Outpost

by Adam Baker

  Nail was conscious. He lay still, breathing shallow. Punch crouched beside him.

  'How you doing, big guy?'

  Nail coughed and flipped him off.

  'Take it easy, all right? Give your lungs a chance to recover.' Punch left the bunker. He stood on the jetty and watched the refinery burn.

  D Module was ablaze. The fuel store had been on the lowest level. The fire spread upward, floor by floor, until the habitation block was a pillar of fire.

  Flame lit the surrounding sea and ice, flickering orange.

  'I'm taking the boat,' Punch told the crew. 'I'm going back to help. Any volunteers?'

  They looked away.

  Punch rode the zodiac back to Rampart.

  He could see the underside of the refinery. Liquid, rippling flame washing over pipes and spars. The sight was mesmeric.

  White light at the heart of the conflagration. Thousand-degree heat. It was like staring into the sun. He had to look away. Debris fell into the sea, spitting geysers of steam. A shriek. An explosion of sparks. A steady groan, like the refinery was in excruciating pain. A major structural collapse under way.

  A cascade of girders: fatally weakened chunks of superstructure tumbled into the ocean with a roar like Niagara.

  Punch gripped the side of the boat as waves rippled outward from the refinery, bucking the boat, cracking plates of ice.

  Jane and Ghost crouched on the D Module roof. They held each other. They felt the roof begin to buckle and torque. The scream of tortured metal was so loud it became a strange, eye-of-storm silence.

  Jane looked up. The crane arm. The cargo pallet descending out of smoke.

  Brief glimpse of the crane cab. Sian at the controls.

  'Come on,' said Jane.

  They threw themselves aboard.

  Punch docked the zodiac. He watched D Module fall from the refinery into the sea. Support girders beneath the habitation block, fatally weakened by hours of blowtorch heat, buckled and fractured. The blazing structure slowly toppled forward. It hit the ocean, sending a final mushroom-cloud of flame hundreds of metres into the air. Sudden darkness. Sound of on-rushing water. Punch ran for the stairs, anxious to get higher before seawater washed him into the ocean.

  Punch crossed the deck. Devastation lit by moonlight. He stood at the edge of the smoking acre where D Module used to sit. Ragged, twisted girders. Broken pipes. Metal glowed red. Spars part-liquefied by heat. Steel hung in petrified drips. The mangled superstructure ticked and creaked as it quickly cooled in sub-zero air.

  Plenty of smoke, but no flames.

  The cargo pallet stalled four metres above the deck. The crane was dead. No power. Ghost hung from the pallet and let himself drop. He rolled. He lay on the deck. Jane dropped beside him. She helped Ghost to his feet. He coughed and retched.

  'You okay?' asked Punch.

  'I'll be all right.'

  Jane and Punch explored the remaining habitation block.

  They stood in the canteen. Moonlight shafted through the windows. Spectral smoke haze hung in the air. The tables and floor were dusted in a fine layer of soot.

  Punch tried the lights.

  'Everything is dead.'

  'We better check the powerhouse.'

  The powerhouse. They surveyed the destruction with an old Aldis lamp. Three John Brown generators, each the size of a bus. The generators were still and silent.

  They climbed steps to the mezzanine level. The generator controls were fried. Cabling had burned through.

  'You know,' said Jane, 'for a while there I thought we would be okay.'

  The Long Game

  Jane brought Ghost to the powerhouse. He walked with his arm round her shoulder. She helped him climb the steps to mezzanine level.

  'Well, there it is,' said Jane.

  Ghost examined the scorched ruins of the generator controls by flashlight. He could barely stand. He leaned on a railing for support.

  Two of the control stations were burned and warped. Cracked dials. Cracked screens. A side panel had fallen from one of the consoles exposing melted clumps of cable that hung in tangles like jungle vine.

  Ghost coughed and cleared his throat.

  'One and Two are fried. Generator Three seems pretty intact. I say we get Three running and maybe cannibalise One and Two for spares.'

  'You need to rest. You have a bad case of smoke inhalation. It'll get worse before it gets better. You've damaged your lungs. They'll start to fill with fluid over the next couple of days. Rye wants to get you on oxygen, soon as she can. Give you a chance to heal.'

