Offshore (39 page)

“
I am…we are, but something else…came up.”

“
Something more important than finding our medic? And what’s
so important you couldn’t use the radio?”

“
They’re not … working,” he panted.

“
What?”

“
That’s what I was … trying to tell you.”

“
Take your time. Catch your breath.”

Cameron
took a few deep breaths, steadying himself.

“
Okay. We - Matt and I - assumed you - because you’d had a
bit of a - pasting –” He took in another breath. “We assumed you
hadn’t - managed to call for help and so - so we went to the
control room to - to find a short wave and do it
ourselves.”

“
Good thinking. Did you find it?”

“
No. Didn’t get the chance. You should see the place, Guv;
it’s a helluva mess. Brewer trashed it. Everything’s smashed up,
portable radio control’s busted. Matt’s working on fixing it now. I
think Brewer–” At that moment, Eddie’s handset crackled into
life.

“
Boss you there? Can you hear me?”

Eddie
snatched at the radio. “Yeah! Go ahead Matt. Over.”

Shaw
confirmed Cameron’s story, the control room was wrecked and he
should come and see it. The call then cut off without
warning.

“
Gone off again,” said Eddie, giving the handset a little
shake. “Let’s go and see what’s what.”

They
approached the darkened room with caution.

“
Why’d he put the lights off?” said Cameron, pushing open
the door. “Matt,” he hissed.

No
answer.

“
Matt!”

He
spotted the bloodied axe leaning against the table. “That wasn’t
here when I left,” he said. “He said he’d left it in the
loo.”

Eddie
eased his hand through the door, felt for and flicked the light
switch. Banks of fluorescent lights flared into life. He stepped
into the room, Cameron following close behind. Too
close.

“
Back up a bit, mate,” he said, elbowing him
away.

“
Sorry.”

The room
appeared to be empty.

“
He’s not here,” said Eddie. “What the fuck is he playing
at?” He shouted into the room. “Matt Shaw! Stop fucking about and
show yourself. This is no time for playing bloody hide and
seek.”

Silence.

“
Boss? Is that...?”

Cameron’s hushed urgent tone made Eddie turn to see a pale
scared face, wide eyes staring at the ceiling and its dull red
spatter pattern. His gaze followed Cameron’s. A large ruby droplet
detached itself from the grotesque graffiti and fell onto the desk
with a wet
put
.

Eddie
stepped back, knocking his hip against the operator’s chair and
setting it into an idle spin.

A half
revolution, and it revealed to him its awful passenger, a human
shape in navy coveralls with a maroon cape of blood, a ragged mass
where its head should be, and in its lap, the slack mouthed spiky
haired turnip lantern that was Matt Shaw’s brain pan.

Cameron
staggered, veins shot through with ice. His throat spasmed,
compressing his flow of air into a small tight squeak of pure
terror.

The last
of the colour washed from his face and he turned on his heels and
bolted from the room with the pace of an Olympic
sprinter.

Eddie,
rooted to the spot, could only swear. Oh, how he swore.

Finally
able to tear his eyes from the repulsion in the chair, he realised
he was alone. Cameron was long gone.

“
Cam?” He ran to the door and bellowed down the stairwell.
“CAM!”

He
returned to the control room and dashed to the window in time to
see a figure sprinting over the deck below. How had he managed to
get down there so quickly? He hammered on the toughened glass
pane.

“
CAM! Get back here!”

A waste
of effort. The double glazed windows were all but soundproof. The
figure vanished from view, consumed by shadows. Eddie depressed the
transmit button on his radio.

“
Get back here, Cam, you hear me? I can’t do this on my own.
CAM!” Only static replied. “Cameron, I’m ordering you–”

“
To do what? You have no authority here any
more.”
Shaw’s voice rang as clear as a bell inside his head. He
risked the briefest glance towards the operator’s chair. Its grisly
passenger stared back at him, a half smile on its blue
lips.

“
You’re done here, Capstan.”

At that,
Eddie, too, fled.

Half a
dozen strides out into the corridor and his feet turned to lead. He
stumbled, fell against the wall and slid down onto his haunches;
frightened, alone, weighed down by an almost unbearable
despondency.

After a
full five minutes sobbing out hot bitter tears of self reproach, of
fear, and of pure and utter uselessness, he wiped his face on his
sleeve, sniffed wetly and hauled himself to his feet.

“
Pull yourself together you fucking coward,” he chided as he
smoothed the creases out of the front of his overalls with slow
deliberate strokes. “Cameron might have scuttled off to hide his
useless carcass but Lydia is still out there somewhere, defenceless
and scared. She needs you. She’s depending on you. So shift yer
stumps and go find her.”

Chapter 46

“
He cut his head off! He cut Matt’s
head off. Jesus Christ All-fucking-mighty! And now he’s going to
get me.”

Cameron
burst through the bulkhead door and out onto the deck, the wind
filled with shards of half frozen rain lashing at his exposed skin,
stinging like a whole nest of wasps. He looked around, eyes like
dinner plates, swimming with tears of fear, gasping breaths burning
his lungs and throat, not knowing which way to go. He felt a sick
detached dizziness as his mind raced.

“
He’s going to kill me! He’s going to cut my head off. Oh
Jesus and Mary help me - got to get away - got to. I don’t want to
die–”

He
stumbled blindly about, seeking some form of escape, somewhere to
hide, until he found himself in the middle of the deck, eyes
filling with ice water as he looked up the empty skeleton of the
moveable derrick, chocked in place over the blocked off mouse hole,
disappearing into the night like an arrow.

