Outpost H311

by Townsend, Sara Jayne

  “What have we found?” David asked.

  “Check this out.” Jake shone his torch on the north wall, above the filing cabinet. A large flag featuring a swastika adorned the wall. “It was obviously a Nazi base.”

  “All the way out here?” Ellen said. “Why would it be here?”

  “I had a suspicion that’s what it was when we found the place – those blocky concrete structures are typical of Nazi construction,” Jake said. “We’re still finding Nazi bases that were top secret. We’re only scratching the surface of discovering everything that those bastards were up to during the second world war.”

  Ellen rummaged through the filing trays and picked up a few pieces of paper at random. They were mostly memos and letters, typed in German. She didn’t speak or read German. She recognised the odd word because of its similarity to English, but nothing more than that.

  “If this was a base then there could well be equipment we can use,” David said. “We should check out what else we’ve got down here.”

  “Because of the ice wall, we’ll need to back-track through the comms room,” Ellen said. She wished there were an alternative.

  They moved cautiously down the corridor, investigating the other rooms. The first door on the left led to a barracks room, containing five sets of two bunks, laid out in an orderly fashion, and a row of ten lockers at the end of the room. Each bunk had a metal frame with a series of wooden slats forming the base, and a mattress on each. Each bunk was neatly made to military standards, with striped cotton sheets, two thick grey blankets and a pillow.

  Ellen crossed to the lockers and opened up the first one. Inside, hung a near-pristine Nazi uniform, and a thick, down-filled cold weather coat. On a shelf at the top of the locker were several items including a hat to accompany the uniform, a notebook, and an envelope of old photographs. Ellen removed both for a closer look. The notebook was a personal journal, featuring crabbed handwriting.

  “Do either of you speak German?” Ellen asked. The men shook their heads. “That’s a shame. There’s a diary here. If we can translate it, it might give us a clue as to what was going on here.” She put the journal back on the locker shelf and looked at the photographs inside the envelope. They depicted a smiling woman with a distinctly 1940s hair style. In some of the pictures she was accompanied by children – a boy of about two or three, and a baby. There were pictures of the children together, posed on a sofa and both looking quite serious, or the woman with one or both of the children. Most of the pictures looked like professional shots in a photography studio, but there was one photo that seemed particularly striking to Ellen. It was a candid shot taken on a beach. The woman looked younger in this picture, Ellen thought that perhaps it was taken before the children came along – maybe a honeymoon shot. The woman looked happy and carefree, wearing a swimsuit of the kind that was fashionable in the 1930s. She sat cross-legged on a blanket with the sea behind her. Her hair was damp and blown about by the wind. She was laughing, the expression on her face one of mischief and hope. It was the look of someone at the start of an exciting adventure, someone looking forward to what life had to offer. Ellen felt a pang of sadness for this German woman who had no idea at the time of the terrible things that were going to unfold over the next few years.

  Jake looked over Ellen’s shoulder. “What’s this?”

  Ellen shoved the pictures back in the envelope. “Whoever the chap was who kept his stuff in this locker, I think these are pictures of his wife and kids. I guess he was away from them for quite a while. Interesting that they are still here. What happened to this man? Why did he not come back to take his stuff away with him?”

  “That’s an excellent question,” Jake said. “Maybe the base was abandoned in a hurry.”

  “But why?” David asked.

  “Another excellent question. Maybe we’ll find the answer if we look around some more.”

  The rest of the lockers contained similar personal effects and military-issue clothing and footwear.

  “Has anyone else spotted what’s weird about this place?” Ellen asked, shining her torch on one of the neatly-made bunks.

  “What weirdness in particular are you referring to?” David asked. “This whole place is giving me the creeps.”

  “This place has to have been abandoned for at least seventy years. But everything’s pristine, like people left yesterday. Why has nothing rotted? Why is there no dust?”

  “Not a lot of bacteria can live at sub-zero temperatures,” Jake said.

