Outpost

by Adam Baker

  'Give me your knife,' demanded Ghost.

  Punch handed over his lock-knife. Ghost snapped open the blade and cut the sledge rope.

  'What are you doing?' asked Nikki, shouting to be heard over the gathering wind.

  'He's either dead or dying. We have to outrun the storm.' Ghost pushed Nikki and Simon back towards the bikes. 'It's all right. I didn't give you a choice, okay? It's my decision. My guilt.'

  They climbed on the snowmobiles and drove away leaving Alan still strapped to the sledge, snow settling on his face, a blue speck abandoned in a vast ice plain.

  The sun set. They rode headlong into a blizzard. Rising wind-roar. Their headlamps lit driving snow. Punch wanted to erect the survival shelter but Ghost ignored his signals to stop.

  Ghost checked his sat nav and headed for the cabin coordinates. The Garmin unit bolted to the handlebars counted down the metres. He was surprised the unit could still find a GPS signal. He guessed remnants of the US military were still active. A bunch of generals in a mile-deep war room trying to mobilise troops that were long dead or had abandoned their post.

  YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION.

  They pulled up. Featureless terrain. White nothing.

  Ghost dismounted. He shone his flashlight into a locust-swarm of ice particles. He found a snow bank. He and Punch began to excavate, burrow like moles. Punch hacked at the snow with gloved hands. Ghost unfolded a trenching spade and dug. They exposed a window, and then they exposed a door. The door was chocked closed. They tugged the wedges free and pulled the door wide.

  The interior of the cabin was bare. They revved the snowmobiles, drove them inside, and wedged the door closed. Wind noise dropped to silence.

  Ghost erected a dome tent in the corner of the cabin. He hammered pegs into the floor with his boot. Punch set up a couple of LED lanterns. He burned a Coleman gas stove to raise the cabin temperature. He melted snow for coffee.

  They wrapped Simon and Nikki in foil blankets. Punch cracked self-heating cans of chicken teriyaki. Nikki ate with trembling hands. Ghost spoon-fed Simon.

  'They wouldn't tell us on the radio,' said Nikki, wiping food from her chin.

  'Tell you what?' asked Ghost.

  'Why the plane didn't come.'

  'There's been some kind of outbreak back home. A pandemic. Everything shot to shit.'

  'How bad?'

  'Pretty fucking bad.'

  'The whole of Britain?'

  'The whole of the world. Take off your gloves a moment. And your boots.'

  Ghost checked Nikki for frostbite. 'Your skin is cracked, but you still have circulation. See? If I press your skin it goes white then red. You still have blood flow. We have a doctor on the rig. She'll check you over properly.'

  'Maybe we should go back for Alan,' said Nikki. 'When we have our strength. When the weather clears.'

  'It's winter. The weather won't clear for six months. It'll be one storm after another from now on. We wouldn't find him, even if we looked. What can I tell you? I guess we aren't the good guys.'

  Ghost turned to Simon.

  'Let's take a look at you.'

  Simon allowed Ghost to unbuckle his gauntlets. He sat back and let Ghost peel off his socks and shoes.

  Simon's toes were swollen and peeling. The fingertips of his left hand were blue. His entire right hand was black, cracked and weeping. The smell was foul. Punch covered his mouth and nose.

  'Probably looks worse than it is,' lied Ghost. 'Skin will grow back in time.'

  He helped Simon dress.

  'Take it easy, all right?'

  Ghost picked up the trenching spade.

  'I'm going outside to dig us out. Don't want to suffocate.'

  He stepped outside into the wind and snow. He shouted into his radio.

  'Shore team to Rye. Shore team to Rye, do you copy, over?'

  Jane knocked on Rawlins's door.

  'They reached the cabin,' she said. 'I thought you'd like to know. Couldn't get much out of them. Bad atmospherics. Imagine they will push for the coast at daylight.'

  'Everyone all right?'

  'Punch and Ghost are okay. But only two members of the Apex team made it.'

  'What happened to the third guy?'

  'Like I say, bad reception. I could barely make out a word. But there were three of them. Now there are two. Maybe the cold got him.'

