Hell Rig

by J. E. Gurley

  “Where is everyone?” he asked, looking around the room. The only light came from a single bulb down the hallway.

  Slowly, using the power of his massive body, he shrugged off the pain and sat up.

  “I gotta take a piss,” he said to himself. He got up and saw Easton asleep in the bunk above him. “Little bastard,” he tossed at the sleeping form. Using the wall to brace himself, he went into the hallway. Raised on a small farm in Picayune, Mississippi, he had grown up using an outhouse or convenient nearby tree long before he ever saw indoor plumbing. Out of habit, Gleason made his way down the hallway and out the back door, passing the freshly scrubbed bathroom.

  He walked to the edge of the deck and leaned against the railing, emptying his bladder over the side of the platform. It felt good, like he hadn’t peed in a month. He closed his eyes and rocked gently urging the urine to flow. His task completed, and opened his eyes. It was then he noticed the heavy fog cloaking everything, disguising the angular outlines of the platform under mounds of corpulent mist like kudzu in the spring. He stood in a small clearing surrounded by the swirling, gray, slightly glowing mass.

  “What the fu-?” he exclaimed, watching the fog do things fog should not be able to do. He reached out to touch the mist and jerked his finger back quickly. A small blister popped up on the tip of his finger. The fog stung like battery acid, very cold battery acid. “Son of a bitch.”

  He began to panic. He looked around and saw the fog rising up the stairwell and over the railings. It reared and swayed like a snake, or a mass of snakes coiling about each other. When the lights suddenly flashed on in the main building, it startled him so badly he almost yelled. The fog receded under the lights but it still covered the deck between him and the door. He looked around and saw a light coming from beneath the radio shack door. He decided to seek shelter there. The fog parted invitingly like waters dividing, providing a clear path to the shack.

  Where the fog had rolled back, he was astonished to see layers of rust, even in some of the spots that he and Towns had just blasted and primed that morning.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Shadows moved in the fog. The outlines looked human but oddly misshapen and distorted by the mist. Sounds, moans and ragged breathing, drifted from the mist. Frightened, he reached the radio shack door, jerked it open and slammed it shut behind him. Tendrils of fog seeped under the door. He looked around, spotted a blanket draped over a chair and stuffed it under the door. The wooden door bowed inward as if pushed by some massive force outside. The hinges rattled but held. He leaned against the door, jerking away quickly as the immense cold hit him. White frost outlined the spot where he had leaned. He grabbed a folding metal chair and jammed it under the doorknob. It held.

  “Stay away from me!” he yelled. He didn’t know who or what was out there trying to get in, but Bale was dead and he was taking no chances.

  Fog covered the single window, leaving an icy rim around the edges. After a few minutes, the fog halted its attack on the door and swirled around the shack like a waterspout. Gleason sat down on the desk with his back against the wall. The cheap metal desk bowed under his immense weight. He drew up his knees and rested his aching head on them. He tried to remember a prayer from his youth.

  “Now I lay me down to sleep,” he began. By the time he finished, he felt better.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’ve got to go to the john,” Easton announced unexpectedly. The others had been sitting together in the meeting room for two hours, drinking coffee and discussing their situation, getting nowhere. They had awakened him with the information that Gleason was missing. Easton had listened to their bantering with disinterest. The others had ignored him until now.

  “Then go, damn it,” Tolson growled, annoyed at the interruption.

  Jeff noticed Tolson had been growing increasingly more irritable, chaffing at their forced confinement. He had been swinging his empty coffee cup by its handle for ten minutes, tapping it against his thigh. Easton shot Tolson a hurt look and left the room.

  Tolson noticed the look on Jeff’s face. “What? He’s getting on my nerves,” he said, slamming the coffee cup on the table, startling everyone.

  “Relax,” Jeff told him. “He’s scared.”

  “We’re all scared,” Tolson returned. “Why should he be different?”

  Jeff wanted to say, “Because the shadows spoke to him,” but refrained. “Maybe the fog will recede when the sun comes out.”

  Tolson stared at him. “Maybe? What do you mean, maybe? We can’t just sit here.”

