by Bryan Alaspa
She began searching the capsule. Beneath the back wall and the small row of seats there she found several boxes bolted to the wall. One of those boxes was red with a white cross on it and she determined this was the most likely candidate for a first-aid kit. It took some time to fumble with the latches that held the box to the wall but she eventually removed it and opened the kit. She dragged the box over to J.D. and began cleaning the various wounds on his face and head and wrapping them in bandages.
J.D.’s face was swollen and bruised. He was still breathing steadily. She did her best to check for other fractures and thought she felt something give in one wrist and one ankle more than it should have. She also figured he probably had broken ribs. What she would not be able to tell is how badly the battering had damaged him internally. One of the pieces of equipment constantly lacking in a first aid kit was an x-ray machine.
Once she felt that J.D. had been bandaged and tended to as much as would be possible given what she had she set about trying to find a way to either get a motor started or send a signal for rescue. She recalled vaguely that when they were first trained on what they would find on the rig that the capsules were equipped with devices that would summon the Coast Guard when activated.
She removed two more boxes from beneath the seats. Inside one appeared to be some kind of transmitter. There was an antennae she could extend, a red light and a switch. She flipped the switch and the red light began to flash. She hoped that meant it was now transmitting a signal somewhere. Unconsciously she began to scan the sky as if she could either detect the radio waves themselves or as if the helicopters and boats would appear immediately. The second box contained a flare gun and provisions such as water and food. It looked like processed food packs like the Army distributed to their troops. Karmen shrugged and opened one. She began to eat an completely unidentifiable substance.
Karmen sat back against the wall in a small space between the row of seats and the connecting wall. She felt the soft rocking of the capsule. She was very tempted to fall asleep but forced herself to stay awake. Her head still hurt and she was still pretty sure she had a concussion. She remembered reading or hearing somewhere that people with a head injury shouldn’t be allowed to fall asleep.
The sun rose steadily in the sky. The day turned warm. Boredom set in quickly. J.D. continued to be unconscious. Karmen was eventually forced to find a blanket and cover him to prevent the sun from baking him. She poured water down his throat and made some attempts to wake him. There was no response. Several times she thought she heard helicopters or boats. Always the horizon remained empty. Other times she thought she heard the faint sound of screaming and torture but that turned out to be imagination as well.
She did not let her mind drift back to the oilrig. A few times she found her mind trying to force her to recall what had happened there. Already the entire episode had taken on an unreal light and feel in her mind. It was like she had spent a few days watching a movie of someone else fighting some demonic force. If not for the fact it was only herself and J.D. with very real injuries, she would allow herself to believe that it had been a dream. Joe was no longer here. Mark was gone. The pain of those losses tugged at her heart and mind but she refused to let them grab hold.
Sometime before noon and before the sun reached its apex the sound of rotor blades emerged from the sound of lapping waves. At first Karmen assumed she was hearing things again but then the sound came closer and became louder. Karmen stood and scanned the horizon. She spotted the dot in the sky and allowed herself a moment to feel relieved.
Later that night, as she lay in a hospital on the mainland with bandages around her own head Karmen stared at the television without really understanding what was being said and wondered what had happened. The pictures were meaningless. Pictures of Kevin Iler danced across the screen and hovered over the shoulders of the news anchors. She felt hatred burn in her for the man who had sent them in there knowing it was a lost cause but not caring because all he care about was the bottom line.
As the drugs worked their way into her system and into her brain she let her control over her emotions slip. She remembered Joe’s face and Mark’s smile and she began to weep. Her tears were tempered with anger and they burned her tear ducts and left hot trails down both of her cheeks. She wept for all of them including the workers she had never met and who had died because of one mans insatiable love of making money and total devotion to a company rather than humans with feelings and lives.
Just before she slipped away into the first deep sleep she’d had in days she vowed she would make Kevin Iler pay for the lives he had cost.
Epilogue
Kevin Iler was having the worst day of his career. Considering the events of the past few months that was saying something. He had done everything he could to cover things up, destroy evidence and save face over the disaster at Rig 42. He’d spent hours shredding paper and erasing tapes in an effort to distance himself from any decision to hire mercenaries or that might show he cared not a whit for any worker’s life. He spent many more hours screaming and threatening and physically and verbally abusing every employee that came near his orbit. He had screamed so loud that he lost his voice for three days about a month ago.
