by Adam Baker
She looked out over the refinery. A crystal palace. White-on- white. Frosted steel. Cross-beams and scaffold towers dripping ice. Snow-dusted storage tanks. Crane jibs heavy with icicles. Every north-facing surface caked and glazed.
'Reckon Nail is lurking round here?' asked Jane.
'Keep a lookout for prints,' said Ghost. 'I doubt he could make it up the anchor cables, but he's desperate enough to try.' He lifted his boot and pointed at the sole. 'Zigzag tread, all right? Anything else is him.'
Ghost struggled to unscrew the cap of his hip flask with a gloved hand. He swigged.
'Back in a moment, all right?'
Ghost had spent the last hour thinking it through. This was their last chance of escape. If the anchor cables failed to detach they would be permanently marooned at the top of the world. In a few weeks the food and fuel would run out and they would be forced to choose between a knife-slash to the throat or a long walk in the snow. He pictured his body on a high gantry facing the sea. A grinning corpse cradling a blade. Maybe Jane's mummified cadaver would be beside him, holding his skeletal hand.
He walked to the corner of the rig. He took a fist of explosive from his pocket. He had kept a small lump of C4. A vague plan. If the anchor cables failed to detach, he could prepare a small charge and tape it beneath a table in the canteen. Cook a meal. Invite Jane and Sian to sit for dinner. Make it quick and clean. End it all mid-conversation.
He told himself not to be so stupid. He had spent so long facing down mortal terror he had made a fetish of death. He had been planning an elaborate demise instead of fighting to live. He added the nub of explosive to the main charge.
Jane fetched the initiators from the canteen. A black plastic case. Three initiators sitting snug in a foam bed. Each initiator was a pistol-grip with a red Fire button on top.
Jane tested batteries in a Maglite, to make sure they held a charge.
She slotted batteries into the butt of each grip.
Jane looked for Sian.
'I think she went outside,' said Ghost.
Airlock 52. A winking red corridor light. An alert that the exterior door had been left open.
Jane put on her coat and stepped outside. She saw Sian standing at the end of a walkway. She was leaning over a railing, looking down at the ice far below.
Weeks ago, when Jane was fat and hopeless, she had leaned over a similar section of railing and willed herself to jump into the sea. She wondered if Sian was, at that moment, thinking of flinging herself from the refinery. Sian leaned further forward.
'Hey,' said Jane, reaching for the only words that might cut through Sian's despair. 'Come on, girl. We need your help.'
They walked to the pump house. Ghost twisted wire round the terminals of each initiator.
'I taped up the windows,' he said. 'We should probably stand back from the glass. I'm not sure how big a bang this is going to be.'
They stood facing each other. 'Want to say a prayer?'
'No,' said Jane.
'Everybody ready?'
'Yeah.'
'Okay. Here we go. Three. Two. One.'
Countdown
Nikki pressed her ear to the bunker door. No wind noise.
She dug a crash helmet from a pile of snowmobile components heaped by the tunnel wall. She opened the bunker door. Two infected passengers stood with their backs to her, looking out to sea. She swung the helmet and smashed their skulls.
Nikki climbed crags. She crouched on high ground. She surveyed the refinery through binoculars. The fog had cleared. Rampart was lit by weak twilight, a dawn that would never break.
She adjusted focus.
'You see?' said the voice of Nikki's dead boyfriend. 'They've cut away the stairs and ladders. There is no way to get aboard.'
'I could climb the cables.'
'Too steep. Too smooth.'
'I could fetch rope. I could grapple a railing.'
'Too high. You would never manage the climb.'
'There has to be a way.'
She switched to infrared. The frozen steel superstructure of the refinery betrayed no heat signature except for Accommodation Module A. The module glowed weak orange. Someone had switched on the heating.
She scanned walkways and gantries. A red dot. Zoom in. A glowing stick figure, walking slow, looking down as if they were following a trail.
'Those bastards hold all the cards. They've got food, they've got heat and they've got guns.'
'They are my responsibility. That's why I came back. I have to save them. I have to save them from themselves.'
Nikki was halfway back to the bunker when she heard the explosion. A deep, rumbling roar like thunder. She ran to the shoreline. Two of the refinery's great anchor cables were gone. The ice beneath the rig was shattered.
Nikki uncapped her binoculars. They were still set for infrared. The corner coupling burned crimson. Reset. Focus, re-focus. Mushroom clouds of smoke hanging over each coupling.
The third cable hung slack. A moment later the lock-pin broke loose of the coupling, and the cable dropped. It smashed through the ice crust and threw up a geyser of seawater.
'Clever said Alan. 'Can you see what they are trying to do?'
