Hell Rig

by J. E. Gurley

  “Please be careful,” she warned.

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  He raced down the stairs and almost stumbled over a body.

  “What the hell?” he muttered. He didn’t recognize the man but saw the captain’s hat. He also saw the ruby-red slash across the man’s throat. “Waters’ handiwork,” he said to himself.

  He looked at Lisa. “Go back and get the others. I found a body.”

  “I’ll stay and keep watch for you,” she said.

  “No! Get the others, now!” he yelled.

  She flinched at the ferocity of his voice and left.

  Jeff removed his shoes and pants and dove into the water. The water was oddly frigid for September, more like sixty-five degrees rather than the normal eighty. As he swam across to the sinking ship, he had an equally sinking premonition it would be too late for anyone onboard. Waters or whatever controlled Waters had been at work already. He doubted he would find anyone alive. He just prayed the radio would work.

  Jeff dragged himself up the side of the ship using the old tires hanging from the sides of the ship by chains—bumper tires. The stern deck was already awash and the ship was listing sharply starboard. He raced for the bridge.

  It was empty, but someone had been there ahead of him. The radio was smashed, useless. A broken coffee mug, shredded charts, even a crushed bouquet of fresh flowers littered the floor. He looked at a weather report lying on the desk and gasped aloud when he saw that Tropical Storm Rita, churning the waters out near Cuba when they had set out for the rig, had now become a Class Five hurricane and was headed for landfall on the coast somewhere near New Orleans. It would be in their vicinity in less than thirty-six hours. He said a silent prayer for New Orleans. With the levees down and the city flooded, it could not withstand another hurricane.

  “Damn! Just what we needed!” He slammed his open palm against the desk. He looked out the cabin door and saw the ship’s skiff upside down in the water. “Wonderful.” That eliminated that chance of escaping the platform. Jeff was losing hope of getting off the rig alive.

  Though he doubted there were any survivors on the ship, he had to look. He found the first body on the deck, a young kid in his late teens lying in a pool of blood between two pallets of blasting sand. His eyes were open, staring unbelieving at the blood seeping around his hands clasped over his chest. He was alive but just barely. Jeff leaned over him and he looked up.

  “He came out of nowhere, mister,” the teen said, his voice shaking. “He cut me up real bad. Am I gonna die?”

  Jeff moved the kid’s hand and blood spouted from the wound. He quickly replaced it. “Keep pressure there and I’ll look for a medical kit.”

  “Don’t leave me,” the kid pleaded. “I don’t want to die alone.”

  Jeff nodded. It was the least he could do. “Anyone else injured?”

  The kid shook his head. “I don’t know about the Captain and Ed Buras, the First Mate. They went over to the platform last night and didn’t come back. Mr. Collins and Mr. Hazlewood are both dead. I saw it. God, it was awful. That man…that madman materialized out of nowhere. He was just suddenly there. He hacked them to pieces below decks, laughing the whole time. I ran but he found me.”

  He closed his eyes and groaned. “Jesus, it hurts!”

  The ship heaved simultaneously with a loud rumble and began to slide into the water stern first. He knew it was time to abandon ship but he couldn’t leave the boy.

  “She’s sinking isn’t she?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  The kid shook his head. “She was a good ship.” He began to cough up blood. His eyes grew wide when he saw the crimson flecks on his shirt. “That doesn’t look good, does it?”

  Jeff tried to get the boy’s mind off the inevitable. “What’s your name, kid? Is there anyone I should…you know…notify?”

  “Name’s Doug Peters. I got nobody. My family has been dead two years. I just signed on a few weeks ago but it’s like I found a new family here. It’s kinda nice we’ll all stay together, you know, like a family.”

  Jeff nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

  A loud moan and the sound of wrenching metal erupted from one of the open cargo hatches. The ship bobbed a few times and rolled even farther to starboard. Jeff braced himself against the pallet of sand bags.

  “You better go, mister. Thanks for staying.” He raised himself from the deck a few inches. “If you see that son of a bitch with that big eagle knife…” He fell back gasping for breath.

  “I’ll wait with you,” Jeff promised.

  Peters nodded and smiled. “I think it won’t be long now.”

