Hell Rig (34 page)

Jeff hung his head and let the rain drip off his soaked Re-Berth cap. He couldn’t let his doubts, as myriad as they were, affect Lisa’s plan. He would have to support her fully or they would surely fail. He tried to think of similar times when trust triumphed over doubt, but could recall none. Of course, he had led a relatively quiet life until now. Surely, others had trusted deeply enough in their comrades or loved ones to risk everything. It would just have to be his first time, a virgin truster.

He hoped Tolson was still alive. There was nothing more they could do for him. He was probably safer in the emergency craft anywhere, out of the weather and away from marauding zombies. Lisa seemed to think Damballah Wedo would ignore him since he had touched him already. One thing Jeff did know, if Tolson didn’t get serious medical help soon, he would certainly die.

Jeff hid behind a steel drum as a man wearing a captain’s hat and Sid Easton shambled by. It seemed they had a plague of zombies. Their heads turned toward him but did not see him through the blinding rain. They ignored the fury of the storm as the rain fell in sheets and ran down their decaying bodies. Their wet clothing lay plastered to their skin by the wind. Jeff watched in disgust as the edges of the open wound in Easton’s torso flapped open, revealing the empty cavity inside.

He lost sight of them for a moment in the fury of the storm. The rain was so furious it created a solid wall of water across the deck, like a curtain. They had slipped through it and vanished.

Jeff eyed the crane. Even though the engine was out of diesel, the battery would still contain enough juice to at least swing the boom around and lower the cables. If all else failed, it might provide a means of escape. He could lower the cables and he and Lisa could slide down them into the water and their probable deaths. He wished the rig had two of the inflatable self-contained survival suits such as some rigs carried. Even those might keep them alive long enough for rescue; but that meant leaving Tolson and he wasn’t willing to do that yet. Too many of his friends had died on Global’s Hell Rig. He would have to let Lisa have her chance.

He saw her crawling toward him and his heart raced. She snuggled up against him.

“Miss me?” she asked.

Jeff saw she had her I-pod in her hand, cradling it against the rain. “Where do we go?”

“The only place we can—the chemical room.”

“I was afraid you would say that.” The chemical room had only two doors, the outside door and the one leading to the central hallway. It was an easy place in which to get trapped. “We need some kind of weapons.” He had dropped the Glock since it was out of ammunition and he had left the axe in the main building in his haste to escape.

“Maybe in the wood shop,” she suggested.

He nodded. A sharp saw blade or wood chisel was better than nothing. Using the outside staircase was dangerous but they had no choice. Hurricane Rita was slamming the rig with 135 mph winds. Each giant wave rang the rig like a bell. It staggered like a drunken man. Each second could be its last.

They slid down the rain-slick steps one at a time on their backsides to prevent being blown away. Even so, they had to cling tightly to the rails and to each other as sudden gusts literally lifted them from the stairs. Reaching the bottom only compounded their problem. They had to walk directly into the fury of the wind. They each took a moment to catch their breaths before hurrying to the wood shop. The icy knee-deep water did not matter since they were thoroughly soaked already.

Jeff searched the room for a weapon, any weapon. His eyes fell upon a large hatchet hanging on a tool pegboard attached to one wall, neatly centered upon the painted silhouette of a hatchet. He thanked the shop foreman for his neatness and grabbed it. He tested the edge and found it still sharp and free of rust. On the same pegboard he saw a two-foot long flat-head screwdriver, also in its proper place. The incongruousness of the neat pegboard amid the destruction and turmoil of the rig struck him as funny. He could almost envision the harried shop foreman racing around, neatly stowing away tools as the Digger Man chased him with whatever implement of torture he used. He laughed aloud, but immediately regretted it as Lisa shot him an irritated look. He grabbed both tools and stuck them in his belt. Searching further, he used the screwdriver to break the lock on a steel storage cabinet. Inside, he found a gas powered nail gun that still contained a CO2 charge. Using his screwdriver, he broke away the safety feature that prevented the accidental firing of the nail driver and handed it to Lisa.

