The Platform Read online

*

  I sit in the west tower, the wind ripping at the structure and making it sway in a sickening rhythm back and forth, as I huddle from the bitter cold. The climb up the ladder was bad enough, slippery and icy as the wind tried to lever me off and drag me down, but sitting here is worse, one of the lowest duties on the Platform. It’s too wet to smoke and too windy to sleep, curled up to the huge hundred mill double cannon, and there is little point in peering through the night eyesights because there is nothing out there to watch. There is only the endless waves and occasional creature breaking the surface, its hideous form as nauseating as the tower’s constant sway. Meska ordered several of us on look out to reinforce our hatred of her.

  I let my mind journey on its own, but always it comes back to the same thing – that the world now is done and finished, and we are the last. What is the point? Helst keeps asking, and he is not alone, but that’s a question for every day, not just because our race is run.

  “Gruz? You there?” the transmitter screams in my ear.

  “Yeah!” I yell back above the constant blistering storm.

  “You got some action,” the voice replies.

  I look through the night eyes and sure enough there is one of the creatures slithering its way up right under the webbing. It is uncomfortable to look at it, and I zoom in with the sights, despite the fact it makes me a little sick to see its writhing form magnified.

  “Got it,” I mumble back to east tower. My fingers are so frozen stiff I can practically hear the joints crack as I ease them round the triggers. I don’t fire right away but remain still, watching it. A quivering limb reaches out, probing at the netting and curling it back and forth. It has, it seems, figured out that the current has been turned off and is on a random cycle. Then I see a second one creeping behind it, dragging its disgusting form up the metal and worming from the pulsing water. They know, I think to myself. When that power goes down completely, they will be coming in force.

  “You going to take the shot or what?” the transmitter squeals in my ear.

  “Yeah, just give me a minute,” I hiss back. I don’t know who is in the east tower and the distortion makes it impossible to recognise the voice. Whoever it is doesn’t seem to realise we are going to be confronting these things up close, real soon, and it might be a good idea to learn something about them. No, just shoot the fucking things, I think. Yeah? I then counter. You got enough shots for a whole ocean? Dumbfuck, I think to myself. I watch them, one running a twisted tentacle over the other and I wonder if they can communicate by touch. I haven’t really thought about it, but they must be able to talk to one another somehow.

  “Gruz!” the voice screams.

  I take the shot. The recoil chair throws me back and the deafening report echoes through my bones as the bullets rain down on the abomination. It ruptures and explodes in showers of black ichor, curling and writhing, its flesh gouging off in chunks in all directions until finally its grip is lost and it tumbles down into the waves. I line the sights on the second, but already it is retreating under the water, like it knows, or senses, that death is only a second or two away. I see one last waving limb as it disappears and then there is just the sea, churning up the carcass.

  “Gruz, what the fuck are you playing at?” yells the transmitter in my ear.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Juken.”

  Juken, one of the old hands, yeah, I know him. One of Clook’s fuckheads.

  “Go fuck yourself, Juken,” I yell back at him. He starts screaming abuse and I let him rant on for a while. It is an entertainment that breaks up the rest of the duty and I smirk to myself as he lets his temper get the better of him. I wonder if he will have a heart attack as he screams and curses at me, and I know I have just made another enemy.

  *

  Everyone is watching Jem. He found the body of Teawn at the bottom of the metal stairs on the supply deck, the back of his skull destroyed. Jem was covered in blood when he located Clook to tell him, and immediately they were suspicious of him. They held him for a couple of hours, gave him a hard time, but he swears it was nothing to do with him. Everyone is saying it must have been an accident, but Jem says there was no blood on the stairs. I think they are going into some kind of denial and can’t see a pattern. If that is how they wish to comfort themselves then so be it. However if I were asked to pick out a murderer, I would say Helst, not Jem. Jem is big and loud but is not a murderer, but as for Helst, there is a furtiveness about him, something he wants to keep hidden, or a secret he will not admit.

  Teawn’s head had been split wide open, Jem says, and there was no chance of it being an accident. He told the same story three times, but added the third time round that at least there would be something to eat. It was meant to be a joke, but nobody laughed; they just stared at him watching for a tell, but he just went quiet and apologised. He is right though, nobody can deny that. We all benefit, I suppose, except for Helst, of course, who still refuses to partake.

