by Dayle, Harry
There were three main staircases that ran between all the accommodation decks. One fore, one aft, and one in the middle. Lucya checked the cabin number. She was nearest the aft, which suited her fine, as her first thought of a destination was the engine room, which was located at the rear of the ship. It meant descending a long way, which increased the risk of getting caught, but there really wasn’t anywhere else to go. The bridge was off limits, and she had no idea where any of the rest of the crew might be. At least in the engine room there was a good chance of finding Martin, and refuge. She turned left, and stopped in her tracks. The door of the opposite cabin had just opened.
“Well hello there, young lady. I must admit I didn’t expect to see you out here.”
Lucya’s heart almost exploded in her ears. She tried desperately to keep calm. There was no need to panic, she told herself. Just a passenger making conversation.
The man in the doorway clicked his fingers. Immediately two other men appeared behind him. The three stepped out of the cabin. The first man was well built, strong looking. The other two were even heftier.
“I was just on my way to come and introduce myself,” the first man said. “My name is Flynn. I am the captain now. I’ve just been talking to your boyfriend, Lucya, the ex-captain.”
“Jake? Where is Jake? What have you done with him?”
“Well, you know, he killed a few people, so we had to get rid of him.”
“You’re lying! Jake would never kill anyone or harm anyone. Where is he?”
“I told you, he killed two men. I was lenient, probably too much so. He has left the premises.”
Lucya tried to charge forwards, to do physical harm to Flynn. But his men had anticipated the move and grabbed her before she got too close. They held her in a vice-like grip.
“But I don’t want to talk about him, let’s talk about you,” Flynn continued. “You’ve proved yourself to be quite remarkable. I assume you have somehow overcome Ms Bloom in there?” He looked at the door to the cabin where Lucia had been held captive. “I don’t think she let you out willingly. She has made a surprisingly good convert to the cause. She doesn’t have your spirit or, dare I say it, inventiveness, though. Getting out of there, that takes talent. I think you’ll be one of our top specimens. It seems to me you’ve compromised Tania’s cabin. Let’s take you somewhere else, somewhere more suitable. It seems a shame to lock up such a pretty one as yourself,” he caressed the side of her face with rough, dry fingers, “but this is as much for your own safety. We have a more secure cabin my boys here have been working on. The good news is that some of your old crew mates are already there. You can talk about how great things were before! Silvia will be delighted to see you, as will Doctor Lister. Taker her,” he said, clicking his fingers once again.
Lucya struggled, kicked, lashed out, tried to scratch, to scream, but either man on his own was more than capable of overpowering her. Together, she stood no chance. One of the men was behind her. He encircled her with his arms, squeezing her arms against her and rendering them inoperative. The other lifted her feet. They carried her off down the corridor like they might have carried a corpse. This body was a lot noisier, though.
Fifty-Eight
JAKE WAITED UNTIL Zhang had mounted the steps and returned inside the boat before he moved. He could see Gunter’s discarded oar still floating, some way away. He was being pushed towards the shore, and so was the oar, but the oar had a considerable head start. He crawled to the front corner of the raft and, leaning over the side, he started to paddle. His movement was severely restricted by the pain in his side. He felt pathetic, splashing his hand in the water ineffectively. Every stroke was agony, and not only did it not seem to bring him any closer to his immediate goal of the oar, it also took him further away from the ship in terms of time. He knew the longer he took to reach the paddle, the less chance he had of ever catching the Spirit of Arcadia. So he kept on paddling like a puppy at sea.
When fatigue almost overcame him, and he was forced to his knees to relieve the pressure on his ribs, something remarkable happened. The oar appeared to stop dead in the water. It was no longer advancing, he was actually gaining on it, and without any effort on his own part. The wake of the bow thruster alone was propelling him forwards, but not the oar. Within a minute he was almost on top of it. He could see the reason it wasn’t moving. It was caught against one of the submerged pieces of pier. A jagged triangle of concrete and steel poking through the surface of the fjord like a spring shoot. Jagged, and very sharp. Easily capable, Jake realised with horror, of puncturing an inflatable life raft.
