Adam Baker - Outpost

Rye woke. She found herself jostling with infected passengers. Stench and rot. A dozen monsters pounding at a door, scratching and hammering, trying to reach the meat. Hawaiian shirts and paper garlands. A night of limbo and pina coladas turned to hell.

Fingers raked the hatch metal. Broken nails and streaked blood. The hatch was giving way. It was wedged shut by a barricade the other side of the door. Rye heard furniture start to shift.

Bodies hurled against the door. Chairs and tables began to subside.

Rye kicked legs. She tripped the passengers. She wanted to slow them down. She wished she had her radio. She could warn the Rampart crew of impending attack. They were about to be swamped. Cornered. Killed in their beds.

The door gave way and swung open. A collapsing mountain of furniture. Rye stepped back, waiting for grenades to detonate and consume the crowd in brilliant white fire.

Nothing.

Jane and Ghost were waiting on the other side of the door, shotguns raised like a firing squad. Twin muzzle flash. Explosive roar. Scrambled brain matter.

Jane stood hazed in gunsmoke. She slotted fresh shells and racked the slide. Efficient shots, point-blank to the face like a stone-cold killer.

‘Hey,’ shouted Rye. ‘Hey, Jane.’

Jane saw her. No recognition. She raised her shotgun. Rye dived sideways to avoid the blast.

Jane and Ghost re-sealed the door. Rye lay among smouldering, headless bodies and listened as they rebuilt the barricade.

Rye’s last moments of full consciousness, the last time she was truly herself, occurred deep in the heart of the ship. She was stumbling down a stairwell. She was not alone. She found herself leading a crowd of passengers in fancy dress.

On her left was a man in a dinner suit and pig mask. Spikes pierced the pig snout. The man could never remove the mask. He would spend the rest of his short life squinting through rubber eye-holes.

On her right was a man in a bunny costume, fur matted with blood.

The stairs led down into dark water. One of the hull plates had popped a seam below the waterline when Hyperion collided with the refinery. The ship was still seaworthy but a couple of mid-section compartments were flooded.

At the bottom of the stairwell, beneath the icy water, was a door that would lead to rooms directly below the officers’ quarters. The door wouldn’t be wedged shut and it wouldn’t be strung with grenades. A blind spot. The Rampart crew wouldn’t anticipate anyone would rise out of seawater.

Rye reached the point where water lapped the stairs. She kept walking. Knee-deep, waist-deep, chest-deep, and finally submerged.

Smothering silence. Green, sub-aqueous murk. Rye walked slowly like an astronaut. The cold should have killed her but she could barely feel it. She was breathing water, but it didn’t seem to matter.

The bottom of the stairwell. A submerged electric wall lamp, sealed in a glass bubble, still burned bright. A sculpin swam past Rye’s face and darted into a floor vent.

She found the hatch. She turned the handles and pulled it open. There must have been a cupboard of bathroom supplies nearby because the water around her was filled by a blizzard of dissolved toilet paper.

Rye walked through the doorway. She looked over her shoulder. The grotesque animal forms of her companions kept pace behind her. A clown with one arm. A ballet dancer, tights lumped and stretched by tumorous growth.

More stairs. Rye climbed upward, water cascading from her clothes as she broke the surface. Her companions followed, shaking water from their animal heads, stumbling under the weight of their sodden costumes.

Her thoughts cleared for a moment and she realised the terrible carnage she was about to unleash. The refinery crew were two decks above them, eating dinner, convinced they were safe behind barricades.

Rye reached in her pocket for the grenade, then remembered she had given it away. Maybe she should trigger the sprinkler system and raise the alarm. But a moment later she could no longer remember who she was, and why she was standing in a stairwell jostled by monsters in tattered carnival costume. She joined the herd and shambled up the stairs alongside her nightmare companions towards the Rampart crew, ready to rip and tear.

Nail and Gus were lost in the fog. Their flashlights lit snow and curling mist. Frozen beards. Clothes crusted with frost.

‘We’re lost.’

‘We’re not lost.’

Gus was badly burned. He leaned against Nail for support.

‘Wait,’ said Nail. ‘Hold on.’

‘What?’

Nail took a red bandana from his pocket and held it up like a wind sock.

‘I think we’re heading the right way. We just need to keep the wind behind us.’

‘Then what? We’re royally fucked.’

Nail’s flashlight had started to fail.

‘We have to keep moving. We have to find shelter.’

Hyperion had been overrun. Nail and Gus fled during the attack. They slid down knotted rope as the ship burned. Quickly rappelled down the smooth white hull to the ice. They didn’t have coats. They each wore a T-shirt and fleece. They could survive maybe fifteen minutes before succumbing to the cold.

Gus sagged like he wanted to sit down.

‘Keep moving,’ commanded Nail, his voice flat and muffled by the fog. ‘It can’t be far.’

He was starting to shake.

They stumbled over snow and rock. Deep thuds behind them. Explosions aboard Hyperion.

Concrete jutted from the snow. The high arch of the bunker entrance.

‘This is it,’ said Nail. ‘We made it.’

They reached the bunker door. An infected crewman stood sentry in front of the entrance. It looked like he had been there a while. Snow had collected on his head and shoulders. He was knee-deep, his uniform frosted white. He stood quite still, staring into the mist. He slowly came to life like a rusted robot. His clothes crackled with ice as he moved. He stumbled and reached for Nail and Gus. His face was frozen. His eyes couldn’t turn in their sockets.

Nail kicked the crewman’s legs from under him. He pushed the fallen man down the bunker steps with his foot. The body rolled into the fog.

Gus passed out. He fell against the door and slid to the ground. Nail tried to slap him awake but got no response. He checked for a pulse. Still alive.

Nail looked around. He glimpsed figures, grotesque silhouettes lurking in the fog.

‘Gus. Wake up, man. We’ve got company. They sniffed us out.’

No response.

He checked the bunker doors. The padlock and chain were gone. He tried to pull the doors wide. They opened a few centimetres then jammed. They had been lashed shut from the inside with rope.

He searched Gus’s pockets. He found a lock-knife. He flipped open the blade. He threw his flashlight into the mist to lure away the prowling figures that encircled them.

He worked by touch. He reached through the gap in the doorway and sawed at the rope.

‘Gus? Still with me?’

No reply.

‘Come on, dude. Don’t check out on me now.’

He cut through the rope. He hauled open the door. He set his lighter to full-flame and dragged Gus into the bunker. A dark tunnel mouth.

He scanned shelves, picked through clutter. He found a lamp and switched it on. It was styled like a hurricane lamp, but had an LED bulb and a couple of Duracells.

He knotted the doors closed with scraps of rope.

He tried to wake Gus.

‘Can you hear me? Can you hear what I’m saying? You have to focus, Gus. You have to listen to my voice. Shock and cold. Don’t give in to it.’

Gus opened his eyes but couldn’t focus. Semi-delirious.