Water

by William Esmont

  Megan turned to the left and took a cautious step forward, only to stop mid-stride when her leading foot encountered another obstacle. She squatted and extended her hand, expecting to find another piece of machinery in her way. But the briefest of touches was all she needed.

  She was sharing her cell with a body.

  Megan’s blood froze in her veins. Her heart rate doubled in an instant, spiking so hard her chest ached. Paralyzed by fear, she remained frozen in place, her hand extended, her thigh muscles and ankles screaming at the effort of squatting for so long. Time stretched into oblivion.

  Then she caught the faint, unmistakable muskiness of mummified human flesh. The body was old. Ancient. Megan stood and took a quick, cautious step back, groping desperately for the corner.

  Seconds passed, yet still she detected no movement in front of her, no sounds of a long-dead body creaking back to life in search of its next meal. Desperate for some sort of weapon, Megan backtracked to the machine she had stumbled upon earlier and knelt beside it. Reaching out and feeling along its length, she discovered a tubular metal bar about three feet long, wobbly, attached to a larger, heavier object at floor level. She ran her fingers along the knurled steel end of the bar closest to her. A mental picture began to form—a hydraulic jack. The bar was the lever. She recalled a similar contraption in her father’s garage. If she remembered correctly, the handle was detachable. Emboldened, she yanked and twisted until a sharp clang rang out as the handle popped loose and dropped to the floor.

  Megan cocked her head and listened. She could have sworn she had heard a rustling sound coming from the direction of the corpse. She snatched her new weapon from the floor and stood up straight, facing where she imagined the corpse lay. When, no threat materialized, she took a hesitant step forward. The body was still there. Still dead. Megan gently probed around the remains, searching for anything that would give her a clue as to how the person had died or how long it had been there. She found nothing.

  Not willing to take any chances, she placed the end of the lever against the side of the corpse’s skull, centering the tip directly over the temple, then jabbed with all of her might. The skull cracked open like a rotten pumpkin, releasing a foul stench. Megan twisted and turned the bar, scrambling whatever remained of the corpse’s brains until only mush remained.

  Once she was satisfied with her handiwork, she resumed her trek around the shipping container, eventually working her way back to her starting point. By her estimation, her prison was approximately twenty feet long by eight feet wide by eight feet tall. Aside from the body at the far end, she was alone.

  A crippling wave of despair gripped her. If the corpse at the other end of the container was any indication, she didn’t have much to look forward to. There was no way out of the steel box, no way to call for help. No one was coming to rescue her. She was going to die in there.

  Megan found a wall and sank to a sitting position. Tears welled in her eyes. She snorted and wiped them away. More tears came. A flood. Unable to stay strong any longer, Megan finally succumbed, dissolving into a sobbing heap in the darkness.

  Twenty-one

  Gulf Star Oil Platform

  Luke peered over the edge of the platform at the floating dock a hundred feet below. As he had expected, one of the big Coast Guard boats was gone. He drummed his fingers on the sun-warmed steel railing and pondered a possible explanation. Nothing came to mind. He didn’t know of any shore runs being conducted that day, and the RB-M certainly wasn’t the type of vessel people took out for a pleasure cruise. Not that anyone did much of that anymore.

  He turned and, shielding his eyes against the sun, gazed at the main administrative deck three stories overhead. He didn’t sense any signs of movement, but that didn’t mean much. It was time to get some answers.

  Luke rapped softly on the door leading to the main offices of the oil platform. When he received no answer, he put his hand on the knob and turned. The door opened easily. Luke entered the room and looked around. A four-foot-by-five-foot nautical chart dominated one wall, copiously marked with reminders of hazards the shore crews had encountered in the nearby waters. Another map of similar size showed the northern coast of Mexico. A red circle surrounded an island off the coast of northern Mexico, presumably where Megan, Jack, and Jeremy had gone. The bottom edges of the maps rose and fell in a regular rhythm, moved by a faint breeze from the open window. Luke closed the door and moved deeper into the room.

