by Bryan Alaspa
Larry Appling nuzzled himself next to Kevin Iler like some breed of snake nuzzling against the sheep before devouring it. He figured he would learn what he could from the man, and then do what he could behind the man’s back to have him removed. It was a technique he had employed before. The trick was acting as if the extra work of the new promotion was some sort of trial inflicted upon him unwillingly by the company It was key to play this off to the people beneath him. This is what made Larry appealing to those upon whose backs he stood while reaching for that next rung.
Larry pulled into a parking space and walked form his car into the elevator. His head felt heavy and his eyelids felt like he had rubbed them raw. John Levins, one of the men Kevin called to scream at, called Larry at home to inform him what was going on. Larry kept clothing hanging on a closet door for just such emergencies. He also made sure to shower and shave before going to bed so that all that was needed should such an incident occur would be a comb through his hair and a liberal splash of cologne. Then he was on his way. He forwarded the second phone line he had in his home to his cell phone because he knew Kevin would get to him eventually and he wanted Kevin to hear that he was already on his way.
He entered the darkened offices. His office was two floors beneath Kevin’s and the floor was dark and the cubicles empty. He flipped on lights and made his way through the rat-maze of tiny squares of space that the other workers used during the day and turned on the lights in his office. He was at his desk and checked e-mails and made phone calls after a few scant seconds. He prepared as much information as he could before he made his way up to Kevin’s office. He had a knack for showing up at Kevin’s door minutes before Kevin realized he needed him.
The rest of the crew had arrived and sat around a table in a conference room adjoining Kevin’s office. There was also a wall with various screens and upon these screens were other officials within the company as well as various maps and presentation slides. Most of the crew around the table were in various states of disheveled-ness. Larry suppressed a smile but allowed himself a brief nod towards Kevin as he entered.
“The transmissions came last night, just before sundown,” said one of the men on the wall that Larry recognized as David Meking from the operations in Texas. “They were received by the coast guard and apparently some people who have scanners and shortwave radios.”
“How do we know that?” Kevin asked.
The man shifted in his seat on the monitor and cleared his throat.
“Quit your fucking stammering you fucking idiot and tell me!” Kevin screamed, his voice echoed off the bare white walls.
“Anyone who heard the transmission as it was broadcast is dead, sir,” David said.
Kevin paused his writing and looked up. “What the fuck do you mean?”
“No one knows, sir,” David said. “It just seems as if anyone who heard the transmission, well, they, uh, they died. Rather horribly, as a matter of fact.”
“Coast guard men died?” Kevin asked.
“Yes, at least five of them,” the man replied. “There were four others we know of just around the Gulf as well; all of them men on shortwave radios. Their internal organs and their brains were, well, they say, it was like they were melted.”
Kevin threw his pen down and his face turned an interesting shade of crimson. “Does anyone here have any fucking clue what the holy fuck is going on?”
There was stunned silence around the table.
“I will start walking around this table plucking out your fucking eyeballs with my pen if someone doesn’t start talking very soon!” Kevin roared.
“I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” said Harry Winton, a large man with a mustache, near the far end of the table. “I’ve been in the oil business for thirty years and I’ve never heard of this.”
“What happened to the crew?” Kevin asked.
“No one knows that either,” said another face on the wall. “Once the transmissions stopped there was nothing else. We did a few fly-bys with helicopters and it looks like the rig is abandoned, but none of the evacuation vehicles have been deployed.”
“That sounds like some kind of gas attack or something,” Larry said. “Like nerve gas hit the rig and wiped out the crew.”
Kevin nodded. “What are the odds that this was some kind of terrorist strike?”
“What kind of gas kills a crew and then melts the internal organs of the people who hear the mayday transmission?” Harry asked.
Kevin shut him up with a look. “Let’s deal with one mystery at a time right now. Right now, I care a whole fucking lot more about my rig than some saps who couldn’t cut it in the Navy and pathetic souls with nothing better to do than listen to shortwave radios.”
