Outpost

by Adam Baker

  'Do you think those things are still outside?' asked Punch.

  'I expect so.'

  Punch kicked the engineer.

  'I killed a man,' said Punch. 'That's who I am now. A guy who kills people.'

  'The world has changed. We better change with it.'

  A scuffle and a thud. Punch climbed the gantry steps and put his ear to the door.

  'What can you hear?' asked Ghost. 'Is someone outside?'

  Punch mimed hush.

  Three knocks.

  'What do you reckon?' asked Punch. 'Open the door?'

  Three more knocks.

  'Pass me the gun,' said Punch. 'I'm going to open the door.'

  Punch unlocked the hatch. He shouldered the shotgun and kicked the door open. Dr Rye stood with a bottle of Chivas Regal in her hand. 'Ready to go?' She lit a rag stuffed in the neck of the Chivas. She tossed the bottle at a gaggle of infected passengers massing at the end of the corridor. Burning booze splashed the walls and floor creating a barrier of flame. 'Let's not hang around.'

  They hurried through the ship. The passageways and stairwells listed at a nightmare angle.

  'Okay,' said Rye. 'We'll need to cut through a couple of public spaces. We'll need to do it quickly and quietly. Way too many of these fuckers to fight off.'

  They passed through the ship's library. Novels and magazines had fallen from the shelves when the ship ran aground. They kicked through mountains of paper.

  'This is where we cut through the main lobby,' explained Rye. 'Could be tricky.'

  They hurried along a balcony area overlooking the main lobby, the central communal area of the ship. Ghost stopped for a moment and looked over the balustrade.

  Hundreds of infected passengers milling and moaning. Chaos and stench. Rich vacationers mutated to monstrous parodies of themselves. They stumbled over upturned tables and chairs. They rode escalators. They rode glass scenic elevators. They crawled up and down the great sweep of the staircase on hands and knees. They slid on scattered leaflets from the information desk. They tripped on glittering fragments of fallen chandelier.

  'My God,' murmured Ghost.

  Rye tugged his sleeve. 'Keep going.'

  'How did you get here?' asked Ghost.

  'I paddled a lifeboat from the rig,' said Rye. 'We'll use the zodiac to get back.'

  'Did you find Jane?'

  'I thought she was with you.'

  Jane was hurled forward from the roof of the bridge at the moment of impact like a crash-test dummy propelled through a windscreen.

  Mid-air. Body clenched for impact. 'It will be slow hell,' said a remote corner of her mind removed from the action. 'You'll hit the deck, and lie there, and think you are okay even though your back is broken. Then pain will build and build until it blots out the world.'

  Her leg tangled in a decorative light-string hung at the prow. She dangled upside down for a moment, swung and spun, arms flailing, then the festoon snapped in a burst of sparks. She hit the deck, crunching bulb-glass beneath her. She got to her feet. Infected passengers would be on her any minute. She snatched up her shotgun and ran.

  The Rampart zodiac was suspended from a couple of lifeboat cranes. Jane lowered the zodiac. It hit the ice. She slid down the crane-rope. She unhitched the rope and dragged the boat across the ice to the water's edge.

  She had lost her radio. She huddled in her coat and waited to see if anyone else made it off Hyperion. Fifteen minutes later they approached across the snow. Ghost, Punch, Rye. 'I thought you must be dead,' Jane said. 'So what happened?'

  'There were hundreds of them,' she mumbled. 'It was like they were hibernating down there in the dark.'

  'Where's Ivan?' asked Ghost.

  'They tore him apart.'

  'Christ.'

  'Let's get off this island,' said Jane. 'I don't even want to look at that fucking ship.'

  They rode the zodiac to Rampart. They looked back.

  The liner was beached three kilometres away, lights still blazing. The prow of the ship had lifted from the water. The hull plates were ripped open.

  Nobody spoke.

  Rye patched up Sian's face. Wiped blood from her nose and lashed a splint across the split skin.

  'You'll be mouth-breathing for a while, but you should be okay.'

  She gave Sian a couple of aspirin.

  'Anyone else hurt?' asked Sian. 'Nail broke his arm.'

  'Damn.'

  'Fracture. No big deal.'

