Sea Sick: A Horror Novel(61)
The time of terrorism isn’t yet over, it seems.
The Commander was no stranger to death at sea, but the thought of one-thousand passengers and five-hundred crew members sinking to their deaths had left a numb space in his chest. Civilians were not suited to terror. They did not embrace it like servicemen did. He pitied the suffering that they would have gone through as they realised their time was up. The worst kind of death is one you can see coming, even if only by a few minutes.
What the hell happened to you people? There wasn’t even an SOS.
If it had not been for the fact the Kirkpatrick had gone radio silent, no one would have even known it had gone down. If Harrington hadn’t been in the area, there would have been barely a trace that the ship had even been there. Already the debris on the water’s surface was sinking beneath the waves. His men were currently doing their very best to retrieve whatever they could before it was lost forever.
Midshipman Brown approached with his trusty clipboard in hand. He saluted Harrington from a few yards away. “Commander! We’ve just received word that the French Coast Guard is just a few clicks out. They’ve requested that we hand the situation over to them now and that we have their thanks for our quick response.”
“Typical French. Don’t like the British stepping on their toes. Okay, Midshipman, let the crew know we’re out in thirty.”
“Aye aye, Commander.”
Harrington took a stroll along the deck, glancing over his men and supervising the wrapping-up of their efforts. They had divvied up the detritus they’d salvaged into separate containers: some containing scrap metal and parts of the ship, while others contained personal belongings that could later be claimed by the passenger’s families. Harrington walked up to one of those containers now and examined its contents.
There were many things inside: paperback novels, a jewellery box, and all sorts of other mundane possessions. There was even a scorched police badge. One thing that caught the Commander’s eye in particular, though, was a little girl’s dolly. He picked it up and studied its angelic face while trying to imagine the child it must have belonged to. He felt his heart sag. The child’s toy was a soggy mess and seemed to sum up the tragedy quite succinctly. Its frilly dress had already started to succumb to the exposure to salt water and its small plastic hands had gone a sickly green as if some sort of chemical reaction had taken place.
Harrington decided to take the dolly with him, and made a personal promise that he would try to find out whom the toy belonged to. It would be difficult, he knew, because whatever secrets the Spirit of Kirkpatrick had to tell were now well and truly lost beneath the sea. Perhaps the world would never know the true story of whatever happened to its passengers and crew. Maybe they would not want to know, even if they could.
Harrington turned around on his heel, dolly in hand, and addressed his crew. “Come on, men. Let’s get back to the mainland. I don’t want to think about what happened here anymore. We’ve been around enough death and misery for one day.”
Two hours later, Commander Harrington felt a cold coming on.
BAD DELIVERY
“Prep Surgery Ward Two, we need to get this man stabilised in the next five minutes or he’s going to die.”
Vicky nodded at Dr Cathcart and rushed off to get everything ready. The two orderlies hurried behind her with a critical patient on the gurney. From what she’d gathered in the ten seconds of panicked exchanges between her colleagues the man was stabbing victim. They would have to work fast to save him.
She cleared a space to the operating table and quickly switched on the room’s lighting. The harsh glare of the examination lamps came on with an audible hum. The smell of chlorine hung heavy in the air.
“Okay, move him across and I’m page Dr Malone.”
The orderlies lifted the patient from the gurney onto the operating table while Vicky sent a page to the on-duty surgeon. Within minutes, Dr Malone arrived.
“Stab wound to the abdomen?” he asked, attaching the heart-rate monitor.
“Yes,” Vicky replied. “Paramedics called t in en route. Apparently the patient had crawled out of some woods and passed out on the side of the road. Someone driving passed found him and called 999.”
“Any identification?”
Vicky nodded. “Driver’s license. Nigel Moot, age forty-two. He’s on the database; blood type A negative.”
“Rare,” muttered Malone, already fast at work. “Get an IV prepared and a blood line.”
Two more nurses entered the room, obviously hearing the commotion. Without word they pulled on latex gloves and surrounded the operating table to make themselves available. Vicky came over and set a tray of surgical instruments. She handed a bottle of iodine to one of the other nurses and passed a scalpel to Dr Malone. She’s been doing the job long enough now that she knew what was needed when.
One of the nurses pulled down the irrigation hose and begun rinsing out the wound with sterilised water. The blood flushed away, replaced by flooding water. It looked like a puckered, pink mouth, stretching three whole inches across the patient’s torso.
Malone used the scalpel to open the wound very slightly, to get a better view of how deep the blade had gone. The heart rate monitor beeped regularly but slowly.
“No organ damage. He’s lucky, the blade just missed his liver.” Malone used his fingers to slowly part the wound. A brief spurt of blood overwhelmed the water for a moment. “Can we get some clamps on this? I need to suture this room before he bleeds out.”