Hell Rig (9 page)

“Bale wore one,” Jeff said. “I’ve seen it.”

“What the hell could have done that?” Tolson asked her.

She shook her heard. “I don’t know—heat of some kind, maybe.”

Ed took charge. “Look, we’ve got to inform the authorities. Lisa, you and Jeff go see if you can call it in. The rest of us will divide up into pairs and scour this platform for whoever did this.”

“I ain’t going with Easton,” Tolson said. “Chicken-shit bastard.”

“I’ll take him,” Ed snapped.

Gleason rummaged through a pile of metal and picked up an iron rod three feet long and two inches in diameter. He took a couple of practice swings and smiled. “Yo, I’m ready.”

They paired up, Ed and Easton, McAndrews and Tolson, Jeff and Lisa. That left Gleason pairing with Waters or Sims. Waters looked at Gleason, took in the steel rod the big man brandished and stalked away. Gleason looked at Sims and shook his head. Ed saw the gesture.

“You want to come with one of us?” Ed asked Gleason.

“Nah, I work better alone. I’ll guard the fort for you guys.” He nodded toward the warehouse. “I’ll check that out first.”

“Yell if you find anything,” Ed told him.

“Or if anything finds you,” Easton added in a spooky voice.

Gleason took a step toward him. “You little pipsqueak. I’ll pound you into the deck.”

Easton laughed and ran ahead.

Gleason shook his head. “Bastard’s got no respect for nothing.”

“I’ll check out the main building,” Sims offered. If Gleason’s refusal to pair with him had offended, he did not show it.

“You do that,” Ed replied. To the others he repeated, “Yell if you find someone.”

Jeff watched Sims saunter away and wished someone was going to stay with him. He still didn’t trust Sims; even less now after Bale’s murder.

* * * *

Jeff walked beside Lisa, snatching quick glances at her. She seemed deep in thought. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I can’t believe it was one of us. Whoever did that isn’t human.”

“Not human?”

“I don’t mean supernatural. I just mean…how could someone do that, yet look and act normal?”

“Like Waters?” Jeff asked with a smile.

She smiled back at him. “Okay. Him I don’t trust.”

Jeff opened the door to the radio shack and allowed her to enter first. When she switched on the light, she gasped in shock. “My God!” she said. “Look at this mess.”

Jeff peeked around her, as she stood rooted to the spot and stared. His stomach did a cartwheel. The radio was useless, smashed beyond any hope of repair. Someone had wrenched the control panel from the wall, leaving exposed wires dangling. Sparks cascaded onto the floor. A small electrical fire had melted the plastic sheathing of some of the wires and several circuit boards. Tables and chairs lay upended and files strewn across the floor. Breaking free of her initial shock, Lisa ran to the radio and picked up the microphone. It dangled uselessly from a shredded cable.

The room smelled of fire, smoke and the dank, musty odor of the deep swamp. Jeff grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and sprayed foam on the sparking panel. Satisfied no flames would erupt, he shut down the main circuit breaker on the wall.

“It’s like a bad dream,” he said. He turned to Lisa, “Didn’t you say you found some spare parts?”

She shook her head, her eyes never leaving the destruction. “Parts, yes, but smashed, and there’s nothing left here to repair anyway. It’s all gone, demolished.”

“Who could have done this?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at him a moment, grimaced and shook her head.

“What?” he asked

“It’s nothing.”

He could tell she wanted to know something. “Go ahead. Ask?”

“Is it unusual that there are no insects, spiders or rats out here? I would assume that a rig would be the perfect place for them, birds too.”

“I’m sure there are some somewhere. Maybe the hurricane flushed most of them out, you know, rats desert a sinking ship.” But even as he spoke, he knew she was right. He had not seen a single spider web, gull, rat dropping or any sign of life since they had arrived. Even his storm theory did not account for a total lack of life.

She shook her head. “It’s more than that. It’s, well, it’s as if the air here was dead, too. It has no vitality. A deep breath doesn’t clear your head or invigorate you. Even sounds seem muted, hollow.”

