400 Minutes of Danger

by Jack Heath

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t let you risk your own life for a dog. I’m sure the staff will find him. Please stand over there with the others.’

  Nancy took her place in the line, feeling dizzy. The staff wouldn’t be checking under beds and in cupboards. They would just open each door, call out, glance inside and move on. And Sid would be hiding. He was a nervous dog. That was part of the reason she had decided not to put him on a plane.

  When the water entered the room, Sid wouldn’t know what was happening. He would wait for Nancy to save him. If she didn’t go, he would drown.

  21:25 The woman wasn’t looking her way. Nancy scanned her surroundings. It was pandemonium on deck. No-one would notice if she slipped away.

  She told herself there was enough time to run downstairs, grab Sid, get back up and jump in a lifeboat. It would take ten minutes at the most. A ship this big couldn’t sink in ten minutes, could it?

  Nancy turned and ran towards the stairs.

  19:45 No-one yelled out—at least, not specifically at her. Some people were clamouring around the lifeboats as the staff tried to convince them to make room. Others were leaning over the rail and gawking at the damage done to the ship. All the noise made it hard to think.

  Nancy reached the top of the spiral staircase. Without looking back, she trotted down towards the lower decks.

  19:00 Her seasickness returned immediately. The ship was starting to tilt, so the stairs weren’t at the right angle. Her feet kept landing a split second earlier than she expected them to. She held the handrail tightly. If she twisted an ankle, she might not be able to get back upstairs. She and Sid would both die.

  Some scuba holiday this is, she thought.

  Another passenger was dragging a suitcase up the stairs, his long hair all over his face.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded. ‘We’re supposed to go up to the deck!’

  18:20 ‘I have to get my dog,’ Nancy said, and pushed past.

  He didn’t try to stop her. Maybe he understood—or perhaps he just didn’t want to risk his own life by trying to convince her to go with him.

  Her cabin was on a lower level, one of the cheaper ones. It had seemed like a smart move at the time. Now Nancy would have given anything to be higher up. She and Sid could have been in one of the lifeboats by now.

  17:10 She passed by a floor and saw a staff member checking the rooms. As she suspected, the man was just shouting into each room and then locking the door. Fortunately, he was facing away from the stairs. Nancy slipped further down without being seen.

  She stepped off the staircase two floors lower. The narrow corridor looked straight but felt crooked underfoot. No water was yet visible, but she could hear the hull moaning under the increasing pressure. The air felt different, too. There was a weird energy in it. She could somehow smell the danger.

  Nancy ran down the corridor, past a janitorial closet and a rack of scuba equipment for the onboard activities, keeping one hand on the wall so she didn’t fall over. Her room was just up ahead.

  16:30 ‘Sid,’ she yelled. ‘Don’t worry! I’m coming!’

  She slammed into the door. Locked. She didn’t remember locking it—one of the staff must have done it after checking that no-one was in the room.

  Nancy fumbled with her key card, swiped it and wrenched the door open.

  The thin bed was unmade, the cream curtains still closed over the porthole. Her stack of books had fallen over and her laptop had toppled off the mini-fridge, but other than that, the room was just how she’d left it.

  ‘Sid?’ she called.

  15:55 She couldn’t hear the dog. Maybe one of the staff had found him after all.

  Running into the room, she checked under the bed. No sign of him. She looked in the closet. Nothing.

  Nancy stumbled into the bathroom. Sid wasn’t in the shower recess or the nook next to the sink.

  She was about to leave when she heard a soft whimpering. She checked behind the bathroom door. There he was, cowering on a nest of fallen towels. He looked up at her with big wet eyes and licked his lips.

  15:05 ‘Sid!’ Nancy cried.

  Sid stood up and wagged his bristly black tail. Nancy scooped him up and he licked her ear. At his last trip to the vet he had weighed only nine kilograms. She should be able to carry him up the stairs easily enough.

  The bathroom lurched around her and the hull moaned again. The lights flickered and fizzled out. There were no windows in the bathroom—Nancy was surrounded by almost pure blackness. She heard the mini-fridge fall over with a thump as the ship tilted further and further. She had to get out of here.

