William Meikle: Infestation

“My job as chief scientist was to keep an eye on the sediments we brought up and check for value. As it turned out, I was kept busier than I would have hoped. The drill bit did its job for the most part, but the sediment, then rock, we drilled through varied wildly in porosity and density so we never knew from day to day how deep we would get, or what we might dredge up. I spent my days on the rig in the vicinity of the drill shaft trying to ensure the smoothest operation possible and my evenings in the mess with a never-ending procession of vodka shots and packs of Marlboro.

When I ran out of liquor, I took to getting beat by the captain at chess. The little Murmansk man was quiet but he had a mind like a steel trap and a game to match; I forced a couple of draws out of him but that was as far as I was able to get. We spoke little of matters beyond the game or the drilling, but he was a comfortable companion. I am going to miss him.

“In early May, we had a celebration when we struck an oil deposit and I’m afraid the lure of vodka got the better of me again. I staggered to my bunk and fell into a dark pit. I woke with a stinking headache, made all the worse by the loud ringing of an alarm and the incessant honking of our fog horn despite the fact bright sunlight lanced in through the porthole above my bunk.

“I went out onto the main deck and into a scene of almost comedic chaos.

“Stefan, the cook, stood at the gunwale, smacking something at his feet with a frying pan, again and again until whatever he was hitting was a streak of pulpy mush on the deck. Elsewhere, the crew stomped and yelled in a kind of macabre, badly choreographed, dance. It was only when I saw what the captain was holding at bay I realized this was no laughing matter.

“At first, I took them for horseshoe crabs; they were about the same, oval, dinner-plate size. But these had claws under the carapace, talons on their legs, pincers at the mouth parts, long antennae probing at the air as if tasting it and a squat, stubby rectangular tail rising in the air, giving them balance as they scuttled across the deck. I finally identified one as it stopped, raised its head, and tasted the air. I’d seen the like in books and on the Internet, but this was my first real-life encounter with the species. It was an isopod, Bathynomus Giganteus, normally a carnivorous bottom feeder.

“They weren’t anywhere near the bottom now; the whole deck swarmed with scores of them. The one tasting the air turned on scuttling legs and came straight for me. I didn’t think twice, I stepped forward and kicked it, hard, sending it soaring away over the gunwale.

“‘I need some help here,’ the captain shouted. He was at the main doorway into the superstructure, trying to close it against a frenzied attack of tens of the isopods. Three of the deck hands followed me in answering his call and we did what we could, stomping and kicking our way to his aid, leaving sticky trails of mush and slime behind us.

“The man next to me bent and tried to lift one of the things in his hands; it turned on him immediately, stripping two of his fingers to the bone with its rough mouth. Our stomping got more frenzied but even then the sheer number of the things threatened to overwhelm us. The noise of talons scratching on the steel deck sounded like tearing metal and the tap-tap of their legs as they scuttled was like rapid gunfire. Everywhere I turned there were more of them, and I finally saw the source; they came up the side of drill shaft and across the gangplanks from the rig, washing down in a wave onto the deck.

“My thought was we must have disturbed a colony on the seabed, enough for them to get curious… or hungry. It didn’t bear thinking about.

“I kept kicking and stomping. Behind me one of the crewmen yelled in pain, bent to grab at where his ankle had been attacked and immediately had three of the things scuttling up his arms and over his body. I saw his left ear get ripped off, then he fell, immediately submerged in a threshing, squirming pile of the isopods, all eager to get to him and strip the flesh from his bones. His screams were terrible but thankfully, they did not last long.

“We had almost reached the captain at the superstructure door. He laid into the attacking isopods hard with a long tire-iron, cutting swathes through the beasts like a swinging sword. Between the four of us remaining, we cleared the doorway and were finally able to drag ourselves in and slam the door behind us with a resounding clang.

“We quickly made our way up the stairwell to the control room, where we all stood there, looking at each other for long seconds, each wondering what the hell had happened. The whole deck swarmed with the beasts, crawling and scuttling over each other in a frenzied search for food. I couldn’t see any of the crew. I was hoping that, like us, most of them had made it to relative safety. At least the cargo hold doors were closed; I could only hope all remaining access points below decks were likewise firmly shut, for the thought of these things scurrying – feeding – in the corridors and cabins did not bear thinking about.

“‘Now what?’ one of the crew with us said. I realized the question had been directed at the captain.

“‘Now we get these boogers off my bloody ship,’ he said, his features set in grim determination. ‘Brute force obviously works but let’s try something a bit faster. Fetch the kerosene, we’ll burn these bastards out.’“

“So began the longest day of my life. The captain dispatched crews all over the boat with only one remit – find any isopods aboard and get rid of them by any means necessary. As it turned out, fire was damned efficient, sending the things skittering away in search of respite from the flames. We were able to herd large numbers of them into an empty cargo hold where they burned, crisping and cracking like hastily cooked bacon. If I’d expected them to smell like a seafood gumbo, I was much mistaken, for the stench they gave off was acrid, like burnt vinegar, and they cooked down, not to the equivalent of shelled crabmeat but to a green, oily goop that smelled even worse.

“But our tactics were working.

“It was while I was helping to get ten more of the isopods into the dark hole of the cargo hold I saw the luminescence for the first time. It was only a faint blue shimmer, for there was bright sunlight coming in from the now open bay doors above dimming the effect. But now I’d seen it, I started to notice it in other dark corners where we found the beasts hiding. I knew immediately what I was seeing; the light they used to hunt by down in the depths was giving them away up here on the boat.

“As the day drew on and the sun moved ‘round, casting deeper shadows in corridors and holds, I started to see the glow even stronger and along with it came a high, whining hum. I had to get up close to one of the things to find the cause; it rubbed its two largest limbs together, fast and furious and, like a cricket, sent out a message only its fellow isopods had a hope of understanding. But getting in close showed me something else and it was something needing further investigation. I didn’t want to share the information with anyone just then but if I was correct, we were in more trouble than we thought.

“Much to the captain’s disgust, I insisted on capturing a live specimen of the things for study; we finally caught one in a stout fishing net and I had it transported to the lab above the drill shaft out on the rig. I had no time to have a look at it then though, for the ship was far from clear of the things and it was several weary hours later before the captain pronounced himself satisfied.

“The last act of a long day was to go out onto the rig and pour a flow of kerosene over the rig and down the outside of the drill shaft then set it alight. I didn’t hear any more of the high whine but I saw several small bodies fall, flaming, into the sea far beneath the main body of the drilling rig. As night fell, we scoured the boat for any luminescence but found none. The job was done.