by Bryan Alaspa
“There’s nothing here that shouldn’t be,” she said when she arrived near J.D. “nothing up here that could be dangerous. I have no clue about inside the building, of course.”
J.D. nodded and turned towards the group. “We’ll have to keep the masks and suits on until we can check the building. You guys stay out here, and keep low to the ground. I doubt there’s anyone here. They wouldn’t take an oilrig hostage and then not have any guards or lookouts, but we need to be sure.”
Mark, Lazlo, Monica, Larry and Rhonnie nodded. J.D. turned his attention to Karmen and Joe.
“Let’s do this quick but thorough,” he said, “I want us back here in five. We need to at least make sure there’s a clear path between here and the control room.”
Karmen and Joe nodded. The three of them ran across the top of the rig and headed for the open door. They paused near the door and then J.D. nodded and Karmen rolled into the space beyond with her gun ready and pointed. Joe followed but he took the opposite direction from where Karmen was pointed and then J.D. followed suit. His gun was held out before him and it pointed wherever his head turned.
The place was dark, as if the power had been shut off. They were in a hallway with doors opened on either side of the hall all the way down. There was a sense of a huge mass on top of you and a large structure beneath you. The entire place seemed to hum even though it appeared as if the power was out. The control room was two floors up. This bottom level was mostly recreational and contained the galley as well. They checked the hallway, the galley, the room with the computers used to e-mail relatives and for recreational purposes. They checked the room with pool and ping pong tables and the main room with the large television. Every room they checked w as eerily empty.
J.D. indicated it was time to move up. They moved up the stairs and checked the next level until they finally came to the large open space that was the main control room. They studied the banks of computers that appeared dead with their black faces. Displays that had no meaning to any of them were also unlit and dead. The whole place seemed dead, and yet, something gave J.D. knots in his stomach, and it was more than just tension. There was a feeling about this place unlike any he had felt before. During his career as a mercenary and solider he had stumbled across some of the most horrifying kill-scenes the world had ever produced, and had seen scores of bodies piled high, but nothing had given him the feeling he felt right now. He could tell by the sweat that dripped into Karmen’e eyes, she felt something too.
“Let’s go get Rhonnie,” J.D. said, “I want to get the hell out of these suits.”
Joe nodded and disappeared back the way they had come.
“Should we check the rest of this building?” Karmen asked.
“A little further on, in the next section, are the crews quarters,” J.D. said, indicating the direction with his chin. “We’ll need to check those, but I don’t think there are terrorists on this thing, do you?”
Karmen shook her head and she looked at J.D. through his mask. J.D. noticed for the first time how wide her eyes were. “No, but there’s something royally fucked up about this place.”
J.D. nodded. “I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels it.”
A noise behind him made him turn around with his gun pointed. It was pure instinct combined with his keyed-up muscles. He lowered it quickly when he saw it was Joe and Rhonnie. She had her device out again. She was already shaking her head.
“There’s aren’t any strange readings in here,” she said, “I don’t think we need to worry about any chemical weapons on this thing.”
J.D. nodded. He reached up to grab his mask. Karmen’s hand fell on his wrist.
“Someone has to try it sometime,” J.D. said, “why not me? Rhonnie, you have stuff in your bag there in case I start choking?”
Rhonnie nodded. “I just hope I have something that can counteract whatever might be in the air here.”
“That makes two of us,” J.D. said and ripped his gasmask off.
He held his breath of for a moment and felt the coolness of the air on his sweaty face with his eyes still closed. Then, slowly, he released his breath and took in a huge lungful of air. There was a foul smell, perhaps something rotting in the kitchen or galley, but there was no burning sensation in his nose or lungs. He did gag, choke or spit blood. He took in several more lungs full and then opened his eyes. He let loose a little laugh at the wide, expectant faces of the others.
“You can breathe, guys,” he said. “You still have your masks on.”
