Текст книги "Noah's Ark: Contagion"

Автор книги: Harry Dayle

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Four

“HELLO, SWEETIE, MY name’s Kiera. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know! What’s wrong with my daddy? Is he going to be okay? I’m scared!”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine. What’s your daddy’s name?”

“He’s called Scott.”

“Okay, my love, and what’s your name?”

“Erica. Are we going home soon? I want to see Granny, she’ll know what to do.”

“We can’t go home right now, Erica. I need you to be very brave for me, okay? Has your daddy collapsed like this before?”

“No!”

Kiera looked around at the group pushing to get a view of what was happening. “Did anyone here see what happened?”

“He was shouting for help, then he just kind of, I don’t know, fainted I guess?” a woman said. A few others nodded their agreement of her assessment.

“He were dragging himself along t’ floor,” someone else added, “like he couldn’t walk. I thought he were pissed meself!”

Kiera had already moved Scott into the recovery position. She took his pulse while the people around spoke. Happy that he was at least breathing normally and his heart was working properly, she leaned back and looked at the little girl. “Erica, can you stay here with your daddy for a few minutes? I need to get someone to help me take him to the medical centre.”

“Will you be able to make him better there?”

“I hope so. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

Erica nodded, although she clearly wasn’t happy about being abandoned.

Kiera sprinted to the nearest courtesy telephone, which was located by one of the sets of lifts. She called the medical centre but there was no reply, so she tried the bridge instead.

“Hi, Dave? It’s Kiera, is Grau on the bridge?” She listened intently. “Okay, how long is he likely to be? If you see him, tell him we have an emergency. I’ll find someone to help me get the patient down to medical, thanks.”

She hung up the phone and considered her options. Further up the corridor she could see Erica and the group of passengers watching her intently. She tried another number. “Barry? I really need your help…”

• • •

It took less than ten minutes for the entertainments manager to get to deck eight. His arrival was announced by a ping and the sound of the lift doors sliding open. He emerged, pushing a stretcher on a trolley in front of him.

“Oh, thank goodness! Down here, quickly,” Kiera shouted.

The crowed parted to let the trolley through. Scott had started to come round, and was groaning incomprehensibly. Erica clutched his hand; she was sobbing softly.

“I came as quickly as I could; it took ages to find this thing.”

“I know, I’m sorry. We hardly ever need it, that’s why it was packed away. Right, let’s get him on the stretcher. Undo that clip there.”

The stretcher was removed from the trolley and placed on the floor next to Scott.

“Barry, you’ll need to lift him up. Get your hands under his shoulders. I’ll take his feet. Ready? On three. One…two…three!”

The two of them half-heaved and half-dragged the semi-conscious man onto the flat surface. Despite grabbing him by the ankles, Kiera noted that his legs did not bend when he was lifted. They remained as straight as if they had been tied to splints.

“Here, let me help you with that.” A hefty man pushed his way through the crowd.

“Thanks,” Kiera said. “He’s heavier than he looks.”

The two men lifted the stretcher onto the trolley. “I’ll help you get him back down to medical,” Barry said.

“I’m coming with you!” Erica cried.

Kiera looked around at the crowd, pushing and shoving for a look at the spectacle. She didn’t think the medical rooms were the best place for the young girl, but neither could she leave her alone among strangers. “Okay, come on then.” She held out a hand. Erica grabbed it and hung on as if the life of her father depended on it.

The trip back down to deck five was made in almost total silence. Scott had lost consciousness again. Only the gentle sobbing of Erica broke the peace.

When they arrived in the small medical suite, there was no sign of Doctor Grau Lister, or David, the other nurse.

“Barry, I think it’s best if you wait in here with Erica,” Kiera said as they wheeled the trolley through the space used as a waiting room and reception.

“I want to stay with my dad!” the girl insisted.

“I know you do, but I need to be able to examine him properly. Barry will look after you, and I promise you’ll be able to see your dad again very soon. Will you be brave for me, and for him?”

Erica looked up at the nurse, her big blue eyes glistening, and nodded, unconvincingly.

“Come on, I’m trying to make up some new games for the kid zone. You can help me decide if they’re any good, yeah?” Barry led her to a seat, and Kiera disappeared through to the treatment room with her patient.

Once alone with Scott, she proceeded to remove his trousers in order to examine his legs and find out why they were so stiff. As soon as the clothing was gone it became clear that lack of mobility was not the only problem. His lower limbs were covered in huge red blotches, some of which looked like they had started to decompose. The smell was quite overpowering, causing Kiera to rush to the cupboard in search of a surgical mask. It didn’t block the dreadful odour entirely, but it helped. She set about dressing the wounds, hoping that the doctor would return quickly and be able to make a full diagnosis.

• • •

“Goodbye, for now at least, Captain.” Jake shook Coote’s hand.

