Offshore (8 page)

Instinct
kicked in. Noises?

Yes.
Footfall. Heavy and regular. Getting closer. Stopping right outside
the door. His prayer answered with the sound of scraping, a
metallic clank and a creak of hinges.

Chapter 10

Lonny
Dick employed all his brute strength to shift aside the heavy
crates of engine parts blocking the outward opening door to the
fabrication workshop.

With
room to manoeuvre he wrenched the door open, picked up a cardboard
box from the floor, tucked it under a meaty arm, and stepped over
the sill.

He
screwed up his face in a sour grimace when the overpowering stench
hit him.

“
Fucking hell! What died in here?”

In the
airless fug, the underlying pongs of methylated spirits and engine
oil were as roses compared to the acidic throat burning stink which
reminded him of cat piss, rotting meat, and dog shit.

He
pressed one of a series of switches on the wall at the door and a
single fluorescent tube in the centre of the ceiling flickered into
life, producing a harsh blue-white light sufficient for him to move
about in, but leaving corners and alcoves in deep, intimidating
shadow.

The rank
smell burned his nose and nipped his eyes. Having previously worked
in hot and putrid swamp, replete with mouldering vegetation and the
decaying corpses of dead animals, this was more than even he could
bear and he took to breathing through his mouth, the foetid air
tasting marginally better than it smelled.

“
Bloody rats! Filthy buggers!”

Another
switch operated a powerful extractor fan which whirred into life,
sucking the miasma out and drawing in a draught of fresh air
through the still open door.

It did a
good job and in a few minutes Lonny could breathe through his nose
without feeling sick. He closed the door but left the fan running
to carry errant wisps of the fragrant smoke he would soon be
producing out of reach of the detectors.

Dragging
a wooden packing crate from an alcove by the washroom, he sat on
it, balancing the carton on his knees. From it came a smuggled can
of beer, a small metal box, a packet of cigarette papers and a
cheap disposable - and illegal - lighter.

He
popped the ring on the can and swallowed half its contents in a
series of convulsive swallows, belched, and wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand.

Another
quaff and he set the can on the floor beside him. He then took the
metal box and carefully prised it open, taking a deep appreciative
inhalation of its densely packed contents.

As the
sweet sweaty scent of his tobacco marijuana mix reached the back of
his nose his ears picked up a sound behind him - a soft, muffled
scratching, like nails on wood. He froze and listened closely, his
entire attention concentrated on identifying the sound.

There it
was again. A barely there skittering. The hated rats, or someone in
the room with him?

Had one
of his workmates followed him down to spy on him; to deprive him of
his little pleasures?

He
snapped the box closed.

Let them
try.

Without
moving his head he tracked his gaze over the adjacent workbench and
the tools lying on the shelf beneath it. He immediately picked out
the unmistakable shape of a Stillson adjustable pipe wrench. A big
one too.

On the
pretence of accidentally dropping the box, he lowered himself to
his knees and shuffled the three feet to the bench, wrapped his
hand around the handle of eighteen inches and five kilograms of
forged steel, and eased it out.

With it
snug against the palm of his hand, his long legs unfolded, he drew
himself to his full height, tool in hand. Another soft scratching;
a little louder this time. Back rigid, he turned to face the
direction of the sound, ears keen, eyes trained on the patch of
gloom in front of him. He took a step forward, peering into the
shadow, the wrench now raised like a club ready to
strike.

“
Who’s there? Show yourself.”

He
screwed up his eyes as if it would sharpen his focus on an area of
shadow somewhat darker than the rest.

“
Is that you Reynolds, you prick? Come out where I can see
you proper.”

Silence.

“
Come out Reynolds, else I’ll come in after you and then
you’ll be sorry.”

A murky
patch within the shadow shifted, quivered, and then shrank back
into the dark with what sounded like a sigh.

Lonny
stood stock still, his damp hand rigid around the wrench, ready to
defend himself against imminent attack. His tense jaw twitched as a
bead of cold sweat rolled down his temple.

“
Last chance, Reynolds. Come out or I’m coming to get you,
and when I do I’m gonna smash your face in!”

•

The dweller tried, but found he could not stand, managing
only to get halfway to his feet before his legs failed, too weak to
support him. They folded at the knees, and with a sigh of fatigue
he dropped to the ground.

He had no choice. Desperation overrode dignity, and on all
fours he crawled like a baby, forward into the light, towards the
man.

•

Lonny
could not believe his eyes. A dog? Down here? Nah!

He squinted at it out of a contorted India rubber face,
trying to work it out. If this
was
a dog, it was no breed he knew.

At first
glance it looked more like a rat, a bloody big rat at that.
Although … not that either. A combination creature? A rat/dog
blend? Yeah, that would do it, if there was such a
thing.

Maybe it
was some weird foreign dog species, misshapen by uncontrolled
inbreeding. Whatever it was it was the skinniest beast he had ever
seen alive.

The
animal raised its strangely elongated head, and with blank white
eyes like pickled eggs looked up at the massive man.

Blind?

On the
side of its head where its ears should be, cartilaginous crescents
twitched around dark openings.

Deaf?

It had
no nose, no snout, only holes in the middle of its face. Neither
did it have a tail, and its back looked curiously hunched, as if
the hind legs were bent out of shape and tucked underneath
it.

How had
anything so deformed managed to survive at all?

The
beast heaved itself forward as if to get a better look at the man,
its nails scratching on the chequer plate composite
flooring.

The
source of the skittering sound?