  “Even so, I think it’s weird.” Ellen followed the men out of the barracks. Next door to the barracks was a room slightly larger than the administrative office, but that had the same starkly functional feel. It looked to be a conference room – four small tables had been pushed together to form a larger table surrounded by metal foldaway chairs. Another Nazi flag adorned the western wall.

  Directly opposite the conference room was another door. Ellen was in the lead as they approached it. Ellen sensed an inexplicably oppressive air to the place, which she attributed to it being a secret Nazi base. Whatever had been going on here, she thought it couldn’t have been good. No wonder she had a bad feeling.

  She steeled herself and pushed against the door. It opened, the creak deafeningly loud in the silence. She shone her torch into the room. The beam alighted on stainless steel worktops, a large sink, an oven. “It’s a kitchen,” Ellen announced.

  “With luck, there’ll be food,” David said.

  “I doubt there’ll be anything edible after seventy years,” Jake replied.

  David poked Ellen in the back. “Go on, then, let’s have a look around.”

  Ellen took two cautious steps into the room so that Jake and David could enter. She swept her torch beam across the room, revealing a long wooden food preparation table dominating the centre.

  David’s scream split the silence.

  CHAPTER 8

  “What the fuck is all that about?” Jake glared at David.

  David’s eyes were wide, his face pale. “I saw someone in here.”

  “Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing in here.” Jake swept the beam of his torch across the empty room.

  “By the table, there was a man staring at me. A man with wild red hair. And really strange eyes.”

  “There’s nothing there,” said Jake. “You’re imagining things.”

  “I only saw him for a minute.” David was staring into the room, at the place he thought he’d seen the man. “But there was something about him. Like he wasn’t human.”

  “There’s nobody here,” Jake repeated.

  “It’s just that this place is so creepy,” Ellen said.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said David, looking unconvinced.

  “Creepy or no, this is looking like a damn fine place to shelter.” Jake crossed the room to the pot-bellied stove. “This is coal fired, and there’s a supply of coal here so we can have heat. The oven is electric. There must be a generator somewhere.”

  David looked at a large cupboard next to a door that probably led to a store room or walk-in freezer. Ellen noticed he hesitated slightly before opening the cupboard door first. “Hey, there are a load of tins in here. How long does tinned food last? Is anything still going to be any good?”

  Ellen, hands trembling, tried turning on the tap. “There’s no running water,” she said.

  “Water’s not such a problem,” Jake said. “If we can get heat we can melt the snow and boil the water so it’s drinkable. It’s heat and food that are our main concerns. And why I think we should move everyone here. With the plane wrecked as it is, people will start dying of exposure soon.”

  David closed the cupboard door and moved to the door next to it. “Wonder what’s in here?” He tugged the door open then disappeared through it.

  “What have you found in there?” Jake asked.

  David stepped back into the room. “It’s a freezer. The power’s out, of course. There’s meat hanging up in there.”

>   “Must be pretty rank after seventy years,” Jake said.

  “But that’s the thing. It’s not. It looks pretty fresh, and it doesn’t smell like it’s gone off. How is that possible?”

  “It’s not possible.”

  “See for yourself,” David said.

  Jake disappeared into the freezer.

  “What kind of meat is it?” Ellen asked.

  “Hey, maybe the Nazis started getting into cannibalism,” David said. “Maybe the food ran out and they started eating each other.”

  “Don’t talk shit,” Jake said as he reappeared from the freezer. “It’s not human flesh.”

  “What kind of meat is it then?” said David.

  “Possibly beef. Or pork,” said Jake. “And I don’t know how it’s possible for it to still look so fresh.”

  “Maybe the place froze over and everything got preserved,” David suggested.

  “Then why isn’t it still frozen?” said Jake.

  “And how did all this stuff get down here?” Ellen said. “Lockers, bunks, supplies, all this kitchen equipment? How did they haul everything out here?”