  'Christ. There will be a bunch of tears when they get back. A bunch of guilt. Well, that's your problem. Pastoral care. Ghost and Punch are okay, yeah?'

  'We'll hear more when they reach the bunker.'

  'Take a look at this.'

  Rawlins had stapled an Arctic map to the wall. The island and surrounding ocean were dotted with red pins.

  'These are all the installations in our sector, as best I can remember. Mostly Gazprom. A couple of Occidental. I suppose most have been evacuated. But if they cleared out in a hurry they might have left some useful supplies. Food. Fuel.'

  'What's that?' Jane pointed to a pin tacked to the northern shore of the island.

  'Kalashnikov. A cluster of cabins built by whalers. Survey teams use it as a stop-over. There might be a cache of food, if we're lucky.'

  'There's a town called Kalashnikov?'

  'A Hero of Socialist Labour. He got a patch of ice named after him.'

  'So we take the snowmobiles and travel up the coast?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Our route would pass within a couple of kilometres of that impact site,' said Jane. 'A person could walk inland and take a look.'

  'Depends on the weather, but yeah.'

  'This time I go, all right? If the boat goes out I want to be on it. I need to get off this damn rig.'

  Jane sipped coffee. Sian hurried into the canteen.

  'It's Rye. You better talk to her.'

  She handed Jane a radio.

  'Go ahead.'

  'We're at the bunker. We're heading back in the boat. I need you to boot-up Medical.'

  Jane flipped a wall switch. Strip-lights flickered.

  The medical bay was a wide, white room with an operating table at the centre.

  Sub-zero. Jane's breath fogged the air. She set convection heaters running.

  'Okay. What do you need?'

  'The resuscitation trolley. Plug it in. Get it charged.'

  'Done.'

  'An instrument pack from the wall cupboard. It's on a plastic tray, vacuum sealed in plastic.'

  'Got it.'

  'Bottom shelf. There's a blue nylon bag. It's a hypothermia bath.

  Inflate it. Don't fill it, though. I'll need to adjust water temperature myself.'

  Jane unrolled the rubber bath. It was shaped like a coffin. She recognised it from the survival skills training day Con Amalgam insisted she attend before getting shipped north.

  She released the valve of a little C02 cylinder. The bath inflated like a child's paddling pool.

  'Done.'

  'Go to the refrigerator. Get a bag of saline and a bag of Haemaccel. Unlock the drug store and fetch pethidine.'

  'Who's hurt?'

  'Simon, one of the Apex team. Big-time frostbite. Oedema. Possible septic shock.'

  'Shit.'

  'Meet us on the dock. He's fading fast. We've got to get him in a hypothermic bath and raise his core temperature or we are going to lose him.'

  Dealing

  Jane and Sian waited on the floodlit dock with a stretcher. Jane had binoculars.

  'Here they come.'

  The zodiac came in fast. Ghost killed the engine and threw Jane a rope. Simon lay on the aluminium floor of the boat. Jane helped drag him from the boat. They laid him on a stretcher, put it on a cargo trolley and wheeled it to the freight elevator.

  The stretcher buggy was parked at habitation level. Rye drove Simon to Medical. Jane and Sian jogged behind the little electric car as it hummed down dark corridors.

  They moved Simon on to the operating table.

  'Cut off his clothes,' said Rye. 'Get him under the
shower.'

  Jane and Sian hacked through Simon's clothes with trauma shears. His genitals were so shrivelled by cold he looked female. Nothing between his legs but a tuft of pubic hair.

  There was a bathroom at the back of the bay. They dragged Simon to the shower and stood him under a jet of hot water.

  Rye stripped out of her survival gear and filled the hypothermia bath, tested it to forty-six degrees.

  'All right. Let's get him immersed.'

  They laid Simon in the bath.

  'Keep his hands and feet out of the water.'

  She shone a penlight into his eyes.

  'Ideally I would like to test rectal temperature, but we'll spare him that indignity for now.'

  'His hand is fucked.'

  'We'll see how his condition develops as we restore circulation. Of course, that's when the pain will begin.'

