Authors: Chris Keith
He tied the securing line around the support beam and made a knot. Hopping out of the raft onto the support beam, looking up at that horizontal door in the wall twenty feet high, he tried to figure out how to get up there. The raft’s anchor, a tapered sleeve made of porous mesh, came away from the attachment point and stretched as far as Sutcliffe wanted it to go. Swinging the claw
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like anchor back and forth to gain momentum, he let go and it ricocheted off the door frame. The second attempt was also unsuccessful. The third attempt almost worked. On the fourth go, the anchor smashed into the door and wrestled through a gap, dropping over the frame. Pulling the chain back until it went taut, he took his weight off the support beam and his body thumped against the wall, his feet scratching the surface of the water. Inching his way up the chain, his weak muscles objecting, he climbed to the top and reached his hand to the frame, pulling himself up.
Side
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saddled on the length of the frame, with the door pressing into his side, Sutcliffe stared into a gloomy room wondering what the darkness hid. He flicked on his EVA headlamps and a kitchen emerged. It had every distinguishing feature of a modern fast
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paced galley: giant hobs and storage facilities, multifunctional equipment, impingement ovens, sandwich and salad counters, cocktail stations, pallets, racks, prep tables, ware
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wash tables, sinks. The galley was a maze of compact stations. It had been a cramped place to work. Nevertheless, the closest work station, a death
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defying leap of six feet, put the frighteners on him. A jump he considered too far. The bloody door, he thought, it getting in his way. He elbowed it and the door nudged away from the frame. One of the hinges was loose. Four screws stood out of their holes. He thought about the utility door used to bypass the water in the lobby outside the White Room. It gave him an idea. While he pulled the screws on the hinge, he thought of Jen Hennessey during her induction of Mission Control Base.
Have you ever tried tying a shoelace with boxing gloves
? He’d taken her advice and had practiced simple and complex tasks in the workshop to learn the spacesuit better – changing light bulbs, tying knots in ropes and, thanks to Hennessey, unscrewing screws.
All four screws on the second hinge were buried into their respective holes. Physical force overcame that. Twisting the door, putting pressure on the hinge, it broke off the frame completely and Sutcliffe struggled to keep hold of it as he swung it round to the first work station, assembling the bridge. One width of the door slotted into a groove in the station while the other rested on the doorframe upon which he sat. Like walking the plank, he carefully stepped down the sloped door, peering over the edge. It was quite a drop to the ominous darkness below and one wrong step could spell death. The sound of the capsized ship creaking under the pressure of the ocean sent a chill running up his spine.
Reaching the first station, he picked a path to suit him, making his way down, descending with large, strategic strides, heading deeper and deeper into the bowels of the galley. Closer to the water now, he opened drawers, ovens, grills, then searched for the fridges and freezers, finding neither. He searched lockers and hoods and cupboards but found only equipment. He worried that he’d come all that way for nothing, wasting precious time and oxygen when he could least afford either. Nothing else was left to check. No, there was – a large door on the other side of the galley. His final hope. Beside it, another support beam cutting through the heart of the kitchen supporting the roof provided a walkway all the way across. He climbed up onto the thin beam and stepped carefully, arms outstretched and both legs perfecting his balance. At the end of the support beam, he pulled the door open and stepped inside. The headlamps lit up a pantry with shelves that were disappointingly empty.
“Shit!” he yelled. “Shit!”
Turning to leave, he stepped on something and his feet went from under him. Landing hard on his side, his bad leg jarred and he wailed in agony. Several minutes passed. Sutcliffe hadn’t moved, unable to resist the temptation to rest, as good a place as any to curl into a ball and die. He doubted he had the strength to get back to the White Room anyway. More time passed. Around him, the ship moaned in pain and sufferance. Then everything went blissfully dark and quiet.