“The possibility does exist,” said a face on the wall. “Perhaps there is some kind of new technology employed here. Wipe out the crew with nerve gas and use something to try and jam the radio transmissions. Maybe an unintended side affect was the deaths.”
“I don’t even want to think about a terrorist group with the ability to melt my internal organs over the airwaves,” Larry said.
“So what do we need to do to get the rig up and running again?” Kevin said.
“We have to make sure the rig is safe,” Phil Stim said. “How do we know that if we send another crew they aren’t going to drop dead the minute they get off the helicopter?”
“I can get more workers,” Kevin said. “I got workers coming out of my ass. I want to get the rig running again and fast. If we send a crew and they drop once they get out of the chopper, I guess we have our answer.”
There was a shocked silence around the table.
“Need I remind all of you how much money this company has invested in this?” Kevin said. “This rig is the most advanced thing that anyone has built anywhere in the world. The technology we developed for this is unheard of. It’s going to make us billions, folks, not millions. If we don’t get it working again and get it working again fast, I personally will kill all of you and your families before I let this company go down. Do I make myself clear?”
“I have an idea,” Larry said.
“I was wondering when you were going to say something,” Kevin said.
“I can get together a small crew,” Larry said. “I have some contacts with some certain personality types that I think could get onto the rig, make sure that it’s safe and even clear out anyone who might still be there, if this was some kind of terrorist thing.”
“Mercenaries?” Harry said incredulously.
“I could send you instead,” Kevin snapped back.
“There’s one man in particular I have in mind for this,” Larry said. “He’s handled this type of situation before. Well, that is to say, he’s gone into a potentially dangerous situation before to sweep and clear.”
“How long?” Kevin said.
“Well, that is going to be the problem,” Larry said. “The last I heard he was in Thailand. I’ll probably have to go get him myself. Once I get him, though, he’ll be fast. I think we could have the thing swept up in three weeks.”
“See,” Kevin said and looked around the table, “that’s the kind of thinking I expect from you and never get. He thinks about the company first and worries about the rest afterwards. All the rest of you get out of my sight. Go find something to do, but if any of you go home, I wouldn’t turn on the car yourself tomorrow morning, if you get my meaning.”
The men around the table, many with their hair sticking out in various places and their eyes still glazed over with sleep, gathered their things and filed out of the board room. The faces on the screens on the wall disappeared. Eventually only Kevin and Larry were left in the room.
“Larry, I want you to listen to something,” Kevin said. “I don’t believe for a minute that there are any terrorists or nerve gas. I can’t say that for sure, so, whoever you send will still have to be careful, but I need you to know what we’re up against.”
Larry nodded. Kevin stood
up and walked into his office for a moment and then returned via the door that connected the two rooms. He had a tape recorder in his hand and he set it down on the table. Then he sat down in the chair again and looked at Larry.
“If this gets to you,” he said, “I want you to tell me right away so I can shut it off. I don’t want your fucking brains all over my conference room table.”
Larry nodded again and felt the first pang of fear on his gut. He swallowed and it felt like there was a large lump in his throat. Kevin pushed play and for several seconds there was only the soft hiss of the tape player and static.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday…”
The cries of the woman began and her voice filled with a kind of terror Larry had never heard before. Her voice rose in pitch and quivered repeatedly. Then, as the recording went on and the mayday repeated, the sound in the background began to grow. The room suddenly seemed filled with the echoing sound of a billion voices screaming. They weren’t just screaming in pain or terror, but in a kind of despair that no human could ever truly fathom, at least not in this world. It was as if a billion people were literally piled upon each other with a great weight slowly pressed down upon them. There was screaming, moaning, laughing of a mad hysterical type, then more screaming. Sounds overlapped other sounds and bounced off the walls of the white room. Larry felt the sounds pierce into his head and he wasn’t sure how such a thing could be possible, but it was true and he could feel it. It was as if the sounds were alive. It was as if each screaming, despairing voice tried to reach out and either destroy or grasp at something. It was the most bone-chilling, terrifying thing that Larry had ever heard. It grew louder, louder still, each voice became almost distinct, and there were so many voices. The table seemed to vibrate from the sounds and Larry felt something grab his heart. It squeezed him. He closed his eyes and reached for the tape recorder. Just then, Kevin slammed his hand down on the machine and stopped the sounds.
