Infestation

by William Meikle

  The boat might be afloat now, but there was no guarantee it would stay that way for long.

  He went back to join McCally.

  “How long, lad?” he said, his voice a whisper.

  “Depends. Do you want it off permanently, or just off now?”

  “Just switch the fucker off,” Banks said.

  “Sorted then,” McCally said and yanked at two wires. There was a flash, a spray of sparks around them, quickly dissipating. Everything fell quiet. The red LEDs denoting the power was on dimmed and went dark.

  They both heard it coming at the same time; a click-clack and scratching of feet on metal, accompanied by a slosh of water as a wave washed through next door. The engine room wasn’t empty anymore.

  Banks put a finger to his lips and jerked his thumb upward. McCally nodded. The younger man stood closest to the exit, so Banks let him go first and waited while the McCally checked the stairwell up to the next deck.

  He looked into the well to see McCally give him an ‘OK’ signal from above. Banks was about to step out into the stairwell when the scuttling suddenly got too loud at his back. He turned to see the head, antennae, and front legs of a huge beast push through the doorway. Its body was too large to fit in the doorway but it kept trying to get at the captain.

  Banks tried to back away but misjudged the position of the doorway and got trapped in a corner. One of the beast’s large antennae whipped through the room, as thick as a steel cable; it would snap his spine like a twig or cave in his chest if it hit him. He crouched tight in the corner, almost kneeling, giving a small target and finally got his weapon round to point it at the beast. The isopod chittered like a grasshopper and the blue luminescence on its underside sent out a shimmering aura, filling the small room with dancing shadows and the acrid smell of burnt vinegar.

  Banks fought down a gag reflex, aimed for the base of the antenna, and fired three quick shots, the recoil shoving him farther back into the corner. The noise was far too loud and would surely alert any other isopods in the area to his position. But he’d got his target; the antenna hung, bent at the base oozing sickly green fluid, and the creature thrashed violently. The smell got worse too and splashes of the green goop washed the wall. Banks sidled to one side, ready to launch his body at the door if there was any chance of any splashes reaching him; he didn’t want to get any nearer to the stuff than he had to.

  “Stay down, Cap,” a voice shouted above him and McCally came into the doorway. “I’ve got this one.”

  “This is for Briggs, ya bastard,” he shouted and let off a volley, blowing the beast’s face into flying scraps of carapace and soft parts. Banks had to shift to almost between McCally’s legs to avoid being splattered in green. The blue shimmer on the underbelly faded and the beast let out an almost comical fart, then fell heavily on the deck with a thud before the weight of its now lifeless body pulled it back and off the gallery walkway out of their view. A loud splash echoed around them as it fell to the engine room floor.

  A voice called out from somewhere above; Hynd had come down to the foot of the control room stairwell.

  “You lads need any help down there?”

  McCally called back up.

  “Nah, the wanker’s dead. It’s sorted.”

  “Then get your arses up here, pronto,” Hynd shouted back. “There’s something you need to see.”

  *

  Banks looked out the view window as soon as he got back to the control room; the forward deck was completely clear, the beasts gone as silently as they had come; even the top of the drill rig was clear of the large isopod they’d seen sitting there.

  I hope it was you we got, you bastard.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” McCally said, but there was something else in Hynd’s voice when he replied.

  “The fact the beasties are gone? Aye, fucking great. But it’s not what I wanted you to see.”

  He pointed north. A gray wall, an approaching storm front with paler cloud tops towering impossibly high above loomed over the horizon, getting visibly closer.

  “Well, that’s fucking marvelous, that is,” McCally said.

  “How long before it hits hard do you think?” Banks asked.

  The Russian woman spoke first.

  “An hour at most. We had one come through last week and things got a bit rough but she rode it out okay.”

  “Aye,” Banks replied, “maybe. But I’m guessing she wasn’t holed at the water line and shipping water back then.”

  “We could make for the kayaks?” Hynd said. “Head for shore?”

  “We’d be sitting ducks if the beasts came for us,” Banks replied. “Much as I hate to admit it, we might be better off here waiting for the chopper.”

  The rest of the words were unspoken but everyone knew they were there.

  Unless we sink first.

  *

  Nobody spoke for a while, watching the storm front edge ever closer. McCally left and went over to join Mac, making up a brew of tea on the stove and sharing smokes in silence. After a while, Banks checked his watch.

  “Keep an eye out the window,” he said. “I need to check in.”

  He took out the satellite phone, switched it on and punched the number.

  “Check one,” he said when it was answered and the voice at the other end replied in kind, “Check one.” The line was immediately dropped but Banks was done speaking in any case. He knew there was no sense in giving any more update; none would be heard and the chopper was already on its way. He wasn’t going to be able to get it here any faster.

  He switched the phone off and looked to Hynd.

  “Anything?”

  “A big bugger poked its head up over by the drill rig but as soon as you switched the phone off, it fucked off again. We’re still all clear.”

  “Well, it’s something, anyway,” Banks said, then looked out the window for himself. Several drops of sleety rain spattered like hard pellets against the glass.