On his awakening, he didn’t know where he was, only that he had been sleeping. How long? An hour? Two? More? His oxygen had decreased dramatically. His headlamps pointed at the wall lined with shelves directly above his head. Gradually, shapes and outlines began to appear as his sight adjusted to his surroundings. Slowly, very slowly, he rolled onto his front. He was far too hungry to move and was on the verge of giving up altogether when something drew his attention. The pantry, he noticed, was L
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shaped. Indeed, at the back of the pantry was another section that he hadn’t checked. He shuffled forward on his front and peered around the corner. A vast, unsteady pyramid of food tins stared back at him. He looked again. He kept looking. So many tins, many labelled in a language foreign to him. Conservas Alguazas. Cecoa. What the hell was that? They all displayed pictures. Sliced, red fire roasted pepper. Sliced artichoke hearts in brine. Seedless grapes in syrup. Pear balls in syrup and lemon juice. Gherkins in vinegar. Olives stuffed with natural lemon. Soup, a lot of soup. Minestrone. Pumpkin. Vegetable. Chicken broth. Mushroom. Whole tomatoes in juice. Mini corn kernels. And tuna. It didn’t matter. They weren’t real. Were they real? He slowly rose to his feet and sculptured himself into a crouch, studying the food, doubting his lucidity. Only one way to prove it. Reaching out, he picked one of the tins up and shook it. It seemed real and hard to the touch. To the left of the pile he saw crates of various soft drinks: lemonade and fizzy orange and a few crates of water too. There was a stash of unused dinner candles buried beneath two large boxes labelled serviettes. Sutcliffe shook his head in disbelief. Not only did they now have blankets and medical kits, they’d scored food, drink, light and toilet paper.
He laughed. “…unbelievable.”
When his laughter faded, a question struck him. How could he get the provisions into the life
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raft and back to the White Room? He tried to collect his thoughts, create a rough plan to get him through the challenging next few hours of his life. While he pondered over the task, he opened a bottle of water, opened his visor wide enough to fit the bottle through and guzzled the whole lot down. He drank another. He lifted a tin of food out of the pile. Most of the tins, he noticed, had lids firmly sealed, but others opened with a pull
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tab. He cracked open a tin of pear balls, guzzled the juice and filled his mouth with the fruit, barely chewing them and swallowing whole. He feasted on another tin of pear balls and a tin of tuna. He could have eaten a lot more at that moment, but he chose to save it for the crew. Instantly, the food rehabilitated his energy and now he was ready to go to work.
Outside the room, Sutcliffe had seen a large, stainless steel pot tucked into the corner of a work station and one of the prep tables. He collected it, brought it back and began stuffing the pot full of tins with as many as he could manage. He carted a fair amount that first trip, going from station to station, ascending the door bridge where he put the pot down and, on his knees, peered through the entrance with the missing door for a view of the restaurant and two life
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rafts knocking into each other in the ocean currents. Picking out a tin, he threw underarm and the tin somersaulted through the air, hitting the life
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raft, the airless floor cushioning the impact. And that was how he built his collection, launching one after another into the raft, losing some, gaining most. It was an exhaustive process and by the time he had drained the pantry and filled the life
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raft, he’d made almost fifty trips.
Outside, darkness encompassed the ship. Exhausted after the long day’s labour, Sutcliffe descended the anchor chain, but his body gave in and he lost his concentration, then lost his grip, falling into the dark water. He twitched and thrashed, the life
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jackets yanking him back to the surface in a rush of bubbles and he swung his arms frantically through the water towards the life
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rafts.
Hauling himself into the front life
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raft, he rested a few minutes to recuperate his burning muscles. He could have stayed there all night, but the thought of his crew starving and worrying about him kept him going. He disconnected the anchor from the life
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raft and cut the securing line from the support beam with the safety
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knife.
Rowing the rafts out of the ship, the food trailing behind, he headed out of the restaurant. The second raft was extremely heavy in the water as he backed the rafts away from the ship and turned out into the Atlantic Ocean.
Into his mouthpiece he spoke. “Trev, you alright?”
But that time, Gable didn’t respond.
“Trev, this is Brad. Everything alright?”
Again, no response.
Using the nose of the cruise ship as a compass to direct him home, he rowed with all his power towards the dark horizon where glowing fire light guided him in. Finally, when he could faintly make out the beach, he rolled out of the life
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raft and waded the last few feet to shore. Hauling the rafts up onto the beach as the crashing waves broke into them, he flopped to the sand, switched off his headlamps and on his back stared up at the black sky. It had taken him almost half a day, but now the crew had enough food and drink for a year.
