‘No, Beth,’ said Richard, pushing me back. ‘That thing’s going to hit us any minute.’
‘I know. That’s why I need to get to my children. Understand?’
‘No, it’s not safe.’
‘Get out of my way.’
‘The best idea is to sit tight until it passes, and even if we get into difficulty, then we have the lifeboats. They’re submersible, see?’
He nodded helpfully at the three flame-red torpedoes.
‘Richard.’
‘So the worst that can happen is you’ll be in a different lifeboat, that’s all, until—’
‘Richard!’ The bark of my voice surprised me as much as it did him and everyone else around me. ‘Get out of my way.’
He took a step back and I marched past, only to be confronted by the quivering faces of Gerald and Mildred as they fiddled with each other’s jackets.
‘Move,’ I said. And they did.
Halfway across the walkway I saw Alice in the crowd by the opposite muster station. Her face was mangled and wet with tears, and there was Arthur crying too with one pudgy hand thrown in my direction. Mary was holding him. When she saw me her face hardened.
I steadied myself on the railing and, forcing a smile, called to them.
‘It’s all right, Mummy’s coming. Mary, hand them to me.’
Mary stared back. I looked around to see if anyone was watching, but they were all absorbed in their own panicked preparations. ‘Mary, please give me my children.’
She bit her lip, and there it was: the slightest shake of her head, nothing more than a twitch of her neck muscles but enough to make all those half-felt instincts I had brushed aside return with the full force of certainty.
‘Mary?’
I braced myself on the railings, ready to pull myself towards her, but as I did the boat gave a deep and terrible groan. The world turned, the stars spun and I was thrown back against the fence.
I fell to my knees, trying to draw breath into my emptied lungs. The ship had turned by ninety degrees and we were now moving backwards, accelerating into the mouth of the rapidly approaching wave. I looked for Mary’s muster station, but she had lost herself with the children in the crowd.
‘No –’ I could only mouth the word ‘– no.’
I staggered to my feet, instantly thrown against the front railing by the boat’s backward acceleration. As I pulled myself back there was a deafening snap from above, and I turned to see that a cable had sprung from one of the lifeboats. The passengers shrieked as the thick metallic cord thrashed like a skinned viper. In one furious whip the cable extended towards me and I ducked. It passed within inches of my head and returned at twice the speed, striking a crew member in the torso with a hideous wet crack.
Without a scream he sailed over the fence and out into the dark ocean, leaving a spray of blood on the yellow fence.
The stunned crowd whimpered and cowered as the cable – now tipped red – continued its violent jig.
‘Beth, get up, it’s not safe here.’
It was Richard again. He pulled me from the ground as the cable made another pass, and I ran back with him to our muster station.
‘My children,’ I seethed. ‘She’s got my fucking children.’
‘Who, Mary?’ said Bryce. ‘That one that looks like Diana Rigg?’
‘Who’s Diana Rigg?’ said Josh.
‘Fucking Avengers, man, TV show, mind, not that piece o’ shite superhero bollocks. I used to fancy her in that. Still do actually. Seen her in that Game of Thrones? Wouldnae mind, like, I mean if you had to shag a granny—’
‘Yes, Mary!’ I yelled, trying to see through the bodies to the opposite deck.
‘I thought she was your pal? What’s up with her?’
‘She’s bad news, that one. Bad news.’ I turned to see Gerald, life jacket already inflated and tight around his bulging abdomen. He was shaking his head. ‘Knew it from the start, didn’t I, Mildred?’
‘What?’ I said. ‘What do you know about her?’
He shot me look, grinding his teeth. ‘You should never have left them with her. Never. She shouldn’t even be on this bloody—’
At that moment the crowd toppled under a sudden surge in the boat’s backward acceleration. We were pitching forward as the approaching mountain of water dragged us up its face.
‘Hold on to the fence,’ I said, grabbing the mesh. Richard, Bryce and Josh managed to anchor themselves behind me, but there were screams as bodies fell past us, gravity pulling them rapidly towards the bow.
‘Help!’ cried Gerald, sliding down the deck. ‘Help! Mildred, Mildred, good God, no …’
‘Take my hand,’ I said, reaching for him, but the momentum was already building.
