Survival

by David Fletcher

  Alex had now joined Debbie in watching the loading of these final zodiacs, and noticed that each was receiving not just three people, but a significant number of inanimate objects, such as crowbars, hammers, sledgehammers and wire cutters. In addition to these ‘foraging aids’, both Mike’s zodiac and Terry’s zodiac also received a large canvas bag that clanked when it was stowed. And Alex wondered whether these contained some sort of weapons, and if they did, what might trigger their use…

  He might very soon find out. Because already Mike’s zodiac was moving away from the Sea Sprite, and then, just seconds later, Terry’s and John’s zodiacs began to follow it as it made a beeline for the Argentinian research station. And as this was no more than five hundred yards away, it wouldn’t be long before all three zodiacs were at their intended destination. Everybody on the ship – and in the other seven zodiacs – was watching them intently, and in silence. And all those with binoculars probably had them trained on Mike’s lead zodiac as it slowed in its approach to the research station’s small jetty in order to allow its companion craft to join it. Clearly Mike wanted to conduct a team landing, and the jetty was certainly large enough to allow this.

  So, all three inflatables were now side by side, and in each vessel their crews were standing up in readiness to leap onto the jetty just as soon as this was within leaping distance. It all looked to be going very well indeed; a bunch of professional men, performing actions they’d probably performed a thousand times before, and probably in far less benign circumstances than they were dealing with today. The water in the lagoon was still pleasingly calm, and there was certainly no hostile reception committee. No one had appeared from inside any of the station’s huts, and it now seemed inconceivable that they would. In fact, just about as inconceivable as Mike suddenly collapsing onto the floor of his zodiac, to be joined just seconds later by his two crewmates. Then it happened in Terry’s zodiac: all three in this craft collapsed simultaneously, just before John and his own crew succumbed – with one of them falling into the water.

  There was an audible gasp from all those gathered at the stern of the Sea Sprite. And then someone on the Erickson Deck – equipped with a pair of binoculars – let out a cry. ‘They’re all writhing around,’ he shouted. ‘They’re all… they’re all dying!’

  He’d hardly finished this anguished announcement when Captain José’s voice came through the loudhailer. He was still at the back of the Columbus Deck, and he’d clearly seen what had happened with his own eyes.

  ‘All passengers back to your cabins and seal them, now. And I mean now! Then wait for further instructions.’

  Then he leant over the handrail and addressed all those below him without the use of the hailer.

  ‘Get those zodiacs secured ASAP. And then all of you back inside ASAP. We start engines in sixty seconds. So, move! Move now!’

  Here, he turned his attention to those just beside him and began to bark some instructions. They were clearly being told to get the Sea Sprite away in double-quick time, and probably to make sure that it was as much sealed as it possibly could be. And just as clearly, all the guys below him were doing their very best to carry out his commands. With almost military efficiency.

  Alex found himself being swept along by the desperate urgency of it all, and was even able to help with the rapid tethering of his own zodiac before disembarking even more rapidly and haring off to the possible safety of the ship’s interior.

  Apart from being impressed by the speed of his and everyone else’s reactions, he was also impressed – and surprised – by how soon the captain was able to set in motion his formerly stationary vessel. Alex heard its engines rumbling into life as he was ascending the metal stairs to the deck above, and even before he’d stepped into the main lounge, he felt the ship’s movement as it began its desperate attempt to outpace the spores. Because that’s what it was doing. The fungal spores had now arrived in Deception Island, and, having bestowed a long, drawn-out, miserable death on nine of the Sea Sprite’s company – and nine of its most able – they were no doubt now on their way to deliver a dose of purgatory to the rest before taking their lives as well. Alex, and all those aboard this vessel, might have only minutes to wait until they too were cut down. Or they might just escape.

  Well, nothing else horrible had happened by the time Alex joined his wife in their cabin – and embraced her a little too tightly. But both of them were hardly at ease.