  'You seem okay,' said Ghost.

  'Buddy breathing. You gave me most of the air.'

  'Honestly. I'm fine.'

  'Not for long. If you start chasing round trying to fix that generator you could do yourself serious damage. You could keel over with pneumonia, and there isn't much anyone could do to treat you.'

  'If we don't get the generators running we will all freeze to death. I can't sit around and convalesce. And if I get pneumonia then all the more reason to tap my expertise while we still can. We have to get to work right now.'

  'Christ.'

  'Do we have any amphetamines? Anything that can give me a boost?'

  'We've got some pre-loaded adrenalin shots in the survival kits. It'll crank you for a couple of hours, but once it's metabolised you'll be a wreck.'

  'Go and get them.'

  Jane fetched the shots.

  She found Ghost sitting on the deck with his back to one of the charred control panels. She sat beside him.

  'How you doing, fella?'

  'Pretty fucked up,' he croaked.

  Jane gestured to the broken instrumentation.

  'Reckon you could fix it?'

  'I'm not an electrician.'

  'Neither is anyone else. You're the best we have.'

  'Wish I could stand without coughing my guts out.'

  Jane held up a yellow, pre-loaded epinephrine syringe from a survival pack.

  'Do it.'

  Jane stabbed the hypo into his thigh and pressed the plunger.

  The rest of the crewmen returned from the island.

  They cleaned the canteen by lamplight. The wiped a fine dusting of ash from tables and chairs. They swept the floor.

  Nail slipped out of the canteen. Nikki followed. She trailed him down dark passageways. She followed his flashlight beam through the cavernous shadows of the pump hall. She found him in a storeroom examining Ghost's boat.

  Nail circled oil drums welded to a scaffold pole.

  'He didn't get very far,' he said.

  He examined sketched plans laid out on a trestle table. A crude yacht. Top view. Side view.

  'It's a good design, as far as I can tell. Single mast. Mainsail. Jib. I imagine it would be pretty stable.'

  'Could you finish it?' asked Nikki. 'Ghost might be out of action for a while. Could you finish what he started?'

  'I'm a dive welder. Been doing eight years, off and on. Yeah, I could do it.'

  'Perhaps we'll get lucky. Perhaps someone will answer our mayday.'

  'I'm tired of waiting. I don't like putting my fate in someone else's hands. It's not my style. You saw those guys up there. Sitting round, slack-jawed, waiting for Blanc to lace their shoes. Contemptible.'

  'Morale is pretty low. The guys are feeling shell-shocked. Helpless.'

  'Fuck their emotions. Do they actually want to live or what? Brain-freeze. Paralysis. That's what kills most people in a crisis. Well, not me, baby. I'm the survivor type.'

  'So what should we do?'

  'If Ghost recovers, then great. He can finish the boat for us. If anything happens to him, then we finish it ourselves. Take the food we need, and wave sayonara on our way south.'

  Jane helped Ghost inspect the powerhouse controls. She worked under his direction. She levered a side panel. He shone his flashlight inside.

  'Generator Three looks healthy enough.' He coughed. 'This console looks fine. So why the hell aren't th
e lights on?'

  'Maybe the fault is further up the line.'

  He shone his flashlight at the wall. Cable thick as drainpipe snaked into a duct. Ghost unzipped his coat and fleece.

  'You're not seriously going in there?'

  'I'd love to send you in my place,' said Ghost. 'But I need to see with my own eyes.'

  He coughed and spat.

  'If you pass out in there we will have a bitch of a job dragging you out.'

  'That adrenalin shot will keep me juiced for a couple of hours. Let's make the most of it.'

  Ghost ducked down and crawled into the conduit.

  Punch unlocked the canteen storeroom. Colder than a meat locker. Frosted food. Sian joined him.

  'Why don't we pass out survival rations?' she asked. 'Those self-heating cans?'

  'Last resort. I want to save those in case we need them on a journey. I still think our best plan is to wait until mid-winter, take the Skidoos and head for Canada.'

  'Just us?'