  The kid exhaled his last breath and his young body went slack. Jeff closed the boy’s eyes. The ship rolled once more and sand bags began to topple from the top of the pallets. Barrels of much needed diesel broke their lashings and rolled across the deck into the sea. Jeff glanced at Doug Peters’ body one last time and walked to the railing, a sick feeling in his stomach at such a useless loss. He spotted a First-Aid kit on the cabin wall. He raced to get it just as the second cargo hatch exploded upwards in a geyser of water, the ship shuddering in her final death throes. Jeff dove over the side just as she began to roll.

  The ship rolled over until the barnacle-crusted hull was visible and slowly slipped beneath the waves, stern first, hissing like a giant cockroach as trapped air escaped. Jeff swam on his back, watching the ship go under. Back on the platform, he watched the ship’s bow disappear beneath the waves, leaving only an oil slick and scattered debris. He said a quick prayer for the crew and rushed back upstairs.

  “What the hell happened?” McAndrews called out as he reached the main deck.

  “Waters,” he said. “He beat me to the ship.”

  “Are they all dead?” McAndrews voice was plaintive, as if he had already guessed the answer to his question.

  Jeff looked at the slowly scattering debris on the water, the only evidence a ship had ever been there. “I hope to God they were.”

  “Well, that tears it,” Ed yelled. “We’ll die here on this damn rig.”

  “Tolson will,” McAndrews said. “His fever is out of control. He won’t last the day.”

  Jeff handed him the medical kit. “I managed to grab this. Maybe there are some antibiotics in it.”

  McAndrews took the kit and rummaged through it, withdrawing an ampoule of penicillin and two disposable syringes. He smiled. “Good job, Towns.”

  “We’re not dead yet,” Lisa added. “Help will come.”

  Jeff shook his head. He hated to tell them the bad news. “That’s not all. The radio was smashed but I saw a weather report. Hurricane Rita is bearing down on us, a Class Five storm now, like Katrina. It’s due to hit us in less than thirty-six hours.”

  “Oh, God,” Lisa cried out in dismay.

  “We’re screwed,” Sims said with a chuckle, summing up their situation succinctly. “This rig will never take another hit like the last one.” He looked at the others. “It also means something else. They will never send out the refit crew in the face of a hurricane. No one’s coming back here, not until the weather clears. We’re stuck here.”

  Jeff wanted to smash Sims’ face. The man seemed to take delight in conveying bad news. Even if he had resigned himself to dying here, he didn’t have to wish it on everyone else.

  “What about the supply ship?” Lisa asked, nodding to the slowly spreading debris field. “It must report daily to someone.”

  “Maybe, but by the time they realize something’s wrong, the hurricane will be on us. They’ll never search for it during a blow.”

  “We’ll have to batten down this rig real tight and ride it out,” Ed said. “It rode out the first one. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Luck is a fool’s bet,” Sims said. “We’re prisoners here. Fate has dealt us Aces and eights.”

  “Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds,” McAndrews quoted.

  Sims lo
oked at McAndrews. “Who spouted that foolishness?”

  “Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was an expert at overcoming adversity.”

  “Well he ain’t here. We are,” Sims retorted. “If we try to ride out a hurricane, Waters will kill us all.”

  “So we go. Now, before the fog comes back,” Jeff suggested. “We take the TEMPSC and leave.”

  McAndrews shook his head. “How far do you think we’ll get before the hurricane hits us?”

  “I don’t care,” Jeff said. “I’d rather take my chances out there.”

  “Well I care. Waves the size we’ll face in a hurricane will crush the emergency craft like a beer can. I don’t want to drown.” McAndrews had raised his voice.

  Jeff was not giving up but he relented. “Maybe you’re right. We hunt down Waters and kill him.”

  “We can’t just murder him,” Lisa protested. “He’s a sick man.”

  Jeff remembered Waters’ spectral appearance the last time they saw him. “I don’t care,” Jeff snapped at her. “If I see him, I’m going to kill him if I can. No more holding him prisoner, no more talking to him.” He looked at McAndrews. “What about you?”

  “He or whatever he’s become murdered my brother. I intended to kill the sick bastard no matter what.”

  “And you?” he shot at Sims.

