Outpost H311

by Sara Jayne Townsend

  “The vote is six to one,” Allison said.

  “That door was sealed for a reason,” Nathan said. “We open it up, we’re opening up a whole world of trouble. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Everyone was too tense to go back to sleep, so they got on with the morning activities. Allison’s meal preparation rota had Nathan making breakfast, a task he commenced with surprisingly little argument.

  Neeta changed the dressing on Daniel’s injured leg. The smell coming from the wound was awful. As Daniel grimaced, she doused his wound in antiseptic. He gratefully accepted the pain killers she offered.

  Jake finished connecting the water heater in the shower room to the generator. When he returned, Nathan was serving up breakfast in the refectory.

  “Damn, that smells good,” Jake said, joining the others at the table. “What is it?”

  Nathan put a bowl in front of him. “Just porridge. But I added a few personal touches to make it taste a bit better.”

  “Nathan, this is delicious,” Allison said, unable to mask her surprise. “What did you put in it?”

  “A bit of cinnamon. A bit of nutmeg. Honey. Plus a few other secret ingredients,” Nathan said smugly. “Not that I’m going to give away all of my cooking secrets.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re a master chef and none of us knew it,” Ellen said through a mouthful of porridge.

  “As it happens, I was on Masterchef once,” Nathan said. “Years ago, of course. I don’t really get time to cook anymore.”

  “Did you win?” Ellen asked.

  “Obviously not, because we would have all heard about it if so,” Allison said.

  Nathan glared at her. “I got to the semi final.”

  “Since you’ve done such a good job here, maybe we should get you cooking all the time.”

  “You were the one that came up with the rotas,” Nathan said. “I accept the need to heed your rotas. Especially when it comes to food. A guaranteed way of making sure you don’t eat rubbish is to cook it yourself.”

  “Where’s Daniel?” Ellen asked, looking around the table. “Has he got some food?”

  “He was in quite a lot of pain, so I told him to stay in the bunk and rest,” said Neeta. “Don’t worry, I took him some food. I’m a bit worried about him. I think his leg’s infected, and I can’t find any antibiotics.”

  “That would be because we don’t have any,” Allison said.

  Neeta put down her spoon and stared at Allison. “All the equipment we brought for weeks in the Arctic and there are no antibiotics?”

  Allison spooned the last of the porridge out of the bowl and swallowed it before answering. “It was on my list of essential supplies and it got kyboshed.”

  “And whose idiotic decision was that?” Neeta asked.

  Allison pointed at Nathan. “Since the argument against them seemed to be financial, that would be mostly down to Nathan here.”

  “It wasn’t as straightforward as that,” Nathan said defensively. “We were way over budget and we had to cut back. Antibiotics can be complex as a lot of people are allergic to different things, and you need different ones for different infections.”

  “So rather than take lots of different ones you decided to save money and take none,” Allison said.

  “It was felt that anyone with a serious infection would be better off being removed from the site,” Nathan said. “That was the plan in case of any kind of serious injury or illness. Call for medical backup and have them flown out.”

  “Except the satellite phone broke in the crash, and our only pilot died. We have no way of calling for help and Daniel might die without antibiotics.” Allison threw her spoon into her bowl and reached for her mug of tea.

  Ellen turned to Jake. “Speaking of serious injuries, what did you do with David’s body? I mean the thing we killed that looked like David.”

  “We buried it in the snow outside,” Jake said.

  “We did that last time, and he came back.”

  “He’s not coming back this time. We blew his head off.”

  “We don’t know that,” Ellen said. “If that machine is the thing that’s bringing people back, we have no idea if it works on only whole bodies or just body parts.”

  “What else were we supposed to do with the body?”

  “Burning it might work,” said Nathan.

  Jake stood up abruptly. “If you want to chop up a body that’s frozen solid and set fire to it, be my guest. I’m going to set up the blast to clear the ice block in that corridor.”

  Allison stood up as well and began to clear the breakfast dishes. “Pete, you and I are on washing up duty this morning.”

