Rig

by Bryan Alaspa

  RIG

  A novel by

  Bryan W. Alaspa

  Copyright 2006 Bryan W. Alaspa

  For Jason and Karmen, two friends who helped me get through a lot.

  Prologue

  Ming Dwyer walked into his modest one-bedroom apartment just after eight o’clock and removed his coat. He shuffled his feet as he walked as if the weight of the world were placed firmly on his shoulders. Another day with long hours and little gratification was behind him. It was the end of another day where he cow-towed to the managers above him, caved in to ideas that were not his own, gave in to others he did not agree with and felt as if a little more of his soul had been snatched away. Not snatched away by anything demonic or satanic but by a faceless corporation that could not possibly have cared a whit for him. He was home now, however, and he could try to put those thoughts behind him.

  He was a small man. He stood in the neighborhood of five foot four. He had dark hair and dark eyes. He was gradually getting a gut, now that he spent his days chained to a cubicle and ate fast food. The days of his youth receded further and further into the past and the thoughts of his future filled his head. So much time had been spent devoted to his career. Now, here he was, just past the threshold of thirty and staring middle-age full in the face, and what did he have to show for it? He had an empty one-bedroom apartment, a few friends and no love-interest to speak of. It made coming home something of a tragedy. This was why his walk had degenerated into a shuffle over the years.

  He walked down the hallway and into the small kitchen. A week’s worth of dishes were piled in the sink but he figured that was what weekends were for. He made himself a quick batch of macaroni and cheese and carried the warm bowl of unnaturally orange-colored noodles to his chair in the living room. He watched the news without really hearing it and mindlessly moved his fork from bowl to mouth. He made certain not to spill the cheese on his shirt or his chair.

  Outside his home the weather was beautiful. The ocean - invisible from the windows at Ming’s apartment but very visible to many in the town - was a sparkling blue as the sun descended on the Gulf of Mexico. The weather was unusually chilly considering it was still summer. To have people wearing coats in this part of the world was a very strange sight. A cold front blanketed most of the country but it was not a normal thing to have to worry about such things in these parts. The wind off the ocean should have warmed all of them but lately it created a kind of chill and made it seem as if these were the streets of Chicago instead of the Gulf. Many talked about how unnaturally cold it was and wondered what it meant.

  Ming didn’t wonder. He worked for a company that managed benefit plans for other companies. He worked in the call center and dealt with people who took calls from those with nothing better to do than call and complain and bitch about the things they didn’t like about their health insurance. His life was wrapped up in reports that detailed every call so minutely that it took micro-managing to unheard of levels. The client he worked for demanded ridiculous levels of perfection and they were the type to be on the phone to him in a few seconds just so they could scream in his ear. The company had fought and negotiated the contract with this company for over a year. Countless hours had been spent securing the client. The entire fate of the company hinged on appeasing this client; one of the largest they had. When the contract with this client had been signed they were given unheard of and unreasonable access to everything with unreasonable promises made should any faults or missteps be found at any time. The pressure caused Ming to walk with a slight hunch in addition to the shuffle.

  The news was all bad and the weatherman was perplexed about the sudden change in temperature. He indicated that he felt it would not last and Ming decided he felt as if he could really care less. He was barely outside anymore these days anyway. He put the empty bowl down and decided to walk into his bedroom He clicked off the television as he walked past.

  The room was small and contained his bed, a small dresser, a small closet and a desk with an ancient computer. There was, next to the computer, a radio with headphones, a microphone and a wire leading from the back across the wall and out the window. The one thing that Ming still seemed to enjoy these days was his time on the shortwave. While he also had a license as a ham radio operator the discussions he’d had while doing it completely numbed him. He really just enjoyed listening and scanning the bands and frequencies until he found something interesting. Sometimes he heard air traffic at the small airport five miles from his apartment. Other times he listened in on the police and fire departments. Sometimes there was communication between ships out in the Gulf and people on shore. Sometimes he picked up calls and communications between other people with radios or cordless phones.

  Ming sat down at the desk and put the headphones on. His head was killing him so he welcomed the relaxing hiss of the radio. He hit the scan button. The digital readout flashed numbers so rapidly he couldn’t follow them. He rested his head on his arms, closed his eyes and listened. The scanner stopped on the fire department. Nothing exciting was happening so Ming let it move on. He listened to the police band for a bit and then continued scanning. He stopped to listen to a cordless phone conversation. It was a young woman apparently not far from Ming’s apartment trying desperately to convince her boyfriend that he should come over for the night. The guy was obviously drunk or incredibly stupid because he was not getting the hint. When that ended he hit scan again.

  “Mayday, mayday… We need help…”

  The scanner jumped back to scanning before Ming could react. He reached out and reversed the direction of the scanner. He was suddenly very awake. He had heard about ham radio operators catching distress calls but had never experienced one.

  “-ig 42. …We hit something… Mayday, mayday, mayday…”

  “Jesus,” Ming whispered to himself. He stopped the scanner and listened while on the edge of his chair.

