Soft Target 05 - Blister

by Conrad Jones

  Big Gordon Morris picked up the telephone in his office and listened for a tone. There was nothing but static. He pulled out his mobile and prodded the touch pad with a podgy finger but the screen responded with only two words, ‘Limited Service’. Gordon sat at his desk and hit the keyboard return button. The computer screen saver disappeared and the home page popped up. He clicked on messaging and the icon box changed to ‘System Error’. His inbox was reading that there was one message unread. When he’d checked earlier it had been empty. Gordon clicked on it and the header read, ‘Urgent’. He opened the message and printed it off as he read it on the screen. There was a brief set of instructions attached to a very vague e-mail, which would have made absolutely no sense under any other circumstances. Gordon read it twice on the screen before standing up and taking the printed copy from the tray. He had to move quickly if he were to save the lives of any of his men at all, including his own. As he reached his office door Brains was returning from the backups. Chef stopped battering the kitchen door and went to join the new arrival and his boss.

  “Did you put Sparks into isolation?” Gordon asked the lab technician.

  “Fuck off fatty,” Brains said as he walked past the big foreman. Chef was open mouthed by the flippant comment. The lab technician’s skin had yellowed significantly and his eyes looked red raw.

  Gordon was about to lose his temper with the lab technician. Now was not the time to be hurling childish insults around the rig. He opened his mouth to speak, but then he noticed that Brains was leaving a trail of blood spots behind him. The blood appeared to be dripping from the technician’s right hand, and Gordon immediately thought that he must have cut his fingers, until he noticed that two of his fingers were missing. Sticky crimson fluid oozed from the bloody stumps, but Brains seemed to be oblivious to it.

  “Jesus Christ Brian, what happened to your hand?” Gordon reverted to using his real name. He reached back inside his office and grabbed a small green first aid box. There was one in every room on the rig and Gordon had a feeling that it would need more than an elastic bandage and some sticky tape to fix Brain’s hand.

  “I wanted a bottle of water from his tray but the greedy bastard wouldn’t give me one, so he bit me,” Brains muttered as he walked by.

  “Brian I need to stop you from bleeding,” Gordon followed him at a distance. Chef followed Gordon like a lapdog hiding from a bigger animal, and he peered at Brains around his massive shoulders.

  The technician ignored his boss and continued on his way. He reached the drinks machine and stopped in front of it. Brains felt his trouser pockets looking for pound coins, and was frustrated by the lack of fingers on his right hand. All his loose change was in his right hand pocket but he had no fingers to reach it. He stared at the bloody stumps and he was totally confused by the fact that his two of his fingers weren’t there anymore. He looked around and spotted the fire hatchet lying next to the machine. Using his left hand Brains picked up the hatchet and swung it at the machine. The curved facia shattered, and the lights which illuminated it flickered and then went out. He hit it twice more before the hole in it was big enough for him to reach inside and remove a cold can of diet cola. Now he was faced with the dilemma of picking up the cola with no fingers on his free hand. He looked at the hatchet and dropped it before using his good hand to get the tin. Yet another hurdle frustrated him as he held the coke in his left hand and tried to the grasp the ring pull with his right. Having no fingers was making him very angry indeed. Brains spun around three hundred and sixty degrees in his search for a solution to his problem. He focused his attention on Big Gordon.

  “Could you open this please, fatty?” Brains held the can out toward his boss. Gordon had his mouth open and he was dumbfounded by the sequence of events which had unfurled as the shift progressed.

  “Of course I will Brian. Let me strap up your fingers while you drink that,” Gordon took the cola tin and opened it. The tin was covered in blood which made it slippery. He handed it back to the technician and reached gently for his injured hand. Brains drank thirstily from the can while Big Gordon tried to stop the bleeding.

  “Tie a tourniquet around the top of his arm Chef,” Gordon spoke quietly but with a stern quality in his voice. Chef looked blankly at him. “Get a tourniquet from the box and fasten it to the top of his arm, and do it now while he is still calm.”

  Chef took the first aid box and removed the strapping from it. He approached Brains as if he was a stray dog, and with quivering hands he fastened the tourniquet above the bicep muscle. By the time Gordon had strapped the stumps with elastic bandages the blood had seeped through them and was dripping onto the floor. Gordon could see that Brian’s eyes were bloodshot in the corners, not as bad as Harvey’s had been, but they were getting worse.

  “Open another one please fatty,” Brains said matter of factly. He pulled his injured hand away from Gordon. Gordon took a sling out of the first aid box.

  “I’ll open a can of coke for you, if you put your arm into this sling for me. We need to keep it elevated so that you don’t bleed to death,” Gordon looked into the technician’s eyes. They were like those of an animal. There was intelligence behind them but there was also fear and anger. Brains seemed to be thinking about his options. If he did as he was asked he could drink to quench his terrible thirst. He placed his injured hand across his chest, next to his shoulder, and Gordon tied a reef knot behind his neck to support the limb.

  “I need a drink please,” Brains said.

  Gordon reached into the shattered machine and took out a cold can of diet cola. He opened it and handed it to Brains with a smile on his face.