  “I think I’d like to try out that new shower that Jake’s rigged up.” Neeta hurried from the room.

  Nathan ran after her. “Wait a minute, why do you get to go first? Since I made breakfast, I should get first dibs on the shower.”

  Not wanting to get drawn into the argument, Ellen hurried after Jake to help him with the explosives.

  When she caught up with him, Jake was packing plastic explosives into the middle of the wall of ice. “It’s always best to do this as a two-man job,” he said. “You don’t play about with explosives.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Ellen asked.

  Jake threaded out a length of thin rope. “This is our fuse.” He fed it down the corridor back towards the door. “Can you double-check what I’ve set? Make sure there are no breaks or flaws that I might have missed.”

  Ellen inspected the explosives, which looked like a ball of blu-tack embedded into gouges in the wall of ice. The fuse Jake had set was secured into the substance. She poked a finger gingerly at the mass; the fuse was stuck fast. “It all looks okay to me,” she said.

  “Great. Then come back here so I can light the fuse.” The length of fuse finished just over the threshold of the door into the comms room. Jake fumbled in his pocket then produced his lighter. “When I light the fuse, we have to shut this door and stay on the other side of it so we’re out of the range of the blast. You go lean against that door, and as soon as I’ve lit the fuse you help me close it, OK?”

  “OK,” Ellen said. She stepped into the comms room and braced her arms up against the door.

  Jake flicked the lighter. A yellow flame flared into life. He leaned down and touched the lighter to the length of rope. After a moment, the end of the rope flared and the flame took hold. Jake pocketed the lighter as he hurriedly stepped back and leaned on the back of the door. Ellen pushed on the door. It swung in and slammed shut. “Get down,” Jake hissed and dropped to his knees. He buried his head in his hands.

  Ellen sat down hard on the cold floor, her back against the door. She brought her knees up and rested her head against them. She wrapped her hands around her knees to form a cradle for her head, waiting for the explosion.

  A moment later, a deafening boom. The base shook. Chunks of concrete fell off the ceiling and crashed to the floor. A cloud of smoke seeped through the crack in the door. Ellen waved a hand to clear her vision and coughed. As the smoke cleared, she stood. Jake was already standing up, tugging the door open. Ellen helped him.

  The corridor was now littered with chunks of concrete and ice. Holes had been blasted into the walls. Melted ice formed puddles ankle-deep. But the explosion had had the desired effect. A hole had been blasted through the wall of ice.

  Ellen bent to peer through. The smoke obscured her vision, and she didn’t have a clear line of sight. “I thought the hole would be bigger.”

  Jake kicked at the ice wall with his boot. A big chunk of ice crumbled away under his foot. “We’ve broken it up sufficiently to dig through the rest, I think. Let’s go grab a couple of shovels. We’ve still got work to do.”

  An hour later Ellen was sweating so hard she’d stripped off all of the extra layers, right back to her thermal underlayer. Jake’s face and neck were red, sweat lining his brow. But they had successfully broken a big en
ough hole through the ice for it to be possible to pass through it. All the ice and snow they had removed was piled up in a corner. “At least it’s a plentiful supply of ice to boil down for water,” Jake said.

  With their work done, they fell into chairs in the refectory, grateful to take a rest while Allison and Pete explored the area that had been opened up, including the wrecked laboratory.

  The longer Ellen sat down, the harder she thought it was going to be to get up again. Her shoulders felt like they were on fire. Her arms were trembling so much she spilled tea every time she lifted the cup to her mouth.

  About half an hour later Allison came back into the refectory. Pete followed behind her, his camera rolling. “That machine in the lab seems to be doing something,” Allison said.

  “We noticed that,” Ellen said.

  “Well are you sure it’s a good idea to keep it going, without us knowing what it does?”

  “First of all, we don’t know how to switch it off,” Jake said. “It’s not running off electricity so it’s not a question of pulling the plug. Second, since we don’t know what it does we should avoid touching it.”

