Adam Baker - Outpost

Jane looks almost gaunt. She was horribly obese and lethargic when we first met. A heart attack waiting to happen. She couldn’t walk without hurting her knees. She sequestered herself in a distant accommodation block so we wouldn’t be kept awake by her piggy snore. Now she seems fiercely alive. She’ll be dead soon. They’ll all be dead. But I suppose some people thrive in a crisis. They find their purpose. They say a happy childhood is a lousy preparation for life. Kids who spend their playground days fat, ginger or gay know the truth. The world has always been full of vicious predators. For plenty of people this carnage and savagery is business as usual.

Ghost led us to a stack of explosives hidden in a deep vault. C4 and thermite grenades. Apparently Jane and Punch discovered the munitions at a seismic research station some weeks ago. Rawlins ordered the explosives be stored in the bunker.

The packets of C4 look like bricks of clay wrapped in cellophane. They smell like petrol. Cable. Detonators. Battery-operated initiators. Ghost insists we each sleep cuddling a patty of frozen explosive in the hope our body heat will make it pliable. Tomorrow we blow some Hyperion passengers to hell.

Friday 30 October

We woke early, packed and stood at the bunker mouth. Arctic winter. Early morning, but it will be bright moonlight all day.

Ghost took one of the Skidoos and drove to the shore. Jane rode pillion. She balanced a holdall in her lap. I took binoculars to high ground.

He rode out on to the ice sheet that has extended from the island shoreline. He made a slow pass of passengers who stood mesmerised by the lights of the refinery. Jane unzipped the bag and unravelled detonator cord behind them. Fistfuls of explosives strung at four-metre intervals like a string of Christmas lights. Ghost brought the bike to a halt and they both crouched behind it for cover.

Ghost twisted wires to a hand-held initiator. He mouthed a three-count then clicked the trigger. The chain of high explosive blew, and threw a curtain of ice-dust into the air. No flame, no fireball. Just a fierce concussion. The sound of the explosion reached me a couple of seconds later. A sharp clap like thunder.

Four or five passengers were blown to pieces. Body parts littered the snow.

A web of jagged fissures split the ice. Slabs tipped and tilted. Figures toppled into dark water. No attempt to swim or struggle. They immediately sank. A couple of infected passengers stood at the centre of a detached ice floe and looked around, stupefied, as the current began to carry them south.

I could hear Ghost and Jane whoop and cheer. I’m not sure how many passengers they killed. Maybe twenty or thirty. Futile? People need to act, to feel in control of their fate. Jane and Ghost are intelligent people. I’m sure they are aware how little they achieved. Yet they fight, and I admire them for it.

I was supposed to meet Ghost and Jane at the zodiac, but instead I have returned to the bunker and locked myself inside.

Sian tried to contact me on the radio. She called over and over before I descended too deep for the signal to penetrate. ‘Rampart to Rye, do you copy, over?’’ I suppose I should have told them not to look for me. I should have told them I was gone for good.

I’m reluctant to put down my pen. This is the end of my life. I don’t want to sign off.

Sooner or later, Jane will search my room. She will find the remaining medical supplies laid out on my bed, with explanatory Post-it notes taped to each of them. I’ve left a simple medical encyclopaedia on my chair. The A-Z of Family Health. Dress a wound, deliver a baby or pull a tooth, then they will have to thumb through the index.

I’ve survived these past few years by ruthlessly suppressing all sentiment, declaring unending war on self-pity. Yet I can’t help wishing I was leaving someone behind, someone who will miss me, someone who will remember my name. I haven’t seen my son for years, and that is probably for the best. Easier all round if I stay out of his life. Easier if he thinks I’m dead in a ditch. Let him hate me. Hate is good. Hate is rocket fuel. It’s a galvanising force. It will send him out into the world full of defiant energy. But right now I would give anything for a chance to say goodbye.

The infection has spread further up my arm. My thoughts are sometimes not my own. Shall I let myself be subsumed into this collective consciousness, or shall I kill myself? I shall either walk to the shore and jump into freezing water, or make my way to Hyperion and take my place among the colony. I have yet to decide.

I will leave my journal on the floor of this cavern in the hope that one day, when humanity is restored, it will be found.

My name was Elizabeth Rye.

Ghost took a team of men from the rig to secure the officers’ quarters of Hyperion. He gave them each a fire axe.

Ghost passed round a bottle of Hennessey as they rode the zodiac to Hyperion.

‘This could be messy,’ he warned. ‘Women, children. It’s not going to be nice.’

They climbed aboard the ship and the slaughter began. They moved room to room. They swung and hacked. They wore masks and goggles to shield themselves from blood-spray.

They splashed kerosene at each intersection and drove back infected passengers with a barrier of flame.

They disabled the elevators and rebuilt the barricades. They booby-trapped the doors with thermite grenades.

They threw the bodies over the side of the ship, dropped them twenty metres on to the ice. They sponged blood from the walls and floor. They wore triple gloves and respirators to protect themselves from acrid bleach fumes.

Later, when they sat down to eat in the newly liberated officers’ mess, they drank too much and laughed too loud. They were blooded. Each man had slashed and bludgeoned until their arms hurt. Ghost sat back and watched the men joke and sing. They were flushed with adrenalin. They had crossed a line. They were killers.

They transported their possessions from the rig and each took a stateroom with a double bed and en-suite bathroom, luxury they had never known aboard Rampart.

Each cabin had a wall-mounted plasma TV. The crew swapped DVDs. A bitter-sweet pastime. Each gangster flick and romantic comedy was a window on to a vanished world. Every glimpse of Manhattan, Los Angeles or London framed sunny streets that had since been transformed into a ravaged battlefield.

Ghost led a raid on the lower decks to check battery power. They took a detour to the Neptune Bar and filled a crate with Johnnie Walker Blue Label. The crew were drunk for a week.

Punch found a small galley and prepared food. He served breakfast each morning and a hot meal each night. He tried to impose a diurnal rhythm despite perpetual night.

They posted a patrol rota on the door of the bridge.

Punch on duty. He prowled the corridors with an axe. If he looked out of the portholes he could see infected passengers milling on the lower promenade decks. As he passed each barricade he could hear the scrabble and thump of passengers massed the other side of the bulkhead doors. The noise never ceased. Scratching and clawing, day and night.

‘Breakout,’ explained Ghost. ‘We need a simple signal. If you see anything, if one of these freaks makes it up here from the lower decks, if they make it through the barricades, shout “Breakout”. Everyone will pull on their boots, grab an axe and haul ass.’

Punch served dinner. He put on a show. He lit candles. He laid out silverware and linen napkins. He wore chef’s starched whites. He found some dried mushrooms and made risotto.

The crew sat in a panelled dining room with galleons on the wall. They applauded as he lifted a cloche from each plate and uncorked wine.