  The boat’s hull creaked loudly and the vessel rolled several feet to port, then righted itself again. The storm clouds loomed to the north, a black wall getting ready to fall on them from a great height. The weather had already begun to ramp up.

  Three more hours. That’s all I ask. Just three more hours.

  He wasn’t sure they were going to get it.

  - 12 -

  Svetlanova had all of the men’s names clear in her mind now. Her head too was clear, the ringing having faded into the far distance, her hearing almost back to normal, although she made a mental note not to stand so close to them if there was going to be more shooting.

  She had also come to a decision on her immediate future; she’d thrown her lot in with these men, even when every fiber of her being was telling her to get back to the pantry and hide. She knew it was unrealistic; this team was her only chance of getting out of here. If it meant being taken to London for questioning, then so be it; Banks had already heard her recording and there really wasn’t a lot more she could tell them they hadn’t already heard or seen for themselves. In their vernacular, the Russians came, they drilled, they fucked up, story over. It made for a succinct, if short, report.

  Over the last hour, she’d even developed a bond with the wounded Glaswegian man, Mac. She watched his wounds for any sign of green, all clear so far, and he gave her cigarettes and chat. They both thought they were getting a good deal.

  He’d listened while she retold her story, having asked to hear it.

  “Did you not hear when the captain played it back?” she asked.

  “I’m Glaswegian, lass,” he said. “We have enough trouble with English, never mind Russian.”

  It took a while in the telling, over strong sweet tea and more of Mac’s cigarettes. He studied her with more respect after he heard the tale.

  “How long were you in yon wee room?”

  “Two days, I think.”

  “Then you’re a braver man than me, lass. I’d have gone mental.”

  “I’m n
ot sure I didn’t, for a while,” she replied. She took another of his cigarettes. She was developing a taste for this British tobacco; and it kept her mind off what was going on outside the window.

  The storm had already ramped up; beyond the glass was now a sheet of running water but she didn’t have to see out to know it was bad. The rock and sway of the boat told her that, along with the now incessant creak and squeal of the hull sounding up from somewhere far below them.

  Mac saw her apprehension and laughed.

  “Don’t worry, lass,” he said. “These old boats can take a pounding. My auld dad built buggers like this on the Clyde and took me along to see them when I was a bairn; I know what their bones look like and they’re hardy. And besides, this isn’t even the worst scrape the cap’s got us into and out of.”

  He started into a long involved story, of a brothel in Cairo, a girl who was really a boy, a misunderstanding about payment, and an epic bar fight followed by a hasty retreat involving half the Egyptian police force. The details of every twist and turn of the tale had them both laughing long before the end.

  She was surprised to look up to see Banks take out the satellite phone for his next check-in.

  *

  “Is it worth the risk, Cap,” McCally said. “You said yourself, the chopper’s on its way already.”

  The captain motioned toward the window.

  “If anything wants to come out in this weather to get at us, it’s welcome to try,” he said. He switched the phone on, checked in as before, and signed off again. If any of the isopods had taken note, it was impossible to tell. Hynd was by the door watching the stairwell and gave the thumbs up as Banks put the phone away.

  “Two hours,” he said. “All we have to do is sit tight.”

  “Can they land in this weather?” Svetlanova asked, for she knew from experience that nothing Russian would attempt to fly, never mind land, in the middle of an Arctic Circle storm like this. Russian pilots were brave but they were also realists.

  Mac answered first.

  “Lass, the fly boys can land on a flea’s arse in a howling gale. They’ll be here.”

  McCally and Mac were now playing cards, three-card brag, with cigarettes as collateral. Svetlanova might have joined them, had Banks not taken her to one side by the window.

  “You mentioned a discontinuity on your tape. You think it’s where these things are coming from?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “And what is it, this discontinuity?”

  “An anomaly in the rock strata,” she said, remembering what she’d told the ship’s captain. “Ever since 1909 when Andrija Mohorovičić noted a zone where seismic waves speed up when they should be slowing down, people have been itching to drill and find out what’s there. That’s what we were doing here; our surveys showed us the discontinuity was closer to the seabed here than anywhere else in the world. Our geologists thought it might mark a huge gas field or, barring that, a mineral layer that could be cheaply mined.”

  “You’re in Canadian waters,” Banks said and Svetlanova waved her hand.

  “The sea is the sea. Anyone can lay claim.”

  Banks laughed.

  “I’m not sure the brass see it that way, but I’m not a politician. Tell me more. You pierced the discontinuity and these things came out of it? So effectively, you made a hole, sprung a leak somewhere down there, allowing the isopods out of their cage?”

  “Yes, that’s about the sum of it. We, as you say, fucked up. It’s a big hole in the seabed. We put a camera down; I saw the footage not long before everything went wrong. It was in black and white of course, color cameras won’t work at depth but even then the screen shimmered and glowed. The seabed looked like a scraped clean slab of stone, with tracks, almost like roadways, radiating out in all directions. There was a hole, glowing and gleaming like a flickering bulb, a giant eye, looking up at us from out of the earth’s crust, daring us to poke it again.