“See you in a few days, unless we have another emergency!” Coote saluted to Jake, and gave a roar of laughter. “Take it easy, old boy. And good luck with the fishing project.” He strolled off down the walkway, back to his submarine. Jake was glad he wasn’t following him.

“Okay, lads, let’s get that thing retracted and get underway,” he said.

Four sailors nodded in unison, and with the help of colleagues on the Ambush they detached the walkway and set about bringing the entire telescopic structure back on board.

Jake picked up the courtesy telephone by the doorway and called to the bridge. “We’re ready to go. Tell Chuck to take it easy until the sub has partially dived. Ahead ten knots.”

As the men hauled the last length of walkway on board, the ship started to move gently forwards, the Ambush matching her speed perfectly. Jake saw the hatch on top of the conning tower being pulled closed. The submarine tilted its nose down very slightly, and the surface of the hull slipped under the water. The tower became smaller and smaller until just the top couple of metres were visible above the small waves. The thick bunch of cables connecting the two vessels remained clear of the sea, just.

“I hope that umbilical cord is waterproof,” one of the sailors said to Jake.

“Martin assures me that there’s no danger, even if the Ambush goes under entirely.”

“Why is she travelling partially submerged, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“She’s designed for efficient sailing underwater. We can go faster if she’s under.”

“How long will it take to get to Scotland?”

“A couple of days, maybe three to reach the base itself. That’s the upper estimate. But we might be able to get there more quickly. It all depends on the load the reactor can handle. This is all theory; it’s never been done before.”

“Makes you wonder why we carried all that diesel around all these years. I don’t know how much one of those nuclear things costs, but I reckon it’s cheaper than all the fuel this ship’s burned in its lifetime. Bugger all emissions, too. They should have built one into the Arcadia”

“Maybe. I’m not sure the prospect would be quite as appealing to our typical clientele though. Diesel may not be exactly clean, but at least there’s no risk of meltdown.”

Jake took a last look at the sliver of black cutting its way through the ocean alongside them before heading off.

• • •

Jake’s next port of call was deck seven. Three men, each well wrapped up against the cold, were waiting for him.

“So, give me some good news. Is it ready?” Jake asked, shaking each man by the hand in turn.

“It’s as good as it’s going to be,” the tallest man said. He was blond, and spoke with a Swedish accent. His tired eyes betrayed his lack of sleep from working all hours on the project. “The ladies have done an amazing job. Given what they had to work with, this net is a work of art. I just hope the winch is up to it.”

“It was designed to lower a fully loaded lifeboat, Stieg, I think it can cope with a fishing net,” Jake smiled.

“Lowering is one thing. Pulling a full net out of the water is different.”

“If the net gets filled, that will be a good problem to have. Don’t let me hold you up if you’re ready, I’m just observing.”

Stieg nodded, and turned and spoke to the other men in Swedish. The three of them arranged themselves around the fishing net. Jake had to agree, given the constraints of working with any bits of string and old rope they could find around the ship, it really was quite an achievement. It had been Lucya’s idea to put retired ladies to work on the project under the supervision of the professional fishermen. Their many hands had made light work of the complicated design. The delicate and aged fingers of expert lace makers and crochet enthusiasts had worked alongside the rough hands of lifelong trawler men. Their creation was, in its own way, quite beautiful. It was certainly the most colourful fishing net any of the fishermen had ever seen.

Now it was attached to a repaired lifeboat winch. The three men heaved it over the starboard side. It unfurled like a sail in the wind, its impressive size becoming truly apparent for the first time.

Stieg was positioned by the winch. He stretched his arms out in front of him, hands interlocked, knuckles cracking, then took the winch in hand and began to turn. His colleagues watched intently as the net was lowered towards the sea. Although this kind of operation was familiar territory to them, they had never worked from such a height above the water. Their elevation negated the need for a traditional trawl gantry. Instead the steel cables that connected the net to the winch were fed through the metal structure that had once had a lifeboat suspended from it. The further the net descended, and the longer the steel cables attaching it to the winch became, the more the whole assembly billowed and flapped. It was becoming difficult to control.

The men shouted to Stieg. Jake didn’t speak a word of their language, but he understood perfectly that they wanted him to speed up. The net was in danger of becoming too tangled to be of any use.

Stieg was turning the winch for all he was worth, but despite his strength, the effort was taking its toll and instead of getting faster, he was actually slowing down. Jake rushed forwards to help. Standing opposite the Swede, he grabbed onto the winch handle and pulled with all his might. Behind him, one of the other two men was pushing the cables away from the hull of the ship with a long pole, trying his best to prevent the net from crashing into the side. The third man continued to shout instructions. The crashing sound of the heavy string-and-steel construction hitting the water told them all that they had made it. Jake and Stieg both fell back from the winch, gasping for breath.