Karmen smiled and then laughed. Joe didn’t react at all, but Rhonnie also laughed. Rhonnie also looked eager, anxious and ready to pounce on him the moment he started to convulse.
“Nothing,” he said. “Kind of smells like some food might be going bad in the galley, but with the power off, we might have a whole walk-in cooler of spoiling meat down there. Just be warned. I think you can all take your masks off.”
They moved slowly as they reached up to their faces and removed the masks. Karmen’s face was slick and shone from sweat. Joe looked remarkably calm as he slid the rubber mask off. Rhonnie looked worried, but she held a bit of that annoying smile on her face and she breathed deeply. After several minutes of standing around breathing, they looked at each other.
“Unless it’s carbon monoxide,” Rhonnie said, “which is odorless and takes a bit longer to have an effect, I think we’re all right. I doubt carbon monoxide would have caused that kind of panicked call, however. I have detectors separate from the power source that should tell us if there’s any monoxide anyway.”
J.D. nodded. “Let’s get Lazlo and Monica up here. Maybe they and Larry can start checking out the controls. I want Mark up here as well because I need to talk to him. Tell them they can ditch the masks and, when they get up here, the suits too. Tell Chun to stay by the chopper. I want that thing ready to go at a moment’s notice until we are sure this whole place is absolutely secure.”
Karmen and Joe both nodded and then ran off the way they had come when he was finished.
“Rhonnie,” J.D. said, “I want you to find a place right near here to set up a medical station. Nothing fancy, but if anyone gets suddenly sick or hurt, I want you to be able to help fast.”
Rhonnie nodded and headed off to peer into open doors. She finally found a room that she must have liked because she stepped inside a room about ten yards from the control room. J.D. looked around and took in the scenery. This place had an eerie feel to it that seemed to pervade his bones and muscles. He was nervous, and this was something he had not been for a very long time.
The others walked up the stairs with their masks held in their hands and at their sides. Larry was already undoing his suit. Lazlo and Monica immediately looked at the control room with eagerness. Mark looked questioningly at J.D. and Karmen and Joe looked eager to check the rest of the place out. Larry just looked anxious to get everything running so he could get the hell out of here.
Mark approached J.D., his face red from sweating in the gasmask and his beard looked moist. His glassed were also slightly fogged from being behind the plastic of the gasmask.
“Joe said you wanted to talk to me,” Mark said.
J.D. nodded. “Not here. Give me a minute.”
He gathered the group around. “Monica, Lazlo and Larry, I want you guys to see if you can get some systems back on-line. Larry, I want you to start looking through whatever data you can recover that might give us some clue about what the hell happened here. I need to talk to Mark about a couple of things, and then Karmen, Joe, and I will start searching the rest of this place.”
J.D. didn’t wait for a response; he simply put his arm around Mark and led him away. They walked down the hallway, past the conference room where Rhonnie busily unpacked her medical station. They found what appeared to be some kind of office just a little further past that, and J.D. ushered Mark in and closed the door behind them.
“Do you feel it?” J.D. asked.
“Yes,” Mark re
plied, immediately.
“You didn’t even know what I was going to ask,” J. D. said.
“I can feel it,” Mark said, “I can feel something is very wrong here and I don’t think it has to do with chemical weapons or gas leaks.”
“Could it just be that it’s really creepy here with the whole place abandoned?” J.D. asked.
“Sure,” Mark replied, “that would be part of it. We are on a ghost-rig, as it were. This place is essentially dead, J.D. However, there’s something else and I know you feel it too. There’s some kind of knot in your stomach.”
J.D. nodded. “I want you to stay here in the control room. If Larry will let you, try to help him. There has to be surveillance footage of this place somewhere. I want to see it. I have to know what happened and I need you to help me, however you can. Can you do that?”
Mark nodded. “I’ll try. You guys all be careful. Watch things closely. We have no idea what we could be dealing with.”
