Outpost

by Adam Baker

  An impact. A metallic scrape against the side of the boat. A second impact. An iceberg? A whale?

  She flipped open the hatch. There were strange shapes in the water, clustered boulders like drifting chunks of ice. She switched on her flashlight and scanned the surface of the ocean. The sea was full of floating cars. White Nissan Navaras. An undulating vista of gloss metal reflecting the moonlight. Some of the utility vehicles were upside down. Water washed over galvanised chassis and alloy wheels. A cargo ship must have spilled its load. Freight containers washed from the deck, smashed open as they hit the sea. The cars held enough trapped air to keep themselves afloat.

  Each time the vehicles nudged the boat Nikki heard the shriek of abrading metal. She worried the repeated impact of the cars might rupture the hull. She spent an hour climbing back and forth along the length of the boat. Her boots slipped on slick metal. She strained to push cars away with her feet. She was tied to the mast by a short leash to make sure she could quickly get back on board if she fell into the sea.

  Once she was free of the car-slick she sat with her back to the mast and caught her breath.

  Survival.

  Once it was all stripped away, her job, personal loyalties, her name and history, what was left? Just the fact that she was alive and aware, adrift on a vast ocean.

  She tuned the radio.

  'Hello? Hello? Hailing all vessels. Can anyone hear me?'

  She heard a man's voice, a calm and measured murmur. She couldn't make out words. It was some kind of looped broadcast. It had faded in and out for days.

  She looked to the horizon. The azure tint of distant daylight was mottled with heavy cloud. A storm heading her way.

  Nikki stretched and composed herself, got ready to confront her next opponent like a boxer waiting for the round-one bell.

  The Damned

  Rye crossed the island, drawn by the lights of Hyperion. She wandered through the lower decks of the ship. The infection had spread down the entire right side of her body. Her flesh was blistered and scabrous. Metal filaments broke the skin of her right arm, her right leg and hip, and punctured her clothing. It didn't hurt. Her body was numb.

  She was still Elizabeth Rye. Her mind was clear. She yearned for madness. She desperately wished her consciousness would fog and dissolve.

  Rye had seen, during the dissections she performed aboard Rampart, how this strange parasite infiltrated the nervous system of its victims. She wondered why the same metallic strands had yet to invade her synapses, choking off memory and emotion. She wanted to be dumb and thoughtless. She expected her disintegrating body to pace the ship for weeks to come propelled by the strange organism, long after her own consciousness had vacated the shell. But it hadn't worked out that way. She was still present and aware.

  Most of the passengers had gravitated to the vast lobby. Rye drifted through empty restaurants, a vacant cinema, a children's play area with ball-pit and slide.

  She amused herself in the sports centre for a couple of hours. She played table tennis against a wall. Her mutated body retained good movement.

  She shot hoops. She powered up the golf simulator and thwacked balls down a digital fairway.

  She found a mini-nightclub. No music, but the glitter ball still revolved. She hopscotched across the dance floor. Each tile lit up as she stood on it.

  She wondered where the other passengers had gone.

  Rye sought out the medical bay. Maybe she could load a hypodermic with morphine and put herself to sleep like a sick dog. Mix it with bleach, oven cleaner. Press the plunger. Feel good. Press the plunger some more. Lie back and let corrosives melt her brain.

  A friend from medical school got a job on a cruise ship. He had an easy time. He ate, flirted and swam. All he had to do was listen for coded Tannoy announcements. 'Dr Jones to the white courtesy phone,' meant he should head to Medical. 'Dr Jones to the red courtesy phone,' meant he should hurry to Medical to deal with an emergency. He dreaded the message 'Dr Rose please report to the Neptune Bar,' because Rose was the code-word for a coronary. Most passengers were elderly. At least one heart attack per trip. Someone sprawled on a restaurant carpet turning blue. The ship's doctor would have to grab his resuscitation kit and haul ass.

  Rye followed signs to Medical. Arrows and a little red cross.