  Clinging to Sid, Nancy ran back into the corridor, where the lights were okay—

  14:25 But she was too late.

  13:20 With a final lurch, the corridor swirled around her. Nancy hit the floor—or rather, someone’s door. The whole corridor had turned sideways. The ship must be lying on its starboard side. She stood, disoriented. The floor was to her left, the ceiling to her right. The corridor sloped down towards the stairs.

  Water started pouring out of the stairwell. There was so much, flowing so fast that Nancy wouldn’t have been surprised to see people white-water rafting on it. The sound was deafening. There was no way she would be able to push through the flow. Not while carrying Sid, anyway.

  13:00 Nancy turned to face the other end of the corridor. But there were no stairs in that direction, just more rooms. If she went that way, she would soon be trapped by the rising water.

  She knew Sid could swim, but she didn’t think he knew how to hold his breath. She had to keep his head above the water.

  The door to her cabin was now above her, hanging open. She could just reach the frame. With increasing desperation, she pushed Sid through and heaved herself up after him, just in time to avoid getting wet. The water washed along the corridor beneath her.

  Her room was totally trashed. Everything had moved. The mini-fridge had smashed a hole in the wall. The bed had fallen onto the closet. The curtains hung down from the porthole over her head, which faced the sky.

  12:10 It looked just wide enough to squeeze through. If she could climb up there and break the window, she and Sid could get outside and tread water until a lifeboat picked them up.

  The desk was bolted to the wall. Heart pounding, Nancy grabbed the legs and climbed up, carrying Sid under one arm. When she got to the top, she could just reach the porthole. But how would she break through?

  11:45 The water had entered the room below her and was slowly rising. It soaked the mattress and gushed into the closet. A jumble of plastic rubbish bobbed on the surface, getting closer and closer to Nancy’s feet. Sid snuffled nervously in her arms.

  Nancy spotted an empty glass bottle floating amongst the debris. She crouched down and grabbed it. Hopefully the base would be hard enough to break through the porthole.

  11:10 She stood up and rammed the bottle against the centre of the window. To her horror, the bottle bounced right off the thick glass without leaving a mark.

  She hit it again, harder. Same result. The window was too solid. It was designed to withstand several tons of pressure. She and Sid were doomed.

  Then she spotted a small handle beside the porthole. Perhaps it was designed to open?

  10:00 She twisted the handle and felt something shift inside the brass frame. She pulled. No result. But when she pushed, the porthole swung open, letting in a blast of fresh air. It opened outwards to prevent leaks.

  The water lapped at Nancy’s ankles. She gasped at the cold, and held Sid up. He squirmed in her grip. ‘Just trust me, buddy,’ she said, and pushed him through the porthole.

  Sid yapped and trotted away over the side of the ship, thrilled to be outside.

  Nancy was about to climb out after him when—

  Kablam!

  09:05 She lost her grip on the window and tumbled backwards into the room as another blast rocked the ship. Another missile! The porthole slammed itself shut, separating Nancy
from the outside world. The wall buckled around the porthole as Nancy splashed down into the icy water filling the room.

  She flailed around until her head breached the surface. The ship was sinking faster. There was less than a metre of air between her and the warped wall.

  08:25 Looking up through the now-shut porthole, Nancy was horrified to see that it was underwater. She could see the surface—Sid’s kicking legs and the keel of a lifeboat were visible high above. But they were growing more and more distant. The ship was sinking, and she was trapped inside.

  She grabbed the handle and shoved the porthole with all her strength. But it was like pushing on a concrete wall. The shockwave from the rocket had wrecked the hinges.

  ‘No!’ she screamed. She rattled the handle and punched the glass. It wouldn’t budge.

  07:40 The seawater sloshed around her shoulders. The top of her head was pressed against the glass. The water reached her neck. Her chin. She gagged as it battered her face. Fighting to keep her nose above it, she took a last desperate sniff of air before the ocean swallowed her.

  06:50 The room was full of water now. It rumbled in her ears like a strong wind. How long could she hold her breath? A minute? Two?