  “It could be emitting poisonous gases for all we know,” said Allison.

  “If it was, it would have been doing so in an enclosed space for seventy years and none of us would still be breathing after spending twenty-four hours in this place.” Jake got up and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Allison sat down at the table. “It would be really useful to get into the infirmary. The door’s sealed.”

  “We told you that too.” Jake came back into the room, his re-filled mug steaming with coffee. He sat down and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket of his jacket, which was slung over the back of his chair.

  “So how are we going to break through the door?”

  “We talked about blasting it. Of course if we do that, we’ll probably wreck the door and we won’t be able to close it at all.” Jake tapped a cigarette out of the pack and stuck it into his mouth.

  “I thought we agreed no smoking indoors,” Allison said pointedly.

  Jake pulled the unlit cigarette out of his mouth and gave her a hard stare. “I think that must have been a conversation you had in your head, because I don’t remember participating in it. But I guess I’m going out for a smoke.” He stood up, pulled his jacket on, and stomped off towards the ladder at the end of the corridor.

  Allison studied the map, which was laid out on the table in front of them. Daniel had translated the German words on it, adding the English translation in pencil, in neat block letters. “It bothers me that these corridors are sealed off. I can’t help but wonder why.”

  Ellen leaned forward so she could see the map. “I know what you mean. It says those storage areas in the northern corridor are for electronics storage. There might be a radio. Or things to fix the broken one.”

  “And we still haven’t managed to get to the hangar. Or the boathouse. That might be a way out, just waiting for us.”

  “The stairs are blocked and the lift is out.” Ellen leaned back and picked up her mug. “I suppose now the generator’s working we might be able to get the lift working again. Even if it isn’t, we need to get to that hangar.”

  Allison glowered at Pete, who was still filming. “Hasn’t that bloody camera run out of power yet?”

  “I was able to recharge it,” Pete said cheerfully, not taking his eye away from the lens. “The generator is powering a couple of power sockets.”

  “I’m sure there’s a better use for the power we’ve got,” Allison said. She turned back to Ellen. “I still think it’s a risk.”

  Ellen shrugged. “Sure it’s a risk, but it’s one we have to take. You said yourself we can’t sit around waiting to be rescued. If we want to get out of here, we have to find our own way out. We need to access the rest of the base.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Jake put plastic explosives all around the infirmary door. He and Ellen worked largely in silence, she not dwelling too hard on why the Nazis had felt the need to solder the door shut in the first place.

  Jake set a long fuse. The plan was for him and Ellen to be behind the door to the comms rooms again to be shielded from the blast. Ellen waited once again behind the door while Jake lit the fuse. When he ducked back behind the door, she slammed it shut, and the two of them hunkered down behind the door, waiting for the blast.

  The blast, when it came, was significantly more powerful than the one for the ice wall. An almighty BOOM! echoed through the base, shaking the comms room. The shelf on the wall clattered to the ground. The comms room door bowed in with such force that Ellen was thrown back and ended up sprawled on the floor in the middle of the room. Acrid smoke flooded into the room from the crescent-shaped gaps in the door.

  Ellen climbed to her feet, coughing. “We didn’t want to wreck the base.”

  “I had to be sure there was enough explosive to take the door out,” Jake said. He coughed and gripped the handle of the warped door. “I’ll need your help on this. Wait a minute.”

  Ellen paused, her hand halfway to the door handle. “What?”

  “Shh.” Jake took his hand off the door and leaned in, his ear to the gap.

  Ellen strained to listen, trying to catch what had got Jake’s attention. At first she could hear nothing, beyond the faint noises of conversation from the others in the refectory beyond the comms room. And then she heard it. From the corridor were slow, heavy footsteps, accompanied by low, animalistic growls.

  Ellen stared at Jake, eyes wide. He silently pulled his handgun out of its belt holster and gestured at Ellen to stay behind the door. He tugged on the door, opening it just wide enough for him to peer through.

