Conrad Williams - One

'You don't just slip the lock in these bastards, Rich,' Stopper said. 'You don't just kick the fucking door off its hinges.'

'The windows, then,' Jane said. 'There's got to be something we can do.'

Stopper was shaking his head, but he stood up and tested the bunk bolted to the wall. 'Fetch me one of them spanners,' he said.

Between them they managed to unscrew the bolts and wrench the bunk clear. Jane tossed the bedding to one side.

'Here,' Stopper said, 'turn that round so we can use that nasty-looking corner. See if we can't ram that into the glass.'

They spent ten minutes trying to crack the porthole, but the glass wasn't even scratching. There was no swearing; they had both known what the result would be. Stopper tossed the bed into the corner of the chamber; the echo of its collision rang dully. Panic unstitched itself once more in Jane's gut. He wanted to breathe fresh air. He didn't want the stink of cheap whisky fumes and stomach acid to be the last odours to sit in his lungs. And though Stopper was suddenly the only thing between him and being alone, he wished him a thousand miles away. He didn't know what was going to happen once the goodwill and the fire from the whisky were all gone and it became just the two of them and the panic stripping them away, layer by layer, to a point where violence was waiting.

They were painstakingly checking the seals at the hatch on the far side of the chamber, in the hope that the explosive decompression Carver and Rae had suffered might have somehow weakened it, when there was a deep sound they both recognised: the chunk of the hatch tumblers sliding free. They stumbled over each other in their desire to be first out of the door, and Stopper's fist was balled, ready to fight Jane for it, when Jane put out a hand to hold him back.

'Wait,' he said, and held up his other hand in a placatory gesture. 'Stopper, let's just take it slow. We don't know what it was did for the guys out there. If it was a gas leak, maybe.'

'There's nothing on the platform that could take out a whole shift.'

'But something did, right? Something did.'

Stopper sighed and let the tension fall out of him; he seemed to dwindle. 'OK. I just . . . if that's the fail-safe, I just don't want it to unfail-safe itself. You hear me?'

'I hear you. But let's at least get some masks on. The suits too. You didn't see . . . their skin, Stop, their skin was sliding off them.'

They shrugged on their wetsuits and masks, gloves and boots. They checked each other's oxygen tanks and gave each other the OK signal. At the hatch, Jane pulled out his regulator and said, 'Stop, try not to look at what's out there too much. Let's head for the OIM's office and see what's what. Quick as we can.'

He didn't hang around to see if Stopper was following, but took off quickly and almost paid the price for his impatience. The wind on deck was gusting so violently that it swept his feet from under him and took him fully twenty feet towards the guard rails. Part of them had been sheared off either directly by the wind or some piece of hardware driven by it. The rubber suit bit at the deck and brought him to a stop six feet away from his death. He was almost too busy looking at the sky, at the chicanery of violet and green and orange, to notice. Northern Lights , he supposed. This far south? He thought it more likely that it was the breakdown of cells in his own brain as he lay dying. But he wasn't dying. Not yet.

Stopper had tiptoed down to him, hand-over-hand on the guard rail, and helped him upright. Together they shouldered into the wind, angling towards the block that contained the Offshore Installation Manager's office. Bodies were piled up at the threshold of the door. He could feel the panic creeping through him like cold. He felt he must keep moving or it would consume him. Jane led the way inside, hoping that Stopper would give the dead as short shrift as he had. There were more bodies ranged across the corridors and internal stairs. In a canteen, one man sat hunched over a half-eaten sandwich, his cheeks ballooning, his stomach hanging like a Portuguese man-o'-war from his lips.

Jane could hear his breathing quicken through the regulator. He tried to calm himself by thinking how ridiculous he must look in his diving gear. Some of the toolpushers and roustabouts would pull a muscle if they could see him and Stopper now. Gas leak , he was thinking. Cyanide? Hydrogen sulphide? Could that change the colour of the sky?

He slowed as he neared the OIM's office. The control room next to it was utterly still and dark; the windows were packed black with debris. Ricky Melling, the Dynamic Positioning Operator, was slumped over a desk, a welter of his blood dried to glaze like a slab of treacle toffee waiting for the hammer. The swelling of his body had split his jacket up the back seam, the jacket he'd described once as a bit roomy since he'd come off the sauce and started grilling his chicken and chops.

Though everything was dark, Jane tried the lights, the TV, the radios. No response. Wind was getting into this module somewhere; he could hear it howling and rattling around the prefabricated units. It was a wonder they all hadn't been torn off their housings. He was about to leave the control room and move further into the building, to the recreation room, when he saw Eamonn Tate, the OIM, sitting against the wall, his hands in his lap. He seemed to be staring down at them, or perhaps at the pale grey slack of his tongue as it lolled against his chest. Though Jane had been expecting this, to actually see the guy in charge, a guy who was as serene and quiet-talking as they come, broken and bent and capsized, was almost too much to take. Jane crouched down next to him and thought about taking his pulse, but shook his head. No survivors. Just Jane and Stopper. He was turning to tell Stopper this, but he realised he would have to take out the regulator to do so. Stopper wasn't ready for the news anyway, by the look on his face. To confirm what he was already seeing was to invite his utter dislocation.

Jane clapped Stopper on the shoulder and gestured to the door. Stopper followed him. Jane lowered his head against the wind as he edged outside and led the way to the lower decks and the bright orange lifeboats. Jane checked behind him when he was shooting open the bolts on the entrance hatch. Stopper was standing loose, head back, watching the queasy swirl of the sky. He appeared deflated, a bottle of something unstoppered, flat. Now Jane wished he could say something. If Stopper didn't keep his mind on what was happening, a rogue gust was going to pick him up and toss him a couple of hundred feet into freezing water. Jane made a grunting noise around his mouthpiece, waved his arms: Stopper slowly levelled his gaze back on his buddy, but Jane doubted it had anything to do with his pleas for attention. Stopper's eyes were wide open but unseeing. Clouds had formed, despite the wind, pinguid and low, like something thick in a mixing bowl, streaked with the colours of decay. The secret colours he had only ever heard mentioned by his mother and her sisters: taupe, mauve, teal. The clouds sweated greasy rain.

Jane bundled Stopper into the lifeboat and swung the hatch shut. He pressed his fingers against Stopper's regulator to prevent him from spitting it clear, waiting to see if any of the granularity of the sky had followed them inside. What there was settled quickly without the wind to propel it. It settled like a weird matte glitter on their clothes, twinkling dully. Scintillas of quartz, Jane thought. Obsidian. Asbestos. He plucked the regulator out and drew a breath.

'Normal service has been resumed,' he said, trying a smile. Stopper blinked at him. Jane gently tugged free Stopper's mouthpiece; a glut of drool followed it out. The other man didn't protest but regarded him slackly, as if every muscle in his face had been injected with relaxant.