With its
top drive and 30 foot pipe stacks removed, he could clearly make
out the wooden box of the crow’s nest 140 feet above him. It was as
high as he could go. Beyond that, clouds the colour of doom raced
by at a dizzying rate.

“
Up! I’ll go up! Get to the crow’s nest and hide. He won’t
find me up there.”

He
grabbed hold of the icy rungs of the derrick ladder and began to
climb. It was hard work. He couldn’t get the rhythm. The rails were
wet and slippery and he kept losing his grip.

Pffft
!

A small
explosion sounded below him and something metallic pinged by his
right hip, a bright spark flaring on the upright of the
ladder.

Cameron
halted and looked down to see Brewer on the deck below him,
grinning back at him like a lunatic, the pneumatic nail gun in his
hand fully loaded and pointed directly at him.

He
snatched at the next rung up with frigid fingers and started to
climb for his life. Not fast enough. Another explosion and an
inferno erupted in his right thigh.

A hit,
gone deep, down to the bone, touching a nerve. He yelled as pain
shot through his leg and buttock, immobilising him, leaving him a
stationary target.

Another
discharge, another hit, this time across the back of his right
hand, gouging a furrow in his skin; hot, wet, stinging.

Blood
oozed between his fingers to mix with the half frozen rain, making
the already slippery metal rung too slick to grip.

He
snatched at the upright instead, hooking his elbow around it to
haul himself up one more step, forcing his wronged leg into action,
raising his boot and placing it on the rung. He offered it his body
weight.

Without
warning his foot shot out from under him, leaving him dangling
precariously by his crooked arm. Seeing his helpless target
scrambling desperately for another foot and hand hold, Euterich
took careful aim - and fired.

The nail
entered Cameron’s left bicep, numbing his arm to his wrist. All
strength, all grip, left it.

With
nothing to hold on to, or to hold on with, and with no safety
harness to stop him, Duncan Cameron screamed into the dark as he
plunged through fifty feet of fresh air into the outstretched arms
of the Grim Reaper.

On the drill deck below, nail gun in hand, Euterich watched
the screaming figure plummet toward the dark cube of the doghouse.
A sickening
crash
as it punched its way through the structure’s roof,
followed by a deep and penetrating silence.

Euterich
grinned and nodded his satisfaction. “Full house,” he said, and
made his way back inside.

He had a
love nest to prepare.

Chapter 47

Lydia
heard the scream, faint above the wind; a terrified piercing
screech followed by a harsh crash.

Who had
it been? Shaw? Duncan?

Brewer,
please God?

She
listened for more. Only the howl of the wind and the distant rumble
of thunder answered. The loneliest sounds she’d ever
heard.

What
were her choices now? Sit here meekly in the dark and wait for
someone to rescue her?

But
suppose there was no one left. Suppose that scream had been the
last of them dying. What then?

What if
it hadn’t been Brewer, but one of the others? What if now it was
just her and her insane rapist, and he was on his way back,
possibly to violate her again? Or kill her? Perhaps she should do
it herself and save him the trouble.

It
wouldn’t be hard to finish what she started five years ago, opening
up the scars again, and it would certainly take the shine off
Brewer’s day to get back from his mysterious mission to find her
lifeless body bleeding out onto the filthy sacks.

“
No! You’re not getting away with it that easy!” She
scrabbled around seeking her panties. “Eddie might be
dead...”

She
swallowed down the words, drew a breath and continued. “But there’s
always the chance, no matter how slight, that Cameron, or Shaw,
might still be alive. Even if they’re not, that demon is not going
to touch me again.” She raised her voice to the ceiling. “I will
fight you with the last drop of my blood and the last breath in my
body, Brewer, so help me God. Only one of us is leaving this place
alive, and it’s not going to be you.”

She
found the underwear and wriggled into them, flinching as she pulled
them up. The rape had bruised her, possibly torn her, but she
couldn’t worry about that now.

The door
handle did not yield under her grappling with it and she’d heard
the metallic clatter as he fitted the padlock. The fox wasn’t
taking any chances of his hen fleeing the coop while he went a
huntin’.

Time for
some logical thinking.

Where
was she? An equipment store?

And what
did an equipment store have plenty of? Tools. Big, heavy, metal
tools.

Big,
heavy tools – small, slight woman. Not a good combination, but
throw in a rush of adrenaline and a whole shit load of anger, and
her strength doubled.

Feeling
her way around the store, her hands came upon all manner of cold
metallic object, in all shapes and sizes - spanners, wrenches,
hammers, chisels, then - a long wooden shaft. A broom. She let her
hands drift down to its base, a solid metal rectangle. A sledge
hammer.

Using
every ounce of strength she could muster she dragged the tool
across the floor to the window more than halfway up the
wall.

Not tall
enough to reach it.

She
leaned the hammer against the wall and fumbled about the room
again, praying she might come across a stepladder.

Not a
chance. A galvanised bucket was the best she could find. It would
have to do.

She
upended it, climbed on it, and took hold of the hammer’s wooden
handle.

Christ
it was heavy.

Sucking
in deep breaths and summoning a strength she never knew she had,
she swung the hammer at the toughened glass pane.

It
bounced harmlessly off, rebounding back at her, its inertia
unbalancing her and forcing her off her perch.

“
Fuck it!” She climbed up again. This time she swung the
hammer like she meant it. For Eddie.

The
window cracked under the blow. Yes!

Again.
And again. And again. The metal block pounded at the window until
the glass was no more than a crazy pattern of interconnecting
cracks. Yet still it did not yield.