Outpost

by Adam Baker

  'There's a message from Ghost. Rawlins is hurt. Injured or something. They're on their way back.'

  They descended the leg of the refinery and stood on the ice. Jane scanned the horizon with binoculars. The zodiac was a black dot approaching fast.

  'Jeez,' said Punch. 'He's pushing it hard.'

  Ghost swerved the boat to a halt, kicking up spray. He killed the engine. Rawlins lay at the bottom of the zodiac. His right arm was wrapped in a foil insulation blanket. They dragged him from the boat and laid him on ice surrounding the refinery leg.

  'Don't touch him,' said Ghost. 'Don't touch his skin.'

  They hauled Rawlins across the ice to the deck of the platform lift. The lift was bolted to the south leg of the refinery. They laid him on the floor plates.

  'Where's Dr Rye?' asked Ghost.

  'Waiting at the top.'

  'Okay. Punch, you had better stay behind and secure the boat.'

  Ghost jabbed the Up button. The elevator jolted to life.

  Jane leaned over Rawlins. His face was hidden beneath a ski mask and goggles.

  'Is he conscious?' she asked.

  'He moves now and again. He's not talking.'

  'What's wrong with him?'

  'Easier if you see.'

  Rye met them at an airlock. She helped carry Rawlins inside and lay him on the stretcher buggy.

  Convulsions. Rye wriggled on nitrile gloves. She pulled off Rawlins's mask and goggles. His eyes rolled. His lips were blue.

  'No skin contact,' warned Ghost. 'No mouth-to-mouth, whatever you do.'

  Rye ripped open Rawlins's coat. Twenty chest compressions.

  'He's breathing. All right. Let's go.'

  The buggy's headbeam lit the way as she steered down dark corridors. Jane, Sian and Ghost jogged behind, keeping pace as best they could.

  Medical. Rye restored power. The white room lit up.

  They laid Rawlins on the examination table. Rye re-angled the light canopy above him.

  'There's a convection heater in my office,' said Rye. 'Get it going.'

  She put on a mouth mask and goggles. She wriggled on a pair of surgical gloves.

  'Okay. You folks better get in the office and stay there.'

  They sat in Rye's office and watched through an observation window.

  Rye took scissors and forceps from a drawer. She snipped through the foil blanket that sheathed Rawlins's arm and peeled it back. Blood dribbled on the floor.

  'Treat every drop of that shit like AIDS,' advised Ghost, via a wall-mounted intercom. 'Scrub it. Bleach it.'

  Rye scattered swabs on the floor to sop the blood.

  'And be careful with his arm,' said Ghost. 'Don't touch it, whatever you do.'

  Rawlins's hand had turned dark, skin mottled like a bad bruise.

  'Frostbite?' asked Jane.

  'No.'

  'Are you sure? Looks like Simon's hand when we pulled him off the ice.'

  'Look closer.'

  The flesh bristled with needle-fine splinters of metal.

  'My God.'

  Rye sliced away Rawlins's clothes with trauma shears. She plucked dog-tags from his neck.

  'O neg.'

  She wriggled on a double layer of gloves and canulated Rawlins's left hand. She took a bag of O neg from the fridge and set it to feed.

  'His heart rate is high,' said Rye. 'His breathing seems unimpaired. So what actually happened?'

  'We opened the capsule. Frank crawled inside. There was a body, an astronaut. Frank tried to take off his helmet. Next minute he was screaming and bleeding.'

  'An astronaut?'

  'Some kind of cosmonaut. He was dead. Way dead. Then he woke up. He grabbed Rawlins. They fought. I hauled Frank out of there and torched the whole thing.'

  'His fingers. That looks like a bite mark.'

  'Yeah. Frank said something about teeth, metal teeth. I don't know. Frank wasn't making a lot of sense. Like I said, I didn't investigate. I didn't climb inside. I hauled Frank out and threw a grenade.'

  Rye took tweezers and tugged at a metal spine.

  'These filaments seem to be anchored in bone.'

  'It's spreading. It started at his fingertips. Now it's reached his wrist.'

  Rawlins woke. He licked his lips.

  'How are you feeling, Frank?' asked Rye, leaning close.

  'Don't take my arm.'

  'You'll be okay,' she soothed. 'We'll fix you up.'