  Ellen got down on the floor and peered cautiously round the door, her view partly obstructed by Jake’s legs. Initially she could see nothing but smoke, but the heavy footsteps were getting louder. As the smoke cleared, something moving in the corridor came into view. All Ellen could make out initially was the outline of a figure, vaguely human, but it looked like something was wrong with its head. Jake swore loudly and fired the pistol, just a fraction before she understood what she was seeing – a man in a Nazi uniform, the misshapen head actually a helmet. Jake had shot it square in the chest. It staggered back but stayed on its feet then kept moving forward. A second figure emerged from the smoke.

  The figure’s face came into view. It was covered in brown leathery skin broken with black rotten patches. Where the skin had rotted away discoloured bone was exposed. The eyes were unblinking orbs, looking too big for the sockets. And then the face disappeared in a spray of black ichor as a second shot from Jake’s gun found its mark. The body teetered for a moment while the skull fell away and hit the floor with a clatter, then pitched forward. The second figure looked like it was grinning, parchment-thin skin stretched over its skull. Jake fired again. The first shot bounced off the figure’s left shoulder. Its arm on that side hung limply, the flesh shredded, the arm attached by only a tendon. The figure lurched as the bullet hit it and the arm dropped off, thudding to the floor. It kept coming.

  A third figure emerged from the smoke. “There’s more of them!” Ellen called out.

  “Go find a weapon,” Jake said, not taking his eyes off the hideous figures in the corridor. He fired again, hitting one in the side of the head. It toppled over. Ellen desperately scanned the room for something she could use. Her gaze landed on the shovels they had been using to break through the ice. She grabbed one then raced back to the doorway.

  The second Nazi had fallen, but the third kept coming, stepping over its two fallen comrades. Jake took careful aim and fired, hitting the zombie in the head. As it fell over, a fourth materialised out of the smoke.

  “Holy shit, how many are there?” Jake took aim and fired again, but the trigger clicked. “Fuck.” He tossed the weapon aside and dug a knife out of his belt. He glanced at Ellen and the shovel she clutched. “Stay behind me,” he said. “And move when I say.” />
  Ellen nodded, too terrified to speak.

  “OK, let’s go.” Jake pulled open the door and raced forward. The Nazi zombie reached out to grab him. Jake brought his knife up and sank it into the creature’s eye socket, but he could not extricate himself from the zombie so as it fell it pulled him over with it.

  Ellen saw yet another zombie coming out of the smoke. As it came towards her, she brought up the shovel and slammed it into the zombie’s face as hard as she could. The shovel rebounded off the Nazi’s helmet with a terrific clang. The Nazi staggered, but stayed on its feet. Desperately, Ellen swung the shovel again, this time bringing the blade down hard on the zombie’s knee caps. It snarled and lost its balance, immediately trying to get up once it hit the floor.

  Ellen rushed forward with the shovel but Jake lunged forward and plunged his knife into the Nazi’s eye socket. It twitched and groaned then lay still.

  Ellen collapsed to the floor, still clutching the shovel, breathing heavily. Five twice-dead Nazis lay motionless all around them. The infirmary door hung bent and useless on its hinges.

  Jake retrieved his knife from the Nazi’s eye, the blade dripping with black goo. He turned to look at the comms room, and Ellen followed his gaze. Crowding the doorway were the others. Allison and Neeta stared with their mouths open. Pete had the video camera pressed to his eye. Nathan said, “What the fuck is going on here?”

  CHAPTER 26

  “So we’re dealing with fucking Nazi zombies, is that it?” Nathan glowered, arms folded, as Jake inspected the bodies on the floor.

  “Whatever these things are, they aren’t human. I was hitting them point blank and they weren’t going down.”

  “But they’re all dead now,” Ellen said. “Aren’t they?”

  “It seems to take a head shot to bring them down.” Jake rummaged in the jacket pocket of one of the felled Nazis and produced a battered pack of cigarettes. “German smokes. This brand hasn’t been made for years.”