  Jane jogged a kilometre circuit of C deck. She was joined by Sian. 'Spoken to Ghost?'

  'Briefly,' said Jane.

  'What did he say about that Apex guy? The one who didn't make it back.'

  'He refuses to talk about it.'

  They trotted down unheated corridors. Each puffing exhalation was a great plume of steam-breath. They both wore three tracksuits. The metal floor was slick with ice so they ran in snow- boots with thick rubber tread. Their route was lit by weak daylight shafting through the corridor windows.

  Jane ran fast and lithe. She had lost four kilos. Her clothes felt loose. Sian struggled to keep pace.

  Jane had been fat all her life. Her body had been nothing more than a sweating, aching encumbrance but now she felt an intimation of what it would be like to be supple and strong.

  'What's the deal with you and Punch?'

  'How do you mean?' asked Sian.

  'Both young, both bright. An obvious match.'

  'I always thought Nail and Ivan seemed like a happy couple. Pumping. Preening. Oiling each other down.'

  'Nice deflection.'

  They ran the kilometre circuit then ran it again.

  Sian returned to her room to shower.

  Jane walked past Medical on her way back to the accommodation block. Dr Rye was packing packets of drugs into a box. Jane felt obliged to offer help.

  'Happy pills,' said Rye. 'Seroxat. Triptafen. You've got to expect depression in a place like this. No daylight. Nowhere to go. There will be plenty of demand, now night is closing in.'

  'How is Simon?'

  Rye gestured to a side room.

  'Stable. Sleeping. Infection: that's my chief concern. This is a first aid station. Serious injuries are supposed to get a priority airlift. We don't have enough antibiotics for long-term treatment.'

  'Right.'

  'I probably shouldn't mention it, but what the hell. You might need to know. Nikki? That girl we pulled off the ice? She was pretty distraught about the man they left behind. She blames herself. It should have been me, blah, blah. I dosed her with Anafranil but it takes a few days to kick in. She'll need a shoulder, someone to coax her through the next few days.'

  'Okay.'

  'The crewmen are smoking weed and hoping for a ship, but once the sun has set for good the mood will quickly head downhill. There are black days ahead. Thank God we don't have guns on board.'

  Sian found Simon watching DVDs in his hospital room. Goodfellas. He was pale. His hands and feet were bandaged. Sian held a cup so he could sip from a straw.

  'Can you help me up a little?'

  Sian pressed the Elevate button to raise Simon's head.

  'Where's Nikki?' he asked.

  'Eating in the canteen. Eating and eating. Can I bring you any food?'

  'No thanks.'

  BBC News was still showing slow-motion footage of a fluttering Union flag and a list of refuge centres.

  'It's been that way for days,' said Sian. 'The refuge list doesn't update. I suppose the studio has been evacuated. We'll be watching that image until the satellite fails.'

  'Are there no other channels?'

  'North America is totally off air. All the Russian and Euro channels are long gone.'

  'Jesus.'

  'See that BBC logo in the corner? I like to look at it. It's comforting. A last little piece of home.'

  'I killed my best friend to get here,' said Simon. 'And I'm just as stuck as before.'

  'We've got heat, we've got light, we've got food for months. Look around you. This rig is one giant construction set. It's packed full of survival equipment. I promise you, one way or another, we will get you home. We'll get everyone home.'

  Rye changed Simon's dressings. She unwrapped his right hand. The smell of necrotic flesh made Sian want to retch.

  Sian sat on the edge of the bed. She wanted to distract Simon from the sight of his rotted hand.

  'So what's the first thing you will do when you get home?'

  'Fuck knows. Doesn't sound like there is much waiting for us. And what can I do? I'll probably never use a knife and fork again. I'll have to lap food from a bowl like a dog.'

  'You're exhausted, hungry and dehydrated. You get two days' self-pity, all right? That's your allocation. Wallow. Whine all you want. But after those forty-eight hours are up, you are officially a malingering twat.'

  'I need a shit.'

  'Is that why you haven't been eating? Worried about using the toilet?'

  Sian lowered the bed and helped Simon stand. He shuffled to the bathroom. Sian helped tug down his pyjama bottoms.