  The faint sound of voices coming from behind the closed door on the far side of the room made him stop in his tracks. He cocked his head and listened, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He tiptoed across the room to the door. He recognized the speakers as he drew close: Major Hines and Doctor Cain. So this is where they’ve been hiding out. The sharp, clipped pace of the Hines’s voice told Luke he was angry about something, and that the doctor was on the receiving end of his ire.

  Luke only managed to catch every second or third word, but he got enough to piece together a semblance of an idea of what was happening. Chris and Ben had gone to the Dixie Sunrise to search for information about the strange sickness starting to spread on the Gulf Star.

  The revelation sent a chill through Luke. Tinsley was right to be worried. Luke put his ear to the door, hoping to hear more. He thought of Megan’s reaction when she had caught him eavesdropping few days earlier. He didn’t want to repeat that experience, especially with Hines or Doctor Cain. While Megan had let him off with a stern warning, he couldn’t expect to get the same treatment from Hines and Cain.

  “…get more coffee… some?” Doctor Cain said.

  Luke froze. A chair squeaked as someone—the doctor, Luke presumed—got to his feet.

  Luke spun around and scoured the room for a place to hide. He didn’t have time to get through to the safety of the hallway. His only option was to hide underneath the heavy metal desk a few feet to his left. Luke lunged for the cover of the desk. He was pulling his feet beneath it when the door creaked open.

  Hines’s voice spilled out into the room. “And don’t forget the sugar this time!”

  “Got it,” Dr. Cain said as he strode past Luke’s hiding place.

  Cain exited the office and closed the hallway door but left the radio room door wide open. Luke’s mind raced. If he remained where he was, the doctor was sure to spot him when he returned.

  Taking slow, controlled breaths, Luke stuck his head out from his hiding place. Hines sat hunched over, flipping through a book or some papers. Luke couldn’t quite tell for sure. But he knew he had to act fast. Even if the doctor took his time downstairs, he would only be gone a few minutes.

  Luke began inching toward the door, sticking to the wall and trying to keep out of the major’s direct line of sight in case he turned around.

  Hines’s chair squeaked, and Luke nearly jumped out of his skin. His breath caught in his throat, and his heart hammered out of control as he slowly turned his head, expecting to find Hines looming over him, his face full of fury. To his surprise, he saw only an empty doorway. Hines had gotten up and gone to the far side of the radio room. Luke had his opportunity. Breaking into a crouching sprint, he scrambled the last few feet to the door.

  Safe outside, Luke forced himself to appear as calm as possible then set out for the stairs. Two flights down, as he was about to round the corner for the next flight, he ran into Doctor Cain. The doctor clutched a cup of steaming coffee in each hand, and he looked tired with bags under his eyes and mussed hair.

  “Luke?” Cain said, stopping short. “Hey. How are you doing? How’ve you been?”

  Luke swallowed and tried to look pleasantly surprised. “Good. How about you?”

  Cain lifted the coffee. “Just getting something to drink.”

  Luke peered past the doctor. “I’m sorry. I... I have to get back downstairs.”

  “Well, don’t let me hold you up,” Dr. Cain said, making a show of stepping aside.

  With a muffled word of thanks,
Luke dodged past and resumed his descent.

  Twenty-two

  The Dixie Sunrise Oil Platform

  Ben knelt beside the wrinkled, shirtless corpse of an old man curled in the fetal position a few feet inside the sick bay door. “What the hell?”

  Chris shook his head. None of what he was seeing made any sense. He did a quick count on the number of bodies in the room and came up with only twenty-two, one short of the number Doctor Cain had told him to search for. “We’re missing someone,” he said.

  “What was that?” Ben said, standing.

  “We’re one short.”

  “Shit. Do you know who?”

