by T. C. Farren
Down, not up, Tamba!
11.59.51. I have nine seconds.
I peer into the opening. A bulbous switch, good for the fingers of an extraterrestrial.
Fifty-three. Fifty-four . . .
Down or up? I wiggle it. It won’t budge.
Five seconds. Help me!
A strange calm soaks my nerves in gentle sunlight. It sinks into my muscles, sends signals to my brain. I explore the centimetres around the switch. Yes. There is a tiny track to the left. This is a sideways switch.
Fifty-nine . . .
I jam my hand against it.
Sudden shocking darkness. The silence of a sleeping whale. I count. One. Two.
Do I hear the soft sound of thirty-nine simultaneous clicks?
The whirring, the clicking of machines returns to the metal arachnid. The misty lights flicker like birthday candles above me.
Happy birthday, Malachi.
The rig did nothing more than hold its breath for three seconds. Electricity hums through its steel skin, its heart beats relentlessly. I smile like a man who has suffered damage to his amygdala, the part of the brain that receives lethal danger signals. One breath gets my sneakers all the way down the spiral.
* * *
As I burst through the door of the cultivation hall, I am met by a straggling line of creatures who have only just evolved into Homo erectus. They rock sideways on their spines, unsteady on their legs. They cling to their cages, shuffle towards me.
I blow air between my teeth.
‘Shhh.’ I press my finger to my lips. One silly word makes me their leader.
The prisoners let go of their cages, stumble towards the one who has promised them a chance to do something other than shit liquid and suffer recurring, live autopsies. These people are too frail to reach the deck, surely. Still, I beckon wildly. Come. Quickly!
Vicki thrusts her long legs forward like a newborn foal. She buckles. Samuel pulls her up, his hips more powerful than they seemed when he was caged. His penis looks longer than it did when he was sitting. Eulalie collapses to her hands and knees, smiling like this is a party game. The yellow man grabs her shoulders, wrenches her from the floor. Where is the Indian? Eulalie might be excellent at communicating with spirits, but she is useless with satellite technology.
There he is. Barry, the fat Australian, is holding on to Vihaan as he grunts and grinds down the aisle. Barry falls to his knees, but he keeps a stubborn grip on the Indian. Vihaan topples onto him. I thrust my palms towards the roof. Get up! Bring him! I turn towards the door, fling my arm forwards, mime to everyone. Follow me!
The desert runner overtakes the other prisoners, trotting like his legs work on some wind-up mechanism. Charmayne catches up with Madame Sophie, drags her like a beloved rag doll she can’t bear to part with. She claps her free hand on Lolie’s back and gives her a powerful push towards the door. I wait outside the hall. Vicki hangs on to the door frame behind Charmayne, her face drained of life. She is corpse-like, a bare mannequin in a night window.
I urge her without words, Come, my love. I smile a tender smile I have been hiding for decades.
Vicki forces her pale thighs through the opening. As she brushes past me, her silky hair slides across the nodules of her spine. I raise a hand, touch it. Vicki stops, stares at my mouth as if she is afraid of my eyes. I take her hand, weave my fingers between hers, weld our panic-stricken electricity into one. Vicki’s soft, sweaty hand feels like the long, wet kiss I have never had.
Behind me, the desert runner yanks the stragglers over the threshold. I give him a thumbs-up with my free hand. I think I have finally become a Valentino hero.
In the snuffling, shambling silence, the prisoners follow Vicki and me. I catch a glimpse of Shikorina and the priest killer shoulder to shoulder, sharing the odd experience of walking on wasted legs. Lolie, the skinny rapist and the other three post-operative prisoners are still among us. The skinny rapist, I see, has a raw, red wound over his heart, but his stitches seem to be strong, however shoddy the workmanship. He slips through the door before Josiah, who takes the last place in the naked pack.
‘She’s bleeding,’ someone whispers.
The crowd makes a space around Shikorina past the spiral stairs. I refuse to look at the site of her incision. I jab my finger towards my bedroom door. Gesture wildly, Be silent. There’s someone in there!
The priest killer grabs Shikorina’s hand and pulls her along the corridor. I tug Vicki with me.
Please, please if Tamba hears us, let him think he is dreaming. Some prisoners creep, some shuffle past the glorious thrum of Tamba’s epiglottis. God must be with us.
It is Vicki and me and Charmayne in the lead, pulling Madame Sophie who is much, much tinier than she was in captivity. Samuel and the social worker walk abreast now, linking arms like new best friends.