  'It tastes funny,' said Rawlins, and passed out.

  'Right,' said Rye. 'You three. Get your coats off and scrub up. I need you in here.'

  They lathered their hands and forearms in Bioguard scrub.

  Rye unlocked a cupboard. She took out a tray of surgical instruments and slit open the vacuum-sealed plastic. She unwrapped a surgical saw and laid it on the surgical trolley.

  'What do you have in mind?' asked Sian.

  'You're going to help me amputate his arm.'

  'Don't you have anything more high-tech than that?' asked Jane, pointing at the saw.

  'I've got an electric blade but I don't want to spray blood everywhere.'

  They gave Rawlins a shot of morphine and strapped him to the table. Rye intubated his throat. She wheeled a heart monitor to the table. She pasted electrodes to Rawlins's chest and set the machine beeping.

  'Watch the screen,' she told Sian. 'If that figure drops below thirty-five, yell.'

  She took saline from the refrigerator and hung it from the drip stand.

  'Keep an eye on the bags,' she told Jane. 'Let me know when he needs a refill.'

  She swabbed Rawlins's arm just below the elbow.

  'Ghost. Keep hold of his shoulders, okay? He could buck. Right. Everybody ready?'

  Rye sliced into Rawlins's arm with a scalpel and clamped his arteries. Yellow globules of subcutaneous fat glistened like butter.

  She sawed his arm. She worked through bone in short rasps like she was sawing through a table leg.

  'Think he will be okay?' asked Jane when they had finished.

  'I'll give him another shot when he wakes. After that, it's aspirin.'

  'So what about you, Doc? What if we need to fix you up?'

  'Anything happens, shoot me a spinal and I'll talk you through it.'

  Rawlins's face was pale and slack. Jane instinctively moved to wipe sweat from his forehead. 'No,' warned Ghost.

  Husky exhalations through an airway tube. Steady beep of the cardiograph.

  'Done that before?' asked Ghost. 'Cut off an arm?'

  'Snipped plenty of fingers,' said Rye. 'Standard oil-field crush injury.'

  'Reckon he'll make it?'

  'Normal circumstances I would expect him to recover from the amputation, as long as the wound doesn't become infected. This disease, though. Never seen anything like it.' Ghost thumbed through Rawlins's medical notes. 'Stress. Depression. Prostate trouble. Poor bastard. Should have cashed out of this game years ago.'

  'Put that down,' ordered Rye. 'That stuff is confidential.' They stuffed Rawlins's shredded clothes into a red body-waste sack. They bagged bloody swabs and dressings. They slopped bleach on the floor.

  Ghost picked up the sacks with gloved hands. He held them at arm's length.

  'Throw that shit over the side,' ordered Rye. She used forceps to pick up the severed arm. She dropped it into a plastic box and sealed the lid. She handed the box to Jane.

  'And get rid of that fucking thing, will you?'

  Jane called Punch on the intercom. She asked him to fetch a can of kerosene and meet her on the ice.

  They walked from beneath the shadow of the refinery and stood at the water's edge.

  'How is he?'

  'Out for the count,' said Jane. 'He might live. He might not.'

  'So who is in charge now?'

  'Fuck knows.'

  'This isn't a democracy. If we vote on every little fucking thing it will be a disaster.'

  'Yeah.'

  'Somebody better step up. If Nail and his compadres start cal
ling the shots we'll be dead within a week.'

  'Yeah.'

  'You actually cut off his arm?' asked Punch.

  Jane peeled the lid from the box.

  'Christ,' he said. 'How did it happen?'

  'We won't know for sure until he is awake and talking.'

  'Swear to God, I won't let that happen to me.'

  They put the box on the ice, doused it in kerosene and set it alight. It burned with a blue flame. The hand slowly clenched as it cooked.

  Medical.

  Rye checked on Rawlins. He lay on the examination table draped in a sheet. The stump of his arm was bandaged. Steady beep from a monitor.

  Rye examined a drop of blood beneath a microscope. Red platelets. Black, barbed organisms swarmed and replicated. Hard to see detail. She wished she had better magnification.

  Movement in the periphery of her vision. Maybe Rawlins stirred in his drugged sleep. Maybe she imagined it. She watched him for a while. She got spooked. She played music to feel less alone. Charlie Parker. Live at Storyville. CD fed into the player. Cool jazz echoed down empty corridors.