  Sjukhus

  The infirmary had been ransacked. Instruments scattered across the floor. Bloody bed sheets bunched on the examination table. Blood sprayed up the wall. It looked as if an army surgical unit had treated hundreds of battlefield casualties then cleared out. The doctor aboard Hyperion had obviously done heroic work in his attempts to treat infected passengers before he too succumbed or was torn apart.

  Rye felt hungry. She followed sombrero signs to the Tex Mex Grill. She wanted to crunch nachos.

  She climbed stairs and walked down a passageway. Her path was blocked by a watertight door, one of the heavy steel hatches that had immediately dropped like a portcullis when Hyperion ran aground and took on water.

  Rye put her ear to the hatch. She could hear faint music. 'Gimme Shelter'. Muffled voices. Men talking, laughing. The Rampart crew on the other side of the door. They must have taken over the Grill.

  Rye was overcome by loneliness. She leaned against the wall and wept.

  The casino. A plush, Monte Carlo gambling den. A couple of roulette wheels, a craps table and a bar.

  A showgirl lay dead and rotting on the floor. Sequins and pink ostrich plumes. A pulped mess where her head used to be.

  Rye stepped over the body and approached five men sitting round a blackjack table. They wore ripped and bloody dinner jackets. One man was so far gone he was virtually a pillar of dripping metal. He was fused rigid and would clearly never leave his chair again. The croupier was slumped like he had fallen asleep. His head had melted into the table. The other men retained movement in their arms. There were cards and chips scattered on the green baize. The least inhuman of the bunch, a passenger who still retained half a face, acted as dealer.

  'Ah,' he said. 'Fresh blood.'

  Rye took a seat at the table.

  'Ready to lose your money?' asked the dealer, shuffling his cards.

  'It's nice to hear another sane voice.'

  'This thing, this contagion, seems to strike people different ways, as you have evidently discovered. Some people die outright. Not sure why. One bite and they keel over. Must be like a peanut allergy. But sometimes, if you're unlucky, it takes your body but not your mind. You're not one of the passengers, are you? I don't think I've seen you before.'

  'I'm from an oil refinery near here.'

  'The ship ran aground?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Do you know what is happening out there in the world?'

  'No,' said Rye. 'Not a thing. You?'

  'Nothing. Just rumours. We circled for weeks trying to find a port. Then there was an outbreak. It must have been with us all along. An infected crew member perhaps, hiding the disease from his colleagues. Who knows? Who cares? Here we are, waiting for the end to come. The cowards. The ones too chicken to slit our throats or leap into the sea. Doomed to live.' The dealer shuffled cards. 'Have you ever played blackjack?' he asked.

  'It seems like a good time to learn.'

  Rye saw men and women suffer and die during her time on a cancer ward. Most accepted the end of their lives with stoic resignation. Youngsters calmly faced death even though they had yet to live. Joked as they were wheeled into the operating theatre, joked as they got shot full of chemotherapy or blasted with radiation.

  Rye knew she was a coward. She wanted to die, but it had to be quick and painless. She had seen scalpels scattered on the floor of the medical bay. She should have put a blade to her eye and punched it into her brain, but couldn't bring herself to do it. She wanted an easy exit. She wanted to slide into unbeing like she was drifting off to sleep.

  Rye searched the ship for the means to kill herself.

  She found shelves of barbecue equipment
in a kitchen cupboard. She pictured Hyperion chefs organising a spit roast for the passengers. Handing roast pork baguettes to rich clientele as they stood in anoraks watching whales break water in the distance.

  Rye toyed with the idea of releasing a propane valve then striking a match, but was too scared to go through with the plan. What if she didn't die? The fireball from a couple of tanks would quickly dissipate. She might sustain third-degree burns. Lie immobile in a delirium of pain. She knew, from her own experiments, that a person subject to advanced-stage infection was tough to kill. It might take her days to die.

  She found some extension cable but the cord was too thick to make a noose. She wished she had a gun. If she had a pistol she could sit at a window, press the barrel to her temple, then distract herself by studying the view. She could try to name the constellations and, as she did so, casually switch off the world like it was a TV show that no longer held her interest.

