Outpost

by Adam Baker

  'I've got a plan. Fetch explosives from the bunker. Blow the lock-pins and release the tethers. Float our way out of here. What do you think?'

  'I think you're stronger than me, and smarter than me, and if you want to give it a shot then I am along for the ride.'

  'Cool.'

  'So you want to head back to the island?'

  'One last time.'

  'Then I've got something that may help.' He shouldered the SCUBA tanks. 'Let's go up to the helipad. I want to show you something.'

  The helipad. Big as a basketball court. A big red H lit by a ring of floodlights. Ghost wheeled an office chair to the centre of the H and draped a parka over it. He helped Jane strap the SCUBA tanks to her back. Thick hose led to a spray gun.

  'Diesel pressurised with nitrogen,' said Ghost. 'Press that button on the barrel. That's a butane lighter from the kitchen. The igniter. Gives you a little nozzle flame. The big trigger releases fuel. Watch yourself, all right? Brace your legs, and don't pull the trigger unless you mean it.'

  Jane stood twenty metres from the chair. She sparked the igniter. She adjusted her grip on the spray gun and pulled the trigger. A roaring, high-pressure jet of fuel-fire engulfed the office chair. Upholstery foam shrivelled and dripped. The plastic chair withered in a hurricane blast of flame.

  Hunger

  Nail and Gus sat by the fire.

  'I feel like a caveman,' said Gus, prodding the embers.

  'That's because we are living in a cave.'

  'I could use a big juicy bison about now. What do you reckon? The infected. They hate fire, right? Maybe we could cook the virus out of them.'

  'You want to eat a sailor?'

  'Right now I'm prepared to give it a shot.'

  'You are the sickest of fucks. So how are you feeling? Hunger aside?'

  'Parched,' said Gus. 'It's fucking ridiculous. We can't even go outside to grab some snow.'

  He stroked the remains of his beard. Weeping blisters. Scorched stubble clotted with pus.

  'The burns feel like they are tightening up, you know? Like the skin is contracting. I'm frightened to move in case I split right open.'

  'Maybe you should lie still a while.' Nail was preoccupied with his own misery. He was starting to sweat cold turkey. He didn't want to talk.

  'The pain comes and goes. Ice helps.'

  'Maybe we should grease you up. I think that's what you're supposed to do with bad burns. Seal the wound.'

  'What's she doing?'

  Nikki stood at the bunker entrance, ear to the door. She was mumbling to herself.

  'Is she talking to them? Look at her. She speaks. She listens. She speaks again. She's holding a conversation.'

  'Trying to work out how many of those infected fucks are out there waiting for us,' said Nail.

  'Looks like she's having a nice long chat with them through the door. They act in concert sometimes. You've seen that, right? Watched them out on the ice? What if she can read their thoughts? What if some people can actually tune in?'

  'Doubt it.'

  'Where's her boat? If she made it back here she must have a boat.' 'Yeah.'

  'She's insane, you know that, right? All that stuff last night. All that babble. Walking cities. Oceans of fire. She's lost it.'

  'She sounds better this morning. She's actually making sense.'

  'Do me a favour, all right?' said Gus. 'Don't leave me alone with her. Just don't leave me alone.'

  'I'm going to get some wood. Take it easy.' Nail stood up.

  'Hey, Nikki,' he called. 'I'm going to fetch some more firewood. Care to join me?'

  He led Nikki deep into the tunnels. They each held a piece of burning bed frame as a torch.

  Damp concrete. Nail hadn't been outside for days. There would quickly come a time when he wouldn't want to leave. He would become habituated to the soothing silence of the passageways. A creature of the shadows.

  'Better watch our step,' he said as they traversed damp, subterranean caverns. 'This place is only half built. They might have dug vertical shafts.'

  'I think I might know this place better than you. These days I think of it as home.'

  'What about food? What have you been eating this past couple of weeks?'

  'Cans. I ate them all. None left.'

  'So do you want to tell me about it?'

  'Tell you what?' she asked.

  'You took my boat. You sailed away. Now you are back, talking trippy bullshit about walking cities. Did you leave at all? Jane told us you sent radio messages. You went south, then sank. Was it all lies? Were you here all along?'