  Through another door off the kitchen they discovered a cafeteria. Tables with long low benches were set out in rows. A Nazi flag adorned the south wall. In the north wall was another door. Jake pulled on the handle. It didn’t budge.

  “Locked?” Ellen asked.

  Jake looked closely. “Sealed.”

  “Sealed? Why would the door be sealed?”

  Jake pressed his ear to the door. He stepped back and stared at it. The expression on his face worried Ellen. “What is it?”

  Jake whispered, “Do you hear anything?”

  Ellen stepped up to the sealed door and pressed her ear to it. She stepped back. “A low rumble maybe. Gas leak or something?”

  He shook his head. “Not a gas leak.”

  “What is it then?”

  “No idea.”

  “Maybe we can find out by going the other way,” said David. He went back through the kitchen and into the corridor, the others following close behind.

  The corridor north carried on, but beyond the kitchen there was a junction with a branch going right. David started to turn right but then stopped so abruptly that Ellen crashed into him.

  “What is it?” she said. “Why have you stopped?”

  “Because it’s a dead end. Look.” David shone his torch on a slab of concrete that blocked the corridor.

  “Well, that makes no sense,” said Ellen. “We know there must be a corridor there because the other door out of the cafeteria leads to it.”

  “And for whatever reason, it’s been sealed. I don’t like it,” said David.

  “Let’s continue with our reconnaissance and come back to this later,” said Jake.

  They continued moving down the corridor that went north, discovering four more bunk rooms, and beyond those, small single-occupancy rooms.”

  “Officers’ quarters,” Jake said. “Officers don’t have to share with their men. They get private rooms.”

  “And toilets.” Ellen shone her torch into a room that contained a row of urinals, toilet cubicles and separate shower units. “Too bad there’s no water. A hot shower would be really good right about now.”

  “I might be able to fix it, if you give me time,” David said.

  “I didn’t know you were a plumber.”

  “I’m not. But I told you, I can fix anything. We’ll need a generator to heat the water, but we’ve got one back at the plane. And there has to be one here somewhere. If it still works, that’s a bonus.”

  “The question is though, do we want to use this as a shelter? There must be a reason for one of the corridors being blocked off,” Ellen said.

  “Make that two corridors,” said Jake. “There’s another corridor running east, here. And like the other one, it’s blocked off by a concrete block.”

  “What’s over that way?” Ellen pointed northwards. “This corridor must end somewhere.”

  Jake shone his torch down the corridor where it appeared to open out into a space. He walked closer to investigate. “Looks like there’s another level and steps going down.”

  “So we should go and check it out,” Ellen said.

  “We can’t. The stairway’s blocked.” Jake stepped back to allow Ellen to see, shining his torch into the stairwell. Large chunks of concrete had fallen in, completely blocking the stairwell.

  “So this is a huge place, but large chunks of it have been blocked off. Either accidentally or deliberately.”

  “Either way, it’s still going to give us a better chance of survival than the wrecked plane,” Jake said. “Here we have shelter, heat and food.”

  “So we need to go back and get the others,” said David. “But it’s dark now.”

  “It’s the Arctic, in winter,” Ellen said. “It’s always dark.”

  Jake looked at the sturdy watch on his wrist. “But now it’s coming up to nineteen hundred hours. It’s a long walk back to the plane and not only do we have to get there, we’ve got to come back again. I suggest we rest for the night here and eat and get warm. Then we’ll be ready for the journey back to pick up the others.”

  “You’re saying we should stay here?” Ellen said. “All night?”

  “You’ve got a problem with that?” Jake asked.

  “I’m not sure this is a good place to set up camp, is all.”

  “Why not?”

  Ellen hesitated. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about it.”

