Outpost

by Adam Baker

  'How much further?' asked Punch.

  'Quite a way. Ghost hid the explosives in one of the deeper galleries. Can't find it by accident. You have to know where to look.'

  They approached something blue on the tunnel floor. A snow- boot. Jane crouched and examined the shoe.

  'Size ten. There's blood in it. Blood on the floor.'

  Her flashlight lit a trail of drips.

  They kept walking.

  The tunnel terminated in a massive lead door. A skull etched above a cloverleaf radiation emblem.

  Jane wiped away stone dust.

  ФnacИOCБ/Danger

  PaДИЦИra /Radiation

  Beneath it, written in blood:

  HELLBOUND

  Jagged letters. Splatters and drips.

  'This place stinks of madness,' said Punch.

  Jane examined the blood. It was black. It crumbled and flaked to the touch. The letters had been daubed by a gloved hand.

  'You know what?' she said. 'Whatever happened down here simply isn't our problem. I'm just not interested. We get what we want then leave.'

  The vault was big as a church nave. The walls and ceiling were lagged with lead plate. The chamber was built, Jane supposed, to house the decommissioned reactor core of a Soviet submarine or a nuclear ice-breaker. Relics of the Northern Fleet. The sleek hunter-killers that operated out of Archangel, prowling beneath the polar ice cap, waiting for their comms to flash red and chatter launch codes and target coordinates. The crusted, corroded reactor would be towed down the tunnel on a freight wagon and parked at the centre of the vault. The vault would be filled with salt and the doors sealed for a quarter of a million years.

  The vault had been used as a temporary store for excavation equipment. There were picks and shovels, a jumble of hard-hats, and a couple of pneumatic drills propped against a wall. Hard to know why construction suddenly ceased. But the mining teams downed tools one day and didn't resume.

  Tin mugs and plates. A broken welder's mask used as an ashtray. A bottle of Stolichnaya long since evaporated dry.

  Punch pulled off his gauntlets and began to load his backpack. He pulled ammo boxes from the shelves. He flipped the latches and removed patties of explosive wrapped in brown paper.

  Jane explored corner shadows. A scoop-digger with a broken track.

  Something smelled bad. She lifted the edge of a tarpaulin. An emaciated hand. She pulled the tarpaulin aside.

  'My God,' said Jane.

  'What have you found?' Punch kept packing.

  'A body.'

  Jane crouched over the body. The corpse was jammed in the digger scoop. Thighs, calves and buttocks were gone. The upper arms, belly and chest had been flayed. Slow decay, despite the cold.

  'Who is it?' asked Punch. 'Can you tell?'

  Jane trained her flashlight on the bearded face. Sunken cheeks.

  A rictus grin. Scraps of neck flesh. Fragments of a barbed tattoo.

  'Gus. I think it's Gus. It looks like someone ate him.'

  Punch stuffed a tin of detonators into the side pocket of his backpack.

  'Ate him?'

  'He's been butchered. Someone used a knife. Did a thorough job.'

  'Let's get off this fucking island.'

  'Punch,' shouted Jane. She trained her flashlight on the vault door. A figure in a red hooded parka was struggling to heave the door shut. 'Don't let him lock us in.'

  Punch hurriedly shouldered his shotgun. He shot wide, and blew a crater in the lead wall. He fired again. The impact scoured a deep trench in the closing door. He threw the gun. It skittered across the concrete floor and jammed the vault door just as it closed.

  He dived for the gun and grabbed the butt. He wrestled for the weapon with an unseen adversary. He pulled the trigger. Muzzle-flash. Blast like a thunderclap. A scream of rage.

  'Punch, get out of the way,' shouted Jane.

  Punch rolled clear. Jane fired the flamethrower. Screams. She ran across the room. Second burst. The walls and door dripped flame. Lead rivulets like lava. The chamber filled with smoke.

  Jane kicked the door wide with her boot. A puff of fire from the flamethrower lit an empty tunnel. Scraps of smouldering fabric on the floor.

  'Run, you fuck,' she shouted, her voice turned metallic by the tunnel walls. 'Keep running.'

  Punch picked up his smouldering shotgun.

  'Think it was Nail?' he asked.