‘Gerald,’ said Mildred, knuckles white as she gripped the fence. ‘Where do you think you’re going? Come back here this instant. Come back!’
Bryce stuck out a boot, which Gerald just managed to catch with one hand.
‘Got you,’ said Bryce. ‘Now hold on, buddy, I’m going to lift you up.’
The boat groaned as its pitch rose ever greater, and spray from the sea behind now poured down on us like rain.
‘Please,’ whimpered Mildred. ‘Please don’t let go of my husband. Please don’t let go, Gerald.’
‘I’ve got you,’ said Bryce, grimacing as he tried to lift Gerald’s enormous weight with his left leg. ‘Hold still, will you?’
Gerald struggled on the deck, legs flailing, mouth agape.
‘I can’t hold on. I can’t—’
Bryce strained. ‘Stop struggling!’
‘I’m slipping, I’m—’
‘Gerald, don’t you dare!’
But Gerald’s fingers had already failed him, and with a yelp he lost hold of Bryce’s boot and shot down the slick deck, arms waving, looking for all the world like a boy at a water park. The last thing we saw was him tumbling past the next muster station, striking a fence post and spinning away at a violent angle into the darkness beneath.
‘Stupid bastard,’ muttered Bryce, closing his eyes and resting his head against the fence. Mildred, her hair drenched by the spray, watched the space where Gerald had been as if he had merely popped temporarily from existence and would soon reappear. But he didn’t, and eventually she blinked and looked away.
I clung to the fence and scanned the opposite deck, met by a dual surge of relief and fury as I saw Mary doing the same. She was holding Arthur to her breast, protecting him from the rain, cocooning Alice against the side with her hips. Both responsibilities were mine, and I wanted them so badly I felt I might let go and leap across in one bound to tear them away.
But reality was catching up with us fast, and the noise of the spray was joined by the deep roar of water shifting beneath the hull. We must have been halfway up the face of the wave by now.
‘It’s all right, Josh,’ said Richard, holding his son in a protective embrace. I kept my eyes on Mary. ‘Just hold on.’
‘Dick …’ said Bryce.
‘It’s all right, everyone,’ Richard went on, speaking to the group. ‘We’ll make it over the top, don’t worry.’
‘Dick …’
Bryce was glaring up at the wave. His mouth trembled. I turned to see.
‘Don’t worry, Beth,’ said Richard. ‘We’re going to get out of this.’
‘DICK!’ Richard stopped and turned. Bryce had a raised finger. ‘Look at that.’
Richard looked up. The rest of us did the same.
‘I know, it’s big, but like I said, these things are almost impossible to capsize, and—’
‘No,’ said Bryce. ‘Look. At. THAT.’
Richard stopped talking. His face fell, drained of colour.
‘Christ. What is that?’
The wall of water was rising fast, a hypnotic cliff face consuming the sky. And in the middle of it was something large, a drifting object, just like us and growing in size. It flashed as the moonlit caught its jagged edges, but tongues of orange
flame grew visible as it approached.
‘It’s another boat,’ I said. ‘It’s on fire.’
‘It’s on fire all right,’ said Bryce. ‘But that’s not a boat, it’s a fucking oil rig.’
‘Holy shit,’ said a voice, ‘you’re right. Where did that come from? The nearest rig must have been, what, Nova Scotia?’
Bryce closed his eyes and gripped the fence. ‘Then that’s where it came from, but it’s not there now. It’s here, and it’s coming straight for us.’
We had one last remaining crew member at our muster station, a fresh-faced young man in his twenties who had just seen his crew mates slide to their deaths. It was at this moment, as the fifty-or-so passengers in his care realised that they were on a collision course with a blazing oil platform and renewed their panic accordingly, that he made a decision. Muttering to himself in hurried Norwegian, he attached his safety harness to the fence and fumbled with a set of keys, which he used to open the gate to the lifeboat. Once through, he began to wrestle with the mechanism that held our lifeboat to the ship.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ said Richard.