He hurled himself forwards, bouncing on the front inflated section, sending a surge of pain through his side. With arms outstretched, he tried to grab the oar with one hand while simultaneously pushing off from the fragment of pier. His left hand closed around the shaft of the oar and he pulled it out of the water, threw it over his head and heard it land on the rubber bottom of the raft behind him. At the same time, a spur of reinforcing steel jutting from the smashed concrete caught him in the middle of his right hand, reopening the wound there, created during his battle with Ibsen. Blood gushed from the tear in his skin, but he couldn’t let the pain distract him from his task. With both hands, he pushed off from the pier with all the force he could muster. The raft floated away from the obstacle. Jake scrambled to the other end, clambering over inflated air chambers that were designed to add buoyancy and redundancy and also to provide somewhere to sit. He collected the oar on his way. Reaching the end, he started paddling furiously. The ship was now a considerable distance away and was executing a turn. The raft began to move, but by paddling only on one side it was not only advancing but also turning to the left. He shuffled on his knees to the right-hand side, lowered the oar into the water, and began paddling again, bringing the craft back straight, and then round to the right. Shuffling back to the left-hand side he repeated the operation. But it was no good. One man alone could not paddle fast enough. And a man with at least one broken rib, who was losing blood through the gash in his hand, stood no chance. Jake fell back onto his back, splashing down into the water that was still swilling around in the bottom of the raft, and roared.
“Nooo! Lucya!”
His cries and screams carried across the water, bounced off the sloping remains of Longyearbyen, and echoed back out over the fjord. Jake was beaten.
In the distance, the Spirit of Arcadia had turned one hundred and eighty degrees, and was sailing towards the mouth of the fjord, and the open sea.
Fifty-Nine
TWENTY-THREE HOURS Later
Jake opened his eyes, frightened. Something had made a sound. This was odd, because since he had seen the ship sail out of the fjord and head south, there hadn’t been any sign of life, at all. No birds. No butterflies, or moths. No sea lions, or polar bears. Not even any fish. And certainly no people. The world was dead, and he had accepted that he was going to die here too. The wake from the ship and the current in the fjord had carried him further east, away from the open sea. There was no broken pier here, and no pulverised town. Just steep sloping hills on either side. Grey hills, thick with toxic ash. Nowhere to go on land, nowhere to go at sea. Jake was beaten and he knew it.
He had tried to make himself as comfortable as he could, given the circumstances. He had succeeded in removing most of the water between two of the parallel inflatable sausage benches, making a third of the raft more or less dry. The wind had changed direction and was now blowing up the fjord; the mountains to either side offered no protection. So he had unrolled the bright orange hood and erected that, giving him some degree of shelter. A bright pink buoy had fallen out of the folds of the hood as he had unfurled it. It looked like it had been punctured and hastily repaired with silicone. He’d wedged it into the corner between the outer air chamber and an inflatable bench, and used it as a head rest. Staying down low, curled up, he was able to conserve a little body heat, despite his wet clothes and the icy conditions. He’d even ma
naged to go to sleep for a while.
But then there had been the noise, loud enough to rouse him from his slumber. He pushed the orange cover back down into the raft, got to his knees, and scanned the landscape in every direction. Nothing moved except the water, rippling in the wind. Had he dreamt the sound, he wondered? Maybe it was the dehydration, causing his mind to play tricks on him. When had he last eaten, had anything to drink? He had no idea. He’d been adrift for hours, perhaps days. And before that he had hardly eaten on board. His mind wandered. How would he die here, what would kill him first? The cold? Or the hunger? Maybe a combination of both. Perhaps he should try and get to the land. Choose his own demise, rather than letting fate decide. He had options. The toxic ash could finish him off. The memory of Stacey, writhing in agony, flashed before his eyes. Too painful. He could deliberately drown himself, that would seem fitting for a sailor. But he knew he’d never have the courage to go through with it. The survival instinct was too strong.
