Adam Baker - Outpost

He stopped thrashing, closed his eyes and tried to compose himself.

‘Talk to me, Jane. Let me hear a voice.’

‘Just thinking. Rawlins didn’t want to lose himself. That’s what he told me. He didn’t want the disease to win. I suppose that’s what everyone says. That they’d drive off a cliff in a blaze of glory rather than waste away in a hospital bed.’

‘So what do you reckon? This disease .’

‘I read a book about the Manhattan Project. When they tested the first atom bomb in the desert, scientists wondered if the blast might set the atmosphere on fire. Maybe this was the same situation. They, the big, scary They, were toying with some kind of super-technology. Nanobots. Bio-weapon. Something so cutting-edge, so unstable, they put the lab in space to contain it in a vacuum. But something went wrong, something sudden and catastrophic, and chunks of debris dropped to earth like our friend in the capsule .’

‘Sure. Why not?’

Ghost squirmed in the narrow space. He unhooked his belt-loop. He crawled forward on his elbows.

‘Feel like I’ve been wriggling around in here for hours.’

‘ Nothing ?’

‘Nothing. The cable looks fine.’

‘Find a way out and head back to the powerhouse. We’ll take another look at the generator .’

Punch sat in the observation bubble. He cocooned himself in a sleeping bag and stared at the stars.

Footsteps from below. Crazy, dancing light approaching up the spiral stairs. Sian with an aluminium trunk under each arm and a Maglite clenched between her teeth.

‘One of the men on Raven is an electrician,’ said Sian. ‘If we can get him here, he can help.’

‘We don’t have power,’ said Punch. ‘We don’t have radar. If they take to the lifeboats they’ll drift right past us.’

Sian flipped the latches on each case.

‘A GPS kit and a radio. I found them downstairs. They run on lithium batteries. They’re charged.’

‘They won’t have much range.’

Sian contemplated the silhouettes of the gargantuan distillation towers, three great shadows that eclipsed the stars.

‘What if we got them up high?’

Ghost was overcome by a sudden wave of exhaustion. He rolled on to his side.

‘I feel like a fucking sewer rat.’

‘I spoke to the careers counsellor during my last year at school .

He asked me what I would do if I were the last person alive. If there were no social pressure, no one left to impress .’

‘What did you say?’

‘I’d mooch. I’d loaf. I’d sit on a riverbank and read books ’

Ghost reached in his pocket. He pulled out a yellow epinephrine hypodermic. He bit the cap off the hypo and injected his bicep.

‘You’re in charge now. You know that, right? I mean seriously. For real. With Rawlins gone you are the only authority left. The crew are your responsibility. They’ll expect you to have the Grand Plan.’

‘Is this your valedictory statement? Are you passing the torch ?’

‘I can feel a breeze. There’s something up ahead.’

Ghost wormed his way along the conduit. A section of duct broke open when D Module fell from the refinery. He leaned over a jagged metal lip. Frayed cable swung in the ice wind. Far below him was the sea.

‘I think I found our problem.’ He coughed up phlegm. He retched. He vomited. ‘I’m turning round. I’m coming back.’

Jane helped Ghost limp to his room. She laid him on his bunk. He was pale and breathless. He shivered. She draped three coats over him.

She lay beside him; let his head rest on her shoulder.

‘Take it easy for a while,’ she said. ‘Get your breath back.’

‘Just need to rest.’

Liquid in his lungs. Each breath died away in a bubbling rattle.

‘Take your time.’

‘I can splice a domestic extension lead into that powerhouse console. We can run a couple of heaters. Cook food. It’ll keep us alive. Buy some time.’

‘After that?’

‘Look for an intact length of three-thousand megawatt cable. A few metres. That’s all we need. Patch that break in the line and we are back in business. Just need to rip up floor plates until we find some.’

He took an epinephrine syringe from his pocket. ‘Sure you want to do this?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. Final lap.’

Punch stood at the refinery railing and looked east. Ice surrounded the refinery and spread towards the island. The sun no longer rose. Daytime was a brief pink twilight. The Arctic was entering perpetual night.

He took an old Sony radio from his coat pocket. He had found it alongside a drum of paint and a roller. Someone had been redecorating a corridor and quit halfway through the job. The batteries still held a charge.

He extended the aerial and adjusted the dial. Whistling static.

A ghost voice. Male. French accent. Tired, distressed. Punch pulled back the hood of his coat and pressed the radio to his ear.

‘… est advice… safe place and don’t venture… can hear me… refuge… hopeless… God help… ’

Punch returned to the observation bubble.

‘Anything?’ asked Sian.

‘Nothing. Doesn’t seem to work.’

Punch shook batteries from the radio and tossed it aside.

He and Sian had turned the observation bubble into their base camp. They had pushed chairs back from the transmitter console and erected a dome tent. Each night they cooked on a stove. They ate and counted stars. They zipped sleeping bags together and slept skin-to-skin.

‘What do you think is waiting for us back in the world?’ asked Sian. She was sitting cross-legged by the stove stirring noodles in a mess tin.

‘I bet the worst is over. People will have got organised by now.’

‘You think?’

‘Yeah. When the chips are down, neighbours help each other out.’

Punch wanted to say: ‘Promise you’ll kill me. If I get infected, if I turn like Rawlins, finish me off. Don’t let me become a monster.’

Instead he asked: ‘How are the noodles coming along?’

‘Soon be done.’

The powerhouse. A steady hum from Generator Three. Massive megawatt output, enough to power a small town. Ghost had run a single domestic extension lead from the control panel. It ran through an air vent into the submarine hangar next door. A single plug socket. A single convection heater. Crewmen took turns to sit in the orange glow.

The crew were camped in front of the submersible. Steel manipulator claws curved above them like a protective embrace. A couple of crew huddled in blankets and played chess. One crewman relentlessly sharpened a knife. Bottles of drinking water were lined up in front of the heater to keep them thawed.

Ghost lay beneath three parkas. Short, bubbling breaths. Jane sat beside him. She stroked his head. Once in a while he opened his eyes. She smiled. She wanted him to see a reassuring face. She didn’t want him to feel alone.

He opened his eyes wide and steady.

‘How you doing, champ?’

Thumbs up.

‘Warm enough?’

Nod.

He stroked her face. Peeling skin.

‘Guess I got too close to the fire,’ said Jane. ‘Sunburn.’

He licked dry lips.

‘Drink something.’ She put a canteen to his lips. ‘Wet your mouth.’

She rearranged the coat beneath his head to give him a better pillow.

‘Get as much sleep as you can.’

‘Feel like I’ve been punched in the gut,’ whispered Ghost. ‘I can barely breathe.’

‘Getting worse?’

‘Yeah.’

Jane looked for Rye.

‘She’s in the sub,’ said Ivan.

Jane lowered herself through the roof hatch. Her flashlight lit tight banks of instrumentation. Rye sat in the co-pilot seat. She was listening to an iPod.