J.D. nodded. He clapped Mark on the shoulder and opened the door and went out. He heard Mark walking behind him and head into the control room as he removed his suit. J.D. decided that was a good idea and removed his. Karmen and Joe had already removed theirs and stood ready to move.
“OK, guys,” he said as he came over to them, “now that we know we don’t have to worry about terrorists and chemicals, let’s check out the place and just see what we find. Keep an eye out, there’s still a slight chance we might find someone alive here, but I doubt it. This place is a ghost-ship.”
They moved down the hall.
* * *
Deep below the rig, beneath where the struts that held the rig above water were anchored to the ground, was the hole into which the drill had dug. Once the hole itself is dug, generally, the oilrig fills the hole with a concoction known as “mud.” This is not really mud, but a number of substances that cap off the hole and spewing oil so that the oil can then be pumped, barreled and sold. The incident upon Rig 42 happened so fast, none of this had been dumped into the hole, so the hole was open and exposed to the water around it.
What no one up on the rig knew was that this hole had raised the temperature of the water around the spot where the hole existed. As the fish swam by the hole in the bottom of the sea they literally flash-fried. Strangely, the fish did not float to the surface but fell to the bottom of the ocean so the surface was not littered with corpses. Instead the seafloor beneath the rig was beginning to look quite a bit like a fish market. The hole itself glowed as though it were a furnace.
Most of the time this hole glowed a very dull and dim orange which lit the darkness and the water around it like some kind of underwater sun. Every so often, however, the glow increased, grew, slid up the walls of the hole and reached the top of the hole. This is what happened minutes after J.D. informed everyone they could remove their chemical suits and gasmasks. The hole glowed intensely bright, and this time, something came out of the hole.
It wasn’t much, and most, had they seen it, would assume the small glowing sphere was actually a kind of fish, perhaps glowing because it had adapted to its dark surroundings. This glowing sphere, however, did not flit and float like a fish, but rocketed to the surface, streaking through the water, until it broke through the surface. It did not create a splash and was so small and moving so fast, no one noticed the sphere as it rose into the sky, disappearing into some fluffy white clouds.
Once it reached the proper altitude, the sphere burst into an array of colors that would have been most impressive to any passing air-traffic. Instead, it went noticed only by the sun and clouds. When this happened, something that had never happened before on the planet occurred. A depression occurred within the Gulf of Mexico, just to the east of where the rig stood. In meteorological terms this meant that the beginnings of what I commonly known as a tropical storm began to form, in the middle of the Gulf for no reason that would become apparent to anyone at any time. It would be something that students and meteorologists would study for decades to come.
The clouds began to form almost immediately, as the rain began to develop. The clouds began to rotate around each other, gathering steam and moisture from the Gulf and the warm waters, the rotation began to get intense. In a matter of mere minutes, an intense storm began to develop
As one meteorologist on the Florida coast, watching his radar and spilling coffee in his lap, would say, “It was almost like the hand of God came down and produced a storm out of nowhere.”
He wasn’t too far from the truth, really.
* * *
One of those who missed the light show was Chun, the helicopter pilot. He was leaning against the front of the chopper, smoking even though he had been told not to. He was absently watching the ocean undulating around the rig, inhaling smoke and wishing that he was anywhere but standing the deck of this oilrig in the middle of the ocean. His tongue tasted salty to him, from the ocean spray, and his clothes felt damp. He also felt extremely abandoned by the rest of the group.
He had felt from the beginning like someone coming into the middle of a party. Larry had called him suddenly the previous afternoon and tried to explain what he needed of him. Larry and Chun had worked together on a certain job in Asia once and Chun actually owed Larry a favor. Larry had decided to cash that in yesterday afternoon, evidently.
He was leaning there, his eyes darting across the strange and alien landscape of the oilrig, scanning the pipes, the metalwork, the various structures. He could not imagine, for the life of him, working let alone living in such an environment for any length of time. It was while he was doing this that something moved near the crane.