There it was again, the noise. Jake snapped his head around in the direction he thought it had come from. He hadn’t imagined it, he had definitely heard something that time. A splash. Something in the water. Not loud, but its effect was amplified a thousand times by a total absence of any other sound.
Jake strained his eyes, stared at the water where he thought the sound had emanated from. Was it a fish? No, he didn’t think so. But there was something there. Something black, protruding from the surface. It was about a hundred metres away, small, difficult to see. He considered the possibilities; a fin of some kind? But it didn’t seem to be moving. Perhaps another piece of the pier, or other wreckage? But he had drifted a long way from Longyearbyen; he couldn’t image there would be any wreckage this far out. Whatever it was, Jake had a strange feeling that it was watching him. His curiosity was intense. If there was something alive over there, he had to find out what. He positioned himself in the tapered front of the raft, picked up his only oar, and began paddling towards the mystery excrescence. It was slow going. Two strokes. Pull the paddle out of the water. Shuffle to the right. Put the paddle in the water. Two strokes. Pull the paddle out. Shuffle to the left. All the time he had his eyes fixed on the mystery object. Inexplicably, it appeared to be growing. Rising out of the water. Where previously it had looked like it was maybe thirty or forty centimetres, now it was over a metre. It looked suspiciously like a head on a stick. Were those eyes? They certainly looked like eyes, but they weren’t aligned properly, weren’t symmetrical.
It was then that he noticed the bubbles. A million tiny bubbles breaking on the surface. He was now about fifty metres from the stalk that was sticking out of the water. The bubbles looked like they were radiating from it. They covered a huge surface area. While he looked on they grew in size and in intensity. The water around the object was no longer blue-green, it was turning white, churning, fizzing like a gigantic Jacuzzi. As the bubbles reached the raft and broke against its side, their inertia pushed it backwards. Jake stopped paddling. Whatever was happening, he didn’t want to get any closer.
The object in the middle of this aquatic chaos was rising again. Another protrusion joined it. Thinner, without a bulge on the end. A simple stick rising out of the water. And then a third, shorter and fatter. And then the white water turned black as a gigantic fin appeared to rise out of the fjord. As it broke the surface, sheets of water cascaded off of it. Spray flew into the air and rained down on Jake and the raft. But it wasn’t over. Because the fin was attached to a body. An immense, dark hulk of a body. It too broke the surface with an almighty roar, torrents of seawater tumbling from its back. It must have been almost a hundred metres long, Jake estimated. It dwarfed his little raft. The central fin itself was the size of a house.
And then, silence returned. The last of the water trickled down the side of the massive black beast. It was magnificent. It was unreal. It was, Jake knew, his saviour. He sank back into the raft and stared up in awe at the sight of the submarine in front of him.
Sixty
NOTHING HAPPENED FOR a few minutes. The periscope array that had foretold the vessel’s arrival still seemed to be watching Jake, now from on high. Once over the initial shock, he got back onto his knees and started paddling slowly towards the monster. As he got closer he could see that the surface was not as smooth as it looked from a distance. It was covered in thousands of square tiles, each one a slightly different shade of matt black. It seemed to absorb light and sound, a hole in his field of vision. Rivets the size of dinner plates marked out sections. At one edge of the towering fin, a door opened up, and two uniformed men stepped out. Jake couldn’t help but be dismayed to see they were carrying guns. He had seen enough guns in the last few days. A third man stepped out, older than the others. Mid-fifties, Jake guessed. Shorter than himself, and with a neat moustache.
“Hello there!”
The cheery way the man flanked by two armed ratings spoke took Jake quite by surprise.
“Well don’t just sit there staring, come aboard, come aboard! Throw that man a line, help him on, will you?”
The younger men put their weapons down on the deck and set about getting a rope from inside the tower, attaching it to the sub, and throwing it to Jake. His condition meant he wasn’t fast enough to catch it, but it landed inside the raft and he was able to pull himself in.
“Just you then?” the older man called out as he waited for Jake to close the gap. “Nobody with you?”
