Offshore (42 page)

“
You give me your word she’s going to be
okay. You’ll take good care of her for the rest of her life. You
swear?”

Euterich rested his hand against his chest, at his heart. “On
my honour as a gentleman, Mr Capstan.”

For some reason he could not fathom, Eddie believed
him.

“
Okay then, let’s get this over with,” he said and squared
his shoulders, drawing himself up to his full height, although it
sent a flare of pain through him. “I’m read–” In the shadow behind
Euterich something moved.

Something slight and white, smeared with grease, wet hair
draped over its face like a beaded curtain; a wild untamed creature
creeping up on him, a solid red object swinging from its
hands.

“
Wait! One more thing!” Eddie cried.

Euterich
levelled the nail gun. “No! No more delays.”

“
Please, you’re going to kill me anyway. What difference
will ten more seconds make?”

Euterich
rolled Brewer’s eyes skyward. “What now?”

Eddie
never got to ask his question.

Chapter 50

Lips
drawn back in a snarl and emitting a howl like a demented banshee,
the creature behind Euterich swung the red object with all the
force its slight frame could marshal, striking him square on the
temple, knocking him sideways.

His face
contorted in slow motion, appearing to bend out of shape, his mouth
forming a slack O of total surprise. He dropped to his knees, the
nail gun falling from his hand to skitter away harmlessly under the
humming refrigeration unit.

A second strike with the red thing hit him between his
shoulder blades with a dull
thumph,
and he tippled forward onto his face, smashing his
nose on the tiles. Another to his upper back flattened him against
the floor; a fourth fractured his spine with a sharp
crack,
a fifth, opened up
the back of his head with a sickening wet squelch.

The
ragged wet creature stood rigid over Euterich’s broken shape, eyes
glittering beneath her curtain of hair, shivering, panting, arms
corded with tension as they held the fire extinguisher at shoulder
height, ready to strike again if he should so much as
twitch.

Keeping
his eyes on her in case she should decide to attack him too, Eddie
edged his way towards the body, crouched, and poked it with the
spoon.

No
reaction.

He
touched his fingers to its throat, into flesh soft and malleable,
like PlayDoh. He could detect no discernible pulse.

“
He’s dead,” he said, and stood. He put out a steadying
hand. “You can put the extinguisher down, Lydia. You don’t need it
now.”

Her arms
strained under the weight of the cylinder as she lowered it, her
bone white fingers spasmed around the handle.

“
It’s not Brewer,” she said, words shaking in time to her
shivering. “He looks like him … he sounds like him … but he’s not
him …”

“
I know,” said Eddie.

Lydia fixed large terrified eyes solidly on him. “But what
about you, eh, spoon man? Who are
you
? Are you one of them? Like him?”

Eddie
tossed aside the ladle and reached for her. “No! It’s me, Lydia, I
promise. It’s me, Eddie.”

She backed off. “Eddie’s dead.
He
said so. He–” She risked a glance down at
Brewer. “He k-killed him.”

“
He didn’t kill me, Lydia. I’m a bit battered and bruised,
but I’m very much alive. It’s me. I swear.”

Eddie
took another cautious step forward, showing her empty hands. She
stepped away again, shivering, shaking. “Stay away from
me!”

“
I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “Please, put the
extinguisher down and come to me. You’re going to be
okay.”

She
didn’t move.

“
Wait. I’ll prove it’s me. Here–”

Eddie
dipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out her
broken chain with her good luck medal, and showed it to her. “Your
Saint Christopher, from your dad for your 18th birthday,” he said.
“It was the last thing he gave you, two days before he died. I let
you keep it on because it meant so much to you. I told you I’d keep
it secret, so who else but me would know that, eh?”

She eyed
the medallion and then looked to him, recognition flooding into her
face, tears brimming in her huge eyes. She lowered the extinguisher
to the floor and slowly extended her hand.

Eddie
dropped the jewellery into the cup of her palm and folded her
fingers over it, holding them with his own.

A small
whisper, barely audible, broke through the tremors. “I thought you
were dead.” She started to cry, harsh wracking sobs coursing
through her.

Eddie
gathered her in a tight protective hug. “It’s okay, Lyd. You’re
okay now. You’re safe. We’re both okay. Oh jeez, you’re freezing.
Here–”

He took
off his jacket to drape over her, for its fleece lining to warm
her, to cover her and give her back some dignity.

No
sooner had the coat touched her shoulders than something closed
around his ankle, tugged hard and overbalanced him, ripping him
away from her. The back of his head cracked against the floor,
starbursts of light flaring behind his eyes, blinding him, adding
to the searing pain once more stabbing through his side.

Screaming rose from nearby; high pitched and animalistic in
its urgency.

A scrape of metal, a sickening
thud
, and hot wet stickiness hit Eddie in the
face. More thuds, more incoherent yelling, one more dull slapping
sound, and then a heavy metallic
clang
.

The
shackle around his ankle released and the flashes of light cleared,
yet his vision remained tainted, tinged with scarlet. He rubbed at
his eyes, wiping away the redness, smearing it onto the back of his
hand.

Eddie
sat up carefully so as not to exacerbate the throbbing in his side
and felt about his face, seeking the wound and the source of the
blood.

He found
none. It wasn’t his.

Across
the room Lydia was on her knees, bent double as if practising some
exotic yoga position, head resting against the floor with her hands
clasped to the back of her neck, pulling herself into a small tight
ball.

The
extinguisher had rolled away, coming to rest against -Eddie
couldn’t quite make out what. Barely attached to the
Euterich/Brewer chimera’s neck, in the area where its head should
have been, was nothing more than a mangled bloody pulp of skin and
bone, startlingly white jagged fragments jammed into pinkish grey
globs of brain tissue, intermingled with scarlet. Not enough
remained of the pureed face to identify its owner as Lawrence
Brewer. One eye clung to its socket, just; the other had exploded
under the extinguisher’s impact, like a raw egg under a
hammer.