At first Chun was certain he had seen a reflection or a shadow, perhaps from the swinging hook attached to the crane. Still, his eyes narrowed on the spot where he had seen something appear to dart from one of the metalwork structures to behind the body of the crane. He could see nothing now, but his eyes were in very good condition, given his line of work, they had to be and he was certain he had seen something.
He looked around, wanting anyone to come out so he could give a kind of signal that he had seen something. There was no one, of course, and he cursed under his breath. He stroked the stubble that passed for a beard beneath his chin, the whiskers like mountain climbers clinging to the side of a mountain. He wondered exactly what he should do. He hadn’t been left any weapons, and he was supposed to sit by the helicopter to wait for word to start up the engines. He assumed this would come from someone inside the building, running outside the building and signaling him as none of them had been left with walkie-talkies or anything of that nature.
He walked back to the cockpit and reached inside. He removed a wrench he had stored under the seat and crushed out his cigarette. He looked around again, hoping that maybe someone was looking out a window. The black windows stared back in mute testament and he began to move towards the crane.
He walked across the deck, amazed at the length of the structure. He slowly reached the front of the crane, pausing, breathing hard, his heart pounding, the sound of the ocean in his ears. He knelt down, looking beneath the crane, between the treads of the crane, and he saw nothing at the other end. Above him the hook twirled lazily in the sunlight and wind. He began to creep around the side of the machine.
He worked slowly, creeping along the side, his back pressed against the metal side of the crane. His eyes darted around, looking back and forth and then towards where he was going. He trained his ears, listening hard for any sound. He heard nothing save for the ocean and the pounding of his own heart. He wiped sweat from his face and reached the edge of the crane.
He heard something. It was faint, but he could definitely hear it over the sounds of the ocean and his heard. It sounded like someone was screaming. It sounded very far away, and he thought for a moment it might have been one of the women in the building, and he turned to look. The screaming continued, but it grew louder as well. It was not coming from the building, but seemed to be coming from the other sid
e of the crane. The sounds chilled him. It sounded like several voices now, screaming, tortured, moaning. It was a sound that made his stomach feel queasy and his heart pound even harder. He gripped the wrench tighter, certain now that thee was something around the back of the crane.
He jumped around the corner, the wrench held high in his hands, ready to strike. There was nothing but the edge of the crane and the ocean. He paused for a moment, his stomach still rolling from the sounds in his ears. He realized, the horrible sounds were not just in his ears. He was hearing them in his head, pervading his thoughts. His courage left him and he turned, ready to run back to the helicopter.
The crane moved. The body of the crane swung around, with a speed that caught Chun completely off-guard. He turned his head to look, seeing the body turn and his mouth dropped open. The boom of the crane swung around over his head and he turned back to look in front of him just in time to see the loose-swinging hook slam into his chest with full force. The hook drove through his chest, shattering his ribs, puncturing his sternum and heart, and the end severed his spine and emerged out the back. He vomited blood, violently, all over the hook and the cable it was attached to. Still the boom swung, lifting Chun off the ground, causing more blood to vomit from his mouth, splattering his feet. He was out, over the edge of the platform, his feet swinging and the cable from the crane began to let out. The crane spun, very fast, faster than it should have, swinging the ever-lengthening line and the body attached to it. It spun around again, and slowed. Chun’s body, still barely alive, smashed into the cockpit of the helicopter, the heavy hook burying itself in the controls of the helicopter. His body was shattered, broken apart and the hook drove deep into the guts of the helicopter, into the floor and the boom still spun. The helicopter moved, twisted as the crane pulled it, Chun’s body broken and spilling blood into the cockpit. The helicopter spun on the landing pad, the hook dislodging, swinging back the way it had come, now rapidly reeling back in. The chopper tilted, spitting sparks now, and began to fall off the edge of the landing pad, it hung there for a moment, dangling over the steadily rising waves of the sea, and then it fell, crashing backwards into the ocean.