  “That wasn’t even the worst of it. The hole had cracks radiating out from it, the same radii, mirrored in the scraped tracks on the seabed, glowing tendrils pulsing and spreading even as we watched. Far from closing up, the hole down to the discontinuity was still growing. Isopods swarmed everywhere below. Big ones, small ones, a multitude of them, pouring up out of the discontinuity, scuttling and scurrying and quickly lost in the dark seas beyond the camera’s reach.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “You didn’t ask… and there’s little we can do about it. The drill is kaput and unless you’ve got a submersible hidden in your jacket, there’s no way down.”

  “Will they keep coming?”

  “Given I don’t know how many of them there are, whether they can survive for long out of their natural environment, or anything about their reproductive cycle, there’s no way to tell. They could stay local to here…”

  “Or they could spread,” Banks finished for her.

  “I’ve had plenty of time to think about it while I was stuck in the pantry. Imagine them getting into one of the main currents,” she said. “The big one from here goes down toward the St. Lawrence seaway. They could get all the way down to the Great Lakes. Imagine them in Toronto, Montreal, or even Chicago. Imagine the carnage.”

  “Or going the other way, heading down the North Sea,” Banks said. “To London. It’s not a huge stretch to imagine one of those big buggers climbing Big Ben, or rampaging among the tourists in Trafalgar Square. We have to do something.”

  Svetlanova motioned to the window.

  “We’re on a holed boat, in a storm, with no operating drilling rig. You’ve lost two men already. What can we do?”

  Mac looked up.

  “I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

  “Fucking A,” McCally replied and the men all laughed as if they’d made a joke; she wasn’t sure if Mac was serious or not but replied as if he was.

  “That might work,” she said.

  Banks looked like he might reply but a gust of wind caught the boat broadside and the vessel lurched, metal squealing. They rolled and Svetlanova lost her footing, tumbled into Banks and sent both of them to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. For several breaths she thought they were going all the way over, then the old boat righted, almost over compensated, then rocked back into position. But something felt wrong now; they felt lazier in the water, too heavy but at the same time rocking and rolling more violently with the wind. Sleet, almost hail, spattered hard against the window.

  Banks helped her to her feet and they looked at each other. Neither spoke, neither had to.

  It’s going to be a long two hours.

  - 13 -

  “We can’t sit here, Cap,” Mac said. “This crate’s going down.”

  “Aye, eventually,” Banks replied. “But I heard you earlier; these are hardy buggers and so are we. And we’re not going anywhere in this weather. So sit tight and pucker up.”

  Banks couldn’t bring himself to take his own advice; the thought of the flooded engine room was too big in his mind.

  If the damage has gotten worse, I have to know.

  Another thought was growing in his mind too. If the isopods were coming up the drill rig, then it probably wasn’t a good idea to be so close to it. He had to find out whether they could uncouple from it, maybe even send the whole thing down to the seabed and how easy, or difficult, it was going to be.

  Maybe the woman’s idea of a massive strike is the right idea.

  There was little he could do about the rig in the current weather conditions; he wasn’t stupid enough to step outside in an Arctic gale if he didn’t absolutely have to. But at least he could check the engine room.

  “Watch my back, Sarge,” he said to Hynd. “I’m going downstairs for a shufti.”

  “What about all that bollocks about not splitting up?”

  Banks smiled.

  “You can come and hold my hand if you’d like? I’m going to the f
oot of the stairs; a quick look at the engine room to check the damage and I’ll be right back.”

  Hynd nodded.

  “Okay. But I’ll be down at the first deck level behind you, in case there’s another of those big fuckers about.”

  “I think we’re all clear; I think she was right about the electricity thing.”

  “I bloody well hope so.”

  *

  Getting down the stairs proved quite an adventure in itself, for the roll and yaw of the boat had got much more pronounced since his last descent. He fell, hard, against the wall twice and was almost thrown off his feet when a gust of wind again shook the whole vessel. He heard a loud creaking, like tearing metal, from somewhere up near the prow.

  Two more hours; give me two more hours.

  The only good news in the engine room was that the hole at the far end didn’t appear to be any larger. But the water was at least a foot deeper than the last time he’d looked, even accounting for the dead beast floating to and fro in the wavelets set in motion by the wind and the roll of the vessel. The wind howled and whistled through the hole and sleet, more like hail, spattered the hull like shotgun pellets. At least there was no sign of any more isopods and it didn’t look like the big dead one had been scavenged in any way; with any luck, they’d be able to hide out the remaining time without worrying about an attack.

  But the weather and the rising water level in the flooded room had him worried more than the thought of an attack. Mac had been right, the RAF lads could land a chopper almost anywhere, but the wind outside showed no sign of relenting. A rescue might not be as imminent as they hoped and the danger of sinking was rising with every passing minute.

  *

  “I don’t think we can afford to sit and wait,” he said when he got back to the control room. “This hulk might not last long enough in the storm.”