  A wasted life. Lousy doctor, lousy parent. Easy to blame the drugs, but her life was a downward spiral long before the first taste of codeine. A debilitating malaise that dogged her since childhood. Each day poisoned by a deep conviction that nothing was worthwhile. No matter where she went, or what she did, she could never quite bring herself to give a shit. But maybe there was something she could do. A final moment in which she could vindicate her life.

  She, of all the Rampart crew, could pass through the liner with impunity. If the shambling mutants saw Jane or Ghost they would seize them and tear them apart. Yet when Rye walked by they seemed unaware of her existence. Rye could wave a hand in front of their faces, click fingers, push them around. They didn't react.

  So maybe she should exploit her freedom to move around the ship and build a bomb. She had already found a cache of propane tanks. There must be reserves of diesel somewhere aboard. She still had a radio. She could warn the Rampart crew. Give them time to evacuate. Open the tanks, release the valves, flood the plant rooms with fuel then strike a match. There were a few Hyperion passengers out on the ice, but most were aboard the liner. She could incinerate them all. Fry the ship. Cleanse the island. And end her own life in an instant. An explosion of that magnitude would be instant extinction. The Rampart crew would watch from the rig. They would see the blast. They would appreciate the gesture. After all, Hyperion seemed beached for good. If it blew sky high, she would die a hero.

  Woozy logic. A little voice warning that she wasn't thinking straight. She was spiralling into fantasy. She would get everyone killed.

  Rye looked for the diesel tanks.

  She found a multilingual brochure. 'Hyperion - Queen of the Seas'. A fold-out floor plan. She headed for the Staff Only plant zones of the ship.

  She saw a man sliding along a corridor wall. He was shirtless. His back was a mass of spines. The eartips of a stethoscope hung from his trouser pocket.

  'Doc? Doctor? Can you hear me?'

  No response.

  'My name is Rye. I'm a doctor too. What's your name? Can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?'

  The man slowly turned to face her.

  'What's your name? Tell me your name.'

  'Walczak. My name is Walczak.'

  They sat in the stalls of the ship's cinema. A ripped screen framed by a proscenium arch.

  'For a while I thought we had it contained,' he said. 'We locked infected passengers and crewmen in the clinic. We had them quarantined. But people didn't want to hand over their relatives. They didn't want to see them locked up with the screamers we had strapped to the beds. So they hid them in their cabins. Sons and daughters. Husbands and wives. Gave them aspirin, brought them meals, hoped they would get better. That's how the virus spread. We formed a posse. A couple of officers, a few crewmen. We knocked on doors. Took people by force. Plenty of anger, plenty of kicking and screaming.

  'It was the same when it turned to war. Battles in the corridors, on the decks. Guys would confront a gang of infected people, all set to hack and burn, then realise their own wives and children were among the crowd. What would you do? Would you kill your children if it came down to it? I mean, do you have kids?'

  'Yeah,' said Rye. 'I have a son.'

  They walked to the Grand Lobby.

  'This is where it kicked off,' said Walczak. 'This is where the carnage truly began. Everyone gathered for a banquet. Trying to forget their troubles. About thirty infected passengers broke out of the infirmary and headed this way. Blood everywhere. Stampede. It was mayhem. That was the point we lost control.'

  Rye looked around. Upturned tables and chairs. Infected waitresses stumbled over broken crockery and flowers.

  'Could you do me a favour?' asked Walczak.

  'Sure,' said Rye.

  He picked up a heavy statuette that had fallen from a wall niche. A dancing nymph.

  'Kill me,' he said. 'Do it clean.'

  He sat at a cocktail piano. He played 'I Get a Kick Out of You'. Rye stood behind him.

  'You're pretty good,' said Rye.

  'Yeah. Always wished I'd gone professional'

  Rye killed him halfway through the third verse.

  She searched corridors surrounding the engine room. She opened every door marked with a red flame emblem. Paint. Lubricant. White spirit.