  'Call me when you are done.'

  Sian helped Simon wipe, then walked him back to bed. She found Rye checking the drug cupboard.

  'What are you giving him for pain?'

  'Codeine. He'll get a couple of cycles. After that, he has to tough it out.' Rye gestured to the pill packets and bottles. 'We don't have much of anything. Once his share is used up, he's on his own.'

  Jane knocked on Nikki's door.

  'Who is it?' Nikki sounded groggy. She was probably dozing on her bunk.

  'It's Reverend Blanc. Do you have a moment? I need your help.'

  Jane led Nikki to the observation bubble.

  'How have you been?' asked Jane, as they climbed the spiral stairs.

  'Standing by every heating vent I can find. Just can't seem to get warm.'

  Jane showed her the radio console.

  'We've been trying to hail any passing ship by short-wave. We man the radio round the clock. We were hoping you could pull a few shifts.'

  'What should I do?'

  'Sit here. Press to transmit, yeah? Kasker Rampart. That's the name of the platform. So you say something like: "Mayday, mayday. This is refinery platform Kasker Rampart requesting urgent assistance, over." Then you release the switch and listen for a reply.'

  'Okay.'

  'Do you like Monopoly? We've been holding a tournament.'

  Sian walked Simon to the shower. She set the water running, took Simon's dressing gown and helped him into the cubicle. She sat on the bed and waited for him to finish. 'How's Nikki?' he called.

  'Seems okay. They've got her helping out in the radio room.' 'Keep an eye on her. Make sure she's all right. She seems tough, but she's not. We left Alan to die. She may act casual, but on some level it will be eating her up.'

  'Jane is looking after her. Jane's good with people. She has an instinct.'

  'I'm done.'

  Sian wrapped Simon in a bath towel and led him from the shower.

  Jane took the elevator down to the docking platform. She found Punch in the boathouse. The boathouse was a steel cabin with a wide hole in the floor. The zodiac was suspended above the water by chains. The walls were racked with survival equipment.

  'What's this?' asked Jane, inspecting a big plastic pod.

  'A weather balloon. Don't mess with it.'

  'Maybe we should build a boat. A raft or something. Give everyone a job. For morale, if nothing else.'

  Punch had found a golf club. He putted scrunched paper into a mug.

  'Do you think Tiger Woods is
dead?' he asked.

  'He's probably sipping martinis on a private island somewhere. Times like this, the rich buy their way out of trouble.'

  'But imagine if we were the only people left. The last men on earth. I'd be the best golfer in the world right now. You'd be the only priest. And Ghost would be the only Sikh. Imagine that. A four-hundred-year religion terminating in a dope-head grease monkey.'

  'I thought you liked the bloke.'

  'I do. But think about it. All the people that made you feel worthless and small down the years. The bullies and bosses. All gone. It's exhilarating, if you think about it. Freedom from other people's expectations. We can finally start living for ourselves.'

  'We can't be the only survivors. There must be others like us. We just need to find each other.'

  Jane found a yellow Peli case on a shelf: a crush-proof, watertight plastic container about the size of a shoe box. She turned the box over in her hands.

  'Do you mind if I take this?' she asked.

  The crew ate dinner in the canteen. Mashed potato, a sausage, a spoonful of gravy.

  'Eat it slowly,' advised Punch. 'Make it last.'

  Rawlins lifted his plate and licked it clean of gravy. The crew copied his lead.

  Jane stood on a chair and called for attention. They looked up, wondering if she were about to say grace all over again.

  'Okay, folks. Here's the deal. We've got a bunch of helium weather balloons downstairs. A week from today I am going to launch one of the balloons with this box attached. The prevailing wind should carry it south to Europe. If any of you want to write a letter to someone back home, then drop it in the box. Million-to-one shot? Maybe. Even if the box lands in the sea, one day it will wash up and one day someone will find it. You may think it's a stupid idea, but do it anyway. Put it down on paper. Put a message in the bottle. The things you wished you'd said but didn't get a chance. I'm going to leave this box in the corner. It's a good opportunity to unburden yourselves. Make use of it.'