  'It was a long journey. I passed Greenland. I nearly reached Norway. There were storms. I'm not entirely sure what happened. My memory plays tricks.'

  'But why? Why come back? All that effort to get away, and you came back. If Europe has turned into some God-awful hell-world I need to know.'

  'I saw cities on fire. And other stuff. I saw cities get up and walk. Strange creatures. Leviathans. It was madness. I knew it at the time. I knew it wasn't real.'

  'But what will we find?' asked Nail. 'Your psychosis aside. If we actually make it back to Britain what will be waiting for us?'

  'They nuked the cities. The armies. The governments. Scorched earth. Whatever else I dreamed, that much was real.'

  'So if we head south we'll hit a radiation cloud. Is that why you came back?'

  'I honestly don't know for sure. I was at sea, and then I was here. I can't explain it.'

  'But where's the boat?'

  'The hull was crushed by ice as I approached the island. It's at the bottom of the sea.' 'Shit.'

  'Maybe I didn't come back at all. Maybe I'm dead. Maybe I'm a ghost.'

  'You're sure they nuked the cities?'

  'A cleansing fire.' 'I'm from Manchester. You know that, right?'

  'Rubble. Plutonium dust. It'll be safe to go back and take a look in a half million years or so.'

  'Fucking ironic. Jane and Ghost. Plotting how to get home, day and night. And it's all gone.'

  'Are you going to tell them?' asked Nikki.

  'We don't exactly get along.'

  'My turn to wonder. Why are you and Gus skulking in this bunker when you could be back aboard Rampart? Did they run you off with a pitchfork?'

  'Like I say. We don't get along.'

  'Well, that's a shame. They've got drugs and dressings. Gus will die without them.'

  'So why did you come back to this island? Okay: they nuked the cities. Plenty of other places you could have gone. Plenty of wilderness. Why here? This place is death.'

  'I love it. I truly love it.'

  'Queen of the Damned. Jesus. This gulag has driven you batshit.'

  An air shaft. Nail looked up. Massive turbine blades dripped rust.

  'I bet they were going to garrison whole armies down here.'

  'This is my little camp,' said Nikki.

  The installation manager's office. A leather chair and a desk. A faded Soviet flag and a little plaster bust of Lenin.

  A mural. Farm workers driving tractors and combine harvesters across a golden field of wheat. They gazed towards Lenin, who stood on the horizon shooting rays like the rising sun.

  Nail examined a photograph on the wall.

  'Brezhnev. Early eighties.'

  Scattered tins on the desk.

  'Like I said. Ate them all, I'm afraid.'

  Nail picked through wrappers and cans. He found a muesli bar.

  'Hey,' said Nikki. 'How did I miss that?'

  Nail split the bar in half.

  'What about Gus?' asked Nikki. 'What about his share?' Nail didn't reply. He crammed the bar in his mouth. He dropped crumbs. He picked them from the floor and ate them.

  They found a couple of Russian Kraz trucks and a bulldozer parked in a cavern. The vehicles were slowly crumbling to rust. Nikki found a copy of Hustler in the cab. She tucked it into her coat pocket. 'Kindling?'

  'Toilet paper.'

  'Maybe there's some petrol in the
se tanks,' said Nail.

  Nikki kicked a fuel tank bolted to the back of a cab. Dull gong. Empty.

  'What about guns?' asked Nail. 'Find any weapons? Any old AKs lying around?'

  'No. I looked. There's nothing.'

  There was a leather jacket balled up on the bulldozer seat. Nikki checked the pockets.

  'Give me your knife,' she said. She cut a small strip of leather and folded it into her mouth like a stick of gum. She cut a strip for Nail.

  'Go ahead. Chew. It'll fool your stomach. Keep the hunger pangs at bay.'

  'Not exactly a permanent solution.'

  'It buys us time.'

  They returned to the bunker entrance with armfuls of wood. They dumped the wood on the floor and fed the fire.

  'Miss me?' asked Nail.

  'Fuck you.' Gus smiled. He was shivering.

  'Are you all right?'

  'I need to get back to Rampart, otherwise I'm a dead man. They've got morphine. They've got antibiotics.'

  Nail thought it over. Would Jane shoot him if he tried to board Rampart? Probably.