  The reception was not great. There was a female voice, obviously very scared. Ming played with the fine-tuning control until things came in a bit clearer. Ming felt a mixture of excitement and fear as he listened to the panicked voice.

  “Rig 42…we hit something…mayday, mayday, mayday…oh God…oh please, dear God!….”

  Ming felt the excitement turn into ice-water. He heard the wind rattle the window in the front room. There was a noise coming through the headphones that at first he thought was just interference. With a chill that crept up his spine he realized that the sound was being broadcast along with the terrified voice. The sound was something in the background just behind the voice of the panicked woman. It was a sound like moaning, screaming, crying, all combined into one. It was like hearing a crowd of people standing behind whoever was transmitting or a choir moaning and screaming.

  “Oh please….mayday, mayday…HELP US!!!”

  There was a horrific scream. It pierced Ming’s ears and he held a hand up to his head and grabbed the right earpiece. The sound in the background became louder. The chills reached his feet and he shuddered uncontrollably. The sound was like a million humans all screaming, moaning, crying at once. It was the sound of a crowd of people being tortured at the same time. The lights dimmed in his apartment. The sound grew louder. He reached out for the volume control but his hand felt suddenly heavy.

  A violent shock of pain drove through his head. Ming clenched his teeth. He bit down on his tongue so hard blood sprayed from between his teeth and splattered the controls of the radio. The sound grew louder still. Now it was a billion souls; a billion lives being tortured and burned. His head filled with images. He saw horrible images of skin ripped off of quivering muscle again and again He saw fire and torture of the most unspeakable varieties. The pain in his head was unbearable. He tried to scream but only a soft moan escaped his lips. He could
feel something in his head, like a kind of pressure, as though two giant hands were in his skull squeezing his brain. Blood flowed out of his nose, ears, mouth and eyes. He couldn’t see. Blood pooled in the cups of the headphones. He tasted blood in his mouth.

  The sound grew deafening. Ming’s eyes exploded in their sockets. The pressure was so great jets of blood pulsed for a moment from his eyes sockets. Blood erupted from his mouth. Then the sound stopped as if a switch had been thrown.

  Ming had a moment to realize that he was blind, and then he was gone. His body slumped forward. Blood poured from his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, nipples, penis, anus and seeped from his pores. His internal organs were jelly. It was as if someone had reached into his body crushed him from the inside.

  The radio was nothing but static. The wind blew hard that night; harder than many had seen it when there wasn’t a hurricane offshore. It blew through the bones of those who ventured out. It blew through homes. People curled up to those they loved and clutched them tighter at the sound of that wind.

  1

  Kevin Iler was not having a good day, and he was determined to let anyone who got into his way know all about it. It was the middle of the night and he walked briskly into his office at GemCo Oil. He should have been fast asleep, dreaming his dreams of money and nothing but money, while trying hard to ignore the annoying snoring of his equally annoying wife. In Kevin Iler’s world most everyone was annoying because everyone around him could not understand that all that mattered was money. The important thing about money was how much of it he could earn for the company and, therefore, for himself.

  Fifteen minutes ago he learned that one of his most ambitious projects was no longer making money. Oil Rig number 42 (known by those at GemCo as simply Rig 42) was no longer in contact with anyone. There had been a number of rather distressing calls made by the rig but, just as suddenly, everything had ceased. Satellite views showed no movement of any kind on the rig. A helicopter fly-by revealed nothing. It was as if the crew had simply disappeared. All that was left were some very disturbing and confusing recordings of transmissions from the rig.

  Rig 42 was the biggest one that GemCo had ever built and it was located in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the biggest in the world and one of the most advanced ever created. It was Kevin’s baby and he had spent countless hours pouring over its design and more hours convincing those in charge that it was an expense that would only bring about good things. Once the oil field had been discovered it was Kevin who put forth the idea of the most advanced and largest rigs seen within the oil industry. The idea was that the more advanced equipment would mean a smaller crew could be used and fewer accidents could occur. Now he had an absent crew, creepy radio transmissions and a rig that was not done drilling to get to the pumping that would bring him more money.

  Kevin Iler intended to yell at a lot of people. For the most part yelling was the only thing Kevin Iler was really good at. He had a knack for it. The other thing Kevin Iler had a gift for was dreaming and obsessing over money. The fact that he had an impressive string of failures behind him with other companies in this endeavor did not seem to stop him from getting jobs at new places. He had enough impressive successes that companies held out hope that he would be able to duplicate his successes with them. GemCo was one of those places.

  Kevin walked into his office and threw his briefcase into a chair just inside the door. He muttered to himself and cursed the fact that his assistant had not yet arrived even though he had called her shortly after he had been contacted. He grabbed his Rolodex and flipped through it angrily. He found the phone number he was looking for. He punched the number into the phone and sat down behind the desk. He rubbed his eyes and built up a good head of steam.

  “Hello?” Said a groggy voice on the other end.