“Christ,” Larry said, breathless, breathing hard. “Holy Christ what the fuck was that?”
“I have no fucking clue,” Kevin said. “That’s the transmission that caused those people’s internal organs to melt. Even on a recording like this it still seems to have some effect.”
“Didn’t seem to affect you,” Larry said.
“Maybe I’m immune,” Kevin said. “I don’t why it doesn’t bother me, but it doesn’t. What did you hear?”
“Screaming,” Larry said. “I could hear screaming, moaning. God, it was like listening to an entire city being slowly tortured to death.”
Kevin nodded. “I have no idea what the hell happened on that rig, Larry. I have no idea what those sounds are or what happened to the crew. I just know that something happened, those sounds happened, and that crew has been unreachable since. Do you think your man can handle this?”
Larry nodded. “I’m sure.”
Kevin studied Larry for a moment and then nodded. He seemed satisfied. “I want you to go with him.”
Larry’s eyes went wide. “You what?”
“I trust you, Larry,” Kevin said. “I trust you to keep things in line and to keep the company first and foremost in your mind. I can’t have this guy, even the guy you recommend, out there running things without you there to make sure he puts the rig and the company first.”
“I’m not really trained for this kind of thing,” Larry said.
“I’m not asking you to run the fucking thing,” Kevin said. “I’m just asking you to be there to supervise things. We have to get this rig up and running again at all costs.”
Kevin leaned forward to make sure his eyes looked directly into Larry’s.
“At all costs, Larry,” he said. “Do you understand me?”
Larry nodded. He understood all too well.
3
J. D. Kartos lay in a kind of half-dreaming/half-awake state and found he quite enjoyed the sensation. He could feel the softness of the sheet covering him and the smoothness of the bare skin lying next to him, but his thoughts had a strange dreamy quality about them. He was quite certain that were someone to hit him upside the head with a two-by-four, he would have only smiled and rolled over.
His body was long and hard, significantly over six feet tall and close enough to his Greek roots to still have the traditional Greek nose and mop of curly dark hair, but far enough away from them to have pale white flesh instead of olive. His eyes were dark, but currently closed. His body was a mass of muscles, hardened over the years through training and hard work, and criss-crossed with scars.
The opium pipe was forgotten and lay next to the mat on which he was laying. His head was lost in a fog of opium haze. Others moved about him as attendants attended to others lying about on similar mats. Bare feet wandered past his eyes connected to bare, smooth legs from the whores who worked at the den and provided whatever services they could to those not too far gone. One of them lay next to J.D. with her dark hair covering her face as she rested on her side. He had paid handsomely for her for the entire night so she had taken advantage of the situation and to catch some sleep. He barely recalled her face but vaguely remembered the small breasts and large, dark nipples. She had called him names in her own language, but he hadn’t really cared.
There was sound, suddenly, somewhere near the front door of the place. J.D. had time to wonder if the police were coming or if there was some sort of trouble and then decided he really didn’t care one way or the other. That was the great thing about opium; you really didn’t care much about anything when you were lost in it. It wasn’t until he heard his name that the fog lifted enough for him to lift his head and seek the source of the commotion.
“J.D.?” Said the voice, loudly.