  'Their medical supplies were pretty depleted,' said Nail. 'No guarantee they could help.'

  'At least they've got hot food and water. I don't want to die on this concrete floor, stinking of my own shit. I want to be warm and clean. I want to die in a bed.'

  Nikki dragged a snowmobile to the bunker door. She stood on the saddle and chipped away at ice accumulated at the top of the doorframe. She threw Nail and Gus a chunk of icicle to suck.

  'So,' said Nail. 'Duke of Amberley. What was that all about?'

  'Amberley. West Country. A cute village on the side of a hill. That's where I'll go when we get home.'

  'Yeah?'

  'Everyone has their heaven. Amberley is mine.' 'Right.'

  'There's a house at the end of a long, country lane. I glimpsed it through trees. Ivy and Tudor beams. That's where I'll go.'

  'But Duke?'

  'Our old lives are gone. We can be whoever we like. A lord. A duke. A prince. Who is left to say No?'

  Gus fell asleep an hour later.

  Nail put more wood on the fire. He took the strip of chewed leather from his mouth and threw it into the flames. The leather crisped and curled. Nikki sat on the other side of the fire.

  'Hell of a way to check out,' said Nail. 'Stuck down this hole, swigging our own piss.'

  Nikki ignored him.

  'So how about it?' asked Nail. 'Do you actually want to live? Do you actually want to get out of here? Or is this your new home? I know why I am hiding in this fucking mausoleum. But I don't fully understand why you came back to the island, and I don't understand why you are lurking down here instead of back aboard Rampart. You deserve desolation? You deserve hell? Is that honestly the reason?' She didn't reply.

  'Canada,' said Nail. 'That's what I reckon. If a person took one of the snowmobiles they could get a long way before the fuel ran out. They would need stuff from Rampart, though. Food. Better clothes. You could tag along. Surely you don't want to stay here and starve?'

  Nikki pushed more wood into the fire.

  'I wish you could understand what we have here,' she said. 'Every one of you aboard Rampart was on the run, fleeing the world. Why are you all so anxious to get back home? It's all here. Everything we need. You just need to embrace the silence. Let it enter your head, fill your thoughts.'

  'Everything we need? We're sitting here eating a leather jacket. You want to join those fucks out there? Get yourself bitten or something? Is that your big plan? Whatever. You can stay here if you like. Hang out with your invisible friend. But I want to live. I don't want to die in this sewer. I want to live.'

  They sat in silence. Nail winced and clutched his stomach. Cramps. He stretched. Hunger had intensified from vague discomfort to an acute, stabbing pain. He hated himself for what he was about to do.

  He struggled to his feet, careful not to look at Gus. He took a burning chair leg from the fire.

  'I'm going for a walk,' he said. 'I'm going to look around for anything useful. I might be gone a while.'

  Nikki nodded and smiled.

  He headed into the darkness of the tunnel mouth leaving Nikki alone with Gus.

  Nail returned an hour later. He sat by the campfire. He looked into the flames.

  Nail was a murderer. He had stabbed Mal in the throat, then crouched over the dying man and begged forgiveness. He tried to stem the flow, got sprayed as he tried to patch the slit jugular with bloody fingers.

  Scrubbing in the shower. Blood on white porcelain. Scrubbing for hours.

  Now this. Step by step into hell.

  He gestured to Gus's immobile body.

  'How's he doing?'

  'Dead.'

  'Yeah?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Well,' he heard himself say, 'then I suppose he won't mind.' He sat and stared into the flames.

  Nikki flicked open her knife, slit the fabric of Gus's trouser leg and cut strips of flesh from his thigh.

  They roasted flesh over the campfire. Nail wept as he ate.

  The Vault

  'There's no reason all four of us should travel to the island,' said Jane. 'I'll take Punch for company.'

  'I should go,' said Ghost. 'I know the bunker.'

  'No point,' said Jane. 'My plan, my trip. Let me achieve something for once.'

  Ghost drew a map.

  'All right. The explosives are five levels down in a storage vault. You'll pass plenty of side tunnels. Ignore them. Stick to the main passageways. I spent two days down there exploring the bunker. Seemed like there was no end to the place.'