  Jane helped make dinner. Spaghetti greased with a crude pesto made from dried basil, garlic paste and a squirt of tomato puree. She carried her bowl to the table.

  'I can't stop thinking about it,' said Punch. 'I'd rather my mother was dead than walking round with that shit sprouting out of her skin.'

  'Don't. It'll drive you nuts.'

  'We should take the Skidoos and split for Alaska. Seriously. You, me, Sian. Ghost, if you want. Anyone can see you dig the guy. A few more weeks and the sea will be frozen. We'd have a shot. We'd have a straight run.'

  'What about everyone else?'

  'Fuck them. Sorry, but fuck them.'

  'We're not at that point yet. We've still got options.'

  'Then somebody better lay out the Big Plan. Look around you. Morale is down the toilet.'

  Rye's voice on the intercom: 'Jane. Punch. We need you in Medical right away.'

  The operating table was empty.

  'Where's he gone?' demanded Jane. 'He didn't leave a note,' said Rye. 'You left him alone?'

  'I need to eat now and again. And the occasional shit.' 'How long were you gone?' 'Fifteen, twenty minutes.'

  The drip stand lay on the floor. The cardiograph was smashed. Jane kicked at a scrap of surgical dressing with her boot. 'He tore the canula out of his arm,' she said.

  'He'll be losing blood.'

  'He had his arm chopped off two hours ago. How is he able to walk around?'

  'I've no idea.'

  Ghost arrived.

  'He's gone walkabout?' said Ghost. 'You're kidding me.'

  'We'd better find him quickly,' said Jane. 'It's minus twenty in those corridors. The cold will kill him in minutes.'

  C deck. Household stores. Sian scanned the shelves by flashlight. She loaded a trolley with toilet roll, liquid soap and paper towels.

  She pushed the trolley down unlit passageways, Maglite clenched between her teeth like a cigar. Movement in shadow up ahead. 'Hello?'

  She reached a junction. She shone her flashlight down a side tunnel. A figure. A glimpse of bare flesh.

  'Hello?'

  Sian stood in a doorway. A dark chamber. Stacked lengths of pipe.

  A naked man crouched in shadow. Rawlins. 'What's the deal, Frank?'

  She stepped closer. She saw the bloody, bandaged stump where an arm used to be. And she saw the face. One eye was jet black. The other eye looked at her in cold calculation. She felt herself appraised by a keen alien intelligence. She backed away and ran.

  They searched rooms and passageways near Medical. They found the airway tube. Rawlins had pulled it from his throat. It was lying on the deck plate. It was glazed with frozen saliva.

  'We better split up,' said Ghost. 'Cover more ground.'

  'Hold on a moment,' said Jane. 'This has to be the same shit we saw on TV, right? Drives you nuts like rabies. Maybe Frank is okay. But maybe not. We have to be prepared.'

  'What do you have in mind?' asked Punch.

  'I think you should go back to the accommodation block. Warn the others and barricade the door.'

  'What are you and Ghost going to do?'

  'Head to the island and fetch the shotguns.'

  The Hunt

  Ghost hauled open the bunker door. His flashlight lit shelves and boxes, and the snowmobiles shrouded in tarpaulin.

  'Okay. Better be quick.'

  Jane unboxed shotguns.

  'Give them to me.'

  Ghost checked the breech of each weapon and dry-fired to make sure they were safe. He zipped the guns and their cleaning kits into a holdall.

  'Get the shells.'

  Jane snatched boxes of 12-gauge shells from a shelf and stuffed them into her backpack.

  'There's a sell-by on these boxes. I didn't think ammunition expired.'

  'Let's get going.'

  Rawlins found he could see in the dark. Not clearly. Not well. But he could make out shapes.

  He stood naked at the centre of the dive room. He wondered how he got there. Self-awareness came and went. Sometimes he was Frank Rawlins. Sometimes he was something else.

  He lit a Tilley lamp so he could see better. Benches. Racks of diving equipment. The white, steel bubble of a hypobaric chamber.

  He opened a locker and examined his reflection in the door mirror. One eye was as black as onyx.

  Rawlins took a dive belt from a wall hook. He unsheathed the knife and used the tip to prise the eye from its socket. He did it left-handed. He sawed through the optic nerve. The eyeball plopped at his feet.