Tamba’s snore breaks off.
Andride falters against the wall. Samuel plucks at him gently.
The door swings open behind them.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Tamba is stark naked. ‘Go back! Go back!’
He makes a cross with his fingers, exorcising the ghouls. ‘They will kill you!’ he shrieks.
The red-haired prisoner totters backwards, his freckles colliding in the garish light. He turns and shambles the way that we came. A tiny Chinese man, quite sprightly, overtakes him. A black man as elongated as an afternoon shadow whispers, ‘Espere por mim.’
I don’t know what it means but he slides sideways towards the hall, his hands high on the wall like a reflection, flung there.
‘Wait,’ Samuel hisses, but they hurry back to their cages, choosing euthanasia on a stretcher over a slaughter at sea.
‘Go back, Malachi,’ Tamba pleads. He could be one of us with his heaving lungs, the puncture marks on his arms. I shove past some prisoners, take hold of his shoulders. March him backwards like I am teaching him to dance. Tamba wrests this way and that, scrambles onto his mattress.
Lolie darts in front of me. I pluck at her elbow but she hunts him with her lethal, black-lined eyes.
‘I helped you,’ he pleads. ‘Ask Malachi.’
Still, Lolie stalks him.
‘Lolie!’ he shouts.
She hesitates at her name. Tamba dives into his storage hatch and pulls his knees up. He curls on his side among his clothes and his Red Riding Hood Kindle.
‘Lock me in,’ he begs me. ‘Quickly.’
I shove past Lolie, slide the hatch shut on Tamba.
He panics immediately, choking. ‘Wait. Malachi! . . . I can’t breathe.’
I turn the rusted key. Lolie falls back, scrapes a difficult breath in sympathy. I pull the key out, give Tamba air to breathe.
‘Please. Fucking please . . .’
I leave him to swear in his steel uterus, drop the key on the bed. The Volkswagen keyring is stark against the white sheet. An upside-down peace sign.
As I shut the door to our living quarters, Tamba starts to hammer at the hatch. ‘Malachi-i-i!’ His scream is muted by two layers of metal.
I take Vicki’s shaking fingers, lead her past the canteen. Behind us comes the fat Australian, almost suffocating the Indian. Beyond them I catch sight of Shikorina’s eyes, dazed with bewilderment as she clings to Mohammed’s forearm like an octopus. He could surely twist from her cloying fingers but he lets her hang on, perhaps remembering the priest.
Outside the women’s living quarters, there is still a trace of factory-made jasmine. My nostrils tickle slightly. I hear the sound of an indrawn breath. A strangled sneeze explodes behind me.
Oh no!
Another sneeze explodes in the skinny rapist’s fists. There is a thudding sound inside, a clumsy landing. The door to the women’s room opens slowly. Olivia stares out, her sleepy eyes growing huge with incredulity. Her fringe is pinned to one side with a big, gold clip.
I scramble back through the prisoners, type feverishly, ‘Let them go.’
The white bunnies on her shining vest are doing kar
ate kicks.
‘Timmy has his lungs,’ I type desperately. ‘Go to sleep. Please.’
Olivia stares at the gathering, considers my bizarre plea. Vicki brushes against my back, creates a shield of female electricity.
I type to Olivia, ‘You know they’re going to kill them.’
She shakes her head violently. ‘They’re going back to prison.’
‘You know it’s a lie.’
Guilt stains her blue eyes like nicotine. She spins towards the ungainly shape on the bed. ‘Janeé!’
‘Mm?’ Janeé is curiously sweet-tempered in her sleep.
A terrible brutality comes over me. I grab Olivia’s arm, slam her spine into my belly. I clamp a hand over her mouth. Olivia’s big teeth bite into my good hand.
‘Agh!’ I grunt.
Lolie ducks past me, snatches at a huge white dressing gown hanging on a hook. Vicki tears off Olivia’s bunny shorts. She tugs my stinging fingers from Olivia’s mouth and stuffs the silky shorts between her teeth. Olivia bucks against me, tries a muffled shout.
Inside the living quarters, I hear Janeé reply, ‘Huh?’ as if the two friends are miscommunicating in a deep, bewildered dream.
Lolie jerks the furry belt from the dressing gown. Her little hands fly as she ties tight knots around Olivia’s wrists. Olivia lifts her legs, kicks wildly at the crowd. The desert strangler’s head snaps back. He dives at Olivia’s legs and drags her to the ground. He takes over from Lolie, binds Olivia’s wrists to her feet.