  Nancy had no choice. She was going to have to go back out into the corridor and try to swim through the ship before it got too deep, and then get to the surface before she ran out of air.

  She swam down past the fridge, which was floating open like a casket at a funeral. She grabbed the waterlogged bed by its legs, pulled herself beyond it and emerged into the corridor.

  06:20 Possessions floated everywhere—towels, books, bottles. Somebody’s watch. A broad-brimmed hat. A bedside clock. Nancy could hardly see, and it was getting darker by the minute as the ship sank deeper.

  She pushed the debris aside and swam towards the stairs. Her lungs were already burning. Her eardrums ached from the sudden increase in pressure. She told herself not to panic—her racing heart was using up too much oxygen—but it was impossible to shut out the terror.

  Soon the stairs were visible through the darkness. They were wrecked—just a twisted maze of jagged metal. The walls had crumpled inward around them.

  This was where the second rocket had hit. Now there was no way through. She was trapped.

  Boom! Cracks spread across the floor and ceiling. The light fittings burst, sending shards of plastic floating through the black water. The ship must have hit the ocean floor. How deep was that? A hundred metres? A thousand?

  05:25 Nancy was almost out of air. Even if she found away out of the ship, she would never make it to the surface. She was going to drown, down here in the dark. There would be no scuba diving with her parents. No reading on the beach. No walks along the rock pools with Sid.

  She hoped one of the lifeboats had picked Sid up. Then she wondered if her parents would be angry at her for saving Sid instead of herself.

  05:15 A metal canister rolled slowly past along the wall beneath her, dragging a tangle of tubes. It looked a bit like a fire extinguisher. Maybe she could use it to break through the porthole. Except that wouldn’t help—she was already dizzy. Her lungs felt like they were going to explode. She would black out any second now …

  Then she realised it wasn’t a fire extinguisher. It was a scuba tank.

  04:55 She scrabbled at the tubes with sudden hope. Following one of the lines, she found a regulator attached and pressed it to her mouth. She twisted the valve on top of the tank, and exhaled to clear the water from the mouthpiece.

  04:35 With a beautiful hiss, sweet air flowed into her mouth. She sucked it in greedily, feeling the oxygen cool the fire in her lungs and replenish her aching muscles. The giddiness subsided. She fought the urge to laugh hysterically with relief.

  Nancy located a mask hooked onto the tank and quickly pushed it to her face. She pulled the rubber strap over her head so the mask stayed on and dragged the air canister back down the corridor. Now that she could breathe, she could think. Most of the room doors had burst open when the corridor filled up. Looking through, she saw that all the portholes were closed—but that didn’t mean they were jammed like hers.

  02:45 She hauled herself and the scuba tank through the first open door she found. Discarded clothes drifted around her like seaweed. She swam over to the porthole and tried the handle.

  Finally some luck! The handle turned. The porthole opened. She tried to clamber through the opening, but her hips got stuck. Terror clawing at her heart, she wrenched herself past the window frame into the open water, losing some skin in the process. Then she reached back and dragged the air canister after her.

  The infinite ocean surrounded her. Dirt swirled around the seabed, stirred up by the crash-landing ship. Schools of fish flitted left and right. Anemones danced among towers of coral.

  01:10 Nancy looked upward. She could just make out the surface of the ocean, a shimmering curtain high above, dotted with lifeboats—and amongst them, Sid’s kicking feet. He was OK. She had saved him.

  Nancy could swim up and join him—but she would have to do it slowly, stopping often. Divers who ascended too fast often got decompression sickness.

  00:00 Holding the air tank with one hand, Nancy swam slowly towards the light.

  MOSOUITO

  40:00 ‘Don’t move,’ Dr Volchek whispered. ‘And be quiet.’ Sally fell silent. She’d been told that this jungle was full of deadly creatures. Snakes swirling through the dead leaves underfoot. Razor-clawed birds defending their nests with vicious force. Vines bristling with poisoned thorns.