  He stared at his reflection. The empty socket wept blood. He took a scuba tank from a wall rack and pounded the mirror to glass-dust.

  Rawlins's office. A sign on the door:

  STRICTLY NO UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL

  Punch switched on the lights. It felt like trespass.

  'The desk drawer,' said Sian. 'That's where he keeps it.'

  Punch levered the latch with a screwdriver. He took the Taser from its case.

  'It feels like a toy. Should stop him dead, though.'

  'Then what?' said Sian. 'If he has this infection we can't lay a finger on him.'

  'Improvise a straitjacket. Tie him up in a sleeping bag or something. Lock him in a freight container. Quarantine, until we see what's what.'

  Sian examined the desk screen. A couple of clicks brought up a floor plan of the refinery.

  'He's on C deck, right? We can track him.'

  Punch leaned over her shoulder. The C deck schematic was speckled with red dots.

  'We dropped some of the blast doors when we powered down the rig. The doors show up on the status board. Keep watching. He might betray his location.'

  'Don't move from that chair, all right?' Punch gave Sian his radio. 'If you see movement, shout.'

  Punch lowered the blast door, sealing himself inside the accommodation module.

  He was armed with a pool cue and the Taser.

  He slid down the wall and sat on the corridor floor with the Taser cradled in his lap.

  'How's it going?' Sian's voice. Punch took out his radio.

  'Sentry duty.'

  'Can we lock the hatches? Can we stop him moving around?'

  'The blast doors seal tight in an emergency. Otherwise anyone can raise them. Only the airlocks have keypads. Protection against piracy.'

  'We have to assume he is infected.'

  'What else can we do? We have to treat him as hostile until we know better.'

  'I wish we could be sure. Severe blood loss. He's going to freeze.'

  'I know. I know.'

  A thud against the door. Punch jumped to his feet. 'Frank? Is that you?'

  Punch trained his Taser at the door. The hatch began to slide upward. He hit Close.

  He pressed the intercom.

  'Frank? Are you okay?'

  'I'm cold. Very cold.'

  'Are you infected? Your arm. Can you tell me? Did
it halt the infection?'

  'So cold.' Rawlins sounded weak, delirious.

  'You've got to tell us, Frank. We have to know.'

  'So tired.'

  'We can't let you in, Frank. Frank? Are you there?'

  He waited a full minute. He hit Open. The door slid back.

  Nothing beyond but an empty corridor.

  Punch called Sian.

  'Frank just tried to get in.'

  'Is he still there?'

  'He's gone.'

  'Wait. Someone just entered an airlock near Medical.'

  'Did he go outside?'

  'No. He just opened the interior door.'

  'Anyone heard from Jane and Ghost?'

  'No.'

  'We need those shotguns.'

  Rawlins ransacked the airlock. He struggled to pull up trousers. He shrugged on a coat. He stepped into boots.

  He searched the rig for cigarettes. He dragged himself down dark, frozen passageways. He slid along pipework for support. He hugged the stump of his right arm, sheathed in an empty sleeve, to his chest.

  Cigarettes were forbidden. Big red signs in each recreation area. 'No unauthorised sources of ignition.'

  When Rawlins took control of the rig five months ago he smuggled cigarettes aboard. Two a day for the duration of the tour. He used to sneak outside and light up. He knew most of the crew smoked weed but he didn't care. It kept the men occupied. It kept them sedated. But he was the installation manager and couldn't be seen to break the rules. He kept a pack of cigarettes and a Zippo hidden among fire equipment near an airlock. He couldn't remember which airlock. He couldn't remember much at all.

  He sat in the gymnasium for a while, one of the few rooms on the refinery with a large window. Weak daylight. It was noon, and the sun was barely above the horizon. Rows of cycles and treadmills glittered with ice. Centrefolds blurred by frost. He pulled up his sleeve and examined his bandaged stump. Metal spines protruded from the gauze. The skin surrounding his elbow had started to blacken.

  'So here we are,' he thought. 'My dying day.'

  Frank once saw a man clutch his chest and collapse while queuing in a bank. He guessed it was the same for most people. Walking round with a head full of humdrum until a terminal diagnosis or myocardial infarction struck out of the blue. Was it October? November? Hard to think straight. He was pretty sure it was Tuesday.