The Platform

The Platform

©2015 Necropolis Literature

Written by D G Jones

Proofread by Sharon Davidson of TypeitWrite

Website:
www.theflayedprince.co.uk

Twitter: Dave @theflayedprince

Also by D G Jones, exclusive to Amazon:

TERRORISTS HAVE STOLEN THE MOON!

Rise of the Fingering Phantoms

Wounded

Curse of the Feltching Vampires

Attack of the Fisting Zombies

City 33 (A Dark Narrative)

Internal Injuries

Omelette Prince of Danish

The Thaylian Asylum: Complete Edition

The Thaylian Asylum: Outtakes

Zone2 (A Dark Narrative)

Facility 61 (A Dark Narrative)

The Doctor Who Fan Massacre

The Thaylian Asylum Volumes 1-3

Four Women

Three Horror Classics Ruined

The Complete Machine Trilogy

The Products of a Sick Mind

Lynchpin

The Empyrean Carousel

Wormwood

Desolate: Only Agony Endures

Newly Street

The Tattoo and Body Piercing Survival Guide

THE MACHINE- Industrial Edition

THE MACHINE- Easy Read Edition

Persecution

Politically Motivated

Strange Erotica

Dave Malarkey

The Oddball Express

Lovecraft’s Chip Shop

Stephen King’s Trousers

Poe’s Replacement

Dedication:

This is dedicated to that man in Telford and his family. I
wrote this for you…

           
 
I can’t remember the last time I saw the aurora.
 
It had been one of the few pleasures of
working on the Platform, but these days the sky is a never-ending boiled black,
just like the thick, acid sea that rolls and churns below the gantries,
crashing on and on against the thick metallic legs that sink deep down below
the waves and hook into the sea bed. Here is nowhere – the worst of the worst.
The duty tour was supposed to end three weeks ago, but no one came to liberate
us.

           
 
I stand watching the endless ocean raging in
the darkness. The polluted stink is so thick that I cough and spit up the black
tar-like mucous that afflicts those posted here. There is a tangible fear all
around us now – the silence from the rest of the world is gnawing on us all – and
we try to carry on as if nothing’s changed, but the inky midnight sky says differently.
I doubt there is a world out there to return to now – either that or we have
been forgotten.

 
          
The Platform is the godawful posting
nobody
asks for: in reality it’s for
those militia they no longer want or can’t control, or a mandatory posting for
new recruits.
 
And so we are a mixture of
young and old, fresh and jaded, sweet and bitter.

           
 
I watch the pitch-black sea whirling and
thrashing in its madness, and every now and then there is a hiss and crackle
from the electric netting which spans the underside below. It is the only thing
that keeps the abominations from us. The ocean is full of them, twisting in
their revolting limbs, all razored teeth and claws. They can tear someone apart
in seconds, devouring them in their round, spiked maws. The first time you see
one, it’s enough to make you piss yourself. I know, I did.

 
          
“Gruz!” a voice yells above the
slicing wind. I look up and see Skea waving at me and I retreat along the
shaking steel gantry, back to the crew quarters.

           
 
“What the hell are you doing out here?” she
screams, spit flying everywhere. I follow her back inside and the thick door
slams shut, muffling the noise. But you can still feel the ocean, battering the
struts and shaking the structure in its constant fury.

 
          
“Sometimes I think you’re not right
in the head,” she mutters as we tear off the thick plastic waterproofs.

 
          
“Why? Not much point in hanging
around here in the dark,” I reply. I find it depressing inside now; they are
desperate to conserve fuel so now all we have is the sickly- green chemical
lighting. I follow her back to the mess room, a horrible chill in my bones that
makes them rattle hard beneath the skin. Jem, Helst and Cora are sat playing
cards and smoking; how they can see in the dim green light is beyond me. I
reach across and take one of Cora’s cigarettes. She doesn’t complain seeing as
she owes me so many from the old days in the training camp. We are all
conscripts here: service is mandatory from age twenty-one for two years, like
it or not. All of us are from the same class so we tend to stick together.