  And of course, there was the thing they were actually looking for. Vampirus Colossi. The giant mosquito. The drawings, based on terrified eyewitness descriptions, made the creature look as big as a lobster, with gleaming armour and mighty wings. It looked like something out of a robot invasion—or a nightmare.

  Dr Volchek had claimed he’d found bodies of wild pigs in this area which had been sucked dry through enormous puncture wounds. He said that nearby cave paintings depicted people fleeing from a giant insect and defending themselves with spears. Sally was starting to wonder if he was crazy. But her main concern was that it would take all day for Dr Volchek to give up searching for his blood-sucking obsession.

  ‘OK,’ Volchek said finally. ‘We’re clear.’

  39:15 ‘What was it?’ Sally asked.

  ‘I thought I saw a driver ant.’

  ‘Surely one ant is no big deal.’

  ‘They have a nasty sting, and powerful shearing jaws. They could easily chew through the soles of those shoes you’re wearing. I once saw a swarm consume a live rat. It was like watching it sink into quicksand.’

  Sally shivered and followed him deeper into the tangle of trees and bushes.

  39:00 When she had heard about this student program it had sounded like a fun adventure. A billionaire was paying for some kids to spend a few days surrounded by nature, learning about practical applications of science. Sally wasn’t the best student and really needed the extra school credit. But now, after six hours on a bumpy plane, she was stranded in the wilderness with a madman. Sally wasn’t even sure what country she was in, although she hadn’t had to show her passport to anybody. At first she’d been ecstatic that the plane had landed at a deserted airstrip on an idyllic beach.

  Then a second plane landed, carrying Volchek and another bunch of teenage recruits. Wild-eyed and sniffing, Volchek wore camouflage hiking gear with an equipment belt that jingled as he walked. He had told everyone to pair up, handed them their sample cages and sent them off in different directions. There were an odd number of people, leaving Sally with no partner except the doctor. As she approached she had heard him muttering: ‘Don’t disappoint Mr List. Just grab it and go, nice and quick.’

  38:45 Why did I have to get stuck with this guy? she wondered, looking wistfully over to where the other students had disappeared into the jungle.

  Mr List was their mysterious benefactor. Sally had never met him, but apparently he collected anima
ls. Not in the way her uncle took in stray cats—rare animals. Weird ones.

  Now, walking along the dense jungle path, she noticed the ground was getting marshy. The mud made a sucking sound as Sally pulled her boot free.

  ‘What does Mr List do with the animals?’ she heard herself ask.

  Volchek glared at her. ‘That’s not our concern.’

  38:10 ‘I mean, is he doing medical research?’ Sally persisted. ‘Studying their genes? Looking for a cure for cancer or something?’

  ‘He could be eating them, for all I know,’ Volchek said. ‘Hush. I need to listen out for the nest.’

  Eating them? Sally tried to picture a crazy rich guy on a mission to sample all the world’s rarest animals. She wished it seemed more unlikely.

  37:55 They were passing a waterfall when Volchek stopped so suddenly that Sally bumped into him. ‘You hear that?’ he murmured.

  At first Sally could only hear the splashing of the water below them. But then she noticed a faint drone, like that of a distant lawnmower.

  ‘That sound means we must be near the breeding ground,’ he said. ‘Keep your eyes peeled.’

  Sally scanned the trees. She couldn’t see anything, but the humming was definitely real. And it was getting louder. Unease clawed at her chest.

  37:20 ‘Get the sample cage ready,’ Volchek whispered.

  It resembled a cat’s carry cage, with a gate at the front and a handle on top. Sally tried to picture a mosquito too big to escape from between the bars. It seemed unlikely, but she opened the gate and held the cage up with one hand. A butterfly net was clenched in her other one.

  The humming got even louder. The sound made Sally’s skin crawl. An ancient, unevolved part of her brain screamed at her to get out, get away—run!

  36:30 Volchek parted the ferns ahead of them, revealing a small lake. A skin of slime covered the stagnant water. The smell was repulsive.

  ‘Look,’ Volchek whispered.

  He pointed at a cluster of what looked like brown billiard balls floating near the water’s edge. Something squirmed under the semi-transparent skin.