“We have to get a motor on that thing,” Jake said as soon as he could get the words out.

“It’s not going to be easy pulling it up again, this much is for sure.”

The two men joined the others leaning over the side. The net was submerged, and against all odds, had ballooned perfectly below the surface. As it dragged along to the side and very slightly behind the Spirit of Arcadia, it was sure to swallow up any marine life it encountered. The only question was whether any such life remained. With food stocks already running dangerously low, this operation was critical.

Five

“I DO NOT think I have ever seen anything quite like this before. And you say these legions have grown larger since you dressed them?” Doctor Grau Lister peered at Scott’s legs, frowning.

“Yes, definitely. I made sure each one was entirely covered, and now the bandages don’t look big enough. Doctor Lister, why do you think he’s unconscious? Apart from his legs, I can’t find anything obviously wrong with him.”

“You have been very thorough, Kiera. You have done a good job. At this point in time, I am as much in the dark as you. My best guess would be that the pain from these sores has caused him to black out. That is something I have seen before. We will know more when the drugs take full effect, but for the time being they are more likely to keep him under.”

“What about the rot?”

“It is very strange. Have you talked to the girl? The daughter?”

“Yes. She’s very upset, it’s hard to get much sense from her. And she’s very young of course. But she was adamant that he hadn’t hurt himself, and that this isn’t something that’s happened before.”

Lister folded his arms and stared at the floor, deep in thought. “We will start a course of antibiotics. If it’s some kind of bacterial or fungal infection, that should bring about rapid improvement. I will have a better idea when I have had time to analyse his blood sample. In the meantime, we will keep this room clear; we do not know if his condition is contagious.”

• • •

Jake closed the conference room door, hesitated, and then bolted it. He didn’t return to the chair in which he’d spent the last hour. Instead he opened a cabinet in the corner, moved aside some stationary and books, and took out a bottle of Irish whisky and a glass tumbler. He carried both back to the large oval table that filled the room, slumped down in an armchair, and unscrewed the cap. There wasn’t much of the amber liquid left. He drained the remainder into the glass and wasted no time in gulping down a good measure. He didn’t know how he was going to get another bottle from Barry’s secret stash. This was the second one he’d finished in a week. Barry was sure to ask awkward questions. Drinking on the job was a new experience, but he’d found it was the only way to survive these committee surgery sessions.

Today’s meet-and-greet had gone the same way as all the others since the committee had initiated the daily drop-in. It was supposed to be a forum for anyone to put questions directly to the captain, or whoever from the committee was hosting the session, in the spirit of openness and transparency. Events since the asteroid had, understandably, led to a general lack of trust in authority on board. In reality though, the meetings were always the same. The distressed and depressed, hoping or expecting miracles.

Mostly it was those unwilling or unable to accept that the world as they knew it, had ended. They insisted that efforts be made to contact their families, or divert the ship to their home country. These interviews rarely ended well, and on more than one occasion Jake had needed to call on Max to help him remove people from the conference room. Not before they’d poured their hearts out though. Everyone had a story to tell, and they were going to make sure Jake listened, because nobody else would. It was therapy, of sorts, but the endless outpouring of melancholy took its toll on the young captain, and he found it increasingly tough to lift his own spirits after these sessions.

Today, food had been a recurring theme. In the first week or so since the disaster, Claude and his team of chefs had worked their way through the fresh and perishable produce on board, to ensure that nothing spoiled and was therefore wasted. The freezers were also being emptied in a bid to save power. Now the rationed meals comprised mostly of dried, tinned, and dehydrated ingredients, and it had not gone unnoticed.

Coote had anticipated this development. He’d warned Jake it would happen. He had experienced first-hand the kind of problems a lack of food could cause. An unexpectedly long mission underwater with insufficient supplies had almost cost him a submarine once, as a large proportion of his crew had attempted mutiny. Ironically it was the fact that they had then engaged the enemy that had saved them, the distraction and danger bringing them to their senses.

The Spirit of Arcadia was not a warship, and the biggest danger they faced was malnutrition. All Jake could do was try and reassure people that the situation was in hand, that efforts were being made on a number of fronts to provide sustenance. Being able to inform them that he had personally seen the first fishing net being deployed just hours earlier was a good start, but they wanted more. The Palm Plaza—the huge open-air park area in the middle of the ship—was being turned into a small farm, but the farmers managing that project were adamant that nothing was going to grow until they got much further south, so there was nothing Jake could report in terms of fruit and vegetables. Canned soup and fruit juice was going to have to do for the foreseeable future.

He downed the last of the alcohol, and wondered if Lucya had any more vodka in her cabin. They shared a tiny measure every now and then, but he had no idea where she kept it; she slept in his room now. He stuffed the empty bottle into the litter bin. Whoever was on recycling duty would find it later, long after he had gone.

