‘Nikki? Nikki, can you hear me?’ Jane’s voice.
The radio was hung in a canvas bag beneath the hatch. Nikki spoke into a handset like a Bakelite telephone.
‘How’s it going, Jane?’
‘The crew transferred to Hyperion. I’m alone on the refinery.’
‘Nobody cares about your little gestures. Get over there and have a good time.’
‘Got a name for it yet?’
‘The boat? It’s a pile of nuts and bolts. Things are what they are.’
‘A boat has to have a name.’
‘I don’t want to find the poetry in my soul. I don’t want to rediscover my lost humanity. I’m trying hard to keep things real, which is probably why I’m part way home and you’re still trapped in that steel tomb.’
‘What will you do when you reach land? Have you thought about it?
‘Survival. The sovereign state of me. It’ll be bliss.’
‘How’s the weather?’
‘Calm enough. The wind cuts like a knife. Seem to be making good time. Hard to judge speed, but the current is strong.’
‘Position?’
‘By my reckoning I’m north-west of Murmansk. The current should funnel me past Norway the next few days. I’ll be out of radio contact long before then.’
‘Keep well. Keep lucky. Ill speak to you tomorrow.’
Nikki slept in her bunk. The hull was packed with supplies. Boxes of food, bags of clothes. She had shoved them aside to create a tight coffin space in which she could stretch out in a sleeping bag. The aluminium roof of the hull was directly above her head. She lay in the dark and listened to her breath, loud and harsh in the confined space.
An impact. A metallic scrape against the side of the boat. A second impact. An iceberg? A whale?
She flipped open the hatch. There were strange shapes in the water, clustered boulders like drifting chunks of ice. She switched on her flashlight and scanned the surface of the ocean. The sea was full of floating cars. White Nissan Navaras. An undulating vista of gloss metal reflecting the moonlight. Some of the utility vehicles were upside down. Water washed over galvanised chassis and alloy wheels. A cargo ship must have spilled its load. Freight containers washed from the deck, smashed open as they hit the sea. The cars held enough trapped air to keep themselves afloat.
Each time the vehicles nudged the boat Nikki heard the shriek of abrading metal. She worried the repeated impact of the cars might rupture the hull. She spent an hour climbing back and forth along the length of the boat. Her boots slipped on slick metal. She strained to push cars away with her feet. She was tied to the mast by a short leash to make sure she could quickly get back on board if she fell into the sea.
Once she was free of the car-slick she sat with her back to the mast and caught her breath.
Survival.
Once it was all stripped away, her job, personal loyalties, her name and history, what was left? Just the fact that she was alive and aware, adrift on a vast ocean.
She tuned the radio.
‘Hello? Hello? Hailing all vessels. Can anyone hear me?’
She heard a man’s voice, a calm and measured murmur. She couldn’t make out words. It was some kind of looped broadcast. It had faded in and out for days.
She looked to the horizon. The azure tint of distant daylight was mottled with heavy cloud. A storm heading her way.
Nikki stretched and composed herself, got ready to confront her next opponent like a boxer waiting for the round-one bell.
The Damned
Rye crossed the island, drawn by the lights of Hyperion. She wandered through the lower decks of the ship. The infection had spread down the entire right side of her body. Her flesh was blistered and scabrous. Metal filaments broke the skin of her right arm, her right leg and hip, and punctured her clothing. It didn’t hurt. Her body was numb.
She was still Elizabeth Rye. Her mind was clear. She yearned for madness. She desperately wished her consciousness would fog and dissolve.
Rye had seen, during the dissections she performed aboard Rampart, how this strange parasite infiltrated the nervous system of its victims. She wondered why the same metallic strands had yet to invade her synapses, choking off memory and emotion. She wanted to be dumb and thoughtless. She expected her disintegrating body to pace the ship for weeks to come propelled by the strange organism, long after her own consciousness had vacated the shell. But it hadn’t worked out that way. She was still present and aware.
Most of the passengers had gravitated to the vast lobby. Rye drifted through empty restaurants, a vacant cinema, a children’s play area with ball-pit and slide.
She amused herself in the sports centre for a couple of hours. She played table tennis against a wall. Her mutated body retained good movement.
She shot hoops. She powered up the golf simulator and thwacked balls down a digital fairway.
She found a mini-nightclub. No music, but the glitter ball still revolved. She hopscotched across the dance floor. Each tile lit up as she stood on it.
She wondered where the other passengers had gone.
Rye sought out the medical bay. Maybe she could load a hypodermic with morphine and put herself to sleep like a sick dog. Mix it with bleach, oven cleaner. Press the plunger. Feel good. Press the plunger some more. Lie back and let corrosives melt her brain.
A friend from medical school got a job on a cruise ship. He had an easy time. He ate, flirted and swam. All he had to do was listen for coded Tannoy announcements. ‘ Dr Jones to the white courtesy phone,’ meant he should head to Medical. ‘Dr Jones to the red courtesy phone,’ meant he should hurry to Medical to deal with an emergency. He dreaded the message ‘Dr Rose please report to the Neptune Bar,’ because Rose was the code-word for a coronary. Most passengers were elderly. At least one heart attack per trip. Someone sprawled on a restaurant carpet turning blue. The ship’s doctor would have to grab his resuscitation kit and haul ass.
Rye followed signs to Medical. Arrows and a little red cross.
Sjukhus
The infirmary had been ransacked. Instruments scattered across the floor. Bloody bed sheets bunched on the examination table. Blood sprayed up the wall. It looked as if an army surgical unit had treated hundreds of battlefield casualties then cleared out. The doctor aboard Hyperion had obviously done heroic work in his attempts to treat infected passengers before he too succumbed or was torn apart.
Rye felt hungry. She followed sombrero signs to the Tex Mex Grill. She wanted to crunch nachos.
She climbed stairs and walked down a passageway. Her path was blocked by a watertight door, one of the heavy steel hatches that had immediately dropped like a portcullis when Hyperion ran aground and took on water.
Rye put her ear to the hatch. She could hear faint music. ‘Gimme Shelter’. Muffled voices. Men talking, laughing. The Rampart crew on the other side of the door. They must have taken over the Grill.
Rye was overcome by loneliness. She leaned against the wall and wept.
The casino. A plush, Monte Carlo gambling den. A couple of roulette wheels, a craps table and a bar.
A showgirl lay dead and rotting on the floor. Sequins and pink ostrich plumes. A pulped mess where her head used to be.
Rye stepped over the body and approached five men sitting round a blackjack table. They wore ripped and bloody dinner jackets. One man was so far gone he was virtually a pillar of dripping metal. He was fused rigid and would clearly never leave his chair again. The croupier was slumped like he had fallen asleep. His head had melted
