Noah's Ark: Survivors

by Dayle, Harry

  “It’s so quiet,” Silvia said. She had remained on the bridge for the morning, enjoying the best view on board. “No birds. Why are there no birds?”

  Nobody answered her. Nobody wanted to imagine why.

  “We should see Barentsburg before long,” Lucya said. “To the starboard side.”

  They kept looking, but didn’t see the small Russian mining community. Just ash.

  Nobody mentioned it. Nobody wanted to think about where it had gone.

  • • •

  After what seemed an age, the radar indicated it was time to make the final turn for Longyearbyen. The charts showed that Svalbard Airport was located on the flat piece of land to the inside of a ninety degree turn to starboard. The view from the bridge suggested otherwise. There was no trace of any airport buildings, vehicles, or aircraft. Certainly the topography was right, there was no doubt they were looking in the right direction, but there was no sign of life or civilisation.

  Jake was at the helm, piloting the ship the last few kilometres to the town. Pedro was not as busy as he had expected. In the relative warmth of June there were no icy hazards floating in the fjord. He was trying to locate the harbour visually, to confirm what the radar was telling them. They had slowed to a crawl, and as they cut through the calm blue-green water, they created virtually no wake. At this low speed the engine seemed paradoxically louder, the only sound to be heard as they glided through the valley.

  “Full stop!” Jake cried automatically, then remembered he was in control. Nobody seemed to notice, they were too preoccupied with the scene outside. It was clear that they had arrived, but Longyearbyen had gone.

  Where the town should have been, was ash. Not just the ash from the asteroid, but the ash of burnt buildings. The stubby, charred remains of wooden houses rose out of the ground like gravestones. Where once had stood brick buildings, now there were piles of rubble and dust. From the ship they were too far away to see the whole town, but nobody was in any doubt that the rest of the settlement had been destroyed too.

  “I can’t see the pier,” Pedro said, sweeping the bay with his binoculars.

  “It’s not very big,” Lucya called back from the map table. She had a large scale chart of the archipelago and was cross referencing it with the radar screen. “Maybe fifty meters across, tiny really.”

  “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”

  “There’s really no doubt. Any further and we’ll be grounded. The pier must be there. Jake, I think you’ll have to just approach sideways on. Cross your fingers until we get eyes on the pier and can guide you in properly.”

  Jake nodded. He set about manipulating the controls at the helm, diverting the power from the engines to the bow thrusters. The Spirit of Arcadia was a modern cruiser, made to be easily manoeuvrable in the smallest ports. Even so, crabbing into a mooring was always a delicate operation. The ship began to crawl nearer the ruined village, slower than walking pace.

  They covered several hundred metres before Pedro spotted something.

  “Stop! Stop the ship!”

  Jake prodded some buttons and the engine note rose as the thrusters spun up in reverse, arresting the drift coastwards. “You see the pier?” he called over to his lookout.

  “Yes and no,” Pedro said. “I see some of the pier. It’s in the water. The pier is destroyed. We cannot dock here.”

  Thirty-Five

  OUT ON DECK, passengers and crew alike crowded against the railings. Everyone was desperate to see this strange place they had come to. What kind of town was it? Would they be able to stay here? Were there other survivors here? If there were, that meant there could be more in other places too. A glimpse of this Arctic settlement promised so many answers. It promised hope.

  But the answers it offered were not the answers anyone wanted to hear. The town was gone, destroyed by the asteroid. The total carnage and destruction visible on the coast was the last scene from the final broadcast. The part that had never made it as far as a camera or satellite feed. The part that many had imagined, but none wanted to believe. And now there was no choice. There was no hiding from the truth. Those last bubbles of hope that perhaps, just maybe, the broadcast hadn’t been real, or that the asteroid had not caused such destruction this far north, popped out of existence. Nobody spoke. Nobody cried. The devastation, and the consequences, what it meant for the rest of the world, for the families and friends left behind, it was too much to comprehend.