Jeff thought of the trip out on the helicopter as they neared the platform when he, too, had noticed the muting effect.

“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation, low pressure system or something. Maybe it’s just our imaginations. Waters can get under your skin.”

“Maybe you’re right. It’s just—”

Her sentence ended abruptly as they both turned toward the sound of a loud scream, outside the shack. “That sounded like Sid,” Jeff said.

He led the way out of the shack and around the blockhouse. At first, they could find nothing. The lights were once again off, though they could hear the generator running. Near the rear door to the main building, they found him.

Suspended in Jeff’s flashlight beam, Sid Easton stood silhouetted against the side of the building, his face as pale as his t-shirt, his mouth open, his chest heaving. His eyes were wide, wild and staring into the darkness, ignoring Jeff’s flashlight.

“What is it Sid? What happened?” Lisa asked.

Sid jumped when she touched his shoulder. He looked up at her but stared blankly without recognition. His body trembled. Droplets of spittle ran down his chin.

“Sid, it’s me, Jeff. What happened?” Jeff looked around. “You were with Ed.” A lump formed in his throat when he thought of Ed and the hideous scream. “Where’s Ed?” Jeff placed his hand in front of Easton’s eyes moving it back and forth. Easton’s eyes slowly followed his hand. His lips moved but formed no words.

“I’ll tell you where I am,” Ed’s angry voice came from the darkness of the stairwell.

Lisa shined her flashlight toward him. His face was red and he climbed slowly as if exhausted. He was gasping for breath.

“The pipsqueak yelled and took off with the only flashlight; left me alone in the dark. I had to feel my way back up the stairs.” Ed noticed Easton’s expression. “What happened to him?”

Lisa answered. “We don’t know. We heard him scream and found him like this. He looks frightened to death.”

“He didn’t scream,” Ed told them. “We both heard the scream while we were below on the landing deck. Suddenly, Sid yelled and ran past me and up the stairs two at a time. I’ve got to tell you, with all that’s happened I imagined all kinds of things in the dark before I got mad enough to come looking for him.”

Easton sighed. Seeing Ed brought back some of the color to his cheeks. He slid down the wall to a sitting position, his arm flung over his eyes. Jeff shook his shoulders. He moved his arm and looked up. “Jeff?”

“Yeah, it’s me. What the hell happened?”

He shook his head and closed his eyes. After more prodding from Jeff, he opened them and looked up. “I heard a scream, a horrible scream. The shadows…the shadows reached out and grabbed me, tried to smother me.” A whine escaped his lips. “It was cold and, and awful. I looked at Ed and he was dead, burned up, his skin peeling off in large patches. A voice whispered to me.” He stopped talking and began to whimper.

“Sid!” Ed yelled. “What did the voice say?”

“Oh, God,” he moaned. “It was Bale’s voice. He said, ‘You’re next’.”

“That’s it?” Ed asked.

Easton looked at Jeff and the others before hanging his head and nodding vigorously. They looked at each other in confusion. Lisa began to say something but Jeff stopped her with a shake of his head. They watched in mutual silence as Easton trembled on the deck, unsure of what to do. He seemed physically untouched but it was apparent that something had badly frightened him.

“Let’s get the others back here,” Ed suggested. He picked up a steel pipe and began banging it loudly on the deck.

* * * *

Tolson and McAndrews had begun their search of the cellar deck in the woodshop. Wading through two feet of icy water, Tolson tried to bite back on his usual flippant remarks to get the job done quickly, but the silence and tension required release. Bits of wood and paper floated in the foul
consommé
the water had become since the hurricane. He reached down and picked up a water-soaked pack of cigarettes that caught his attention.

“Care for a smoke,” he joked as he offered one to McAndrews. McAndrews grimaced and shook his head. Tolson squeezed the carton like sponge. Dirty water ran out, leaving only a crushed mass of paper and tobacco. “Looks like the shit Big Clyde chews,” he said with disgust and tossed the unappealing mass away.