He lifted his head and turned slowly towards the sound of that voice. Light streamed in from the open doorway. Given how dark the place was with the door closed this caused everything to have a strange lighted outline and become little more than a silhouette. He could make out the short figure weaving its way towards him, moving clumsily over bodies either sleeping or engaged in various carnal activities, but mostly oblivious to his passage. As J.D.’s eyes adjusted to the light he could make out the face, the long nose, the dark hair, the bright white teeth and he moaned.
“Appling?” J.D. asked.
Larry paused, looked around the bodies and then broke loose with the toothy smile and waved in a completely inappropriate way towards J.D. He moved with purpose but still plenty of clumsiness towards where J.D. lay.
“Christ,” J.D. said, “you make quite a scene.”
”Sorry,” Larry said. “It was hell trying to find you.”
“That’s kind of the point,” J.D. said and laid his head back down and hoped this was all just a bad dream.
“We need to talk,” Larry said.
J.D. opened his eyes and saw the khaki-clad legs of Larry Appling stood directly over him. Larry didn’t seem to be the least bit moved by the sight of the naked woman sleeping next to J.D. and he certainly didn’t seem to care that J.D. was not paying any attention to him.
“We don’t have to go anywhere,” J.D. said. “I’ve paid for my time here tonight and I intend to get my money’s worth.”
“I’ve got a proposal that could make you a lot more money,” Larry said. “So much so, maybe they’ll just let you move in here.”
J.D. opened his eyes and looked up at Larry’s face. There was no longer a hint of a smile there. J.D. sighed and sat up.
“Let me get my clothes,” he said.
* * *
Twenty minutes later they were in Larry’s hotel room. Outside the windows the entire spectacle that was Bangkok stretched out before them. The sky above was a dazzling blue spotted with white clouds. Down below the city was darker and bustled with people of all shapes, sizes and colors. Inside the room there was the usual hotel smell, clean sheets, and the cool breeze of an air conditioner.
“Nice room,” J.D. said.
“I paid enough for it, it should be,” Larry said. �
�Would you like a drink?”
“If you’ve got Jim Beam over there, I’ll take one straight up,” J.D. said, settling into a large leather chair across from the bed.
Larry took a moment to pour a drink from the bar located along one wall. He handed the glass to J.D. who took a long drink. He enjoyed the warm burning sensation as the liquid filtered over his tongue and down his throat. His head felt like it was still floating about six inches above his neck but he was definitely not lost in the fog that he had been. It was one of the things J.D. did well; he could recover rather quickly when he was punishing his body.
“I need you to get a team together,” Larry said, sitting down in the bed, a glass of bottled water with lemon in his hands. “We’ve got a problem on one of the rigs.”
“What are you talking about?” J.D. said. “I haven’t seen you since Honduras. I have no idea what you do now.”
“Sorry,” Larry said, taking the lemon wedge into his mouth and biting down, eating the fruit, dropping the rind back into the glass, “I forgot how long it’s been. I work for GemCo now. That’s an oil company. We just built one of the biggest and most advanced oil rigs in the entire world. It’s in the Gulf of Mexico. A couple days ago we received a few creepy and ominous transmissions from the rig and then nothing. It’s like the crew just disappeared.”
“Sounds like quite a problem,” J.D. agreed. “Now tell me what really happened that you need a guy like me.”
“Where’ve you been working the past couple of years, Jay?” Larry asked.
“Stop avoiding the topic,” J.D. said.
“I’m getting to it but I’m trying to figure out how,” Larry replied. “Where have you been working?”
“Still in South America mostly,” J.D. said. “There’s always a rebel group down that way that needs someone like me. I spent a few months in Africa but that was too much even for me. Taking machetes to the heads of babies is just a line I wasn’t willing to cross.”
“Wouldn’t something a bit more domestic be a bit of a break, then?” Larry asked.
“Look at things my way,” J.D. said, “I’m here, vacationing in Bangkok, when one of my former CIA contacts comes up to me and tells me he has a job for me on an oil rig. Needless to say, despite the opium haze, all of my needles just went into red.”