  Jeff tried to speak softy, but he, too, was becoming weary of their forced detention. The room was warm from the gas burner under the coffee pot and still bore traces of earlier moldy smells lurking beneath the strong astringent odor of disinfectants. If he opened his imagination wide enough, he knew he would smell the lingering traces of death.

  “We have no choice. The morning sun should break up the fog.”

  “If it doesn’t?” Tolson snapped.

  Jeff stood quickly and looked down at Tolson. He felt an overpowering urge to smack Tolson’s shaved head but restrained himself. They were all scared. “I don’t know, Tolson. I just don’t know.” He walked away from the table and stopped at the door, both hands grasping the doorjamb tightly. Turning back to Tolson, he said, “What do you want me to do? The fog is corrosive, dangerous. We should be safe in here for now. After that, I just don’t know.”

  “Did it just get colder?” Lisa asked, breaking up the confrontation.

  Jeff noticed the pages of Lisa’s paperback fluttering. “There’s a draft.” Suddenly it hit him. “Easton! Damn!” he yelled. He ran to the bathroom but Easton was not there.

  “He’s gone!” he yelled to the others. They came running down the hallway after him. Jeff was already heading for the rear door. As he suspected, it was open. “Damn! The fool’s gone outside,” he shouted.

  The crepuscular fog was still there, glowing eerily in the dark, but a corridor now bore through the heart of the fog leading to the stairwell, inviting him. Jeff watched the fog for a moment and rushed out the door.

  “Jeff, wait!” Lisa called after him.

  Jeff waved the others back. He had to find Easton before the fool did something stupid. He suspected the fog had opened up invitingly to draw Easton deeper into it. He suspected that Easton, scared out of his wits, had thought of a way off the platform and was taking it. Jeff thought he knew where Easton was headed—the TEMPSC.

  Jeff told the others about the sabotage to the emergency craft. Tolson repaired the electrical box and he and Gleason attempted to straighten out the bent rail but they had made no test run. Until they tested it, the emergency craft was dangerous. In his panic, Easton might be willing to take his chances, leaving the others behind. As he bounced down the stairs two at a time, he saw Easton frantically working on the TEMPSC’s sealed door by the light of his flashlight.

  “Don’t try it!” Jeff yelled.

  Easton looked up but seemed not to recognize him. His face froze in a mask of horror and he worked even harder to free the raft. As Jeff took his first step onto the cellar deck landing, something hit him across his back with sufficient force to lift him off his feet and toss him into a maze of pipes. He hit his head and blacked out for a moment. When he roused, Easton was no longer there. He had abandoned his attempt to free the raft and had fled into the darkness. Jeff rubbed a bruise on his shoulder and reached up feeling a trickle of blood running down his forehead. He looked around but there was no one near him.

  “Sid!” he yelled. There was no answer.

  “Jeff!”

  He heard Lisa’s voice coming from somewhere above him.

  “It’s me and Tolson,” she yelled.

  Jeff got up, rubbed his aching left shoulder and walked to the stairwell. He looked up at Lisa, fighting to focus. “He’s gone,” he told her. He held onto the railing for support as a wave of dizziness swept over him. When opened h
is eyes, Lisa was already on the landing staring at him, a look of concern on her face.

  “What happened to you?” she asked when she saw his bloody forehead. The landing shook as Tolson followed her down the stairs.

  “Someone hit me from behind,” he told her.

  “Easton?” Tolson asked, grabbing Jeff as he stumbled.

  “No, someone else.” Jeff shook his head to clear it and wished he hadn’t. His stomach rumbled and threatened to release its precarious hold on dinner. He placed his hand on Tolson’s shoulder for support.

  “Where did he go?” Lisa asked.

  “I think he went—”

  A loud scream cut off Jeff’s words. It echoed in the dense fog, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was a primitive scream, wrenched horribly from the human throat but also deep within the soul. It continued for several moments before becoming a low gurgle.

  “My God!” Lisa yelled. “What was that?”

  “Easton,” Jeff answered. He listened to the echoes as they faded. “This way.”