‘I’m releasing the lifeboat,’ he replied. ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said, ‘there’s no way you can launch that thing at this angle. We’ll lose it for good.’
The young man grimaced as he untethered the boat, flashing me a look of terror. ‘I am the crew member. You are the passenger. It is my decision. If that thing hits us then we will sink, and then we all drown. It is my decision, do you hear? My—’
As the fastenings came free, a cable sprang loose and struck him in the face, snapping back his head. The crowd gasped and for a moment he stood like that, face turned upwards as if enjoying the cool spray. Then he slumped and fell, where he dangled from the fence by his harness.
‘Christ,’ said Richard. ‘Now what?’
‘We’ve got to do something,’ said Bryce. ‘That thing’s about to hit us.’
The rig was approaching fast, huge flames spewing from one side. I noticed activity at the other muster stations, where the same plan as our hapless crewman was being undertaken. The lifeboat at Mary’s station had already been released from its tethers, to a jarring cheer from its intended passengers hanging diagonally from the fence beside it. One by one they clambered aboard. With a terrible clash of horror and relief I saw Alice disappear inside, followed by Mary and Arthur.
‘We have to free the lifeboat,’ I said, pulling my way towards the gate. I scooped the keys from the crewman’s belt as I passed his lifeless body, trying my best not to notice the deep welt across his face. ‘It’s the only way.’
‘Let me past,’ said Bryce, arriving next to me. ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’
I looked down at the network of cords, pulleys and levers before me.
‘Of course I don’t fucking know what I’m doing. Do you?’
Bryce shrugged. ‘Nope. Let’s try that big one with the red cross on it.’
He reached across me and, hands still shaking, yanked the lever towards the boat. With an ear-splitting snap, three of the hooks to which the boat was hanging opened and the boat fell away. Now it was dangling from a single cable. I nodded at it.
‘Internal release cable,’ I said, reading the sign beneath it. ‘We do that one from inside.’
‘Right,’ said Bryce, ‘well, that was a piece of piss. Now let’s open it up and get in. Everybody –’ he turned ‘– oh, fuck.’
I could already feel the heat.
‘Too late,’ said Richard. ‘Get down!’
I looked up just in time to see one corner of the blazing rig hurtling towards the stern. I gripped the gate and ducked as it roared overhead, showering the deck with burning debris and sending more passengers spinning away. I tucked into a tight crouch, eyes shut, waiting to be skewered, crushed or burned, but in place of death was a curious silence and I looked up to see it had passed. What’s more, our pitch was levelling out; we were no longer at an angle.
Bryce, Richard and Josh looked back at me.
‘We’re OK,’ I said. ‘It missed us. Let’s get in.’
I unlocked the lifeboat’s hatch using the keys I had taken, and a sharp light came on inside. The remaining passengers, wide-eyed and bedraggled, crawled into the cocoon, and as I shepherded them in I checked the progress of the other boats. We were the last on the starboard side, and my gut heaved when I saw Mary’s drop.
I ushered the last passenger – a stocky, weeping man – inside.
‘Are you ready?’ said Richard. Josh shivered beside him.
‘You two first,’ I said, and as they prepared to board I looked out across the water. We were on top of the wave now, and a clear rolling summit stretched away from us on either side. The moonlight picked out shapes; our oil rig was not the only prize the wave had claimed on its journey. A whole fleet of giant mangled structures – ships, trucks, planes and what looked a tower block snapped in two – was being carried upon its crest like an upturned box of toys.
‘Hurry,’ I said, but as Josh reached for the hatch a terrible thud shook the air, followed by a sound like a hundred trees falling at once.
The cable snapped and the lifeboat fell, just as Richard pulled his son back onto the deck. There were screams from inside the hatch, and we watched the terrified faces fall into the murk below, framed in their yellow light. The capsule hit the water and spun, hatch down, but before we could see its fate we were lifted from our feet and hurled along the deck. Scrambling to our feet, we saw what had caused the impact; as the rig had rotated, a huge, flaming girder had swung into the boat’s bow and torn it from the hull. The air was filled with a sudden burst of heat as the front end exploded, and we began to pitch forward once again, only this time head first into the water.