“It’s like a gun,” he explained to her quizzical expression. “Just point and press the trigger.” He loaded it with a strip of nails and had her test fire it a few times. At first, she closed her eyes and flinched at the sound of the gas releasing, missing her target completely, but by the third shot she had managed to control the nail gun well enough to at least hit the target, if not the bulls eye. “You’ll do,” he said.

There was little else of use to them. Saws and saw blades were dull and rusty and more likely to infect them than to inflict damage on an opponent. As well armed as they could expect to be, they left and went to the chemical room, checking out the shadows and each nook and cranny of the corridor as they went. Jeff took a deep breath and plunged through the doorway, shining his flashlight around.

“Empty,” he said, ushering her inside. He dogged the door shut knowing it would not keep out Damballah Wedo but might at least slow his zombies.

Lisa looked at him and sighed. “He’ll know what I’m up to as soon as I start the ritual. Don’t try to fight him. Concentrate on the walking dead. Keep them away from me.” She handed him the nail gun. “Here, you’ll need it more than I do.” He took the nail gun. With nail gun in one hand and hatchet in the other, he at least looked ready to fend off a zombie horde.

She reached and wrapped her arms around him. Her lips felt warm and alive amid so much death, a wonderful oasis from what lay before them. He did not want to leave it but she pulled away. Without another word, she donned the earphones and turned on the I-pod. She closed her eyes and began to sway to the beat he could not hear. Her mouth opened and she began to silently chant.

There were no candles, no five-pointed star. She was beyond the need for them now. Her power came from inside. At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the atmosphere in the room changed subtly. The walls began to dissolve, revealing nothing beyond but deep shifting shadows. There was no storm, no rain just shadows. The floor beneath Lisa followed, breaking apart and disappearing like a dream. Lisa was dancing on air. Jeff backed away from the nothingness until he had no place left to run. His back was against the last remaining wall. It, too, vanished and he was floating. They were no longer on Global Thirteen.

Slowly, things shifted and they were standing on a stone platform whose edges trailed off into nothingness. Visible on the near edge, surrounding the platform, shadow columns stood soldier-like in neat rows. The platform was open to the black, starless sky, a hypaethral palace. Amid and at times merging with these columns like passing shadows, he recognized familiar objects—the crane standing like a two-dimensional child’s drawing near the edge of the platform; metal stairs that led to nowhere; stacks of drums and pallets of garbage, each there but insubstantial, as if only shadows of the real objects. He knew that he and Lisa were still on Global Thirteen, but only the parts that impinged on Damballah Wedo’s habitat.

In the distance, he could see a dark red swirling mass that pulsed and contracted like a beating heart—Hurricane Rita. Between the heart of the storm and the platform, a shimmering veil hung in folds suspended in the air. A myriad of colors ran through it, impossible colors with no earthly counterpart, as if he could see deep into the infrared and ultraviolet and other unknown spectrum normally invisible to the human eye.

He knew that this was the Gateway between life and death. Crimson thread-like veins and arteries laced the air between the platform and the Gateway. They pulsed sickeningly as they fed the blood of the dead to the Gateway. Similar threads like streaks of lightning raced between the heart of Hurricane Rita and the Gateway. As the storm drew closer, the pent up energy, the animal rage of the storm, would power the Gateway, opening it forever. This was what Damballah Wedo wanted; the thing he had broken ranks with the other Loas to achieve.

Lisa continued to dance. She twirled maddeningly, becoming almost invisible as nascent mists of arcane energy enveloped her body. She bent forward until her forehead touched stone and backwards just as far, as limber as a green willow twig. Her feet seemed at times to slip both above and below the stones of the floor, as if her dance transcended the limits of Damballah Wedo’s abode.

Far in the distance, north toward New Orleans, a tiny silver light glowed. It seemed to pulse and reach for her and her for it. Instinctively, Jeff knew this miniscule point of light was the others she had spoken of, those in New Orleans capable of fighting Damballah Wedo. It looked pathetically insignificant compared with the red pulsing heart of the approaching storm.