  Jake cast a withering look at Ellen. “I’m not going to pass over the only place for miles with food, shelter and heat because you get the willies about it. We’ll all die a lot faster out there than we will in here. Now, the first thing we need to do is go get the kit from the sledge and bring it down here. We set up camp in the kitchen. If we get that coal-fired stove going, it should be nice and warm. We’ll grab ourselves some food and a few hours’ sleep. First thing tomorrow, we’ll head back to the crash site and collect the others.”

  CHAPTER 9

  They worked on a relay system, with Jake tying the equipment to a rope and lowering it down to Ellen and David. They worked slowly, carefully, so as not to break anything

  Jake located the pot-bellied stove’s flue above ground and cleared it of snow so they would have sufficient ventilation to light a fire. David set up the gas camping hob and gas canister they had brought with them, so that they could heat up food and boil water.

  Ellen retrieved pillows and blankets from the barracks and set up their sleeping bags. She rounded up tea and tinned stew. By the time they sat down to eat, they were too exhausted to talk, but Ellen thought that tinned stew had never tasted so good.

  Her makeshift bed felt reasonably comfortable and very warm, but Ellen lay awake for a long time listening to the rhythmic snores of the two men. The darkness in the complex was absolute and the silence overwhelming. Ellen was overcome by a sense of dread. She felt utterly alone. For all Ellen knew, the other survivors could be dead. And the rest of the world beyond this frozen and desolate island was far away. They could be the last people left alive in the world but they had no way of knowing.

  With ever more disturbing thoughts crowding her mind, Ellen eventually fell into a troubled sleep.

  * * * *

  Ellen ran from something. She couldn’t see what it was but if it caught her, it would kill her. She ran across a frozen landscape, the snow pulling at her feet and dragging her back. Someone was ahead of her; someone barely visible in the swirling snow. Even though the figure’s face was hidden behind a furry hood, and even though he was dead she knew it was her brother. If only she could catch up with him, she would be safe. She could ask him why he left her alone when she was so young.

  But the threat behind her was gaining. She didn’t have to look to know that it was getting closer. She was afraid to turn around; afraid to look. She called out to the man in front of her, hoping that he could save her. Her heart lifted when he
stopped and slowly started to turn around. But then he pulled down his hood, revealing a skeletal, decayed face, a grinning skull with two staring eyeballs in the sockets.

  Ellen sat up with a start, shivering in the wake of the nightmare.

  Her dark-adapted eyes made out the sleeping forms of David and Jake, snoring softly in their sleeping bags on the floor. Apart from that, the room was silent. The pot-bellied stove emitted a comforting warmth that enveloped the room. Despite that, the place felt unfriendly and hostile. She thought of the Nazis. The only reason to spend so much time and effort setting up a base out here, in the middle of nowhere, that nobody knew about, is if they were doing something they didn’t want the world to find out about.

  Ellen fumbled for the torch she had left next to her pillow and shone it on her watch. It was just past six in the morning.

  Keeping her sleeping bag wrapped around her, Ellen shuffled over to the gas hob and picked up the pan of melted snow they had put there. She struck a match from the box taken from the supply sledge and lit the gas underneath it. The dream about her brother disturbed her. He had been dead for twenty years. After the accident, she had been plagued by nightmares. She woke up crying every night but then was unable to recall the nightmares when her parents had come into her room to comfort her. She was unable to identify what had left her so scared other than the realisation that he was gone forever.

  The nightmares had eventually stopped. Ellen had moved through her grief, no longer feeling that sense of emptiness when she thought about Stephen. He was someone she had shared the first nine years of her life with but who was no longer a part of it.

  Movement from elsewhere in the room brought her out of her thoughts. Jake was sitting up in his sleeping bag, stifling a yawn. “Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep OK?”

  “Not really. Nightmares.”

  “That’s to be expected. Post-traumatic stress, from the crash.”

  “The trauma’s not over. How can it be ‘post’?”

  Jake climbed out of his sleeping bag and pulled on his boots. “You survived the plane crash. That’s trauma enough.”