In the
light Lonny could see where the beast’s ribs, spine, and hip bones
protruded, painfully stretching its parchment-like hide to its
limit, creating sharp angles over which the skin had broken into
open weeping sores, around which random mangy patches of dark hair
clustered, rendered stiff with dirt, oil and faeces.

This
animal was all but dead on its feet.

If it
really was there at all.

Lonny
hadn’t yet taken a single puff of his contraband, and just smelling
it in the tin wouldn’t have any hallucinatory effect, so maybe he’d
stepped into one of those undetected pockets of gas Eddie Capstan
warned them about, and it was affecting his brain, making him see
and hear things that weren’t really there. That’s how the Oracle at
Delphi worked, he’d seen it on the History Channel.

But the animal looked real enough, it certainly smelled
real enough, in fact it stank to the heavens, yet it
couldn’t
be
real.

And if
it was, in its current state it presented no threat to a man of his
size and strength.

He
lowered the metal tool and heaved a sigh, a heavy mixture of relief
and sympathy. It might not be any type of animal he recognised but
that didn’t mean it wasn’t suffering and didn’t need
help.

“
Hey there, boy, what the hell are you doing down
here?”

He got
down on one knee, stretching the cotton fabric of his overalls
tight over a massive thigh, and put out his hand, showing he meant
no malice.

The
animal, seemingly hesitant at first, crept forward to sniff at
it.

Lonny
allowed it time to take its readings of him, and when it was done
accepted a rasping lick from a dry hot tongue with the texture of
coarse sandpaper.

It
certainly felt real.

“
You thirsty?” he said, getting to his feet. “Let me find
you some water.”

He
emptied a collection of loose nuts and bolts from a plastic bucket
and filled it half full of fresh water from the tap in the
washroom.

This the animal
was
grateful for, sooking and lapping at it greedily.
The cool clean liquid quickly slaked its thirst.

“
Better,” Lonny said, and ran his hands along the animal’s
bony flanks, over every rib and vertebrae, pausing at its chest to
feel the rapid irregular drumming of its heart beneath his
hand.

“
There’s no need to be scared,” he said, keeping his voice
calm and low. He had dogs at home and knew it was the tone, not the
words, which mattered. Maybe it would work with this miserable
creature too.

“
I bet you’re hungry.” He rummaged in his pockets for a
snack, but found them empty. “Sorry boy, I’ve got nothing. I tell
you what … I’ll take you up to the galley. There’s lots of food up
there. We’ll have that belly of yours full in no time.”

He
looked around for something he could use as a leash. Finding a
suitable length of nylon strapping he formed it into a slack noose
ready to slip over the animal’s neck.

“
The guys upstairs will never believe I found you down
here,” he said as he worked. “I bet them bastards on the boat
dumped you here on purpose, didn’t they boy? Well don’t you worry,
buddy. We’ll have you as fit as a fiddle in no time.”

He
reached out one empty hand, the other hiding the rudimentary leash
behind his back. The dog/rat creature sat perfectly still,
expressionless eyes staring straight ahead.

“
Easy now,” cooed Lonny, and laid a thick warm hand on the
animal’s curiously misshapen head. “Good boy.”

Brimming
with confidence at his supposed mastery of the beast, he brought
out the leash and made to slip it around its neck, bringing it to
within inches of its snout.

The pain
of the bite, short and sharp like a red hot needle piercing his
skin, made him drop the leash and withdraw his hand.

“
Hey! That wasn’t nice. Bad dog!”

Lonny
examined his hand to see if blood was drawn, lifting the finger to
his mouth, to sook on it as would a child with a
splinter.

The
dog-beast merely squatted calmly on its bony haunches, staring at
him with those opaque white blanks as if waiting for
something.

Lonny
had been bitten by dogs many times, but never before had one
brought about this peculiar sensation. He didn’t like it and looked
closer at the wounded fingertip.

A single
drop of blood oozed from a puncture in the skin, paused and then
did an about turn and retreated back into the hole.

Blood
shouldn’t do that! Blood ran out, not in. Neither should skin
suddenly blanch bloodless white and tingle like the worst ever case
of pins and needles.

Something was not right here.

Lonny
could only gape in fascinated horror as the puncture began to
widen, opening into a split in the terminal pad of his index
finger, its margins at first a pale pink, rapidly deepening to
rose, then shifting through all the hues of red, past scarlet,
through to an unhealthy purple tinged with black - and it was
spreading, the whole of the fingertip down to the first knuckle
already affected, its nail detached, leaving behind a soggy
pit.

Lonny squealed terrified air from his lungs as the
discolouration spread over his hand, flesh bubbling and expanding,
rippling like a bag of worms as it separated from the structures
beneath, sloughing away like chicken skin from a well cooked
drumstick to fall to the floor with a sickening
plop
, exposing bone and muscle, ligament
and tendon.

And the
pain. Such agony. Intense, burning, like having his limb plunged
into molten metal.

His
large wet eyes gaped over a mouth hanging open like an empty sock,
whimpering like a bewildered child, his hand clamped over his
wrist, squeezing tightly in an effort to dam the spread of
disintegration.

A futile
gesture.

Its
progress continued unabated, racing like wildfire throughout his
entire body, inside and out. The accompanying pain intensified to a
searing torture, a torment which defied description, yet at the
same time exquisite in its intensity. Sadly, he had no time to
scream out his appreciation of the rapturous ecstasy of his own
dissolution before it engulfed him.

With a syrupy wet
gulp
the six foot five inch solid bulk frame of Lonny
Dick became little more than a glistening pile of bone and giblets
encased in navy and white cotton, neatly decorated with radio, gas
monitor and ID lanyard.