  • • •

  Jake gave the order to drop the anchors. He called down to engineering. “Can we cut the engine?”

  “We’re staying?” Martin asked.

  “We have no choice. We stay here or out there, it doesn’t change anything. Besides, we really should take a closer look.”

  “We’ll reduce revs to idle. If we don’t stay long it will be more efficient than stopping and starting up again.”

  A click, and the line went dead. Jake looked at the silent receiver in his hand and replaced it slowly.

  “I’m sending Stacey with you,” Melvin said. Until that moment he had remained silent.

  “I didn’t say I was going,” Jake replied.

  “Of course you’re going. You’re really going to delegate this?”

  “I’m coming as well.” Lucya joined Jake at the helm.

  “No. If I go you have to stay here. You’re next in command. We can’t both leave the ship. If anything happens to me…”

  “I may be being a bit stupid,” Silvia said, “but why is anyone going over there? I mean, look. Just…look. What do you expect to find?”

  “We have to keep an open mind, Silvia.” Jake was trying his best to sound positive. “For one thing there could be survivors. We might be able to help them.”

  “We don’t have enough food and water for the people we’ve already got!” Melvin looked unhappy. “We can’t go taking on any strays.”

  “For another thing,” Jake ignored him, “there was fuel here. I know it’s a long shot, but we’ve spent nearly twenty-four hours of cruising time getting this far. Without fuel we are dead. If there is even the slightest, most remote possibility there is diesel here, perhaps in a shelter or basement or something, then we have to find it.”

  “There’s the airport too, don’t forget,” Lucya added.

  “Lucya, the airport…we didn’t see it. It must have met the same fate as….” Jake looked out over the missing town.

  “Undoubtedly. But isn’t it worth checking out anyway? It’s three kilometres. You could walk there in half an hour, once you’ve landed.”

  “Maybe. Let’s see how we’re going to get to Longyearbyen first.”

  He picked up the phone and dialled.

  “Martin? Jake.”

  “Look, I’ve done the math. It really is better to keep the engine idling.” He sounded irritated.

  “Sure, whatever. That’s not why I’m calling. The tenders, they were badly damaged in the fires. How quickly can you get a team to repair one, get it seaworthy?”

  “Some of my guys already checked on them. One is a write-off, total wreck, not worth pursuing repairs. We’re cannibalising it for spares though. The other was less badly burnt. Some damage to the hull, quite a lot to the engine.”

  “How long before she can be ready?”

  “Probably a day or two of work.”

  “You have two hours.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “We can’t sit around for a day waiting here, looking at…that. We have to get over there and take a proper look around. The people are going to demand it.”

  “People demand all sorts of things, it doesn’t mean they can always get what they want.”

  “Two hours, Martin. She doesn’t have to be perfect, but she needs to be ready to go in two hours at the latest.” He clicked the phone down. He knew he was pushing his luck with Martin, but he would rather suffer the complaints of one engineer than the wrath of thousands of angry passengers.

  He made two more ca
lls.

  “Grau, how’s the leg?”

  “Further improved, thank you for asking. How is the captain?”

  “As well as can be expected. Listen, do you think you’d be up to joining me in a landing party?”

  “You think there could be survivors over there?”

  “Honestly? No, I don’t. But if there are, we need you with us.”

  “I don’t know, Jake. Getting round this ship is one thing, but that is rough terrain, and it’s cold. I would slow you down, be a liability, and not much use to you even if you did find anyone. I can send Kiera, though. David is sleeping, he ran the night shift.”

  “Fine, Kiera’s a great nurse, she’ll be great. Tell her to be on deck two in a couple of hours, by the exit for the tender.”

  Click. He swapped the phone for a radio headset and punched in the channel number he wanted.

  “Max, I’m taking a landing party over there. I could use one of your security guys. Someone strong. If we find fuel, or food, or anything we can salvage, we could use help bringing it back.”

  “There must be a hundred sailors twiddling their thumbs, why not take one of those?”