  “It has been a hell of a night,” Gordon tried to contact the rational being that had once lived within Brian’s body. “I need to get you some salt water to drink Brian. It will ease your throat.”

  “What are you talking about?” Chef asked.

  “I’ve had an e-mail from someone on the mainland. It’s a long story but basically there has been an accident which has released a cloud of very strong alkaline vapour,” Gordon spoke in a whisper. Brains was calm and he wanted to keep him that way. They had to isolate each of the infected men, and then try to treat them one at a time. “According to the information that I’ve received, we have to try and isolate the badly affected men before they become violent. It’s the thirst which affects their mental state.”

  “Are you telling me that they know what’s gone on out here?” Chef asked angrily. Brains looked at him with frightened eyes. He could sense the aggression in his voice. Gordon saw the injured man’s reaction and he grabbed Chef by the arm. He dragged him away from the drinks machine and the injured technician.

  “Keep your voice down. I don’t know who sent the fucking information through to me, but I do know that Sparks is in isolation after attacking you with an axe; Harvey has locked himself in the kitchen and he looks like a fucking zombie, and Brains has had his fingers bitten off and he looks like he is going to explode any second now, so what I need you to do is listen to me, answer my questions and do not give me any shit,” Gordon had his nose pressed close to Chef’s face. Chef was leaning backward to avoid his boss’s ranting but Gordon held him tightly. There was no escape. “Do you understand me Chef?”

  “Okay, okay, I understand. I’m just a bit blown away by everything that’s happened,” Chef tried to get a grip.

  “We all are. Now where do you keep the salt? Apparently their delirium is caused by burns to the throat. We can ease it by giving them salt water to drink and gargle with. We can also slow down the skin damage by immersing them in the ocean,” Gordon took the printed instructions from his pocket. He scanned them again. “We also need bleach.”

  Chef racked his brains as he processed the questions that he had been asked. It was a scary position to be in, and it was all the more frightening because none of it made any sense. He was used to the odd strange request from the crew. Some people were vegetarians, others were vegans, some had
wheat allergies, and others had nut allergies, gluten allergies, low fat diets, high protein diets, bodybuilders, anorexics and bulimics. The longer he served at sea the more unusual scenarios he encountered, but nothing like this, nothing dangerous.

  “Chef,” Gordon growled at him. “I need you to get a grip and help me. We have been affected too. We have to move quickly.”

  “What has bleach got to do with anything?” Chef asked. He was confused and baffled by everything that was happening.

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but the information says that because it’s acidic it helps to treat the skin burns,” Gordon shrugged his huge shoulders.

  “It’s in the kitchen,” Chef gathered himself. He looked past Gordon at the rectangular window and into the kitchen area beyond it. The room was in darkness. Harvey must have turned the lights out.

  “What is in the kitchen?” Gordon asked. He followed Chef’s gaze and registered mentally that the lights had been turned off.

  “The salt and the bleach are in the kitchen. I keep them in the store cupboard at the back of the kitchen,” Chef waved a hand toward the kitchen door.

  “Open this please, fatty,” Brains approached them with a diet cola in his outstretched hand. The sling was soaked with blood despite the limb being elevated. His eyes were swollen and his lips were cracked and bleeding.

  “He is getting worse every few minutes,” Gordon said quietly. He took the cola tin from his hand and opened it. Brains snatched it from him and drank from it greedily. He turned around and walked back toward the broken vending machine as happy as a man with his fingers bitten off could be.

  The door which led into the backup areas slammed open. Gordon and Chef turned to see who it was. Sparks stood in the doorway naked. His face and neck had turned into a mass of yellow blisters. The skin was stretched and swollen. There was blood smeared around his face and neck. The rest of his body appeared to be normal which only accentuated the damage to the parts of his body which had been exposed when he was on the platform. Sparks collapsed and toppled forward onto his front. There was a broken chair leg protruding from the back of his head. Dark congealed blood clung to the makeshift weapon. Gordon and Chef turned to each other, and then they simultaneously looked at Brains. Brains was staring at the dead electrician.

  “He bit my fingers,” Brains said. He turned around and reached into the drinks machine for another can.

  The platform access door burst open and the impromptu maintenance crew tramped in one at a time. They were stunned by the bloody scene that met them in the recreation room.

  “Every single one of us has been affected by something outside. It must be something to do with the explosions earlier. If we move quickly we may survive this, if we don’t we’re going to end up like Brains. Tie him up and follow my instructions, and do it now,” Big Gordon and his crew were in a race against time, and the losers would become deranged before bleeding to death.

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Grace Farrington

  Grace Farrington reached the deserted docks at Seaforth without any further incidents. Traffic had become thinner as they approached the city and the streets were empty. The snowfall was relentless and if it were not for the four wheel function of the pickup truck then driving would have been impossible. Barnes slowed the vehicle down as they approached the northern entrance of the cargo docks. The entrance led into the warehouse sectors of the old docks and was unused. The gates hadn’t been unlocked for decades. There were thick wooden gates preventing access from the dock road.

  “We need to get into the docks here,” Grace said. Her voice was muffled inside her NBC suit. “This is the most northern point of access.”