  Jane sipped soup in the canteen. She warmed her hands round the mug. The remaining crew watched from the other side of the room. 'What do they want?' asked Jane.

  'What do they want me to say?' 'I suppose they want to know if the ship still floats,' said Sian. Her nose was patched with tape. She sounded bunged up, like a heavy cold.

  'How the hell would I know? Tell them to get off their arses and look. Do I have to do every little fucking thing?'

  Jane locked herself in the toilet. She had filled her pockets with liquor miniatures during her brief exploration of Hyperion. She sat in the cubicle, balanced her flashlight on the toilet paper dispenser, and downed five shots of Jim Beam. She closed her eyes and waited for the rush.

  Jane lay on her bunk. Two more shots of bourbon. She was numb, thoughtless. She hoped it would last. There was a knock at the door.

  'Ghost wants to fetch some stuff from the ship,' said Punch. 'There are things we could use.'

  'Forget it. The place is a death trap.'

  'Quick in and out, like a bank raid. Want to tag along?'

  'I'm taking a holiday from the hero business.'

  'Hope you don't mind if I borrow your gun.' Punch took the shotgun and shells from the table.

  Jane rolled to face the wall.

  Ghost and Punch rode the zodiac back to the island. They had lashed a long aluminium ladder across the boat. The ladder spread either side of the boat like steel wings.

  Hyperion had run aground on the jagged rocks of the island's shore.

  They carried the ladder to the ship's prow. They climbed into the ship through a gash in the side of the hull. Steel plates had been ripped away exposing a cross-section of rooms and stairs.

  Ghost led Punch to a passageway near the bilge.

  'There,' he said, pointing at the ceiling. A thick rope of cable lashed to the ductwork. 'Exactly what we need. Single core, high voltage. Big, juicy length of it. Perfect.'

  He prised open a wall box with a screwdriver and threw an isolator switch.

  'Perfect? We find an entire floating city, and all we can salvage is a bit of cable?'

  'This is heat. This is light. This could get us through the winter. Remember: we're better off today than we were yesterday. Hold on to that thought.'

  Punch closed a hatch at one end of the corridor and knotted it shut with a length of fire hose. He stood guard at the other end of the corridor with a pickle jar Molotov in his hand.

  'Quick as you can,' he said. 'We don't want to attract a crowd.'

  Ghost dragged a table from an office. He stood on it and got to work. He used a wrench to unbolt a socket joint in the cable. He dragged the table to the other end of the corridor and repeated the procedure.

  A fat man in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt turned the corner. He wore a sombrero. He had a camera round his neck. His legs were a tumorous mess of flesh-flaps and metal.

  'We have our first customer,' said Punch. He took a Zippo from his pocket and lit the rag. The Molotov splashed burning kerosene across the corridor floor. The second Molotov smashed against the man's face and turned him to a pillar of flame. A guttural, inhuman howl. He collapsed and lay burning.

  'See that?' said Punch. 'He won't lie still. He's dead but the metal keeps on trucking.'

  He backed away from the burning man, repelled by the stench. He took another Molotov from his backpack.

  'More on their way,' he warned. 'How's it going, Gee?'

  'We're done.'

  Ghost coiled the cable and slung it over his
shoulder. Punch untied the fire hose and released the hatch. He allowed himself a backward glance. Monstrously deformed figures massing through flame and smoke. Punch threw his last Molotov and ran.

  The alcohol buzz was starting to wane. Jane resolved to ask Ghost for a big bag of weed. So much easier to extinguish all thought and sleepwalk through the day.

  She lay in the dark. The ceiling strip-light flickered to life then burned steadily. She shielded her eyes from the glare. Power had been restored.

  She opened the door. There were lights in the corridor, lights in every room. She heard cheering from the canteen.

  The crewmen stood beneath heating vents, faces turned upward, basking in a torrent of hot air like they were taking a shower. One of the men got the jukebox working. 'Sweet Home Alabama'. They would be toasting Ghost with fresh coffee when he returned from his work on C deck. Slapping his back, exchanging high fives. Jane didn't want to stick around and watch.

  The power was back. Nikki ran across the pump hall to the storeroom. She flicked a switch. Brilliant arc-lights.