Their flashlights splashed across rusting handsaws, hacksaw blades, chisels, hand drills, drill bits and draw knives still hanging neatly from a pegboard on the wall.

“Looks like some macabre weapons locker,” Tolson commented.

McAndrews shined his light in Tolson’s face, raised one eyebrow and shook his head slowly. Water logged power tools sat on benches and everywhere there were stacks of wood.

“What was that?” McAndrews fanned his flashlight quickly across the room. “I saw someone.”

Tolson picked up a piece of wood and hefted its weight as a weapon. He aimed his flashlight with McAndrews’ light and began to laugh.

“There’s your man,” he said, playing his flashlight on a jacket hanging over a drill press.

McAndrews shrugged with a sheepish look on his face. “Looked like a man,” he said.

Tolson slammed his piece of wood across the jacket. It thudded solidly on the drill press. “There! He won’t bother you again.”

McAndrews mumbled something unintelligible and shook his head.

The next workroom was the steel shop. It was equally flooded and in equal disarray. A portable welder sat in one corner, half submerged in the brackish water.

“What a waste,” Tolson said in disgust after eyeing the rust. He checked the gauges on a cutting torch sitting beside it. “Almost empty. What a waste of good equipment.”

They examined the rest of the room quickly. Half-completed projects sat on benches or clamped securely in vices. An assortment of various sized metal rods and flat bars rose vertically from a steel drum, brown-red rust climbing them like dripping blood in reverse. Many of the rusting metal lockers lining one wall were pad locked. Tolson battered at one with his wooden club until it sprang open, dropping a coffee thermos in the water at his feet. He leaped back in surprise, eliciting a fleeting smirk from McAndrews.

“Nothing here,” Tolson said.

On the way out, he noticed a watch lying just beneath the surface of the water.

“My lucky day,” he said, reaching down to pick it up. It came up with a severed arm still attached. “What the hell!” he yelled, tossing the arm across the room. His heart pounded and his chest heaved for air. The odor of the rotting flesh assailed him, churning his stomach. He frantically wiped his hands on his pants.

“Looks like the rescue crew missed a body part,” McAndrews said. He calmly waded across the room, grabbed a leather work apron from a table and used it to pick up the arm. He looked around, found a plastic five-gallon bucket with a top and placed the arm inside, resealing it afterwards. “Forensics can check the DNA to find out whose arm it is.”

Tolson, recovering, answered, “I don’t think it will matter much to whoever lost it.”

McAndrews’ face clouded over for a moment. “Maybe it will to his family.”

“Yeah, okay, but you carry it.”

Tolson tried to quiet his racing heart as they thoroughly checked the dry chemical room next door. They found nothing amid the rows of barrels and bags Lisa had been cataloguing. Tolson picked up the clipboard Lisa had been using, took a deep whiff and smiled broadly. “Ah, women.”

“You’re a dog, Tolson,” McAndrews commented dryly. “Do you think of nothing but women?”

Tolson laughed and opened the door leading to the central corridor. “What else is there to think of?”

The small, enclosed hallway running down the center of the cellar deck proved equally empty. They had no better luck in any of the several storage rooms that opened off it—a broom closet, a bathroom and a utilities room containing an industrial-sized hot water heater. That left only the mudroom, a large room with an enormous vat at one end surrounded by pumps and pipes.

“What the hell is that?” Tolson asked, pointing to the six-foot tall vat with an open walkway running across it.

McAndrews smiled. “The mud vat. It’s empty now because the rig was being refitted, but when they drill a well, they fill the vat with chemicals, or drilling mud. They mix it here with big paddles until it becomes a thick slurry and pump it down the well shaft. Heavier than water, the mud keeps the well gases from blowing back up through the pipe.”

Tolson looked at McAndrews. “You know a lot about wells.”

McAndrews grinned. “I’ve been around a few in my time.”

Tolson decided to fish for information. McAndrews was hiding something. Why was he out on the rig? “What else have you done, in your time?”