  “The gates are chained up. How far is it to the next entrance,” Barnes asked.

  “It’s at least a mile or so if my memory serves me correctly. Get those gates open soldier,” Grace ordered. There wasn’t time for protocol.

  “Roger that,” Barnes left the truck in idle and climbed out of the vehicle. He looked clumsy as he waddled through the deep snow. Grace watched as he fumbled with the rusted padlock and chain for a few seconds. He stepped back four paces and fired a short burst from his machinegun. The padlock disintegrated, and the chain dropped into the soft snow. Barnes reached through the gates and slipped the bolt from its keep. He pushed the huge gates with his shoulder but they refused to open. The wooden planks had swelled over the decades and they were jammed tight in the middle.

  “They’re stuck tight,” Barnes shouted.

  Grace slid over the centre console into the driver’s seat. She engaged first gear and swung the truck into the centre of the road, pointing away from the entrance gates. The gearbox crunched as she slammed the vehicle into reverse, and snow sprayed high into the air as the wheels sought purchase in the deep white powder. Barnes had to move quickly to avoid being rundown as the pickup hurtled backwards toward the gates at speed. Grace kept her foot hard down on the accelerator as the back end of the truck connected with the centre of the gates with a deafening crunch. The rear lights exploded into a shower of coloured glass, and the gates splintered into pieces which were strewn across a large area. Only the hinges remained and they were left flapping in the wind.

  “That’ll do it every time,” Barnes muttered to himself inside his helmet. He jogged over to the truck and then climbed into the passenger seat.

  “What did you say soldier?” Grace said.

  “Nothing ma’am, nothing at all,” Barnes laughed.

  Grace turned the steering wheel and span the vehicle through ninety degrees and they were faced with acres of warehouses and canals spread out in front of them. The snow and the Victorian warehouses gave the scene the look of a Dickens novel. The docks were empty and nothing moved.

  “Now what?” Barnes said squinting through the windscreen.

  “This will be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Grace mumbled. “I’ll get the Major on the coms.”

  “Major, what is Chen’s twenty?” Grace asked. Twenty was a citizens band radio code for position, and it is still often used by the military.

  “He has two units moving in on a suspect vessel which is situated south of the warehouse sector,” the Major replied.

  “Is it the lightship?”

  “It is a lightship, and there is evidence of activity around it, but we can’t be sure,” the Major was leaning on the side of caution. “Chen said that there are tyre tracks leading away from it. If you are coming in from the north then keep your eyes open for them. They could lead us to something.”

  “Roger that,” Grace selected first gear and the pickup lurched forward through the storm. She steered the truck between two five storey grain silos which towered above them. The windows were made up of three columns of squares, but every pane of glass was long since smashed or reclaimed by unscrupulous scrap merchants. The snow was deeper between the buildings. The wind had formed deep snowdrifts against the silo walls. Grace kept the vehicle in the centre of the cobbled roads as they progressed from one block to another. Even with four wheel drive the vehicle was slipping and sliding.

  At the end of the third block of warehouses they joined the quayside of the canal system. To the right they could see the perimeter walls which separated the docks from the main road. In front of them was a rectangular harbour which was flanked on two sides by boat sheds, and was completely open to the river on the opposite side. To the left was a series of narrow swing bridges which crossed the canals, and connected one harbour to the next. There was no sign of vehicle tracks in either direction.

  “This is the most northern dock, if we head south toward the city then we should meet up with Chen and his units at some point,” Barnes pointed to the left.

  Grace drove the pickup onto the first narrow bridge and it rattled and groaned in protest at the weight as the vehicle crawled across it. On the right as they cleared the bridge another large harbour opened up. It had boat sheds on one side and there was a flotilla of trawlers anc
hored together in the middle of the inlet. The far side of the harbour was almost out of sight through the snowstorm but Grace could just make out narrow beams of light in the distance. She pointed across the harbour and brought the vehicle to a sliding stop.

  “Over there, across the water,” she said. “They are gun lights, it must be Chen’s units.”

  “Never mind that, look there,” Barnes pointed toward the quayside on their right. Tyre tracks had been left which crossed the swing bridge ahead of them and then went to the right toward a line of boat sheds where they disappeared.

  “Pass me those night sights,” Grace said. Barnes handed a pair of binoculars to her. She placed them against her visor and adjusted the focus so that she could see the activity across the harbour. There were two teams of men in protective clothing boarding a vessel which was anchored to the quayside. One of the teams swarmed the bow decks, and the second team took the stern. Thin beams of light played over the vessel as the men moved in well rehearsed formations. She couldn’t see the bridge door being opened or the men entering it. Neither could she see them descending below the decks into the bowels of the lightship, but she knew that they had. Two men remained on deck as the taskforce men penetrated the vessel, and two sets of headlights appeared from behind a tall block of metal containers. Grace couldn’t identify the vehicles but she knew from experience that they were the Land Rovers moving in as backup. She was about to look away when the lightship was illuminated by a massive explosion which ripped her mid-ships apart. A fireball climbed up into the night sky from the vessel and the flash blinded her for a second. She closed he eyes to protect them from the blinding light and turned her head away.