  She found the fuel tanks. A long gantry overlooked vats of diesel and lightweight marine oil. She tried to spin stopcocks but couldn't get them to turn.

  She descended steps to the tank hall floor. She hacked at the pipes with a wrench. A joint ruptured, a narrow copper coupling at the foot of a tank. Fuel glugged and splashed on to the deck plates. A slow leak, but if she returned in a couple of hours the floor would be awash with diesel.

  'Codeine.' The dealer dealt two cards. Queen five.

  Rye pushed the cards away. Fold.

  'So what did you do? Write phantom prescriptions?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Sweet. Must be great to be a doctor. Kid in a candy store.'

  'I lost a lot of years. I paid a heavy price.'

  'Yeah. Well. Don't be too hard on yourself,' said the dealer. He took a silver cigarette case from his pocket, placed a cigarette carefully between his deformed lips, and lit it with a click of his Dunhill lighter. 'There's that line by Larkin. "All they might have done had they been loved." Every one of us could have ruled the world if we'd got up early and done the right thing. But we limp around dragging our personal damage like a tourist schlepping a heavy suitcase through an airport. Blame your genes, your parents, your school. Just a long chain of cause and effect. Life was mapped out long before you were born.'

  'What is it about cards that makes people all priestly and sagacious?'

  'It's like communion. Dishing out wafers. Dishing out fate. That's the beauty of blackjack. Blind chance. A reminder that you're not in control. You just sit back and watch the numbers dance.'

  'You can pretend that you're not scared of dying. Personally, I'm terrified.'

  'Anything is better than this.'

  'Where's the fifth bloke?' Rye gestured to an empty seat. 'There were five of you. Now there are four.'

  'Casper. A retired dentist. A pleasant man. A divorce, looking for love. That's what he told me. Married thirty-five years. Wife took a bunch of cash and ran off with his brother. Didn't seem too bitter about it, though. We had a lot of time to talk it through, back in the days when he had a mouth.

  'He finally went native. It happened yesterday evening. I saw it in his eyes. The moment the lights went out. He was looking at me. One minute he was Casper, next minute he wasn't. He became one of them. Mindless. Blank. Lucky bastard. All of us round this table praying for the same thing. That blessed day when it will all be over. I never imagined it would come to this. I never imagined I would hate to be alive.'

  She heard a faint scuffing sound. The rasp of a chair nudged aside.

  'That's him,' said the dealer. 'Casper. He's over there. He's lying by the wall. He moves, now and again.'

  'What's he doing?'

  'Migrating. Wou
ld you like to watch? Everyone joins the flock sooner or later.'

  The dealer stood up. Half his face was rippled metal like melted candle wax. His cheek was smeared over his bow tie and lapel. The rest of him seemed untouched.

  'Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,' he said, addressing his fellow players. They were so far gone, so far mutated, they could barely turn their heads. Each face was a mask of blood and spines. Their eyes followed Rye and the dealer as they stood to leave. 'We'll be back in a few minutes.'

  Casper slowly crawled towards the door. His legs appeared useless and his right arm was fused to his body. He dug fingernails into the plush carpet and hauled himself, little by little, through double doors into a service corridor. He slithered on cold linoleum. He seemed unaware that Rye and the dealer kept pace.

  He slowly dragged himself along the corridor, hand slapping on the tiles. He reached a stairwell and began to squirm his way up the stairs.

  'Where's he heading?' asked Rye.

  'I'll show you.'

  They left Casper behind them and climbed three flights of stairs. They found themselves standing at the back of a crowd.

  Twenty or thirty passengers jostled in front of a locked door. They scratched and pawed at the metal.

  'This is where they are drawn,' said the dealer. 'The barricades. We'll join them, when our time comes.' He guided her closer to the door. 'Just stand for a moment. Close your eyes. Can you feel it? Can you feel the pull?'

  Rye closed her eyes. She felt it. A skin-prickle like heat. She turned her head, like she was turning her face to the sun.

  'Yes, I can feel it.'

  'Blood music. That's what I call it.'

  She shouldered her way through the crowd and faced the locked door. She stroked the metal.