Adam Baker - Outpost

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 the 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.