  ‘Jesus,’ he remarked as he loosened his grip, ‘that was so fucking awful…’

  ‘I know,’ responded Debbie shakily. ‘I had my binocs on them, and… well, it was really horrible. They all looked to be in so much pain. And so quickly. It’s just… well… I mean, how can anything work that fast?’

  ‘Search me. But I’m bloody glad old José knows all about “fast” as well. Talk about shit off a shovel…’

  Alex was right. The Sea Sprite was accelerating in a way that he and Debbie had not experienced before. And the throbbing from its engines was intense. It was no wonder, then, that when they’d gathered themselves just enough to peer out of their cabin window, their pocket cruise ship was already on its way out of the caldera, racing at an entirely inappropriate speed through Neptune’s Bellows. Alex was very relieved to see this, albeit marginally distracted by the hundreds of entirely undistracted chinstrap penguins confidently going about their business. For them, the priority was to make their way to their nesting site on the top of the caldera walls overlooking Neptune’s ‘doorway’, and Alex doubted they would even register the flight of a passing vessel, even one travelling at such a reckless speed. It clearly meant no more to them than a passing squall.

  Then it was past them. The Sea Sprite was now in the open ocean again, heading at speed towards the Antarctic, while all those on board were hoping that they would still be alive after the next few minutes.

  They were. And they were still alive after twenty minutes, which was when Captain José chose to address them via the tannoy. It wasn’t a long address, and consisted solely of a further command.

  ‘This is your captain,’ it stated. ‘You are now ordered to stay in your cabins until further notice. Nobody must move around the ship.’

  And that was it until, almost two hours later, Jane’s voice came through the tannoy, not to issue another command but instead to offer some reassurance.

  ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,’ she began. (And it was indeed after noon now.) ‘Captain José has just asked me to assure you that we seem to have… well, escaped from the… erhh, situation in Deception Island, and we are now travelling at maximum speed towards the Antarctic Peninsula. And we will, of course, not be stopping until we are a long way further south. In the meantime, I would ask you to heed the instruction to stay where you are, and bear with us while we organise an afternoon snack. Which, all being well, should be delivered to your cabins within the next couple of hours. I’m sorry we can’t offer you a normal lunch, but I’m sure you will understand. Instead, the intention is to organise a normal dinner for this evening, which will probably be served a little earlier than usual. Please be assured that the captain and his crew are doing everything they can to ensure your safety, but it will really help them if you conform to these arrangements, and, I stress, stay where you are. Believe me, your cooperation will be greatly appreciated in what are these… rather testing times.’

  Alex detected a slight quake in Jane’s voice at the end of her message. It was hardly surprising, he thought. Just as it was hardly surprising that she had made no reference at all to the grisly deaths of nine of the ship’s company, including three of her own team; nor to the possibility that a similar demise might overtake those who remained at any time. Even before that promised afternoon snack. Alex would have taken the same approach: focus on the positive and the mundane, and avoid any mention of how Hell on Earth had just gobbled up a number of one’s friends, and was now, no doubt, snapping
at the heels of all those still to be gobbled. No, that was something that could wait for a chat over this evening’s dinner. If there were any passengers still alive to attend this evening’s dinner…

  There were. Everybody on board was still well, and their situation looked increasingly secure. Deception Island was now far to the north, and as every minute passed, the Sea Sprite was getting closer to the refuge of Antarctica. If only, thought Alex, it hadn’t stopped on its way there.

  That thought was debated over dinner – by the normal gang of five, none of whom, as they freely admitted, could really get to grips with the sights they had witnessed only a few hours before. None of them had even seen anybody die before, let alone embark on a near eternity of suffering before they reached a longed-for demise. It had been truly terrible, and so terrible that Roy expressed the hope that the eight who hadn’t fallen into the water immediately had been able to throw themselves in very soon thereafter. That they’d retained enough sense and control of their bodies amidst all their suffering to realise that a rapid death in icy water was much to be preferred to a long, agonising crawl to death that could last for many hours.