  'Who else would it be? Fetch the backpack. Let's go.'

  They trudged upward, counting the levels. Jane turned round every few paces to check they weren't followed. Brief burst of flame at each junction. She inspected every crevice in case Nail was crouched waiting to launch a second ambush. He was injured but desperate enough to attack.

  A distant wind-rush turned to an oceanic roar as they approached the bunker entrance. They leaned into the hurricane. The doors were open and a storm was raging outside. Jane's torch lit swarming snow particles.

  'Where the hell did this come from?' Punch shouted to be heard over wind-roar.

  'We can beat it.'

  'Maybe we should wait.'

  'No. Got your radio? Call Ghost. Tell him to switch the refinery floodlights on full and hit the foghorn every twenty seconds. That should guide us home safe and sound.'

  They set off into the storm. They descended the concrete steps and walked out on to the frozen sea. They bent double against the gale. Snow furled around them like thick smoke. They couldn't see the floodlights of the rig, but they could feel the foghorn every twenty seconds, a deep rumbling throb that pulsed deeper than incessant wind noise.

  Jane turned to Punch. She lifted her ski mask.

  'We're making good time,' she reassured him. 'We should see the floodlights any second.'

  An infected passenger stumbled out of the blizzard. A man in a blue tracksuit. Jane fired her flamethrower at close range.

  The man was blown from his feet like he was hit by a fire hose. He skidded backward across the ice, burning, flames whipped by the wind. He tried to sit up. A second blast put him down for good.

  A sudden blow to her back sent Jane sprawling, face down. She slid into the burning man. Her arm caught alight. She slapped to extinguish the flames.

  She scrambled to her feet. Punch was gone. His shotgun and backpack lay on the ice.

  She shouted into the squalling wind.

  'Punch?'

  She fired the flamethrower straight up. Flickering flame-light. She looked around.

  'Punch? 'Where are you?'

  She thought she heard Punch call her name. She ran in pursuit, ran headlong into the blizzard, but found nothing but darkness and driving snow. She wanted to search but was fighting hypothermia.

  Jane headed for Rampart, a lone figure struggling through the storm.

  The Bomb

  Sian sat in Rawlins's office and hit the foghorn every twenty seconds. Massive funnels at each corner of the rig blasted a mournful, booming note. The funnels were surrounded by safety barriers and ear-guard warnings. A deep rumble resonated through the superstructure like an earth tremor.

  Jane climbed into the platform lift. She dragged Punch's backpack on to the deck. She pressed Up. She collapsed against the railing and sank to her knees. Movement out of the corner of her eye. An infected man in a white tuxedo had gripped the platform lift as it began its ascent and was hauling himself over the railing.

  Jane aimed the flamethrower and pulled the trigger. Dribble of fuel. No fire. The wind was too strong. The igniter flame wouldn't spark.

  She aimed Punch's shotgun. Click of an empty chamber.

  She struggled to her feet and backed away from the advancing man, holding the shotgun by the barrel and swinging it like a club.

  Ghost sat in the observation bubble and watched the storm. He listened to Mahler.

  'Hey, Gee: Sian's voice.

  'Yeah?'

  'They're coming up in the platform lift.'

  Ghost waited in the south leg airlock. The airlock was a p
added chamber lined with lockers and snow gear. A porthole in the door allowed Ghost to examine the underside of the refinery, the girders and pipework lashed by the gale. Floodlights strung beneath the rig glowed through the storm like a row of weak suns.

  A yellow warning strobe above the airlock door began to revolve, accompanied by an insistent warning beep. The platform lift was active. Ghost watched through the porthole as the elevator cage drew level with the door. Two figures crusted in ice. One figure was wearing a tuxedo. He had a melted face.

  Ghost grabbed a snowboot from the airlock floor. He hit Open and reeled from the sudden wind-blast. The lumbering mutant reached for Jane as she crouched exhausted and helpless on the platform deck. Ghost wore the snowboot on his hand like a boxing glove. He punched the infected man in the face. Repeated blows. He drove the man to the edge of the platform and kicked him over the railing. He threw the blood-spattered boot over the side.

  He dragged Jane inside and hit Close. The door slid shut and the roar of the storm was silenced.