  She circled the boat. It was her first chance to examine it in detail. The integrity of the welds. The tightness of the bolts. She kicked it. She slapped the hull.

  She looped the hoist-chain over the prow and stern, and pressed Up. The winch began to wind and the chain pulled taut. The boat creaked and slowly lifted from the floor.

  She hit a wall button. Warning beacons strobed yellow. The

  hatch in the floor beneath the boat split open like the bomb bay of a B52. Typhoon ice particles. The silver sails wafted and billowed.

  Nikki stood at the edge of the abyss and looked down into darkness and freezing wind. That was where she was headed. If she chose to sail home alone she would have to leave the light and warmth of the rig behind and immerse herself in perpetual night.

  Flutter of excitement. All she had to do was press Down.

  Jane sat on the edge of her bunk. Help someone, she told herself. When you are at your lowest ebb, feeling useless and ineffectual, reach out and help someone. Make yourself matter.

  She headed for the submarine hangar.

  Nail was lying on the deck. He was cushioned by his sleeping bag, luxuriating in a torrent of hot air from a wall-vent.

  He had broken his right arm. A snapped broom handle for a splint. Ripped T-shirt for a bandage.

  'Anything I can get you?' she asked. 'Do you want a drink? Something to eat?'

  Nail slowly turned his head. He looked at her a long while like he was trying to remember her name.

  'Jesus,' said Jane. 'Rye has you doped to the gills, doesn't she?'

  He smiled and closed his eyes. Then he jolted awake and tried to sit up.

  'Nikki,' he said.

  'You want me to get her?'

  'The lights are on.'

  'Light and heat. That's right.'

  'Power.'

  'Yeah, power.'

  'Nikki.'

  'I can look for her, if you like.'

  Nail tried to stand, but Jane gently pushed him back down.

  'I don't know what Rye has given you, kid, but maybe you should just lie back and enjoy the ride.'

  Ghost called a meeting in the canteen and laid out his plan. Nikki stood at the back of the room and listened.

  Hyperion was partially beached. Spring would come, the ice would thaw, and the ship would float free. So the situation had yet to change. Conserve fuel. Conserve food. Ride out winter.

  Ghost suggested the crew transfer from the refinery to Hyperion. Better accommodation. Easier to heat. All they had to do was disable the elevators and rebuild barricades to keep the rabid horde at bay. No reason it couldn't be done. The infected passengers were mindless, incapable of cunning or calculation. They could easily be suppressed.

  'Think of the food,' said Ghost. 'Think of the booze.' He avoided Jane's eye, mildly ashamed to be luring the men to Hyperion with the promise of limitless alcohol.

  Ghost took a vote. A fifty/fifty split. Arguments escalated towards fist fights. Half the guys said it was too dangerous to take a suite on the liner while ravening passengers massed the other side of the door. Half the guys said stateroom luxury was too good to miss.

  Insults flew. Push-and-shove. The discussion looked like it would last long into the night so Nikki sneaked out of a side door.

  She hurried to a lifeboat station. Red running-man signs all over the rig pointed the way. There were a cluster of rigid shell lifeboats at each corner of the refinery. Orange, fibre-glass cocoons the size of a bus. Room for thirty men. During the weekly fire drill crewmen were trained to strap themselves inside, seal the hatch, then pull a release handle. Explosive bolts would eject the lifeboat from a launch tube into the sea.

  Nikki climbed inside the raft. She and Nail had raided the lifeboats for equipment once before. She wanted stuff they left behind.

  She dragged a case from beneath a bench seat. A flip-latch lid. Emergency gear: salt tablets, a manual bilge pump and a compact desalinator. She bagged them and ran to the C deck storeroom. She threw them into the boat.

  She hurried to the food store. She upturned a wholesale box of dried noodles. Tins and cartons swept into the box. She ran to C deck and threw the box into the boat.

  She levered floor plates. Bags of clothes, charts and flares hidden beside the pipes. She threw the bags into the boat.

  She found clippers. She bent forward and shaved herself bald. Clumps of auburn hair fell to the deck.

  Last look around. She took a crumpled sheet of paper from her pocket. Her checklist. Quick inventory: good to go.

