Adam Baker: Outpost

She leaned over a railing. She touched the iced metal for a moment then snatched her hand away like it had been scorched on a stove. She looked down. Far below, hidden by mist, was the sea. She could hear water lapping between the great floatation legs of the refinery. If she climbed the railing and allowed herself to topple forward it would be over in an instant. A hundred-metre drop through white vapour. The impact would smash her bones as if she hit concrete. Quick extinction, like an Off switch.

She put one foot on the railing and willed herself to jump. She had been outside less than a minute, but was shivering as if in an epileptic seizure. Her vision blurred. She wanted to jump but couldn’t do it. Muscle lock. Too scared of falling. Too scared of pain. She went back inside and stood beneath a corridor heat vent. She cursed her cowardice. She plucked a frozen tear from her cheek and watched the little jewel liquefy between her fingers.

Plan B: retreat to her room and swallow a fatal overdose of painkillers.

Jane had been collecting painkillers for the past couple of months. Each time she bought deodorant or gum from the table in the canteen she took a packet of paracetamol. The pills were in a bag beneath her bed.

She stopped at the canteen kitchen to collect a tub of ice cream. The steel door of the refrigerator rippled her face like a funhouse mirror.

Accommodation Block Three. Long passageways. Empty stairwells.

Each crew member was assigned a small cell with a bed and a chair. They got a clothes locker, a washstand cubicle and a metal toilet. A scratched Perspex porthole allowed Jane a view of the basalt cliffs and jagged crags of Franz Josef Land. Desolate, lunar terrain. Volcanic crags dusted with snow. In a few weeks the sun would set and the long Arctic night would begin.

‘Hi, honey. I’m home.’

She stripped, sat on the bed and popped pills from their foil strips. She piled the tablets on the blanket until they formed a little white mound. She mashed the pills into a tub of Cookie Dough. She wanted to write a note but couldn’t think what to say.

She opened her laptop. She wanted to hear a familiar voice. She selected an old message from home. A cam clip. Jane’s sister, sitting in a sunlit room. Jane clicked the Play arrow.

‘Hi, Janey. How are things at the top of the world? Just wanted to say hello and tell you how proud we are of what you are doing. Can’t imagine what it must be like up there. It must be tough looking after all those guys. Or maybe you are enjoying a bit of male attention. Fighting them off with a chair. Anyway, Mum sends her love …’

If she were home, she might pick up the phone and reach out for help. But the only contact with the mainland was the microwave link in the installation manager’s office. An open line with a stilted, two-second delay.

Jane scooped pills and ice cream, and sucked the spoon clean. Bitter. She grimaced. She scooped more painkillers. She didn’t want to lose consciousness before she ate enough pills to kill herself outright. She didn’t want to wake. For once in her life, she would do the job right.

Ice cream. A sweet kiss goodnight. It would be a meek, apologetic death. She consoled herself with the thought that, in these final moments, she would be communing with countless lifelong losers who extinguished the world with a glass of Chablis and a bellyful of painkillers.

She was about to swallow a third mouthful of tablets when there was a knock at the door. She quickly shut off her laptop. A second knock. Must be Punch. No one else knew where to find her.

‘Hello? Reverend Blanc? Are you in there?’

Jane sat still as she could.

‘Reverend?’

Jane wondered if it might be easier to answer the door and get rid of him. Claim she was ill. Tell him to come back later. Much later.

Punch tried to open the door but it was locked from the inside by a plastic dead bolt like a toilet cubicle.

‘Reverend? Hello?’

Jane spat pills and ice cream into a tissue. She put on a dressing gown and opened the door.

Punch in a mad, Hawaiian shirt.

‘Sorry. Sleeping.’

‘Rawlins sent me to get you. He wants to talk to everyone in the canteen right away.’

Jane sagged against the doorframe for support.

‘Reverend? Are you okay?’

Jane bent double and vomited over his shoes.

Punch helped Jane to her feet. He saw the pill packets on her bunk.

‘Oh, Christ.’

He helped Jane crouch over the toilet bowl. She vomited ice cream, then she vomited chocolate, then she vomited green stuff she didn’t recognise. She sat panting on the floor.

Punch counted the tablets to see how many she had swallowed.

‘I suppose you’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘We should get you to Medical.’

‘Fuck that,’ said Jane.

Punch rinsed his shoes under the tap.

‘Promise you won’t tell anyone,’ she said.

‘Let’s get you up.’

He helped Jane to her feet. He waited in the corridor while she dressed.

‘How do I look?’ she asked.

‘Wipe your eyes.’

‘What does Rawlins want?’

‘I don’t know, but it sounded serious.’

Crewmen sat in a semicircle round the plasma TV in the canteen. Roughnecks. Bearded frontiersmen. Oil trash. They watched BBC News bounced by Norsat in geostationary orbit over Greenland.

Ridgeback armoured cars parked outside hospitals. Gas-masked soldiers manning checkpoints and barricades. Desert-yellow vehicles blocking each high street like an occupying army.

Helicopter footage of gridlocked traffic. Motorways at a standstill. Family cars jammed with suitcases, furniture lashed to the roof.

A food riot. Supply trucks stormed by refugees. Rifle butts. Warning shots. Sky News correspondent in a flak jacket:

‘… approached the tent city and were literally overrun by hundreds of desperate families that haven’t eaten for days. The troops are struggling to contain the situation, but as you can see …’

‘Martial law, of sorts,’ explained Rawlins, the installation manager. ‘Some kind of outbreak.’

Rawlins was a burly guy with a white Santa Claus beard. His badges of office: a Con Amalgam cap, Con Amalgam insulated mug, and a big bunch of keys clipped to his belt.

‘When the fuck did this happen?’ asked Nail, a diver with a bald head and bushy lumberjack beard. A huge man. Six-six. Massive biceps.

‘It’s been building up for a couple of months. You lot were watching the Cartoon Network and blowing your wages on fucking PokerStars.’

‘Terrorists?’

‘No idea.’

‘Did they mention Manchester?’

‘I honestly can’t tell you what on earth is going on.’

‘The supply ship is still coming, yeah?’

‘That’s why I asked you here. The ship is coming a month early. That’s the big news. Seven days, then we are out of here. Total evacuation. Pack our stuff and power down.’

‘We still get paid for a full rotation, right?’

‘That’s the least of your worries. The ship is due on Sunday morning. In the meantime if any of you want to use the ship-to-shore, if you’re worried about relatives, then let me know. You can use my office. The signal is shaky but you are welcome to try.’

Punch distributed coffee and sandwiches. The crew watched TV in silence. They wanted to see their home towns. Birmingham. Glasgow. York. Jane wanted to hear about Cheltenham but the news channels were running the same images over and over. Some kind of bloody plague was sweeping through the cities. Was it a bio-weapon? A spontaneous mutation? Nobody knew. Most of the footage was shaky phone clips mailed by viewers. Armed police suppressed supermarket riots. Gangs fortified tower blocks against intruders, declared them a city state. The Prime Minister called for courage, called on God. Studio pundits discussed Ebola, AIDS, haemorrhagic fever.