  “I’m bringing a couple of sailors too, but this isn’t just about carrying stuff. We don’t know who or what we might find.”

  “Alright, what about the new guy?”

  Jake considered this. “I’d rather take a company man. I’ve already got a passenger representative, I don’t want to be responsible for more than one cone.”

  “Okay, I’ll send Reeve. You can’t miss him, he’s six foot six and bald as an egg.”

  “Thanks. Have him meet me on deck two, by the tender exit, at oh-two hundred hours.”

  “Will do.”

  Jake sat back down in the captain’s chair and stared out over the mountains ahead, trying not to look at Longyearbyen.

  “It’s midday,” Silvia said. “I’ll bring up some lunch. You need to eat before going over there.”

  “Maybe,” Jake said. But nobody really felt like eating.

  Thirty-Six

  “YOU MUST BE Reeve.” Jake looked the man up and down. Mostly up. He looked more like a vigilante than a security officer, but he’d got through an interview with Max, so that was good enough. “Stacey, Reeve is our other regular security guy. Reeve, Stacey is here representing passenger interests.” Reeve raised an eyebrow and nodded at Stacey. Jake finished the introductions.

  The group were standing by a large square opening. The chunky metal door cut into the side of the hull had been lowered outwards, and icy Arctic air whistled in. The opened door formed part of a staircase, five white steps to where a telescopic stairway descended to the right, down to a platform that hovered just over the sea. Moored at the bottom was a bright orange tender. It looked like a bigger lifeboat, and indeed could double as one in an emergency. Jake stepped outside and the cold air hit him full in the face. He reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped on board the little boat through a sliding door in the middle.

  An engineer was waiting for him. “We’ve patched her up the best we can, Captain, but she really needs more work.” He gestured towards the side. “She took quite a bit of fire damage. Parts of the hull were melted away.”

  “So, when you say you patched her up, you really patched her, that’s not just a turn of phrase.”

  “Very much so. Martin isn’t happy. He wanted me to pass on his feelings that this boat was not ready to be lowered into the sea and that he won’t take responsibility for anything that happens to it.” The young man clearly felt embarrassed relaying Martin’s words, and seemed glad he’d got it out of the way.

  “Well, she’s floating, isn’t she? So I think we’ll be fine. Thank you, er…”

  “Rigg, sir, Bryan Rigg.”

  “Yes, thank you, Rigg.” He waved at the others at the top of the steps. “Are you coming, or are you all just going to stand there?”

  Reeve came down and boarded the tender, followed by Stacey, Kiera, and two sailors, Horace and Dante. Rigg was standing in the tiny wheelhouse at the front. He pressed a combination of buttons to start the engine. A puff of diesel smoke and the starter turned twice, three times, before bursting into life. From somewhere behind them came the sound of dirty water being spat out in puffs and wheezes as the bilge pump got going. The engineer retreated back through the boat and stepped outside onto the platform. He untied the two thick blue ropes that secured the orange vessel to the Spirit of Arcadia, coiled each one individually, and tossed them onto the little boat, casting them adrift.

  “Horace, would you?” Jake asked.

  The sailor took the wheel. Dante went back to the door, clasped a grab rail on the roof and pulled himself up and outside, where he walked carefully round to the front. He sat on the roof and took up a watch. The tender eased away from its mooring and set off across the last kilometre to the shore.

  Despite the breeze the water was calm, which was fortunate because there were obstacles to avoid. Before long, Dante had spotted something dark and straight edged lurking just beneath the surface. All the while looking forwards, he tapped on the window below him and signalled to Horace to steer clear. The tender was easily able to change direction quickly, and it glided past. Looking down on the menacing shape hidden just below the water, Jake saw it was a huge chunk of the concrete jetty that they had been hoping to tie up to. He looked on in awe as the little boat tiptoed around more pieces of the pier. Some were hidden below the waterline, others rose out of the sea like sheer-sided rocks.

  “What could do this?” he said to nobody in particular. “What kind of force could rip apart something like that?”