  Jane shrugged off the flamethrower and slumped to her knees. Ghost pulled back her hood and tugged off her ski mask. Her skin was blue. Her eyelids drooped like she was half asleep.

  'Jane,' shouted Ghost. 'Hey. Come on.' He gently slapped her face left and right. 'Come on, girl. Focus.'

  She coughed back to life.

  'Get the pack,' she said. 'It's out on the lift.'

  Second blast of blizzard wind as Ghost retrieved the backpack. He emptied it on to the airlock floor. Explosives. Detonators. He examined the shoulder straps. They had been cut with a sharp blade.

  Jane had dropped the shotgun. Quick inspection. Burned stock. Scorched metal. The gun beyond use.

  He checked the breech. No shells. He sniffed the gun. Pepper smell of cordite. Recently fired.

  Jane's eyes fluttered like she was struggling to stay awake. 'Jane? Can you hear me? Where the fuck is Punch?'

  Ghost helped Jane to her room. He helped her strip and stood with her beneath the shower until she revived. She stood beneath a torrent of hot water and basked in the heat.

  She got out, towelled and dressed.

  'So we are down to three,' said Ghost.

  'Nothing I could do,' said Jane. 'Nothing at all.'

  'Nail?'

  'He's turned that bunker into a fucking abattoir.'

  'I hope he comes aboard. I really do. I'll make it slow. I'll make it last days.'

  Jane took a mug of coffee to the observation bubble.

  Sian was watching the blizzard scour the tanks and gantries of the refinery. She was weeping.

  Jane put a hand on her shoulder.

  'Easier if we just died,' said Sian. 'It would be better than this. A moment of fear, a moment of pain, then nothing. This is worse. This is slow torture.'

  'Yeah.'

  'Everyone I ever knew is dead. Family. Friends. But I had Punch. I was all right as long as I had Punch.'

  'Yeah.'

  'I've got nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Bit by bit it all got stripped away.' She gestured to the snowstorm. 'This place is hell. Barren. Sterile. It's like the universe has taken off its mask and we can see its true face.'

  'Want to open a bottle of wine?' asked Jane, and immediately regretted the lame suggestion. Failing as a priest, failing as a friend. Absurd to think there was any consolation she could offer in the face of absolute despair, some combination of words that would make it all better.

  She sat down.

  A few nights ago, she and Ghost lay in bed and planned the future of the human race.

  'If there are kids,' said Ghost, 'will you tell them about Jesus?'

  'No,' said Jane. 'I'm happy to be the last Christian. If they come across a Bible I will tell them it's all fairy tales and nonsense.'

  Jane put her arm round Sian's shoulder. They sat in the dark as the Arctic storm raged around them.

  Jane visited Rawlins's office. She thumbed through the personnel files. Gary Punch. She snipped his picture from the front page of his file.

  She took the picture to the improvised chapel she had established in one of the dormitory rooms. She taped the photograph to the memorial wall.

  She sat and contemplated the mug shots.

  Crew who left aboard oil supply vessel Spirit of Endeavour:

  Rosie Smith.

  Pete Baxter.

  Ricki Coulby.

  Edgar Bardock.

  Frank Rawlins, first to succumb to the infection.

  Dr Rye. Missing. Presumed suicide.

  Ivan and Yakov. Both ripped apart aboard Hyperion.

  Mal. Murdered.

  Gus. Murdered and eaten.

  Nail's picture lay on a chair. Jane didn't want to add him to the memorial wall. He didn't deserve it. No one would pray for him.

  The canteen kitchen.

  Sian sat morose on a bar stool while Ghost greased the damaged shotgun. He reassembled the weapon. He racked the slide. The mechanism jammed. He threw the gun down on the kitchen counter.

  'Fucked. And Punch took all the ammunition.' Ghost took a cleaver from a drawer.

  'Want to help me patrol?'

  They walked the perimeter of the rig. Ghost brought the ruined shotgun. He swung it round his head and flung it far as he could. They watched it fall to the ice two hundred metres below. They looked towards the island.

  'Nail can't stay out there for ever,' said Ghost. 'Nothing for him in that bunker. We've got food, heat, everything he needs. Sooner or later he'll try to make it aboard. I reckon he'll try to climb an anchor cable. Doubt he could make it, but he'll give it a shot.'