           
 
“Outside again?” Jem askes. He is big and
powerful, maybe twice my size, and a mountain of flesh. Cora is slim, has grey
eyes and long, slim hands. Helst is more like me: scrawny and vulnerable looking,
but looks can be deceiving as he is one hell of a fighter. Then there’s Skea:
tough, hard-eyed and tall. I have lusted after her from our first meeting and constantly
dream of making love to her, even if it is only once. I can’t even tell if she
likes me half the time, but usually she’s first to come looking when trouble
strikes. We are all from Continent One, though from different zones, with different
lives. I know Jem and Cora’s people are rich, while Skea’s and mine are poor,
and as for Helst… well, he never says.

           
 
“Better than sitting here,” I say, slumping
down beside Cora. I look at her cards and see she is going to lose.

 
          
“You really think it’s happened?”
Helst asks without looking up from his cards.

           
 
“Yeah,” I nod. Yes, I do.

 
          
The Platform is the last outpost
before the Polar Regions and Continent Two. We are a supply port for all the
warships heading up that way, and supposedly working on six months’ postings,
though now we are three weeks overdue. There has been no communications from
anyone and the sky now permanent black ash, so, yeah, I think the final war has
been fought. All over the globe, there is now nothing but burning citadels,
empty streets and corpses. I think we are the last people left alive, except
for anyone left in their bunkers, but no one is going to see them for years as
they cower at the carnage on the surface. Everyone on the Platform knows it,
they are just too afraid to say.

 
          
When I arrived here the war was
already going on, at least around the edges, and every day the news got worse.
They seem determined to start it – perhaps they wanted to try out all those
weapons. Somewhere, my family is probably nothing but vapour by now – my
sister, my parents, all of them. And we are the last. Out here, forgotten.

 
          
The Marshall is dead – killed
himself, they say – and all we see now is Clook, the next in line, and his
cronies. He is as acid as the sea that boil beneath us and his heart as black.
He is a worm, a coward. Everyone is close to breaking now; they held it
together at first, when there was hope, but now everything seems as dark as the
skies. That’s why I don’t like talking anymore, because I end up saying the
things the others don’t want to hear. Freen went over the guard rails the other
day, ended up charred on the electric netting. So far no one has bothered to
clear him away, he’s just been left him cooking there. I didn’t like him anyway.
But this is how it is now: the rules are beginning to slip, tempers are flaring,
and we know it’s not going to be long now. It’s just a matter of how.

           
 
“Maybe…” Cora tries. “Maybe it’s just mis-comms,
you know?” Even she knows that’s bullshit.

           
 
“You seen the sky?” Skea answers. “That’s not mis-comms
– that’s people up there, or at least the ashes of them.” I think she’s right.
Unease greases every gut; that slimy feeling of fear and dread, and knowing
that there is now somewhere a clock running down on us. No one likes to man the
four-gun towers anymore; no warships have been seen or heard for three weeks now,
and
never
has that been the case. It’s
like the world is so big and empty now and we are the last ones in it. Everyone
is thinking of their families and knows we are all we have.

           
 
“What now?” Helst asks, though it’s not really
a question because he knows the answer.

           
 
“We wait,” I mutter.

 
          
“For what?”

 
          
“To die, I suppose.”

           
 
“Man, you are so fucking cheerful,” Jem laughs
bitterly, but in his heart he knows I’m speaking the truth. The food is almost
out; the rations are so small we can hardly take two bites of a meal. And then
there is the matter of fuel: we must be on vapours by now, and when it finally runs
out, the electricity goes, and with it our defence against the abominations. It
won’t take them long to realise there is a free larder up here waiting for
them. We have plenty of bullets, but not enough for an ocean. It’s just a
matter of what comes first.

 
 
         
“What
the fuck are you lot doing?” a voice screams behind me, and I know that hideous
shriek belongs to Sergeant Meska: a fucking by-the-rules shithead who throws
her weight around all too often. It almost strikes me as funny that, even as
the world burns, there will be someone standing round with a clipboard making
notes.

 
          
“Well, we…” Jem starts, but she cuts
him off with a slicing frown.