  “I once saw a tornado,” Reeve said. “Blew right down the other side of the street in front of me. Picked up the roofs of houses and sent them flying into backyards half a mile away. Picked up cars and dumped them down again a block later. It was an awesome sight, the power of that twister. But even that couldn’t have done this kind of damage. Man, if that asteroid did this, then how the hell did we survive?”

  “It was higher. When it went over us, it was going up. Something made it change direction, and it happened before it reached us. Who knows, maybe it was gaining altitude the further north it got? We were anchored very close to the magnetic pole. Perhaps the earth’s magnetic field interrupted its orbit and sent it spinning off back into space?” It was a pet theory Jake had been toying with for a while.

  “If that’s right, Captain Noah, and it levelled a town like this from a higher altitude, then I can’t even begin to imagine what damage it did further south when it was lower.”

  Jake closed his eyes, swallowing hard. He saw Jane, couldn’t get her out of his head. He’d avoided thinking about home, had been too busy when on duty, and too tired in his brief rest periods. But seeing the destruction, he could no longer hide from the truth, the inevitable truth that Jane must be dead. His parents, dead. Everyone he knew, everyone he had ever known, they were all dead. He felt tears welling up in his eyes, was fighting for breath, tried to open his eyes but they felt like they were glued shut. His legs gave way underneath him, and that was the last thing he remembered.

  • • •

  “Captain Noah? Can you hear me?”

  Jake tried again to open his eyes. The light was strong, they stung. He was lying on his back, but wasn’t sure where. A figure was bent over him, looking at him. A woman.

  “Jane? Is that you?”

  “Captain Noah, it’s Kiera. No, don’t try and move, not yet. You fainted, Captain. You hit your head on a bench.”

  A tiny light flicked on and shone directly into his left eye, then the right. A pair of hands turned his head to one side, very gently. Fingers probed around the back, carefully, gently. A jolt of pain stabbed at his skull. He cried out.

  “Sorry, Captain, I didn’t mean to hurt you. There’s some blood, and you’re going to have a heck of a lump there for a while, but I think you’ll live.”

  The pain had somehow brought h
is vision back into focus. He looked up at the nurse. She actually looked a little like Jane, he thought. Similar short blond hair, thin face, long neck. He didn’t feel so bad about having said the name of his wife. He did, however, feel intense embarrassment at having passed out, and in front of the others. Not Kiera, she was a nurse, she’d seen it all before. Not even the sailors, not really. What really upset him was that Stacey would have witnessed it. A moment of weakness. He had a nasty feeling he wouldn’t be allowed to forget it.

  “Can you try and sit up for me a bit, Captain?”

  “Only if you stop calling me that and call me Jake.”

  “If that’s what it takes. Come on, let me help you.”

  She put her hands behind his shoulders and helped him lift his back from the floor. Another jolt of pain shot through his head. He winced, but didn’t make a noise. Once in a sitting position he shuffled back until he was propped against a bench. The opposite bench bore a dark red stain. His blood. His eyes swivelled around as he scanned the interior of the boat.

  “Where did everyone go?”

  “Horace and Dante went to tie us up. The other two have gone ashore.”

  “Damn. Damn! Ouch!” His hand flew up to the back of his head.

  “Careful, no sudden movements, Jake!” Kiera smiled cheekily. “I need to dress that, then you can go out and play too.”

  “They shouldn’t have gone without me. Oh, what the hell, I never asked to be captain anyway. So what if nobody listens to me?”

  “To be fair, I don’t think you gave any orders to remain aboard while you fainted.” Kiera regretted the words the instant they left her mouth. She looked nervously at the captain, worried she had overstepped the mark. He stared back at her and a grin spread across his face.

  “No, I don’t suppose I did. Now, about that dressing.”

  The nurse pulled out some sterile swabs from her medical kit, doused them in antiseptic, and dabbed at the wound on the back of his head. It stung when she touched it, but not as badly as before. Once clean, she did her best to bandage it. She looked at the dressing on his hand.