  *

  I lie smoking in the dark. My bunk is in the top three of the tier, there are racks on either side of the narrow corridor that serves us as our bunkroom. The old hands have separate quarters and now more than ever they steer clear of us. I keep trying to count how many of us are left on the Platform but am uncertain. I think there were thirty when we began our posting, but that seems so long ago – another lifetime now.

  “You awake?” Cora askes. She occupies the bunk below.

  “Yeah.” Part of me wants to remain in silence, thinking, but the cigarette smoke gives me away.

  “What do you really think?”

  “About what?”

  “About Teawn,” she says in a whisper.

  “Don’t know,” I mutter. She wants me to ask if Jem killed him, but he is in his bunk and in the dark, it’s hard to know if he is awake and listening. There is a long pause as she goes on trying to find a way to put her real question into words.

  “Heard you had some fun today. They are getting smart, aren’t they?” She has backed off from the subject, instead going for safer ground.

  “Yes,” I reply.

  “They are going to cut the web to thirty minutes from tomorrow,” she says, but I am bored of the conversation now, stubbing out my cigarette in a shower of hot orange sparks.

  “I heard,” I mutter. In truth, if they cut the web to every half-hour, it might not as well be there. We all know it. I roll over and ignore her.

  *

  “Up! Everybody up, now!” a voice screams and snatches me out of sleep. “We have a breach!” I slide out of the bunk and jump down to the deck with the others. Everyone has a confused, dazed look about them, like me, I guess, as I stumble around trying to find my uniform. “Move it! Up!” It is Meska, of course, screaming at everyone, and there are, I assume, five people here who are envisioning punching her right in the mouth. I snap on my boots, and then there is a scrum at the weapons rack as we grab the machine guns. She has already gone by the time we are ready and we thump along the corridors and ladders up to the top side to see what is going on.

  I can hear screaming above the relentless wind, over the sporadic gun fire that reverberates though each plate and bolt, and as the door opens, the stink of the sea hits us in a blast of bitter, howling fury, and everywhere is in chaos. People are shooting as the monstrosities wither and crawl amongst us. Jem immediately opens up a burst of rounds, running towards the nearest creature, and Cora and I head left to where one is squirming beneath a stairwell. They are huge, more so up this close, and stink of the ocean. We rip into it with bullets, blowing open chunks of the pale, bone-coloured flesh as splashes and sprays of blood splatter over the wall. It turns, hissing and squealing, its mouths full of needle-like teeth, and I aim right down its throat. A hideous shriek goes up, then a second, but it comes from our left and belongs to a human.

  Two of the abominations are pulling at him, their toothed limbs sinking deep into his flesh. I can’t tell who it is but it’s one of the ol
d hands; he is screaming with his head thrown back. Then one of the spiked worming limbs slices through him diagonally, from shoulder to groin, and they tear him open. I can only watch as he peels apart in two pieces and the creatures immediately begin to retreat, carrying away their blood-soaked trophies as organs and guts spill out in their wake.

  All over the deck similar sights reveal themselves: men and women are ripped to shreds, their blood is slippery on the riveted plates as we run, firing at anything that squirms. Cora and I sprint to the other side of the crew quarters, driving the creatures back with controlled bursts of gunfire, pushing the infiltrators to the edge of the Platform down onto the webbing, but no power is flowing through it, whether it has shorted out or we have finally run out of fuel, I don’t know, but they wriggle and writhe, entrapped within it, until they fall into the sea below.

  “There!” Cora points. Following her gaze I see a huge tear in the netting.

  “Up to the control room,” I yell. I guide us back the way we came, up the stairwells and walkways until we reach the top level. On the fire escape ladder we are suddenly greeted with the full force of the wind; it rips us down to the bone as we claw our way to the door. I can see Clook through the window – him and his cronies – nowhere near the carnage; they hide out of the way and a deep fury slices my heart black. I bang on the window, and they yell something I can’t hear, but I can see they are not happy to have us here. Cora smashes at the glass, and finally, someone lets us in.

