Free Hell Rig by J. E. Gurley Page A

respond.
    “What?” Ed moaned, irritated at being disturbed. He looked up and saw Easton leaning over him, then looked at his wristwatch. He had been asleep less than three hours. At his age, he needed his sleep. “What’s going on?”
    “I can’t find Greg.”
    “He’s probably down on the lower dock taking a piss or smoking a butt,” Ed suggested, wiping the sleep from his eyes.
    “Nah. I looked. I found this, though.” He held out Greg’s flashlight.
    Ed examined it closely. “Is that blood?” he asked of a dark smear on the lens.
    Sid shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. You want me to look for him, or what?”
    Ed sighed. He knew he was going to have trouble with this contract. When Global came to him, offering almost twice the usual rate for a simple clean up, he had been skeptical. Asking around, he had learned that most of the big companies had turned it down. It seemed Global Thirteen had a bad reputation.
    Rig workers can be a superstitious lot. When word spread that of the six men first sent out to number Thirteen after Katrina, one had committed suicide a week later and two had dropped out of sight, men refused to go near it. Even supply ship captains were reluctant to go there.
    It was a bad luck rig.
    Ed thought of the others, still sleeping soundly. “You and I will look around. Let the others get some sack time.”
    The string of lights outside on the platform was out, leaving the platform in darkness.
    “What happened to the lights?” Ed asked.
    “They were out when I came out,” Easton answered, playing his flashlight around the platform.
    “Let’s check the generator room.”
    As they turned the corner, they could hear the generator humming away. Checking the electrical panel, Ed found the switch for the lights they had rigged was off.
    “Why would Greg do that?” he asked Easton, not really expecting the kid to know. He flipped the switch and the lights flickered back on. “That’s better.”
    They made a circuit of the main deck and found nothing. They next checked the cellar deck with its maze of pipes and equipment. The chemical room and mudroom were empty but they did not enter the waterlogged workshops. A dozen men could have hidden in there and Ed did not wish to wade through ice cold water. Finally, they descended to the bottom deck and found nothing. Ed played the flashlight along the pipes running underneath the platform. Satisfied Bale had not come down to the landing dock, they went back to the main deck, going building-to-building but still finding no sign of the missing Bale. They even checked the helideck.
    One area of the main deck near the crane remained dark. As they walked toward the far side of the platform, Ed slid on a puddle, catching himself on a rack of pipes.
    “What the hell…?” he asked. Shining the light, he saw a dark puddle on the concrete. He dipped his finger in it. “It’s not oil,” he said, checking the viscosity between two fingers. “It’s sticky, more like…” He paused and sniffed the liquid. A drop of the dark substance fell on his hand. Slowly, he shined his flashlight upwards. “Holy Mother…” In its beam he saw Bale, naked, swinging like meat on a hook, his arms stretched out beside him and nailed to a wooden two by four.
    Easton followed Ed’s beam with his own, both beams converging on Bale hanging there. Easton fell to the deck and began backpedaling across the platform on his ass, whimpering like a frightened child.
    “Jesus Christ!” Ed swore. He looked at Easton sitting with his back to a rack of pipes, biting his hand. “We’ve got to get him down.”
    Easton frantically flashed his beam around the platform. “Are you kidding? What about whoever put him up there?”
    Ed realized Easton was right. Bale hadn’t crucified himself. The only people out here were his crew, unless someone had come aboard later.
    “Okay. Let’s wake up the others.”
    They left Bale dangling from the crane and returned to the