The base
of the extinguisher itself appeared to have grown hair where it had
sheared off a section of Brewer’s scalp down to the bone, welding
the two together.

Eddie
felt the acid sting of vomit at the back of his throat, but
swallowed it down.

He
crawled over to the quaking ball of Lydia and laid a hand against
her bare back, icy cold and slick with sweat.

She
flinched, squealed and shook him off.

“
It’s okay Lydia. It’s over.” Slowly he eased her out of her
foetal contraction and raised her to her feet, holding her tightly
against his chest, pressing his lips into her hair.

He
caught the sharp sweet scent of urine and looked down at the warm
yellow puddle she had been kneeling in. She had wet herself. He
didn’t blame her. He had probably done worse but hadn’t noticed
yet.

Eddie
chanced to glance over her, to the body, to check it was still
there, to make sure that it really was over. He tensed, clasping
the whimpering Lydia tighter.

He
couldn’t let her see what he was seeing - the shifting lustrous
purple green liquid leaking from the ankles and cuffs and neck of
the vaguely human shape of Brewer’s overalls; a bubbling amorphous
mass of what looked like half set blackcurrant jam sliding from
bones and soaking into the overall’s fabric, turning as black as
spilled ink as it crept over the tiles. It seemed no matter which
form he chose to occupy, man or beast, Euterich could never
completely hide his true nature.

Inside
this otherworldly creature who used humans as shields, who ingested
them and took on their form, who inhabited their skins, their minds
and lives, a part of his own anatomy always remained, the seeds of
his own annihilation - two small glands set deep in his neck, their
hair-fine tubules leading to outlets behind his incisor teeth, the
glands from which the flesh dissolving poison could be administered
when needed.

Lydia smashing his face from his neck had ruptured them,
freeing the reservoir of venom to seep into the surrounding flesh,
setting up the chemical reaction he had last used on Lonny Dick. He
was slowly being devoured by his own toxin. Hoist by his own
petard.

A rank
faecal odour filled Eddie’s nostrils, a stench almost visible in
its intensity, stimulating his gag reflex.

Lydia
sensed it too. “What’s that awful smell?”

“
Nothing. Don’t worry.”

“
It smells like shit … did I …?”

“
Never mind,” he said, scooping her into his arms. “Let’s
get out of here.”

She was
no weight at all, like picking up a bundle of wet straw.

He had
to get her somewhere safe, away from this scene of ghastliness. If
she caught so much as a glimpse of what he had just witnessed her
mind would cave in completely, and his wouldn’t be far
behind.

She was
shivering convulsively now, her teeth rattling in her head like
castanets. She was going into shock.

Hanging
onto his precious cargo he set off through the empty kitchen and
galley, along the carpeted corridors towards the warmth and safety
of his cabin, to towels and blankets, and if he could get her into
it, a hot shower.

Chapter 51

He
stripped and showered her until she warmed through, before dressing
her in one of his baggy T shirts and sleep shorts, swamping her
tiny frame with them. She said not one word throughout the whole
process.

Eddie
sat Lydia on his bunk, snatched up the sleeping bag, unzipped it
until it made a quilted blanket, and wrapped it around her fine
frame.

He then
laid her down, tucking the coverlet tightly around her, cocooning
her. With her secure, he left her momentarily to grab her sleeping
bag from her cabin, pausing only long enough to snatch up Mr Brown
too.

He
covered her with the extra quilt, tucking Mr Brown inside with her,
and then fetched towels from the bathroom and used them to dry her
sopping hair.

“
I’m going to have to leave you for awhile,” he said gently,
arranging the towel into a kind of turban. “You’ll be okay here. No
one’s going to hurt you.”

“
Don’t go. Don’t...” The words juddered out of her, carried
on terrified shivering breaths. “Don’t... leave... me.”

“
I have to. You need to stay here where it’s warm while I go
and find a radio and call for help. I’ll only be in the control
room. It’s not far–”

“
Don’t go!”

Eyes
like vast glass orbs stared out at him from a face the colour and
texture of a wax candle; tight, inert, pale; too scared for tears
now, although they would come soon enough.

He
kissed her cold damp brow and extracted one of her icy hands from
under the quilted layers, unclipped his radio from his breast
pocket and held her fingers around it.

“
Here’s my radio,” he said. “You can talk to me while I’m
away, okay? Do you know how to use it?”

She
didn’t so much nod as shiver harder.

“
Okay. You hang tight here until I can find a spare, and
then I’ll call you.”

Hot
frightened tears escaped to course down her face and she replied
with no more than a mimed breath of quivering air.
“Okay.”

Eddie
reached into the storage drawer beneath the bed, pulled out a torch
and stuffed it into his back pocket. He pressed his lips to her
forehead again. “Don’t move from here. You’ll be safe. I’ll be back
before you know it.”

Before
Lydia could seize him and hold him down, he was on his feet and out
the door, his mind already working on developing a plan of
action.

“
First, get help on its way. Find the
radio. If it’s not in the control room, there’s bound to be one in
the lifeboat. Second, activate an emergency position indicating
radio beacon, an EPIRB, to back up the message. In fact, why not go
the whole hog and set them
all
going? Three at once should get someone’s
attention. They would think there had been some kind of catastrophe
requiring a mass evacuation. That should get the lead out. Yeah,
I’ll do that. Lastly, get the lifeboat, and myself, ready to take
us all off. I’m going to have to have a look at the instruction
manual, though. I’ve only ever been in the boat on training
exercises and drills, never in a situation like this, and never as
a pilot. How hard can it be?”