  Chris shrugged and repeated his count, just to make sure. “Beats the crap out of me,” he said when he reached the same number. “I’ve only been over here a few times.” He gestured at a corpse propped against the far wall. An avalanche of vomit had spilled from the dead man’s mouth and tumbled down his chest. “I do recognize him, though. I think his name was Rudy… or Rusty. Something like that. He was the guy that kept shitting in the garden last year—”

  Ben laughed. “I always wondered what happened to that guy.” He crossed the room and squatted in front of the corpse. “How’d you convince him to come over here?”

  Chris chuckled. “Simple. We told him it was either that or he could enjoy a new life on shore. He made the right choice.”

  “Smart man,” Ben said. He shifted his gaze to the corpse and muttered, “Let’s figure out what killed you.” Using the fingertips of his gloved hand, he raised the eyelids. “Interesting…” He moved his hand down to the man’s mouth and pried it open.

  “What’s going on?” Chris asked.

  “His eyes. They’re… red, like they’re full of blood.”

  “What?”

  “Come over here,” Ben said.

  Chris went over and looked at the corpse’s eyes. A deep crimson hue had infused the man’s eyeballs, as if every blood vessel had burst at once. “What the hell?”

  Working quickly, they checked several more of the dead and found the same condition, to varying degrees.

  “Beats me,” Chris said when they were done. “Looks painful, though.”

  “No shit. I wonder what caused it?”

  “I don’t know, man, but I’m sure there’s got to be a good explanation.”

  A harsh laugh burst from Ben’s throat. “Like the fucking zombies, right? I’m sure that’s what the eggheads said when the first dead person started chowing down on us: ‘There’s got to be a good explanation for this.’”

  “Chill out,” Chris said, more out of annoyance than anger.

  “I’m just saying. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “Let’s find that last person, then we can get the hell out of here,” Chris said, hoping to get Ben off the topic of the strange deaths.

  “That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.” Ben started for the door. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “You and me both. You and me both.”

  The men climbed to the top deck of the oil platform and worked their way down from there. Half an hour later, tired and frustrated, they reached the bottom deck. Their search had proven fruitless, with no sign of the missing inhabitant and no better idea of what had happened to decimate the population of the embattled platform. Eager to be done, they split up to make the job go faster.

  “Hey, Chris! Get in here! You’ve gotta see this!”

  Chris glanced up from the papers he was rifling through. “What’ve you got?”

  “Just come!”

  Chris turned and went into the next room. That was their last chance to find some explanation for the mysterious deaths four floors above before they ran out of platform to search.

  He found Ben in a room painted industrial gray. A row of floor-to-ceiling mesh storage lockers lined the far wall. Fluorescent tubes flickered overhead. Hand tools hung on pegboards on the adjacent walls, and a work bench peeked out from beneath a haphazard collection of welding equipment and metal-working tools.

  Ben waved Chris toward the lockers. “Hurry up, man!”

  Chris rushed to Ben’s side. His pulse skyrocketed when he saw the cause of Ben’s excitement. On the floor, a man sat with his knees drawn to his chest, his head resting on his arms. A faint whimpering came from him, barely audible through the thick hood covering Chris’s head. Although awake, the man twitched and jerked like a dog in the midst of a deep sleep.

  “Holy shit! Do you see his eyes?” Ben asked.

  Chris nodded. “I do.” The man’s eyes appeared normal, without a trace of the red discoloration shared by the corpses upstairs.

  “Do you recognize him?” Ben asked, taking a step forward.

  “He looks familiar, but I don’t know his name.”

  Ben knelt beside the man and reached for his bony shoulder.

  Chris clenched his teeth. “Careful…”

  “Hey,” Ben said, giving the guy a gentle shake. “Hey, we came to—”

  The man exploded from his huddled crouch as if he had touched a live wire. Directly in his path, Ben bore the full brunt of the man’s sudden motion, and he went sprawling onto his back with a surprised yelp. The man let loose a soul-rending scream as he cast a wild-eyed gaze first at Chris and then at Ben. Then, he scrambled over Ben’s supine form and raced from the storage room, screaming the entire time.