  Derek agreed with Roy’s heartfelt hope, and then added that he also hoped that Captain José, and indeed all those aboard the Sea Sprite, would not succumb to any guilt for abandoning the brave nine. There had been nothing to do but scram, he insisted, and any rescue attempt would have been as futile as it would have been lethal to them all. And that wasn’t a fanciful theory, or a sop to his table companions’ possible latent guilt. It was a fact. As were the dreadful consequences of encountering those spores. It was now easier than ever to see why the world’s population had been extinguished so quickly and so comprehensively. And why it was so vital that the Sea Sprite continued to make its way to the most inhospitable place on the planet. Even if it was now without nine of its most capable and courageous characters. And without the cargo of optimism and confidence it had carried at the start of the day…

  twenty-seven

  When Alex began to stir, the first thing that came to his mind was that he was still alive. It wasn’t a thought he normally had as he became conscious, but there again he hadn’t normally come close to death the previous day. So close that he’d witnessed nine others embarking on their own painful path to death, and then spent the next few hours in fear that the same fate would overtake him and his wife. It had all clearly left its mark, and now this recognition that he was still alive was joined by an unmistakable joy at being alive, blended with a residual fear that this joy might not last. He was now quite awake enough to realise that the threat to his life had only receded and not disappeared. That he, Debbie and all those aboard the Sea Sprite still faced the prospect of a sudden and awful demise.

  He dwelt on this thought only until Debbie awoke beside him, when he then initiated a brief exercise in mutual reassurance, to be followed quickly by a mutual recognition that the Sea Sprite was not moving. The ship’s stationary state caused Alex to get out of bed and look out of the cabin window, but all he could see outside was sea and sky. He therefore soon abandoned that task and began to embark on the mundane. He retired to the bathroom for a shave and a shower, and as he then got on with dressing, Debbie took over the bathroom and eventually emerged to prepare herself for the day – and to do a little pre-breakfast tidying up. There were clothes to sort out and the contents of a handbag to be audited – just as Alex needed to clean both his binoculars and his camera.

  It was all very strange; this ‘just carrying on’, when the unimaginable had just happened and when the possibility of the unimaginable happening again was only too real. Finding oneself racked with painful convulsions leading to one’s oblivion was no longer a theoretical rumination, but something that could occur at any minute and without any warning. It was no less than simply terrifying, but at the same time weirdly manageable. It must be similar to what it was like to be in a war, thought Alex. Especially something like the First World War, during which men had had to live for months on end in the knowledge that at any time a shell might land two feet away and reduce them to mincemeat and offal. And the only way to deal with that was to just get on with stuff and forget about the ever-present deadly threat. One might sort out one’s rations – or one’s handbag. Or one might clean one’s kit – or one’s binoculars. But what one would not do was become paralysed with fear and distil one’s possibly final hours on this Earth into an unremitting period of mental torture. That wasn’t the right thing to do, and only a fool would take that path, and not move on to his camera when he’d finally finished the cleaning of his binoculars.

  Of course, there was a difference between Alex’s situation and that of some cold, shivering private sitting in a trench in Flanders, and that was the fact that Alex was cocooned in luxury and had the immediate prospect of a beautiful cooked breakfast to further distract him from his perilous circumstances. And it was now time for him and Debbie to indulge themselves in that tempting first meal of the day.

  It was as good as they’d anticipated, albeit the company was a bit of a surprise. It was Patrick, the remodelled Welshman, and his even more Welsh wife, Morag. This pair of short but thickset Celts had made a beeline for Alex and Debbie’s table as soon as they’d entered the restaurant, and then Patrick had asked, in his new over-friendly manner, if he and his wife could join them. It had been impossible to refuse this request – from Alex’s Number-nine-zodiac crewmate – and soon Patrick and Morag were sharing their breakfast and their thoughts with their slightly nonplussed companions. And most of the thoughts concerned the implications of yesterday’s disastrous visit to Deception Island – and how this whole ‘survival project’ was likely to end.

