Adam Baker - Outpost

Jane kissed him between the shoulder blades. She put an arm round his waist.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Just got a little frustrated at myself. I got seduced by Hyperion. The luxury. You were right all along. We should have stayed here. Kept focused.’

‘I’ve got a plan. Fetch explosives from the bunker. Blow the lock-pins and release the tethers. Float our way out of here. What do you think?’

‘I think you’re stronger than me, and smarter than me, and if you want to give it a shot then I am along for the ride.’

‘Cool.’

‘So you want to head back to the island?’

‘One last time.’

‘Then I’ve got something that may help.’ He shouldered the SCUBA tanks. ‘Let’s go up to the helipad. I want to show you something.’

The helipad. Big as a basketball court. A big red H lit by a ring of floodlights. Ghost wheeled an office chair to the centre of the H and draped a parka over it. He helped Jane strap the SCUBA tanks to her back. Thick hose led to a spray gun.

‘Diesel pressurised with nitrogen,’ said Ghost. ‘Press that button on the barrel. That’s a butane lighter from the kitchen. The igniter. Gives you a little nozzle flame. The big trigger releases fuel. Watch yourself, all right? Brace your legs, and don’t pull the trigger unless you mean it.’

Jane stood twenty metres from the chair. She sparked the igniter. She adjusted her grip on the spray gun and pulled the trigger. A roaring, high-pressure jet of fuel-fire engulfed the office chair. Upholstery foam shrivelled and dripped. The plastic chair withered in a hurricane blast of flame.

Nail and Gus sat by the fire.

‘I feel like a caveman,’ said Gus, prodding the embers.

‘That’s because we are living in a cave.’

‘I could use a big juicy bison about now. What do you reckon? The infected. They hate fire, right? Maybe we could cook the virus out of them.’

‘You want to eat a sailor?’

‘Right now I’m prepared to give it a shot.’

‘You are the sickest of fucks. So how are you feeling? Hunger aside?’

‘Parched,’ said Gus. ‘It’s fucking ridiculous. We can’t even go outside to grab some snow.’

He stroked the remains of his beard. Weeping blisters. Scorched stubble clotted with pus.

‘The burns feel like they are tightening up, you know? Like the skin is contracting. I’m frightened to move in case I split right open.’

‘Maybe you should lie still a while.’ Nail was preoccupied with his own misery. He was starting to sweat cold turkey. He didn’t want to talk.

‘The pain comes and goes. Ice helps.’

‘Maybe we should grease you up. I think that’s what you’re supposed to do with bad burns. Seal the wound.’

‘What’s she doing?’

Nikki stood at the bunker entrance, ear to the door. She was mumbling to herself.

‘Is she talking to them? Look at her. She speaks. She listens. She speaks again. She’s holding a conversation.’

‘Trying to work out how many of those infected fucks are out there waiting for us,’ said Nail.

‘Looks like she’s having a nice long chat with them through the door. They act in concert sometimes. You’ve seen that, right? Watched them out on the ice? What if she can read their thoughts? What if some people can actually tune in?’

‘Doubt it.’

‘Where’s her boat? If she made it back here she must have a boat.’ ‘Yeah.’

‘She’s insane, you know that, right? All that stuff last night. All that babble. Walking cities. Oceans of fire. She’s lost it.’

‘She sounds better this morning. She’s actually making sense.’

‘Do me a favour, all right?’ said Gus. ‘Don’t leave me alone with her. Just don’t leave me alone.’

‘I’m going to get some wood. Take it easy.’ Nail stood up.

‘Hey, Nikki,’ he called. ‘I’m going to fetch some more firewood. Care to join me?’

He led Nikki deep into the tunnels. They each held a piece of burning bed frame as a torch.

Damp concrete. Nail hadn’t been outside for days. There would quickly come a time when he wouldn’t want to leave. He would become habituated to the soothing silence of the passageways. A creature of the shadows.

‘Better watch our step,’ he said as they traversed damp, subterranean caverns. ‘This place is only half built. They might have dug vertical shafts.’

‘I think I might know this place better than you. These days I think of it as home.’

‘What about food? What have you been eating this past couple of weeks?’

‘Cans. I ate them all. None left.’

‘So do you want to tell me about it?’

‘Tell you what?’ she asked.

‘You took my boat. You sailed away. Now you are back, talking trippy bullshit about walking cities. Did you leave at all? Jane told us you sent radio messages. You went south, then sank. Was it all lies? Were you here all along?’

‘It was a long journey. I passed Greenland. I nearly reached Norway. There were storms. I’m not entirely sure what happened. My memory plays tricks.’

‘But why? Why come back? All that effort to get away, and you came back. If Europe has turned into some God-awful hell-world I need to know.’

‘I saw cities on fire. And other stuff. I saw cities get up and walk. Strange creatures. Leviathans. It was madness. I knew it at the time. I knew it wasn’t real.’

‘But what will we find?’ asked Nail. ‘Your psychosis aside. If we actually make it back to Britain what will be waiting for us?’

‘They nuked the cities. The armies. The governments. Scorched earth. Whatever else I dreamed, that much was real.’

‘So if we head south we’ll hit a radiation cloud. Is that why you came back?’

‘I honestly don’t know for sure. I was at sea, and then I was here. I can’t explain it.’

‘But where’s the boat?’

‘The hull was crushed by ice as I approached the island. It’s at the bottom of the sea.’ ‘Shit.’

‘Maybe I didn’t come back at all. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe I’m a ghost.’

‘You’re sure they nuked the cities?’

‘A cleansing fire.’ ‘I’m from Manchester. You know that, right?’

‘Rubble. Plutonium dust. It’ll be safe to go back and take a look in a half million years or so.’

‘Fucking ironic. Jane and Ghost. Plotting how to get home, day and night. And it’s all gone.’

‘Are you going to tell them?’ asked Nikki.

‘We don’t exactly get along.’

‘My turn to wonder. Why are you and Gus skulking in this bunker when you could be back aboard Rampart? Did they run you off with a pitchfork?’

‘Like I say. We don’t get along.’

‘Well, that’s a shame. They’ve got drugs and dressings. Gus will die without them.’

‘So why did you come back to this island? Okay: they nuked the cities. Plenty of other places you could have gone. Plenty of wilderness. Why here? This place is death.’

‘I love it. I truly love it.’

‘Queen of the Damned. Jesus. This gulag has driven you batshit.’

An air shaft. Nail looked up. Massive turbine blades dripped rust.

‘I bet they were going to garrison whole armies down here.’

‘This is my little camp,’ said Nikki.

The installation manager’s office. A leather chair and a desk. A faded Soviet flag and a little plaster bust of Lenin.

A mural. Farm workers driving tractors and combine harvesters across a golden field of wheat. They gazed towards Lenin, who stood on the horizon shooting rays like the rising sun.

Nail examined a photograph on the wall.

‘Brezhnev. Early eighties.’

Scattered tins on the desk.

‘Like I said. Ate them all, I’m afraid.’