“Just me,” Jake called back. His voice was hoarse, his throat dry.
“Good, good. Well I’m sure you have a story to tell. But it looks like you’ve been out here a while. I expect you could do with something to eat and drink? We’ll get you sorted out, old boy. You’ll find it a jolly sight warmer inside, too!”
The front of the raft nudged the black hull. The junior sailors reached out and grabbed a hand each, heaving Jake aboard. He couldn’t help but cry out in pain as they did so.
“Gosh, are you injured?” the senior man asked. “Well I think we should get you down to the medical berth as quick as. I’m Coote, by the way. Captain Coote. You’re not navy, are you?”
Jake shook his head.
“So you can call me Coote. Or Captain. Whatever you prefer. We’re quite informal here. Life on a submarine works better that way. Mutual respect and friendship, that’s the ticket. These men will take care of you. This is Able Seaman Ewan Sledge, and Able Seaman Eric O’Brien. They will take you down to the medical berth, get you patched up, then we can have something to eat and you can fill me in on what has happened to the Spirit of Arcadia.”
Jake looked at the captain with surprise. Not only had he miraculously found him in the middle of a remote fjord, he somehow knew where he had come from.
The two seamen helped Jake in through the door before he could introduce himself properly. They had to climb down a ladder to the main deck, something Jake had trouble with. He was led through a room packed from floor to ceiling with beige computers, screens, and flashing lights. A number of officers manning the equipment watched him pass through. They wore expressions of curiosity, but there was something else there, too. Jake realised it was hope. These men saw him as a reason to hope that not all was lost.
“The medical berth is down on the next deck,” O’Brien said.
He took Jake down a narrow metal stairway and through more densely packed rooms and thick bulkheads, eventually arriving at a tiny cabin, dominated by a single bed covered with a deep red blanket. Sledge had carried on deeper into the submarine.
“Sit yourself down there, sir,” O’Brien said. “Ewan’s gone to find Surgeon Lieutenant Vardy.”
“Please, call me Jake.”
“And you can call me Eric. Like Coote said, we’re like a big family on this sub. A brotherhood. Have to be, you couldn’t survive it otherwise. Ninety-eight people living in a tin can for months on end, it’s the only way to be.”
Ewan appeared at the door with another man; tall, blond, he looked a lot like Gu
nter, the recently deceased German. Jake got the impression the man had just been woken up, his eyes were red and puffy.
“Right, what have we here? A survivor! There’s hope for us all. I’m Vardy, medical officer.” He stuck out a hand. Jake shook it with his left hand, at the same time holding out his right to show the deep cut.
“Jake Noah,” he croaked simply.
“Well then, Jake, looks like we need to start with that hand. And you look like you need some fluids in you, too. That makes two of us. Eric, get me some coffee, would you? And some water for our friend here, lots of water.”
Eric nodded and disappeared off back the way they had come with Ewan in tow. Vardy opened a cabinet above the bed, took out antiseptic and sterile gauze pads, and with a delicate touch he began to clean the wound.
“Anything else I need to look at, Jake? Or just the cut?”
“I think I have a broken rib, maybe more than one.”
He rubbed his side with his free hand.
“Okay, I’ll take a look at that. We have some strong painkillers, but I don’t want to dose you up too heavily. I expect Coote will want to talk to you. That will be easier if you’re conscious.”
• • •
Vardy spent twenty minutes with Jake. He stitched the cut in his hand and bandaged it. He checked for broken bones and concluded that he had almost certainly cracked a rib, but it wasn’t broken. Most of the pain came from the bruising; the whole of his side was very tender. There wasn’t much to be done, he mainly needed rest. The painkillers took the edge off. Eric had come back with water, and Jake downed more than a litre. He would have kept going but Vardy told him to take it easy. He needed to get some solids into him before he flooded his gut. When the medical officer was happy, he escorted him back through the submarine to the officer’s mess, where they found Coote, alone. The captain stood as soon as the men entered, beaming at Jake.