached our location. Went deep, took cover you might say. Stayed down for twenty four hours, then came up very slowly. At first we thought our communications equipment was damaged, we couldn’t hear anything. So we surfaced and found that there was nothing to hear. Now we have to go to Scotland. But it sounds like your ship is in danger?”

“Captain Coote, there won’t be any survivors in Scotland. Or anywhere else. Everything is gone. We landed at Longyearbyen. Well, where Longyearbyen used to be. It’s turned to dust. But it’s worse than that. The asteroid scattered ash, thick ash. It’s toxic, dangerous. Acidic or something, I don’t know. I lost two people to that ash, it melted their skin. Trust me, there’s nothing in Scotland for you. But we can save three thousand people on that ship.”

“Tell me,” Coote said. “How did you end up in the raft?”

“I’d better tell you the whole story,” Jake said.

He recounted the events from the time the asteroid flew overhead. He explained about Melvin, Flynn, the landing party, as well as how he had been framed for murder. He told the captain about being thrown into the raft, being cast adrift.

Coote remained silent for a long time. He looked at Jake, studied him.

“It’s a heck of a story. Now don’t get me wrong old chap, but how do I know you’re not the madman and you want our help to take control of a perfectly well run ship?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I didn’t say that. But you have to look at this from my point of view. I find you battered and bruised in a life raft. Perhaps you were thrown overboard for good reason? Perhaps you are hoping to use the force of Her Majesty’s navy to exact revenge? What I am asking is this. If we find your ship, will we also find others who can corroborate your version of events?”

“We can do better than that,” Jake said, a smile spreading across his face. “If we find the ship then I can give you absolute proof that what I have said is the truth.”

“Do you know where your mutineer plans on taking your boat?”

“No. Flynn just said he wanted to burn off the fuel. It won’t take them long. We ruptured a fuel line, there’s very little fuel left. But Lucya had been scanning the radio frequencies, and I’m certain she would have activated the emergency beacon on board. If he hasn’t found it then surely you could locate them with that?”

“Aside from your buoys, we haven’t picked up anything else I’m afraid. Did you see the ship sail out of the fjord? Did you see in which direction they went after that?”

“South. They definitely went south.”

“Then, Captain Noah, we shall do the same.”