  Jane folded the crude treasure map and tucked it in her pocket. They were sitting in the observation bubble. It was late January. A faint azure tint to the southern sky.

  'Spring is coming,' said Ghost. 'We should have our first real sunrise in a couple of months.'

  'Hyperion will float free. What little is left of it. Probably sink like a stone.'

  'All those guys who died. None of it is down to you. They made their own luck.'

  'How much explosive do you reckon we have stored in the bunker?'

  'We used up the grenades. Used some C4 out on the ice, but there's still a bunch left. Couple of cases at least. Thirty or forty kilos. Enough to put an office block on the moon. You'll need a backpack.'

  'I'll take the flamethrower as well.'

  'I doubt you'll have much use for it. Most of the infected crowd from Hyperion fried aboard the ship. The rest seem to be succumbing to the cold. As long as you keep running, you should be okay. Once you reach the bunker you'll be home and dry.'

  Jane and Punch dressed in the airlock. Ventile over-trousers. Heavy snowboots secured by ankle latches. Triple-seal parkas: zips, toggles, Velcro.

  Jane shrugged on the flamethrower harness. Punch unsheathed the shotgun and chambered rounds.

  They stood on the platform lift and descended the south leg of the refinery. They halted the elevator two metres from the surface and slid down a rope to the ice.

  They walked across the frozen ocean.

  'Ghost says avoid blue ice,' advised Jane. 'It's fresh. Looks pretty, but you could drop through it like a trapdoor. You won't get any warning.'

  The sky was pale pink. They had a clear view of Hyperion. It was a scorched shell. The cabins were burned out. The decks were buckled and black. The funnels had collapsed.

  She could smell it. Burned plastic. Cooked meat.

  They could see a handful of infected passengers out on the ice. Black dots on the slopes of the island like sheep on a distant hillside.

  'Let's make this a quick trip,' said Jane. 'Smash and grab. Hopefully, this will be the last time any of us leave the rig. The last time before home, anyway.'

  A woman in a gold ball gown stood alone on the ice, slump- shouldered and forlorn. She saw Punch and Jane. She staggered forward, arms stretched towards them.

  Jane checked the little blue igniter flame at the mouth of the flamethrower barre
l.

  'Let's see what this thing can do.'

  Punch stood clear.

  Jane braced her legs, took aim and pulled the trigger. She fired. An arc of burning fuel spat twenty metres. The woman was engulfed in fire. She stumbled. She fell to her knees. A second burst. Clothes and hair seared away by a typhoon of flame. She crawled on her hands. She fell forward and slowly melted into the ice.

  They hurried across the frozen sea to the shore. They climbed on to the jetty and up concrete steps to the bunker entrance. Two infected crewmen were slumped in front of the bunker doors. Officers in brass-button dress uniform. Ice crackled as they struggled to their feet.

  Punch kicked their legs from under them, and pulped their heads with the butt of his shotgun.

  'The chain is gone,' said Jane. She tugged at the doors. 'They seem to be tied shut from the inside. Do you have a knife?'

  Jane took off her glove, squirmed her fingers through the gap and sawed through the rope.

  'Do you think someone made it off Hyperion?' asked Punch. 'Well, I can't picture any of those zombie fucks tying a reef knot.'

  They entered the bunker. They swung the heavy doors shut and propped them closed with a snowmobile.

  Punch examined the campfire. He kicked the burning planks. Burst of sparks.

  'Fresh wood. Someone was here a moment ago.' 'There's a bone. A rib.'

  Jane stood at the tunnel mouth and shouted into the darkness.

  'Nail? Gus? Hello?'

  'Must be Nail,' said Punch. 'Anyone else would come running.' 'Hello? Anyone?'

  Jane released a puff of fire down the dark passageway, a rolling burst of flame. Brief glimpse of cracked concrete. Tunnel walls receded to vanishing point.

  'Let's get what we came for,' she said.

  Punch checked the map.

  'Five levels down, then keep heading straight. Be all right as long as we don't deviate.'

  'Don't creep,' said Jane. 'Let him hear us coming.'

  They trudged down a passageway wide as a subway tunnel. Their flashlights lit damp concrete archways Bedrock ribbed with reinforced pillars.