           
 
“I want the fire line prepped for firing. Now,”
she fumes.

           
 
“Why? Do we have inbound?” Cora asks, a sudden
hope in her eyes.

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Then why bother?” I ask. Those brown
eyes look like they could melt through iron, such is the fury.

           
 
“This is a military station! You don't need
reasons, you just follow fucking orders,” she says. Flecks of her spit hit me
and there is the temptation to laugh straight in her face. Doesn’t she realise
this is the end of times? I can’t understand these people! We are fucked; they
know it as well as I do, yet they want us still following their pointless
little rules.

           
 
“Yes, Sergeant,” I say softly.

 
          
“Now! All of you.” We all jump to our
feet, like we’ve been trained to do, to head off back to the outside, but each
of us takes an age to have that last inhale of smoke, and she looks like her
head is going to come off. She glowers at us each step of the way.

                                                                       
*

 
          
The squall tears and rips at us with
cold, burning fingers as we fight to stay upright on the gantry. The fire line
usually takes an hour or two to prep – and that’s in good conditions – but in
this gale, it will take up most of the day. The mighty gigantic coil of piping
has to be greased for firing, the ‘poonclaw lined exactly into the cannon, and precisely
down to the millimetre. I have no idea why in the worst of conditions we are
out here at all, and I swear into the slicing wind. We work in the dim green
light; I can barely see a metre into the dark as I grease the tube along its
length. Because of the webbing, no ship docks can dock on the Platform;
instead, huge lines are fired into the vessel’s docking station – Cora calls it
long-range fucking – and the shot has to be precise. Our team is considered the
best, but it’s only because we had so much practice early on the tour, though
we’ve not done it for weeks now.

           
 
I remember crossing over the thick line when
we arrived, creeping along the narrow, greasy piping, over an acid sea full of
hungry things ready to devour me whole. It’s not a perfect system for sure but
then you know you only have to do it twice, and the second time means heading
home, although, of course, we have not had that pleasure yet. Jem winds up the
next length and I keep on applying the grease on my side. Overhead the corner
watchtowers shake and shudder in the storm, and there is always a fear they
will one day topple down and crash into the deck. But not today, it seems; they
take the hissing, howling gale and hold steady. I’ve been up there a few times;
when the sky is clear you can see to the horizon’s edge, but not recently – not
with all that black shit in the air, the ashes, people, whatever it may be.

           
 
Helst is screaming something at me but it’s
pointless: I can barely see him let alone hear anything. He is waving his arms
and beckoning me to him. His grease gun is jammed, and it will take the two of us
to wrestle it free, so, fighting the wind, we struggle and slip on the metal
grating, all the time trying to hear one another over the pounding ocean and
the relentless storm. Finally I am able to leave him to it and he jerks a brief
thumbs up sign at me as I cough and spit up the black snot in my throat. I
curse Meska and go back to the coil, hardly able to see through the spray.

                                                                       
*

           
 
They found Second Engineer Brena, and what a
fucking mess that was, with her head and left arm were both missing. She’d got
caught in the gears of one of the turbines; the protruding bones from her spine
clicking as the cogs kept turning, making her body jerk and twitch; the one
remaining arm flapping up and down like she was still trying to free herself. The
smell of blood and hot gristle hung in the air thickly above the grease.
Somebody told me they thought it was suicide and I almost laughed out loud. Yeah,
right! Like someone is going to off themselves by sticking their own head in a
moving turbine. To me, it looks like it has murder written all over it, but
perhaps everyone is in denial and doesn’t want to think that. But, for sure,
things have got pretty twitchy since the radio silence and the clouds, so who
can say? It matters nothing to me. I didn’t like her anyway. Apart from my own
clique I have little time for anyone – never really have done since that day at
City Block Gamma – that day kind of changed everything for me. It still fills
my eyes with tears, especially when I sleep – a long drawn-out nightmare that
still claws out across the years and tears my mind to pieces. So really, I
couldn’t give a fuck what they think. Or for Brena and her endless
 
flinching corpse.