Adam Baker - Outpost

‘Any idea why he would want to kill himself?’

‘Right now, every one of us has a dozen reasons to jump over the side.’

‘He was your friend.’

‘Nobody has friends. Not out here.’

Nail proffered his hip flask. Ghost took it and pretended to drink.

‘Fancy a trip below deck?’

‘What for?’ asked Nail.

‘The Neptune Bar. The guys want to hold a wake. We need to liberate a few supplies.’

‘Yeah. Why not?’

Jane used a master key from the purser’s office to let herself into Nail’s cabin. She searched by torchlight. Ghost and Nail were out on deck. She didn’t want Nail to see light at his cabin porthole.

‘What exactly do you hope to find?’ Ghost had asked.

‘I don’t know. Something incriminating. Some kind of contraband.’

Dumbbells. Empty bottles of Scotch. Five years of Hustler.

Jane tried to think like a junkie. Where would she hide her stash? Toilet cistern. Back of the washstand sink. Inside tubular, steel-frame furniture.

She checked beneath the bed with a Maglite pen torch. She tugged at the side panels of the bath. She pulled up carpet.

Nothing.

She headed for the door. She was reluctant to leave. Gut instinct told her there was something hidden in the room, something significant, but she didn’t have time for a thorough search.

The crew took over the Tex Mex Grill. Ponchos hung on the wall, a plastic cactus stood by the door and a picture of Lee Van Cleef hung behind the bar.

Ghost and Nail had rescued three cases of Veuve Clicquot from below deck. They filled buckets with ice chiselled from benches along the promenade, and set the champagne to chill.

‘Have fun, boys,’ said Ghost. His turn on patrol.

Gus put a CD player on the bar. Mal liked U2, so they played ‘Joshua Tree’.

Gus muted the sound for a moment and stood on a chair. He proposed a toast.

‘Mal. Here’s to you, buddy. Via con Dios.’

They all drained their glasses except for Jane. She resolved to stay sober. She sat by a brass radiator. She stooped to pick up a fallen coaster and turned up the thermostat. She popped a fresh bottle and refilled glasses.

Nail took off his fleece. He stood on a table and clapped for silence. Another toast.

‘Goodbye to a good man. Goodbye to our friend.’

Gus found bags of nachos in a back room. He filled bowls.

Jane stood next to Nail at the bar.

‘You took off your bandages.’

‘Guess I’m all better.’

‘I spoke to Nikki on the radio,’ said Jane. ‘She says Hi.’

‘Tell her to eat shit and die.’

‘Did she leave a note?’

‘Bitch stole my knife.’

The room was getting hot. Jane took off her fleece. She wore a black vest.

‘Been working out?’ asked Nail.

Jane pried the cap from a Corona.

‘I took over your gym.’

‘All right. Let’s see what you’ve got.’

They cleared a table. The crew formed a circle. Nail pulled off his shirt. He sat and put his arm out ready to wrestle.

‘Left hand, okay? I don’t want to re-snap my wrist.’

Jane got into position and gripped his massive hand.

Gus counted them down: ‘Three… two… one.’

Nail had a snarling wolf on his bicep. No regimental tattoo on his forearm. No lion on his back.

They wrestled. Nail nearly dislocated Jane’s shoulder. He quickly pulled her arm over, but she kept her hand from touching the table. She fought and swore. She sweated and snarled. She refused to grant victory.

Later that night Jane cracked a fresh bottle of beer and stood at Hyperion’s prow.

She looked towards Rampart. A couple of standby floodlights still burned, even though no one was home.

Jane leaned over a prow railing and shone a flashlight downward. Half-frozen passengers stood far beneath her. She dropped her empty beer bottle. She watched it fall and smash on an infected passenger’s head.

Someone behind her. Nail, with a bottle. He leaned over the railing. He took a swig of champagne and spat spray. He watched the droplets freeze as they fell, and scatter on the shoulders of passengers below like hail.

‘Bored with singing?’ he asked.

‘Karaoke at a wake. Doesn’t seem right.’

‘Mal wouldn’t care.’

‘How are the crew getting on?’ asked Jane, groping for something to say. ‘How is morale? They don’t confide in me much.’

‘Pretty good. There are plenty of distractions aboard. Plenty of ways to waste time. We’re all counting the days until March.’

‘You’re doing all right?’

‘Fine.’

‘Heard you were in the army.’

‘Who told you that?’ asked Nail.

‘I don’t recall. Just something I heard. So how was it?’

‘Hot. Dull.’

‘Why did you leave?’

‘I’m not a follower. I don’t like being told what to do.’

‘Coming to the service tomorrow?’

‘Dead is dead. Nothing we say or do will make a damn bit of difference.’

‘Guilty as hell,’ said Jane, when she got back to Ghost’s room.

‘You’re sure?’

‘He killed Mal. I’m certain. Don’t know why it happened. Drug deal gone sour, argument over a chocolate bar, whatever. But he killed him. Bet my life on it.’

‘You’ve got a shotgun. Maybe you should use it.’

‘I couldn’t do a thing like that. Yeah, we killed a bunch of infected. But we have to draw a line. I’m not a killer.’

‘Of course you’re a fucking killer. There is no higher authority any more. This is the way it is going to be. We have to sort this shit out ourselves.’

‘Seriously? You’d do it? Pull the trigger on the guy? Take him out on the ice and shoot him in the back?’

‘The man isn’t stupid. If you’re right, if he genuinely offed Mal, then he’s a dangerous motherfucker. You know his big secret. He’ll have sniffed it out in a second. Right now we’re safe, but once we get back to the world it’ll be a different story. He’ll consider us a serious liability. We’d better watch our backs from now on. That’s all I’m saying.’

Mal’s funeral was scheduled for three in the afternoon. The crew gathered in the Rampart canteen. They kept it short, anxious to dispatch the man’s body and quit the ice before Hyperion passengers surrounded them and attacked.

They trained floodlights on the ice between the refinery’s cyclopean legs. The crew, those who knew and liked the man, descended from the rig. They stood over the shrouded body while Jane intoned the old words:

‘Our days are like the grass; we flourish like a flower of the field; when the wind goes over it, it is gone and its place will know it no more. But the merciful goodness of the Lord endures forever…’

Most of the guys didn’t believe in God or heaven, but they liked the rhythm of elegiac prayers, the tone of resignation and acceptance.

They smashed a hole in the ice, then slid his body into the sea. The men watched Mal dragged away by the current. Every one of them thought the same thing. Is this how it will end? One by one pushed into the ocean and carried away by the tide. What would the last man do? That final, lone member of Rampart’s crew about to succumb to starvation or infection? They would break a hole in the ice then say a prayer at the water’s edge. Conduct their own funeral oration. Maybe sing a hymn. Then they would cross themselves, close their eyes and drop into the ocean.

Nikki curled foetal and covered her head. Waves slammed into the boat. She had sealed herself below deck. She rode out a series of impacts like one car crash after another. She wrapped herself in a sleeping bag for extra protection. She lay in the dark. Every couple of minutes she felt the boat rise like it was about to take off, then dive into a deep trough. She sang to calm herself down, but couldn’t hear her own voice above the white-noise roar of the maelstrom.