  'You and me. Maybe Jane and Ghost if they want. It's an old argument. I've already talked it through with Jane. She dismissed the idea, but she'll come round.'

  'I'm not sure.'

  'To be honest, I don't talk to the other guys any more. They just sit in the canteen staring into space. They aren't going to make it home. It may sound harsh, but the way I look at it, they're already dead.'

  Punch took a box from a shelf.

  'Give them cornflakes. They'll have to eat them dry. Good carbohydrate. It's the best we can do.'

  'We're all dying by degrees, aren't we?' said Sian. 'Every one of us.'

  Punch smiled.

  'We're not done yet,' he said, and kissed her.

  Ghost wormed along the conduit. Tight tunnel walls. He had a flashlight in one hand and a radio in the other. He examined the thick cable running above his head.

  'How's it going?' Jane's voice.

  'Okay. Just stopped for a breather.'

  'Any fire damage?'

  'Nothing so far. There must be a break somewhere along the line, though. Just have to find it.'

  'I feel bad. We're treating you like Kleenex. Using you up for the common good.'

  'Comes with the territory. You chose to clip Rawlins's big bunch of keys to your belt. You have to take the shit that comes with it.'

  Ghost suppressed a coughing fit.

  'All right. I'm moving on.'

  Nail searched for supplies.

  'I want to be ready. There's plenty of stuff we will need when we sail south.'

  'The boat isn't even built yet,' said Nikki.

  'You can never be too prepared. Besides, I'm bored. No point sitting round with those lethargic fucks in the canteen. I want to achieve something.'

  There were lifeboat muster points at each corner of the refinery. The lifeboat stations were named after London underground stations. Moorgate, Holborn, Blackfriars and Pimlico. Each lifeboat station had a survival pack. Nail picked through each pack. Flares. Insulation blankets. Calorie bars. First aid. He threw supplies into an empty kit-bag and carried it over his shoulder like Santa.

  He led Nikki across the deck. They contemplated the acre of twisted girders where D Module used to be.

  A small sliver of D Module remained. Nail's flashlight lit a buckled staircase and a couple of burned-out rooms.

  'Come on.'

  'You're not going in there, are you?' asked Nikki.

  'See that doorway on the second floor?'

  'Yeah.'

  'That's my old room.'

  They climbed through dereliction. The staircase creaked beneath their weight.

  The door to Nail's old room was charred and bubbled. He kicked it open.

  His room was black with soot. He kicked aside the skeletal frame of a chair. He pulled the melted mattress from his bunk.

  'Take a seat.'

  Nikki sat on the metal bed frame.

  Nail closed the door to trap body heat. He set his flashlight on the washstand.

  He unfolded a hexamine stove and lit the fuel block with a Zippo.

  He stretched up and prised the grating from an air vent. He reached inside and pulled out a scorched cash box.

  He sat on the bed next to Nikki. He took a key from round his neck and opened the box. Money. Notes rolled tight, held by rubber bands. Nail tucked cash into the inner pocket of his coat.

  'You could wipe your ass with it, I suppose,' said Nikki. 'Poker winnings?'

  'Fruits of entrepreneurial labour.'

  Nail tipped the box into his lap. A spoon. Packets of hypodermics. A Ziploc bag of brown powder.

  'Didn't know you had a hobby.'

  'It's a six-month rotation. A person needs to chill now and again.'

  'And you go home with a triple pay cheque.'

  'Loose change. People go to Ghost for weed. They come to me if they want something a little stronger.'

  Nail scraped frost from the shoulder of his coat and melted it in the spoon with a pinch of powder. He unwrapped a syringe and siphoned the fizzing liquid.

  'Want to forget yourself a while?' asked Nail.

  'Yeah, there's plenty I want to put from my mind.'

  She took off her coat and rolled up the arm of her fleece. Nail rubbed the crook of her elbow with his thumb to raise a vein. He carefully inserted the needle beneath her skin and pressed the plunger. A wash of snuggling well-being. She smiled and sat back against the wall.

  Nail took off his coat and rolled up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He tied a shoelace tourniquet round his bicep and pumped his arm. He shot up.