  She punched a green wall button with her fist. Trapdoors opened beneath the boat. A typhoon blast of freezing wind and ice particles.

  The boat hung on a chain-hoist. Nikki pressed Down and jumped aboard the boat as it descended into the dark.

  The boat touched down on the ice beneath the refinery. She unhooked the chains.

  A couple of wheeled pallets roped to the underside of the yacht. The boat weighed the same as a van, but the ice was slick as glass.

  Nikki buckled crampons to her boots and threw herself against the boat. Once the boat began to move it built momentum. She pushed the vessel, a step at a time, to the water's edge. She jumped aboard as brittle-crisp ice cracked beneath the weight of the boat and it settled into the sea. She pulled rope hand over hand and raised the sails.

  Metallic motor noise. A flashlight beam suddenly trained in her face from above. Jane descending in the platform elevator. Nikki recoiled from the dazzling glare like she'd been slapped.

  'Slinking away, is that the plan?' shouted Jane. The platform touched down.

  'I didn't want to make a fuss.'

  Nikki shielded her eyes and tried to squint beyond the blinding light. She tried to see if Jane were carrying a shotgun.

  'I like what you did with your hair,' said Jane. 'You look like a boiled egg.'

  Nikki didn't say anything. She waited to see what Jane would do.

  'Here's the deal. You can take the boat. You can take the food. You can take whatever maritime charts you've stolen. But you have to take a radio, as well. You owe us that much. We need to hear how far you get. We need to hear what is waiting beyond the horizon.'

  Nikki was hit on the chest by a big radio in a canvas bag. She instinctively caught the strap before the radio fell in the water.

  'So how about it?'

  'All right,' said Nikki. 'Call me any time you like. We'll chat, do lunch.'

  'I'm serious. You were dying out there on the ice, remember? You were dead meat. We brought you back. We saved your life. You owe us a few minutes of your time.'

  'Okay. Fuck it.'

  'It'll be lonely out there. Few days alone in the dark. You might be grateful of a voice.'

  The boat began to drift away from the ice.

  Twenty metres. Thirty metres. Nikki moving beyond Jane's reach.

  A hundred metres. Two hundred metres. Out of shotgun range.

 
Nikki was home free. Nail might commandeer the zodiac and try to chase her down, but he would struggle to find her. No running lamps. Too small for a radar fix.

  Nikki looked back. Rampart dwindled behind her, a receding constellation of room lights. A massive, skeletal silhouette blotting out the stars.

  Crackle as the craft bumped ice plates aside.

  She turned her back on the refinery and looked towards the southern horizon, the point where a fabulous dust of the Milky Way met the impenetrable blackness of the sea. A heart- fluttering mix of excitement and fear. She locked the tiller in position with bungee line. She fitted a thermal mask to her face and pulled up her hood. She hunkered down in the cockpit ready for the long haul.

  Nail lay in an opiate stupor. The world-obliterating white pain of his snapped ulna had been dulled to an ache by Demerol. He slipped in and out of consciousness for a couple of hours.

  He woke. The drugs had worn off. The pain in his arm made his eyes water, made his teeth gnash.

  He got to his feet and stumbled down cold corridors to the pump hall. He kicked the storeroom door wide. The floor hatch was open. The boat was gone.

  'Fucking bitch,' he yelled.

  Jane stood at the hatch controls. She pressed Close. The hydraulic rams retracted, pulling the floor hatch shut. It sealed with a heavy, metallic thud, cutting off wind noise.

  'I don't know why you are acting all surprised and betrayed,' said Jane. 'She was aching to fuck you over. Anyone could see it. Personally, I would have hidden the fuse for the hatch controls. Replaced it with a dud. Make sure she couldn't take an unauthorised joyride while I wasn't around. You know, deep down, on a fundamental level, you are pretty stupid.'

  'Fucking bitch,' murmured Nail.

  Jane joined Sian on the floodlit helipad.

  'Feeling a little under-appreciated?' asked Sian.

  'Ghost did a fine job with the power.'

  'It'll keep them happy for five minutes. Then it will dawn on them. They are still here. Still stuck. Still waiting for someone to get them home. They'll be knocking on your door soon enough.'