  “Phil?” Kevin yelled.

  “Yeah,” the man said, “who’s this?”

  “Fuck you, you fat fuck!” Kevin screamed. “Get your fucking flabby ass out of bed and get into the office in ten minutes or your office will be waiting for you in boxes by the curb before the sun comes up!”

  “Sorry, Mr. Iler,” Phil Stim said on the other end, suddenly not nearly as sleepy as he had been.

  “Save your fucking sorry for someone who fucking believes in them,” Iler screamed, his throat muscles stretching impressively. “Roll over that ugly cunt of a wife you have and get your sorry ass into work now, for Christ’s sake. We’ve lost 42.”

  “Oh shit,” Stim moaned.

  “Why are you still talking to me?” Kevin screamed. “I said to get the fuck up and get the fuck in here!”

  He slammed his finger on the button before Phil had even a prayer of responding. He flipped through his rolodex again and found another number. He repeated this exercise six times before his assistant came in. She looked a bit of a wreck. Her hair was pulled back but whatever she had used to try and hold it there hadn’t worked very well and it was sticking up all over the place.

  “Christ you are a fucking walking disaster,” Kevin screamed at her. “I’ve already made the phone calls because you are so fucking slow and dimwitted it has to be seen to be believed! Don’t even bother sitting your sorry ass down just go get me a cup of coffee. Be glad I don’t throw it in your face when you get here.”

  The young woman nodded, dropped her things and immediately shuffled down the hallway. Kevin watched her go with a satisfied smile on his face. He had been told repeatedly that his method of screaming at people served no purpose except to make everyone resentful of him. His response has been that he had no interest in being anyone’s friend and when he screamed people jumped. When people jumped they did things for him. When people did things for him he not only insulated himself from things but they made him look better. This in turn made him more money, which directly related to his theory that the only thing in life that mattered was money. Kevin often had dreams where he entered a magical world where money rained down upon him. No hard coin money, but beautiful, soft, green money just falling all around him. Whether or not the people who made him richer were happy could not have mattered to him less. At a large company meeting he had famously stated that he felt people should not be happy in their jobs because if they were happy or content then they weren’t trying hard enough.

  Kevin turned back to his phone numbers. He smiled. There was one more phone call to make but it was the only one that he was looking forward to making. Of all of the people in this company there was only one person who came close to sharing Kevin’s view of the world. There was only one person as equally willing to sacrifice his soul on the altar of profit. He dialed that number and was not surprised when Larry Appling answered the phone from in his car.

  “Yes, sir,” Larry said, “I got the call five minutes ago. I should be in the office in just about the same amount of time.”

  “Good man, Larry,” Kevin said. “I’ve got the rest of the crew fumbling around in their bedrooms to get dressed already.”

  “I figured you would, sir,” Larry said.

  “I’m going to make you my point-man on this thing, Larry,” Kevin said. “I need someone I can trust on this one.”

  “You can trust me, sir,” Larry said. “Thank you.”

  “Get your ass in here, fast,” Kevin said and hit the button.

  He sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. He loved being able to yell at people and he knew that by the time most of the people he had just called came in they would have more information for him. If they had more information for him maybe he could make a decision that would save this entire disaster.

  2

  Larry Appling hung up the phone and smiled to himself. He let loose a loud sigh. He turned his car into the parking garage and shook his head. How he had managed to come as far and as fast as he had always amazed him. There was a time when the ass-kissing would have made him sick to his stomach. There was a time when the thought of getting up in the middle of the night to go into work was unthinkable. This has b
een before he was married and had a house and discovered all of the wonderful things that making a lot of money could provide for you.

  He was not a particularly tall man and stood about five foot seven if he was wearing tall shoes. He had dark hair and dark eyes with dark hair covering large portions of his body. He had an easy smile and a good sense of humor and most people tended to like Larry, especially in the beginning when they first met him. A few years ago, everyone seemed to like Larry. He was the easy-going boss who let you get away with things and that you could come talk to. Somewhere along the way his realization that being that chummy boss wouldn’t get him further up that tempting ladder made him reconsider things and he changed. Now, people usually liked him in the beginning, but became cautious around him, hushed around him, quiet around him. They knew he was plugged directly into the most powerful people in the company and they were unsure of just how tight-lipped he really was.

  His decision to start climbing the ladder corresponded directly with his decision to marry a woman he worked with but who was further down the ladder. She seemed content with her station which added to the pressure on him that he had to be the one to claw and climb. Out went the silly clothes and on went the shirts and ties. Out went the ideals and standing up for the little guy and in came following the company standards, towing the company line. He willingly shook the hands and made the deals with the various company devils that got you noticed and promoted. It didn’t hurt much to chop away parts of your soul after a while. You could justify everything you cut when you had such ambition for your wife, home and family. You could easily stab anyone who was not in this circle in the back when you justified it as a means to gain more for yourself. It turned out a soul didn’t hurt so much once you just started cutting away.