  He pulled Nikki close and hung his coat round both their shoulders. He stroked her hair.

  They sat in the burned-out room and gazed at the stove, mesmerised by the ethereal blue flame.

  Ghost crawled through the conduit. He jackknifed his body to squeeze round a junction. His belt-loop snagged on a bolt. He tried to twist free. Sudden, sweating claustrophobia. He pushed at the duct walls. He heard himself sob.

  He stopped thrashing, closed his eyes and tried to compose himself.

  'Talk to me, Jane. Let me hear a voice.'

  'Just thinking. Rawlins didn't want to lose himself. That's what he told me. He didn't want the disease to win. I suppose that's what everyone says. That they'd drive off a cliff in a blaze of glory rather than waste away in a hospital bed.'

  'So what do you reckon? This disease.'

  'I read a book about the Manhattan Project. When they tested the first atom bomb in the desert, scientists wondered if the blast might set the atmosphere on fire. Maybe this was the same situation. They, the big, scary They, were toying with some kind of super-technology. Nanobots. Bio-weapon. Something so cutting-edge, so unstable, they put the lab in space to contain it in a vacuum. But something went wrong, something sudden and catastrophic, and chunks of debris dropped to earth like our friend in the capsule.'

  'Sure. Why not?'

  Ghost squirmed in the narrow space. He unhooked his belt- loop. He crawled forward on his elbows.

  'Feel like I've been wriggling around in here for hours.'

  'Nothing?'

  'Nothing. The cable looks fine.'

  'Find a way out and head back to the powerhouse. We'll take another look at the generator.'

  Punch sat in the observation bubble. He cocooned himself in a sleeping bag and stared at the stars.

  Footsteps from below. Crazy, dancing light approaching up the spiral stairs. Sian with an aluminium trunk under each arm and a Maglite clenched between her teeth.

  'One of the men on Raven is an electrician,' said Sian. 'If we can get him here, he can help.'

  'We don't have power,' said Punch. 'We don't have radar. If they take to the lifeboats they'll drift right past us.'

  Sian flipped the latches on each case.

  'A GPS kit and a radio. I found them downstairs. They run on lithium batteries. They're charged.'

  'They won't have much range.'

  Sian contemplated the silhouettes of the
gargantuan distillation towers, three great shadows that eclipsed the stars.

  'What if we got them up high?'

  Ghost was overcome by a sudden wave of exhaustion. He rolled on to his side.

  'I feel like a fucking sewer rat.'

  'I spoke to the careers counsellor during my last year at school.

  He asked me what I would do if I were the last person alive. If there were no social pressure, no one left to impress.'

  'What did you say?'

  'I'd mooch. I'd loaf. I'd sit on a riverbank and read books'

  Ghost reached in his pocket. He pulled out a yellow epinephrine hypodermic. He bit the cap off the hypo and injected his bicep.

  'You're in charge now. You know that, right? I mean seriously. For real. With Rawlins gone you are the only authority left. The crew are your responsibility. They'll expect you to have the Grand Plan.'

  'Is this your valedictory statement? Are you passing the torch?'

  'I can feel a breeze. There's something up ahead.'

  Ghost wormed his way along the conduit. A section of duct broke open when D Module fell from the refinery. He leaned over a jagged metal lip. Frayed cable swung in the ice wind. Far below him was the sea.

  'I think I found our problem.' He coughed up phlegm. He retched. He vomited. 'I'm turning round. I'm coming back.'

  Jane helped Ghost limp to his room. She laid him on his bunk. He was pale and breathless. He shivered. She draped three coats over him.

  She lay beside him; let his head rest on her shoulder.

  'Take it easy for a while,' she said. 'Get your breath back.'

  'Just need to rest.'

  Liquid in his lungs. Each breath died away in a bubbling rattle.

  'Take your time.'

  'I can splice a domestic extension lead into that powerhouse console. We can run a couple of heaters. Cook food. It'll keep us alive. Buy some time.'

  'After that?'

  'Look for an intact length of three-thousand megawatt cable. A few metres. That's all we need. Patch that break in the line and we are back in business. Just need to rip up floor plates until we find some.'