  Patrick had a lot to say. But it could be distilled into three principal points. The first was his concern that the Sea Sprite had not evaded what he referred to as ‘the terror’, but that its flight from Deception Island had merely deferred its inevitable arrival. (Which Alex thought was hardly a novel concern on this ship.) The second was that to optimise the chances of all those on board not being ‘touched’ by the terror, it would be sensible to focus on getting further south as quickly as possible, even if it meant no more foraging. Oh, and why was the ship not still sailing south now? Why was it inexplicably at rest? And the third point was that, even if they weren’t touched by the terror for however long they stayed in the Antarctic, and even if it wasn’t waiting for them when they returned to Ushuaia, what would they do then? What would a successful outcome to this project mean for their future? Would they have a future? Might what they were all involved in now just be completely futile?

  Alex thought that this final point – what the future would look like in the post-Sea Sprite age – was, like the first one, hardly a novel concern. It was on everybody’s mind. It had to be. However, for most if not for all on board the Sea Sprite, any consideration of this daunting unknown had so far been successfully sublimated into their dealing with the imperatives of the ship’s flight to the south. They hadn’t forgotten that they had a very uncertain future – at best – but they had allowed themselves to be consumed with the demands of their present circumstances and what needed to be done to ensure their immediate survival. Even those who weren’t able to bring Derek and Roy’s insouciant perspective to the matter, and who were mourning the passing of their old lives – and the lives of their children and their grandchildren – had, by and large, come to terms with the huge uncertainty of the future simply by immersing themselves in the multiple uncertainties of the present. And it really had worked. Up till now. However, given Patrick’s ‘third point’ reservations expressed over breakfast, and particularly his reference to the possible futility of the captain’s plan, would it continue to work? Would other people now be focusing on their possible return to Ushuaia, and what purpose this might or might not serve? Alex didn’t know. Nor did he know whether any of Patrick’s points would be addressed by Captain José in his next mandatory bri
efing. But he suspected they would be. Although not before he had addressed the loss of those nine good men…

  It was another ten o’clock start and another full house in the lounge. However, this meeting was different. One could see it in the faces of all of those present, and one could hear it in Captain’s José’s voice. When he started to speak, it was with some difficulty and with a great deal of emotion. And why wouldn’t it be? His first task was to acknowledge the sacrifice made by those nine men, and to call upon all those assembled to honour their memory for as long as they all lived.

  There was soon a great deal of crying in the lounge, and even some loud, unconstrained sobbing. Alex had never before witnessed anything quite so painful and quite so raw. And quite so moving. Like most in the room, he had not known well any of those who had died, but he had seen them struck down. And they had been struck down in their brave attempt to help him and all the others still alive, and still with the hope of staying alive for at least a little time yet. And would any light now be shed on how realistic those hopes were? And what else, if anything, would the Sea Sprite’s anxious passengers and crew now learn from Captain José, and would any of it be in any way encouraging?

  Well, when he finally moved on from the appalling events of yesterday to his thoughts on the situation that prevailed today, he sounded pleasingly confident and like a leader who was still firmly in control. Better still, he was able to express the unequivocal view that the immediate danger had passed, and that all those aboard the Sea Sprite could rest assured that no calamity was about to overtake them. As he went on to explain, he, Stuart and all those aboard who had any understanding of meteorology and the behaviour of the atmosphere had together concluded that what had engulfed Mike and his colleagues in Deception Island was not a huge ‘wall’ of falling spores but a very small and very localised cloud of these microorganisms. And this cloud was separated by maybe tens or even hundreds of miles from the vast shroud of spores that enveloped the rest of the world. It was similar, he said, to wisps of foam ripped from the tops of waves by the wind and carried far into the air and far from the waves themselves. Only, here it was a tiny puff of deadly spores, and it was the erratic nature of the Earth’s upper atmosphere that was doing the ripping, and then the casting of this unwelcome draught into Deception Island’s caldera. It had to be, he emphasised. Because, if it had been the fallout from the main cloud that they had seen in action, it would no doubt have overwhelmed the Sea Sprite as well. Mike and his men had been incredibly unlucky. And José was now more than confident that no such terrible luck would pay them a second visit. All those in the lounge really could start to relax a little, and begin to refocus on the next chapter of their passage south, or possibly north…