‘Don’t hurt her,’ Vicki whispers.
We all gape at Olivia in a foetal position, her pubic hair reddish in the steamy light. I float Janeé’s huge dressing gown over her white buttocks, make her decent. I grab Vicki’s wrist, haul her towards the maintenance door.
Behind us, Lolie crouches down and strokes Olivia’s cheek. ‘Sorry,’ she whispers.
Angus, the skinny rapist, steps carefully over Olivia. ‘Sorry,’ he echoes Lolie.
Samuel picks Angus up, almost tosses him after us. Vicki throws her white thighs forwards, grips my hand like we have been lovers for far longer than eleven minutes. Her trust turns my stomach to steel, powers my courage to lead this party. By some freaky miracle the cat-mating door opens soundlessly.
* * *
I draw Vicki into the steep stairwell dividing the rig, pull her up the first twelve stairs.
‘Vihaan,’ I type. ‘Where is he?’ My spokesman whispers the words to Vicki, who whispers them to Samuel. The words drop down the staircase, snake through the door to the prisoners still emerging from it.
Barry almost carries the Indian over the threshold. The others flatten against the wall to make way for them to climb the stairs to us. I pick up the black box from its perfect shadow, show it to the panting little man. Vihaan squints at it. He nods, grins a gap-toothed grin. The relief hits me like a fever. I press the black box into my broken bones, grab Vicki’s hand and pull her up the next flight. The prisoners behind us catch my happy delirium. They find new strength in their atrophied limbs, grasp the railing, shunt their bodies after us. Two by two they climb the ark to start a colony of sinners who, if they live, will spend their days and their nights asking for forgiveness from their beloved dead.
So be it.
Vicki’s legs are stronger now. She breathes against my back, the scent of something dark and sweet. Is it liquorice? She keeps a tight hand on Vihaan while Barry pants heavily, flagging behind us. The desert runner catches up, gets a shoulder beneath Barry’s bum and heaves him up. A stifled cry comes from somewhere below us.
Eulalie has collapsed to her hands and knees. Charmayne lets go of Madame Sophie. She slings Eulalie’s withered arm around her neck and lifts her easily up the next ladder of steps. I peer down the twisted metal cliff. From this height I see it clearly. Shikorina has left a trail of bloody footprints. The murky light paints her thighs a deep red.
My legs buckle towards the floor. I grip the railing, hang on to the black box. Vihaan babbles something, tears it away from me.
Josiah climbs lethargically in Shikorina’s red footprints.
Vicki hooks her arms beneath my armpits. ‘Up, Malachi!’
I press my face into her stomach, a silken, pungent pillow of strong, striped skin. I thrust my feet into the rig, rise up against her full-cream breasts. I extricate myself from Vicki’s delicious breath, watch Samuel far below us, trying to persuade Josiah to keep climbing. Josiah is shaking his head hopelessly. Samuel smacks him hard on the back of his head. Is he mad? Josiah will crush his skull out of mere reflex.
‘We need Josiah for the engines. Tell him,’ I type.
The words start with Vicki, tumble down from the prisoners’ mouths.
They land in Josiah’s fleshy ears.
He stares up at me from beneath his oily eyebrows. A slow pride seems to infuse him, the little boy who loves engines. Josiah places a hairy hand on each railing, swings himself over Shikorina’s bloody footprints.
I give Samuel a quick smile. Thank him.
Vicki and I reach the door to the rest of the universe. She waits one step below me, breathing heavily, whiter than the pages of a paper book. The prisoners gather below us, rasping through rusty lungs, exhausted from carrying the organs Raizier has smuggled in their bodies like drugs. I raise the key card from my heart.
God help us.
A bolt of terror strikes me down. I slump in the shadows of the top stair. Vicki touches my knee. I grab her hand and pull her to me. I kiss her, fold into her fig lips. I suck their plush sweetness, feel the terribly loud ticking of both our hearts, out of time. I kiss Vicki hard with the inside of my lips until our heartbeats synchronise. I will take a bullet right now for this brave, man-killing beauty. I want to kiss deeper, touch her taste buds, but I have no tongue to reach her. I stroke my hand gently between her legs, touch the velvet of her vaginal lips. I do this instead of a tongue kiss.
‘Hurry,’ Samuel whispers somewhere below us.
Vicki does not flinch. She stares into my eyes with a mixture of desire and fear. I use my lips to try to mime my infinite gratitude. Thank you.