'My God,' said Nikki. 'They want to float the rig free.'
'Yes.'
'Will it work?'
'I doubt it.'
'They keep trying. Despite it all, they never give up.'
'They must never leave the island. You understand that, yes? They belong here with us.'
Ghost replaced the platform lift fuse.
He and Jane rode the platform lift down to the ice. Jane walked out on to the polar crust. She circled the great wall of steel.
'Why the fuck is this thing not moving?'
'The rig is ice-locked,' said Ghost. 'We're stuck until the Arctic shelf melts and breaks up. We won't see our first full sunrise for three weeks. Then it will take another month or two for the ice to thaw and break up. Our food won't last that long.'
'How about thermite grenades? Any left? Any at all? They'd melt the ice in seconds.' 'No.'
'Explosives? Demolition charges from the bunker? Is there anything left? Anything at all?'
'No. Nothing.'
'Fuck. This thing weighs a million tonnes. Imagine the inertia. The momentum it would build up. If we could get it to shift a single centimetre it would keep going. It would be unstoppable. A juggernaut. It would plough through everything in its path.'
Jane sat on the platform lift. She pulled off a gauntlet and drew a smiley face on the frosted deck plate with her finger. 'If only there was some way we could give it a push.' Ghost looked out across the ice to the white horizon. 'Got it,' he yelled. 'Come on.'
He ran to the lift and pressed Up. The platform juddered to life. It began to ascend.
'Do you have the combination to Rawlins's safe?' he asked. 'I found it in his address book.'
'Go to his office. Look in the safe. There should be a couple of red keys in a plastic box, okay? Bring them to the pump house.'
Jane found the pump house ankle-deep in scrunched paper. Ghost sat at a desk rifling through box files and binders. He leafed through sheet after sheet and threw them aside.
Jane picked up a fistful of paper. System flow charts. Input/output schematics. Reciprocating compressors. Heavy octane filtration.
'What are you looking for?'
'I did a little work in here a few months back. A guy showed me something. Trying to find the damn thing.'
'What does it look like?'
'It's a red sheet of paper.'
Jane leafed through files.
'Yeah, baby,' said Ghost, triumphantly waving a red laminated checklist.
She glimpsed DANGER in big letters at the top of the page.
'What the hell is that?'
Ghost didn't reply. He spun his chair across the room to the console, kicking box files aside.
The pump room windows had shattered when the demolitions charges blew. Ghost wiped snow
and broken glass from the screens and consoles. He cranked isolator breakers to On. The pump consoles lit up and winked expectant green.
He jabbed the main touch-screen plan of the refinery and set each system flag from Off to amber Standby.
'Okay,' he said. 'The treaters are back on-line. The super-heaters. The draw-pumps. Did you find the box?'
'Yeah.'
'There should be two keys inside.'
'Yeah.'
'And an envelope.'
Jane read out authorisation codes. Ghost typed. The screen in front of him flashed red.
The final code was Rawlins's employee number. Only he had sufficient high-level access to stop or re-start the refining process.
Jane read his employee number from an old payslip.
FAILSAFE WARNING
DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE?
YES/NO
Ghost slotted keys into the main console.
'We need to turn both keys at the same time.'
'Are we launching a missile?' asked Jane.
'Remember Chernobyl? A couple of bored technicians nearly incinerated Europe. This is the biggest Merox treater in the world, give or take. Press the wrong button and we could pollute the entire western hemisphere.'
They turned the keys.
FULL SYSTEM PURGE IN PROGRESS
The screen began a ten-minute countdown.
'Why the countdown?' asked Jane.
'Because we are asking the refinery to do something epically stupid and it wants us to reconsider.'
Punch woke. He struggled to open his eyes. A cut in his forehead. Lashes glued shut by clotted blood.
Punch was bound hand and foot. His arms were tied behind his back by nylon cord. The cord cut his wrists like wire. He twisted his hands to restore circulation.
He lay on the floor of a bare room. The strip-light flickered. The walls were concrete. The ceiling was concrete. The floor was cold, green tiles. He guessed he was in the bunker.
He tried to roll. He tried to wriggle his hands free. He felt blood trickle into his palms.
The door opened. Small snowboots. Blue Ventile trousers. He lashed out with his legs. Someone kicked him in the face. He spat blood. He looked up. Nikki stood over him. She crouched and checked his cuffs.
'Where am I?'
'Where do you think you are?' asked Nikki, calm and pleasant.
'What the fuck is going on? Are you going to let me go, or what?'
'An exchange,' said Nikki. 'I'm going to trade you for food and fuel.'
'Food for what? Where are you heading?'
'I wouldn't worry too much about that.'