  Tolson handed him the flashlight and he and Lisa followed him deeper into the cellar deck, past separator tanks and manifolds, around oil storage tanks and rows of check valves. They found Easton just inside the mudroom. Tolson shined his flashlight on the body and Lisa gasped. Easton lay in a pool of his own blood. His arms had flailed around in his death throes, creating a crimson snow angel on the bloody deck. Steam rose from a gaping wound in his stomach and from the scattered pile of intestines lying in an untidy heap beside him, discarded as if in haste. Easton’s eyes were open, staring blindly into the light. His face was pale and his mouth slackened and distorted by his last scream, but he was alive. Jeff saw his chest heave out a breath with a shudder.

  Lisa drew up short when she saw the wound, leaned over a pipe and vomited. The sound of her retching tightened the knot in Jeff’s already protesting stomach, but he inhaled deeply and maintained control. He noticed tendrils of fog reaching from the shadows toward Easton’s body, caressing it. No, Jeff realized with a start, it was after the blood. Where the fog swirled near the body, the blood faded away as the fog drank it. Tolson noticed it too.

  “What the hell?” Tolson groaned, pointing a trembling finger at the fog. He removed his hat and held it wadded in one hand, crushed against his chest. He stopped pointing and tugged on his mustache. The fog took on a pinkish hue as it lapped at the blood like a hungry animal. The trio stood and watched, frozen in horror.

  “He’s still alive,” Jeff said, breaking the tension. “We’ve got to move him.”

  Easton’s head rolled to one side and his eyes popped opened wide. He stared at them unseeing.

  “Oh, my God,” Lisa whispered.

  The lower half of Easton’s right ear was missing. His cheek was also slashed where his assailant had roughly hacked off the ear.

  “Why would someone do that?” Lisa asked, disgusted more by the deliberate maiming of his ear than the open wound to his stomach.

  “Help me with him,” Jeff said.

  “The hell with that,” Tolson replied. He turned to leave. Jeff put out a hand to restrain him and saw a movement in the shadows near the door.

  “Wait!” he shouted.

  Tolson saw the movement too and lunged into the shadows. He emerged hanging onto a squirming Waters by his shoulder. Waters began to scream wildly, kicking and thrashing about. Suddenly, he wrenched free, reached down to pick up a length of metal lying on the deck. One side had been ground to a fine edge. He attacked Tolson with it. The makeshift machete embedded in Tolson’s right shoulder. Tolson cried out in pain and staggered backwards. He pushed Waters away before falling against the wall. Jeff leaped upon Waters’ back, but Waters, finding inhuman strength in his madness, tossed Jeff off with little effort. Waters turned, stared at Jeff with cold, dark eyes and laughed.

  “He has no secrets now,” he cackled, referring to Easton. “I told you!”

  “Bastard!” Tolson recovered just enough to lift his right leg and kick Waters in the side of the head, knocking him into the shadows and the fog. They heard his footsteps as he ran away. Tolson fell to the deck, moaning. He managed to dislodge the sharp metal, but blood gushed from a deep gash in his right shoulder. “Son of a bitch,” he moaned.

  Lisa turned to Jeff. “We have to get Tolson back.”

  “What about Easton?” He turned and looked down at Easton just as Easton’s chest heaved out his last breath.

  “He’s gone. We can’t help him,” Lisa said gently. “Tolson’s hurt.”

  Jeff looked at Easton’s unseeing eyes and nodded. He reached down and closed them. Together, one under each arm, they dragged the nearly unconscious Tolson back up the stairs. McAndrews and Ed met them at the top.

  “What happened?” Ed asked.

  Jeff answered. “Waters. He killed Sid and attacked Tolson. Tolson’s badly injured. Let’s get him back inside.”

  The fog had given them free passage but now, as if capping the events, it followed them, closing in on them, herding them toward the main building, coiling and nipping at their heels like a wild animal. Gray fog snakes spilled from the leading edges of fog, sticking out tiny forked tongues, and melted back into the mass of fog. It crashed against the door as they closed it behind them, sounding like skeletal nails on a hellish blackboard. Lisa locked the door and braced her back against it as the door began to buckle. She shivered as hoarfrost covered the door.