All around him those that had once trembled in his presence now laughed behind his back. He knew they were laughing. He could feel them laughing. The more he raged the more they laughed because they knew he was finished. Rig 42 had been his baby. The company had devoted huge amounts of funding to that project based solely on his ideas, projections and assurances. The rig was now at the bottom of the ocean. People had lost their lives. It was only a matter of time before it all fell apart.
The two mercenaries had been his original scapegoats. Kevin gave press conferences where he denied knowing who they were. He pinned their hiring on Larry Appling who was still missing from the disaster. He then blamed the mercenaries and tried to paint hem as terrorists who had killed all of the original workers using nerve gas and then painted themselves as heroes so the company would send them back to the rig where they promptly showed their true colors and blew it to pieces. He had no evidence of any kind to back up any of the accusations. His efforts were complicated by the fact that Karmen and J.D. simply vanished from the hospital one night and no one had seen them since.
Karmen and J.D. remained frustratingly silent during his tirade. They had not spoken a word to anyone about what happened out on the open sea like Kevin hoped they would. Nothing would distract from him like two mercenaries on television spouting tales of demons and portals into hell. Kevin knew what had happened thanks to tracking devices he had planted on Larry before he left. He had video tape of nearly everything until Larry himself confronted the thing.
Lawsuits came from the families of the workers and the families of those he sent later. The Board of Directors, Kevin’s true bosses, began to make threatening phone calls to his office and leave ominous messages on his voicemail. Kevin found himself in front of the media answering questions ever-falteringly. He was losing respectability and he knew it. He knew how the play the patsy game and he knew he was being set up.
For weeks Kevin had shown up at work and walked straight to his office. He slammed the door and locked it behind him and did not emerge until everyone else had gone home. He no longer raged as loudly. He had ceased making threats to blow up cars or destroy entire families. In his mind he planned to do those things but he stopped screaming so much.
About a month ago GemCo stock began being purchased by one particular buyer in large bundles. The stock had been plummeting like a rock through fresh water for a while now and was an ridiculous bargain. The Board knew that someone was trying to take a controlling interest in the company but they were having difficulty finding out exactly who was doing the buying. They knew it was a company but the company appeared to be new and small. It was a small fish trying to become a much bigger one by taking over one of the largest oil companies in the world. They gained control last wee
k and two new members were added to the Board of Directors. Today had been the day that Kevin was supposed to meet them.
The paperwork flew over the past few days like planes over a busy airport. GemCo changed hands effortlessly. Kevin had new bosses. Kevin knew that he was marching up the gallows.
He dressed in his best suit just this morning and drove down to the offices where his new bosses did their business. He was forced to wait eight hours in a sterile lobby of marble and glass doors and an annoying secretary with an annoying voice. After eight hours he was told that the executives had been caught up in meetings and were sorry but they would have to reschedule. Kevin felt his blood boil at the indignity of it all but he kept his mouth shut and saved the tirade for his car.
Kevin drove back to his office. When he reached the office there was a voicemail waiting for him. He saw the red light on his phone and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He dialed the number and knew that he was fired. The message was long and rambling and full of business-speak but the end result was the same. Kevin Iler was out of a job and he needed to vacate the office immediately. The new executives would be moving in the next morning.
Kevin spent the last few hours packing his office. He managed to fit his personal things into one box since he never kept mementos of his family. He never wanted any personal distractions around him when he was at work. He stopped to piss on the desk and the leather chair before he grabbed his box and walked out of the office. He dumped a cold pot of coffee on the secretaries’ desk as he walked past.
He descended in the elevator and his mind was full of thoughts of revenge. He imagined tracking down these new executives and sneaking into their houses and slitting their throats with knives he found in their own kitchens. He reached the parking garage and allowed himself to smile at the thought. He knew that he would have another job within the week. He had been fired before and bigger scandals than this one had swirled around him. Companies were always willing to forgive past indiscretions when you were avid and devoted to making money.
The garage was dark and humid as he walked through. His car was halfway down the row just outside the elevator. His feet echoed off the stone walls. He was lost in thought and ideas of revenge and murder and didn’t hear the footsteps that joined his own.
“Good evening, Mr. Iler,” said a voice from behind him.