  Adrenaline pulsed through Chris’s body. His frantic breaths fogged his mask, leaving only a fist-size hole of clear Plexiglas for him to see through. He tasted blood where he had bitten his lip. Counting backward from five, Chris forced his breathing back under control. His mask cleared.

  As Chris turned to help Ben to his feet, his heart caught in his throat. Ben’s mask hung half off his face, jarred loose during the struggle.

  “Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit,” Ben said, fumbling to pull his mask back over his face.

  But he was too late, Chris realized with a crushing sense of finality. Ben had already been exposed to whatever lurked in the air of the doomed station. Ben was as good as dead.

  Ben struggled to his feet, using the edge of the workbench to pull himself up. “I’m okay, man,” he said, taking deep gulping breaths of oxygen from his mask.

  In a fit of rage, Chris grabbed a rusty hunk of metal from the bench and threw it across the room, where it crashed against the wall before clattering to the floor. “God damn it!”

  Ben held up a hand. “Hey! Calm down, man. It’s okay.”

  “No it’s not!” Chris shouted. “It’s not fucking okay! That son of a bitch just—”

  “I said, relax!” Ben said. “I’ll deal with it.”

  “No! You’re not going to die here. Not like this!” Chris barked. “This isn’t fucking fair!”

  Ben chuckled. “Since when has life ever been fair? You, of all people, should know better by now.”

  Chris stared into the eyes of his friend and felt a little part of himself break off and dissolve into nothingness. Piece by piece, his world was coming apart and he was powerless to slow the process. He lifted a hand toward Ben.

  Ben took a step back. “Not too close, now. We don’t know…”

  Chris started to protest, but before he could get another word in, Ben yanked off his mask and peeled back his hood.

  Chris stared at him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Might as well,” Ben said with a grin. “I’m sweating balls in this thing.” He dropped the mask on the workbench, closed his eyes, and inhaled a deep lungful of air. “Smells fine. Almost sweet, in fact.”

  “You dumb son of a bitch,” Chris said, Ben’s demise playing out in his mind like a movie. “You know what this means.”

  Ben nodded. “Believe me, I do.”

  “And you’re okay with it?”

  Ben shrugged. “What the hell else am I supposed to do? You saw him. He wasn’t sick. Maybe I won’t get sick, either.”

  Chris didn’t need to remind Ben that, of all the people
on the Dixie Sunrise, only one had survived. He could see the fear in Ben’s eyes, despite the confidence in the other man’s voice.

  “So what now?” Chris asked.

  Ben gestured at the door. “How about we go find that motherfucker and get some answers.”

  Chris checked his air. He had a hair over twenty minutes left. He’d need at least five to reach the Zodiac and douse himself in disinfectant. He didn’t like cutting his escape so close, but he desperately wanted answers. He made up his mind. “Lead the way.”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Ben said as he shrugged off his air tank and let it fall to the floor. “Let’s go!”

  They found the man five stories up, crouched on a narrow catwalk leading to a flare stack used to burn off excess gas recovered during the drilling process. How he had gotten up there so quickly was a mystery.

  “What the hell’s he doing up there?” Chris asked, nervously checking his air supply again. He had fourteen minutes left before his tank ran dry.

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to find out,” Ben said. He stepped onto a ladder that would take him directly to the catwalk.

  “I…”

  Ben met his eyes. “How much time do you have left?”

  Chris checked again. “Thirteen minutes.”

  Ben reached for the next rung. “Well, I’d better be fast then.”

  “Just…” Chris said.

  But Ben was already climbing.

  Chris watched nervously as his friend raced up the ladder. The first ten feet of the climb were in open air, but Ben soon disappeared from sight inside a metal mesh safety cage. The receding clomping sounds of his footsteps were the only indication of his progress.