Adam Baker - Outpost

Gus watched the smoke.

‘Are there vents down there? A second exit?’

‘Fuck knows. It goes on for miles. A secret city. Some kind of major naval facility.’

‘How many of them do you think are out there?’ asked Gus.

‘Two, I reckon. They’re half frozen. We could get round them easily enough. If more show up I’ll go out there and kill them. Thin out the herd. They’re slow. They’re stupid. I could do it. Wouldn’t be a problem.’

‘My face. Is it bad?’ ‘Yeah, it’s pretty bad.’

‘If I asked you to kill me, if it came down to it, would you help?’

Nail turned away.

A sudden flashback. The big argument. Mal shouting and cursing, jabbing his finger. A blur of steel as Nail lashed out. That shrill, bubbling squeal. That gush of arterial spray.

Nail hadn’t slept for a month. Scared to close his eyes.

‘Maybe it won’t come to that.’

Nail pushed a couple more chair legs on to the fire.

‘We have to get back to Rampart,’ said Gus. ‘That’s our only chance. There will be food, heat and morphine. I’m in so much pain.’

‘Let me think it over.’

A couple of nights earlier Nail had sat in the bridge of Hyperion unable to sleep. He sat in the captain’s chair and looked at the stars. He was joined by Reverend Blanc. They made small talk. Little more than noise. But he could tell straight away she knew his big secret. She seemed too pleasant, too casual. Somehow she had figured out he killed Mal.

Maybe Jane and her friends were dead. Maybe they were ripped apart or died in the fire. But perhaps they escaped Hyperion. They might have taken refuge on Rampart armed with shotguns. Would Jane shoot on sight? What would he do, if their situation were reversed? Sorry, guys. I thought she was one of those infected freaks.

‘I don’t want to worry you,’ said Gus quietly, ‘but I’ve been watching the shadows behind you for a while and I swear there is someone standing against the far wall.’

Nail slowly turned around. The fire cast flickering shadows across the tunnel walls. He saw a figure in heavy snow gear half hidden in darkness.

Nail stood up.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You’re welcome to join us.’

No response.

He took a burning chair leg from the fire and approached the figure.

A Con Amalgam parka patched with duct tape.

‘I’m Nail. Nail Harper.’

No reply.

‘Hello? Can you hear me?’

He held up the chair leg so he could see the face beneath the hood. Chapped, peeling skin. Mad, staring eyes.

‘Nikki. It’s Nikki.’

Jane and Ghost fled the island. Punch and Sian were close behind. They ran headlong. Jane was glad to trip over rocks. Rocks meant they were still close to shore. If they found themselves running through pristine snow it meant they had blundered inland and were running further and further from safety.

They scrambled down basalt boulders and ran out on to the frozen sea. They skidded and struggled to keep balance. The glow of the burning ship stained the ice blood red.

Jane had the only flashlight. They followed her lead.

‘Keep together. Don’t get separated.’

A succession of muffled thumps behind them. Floor by floor, room by room, Hyperion was blowing itself to bits. Grenades strapped to propane cylinders. Ghost’s failsafe plan. If infected passengers broke through the barricades they would be incinerated. But localised detonations had run out of control. One by one the ship’s fuel tanks exploded fore and aft, blasting holes in the hull, jetting flame through corridors and stairwells.

‘We have to slow down,’ shouted Jane. ‘This is fresh ice. I don’t want to break the crust and fall into the sea.’

They slowed from a run to a walk.

‘Are you folks all right?’ she asked. ‘Everyone okay?’

She and Ghost had been in their room when the attack began. They were lying on the rug, listening to Johnny Cash and talking about the life they would build when they got home. They heard shouting. They heard a fight. ‘ Breakout: They had the presence of mind to grab polar coats and glacier boots.

The corridor outside their room was filled with bitter smoke. Thermite detonations nearby. They covered their mouths to mask acrid fumes. Burning paint. Melting metal.

They ran on deck. Fire from below. Windows blew out. A row of burning lifeboats. The zodiac was reduced to scraps of burning rubber hanging from a crane.

Punch and Sian had already retired to bed. They fled the ship wearing tracksuits and sneakers.

‘We’re fine,’ said Sian, starting to shiver uncontrollably.

Jane switched off her flashlight. They stood in the dark.

‘We have to get moving,’ said Punch.

‘Everyone keep calm,’ said Jane.

‘There.’ A green, pulsing glow high above them in the fog. One of the aircraft warning strobes at the corner of the rig. ‘The west leg,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

Jane helped Sian. Ghost helped Punch.

They hurried across the ice. They were beneath the refinery, heading for the south leg. They ran so long Jane wondered if they had missed their target and were fleeing blindly out into the Barents Sea.

‘Do you think they are following us?’ asked Punch.

‘We’ve outrun them for now,’ said Jane. ‘But yeah, if we hang around long enough they’ll catch up.’

The south leg. A Cyclopean cylinder of steel. Jane’s flashlight played across a wall of metal studded with bolts and seams like the suture marks of an operation scar.

‘Jane,’ shouted Ghost.

She turned. A forklift truck drove straight at her. Pallet prongs slammed into the steel wall either side of her head. Wheels span on ice.

‘What the fuck?’

An infected crewman part-melded to the controls.

Ghost grabbed the cab cage and kicked at the driver. Flesh tore. The crewman ripped away from the forklift and fell on the ice, steering wheel welded to his hands. Ghost stamped on the man’s head until it burst.

‘Konecranes . Not one of ours.’

‘Must be from Hyperion. Most liners have a big marshalling area amidships. Side doors in the hull.’

‘He just fell out and started driving around?’

‘Sure. Why not?’

Punch and Sian hugged each other for warmth.

‘Hold on, guys,’ said Ghost. ‘Nearly home.’

‘I think the rope is round the side.’

They circled the leg and found a knotted rope dangling from the mist like a ladder to heaven. Jane seized the rope and climbed upwards into nothing. The platform lift was parked four metres above them. There was a brief silence, then a metallic grind as the lift descended to the ice. They climbed aboard. Jane hit Up.

‘So fucking cold,’ said Punch.

‘Soon be warm,’ said Ghost. ‘A couple more minutes and we’ll be inside.’

It wasn’t until Sian collapsed they realised she had been stabbed in the side and her red tracksuit was crisp with frozen blood.

They carried Sian to the canteen. They laid her on a table. She tried to sit up. They pushed her down.

Jane ran to Rye’s old room and swept medical supplies into a plastic bag. Bandages. Sterile dressings.

Jane examined the wound. Sian yelped and hit her. Punch held Sian’s arms. She turned her head to avoid looking at the hole in her hip.

Jane wriggled on surgical gloves. She selected tweezers from an instrument pack. She sterilised the tweezers with a Zippo flame then dug into the wound. Sian writhed. Jane extracted a big, rusted woodscrew dripping gobbets of flesh.

‘Any idea when it happened?’ asked Jane.

‘That last explosion as we reached the boat deck. I didn’t feel it at the time. Too much going on.’