Moments passed. I scrabbled for something to grab, dimly aware of Richard, Bryce and Josh’s cries as they disappeared above me. I was slipping down the deck, accelerating as the boat plunged beneath the wave, faster and faster until the freezing water engulfed me.
When I emerged, gasping, I found myself in a flaming, junk-strewn maelstrom. My life jacket had inflated and I bobbed helplessly on the still-rolling wave, trying to orientate myself. I was some distance from the ship, which was now vertical, stern in the air and sinking fast. Shouts and screams punctured the night. One of the lifeboats – possibly ours – was sinking too. A woman clung petrified to its hull as water gushed into the open hatch. My heart hammered, my body shook with the cold.
‘Al … Alice! Arthur!’ I cried into the darkness. I scanned the swirling wreckage for signs of other boats. I couldn’t see. My mind reeled. My breath clouded before me. I was freezing to death. It was winter in the Atlantic ocean. How long did I have? Minutes? I heard a voice calling.
‘Beth!’
I grunted at the sound of my name and tried to paddle round to see its source, but as I did a wave rolled over me, dragging me down for more empty seconds beneath the black water.
Up again. I was somewhere else now.
‘Beth!’
I turned again. Something else was coming, but not a wave this time; something hard and jagged. It swept by, crested by a breaker, and snagged my right leg as it passed. I felt a painless dislocation somewhere south of my waist, which my mind put to one side. I couldn’t feel my hands. My lungs were like rocks.
‘Alice!’ I strained the word. ‘Alice, where are you?’
‘Beth!’ My name again. A deep growl from the murderous night. I paddled with hands that belonged to someone else. I wasn’t in this water. This was someone else’s nightmare, not mine. ‘Over here!’
Bryce. The silhouette of his shaggy mane, then his terrified grimace lit by the flames. He was spread out upon some kind of raft, a wide metallic sheet. There were other figures too, face down or clambering onto it. Josh pulled Richard up from the water, and he flopped down like a landed eel.
‘Swim!’ roared Br
yce.
I swam. But something was wrong. My kicks didn’t work as they normally did. It was like running in a dream, the synchronisation all wrong, the geography of my body distorted. Some part of my mind contemplated why, but not too deeply. I dug with my arms instead. Those arms that belonged to someone else.
‘Swim, Beth, come on!’
OK, I thought, I’m swimming. It’s not as easy as it looks … Alice. Arthur. Christ, where are you?
Sobs arrived. My sobs. Not now, swim.
But my body felt like some flimsy counterfeit of itself. Each stroke barely dragged me an inch towards the raft. I tried to concentrate on Bryce’s urgent face, but it kept disappearing from view, and I realised it was because I was closing my eyes.
How easy it would be to just do that. Just close my eyes and let myself drift away. Just like Leo … oh, Kate, why didn’t you just take turns on that raft? … No pain, no memory, no—
Another voice. A cry in the dark. A familiar cry. Arthur.
My eyes shot open. My muscles sprang into life, all moving at once. Through the wreckage beyond the raft I saw a lifeboat, its hatch still open. Arthur’s cries were coming from within.
At once my body was mine again. I plunged my arms in and swam with everything I had, kicking with whatever mutilated machinery existed beneath. I heaved myself through the water, passing the raft, ignoring Bryce’s calls to turn, and as I drew near to the lifeboat I saw a figure in the hatch helping another on board.
Mary.
She looked up as the legs of her rescuee disappeared inside, and froze when she saw me.
‘Mary,’ I spluttered as I swam the last few metres. ‘Mary, help me.’
Behind her was a full boat, and from somewhere within the clamour inside Arthur wailed. And Alice too – I heard her, to more crushing relief I heard her too.
Mary stared down at me from her safe perch. The hatch was high above the water. I held out my arm.
‘Mary, please.’
She put her fingers to her mouth.
‘I was trying to help,’ she said. There was that voice of the chastened child again, trying to get itself out of trouble.
‘I know,’ I said. The cold was taking me again, now that I had stopped. My limbs were disappearing. ‘Thank you, thank you, Mary. Now lift me up, help me on board.’
The End of the World Survivors Club Page 6