  “Get out there and fucking-“Clook doesn’t get to finish: a right cross from Cora sends him sprawling backwards over the control panel. The two big guys move to stop her but I cover her with the machine gun.

  “Get the power back on.”

  “We don’t have the connection,” Clook whines.

  “Then get someone down there to fix it,” I insist, waving the gun at him. “You, who can fast weld?”

  “I can,” the other man says. “But I’m not going out there.”

  “Well, you can get out there and do your job, or you can stay here and have your head blown off – your choice.” I tell him

  “I’ll get my gear,” he nods. For a coward, he has balls, I guess; either that or he plans to simply kill us the second we turn our backs.

  “I’m the chief. I’ll fucking have you dead for this,” Clook shouts, but no one is listening. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that rank no longer counts; like humanity, its day is over. Cora looks to hit him again, but he is worthless anyway.

  *

  Lokro works as fast as he can as we sway and bounce on the netting. I left Cora up with Clook to make sure he has no ideas of switching the power back on before we are clear – the little rat would kill us in a heartbeat to save his own miserable existence. I keep watch as Lokro threads metal wires into each broken loop and spot-welds them into place. It’s like a makeshift stitch but takes its time. It suddenly dawns on me how dangerous this actually is: one of the things could fall from the deck above or rip up from the pounding waves below and be through the torn spot in a sharp breath. But we have to carry on: getting it back online is the only thing that will keep the bastards out.

  “How’s it coming?” the transmitter hisses.

  “Another couple of minutes,” I yell back over the fury of the ocean.

  “They seem to have cleared most of them out up here, but I hear one has got into the living quarters.”

  “Fuck!” I shake my head. “Okay, I will meet you there once we’re done.”

  “Understood,” Cora replies. Lokro works on the last piece, the flaring spit of the welding torch fighting the breeze as it burns incandescent. Several of the abominations now gather below us, perhaps attracted by the light or the stink of us, and I let off a few rounds, making him jump.

  “Done?” I scream at him as he snaps off the lance.

  “Done,” he nods, but before he can pack away one of the things comes tumbling down, shot to fuck and bleeding its black ichor everywhere. It squeals and hisses, thrashing its limbs and roaring in pain. Before I can react, it senses him and leaps into the air, a massive squirming blur; it has hold of Lokro in a second and he can only scream once before it forces one of its thick barbed limbs down his throat, shredding him internally. I fire at it, but it’s too late: Lokro quickly comes apart in showers of hot, red blood and organs. He goes down, and the creature, despite having a dozen wounds, begins devouring him in thick clotted chunks. I turn away and climb the ladder as he dies in segments. Fuck! He was useful, I think to myself.

  I clamber over the guard rail and almost have my head blown off by Skea as she levels her machine gun at me.

  “Shit!” she screams above the never-ending wind.

  “You nearly killed me!” I scream back. We both lean over the guard rail and see the writhing creature dragging a piece of Lokro across the netting. It has no escape route now, and she raises her gun to fire, but I stop her. “Waste of ammo,” I yell. I fumble with wet, gloved hands to find the transmitter and shout at Cora to fire up the web. In seconds the familiar hum sounds, followed by the crackle and screeching of the creature as it fries and burns, pieces of its meal exploding into flames with it. “Come on, there’s one in the living quarters.”

  Our heavy boots thunder over the metal plating, and up ahead, I can see the door wide open. It doesn’t appear forced, just like some fuckhead has left it standing wide and inviting anything inside. Plunged into the dark and breathing hard, we follow, cautiously trying to find it. I can smell its decay like death – a putrid air clings to these things like a shield – and carefully we press on in the eerie darkness, with only the green chemical lights casts twisting hideous shadows in every corner. Cora comes running up behind to find us.

  “Net’s back online,” she says.

  “We saw.”

  “Most of the deck is clear now.”

  “How many did we lose?” Skea askes in hushed nervous tones.

  “A dozen or so.”

  “Any of us?”

  “Not that I know of. Jem and Helst are on the south, mopping up the last ones.”