  “It’s trying to break it down,” she yelled, stepping away from the door. Her voice held equal parts fear and disbelief.

  Ed and McAndrews carried Tolson to the dorm room while Jeff stared in horror at the door. Lisa was right. The imprints of misshapen hands and half-recognizable faces bulged from the door. The hinges popped as the screws bent under the pressure. Whatever it was, it would soon break the door down. Without thinking, Jeff ripped the amulet from around his neck, wrapped it around the doorknob and stepped back. The door stopped bowing inward.

  “It worked,” he said, slightly amused by his last ditch effort.

  “What made you think it would?” Lisa asked.

  “I don’t now. It just seemed to be the right thing to do. Something let me through the fog after Easton.” He turned to look at her. “That fog is not natural. Nothing happening around here is natural.” Jeff cursed and slammed his fist against his leg. “Easton. Damn Waters!”

  “Waters didn’t kill Easton.”

  Jeff stared at Lisa with disbelief. “What makes you say that?”

  “Waters didn’t have a drop of blood on him when he attacked Tolson, did he?”

  He tried to remember. It had all happened so quickly, all shadow and movement. He tried to picture the action as it occurred, see Waters step from the shadows. She was right. “No,” he said finally. “He didn’t.”

  “There is no way he could have butchered Easton like that without getting drenched in blood.”

  “Then who did it?”

  She paused as if reluctant to continue. “Gleason is still missing,” she suggested.

  “Big Clyde? He wouldn’t…why would he…” Jeff couldn’t finish. The thought of Big Clyde Gleason as a murderer did not sit well with him, but McAndrews had vouched for Waters in Bale’s death. Now, it was likely he had not killed Easton either. Gleason was the only one of them large enough to overpower Bale and he, like all of them, carried a knife. It was part of their toolkit. Except for Sims, their list of suspects was growing dangerously short.

  “Waters did attack Tolson,” Jeff countered. “We have to warn the others about Clyde.”

  When they got to his room, McAndrews had Tolson’s shirt off and cleaned his wound. A deep, six-inch long gash ran diagonally across his right shoulder. It was no longer bleeding as profusely as before. Tolson’s body’s self defense mechanisms rose to the occasion, shutting down capillaries near the wound, slowing the flow of blood. Now, only a trickle of blood ran down his back.

  “It’s messy but not life threate
ning,” McAndrews informed them. After washing the wound, he spread an antiseptic gel over it and wrapped it tightly with a gauze pressure bandage.

  “When the bleeding stops, I’ll stitch it up and treat it with more antibiotics. For now, it’s best to let it bleed, in case there are metal filings in the wound. I gave him the last of the pain pills. He needs rest.”

  “It hurts like a son of a bitch,” Tolson complained. “I’ll kill that bastard Waters when I see him.”

  “He didn’t kill Sid,” Jeff said.

  Tolson turned over to look at him. “The hell he didn’t! Did you see the size of that homemade machete he had?”

  Jeff shook his head. “It was just a piece of sharp metal he picked up off the deck. It wasn’t sharp enough to do that to Easton.”

  “The hell it couldn’t! Look what it did to my shoulder,” Tolson yelled.

  “The wound on Easton was thin and even. It would take something like a knife or scalpel. Besides, Waters didn’t have a drop of blood on him. He couldn’t have hacked Sid like that without getting drenched in blood.”

  Tolson closed his eyes a moment as a spasm of pain swept over him. “Big Clyde,” he gasped. “You think Big Clyde is doing this.”

  “I don’t know,” Jeff admitted. “He has disappeared.”

  “Still, Big Clyde for Christ’s sake, Towns.” Tolson, too, was having a hard time imaging their friend as a mass murderer. “He’s big and loves a brawl, but to murder someone so coldly…I can’t see it.”

  “There’s something else.” He started to tell them about the voodoo amulet and the fog’s reaction to it. Lisa anticipated this. She touched his arm and shook her head to stop him.

  “What?” McAndrews asked. Tolson was almost out from the sedative. He simply stared at Jeff with glazed eyes.