Emergence Read Free Page B

dirty laundry. Dave waved his thanks at J2 as he left the helicopter behind, but she was too busy prepping to un-ass the area to pay him much heed. Martinelli grabbed his boss by the elbow and led him through the chaos on the pad. There were bodies everywhere. Burned, mangled, horribly disfigured bodies. And at least a dozen walking wounded waiting for their turn to be evacuated. Everyone looked frightened, which was only to be expected, but what Dave didn’t expect was the crazed, almost animalistic terror that seemed to be driving some of them.
    They had trained for this. He had trained them for this. They shouldn’t be losing their shit.
    ‘You gotta come, Dave, this way, quickly.’ Martinelli all but dragged him along by the arm. ‘Fucking things are down this way.’
    Heat from the fires came at them in waves, tightening the exposed skin on Hooper’s hands and face, making him wonder how long any of them could hope to survive on this gigantic ticking time bomb. He saw three kitchen hands, still wearing their stained, greasy chef’s whites, fighting one another to get to the chopper.
    ‘What the hell,’ he muttered to himself as the men screamed and raged in frustration and something else, something more elemental, when the aircraft spooled up its engines and lifted off before they had a chance to board.
    ‘This way, down this way,’ Martinelli repeated. ‘Come on, Dave. I don’t know how long Marty and the others can hold them back.’
    They cleared the area around the helipad just as the down blast of the rotors tried to push them off their feet. Dave followed Martinelli around the corner into a slightly sheltered corridor between two prefab huts. He put the brakes on, almost stumbling to his knees as Martinelli continued forward, dragging him along.
    ‘Vince,’ he shouted. ‘Would you slow the fuck up and tell me what’s happening? J2 said the navy was talking about terrorists. But I don’t see ISIS around, do you?’
    Martinelli didn’t look happy to be stopping, but he looked even more unhappy at the question, as though Dave were crazy for even asking it.
    ‘The fuck did anyone say anything about ragheads? This ain’t that. It’s worse. You gotta see for yourself, Dave. These things, these fucking animals, they just come out of the water. Up the fucking pylons or something.’
    The space between the prefabs was narrow, and someone slammed heavily into Hooper’s shoulder, pushing him into a pole as they ran past. It stunned him, and he felt an electric tingle of pins and needles run down from his shoulder to his fingertips. This seething crush of people sluicing back and forth didn’t feel like his crew. It felt like a mob.
    They were on a drill rig. In the middle of the gulf. Where the hell did people think they were going to escape to? Sure as shit weren’t going to their emergency stations, that was a goddamn given.
    Dave stood back against the wall of the small prefabricated building that housed the flight operations centre for the rig. He flicked the pins and needles out of his fingertips, or tried to, anyway.
    ‘What, Vince? What things came up the pylons? You’re not making any sense, man.’
    Martinelli’s face dropped.
    ‘They didn’t tell you? Jesus, I asked them to tell you. You’re going to think I’m fucking crazy.’
    ‘Try me,’ Dave said.
    ‘Monsters,’ Vince Martinelli said. ‘There are monsters on the rig, Dave.’
    *
    One heartbeat. Then two. Dave Hooper did not move, did not speak. It was possible he didn’t breathe, either. He looked into Vince Martinelli’s eyes and down into the soul of a man who was telling him the truth. Or at least the truth as he understood it. As men rushed and crowded past them, mostly headed for the helipad, Dave stared at Martinelli and saw the frightened father of four young children. In his eyes, bloodshot and gaping out from a face blackened by smoke and soot, he saw little fear of the very real danger of dying in a small