A foul stench blew in on a light breeze, the odor of death. He knew his part in the battle was coming soon. He readied himself. Shadows shifted slightly near the columns, breaking away and becoming human-shaped—zombies, the walking dead. Jeff was surrounded. Lisa danced on oblivious to her surroundings, a slight smile playing on her lips. He knew without trying that she would not respond to him if he warned her. She was both there and elsewhere. It was up to him to keep her safe. That would be his contribution to this battle.

He waited as the first zombies approached slowly. Some hung back, remaining close to their shadows. He reached into his pocket and grasped Digger Man’s
gris-gris
in his hand. Its surprising warmth gave him a small measure of comfort. He wrapped the leather strip around his wrist and palmed it.

He recognized Sid Easton as the closest zombie, fetid and covered in slime and blood. He ignored Jeff and went straight for Lisa. With less reluctance than he knew he should have felt for the living corpse of someone he knew, Jeff fired two nails into the back of Easton’s head. They did not penetrate far enough to stop him but caught Easton’s limited attention. When Easton turned to face him, Jeff moved in with the hatchet and hacked at his neck. Black foul blood spurted from arteries that no longer flowed, no longer pumped blood from heart to brain. The stench was almost overpowering, the stink of an abattoir floor. It took him three blows to sever Easton’s head, becoming drenched in Easton’s blood. The head fell to the stone with a sickening thud and rolled away. Easton’s body crumpled to the stone and convulsed sickeningly for a moment before growing still.

Jeff did not have time to savor his victory or to catch his breath. More zombies emerged from the shadows. He recognized Ed Harris’ blackened shriveled body and felt a moment of grief for his old boss, but that quickly passed. Ed was dead, murdered by Sims and Damballah Wedo. Now, he was nothing but a flesh shell under the Loa’s sadistic control.

Zombies entered the shadow of one column and rematerialized across the platform from a second column, using them as doorways. It was difficult to keep track of them. He realized this was how Sims and Waters had moved around the platform and hidden from searches. Jeff attacked with the hatchet, severing limbs and heads, but their numbers soon overpowered him. Even armless or with limbs dangling by scraps of rotting flesh, they continued to advance. He retreated.

Using the nail gun from a distance did not stop them. The nails did not have enough power to penetrate deeply enough to cause damage. Frustrated, he moved in closer, careful to watch behind him. He managed to kill two more zombies by dancing in and firing nails into their foreheads before quickly dancing away out of reach. The last time he was not quick enough. A zombie surprised him, one he did not recognize, probably a crewman from the ship. Emerging from the shadows only a few steps away, it came at him from behind, wrapped its arms around him and began to squeeze him. Jeff dropped the nail gun. Pain shot through him as his ribs bent near the breaking point. He grew dizzy as the air was forced from his lungs. He was near the point of blacking out.

A surge of power climbed his arm, spilling from the
gris-gris
he had forgotten in his hand. With renewed vigor, he managed to pull the screwdriver from his belt. He smiled as a burst of white-hot energy exploded from his hand and entered the screwdriver. He jabbed the screwdriver into the zombie’s side. Flames exploded as it entered the zombie’s dead flesh, forcing it to loosen its hold on him. Jeff broke free as it beat futilely with one hand at the flames quickly enveloping its entire body. After a moment or two it exploded, covering Jeff with foul pieces of flesh and congealed blood. Encouraged by his success, he attacked a second zombie with the hatchet until it lay writhing on the ground, headless.

His brief capture had allowed two more zombies to close in on Lisa and she was completely unaware of the danger. Jeff tried to infuse the hatchet with energy as he had the screwdriver, but did not know how. In desperation, he threw the hatchet Davy Crockett-style and split the skull of one attacking zombie, the ship’s captain. The captain fell and did not move. That left Ed Harris. Seeing his old boss, he decided to try something different.

“Ed!” he yelled.

The zombie ignored him and continued to move toward Lisa. Jeff tried again.

“Ed Harris of Re-Berth!”

This time the zombie that had once been his friend stopped and turned to stare at him with dead white unseeing eyes.