  It is a relief to know our clique is safe. As for the rest, I regret losing a useful man like Lokro who had volunteered off his own back, but the others can go fuck themselves. And as for Clook hiding away in the control room, someone is bound to settle him soon enough. We creep further inside, the smell now heavy and thick, and my heart is ticking hard with fear as we round the corner. There is stuff everywhere: the creatures, so much bigger than a man, find it hard to move in the corridors without knocking down gun racks and uniform stations. When we reach the rec room, a couple of the tables are overturned and the black ichor from its wounds is smeared here and there.

  We enter the kitchens and immediately that sense kicks in, the one where you know someone or something is close by. It’s as if every living thing generates its own little field and it touches your own, shedding invisible sparks through your bones. My guts curl uneasily.

  “Who’s there?” Cora hisses, and there is a tiny whimper in reply. It’s not from the creature, but a man. He crawls from under one of the shiny workbenches, having squeezed himself away, and I recognise him as Illen, the cook. Fucking coward, I think to myself, but then again, he is a master of cooking pots, not machine guns. I help him to his feet.

  “Thank you,” he blubbers and whines, his whole body shaking. We send him on his way up top, not needing him to get in the way or make things worse. Then it’s back to hunting, following the slimy black trail that cuts through the double doors and down to the supply deck.

  The cold begins to really bite on my bones, burrowing deeper like ice-laden maggots through the flesh as the three of us pick our way down further into the haze of midnight black. There are hardly any chem lights working down here now, so we hunt mostly by sound and scent, following the suffocating decay mists, a rancid inhale like open guts and festered gangrene, and then we hear it, clattering and slithering behind the tall racks. It sounds weak, almost done,
and is moving slowly with a heavy dragging noise. But it’s just as dangerous wounded – probably more so – and rounding the corner, in the twilight green, I catch a glimpse of flailing, dripping tentacles and several wide and long-toothed mouths.

  For a second I feel a flicker of pity in my soul, but then it turns and comes racing towards us and we open up the guns, ripping it apart in flying pieces. It screams – the loud sound of death – as we pour the bullets into it, the bursts of the guns illuminating the scene in a flashing strobe, and finally it stops moving, the rancid stink worse as it lies twitching and flexing in its death throes. Then there is silence, a ringing sound in the ears, making everything muffled. I hope I am not the one who has to clear it up.

  *

  The abominations have left little for our own cooking pots, we find, after having scavenged and cleared every scrap of human flesh from the Platform. The creatures themselves cannot be eaten, being laced with venom and poison. The old timers discovered long ago that eating them leads to madness and death in the most cruel and evil way. So instead we have to pick at what little remains of our comrades – a few limbs, some entrails and that is all. Illen has the job of making them into something edible and I don’t envy him.

  But at least there are fewer to feed now. I am not sure how many died, but we are still intact so that is all that matters. Clook, Meska and Juken all survived, naturally – it’s always the ones you despise who make it through. Maybe a dozen others have gone; there hasn’t been a full meeting so it’s impossible to tell. But word comes down the line that Lokro’s repairs are holding and the power is back to fifty minutes out of every hour. At that rate we have just over three days or so, but that is pure guesswork – nobody has come to tell us anything.

  I shower with the others. The water at best lukewarm and doesn’t take the constant chill from the flesh; it only seems to compound it deeper. After we eat, I retreat back to my bunk, curling up tightly to try and generate heat. Helst found us each an extra blanket from those who no longer needed them, but it doesn’t help much: my teeth chatter and my body shivers and rattles. The cold is something that eats you slowly, worming deeper inside, and once it has a hold it’s like your guts and heart turn to ice blocks, and I hate it. I would give anything to be home, away from this forsaken place. Where else is there now? It’s hard to comprehend that beyond this structure nothing remains. There has to be something, surely? I curl up tighter, wondering and dreaming, wanting so much for it to be over, but I know nothing will come. And even if it did, where upon a burned out cinder can a man live? I think we have to do something, but I have no idea what. Time is the wire that stiches together all fragments of memory, but the past means nothing when there is no future to look forward to. It just becomes a loose and empty thread unravelling in the mind and the soul, and all that is slowly comes undone as surely as if death itself has unpicked the stiches – all loosened and slipping through the fingers into the black. I turn over, hoping to wake somewhere far away from here, but know it’s not going to happen. My head hurts, and inside I die one piece at a time.