Adam Baker - Outpost

We all need to believe our lives have some ultimate meaning. I have rank and responsibility. It’s not foolish to live your ideals .

Jane woke with a jolt. She had dozed off, crumpled papers in her hand.

She stood at the washstand. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and cleaned her teeth. Toothpaste and bottled water.

‘Jane? You there ?’ Ghost.

‘Yeah.’

‘ Punch and I are going to make a run for the engine room .’

‘I’ll be right there .’

Jane adjusted her dog-collar. The room reflected in the mirror. A silver-framed photograph on the desk. Captain Campbell and his wife in happy times.

‘Okay, Dougie,’ said Jane. ‘Let’s get our boys home.’

Ghost chose a hatch near the stern. A big, red ‘ X ’ sprayed on the door. They dismantled the barricade. A cabin sofa and a couple of TVs. The hatch was jammed shut by a crowbar.

Ghost checked the breech of his shotgun. A shell in the chamber. Safety set to Fire.

Punch hefted a fire axe.

‘Lock the door behind us,’ said Ghost.

Jane removed the crowbar and cranked open the door. An empty corridor. Ghost and Punch stepped inside.

‘Good luck,’ said Jane, and heaved the door closed behind them. They heard a muffled, metallic scrape as she slid the crowbar back in place, sealing them inside the ship.

‘All right,’ muttered Ghost. ‘Quiet as we can.’

Ghost checked a hand-drawn map. He had plotted a circuitous route to the engine room. He wanted to avoid communal areas where infected passengers might congregate. If the diseased passengers were truly mindless they would wander all over the ship. But if they retained faint memories of life aboard the liner they would gravitate towards the bars and restaurants.

They hurried down narrow service corridors. Company slogans interspersed with maritime lithographs.

‘Ridiculous,’ said Ghost. ‘Everything in English except the stuff that matters.’

They passed the entrance of a health spa. The Neptune Wellness Centre. The poolside lit cold, medicinal blue. Upturned loungers. Signs for steam rooms, massage suites, herbal and Finnish saunas.

They heard a faint rustling, flopping sound. Something was trapped at the bottom of the empty spa pool making clumsy, spastic attempts to get out. The slapping abruptly ceased. The unseen thing had sensed Punch and Ghost standing in the doorway. It listened to them breathe.

Punch took a step like he was going to investigate but Ghost tugged his sleeve and motioned to keep walking.

Ivan checked the chart room.

‘There’s an oil heater back here.’

‘Fire it up.’

He dragged the oil heater on to the bridge and lit it with a match.

‘You know, if we are going to heat this place, it might be a good idea to deal with the captain. He could stink the place out.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jane. ‘Let’s put him over the side.’

They dragged the dead man by his boots. They hauled him across the deck. They lifted him by his coat and toppled him over the railing. The captain splashed into the sea. He floated face down for a couple of minutes, then his waterlogged coat pulled him under the waves.

‘Probably ought to say something,’ said Jane. ‘Can’t think what.’

‘I wouldn’t feel too bad about it,’ said Ivan. ‘That’s a better send-off than most people get these days.’

The oil heater burned with a blue flame. The bridge began to heat up. Jane sat back in the captain’s chair and unzipped her coat. Something smelled bad. She sniffed her armpits. She stank.

She threw Ivan her radio.

‘Back in a minute,’ she said. ‘Keep my seat warm.’

She checked the officers’ quarters. Name tags on each door.

She pulled open cupboard drawers. Fresh thermal underwear. T-shirts. Socks.

A bottle of mineral water next to the bed. Jane filled the sink, stripped and washed. Little sachets of conditioner, body scrub and shampoo. The first time she had washed her hair for weeks.

Toiletries and make-up in the washstand cabinet. She caught her reflection as she closed the cabinet door. She hadn’t seen herself naked for a while. She was thinner. Her collar bones were more defined. Her breasts had deflated and sagged.

One of the attractions of Arctic life: it was pretty much asexual. Men and women wore the same quilted cold-weather gear. No hierarchies of beauty and glamour on a polar installation.

Jane toyed with cosmetics. She drew gloss across her lips. It made her mouth seem like a bloody wound.

Ghost and Punch headed for a stairwell. Down nine levels.

‘Mind your step,’ said Ghost. The temperature had dropped even further. The stairs were glazed with ice. They were deep below the waterline.

The engine room.

They shut themselves inside and jammed the door with a wrench.

They found themselves on a walkway looking down on massive drive machinery. Gas turbines. Alternators. Four great motors mounted on rubber dampers, four great manganese propeller shafts.

Ghost took out his radio.

‘We made it. We’re at the engine room.’

There was a glass control booth at the end of the walkway.

‘Let’s flick every switch,’ said Ghost. ‘See what happens.’

A slow dragging sound from below the walkway.

‘I don’t think we’re alone down here,’ said Punch.

The guy must have been an engineer. His badge said Hilmar Larsen. He limped from behind one of the huge Wärtsilä Vasa engines. He dragged his leg like his ankle was broken. His right hand was spiked metal like an armoured gauntlet. The fabric of his boiler suit was lumped and stretched by a strange, spinal deformity. His face was bloody and swollen and his eyes were jet black.

‘How’s it going down there, Hilmar?’ asked Punch.

The engineer looked upward and hissed. He slowly stumbled across the engine room and up the steps to the walkway.

Punch and Ghost backed away.

‘Dude, it would be great if you could stop right there.’

The engineer reached the top of the steps and limped towards them, sliding along a railing for support.

‘Larsen, if you can hear me, if you can understand my words, you need to stop.’

The man continued to advance.

Punch and Ghost backed into the control booth. Ghost shut the door and held it closed with his foot. Punch helped brace the door with his shoulder.

Larsen slammed against the glass. Ghost saw himself reflected in jet-black eyeballs. The engineer hissed and spat. Spittle dribbled down the glass.

‘Shoot him,’ said Punch.

‘We need the ammo. I’ll open the door. You hit him with the axe.’

‘All right.’

‘Ready?’

Ghost opened the door.

Punch stood back. He adjusted his grip on the axe. He held it above his head like he was about to whack a fairground test-your-strength machine.

‘Last chance, Hilmar,’ he said. ‘Can’t let you come any closer.’

The engineer got ready to lunge.

Punch brought down the axe and cleaved the man’s head in two. The engineer staggered backward, out of the booth. He toppled on to the walkway, axe buried between the two halves of his head. His legs danced a jig, last signals from a scrambled brain.

They stepped over the dead man and descended from the gantry to the floor of the engine room.

‘Flick every switch you find,’ said Ghost. ‘Turn every light green.’

They cranked dials and isolator breakers to On. Faint hum of current. Ghost took out his radio.