Kevin jumped and dropped his keys. The box slipped from his hand and he heard a coffee mug break as it hit the floor. He turned to see a man standing in the shadows. The man moved forward into the dim light and Kevin saw J.D. Kartos leaning on a cane.
“You,” Kevin said, “what do you want? How did you get in here?”
J.D. smiled. “One question at a time. I got in here because I am now an executive at GemCo, old boy.”
J.D. let his smile become a toothy grin. His teeth had been fixed and they shown brilliantly white in against the darkness around him.
“You?” Kevin asked. “How?”
“I see we’ve gone the monosyllable route tonight,” J.D. said. “Over the years I have saved quite a bit of money. My services don’t come cheap. I have people all over the world who work for me. I called in a lot of favors. I don’t know exactly how it all works. Business was never much my thing, but they set up some kind of company for me and then started buying up stock. I staged a hostile takeover. It was fun. It was even more fun watching you sit in our lobby all day getting angrier and angrier when we knew all along that the decision had been made to fire you. That was the whole point, really.”
Kevin’s face flushed with anger. He stammered. His hands clenched into fists. He took a step forward. J.D. raised the cane and pointed it at Kevin’s face.
“Control yourself, asshole,” he said. “It wasn’t enough just to fire you. You really should take some anger management classes. You’ve been such an asshole on a galactic level for so long that people you’ve stepped on have been accumulating information about you for years. I’ve had people working on you since you hired me. A lot of that information is very unflattering. All of it is going to be released to the press tomorrow morning.”
J.D. smiled again. Kevin screamed a litany of curses. His voice thundered though the garage and echoed of the walls. Threats were hurled. J.D. laughed and his laughter reached such a level that Kevin stopped his blustering.
“Are you done?” J.D. asked. “Good. I was content with ruining you and sending you out on the street. I was willing to take delight in watching your belongings repossessed. I was looking forward to walking into whatever fast-food joint agreed to hire you eventually and ordering a burger and fries from you. Maybe a burrito. I hadn’t decided which fast-food place would make me more delighted to see you working in. However, I have a business partner now. Well, my partner wasn’t satisfied with that. No, my partner didn’t want to go along with that plan at all.”
Kevin felt faint. His eyes shifted nervously in their sockets like a wild animal’s. He was sweating. His throat hurt. He looked around but didn’t see anyone else.
“Who?” He asked. “What?”
“Still with the single syllables, I see,” J.D. said. “Well, you took something very special from my partner. I was just pissed that you never bothered to pay us but you took something from my partner much more important than money. Yes, Mr. Iler, just in case you were wondering, there are more important things in this world besides money. She’s really pissed at you.”
“She?” Kevin asked.
J.D. stepped to one side. From within the shadows behind him Karmen Etland stepped into the light. She was actually dressed in business suit. Her hair was in a ponytail. Here eyes burned with a hatred Kevin had not seen before. His eyes traveled over her form and saw the black gloves she wore and the shiny silver automatic pistol with the silencer on it.
“Wait –“ he managed to say.
Karmen stood in the shooter’s stance. She raised the pistol and fired without saying a word. She fired so quickly that Kevin had no chance to let out a scream. She started low. A bullet went into each knee. Two bullets went into his stomach. One bullet found a home in each elbow. Finally, a bullet shot into his throat. Each shot was designed to cause maximum pain. The throat wound would eventually kill him but it would take a while as he gagged and choked on his own blood. She lowered the pistol.
“Feel any better?” J.D. asked her.
She never took her eyes off of the writhing, bleeding body. “Much.”
“Should we go upstairs and check out our new offices?” J.D. asked and pointed to the elevator.
She shook her head. “No, let’s get out of here. I don’t want to come back to this place until this garbage has been taken out and disposed of.”
“Fair enough,” J.D. said. “Let’s go.”
J.D. hobbled towards the car parked near the elevator. Karmen walked over to Iler who lay there gagging and choking. He tried to move his arms but his elbows wouldn’t let his arms bend. His mouth was open and his face red. His eyes were open wide in terror and pain. Karmen kneeled down and smiled. Then she kicked him hard across the face, breaking his nose.
“Please,” she said, “take a very long time to die.”
She turned and walked away from the bleeding man. She climbed into the driver’s seat, started the car and drove out of the garage.
It took Kevin a long time. Eventually he discovered that there indeed was much more to the world than money. It was quite a shock to him, actually.
THE END