This is the first time I have ever kissed a woman.
Now I raise the stolen key card, unlock the door to the night sky.
* * *
The rig lights are all off. A golden moon path sweeps across the sea, as broad as a triple-lane highway. It is bright, as if lit by LED street lights. Just as Romano’s daughter showed me in my sleep.
The Dragonfly is parked in its white circle for the night, waiting for Mr Rawlins to wake up and flick his silver fringe, play Hollywood pilots again. It glows above me, flirting with the moon for the second night in a row. At the edge of the deck, Romano’s lifeboat hangs off the rig, its tarpaulin breathing in the soft breeze. Where is he?
The curve of the security tower glitters in the moonlight, but the glass circle at the top is blind and dark. I glimpse a movement behind the reflective glass. The moonlight touches Romano’s profile. I shrink into the rig, shut the door, leave a fist-wide opening to spy through. Romano’s rifle pricks from his shoulder, breaks his silhouette as he turns towards me. I sink out of sight, slide my volume up a little.
‘Go straight to the helicraft ring. Stand on the semi-circle closest to us. It is a blind spot.’
‘What?’ someone mutters.
I will them to believe my preposterous words. ‘You will be invisible.’
‘Ha!’ Charmayne scoffs.
I scorch her mutinous eyes, rebuke her for her lack of faith. The big beauty bows her head sullenly.
Romano swings slowly the other way. Only his forehead shows as he stares out to sea. I grab Vicki’s hand, savour the memory of the feline, furry softness between her thighs. The clouds rush across the moon, conspire with us as we take off towards the helicopter ring: me, Vicki, Vihaan with the black box and Barry the Australian. A clutch of others scramble after us. The prisoners press together, plant their perfectly groomed feet on the white landing ring. Eulalie,
Madame Sophie and Gibril the desert runner lead another frightened rush. The clouds pass by, curse Josiah with sudden, bright moonlight. He blocks the doorway, refuses to move. Samuel doubles back and hauls Josiah to his place on the white line. Again the clouds cover the moon. Another sweep of prisoners launches towards us, then Charmayne leads Shikorina onto the white ring. I dare not look at her smeared legs. The last group of prisoners stumbles across the space. The skinny rapist is the last of the prisoners to take his position on the white paint. We form a human curve around the tail of the huge metal bird, desperately trusting the magic of Romano’s blind spot.
Inside the lookout tower, Romano strolls towards the window, stretches and yawns. For a moment the moon turns him into a little god in epaulettes. Some prisoners suck a scared breath as he faces the blades of the Dragonfly. He turns his back on us. I squeeze Vicki’s hand with all my might.
‘RUN,’ Vicki gasps for me.
Barry finds some metaphysical strength, blunders forwards half carrying the Indian. He clambers aboard the life boat, pulls him into it. Yassir, Mohammed and Gibril are the next ones in. By the time Vicki and I throw ourselves over the edge, Vihaan is already tearing the duct tape off the waterproof case with his few remaining teeth. I think I see him grin in the gloom of the orange tarpaulin. Samuel crawls with Josiah to the back of the boat and stations him at the engines. Josiah immediately pulls up a cap and checks a dipstick. He unscrews something, lets a dark fluid bleed. He pumps and locks a handle. The night breeze blows his greasy hair back, exposes the noble profile of a dark Viking, not a sadistic murderer. I sit down with Vicki, hold her like she is all I have left in my life. The priest killer and Samuel are hunting on the bottom of the boat like some one has dropped a wedding ring. Samuel falls to the floor, thrusts a black disc into an opening. He twists it to lock it. Oh, God. The bath plug.
The priest killer calls out softly to the desert runner, ‘Untie, untie!’, then releases a rope attached to the A-frame above us. The desert runner darts from hook to hook, frees more ropes as the prisoners keep staggering across the deck and throwing themselves into the boat.
A siren screams from the tower, piercing us with panic-stricken peals of sound. I let go of Vicki, dive towards the last steel hook, haul on it. I can’t untie it. The desert runner shoves me aside, engages the muscles in his hands, releases it. A volley of shots blast out, makes shrieking pings. But this is not the sound of table tennis, it is the screech of copper bullets ricocheting off the deck. Angus the skinny rapist runs towards us, screaming like a woman. He leaps into the boat and rolls up like a hedgehog. There is a pause in the pinging while the rest of the prisoners fall and crawl, fling their weak bodies into the lifeboat. I catch sight of Lolie darting behind a huge steel pillar.