  Sims smiled. “Unlike all of you, I think we’re dead no matter what we do, but just for the sake of killing time, I’ll help search for the bastard. Who knows,” he laughed, mocking Ed. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Jeff looked at Lisa, winced at the disappointment visible in her eyes. He wondered how she could defend Waters after seeing him like they had.

  “You and Ed take care of Tolson. We’ll look for Waters.”

  They brought up Captain Lefavre’s body and that of his first mate they found a short distance away badly burned. His neck was broken. They placed them in the cooler beside the bodies of Bale, Gleason and Easton.

  “Quite a somber collection isn’t it,” McAndrews commented at the line of bodies. “Maybe you better pick your spot now, while you can.” As they closed the door, he suggested, “Seal it tight. We’ll run out of fuel in a few hours and the cooler will shut down.”

  The air around the platform was already getting ripe from the garbage they had collected to deliver to the supply ship. In the heat, it was only going to get worse.

  They set to work creating weapons. That required a trip to the cellar deck. Wading through the cold water in the metal shop, Jeff almost changed his mind about the hunt. The thick soupy liquid was ripe with odor and clung to his boots. Biting back his disgust, he found a small air cylinder and rigged a spear gun using sharpened metal rods as darts and a hollow pipe as a launcher. He practiced with it a few times until he could spin the control valve quickly enough to get off a shot and hit a target twenty yards away. He strapped the cylinder to his back.

  McAndrews settled for a long steel rod, sharpened at the end like a javelin with several wraps of duct tape in the middle as a grip. Sims seemed amused by their preparations.

  “Aren’t you going to use a weapon?” Jeff asked him.

  He pulled a long knife from a scabbard beneath his shirt. “I’ll use this.”

  Jeff noticed the blade was so clean it gleamed.

  “Do you ever use that thing?”

  Sims smiled and walked away.

  “I guess we’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” Jeff told McAndrews. They went back upstairs to inform the others. He knocked at the door to the main building. “We’re ready,” he yelled inside.

  Lisa leaned out the door and gave him an encouraging smile. “Forget what I said. Kill him. That’s not Waters we saw. I want you back here safe.” She kissed him on the lips. He returned it, reluctantly pulling away.

  “Keep the doors locked.”

  “Take the pistol,” Ed offered. “You might need it.”

  He shook his head. “You keep it here. Protect Lisa.”

  Lisa reached out and touched Jeff’s face, letting one finger trail softly down his cheek. “We’ll be all right,” she said. She quickly glanced at Sims and back at Jeff. “You watch out.”

  Jeff nodded and left.

  * * * *

  They began at the bottom of rig and worked upwards. The landing deck was clear. The sea, dead calm earlier, now rose in waves that smashed the supporting legs. The grating of the landing deck bounced like a trampoline and rang out like a played instrument but the platform rocked gently. Jeff knew worse was to come. The wind picked up considerably as if combating their efforts. It tore at their clothes and beat at them with invisible fists. Lightning flashed in the distance to the south, but was visibly approaching nearer. Rita was coming and announcing her intent.

  “One of us will have to keep an eye on the stairway in case he tries to sneak past us,” Jeff said.

  “The others will try to force him out of hiding,” McAndrews agreed.

  On the cellar deck, Jeff and Sims took the job of flushing out their quarry while McAndrews guarded the stairwell. Jeff carefully investigated the maze of pipes while Sims entered the pump shack. He searched tool bins, sheds, and the underside of the deck above, any place a man could hide—all without luck. Sims walked around a corner shaking his head. Together, they searched the chemical warehouse, flooded workshops and the mudroom. Sims climbed the ladder to the walkway above the mud vat.

  “Nothing here,” he said and climbed down.

  “Let’s check the inside hallway,” Jeff suggested.

  They found it flooded almost knee deep.

  “Must be leaking from the workshops,” he observed.

  The few rooms off the hallway proved to be as empty as the rest. Jeff knew the inside stairwell was blocked. They had filled it with chairs, couches—anything they could find. A rat, if there were any on the rig, couldn’t get through.

  “If he’s down here, he’s damned invisible,” Sims commented dryly.

