The Hope by James Lovegrove Read Free Book Online

ammonia, piss, whatever, coming from outta that hole – unhealthy and biological. Perhaps we were in one of the drainage tanks where all the johns in the entire ship pour in. Perhaps it was due for a flush and feeder pipes were about to rain down on us. Imagine being drowned in piss. That struck me as quite funny, which gives you some idea of how bad things were.
    Charlie had gone quiet, as if he was turning a page in his head which he would rather have left flat. While he was telling the story he was staring into space, watching the scenes in his head and recreating them for me, as a good storyteller does. I was convinced this was only that, a story, no more.
    He snapped awake and fixed his eyes straight at me.
    “I know what you think heaven is,” he said, “clouds and angels and shit. What do you think hell is?”
    “Rocks and devils and burning and lots of shit,” I answered. There was no point in dreaming up a more sophisticated version to impress him. Charlie knows me inside out and what’s the point in pretending he doesn’t?
    “Yup. Because that day, I found the next best thing to the real thing.”
    He lost himself in himself again and carried on the story.
    As we were standing around feeling threatened and incompetent, like you feel when someone’s looking over your shoulder when you’re taking a leak, a dozen rats, maybe more, burst out of the hole as if they’d been shot out of a gun, and you could hear their squealing through the ear-protectors. I’ll admit I fell over in shock, dropping my flashlight and shovel and getting the crack of my backside full of water, but those little fuckers weren’t hanging around. Their eyes were big and wide, like this, and they crossed that chamber in two seconds flat, no bullshit. We were terrified that they were terrified. I remember getting to my feet and backing away from the hole like the others. It didn’t even cross my mind to pick up my shovel. I saw Benjamin muttering to himself, a prayer most likely, to one of the black men’s gods, eh? What was worse was seeing Big Fred scared, although you wouldn’t have known it for sure the way he levelled the shotgun at the hole and slipped his finger round the trigger.
    Then I understood why there were no rat corpses at the first hole and so few rats down here. The rats hadn’t just been trying to get into the engine room.
    They had been trying to get out of here.
    Something in that hole scared rats shitless. Ate rats, dead or alive, bones and all. Even cleaned the place of rat turds. I did not want to know what it was.
    The ammonia smell got stronger. My nose hairs felt like they were burning.
    Whatever finally came out of that hole might have been a rat once, but equally it might have been a fish or a bird or an insect or a snake. Christ, I can’t even describe it really, other than it was white and covered in a pale grey slime like human spunk and it was about two foot long. Hairless stumps for legs, a cluster of pink eyes at the front and a mouth full of steel teeth. No shit. Steel. Maybe it had learned to grow steel teeth as normal animals grow bone. Don’t ask me. God knows what might evolve in the deepest parts of this floating shitheap.
    Whatever it was, it was mad as hell.
    Big Fred shot it, though I think he only pulled that trigger in shock, and the thing exploded white pus against the wall. It had no skeleton. It was a fat sausage of flesh and pus and Fred popped it open.
    But it wasn’t alone.
    Another appeared in the hole, stretching up its squidgy head to get a good look at us, and then it launched itself in our direction. It got Fletcher in the neck. Thank God Fletcher got in the way of Fred. I mean no disrespect for the dead, but if it hadn’t been for Fred I wouldn’t be talking to you today. Its teeth wrenched part of Fletcher’s throat away and it burrowed into the wound, contracting its body to fit. It sucked itself in. Fletcher’s face said he didn’t know what was going on, didn’t