“One, two, three, pull!” Vardy shouted. The two men heaved, and once again the doors were prised apart by just a few centimetres.

Jake pulled a thin book from the pile and wedged it between them. “Relax!” he said. The submariners eased off. The doors squeezed against the book, compressing the pages, but they held.

“See?” Jake looked triumphant. “Ready for the next one?” The men nodded.

They worked at it for five full minutes, prising the doors further and further apart, at first with the broom handles, then when the gap was wide enough, with their hands. Jake carried on inserting more and more books between them, holding them open.

“That’s enough,” Vardy called. “They’re open enough.” He shone his torch between them, and all three saw the problem immediately.

“Shit!” It was Ewan who spoke for all of them, as they stared at the lift. “How are we going to climb down the shaft now? And why didn’t anybody think about the lift being on this level?”

“To be fair, there was a one-in-three chance,” Vardy said, “and we got unlucky.” He turned sideways and stepped over the books, into the lift car. His torch beam traced across the floor. It was a single metal plate with no obvious fixings.

“In the movies there’s always a trap door,” Jake offered.

“This isn’t the movies,” Eric replied. “And there ain’t no door in there.”

They all considered the problem. It was Jake who spoke what they were all thinking. “Is there any more of that explosive left in your crate?”

Nineteen

IT DIDN’T TAKE Ewan and Eric very long to go back outside and find the box. They brought the whole thing back down to level three, not wanting to transport the explosive without any form of protection.

There was very little of the PBX left, and only one detonator, a spare they had originally brought in case it was required to blow the door. The submariners assured Jake that the small amount remaining would be more than enough to make a sizeable hole in the bottom of the lift car.

The four men took refuge in a store room around a corner. Ewan would have liked to have put more distance between them and the explosive, but they were limited by the available connecting wire.

“I hope this is worth it,” Eric sighed. “That one’s an EBW detonator we’re about to burn. We should have taken another one from a spearfish as our spare.”

Ewan looked at him sideways on. “You think that one would be better off sitting in one of our nukes?”

“One of our nukes is now just dead weight, since we sabotaged it to get that detonator out!”

“And you’re unhappy about that? Seriously? You think we’d be better off hanging onto weapons of mass destruction than using them to potentially save a few thousands lives?”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” Eric said defensively.

“Whatever, guys, let’s leave the arms debate for later. Can we do this?” Vardy said, shaking his head.

Eric smiled. “Hold onto your hats!” He squeezed his thumb over a small electronic trigger. From outside came the muffled sound of an explosion, a dead thud, like something very heavy being dropped on the floor.

“That’s it?” Jake asked. He looked mildly disappointed. “I was expecting something…bigger.”

“Should be more than enough. Come on, let’s take a look.”

Ewan was right. The explosive had taken out the whole underside of the lift car. Torch beams illuminated the deep hole below.

“Well blow me down,” Vardy exclaimed. “It does go deeper! The sneaky so-and-sos. I would never have guessed. Look, there’s a ladder running down the side of the shaft. Must be for maintenance or emergencies. Ewan, do you want to lead on?”

“Sure, no problem.”

Ewan climbed over the books, his foot looking for purchase. It found a rung. He tried putting some weight on it. Happy that the explosive hadn’t damaged its integrity, he put his torch in his belt and tried to get his other foot onto the ladder. It wasn’t a simple job; there was nothing to hold onto inside the lift car. He retracted his foot and stood balanced on what little of the floor remained.

“Eric, pass me the broom handles.”

“Sure, here you are.”

“Thanks.”

He positioned the handles lengthways across the hole in the floor. Bending over, he placed a hand on each handle, lowered one foot down onto the ladder, then the other. He descended a couple of rungs, then took his hands off the broom handles and gripped the upper rungs.

“A bit unconventional,” he said, “but it works. See you guys down there.”

Eric and Vardy followed, leaving Jake to go down last. He still felt dizzy. His head refused to clear completely. The contortions in the lift car didn’t help, and again he questioned why he had insisted on coming along. By the time he made it to the bottom of the ladder, the others had managed to get the doors open.

“Well that was easier!” Vardy said, his mood lifting.

“Only one set of doors, no lift car to content with,” Ewan said. He stepped out of the shaft, and the others followed.

• • •

Mandy Chalmers had valiantly ignored Jake’s demand to take a break for as long as possible, but the workload had taken its toll. The lack of sleep combined with the physical exertion of attending to so many sick people in so many different cabins was too much. But it wasn’t the limit of her own energy and strength that finally forced her to stop, it was the limit of their supplies.

“Mandy, where can I find more painkillers?”

She looked around to find one of the new nurses quizzing her. The poor woman already looked shattered herself.

“Everything we have is in cabin 845.”

“There aren’t any left in there, I’ve looked all over.”

“Then that’s it, we’re out. I’m sorry, that’s all we had.”

“But I’ve got five new cases just been admitted. All paralysed, all in pain.”

“All you can do is try and make them comfortable. Cold wet blankets might help reduce their temperature.”

“No can do. Until they get the power back on, there’s still no running water.”

“I don’t know, Jenny, I’m sorry!” Mandy snapped. She sank into the nearest seat, an armchair that had been moved out onto a landing to make more room in a cabin. “Sorry, I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

“Don’t sweat it, we’re all on edge.”

“Listen, you’ll have to improvise. We’re on a ship, get some sea water up here in a bucket or something. I can’t magic drugs out of thin air, and I can’t make the power come on. We have to face it, we’re losing. These people will probably all be dead this time tomorrow. Us too. A bit more or a bit less suffering isn’t going to change anything.”

“Mandy, don’t talk like that. Where there’s life there’s hope. That’s what Janice said when she brought that engineer up.”

“Mmm, maybe,” Mandy said dreamily. She was sinking into her chair, the soft cushions enveloping her, inviting her to relax for the first time since she had been pressed into service. Her eyelids became unbearably heavy, closing of their own accord. Images of the sick, the dying, and the dead swirled in her mind. Their faces twisted, contorted, and morphed into the faces of her brothers and sisters, of her mother, before fading away to nothingness as sleep claimed her.

• • •

Level four was nothing like the others above it. Gone was the sterile hospital look, the whitewashed walls, and the polished concrete floors. Gone was the recessed lighting, the false ceiling, and the discreet air vents. Level four was an altogether more industrial space, and a more intimidating one too.

The four men had emerged into a dark grey concrete tunnel. The floor was a metal grate covering the channel that ran down the middle of the passage. The ceiling was double the height of the other floors. Huge metal ducts were suspended from it and alongside them ran bright red pipes dotted with sprinkler outlets.