Adam Baker - Outpost

Nikki let the current carry her south.

Morning. The southern sky was tinged azure.

Nikki saw a white dot on the horizon. A fragment of iceberg? A sail? The object grew closer. It was a fin. The tail of a plane. An Air France 747 floating low in the water.

Nikki drew alongside the massive passenger jet. She jumped on to the wing and slammed the barbed spike of the anchor into a riveted seam. She walked back and forth on the wing, boots crunching on the salt-crusted metal. She hadn’t walked a single step for weeks. She spent each day crouched in the cockpit and, once a day, she crawled across the hull of the boat to check the mast and sail.

Nikki wiped a porthole with her sleeve. She saw, through the misted glass, rows of empty seats. She guessed the plane had been turned back from US airspace and run out of fuel halfway back to Europe. The aircraft ditched and the passengers used the evacuation slides as rafts. The last cabin staff to abandon the jet must have shut the hatch behind them out of domestic instinct. The plane was hermetically sealed, a steel bubble. It retained just enough air in its cargo hold, empty fuel tanks and passenger compartments to keep it above water. It would float for months, maybe years, riding out the squalls.

Nikki pushed the wing hatch with her shoulder. The rubber seals gave way with a squelch. The interior of the plane was lit by weak daylight shafting through the starboard portholes.

Economy class. Rows of empty seats. A tangle of oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling. Luggage was scattered in the aisles. No blood, no bodies.

Club and first class were both empty. Attaché cases and laptops had been left neatly on the seats as if the passengers would soon return and resume their journey.

The cockpit was empty. Banks of dead instrumentation and a view of empty ocean.

Nikki sought out the galley at the back of the plane. She hoped to find soft drinks, cartons of long-life milk and maybe biscuits.

She found cartons of orange juice in an overturned stewardess trolley. The cartons were frozen solid. She ripped away packaging. A yellow brick of juice. She smashed the brick in the galley basin and sucked shards as she explored the plane.

She noticed one of the toilets was engaged. She casually kicked the door, then jumped back when a voice said, ‘ Don’t come in.’

‘Jesus,’ said Nikki, addressing the bathroom door. ‘How long have you been aboard?’

‘ Leave. Just leave.’ A male voice .

‘Look, there’s no need to hide. There’s just me. I’m on my own. Come on out.’

‘The door’s jammed. It’s staying jammed. Don’t come in .’

‘Please. Come out.’

‘No.’

‘Look, this is stupid.’

‘Fuck you .’

‘The plane ditched. You know that, right? There’s no one on board but you.’

‘I’m not leaving .’

‘You’re in the middle of the fucking ocean. Everyone took to the rafts. You’re alone. And this plane is barely afloat. If it takes on even a cupful of water it’ll sink to the bottom and take you with it.’

‘ Just fuck off .’

‘Well, shit. I’m not going to argue with you.’

Nikki found a pallet of bottled water in a galley locker. She stacked the bottles by the hatch.

She found a wash-bag and baby wipes among the scattered luggage and locked herself in a club-class lavatory. She stripped out of her hydro-suit and wiped herself down. She brushed her teeth and spat. She kept her lock-knife open on the edge of the basin in case her unseen companion decided to emerge from his den.

She found fresh clothes in a suitcase. Socks and underwear. She tried to repair her cracked and wrinkled hands with moisturiser.

She crouched on the wing and tried the radio. She hoped the metal plane would act as an antenna and boost the signal.

She couldn’t raise Rampart. It was out of range, over the horizon and lost in perpetual night.

Nikki scanned the wavebands. A flickering LED. The radio was trying to lock on to a ghost signal.

‘…God’s help… terrible deci… arkest day..!’

The voice died away.

Nikki loaded food and water on to the boat, then walked to the lavatory at the back of the plane. She knocked on the toilet door.

‘This is your last chance. I’m leaving.’

‘ Bye .’

‘Seriously. I’m heading south. You could join me. If you stay here you’ll die.’

‘Then leave me. You can do that. You’ve done it before .’

‘Leave you?’

‘Yeah. Save your own ass. After all, everyone has a talent .’

‘Who are you?’ demanded Nikki. ‘What’s your name?’

No reply.

‘Alan? Is that you?’

Nikki kicked at the door. Four blows then the lock splintered. The cubicle was empty.

‘Have I gone insane?’ asked Nikki, interrogating her reflection. ‘Is that the deal?’

‘Let’s just say,’ said her dead boyfriend’s voice,’ that your perceptions have undergone a radical adaptation .’

Nikki enjoyed VIP luxury. She sat in a club seat. A porthole gave her a view of open sea. She wrapped herself in airline blankets and reclined. She clamped in-flight headphones to warm her ears.

‘This place is a welcome piece of luck,’ she murmured as she snuggled down to sleep.

‘Yeah,’ said Alan. ‘ God crashed this plane just for you .’

She pulled a TV from a slot in the arm of the chair. A little screen on an armature. She jacked her headphones and selected Brief Encounter from the menu. She dozed as the movie played.

‘You realise that screen is completely blank,’ said Alan. ‘ The plane is dead. Nothing works’

‘But I like the movie.’

‘Jesus. It’s like that joke. My wife thinks she’s a chicken. I’d take her to the doctor, but we need the eggs’

‘That’s fucking ironic. My dead boyfriend posing as the voice of sanity.’

‘You think you left me behind? You’re stuck with me as long as you live. Bonnie and Clyde. Sonny and Cher. I’ll look after you, until the end of your days’

‘Could you get me back to Rampart?’ asked Nikki. ‘Could you master the boat? The ropes, the sail? If I wanted to get back, could you show me the way?’

‘I can take you anywhere you need to go, Nikki.’

She sat cross-legged on the wing of the jet and ate crackers.

She saw a red glow on the skyline, a fine aurora. It was the wrong time of day, the wrong point of the compass for sunset.

They must have nuked the cities. Ahead of her, beyond the southern horizon, Europe was burning.

Self-awareness came and went like a weak radio signal. Stuttering, time-lapse moments of consciousness. It began in the main lobby. She was sipping Scotch. She hated Scotch ever since she vomited Macallan out of her nose during a college drinking game. She retched at the smell of it. A shot glass full of bile. But now she drank single malt like it was Coke. She couldn’t taste it and it didn’t make her drunk.

Three infected people in front of her. Two brass-buttoned waiters and an old lady welded to a walking frame.

Blackout.

Two naked old guys and a chef.

Blackout.

Two officers and a cleaner fused to a broom.

Rye smiled. It was like pulling the arm of a slot machine. Three different fruit, every time.

One moment Rye was sitting at the blackjack table, checking her cards, nudging chips with the rotted club that used to be her hand. Next moment she found herself standing in a deserted coffee bar staring out of a porthole at the stars. She wondered how much time had passed. The next instant she found herself standing in one of Hyperion’s little gift shops cramming fistfuls of shortbread into her mouth then spitting the biscuits because they tasted dry as dust. Time passed in a series of jumpcuts, each lucid moment met with anger and frustration. Why was she, among all the shambling, leprous passengers, one of the few cursed with long moments of wakefulness in which she experienced the full horror of her condition?