• • •

Jake arrived at deck seven just as Martin was finishing up the installation of a motor. The trawler men waited anxiously; they wanted to get the net back on board, to find out if they had caught anything. Indeed, everyone wanted to know if there was anything left to catch.

No signs of life had been seen since the asteroid. No fish, no dolphins, no whales, nothing. The hope was that marine life had largely been unaffected, that it had simply moved deeper, out of the reach of the toxic ash that had been strewn across the planet, destroying everything it touched.

“Hey, Jake, we’re almost ready. Just a few bolts to tighten.”

“Where did you get the motor, Martin?”

“It’s from the winch for the second tender, the one you broke. As we won’t be needing it on there any more…” Martin grinned.

“Yeah, okay, good plan. Did none of the lifeboat winch motors survive?”

“No, the fires destroyed them all pretty much. We’re going to remove them and cannibalise them though. If we’re lucky we might assemble one or two working ones from the parts.”

“No chance of fixing the other tender I suppose?” Jake asked hopefully.

Martin simply rolled his eyes. “Right, let’s see if this thing is up to the job. I’ve pulled the power from the original winch motor and added an override switch. That means these guys will be able to winch up and down from here, no need to use the controls on the bridge.” He waved the fishermen over and explained the workings of his hastily constructed system. Stieg translated for his colleagues, who spoke very little English.

The men took up their positions again, with Stieg on the winch controls. Messages and instructions were shouted between them, and with a glance at Martin to check he was about to press the right button, the Swede started the motor.

It ran smoothly for about twenty seconds, and Jake could see the steel cables dragging the net up from the depths of the ocean. Then the top of the net became visible. As it broke through the surface, the motor became noisier, labouring under the extra weight as the net was less and less supported by the sea.

“Look!” Martin was shouting and pointing excitedly. “Fish! There are fish in the net! It worked, I can’t believe it, there are fish! Oh yes, we’re going to eat fresh fish. With chips! And ketchup!”

The trawler men wore huge grins at the sight of the catch, but their work wasn’t done and they didn’t let the initial success distract them from their job. With a pair of hooks on the end of long rods, they helped guide the cables and the netting away from the hull, and keep it from tangling in the other lifeboat winches.

The motor was making quite an unpleasant sound as it tugged and struggled to pull up the weight of the haul. Martin tore himself away from the sight of his dream dinner caught in the net, and cast an eye over the electrical system. He pulled a meter out of his pocket and took some readings. Satisfied that everything was within limits, he gave a thumbs up to Stieg.

People had started to come out onto the deck, interested to see what the activity was. Jake moved them back, away from the work.

“This area is dangerous. Please return inside, you will be safer in there,” he shouted over the sound of the electric motor as it squealed and groaned with effort. The small crowd was reluctant to leave; they had spotted the net and had a good idea what was going on, but Jake was insistent. If the steel cables snapped, they could whip around with enough force to decapitate someone, he explained. His reasoning was sound, and convinced those who wanted to stay and watch that they really were better off inside. When he was sure he’d marshalled the last of them through the door, he grabbed the phone stationed there and called the bridge.

“Dave? Jake. Listen, I need you to get Claude on the phone and tell him to send some of his men outside, starboard side. Tell them to bring the crates they prepared. All of the crates!”

By the time he got back to the winch, the net was level with the deck, and the men were wrestling with it, trying to get it on board. They were used to working with proper fishing boats designed for the job. The high steel handrail around the Spirit of Arcadia might have made it safe for passengers to enjoy a stroll and take in the sea air, but it was proving a major headache for landing the catch.

“Martin, can you cut out an opening for these guys before the next go? Maybe some kind of swing door so that the area stays secure?” Jake asked.

“Yeah, we’ll work something out.” He was transfixed by the hundreds of wriggling, squirming fish that were packed into the bottom of the net. “Might have to sort out some kind of transport for getting this all through to the kitchens too, if this is going to be a regular thing. Look at it! There’s life in the sea, Jake!”

As he spoke, the net came crashing over the handrail, spilling its contents across the deck. Hundreds and hundreds of fish poured out the top, herring and mackerel cascading over themselves, slipping and sliding in a river of silver and grey until they piled up against the wall. The trawler men were whooping and cheering, overjoyed with the incredible success. One of them even did a little dance. Jake couldn’t help but get caught up in the moment, and cheered along with his chief engineer.

Only Stieg remained quiet. He didn’t cheer, or shout. His face was stony and serious. His eyes were fixed on the bottom of the net. Jake, seeing something was wrong, followed his gaze.

There, tangled in the colourful woven loom of string, was a human body. It looked like that of a man, but it was hard to tell for sure, because it had no head.