  'What about Punch?' asked Sian. Jane hadn't told her about the cannibalised remains they found in the bunker. 'I don't think he's coming back.'

  Ghost decided to give her a task, something to keep her occupied.

  'Do me a favour. Disable the platform lift. Take out a fuse or something.'

  Sian headed for the airlock. She opened the exterior door and walked out on to the platform. She could see infected passengers milling on the ice far below her. She reached for the platform controls. She hesitated, then pressed Down.

  The lift descended the south leg of the refinery. Infected Hyperion passengers and crew looked up. They saw Sian descending to meet them, and stretched their arms to reach her.

  She opened the railing gate and closed her eyes, ready to be torn apart.

  The platform jolted to a halt. Sian fell to her knees. The lift rose. She looked up. Ghost high above her, leaning out of the airlock door.

  He dragged Sian back inside the rig. He helped her to her feet.

  'We'll pretend that didn't happen, all right?'

  Jane sat with Ghost in the canteen. They emptied the backpack. They contemplated the stack of explosives and detonators on the table in front of them. Bricks of C4 wrapped in paper. DEMOLITION CHARGE Ml 12 WITH TAGGANT.

  'Sian's probably right,' said Jane. 'We're kidding ourselves. We're not moving an inch. We are trapped here for ever. This place is our tomb.'

  'I don't know about that.'

  'This is the endgame. Nobody is coming to save us. We've got no ride home. If the cables don't drop, we're done.'

  'My dad died of stomach cancer,' said Ghost. 'He had a car, an E-type Jag. He was restoring it in his garage. He worked hard even though he wouldn't get to drive it. I asked why he bothered. He said, "Never leave a job half done.'"

  'I'm so tired.'

  'We've got a plan. We've got things we can do, moves we can make. Still plenty of fight left.'

  'Yeah,' sighed Jane. 'I suppose. But that's the problem. I can cope with despair. But hope keeps fucking me up.'

  Ghost stood and began to stack the explosives into three separate piles.

  'Come on,' he said. 'Get the job done.'

  Ghost refilled the flamethrower. He used a SCUBA compressor to pump the tanks with diesel, and pressurise them with nitrogen.

  They went outside and thawed the couplings. Jane fired a jet of flame at each
giant lock pin. Ice liquefied and steamed, exposing metal.

  Jane held the flashlight while Ghost rigged the explosives. He took off his gloves. He unwrapped C4. He slapped patties of explosive against the massive cable coupling, punched them with his fist, moulded them into a single tight mass. He pointed to a nearby wall.

  'This is good. This should work well. We're boxed in. Nice, enclosed space. It should focus the concussion. Be a hell of a bang when it goes.'

  He pressed blasting caps into the clay with his thumb before the explosive froze too hard to penetrate. They weatherproofed each charge with garbage bags.

  'What do you want to use for detonation cord?' asked Jane.

  'Strip some wire from a few extension leads. Nothing much to it. All we need is enough copper thread to carry a single six- volt pulse. Click. Bang.'

  They returned to the canteen and spliced wire. Heaters. De- humidifiers. Computers. Cases prised open with a screwdriver. Flex stripped, coiled and stacked on a Formica tabletop.

  'We need about two hundred and fifty metres for each charge. We'll run the cord to a central point. We have to blow all three charges at once. If we blow the cables one at a time the last rope will take the full weight of the rig. It will be under so much tension we'll never get the pin to release.'

  'Right.'

  'No screw-ups. No breaks in the wire. We get one shot at this. No second go.'

  The storm cleared. They slung cable over their shoulders and headed outside.

  Jane helped Ghost run wire from each explosive charge. They spooled flex along the walkways and metal steps. They taped the wires to girders and railings. The wires converged at the pump house, a cabin that housed monitor equipment for the three great distillation tanks.

  They smashed a window and fed the cables inside. Ghost webbed the remaining windows with duct tape. Proof against the blast. He laid three pairs of ear-defenders on a desk.

  One last inspection to check the charges were properly rigged and the detonator wire unbroken.

  'Beautiful sky,' said Jane. She pulled back her hood and craned to see a dusting of stars. A delicate pink twilight to the east.