  It was beginning to look like a wasted effort. He shrugged his shoulders at McAndrews’ unspoken query as they exited the building. Waters had to be somewhere above them.

  This time, Jeff watched the stairs while McAndrews and Sims searched. He did check out the helideck while still keeping the stairway under observation. The wind had taken on an ominous chill. He watched McAndrews enter the generator shed, the tool shed and a small warehouse, shaking his head after exiting each one. Sims lifted pieces of debris and scoured the mounds of garbage. Finally, McAndrews reached the far end of the platform and waved them to him. Jeff kept his eyes open for Waters as he crossed the deck

  “He has to be somewhere,” McAndrews complained. “He can’t just disappear.”

  Jeff remembered the way Waters had melted into the fog and wasn’t as certain. “We must have missed him,” he said.

  “How?” Sims said, “Unless he’s a ghost.”

  “I don’t know. Somehow.”

  Laughter floated to them from somewhere off to their right.

  “Waters,” Sims said, looking around. He pointed to the pallets of garbage. “I’ll flush him out,” he said, pulling his knife and brandishing it in front of him like a Roman gladius.

  “Wait!” Jeff called, but Sims had already disappeared into the maze of garbage. He considered following but decided to stay with McAndrews. They poked around a few pallets but found nothing. He saw no sign of Sims or Waters. As they walked by the warehouse, something fell by Jeff’s feet. He looked more closely and saw it was piece of a bloody ear, Easton’s ear with all his earrings still attached. He looked up. Waters was standing on the roof of the warehouse, staring down at them.

  “Bastard!” McAndrews yelled at him.

  Jeff aimed his spear gun and fired but too hastily. The shaft missed Waters by a few inches. Waters looked down at him and grinned. He leaped from the roof and landed on his feet between Jeff and McAndrews. Now, Jeff had no shot without the risk of hitting McAndrews.

  “Get out of the way, Mac!” he warned, but McAndr
ews was already advancing on Waters with his spear. Waters raised a bloody knife. Jeff recognized it as Sims’ and felt a twinge of guilt at his dislike of Sims. It looked as though Sims, too, had fallen victim to Waters.

  “We’ll see if you’re a ghost,” McAndrews said to Waters.

  Waters shook his head slowly, grinning the entire time. “No ghost. I’m much worse.” To show what he meant, he slowly walked through an oil drum rather than walk around it. His body melded with the metal of the drum, became a part of it, and then oozed from it, leaving small strands of black goo trailing behind him that broke away from the drum only to be reabsorbed by his body.

  McAndrews stopped walking. His jaw dropped. “What the fuck—”

  “He’s part of whatever possessed this platform,” Jeff called out, guessing at the truth.

  “Impossible.” McAndrews hefted his spear with both hands, and with a look of determination in his eyes, ran at Waters. He stopped two paces away and lunged the spear into Waters’ chest, smiling as the spear hit home. His smile vanished as Waters slowly stepped aside, letting the spear rip through his body, which mended as quickly as the flesh parted. McAndrews’ eyes shifted from spear point to Waters in confusion. “Impossible,” he repeated.

  “Run!” Jeff warned, but it was too late.

  Waters took advantage of McAndrews’ moment of indecision and swung Sims’ knife. It connected with McAndrews’ arm. McAndrews screamed in pain and dropped the spear, backing away slowly with blood dripping through the fingers of the hand that he held to the wound. Waters didn’t seem to move, but in a blur was suddenly standing behind McAndrews. He slashed again, this time across McAndrews’ broad back. McAndrews did not scream, but his face contorted into a mask of pain.

  “Mac!” Jeff yelled and ran toward his friend, trying to stop what he knew was inevitable.

  McAndrews slumped to his knees as the pain hit him. Waters stood over him as a priest would a penitent sinner. He touched McAndrews’ head with one bloody hand, brushing McAndrews hair from his eyes. He dipped a finger in McAndrews’ wound, causing McAndrews to scream. With his bloody finger, he made an upside down cross on McAndrews’ forehead. McAndrews began to wail as smoke erupted from the bubbling cross. Jeff caught a whiff of burning flesh. Waters leaned over and whispered in McAndrews’ ear and smiled. He stood up and let the smile drop.