The weather had turned unseasonably cold. A thick frost smothered the scalded land. The sky was growing darker and Trev Gable didn’t feel that he could be more frightened than he was right then. Panic
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stricken, skirting the edge of tears, a sweat broke on his face and ran down his pockmarked skin. He had punched a fair distance inland and thought that from now on it was all about survival and the tiniest mistake would cost him his life.
“Oh God!” He swore over and over as if verbalising his fear made the situation less lonesome, as if voicing the sound of his pixie
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conscience helped in finding a solution for the pickle he was in. In the depths of his mind, however, he knew the likelihood of getting back to the White Room alive was slim. He wondered if there
was
a God looking out for him, even though he felt there probably wasn’t a God as he came from a long line of agnostics.
Gable plunged to his knees and started raking away the frost, looking for the way home. Like a baby exploring its surroundings, he crawled on his hands and knees searching for the markings of white paint he had trailed on his way. It was such a long way back to the White Room and the oxygen on his back would not keep him alive for much longer. Running used more oxygen. Panicking too. Getting up off the ground, he walked, putting a bit of pace in his stride, but before long he was jogging and then running. On his way he passed a dead tree. He hadn’t painted it so he hadn’t passed it. Or maybe he had. He couldn’t remember. Which way? His feet and the backs of his legs were aching, the pain spreading up to his waist and moving upward, and his attention was drawn to his laboured breathing.
“Why me?” he grumbled in objection. “Why me?”
Don’t come back without something to eat or drink
, Sutcliffe had more or less enforced upon him. In his eyes, that made him a victim of bullying. He had been bullied into searching for food. He had been bullied all his life and he was still being bullied. He hated bullies, unable to grasp their moral values and life choices. And, frankly, he was sick of being told what to do. If he made it back to the White Room alive and empty
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handed, the crew would have scores of questions for him and they would be angry with his replies. But what more could he do? It was hard enough trying to see his environment without the assistance of artificial light. In the day’s half
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light, everything appeared in different shades of grey. With his oxygen low, his legs could barely carry him another step. Just like his job at F1 Mission Control Base, he was undervalued, underpaid and overworked.
He spoke into his helmet mouthpiece again. “Brad? Anyone?”
They were ignoring him.
He sat on the hard ground in a morose sulk and started to lie down when he saw a faint white mark beside him. There, a faint line trailing off to his right. The paint! He looked left at the same white line. One way led to safety, the other to certain death, but which was which? He started off left, turned, and went right, stopping again, thinking, and his final decision was left, his pace quickening with each step as the last traces of light continued to weaken. A cluster of dead trees stood in his path. Had he gone through them on his way? He couldn’t remember, but something told him that he had. Wading in and out of the trees, a breeze rustled the branches and he was convinced he had heard a noise. A second or two later, he heard it again, the growl of a wolf or maybe a large dog. The snarl spoke of something evil and spooked the life out of him. He started to run through the trees, blind and full of dread. Low hanging branches scratched at his arms like talons, impeding his escape and tall trees now appeared as angry sentinels blocking his every twist and turn. He heard the growl again and craned his head in the direction from which it came. That was when he saw it; a giant black bear rising up on its back legs, stretching to full height. He back
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pedalled across a ground of twigs and brushwood that popped beneath his feet under his weight. The giant four
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hundred
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kilo monster raised its paw and attempted to slap him, but missed. Gable fell into a seated position as the bear kept at him, swiping the air with its sharp blades protruding from large, meaty paws. Gable scurried backwards to avoid the irate bear, his feet and hands slipping and sliding. The bear thundered after him, the ground shuddering with each footstep. Then it disappeared in the dimness and Gable thought he’d escaped with his life. But it reappeared, bigger and angrier than before, and he was about to be torn apart. He collapsed to the ground and closed his eyes with his arms pulled over his head and just laid waiting for the bear to attack, pulling limbs from his body one by one, like an insect. The ground stopped shuddering. The growling faded and when Gable opened his eyes, the bear had disappeared again. Gaining back his breath, he got up, turned and legged it out of the trees.