'Where's your boyfriend? Where's Nail?'
'He's around.'
'Cut me loose.'
'Not yet.'
'Go fuck yourself, Nikki.'
'You want to get out of here, don't you?'
'You're lying. Food and fuel. Bullshit. I don't know what you are planning, but it's not going to work.'
'Jane will need proof of life. Tell me something only Sian would know.'
'Help me up.'
'No.'
'Come on. I need a shit.'
'So shit.'
'I'm bleeding.'
'So bleed.'
'Go fuck yourself, Nikki. Seriously.'
Nikki left. The heavy door slammed. A key turned in a lock. Footsteps diminished down a passageway.
Punch squirmed across the floor to the wall. He tried to stand. Maybe he could ambush Nikki next time she walked through the door. Knock her out with a vicious headbutt. Get her on the floor and kneel on her throat. She would almost certainly have a knife in her pocket. He could free himself, and find his way back to Rampart.
He lost balance. He toppled to the floor. He hit his head and shoulder. He lay and stared at the wall. He felt hopeless and defeated.
Nikki returned an hour later. She crouched beside him. Punch didn't look up.
Proof of life.
'My favourite comic book character is John Constantine. When I was young I bought a trench-coat and smoked soft-pack Marlboros just so I could be like him.'
Nikki patted him on the shoulder. He heard the door close and a key turn in the lock.
Jane knocked on the door of Sian's room.
'Sian? Hello? Anyone home?'
No reply. Jane tried the door. It was unlocked. The room was dark, dimly lit by light spilling from the corridor. Sian was curled on her bunk staring at the wall. She was hugging her pillow.
'Sorry to intrude,' said Jane. 'Ghost said we should both come and see the fireworks.'
'What fireworks?'
Jane shrugged. 'Wouldn't say. He's acting all mysterious. Seems pretty excited though. May as well humour the man.'
Sian wearily sat up. She switched on her lamp and winced against the sudden glare. She laced her boots.
Jane wanted to make conversation. No point asking: Are you feeling all right? Are you doing okay? The best she could offer was companionship, small talk.
'We've still got a carton of Hyperion egg concentrate. Want a shitty omelette later?'
'I just want to be quiet for a while, Jane. I don't want much at all.'
Jane knew a little bit about loss. Not much. She hadn't wept at a graveside. But she had a boyfriend at university. Mark. He dumped her for a thinner girl. Dumped her by text. She had to watch them arm-in-arm round campus. Those first few days of heartbreak were hell. Jane walked around with a head full of black. Felt like she was drowning. She stood in the supermarket queue and tried to act casual, tried not to sob and scream. Friends told her the grief would slowly ebb. She would think about him a little less each day. But the knowledge that one day she would leaf through Mark's letters and feel nothing doubled her loss.
'We should head to the canteen later,' said Jane. 'I'll beat you at Monopoly.'
'I'll skip it.'
'No. You're going to play Monopoly. Then you are going to watch me cook an omelette, and then you'll do the washing up, all right? You've got to keep on living.'
Ghost led them to C deck. He lifted a floor hatch.
SAFETY HARNESS TO BE WORN AT ALL TIMES
Blast of winds and ice particles.
They climbed down a ladder and found themselves standing on an inspection walkway slung beneath the rig. Miles of pipes and girders above their heads. Mesh beneath their feet, and a two-hundred-metre drop on to the ice.
Ghost checked his watch.
'Here it comes. Any second now.'
A shudder ran through the refinery, shaking loose icicles and slabs of snow. The pipes above their heads creaked and sang.
'The storage tanks are dry,' he explained. 'But there is plenty of octane-grade distillate in the pipework. I've reversed the injection pumps. The whole system is set to flush itself out.'
Liquid poured from a massive pipe mouth hung beneath the belly of the rig. The retracted seabed umbilicus. It looked like Rampart was taking a piss. A torrent of part-refined fuel. First a spattering stream, then a gush. Thousands of gallons of semi- purified petroleum poured in a thin cascade and splashed across the polar crust.
'Smell that?' said Ghost. 'Pure rocket fuel.' He took a flare pistol from his pocket and slotted a shell into the breech. 'This is going to be good.'
Nikki stood at the shoreline and watched the ocean burn. Flames danced spectral blue. The island was bathed in lavender light. The sea boiled with a gentle hiss, like a long exhalation.
She glimpsed the towers and girders of Rampart above great licks of fire. Melted ice fell from the superstructure in drips and slabs.
The refinery looked like Satan's citadel, a jagged fortress at the centre of hell.
Nikki dropped to her knees. She watched in awe. A giddy moment of heightened awareness. She felt like an astronaut fired at light-speed out of the solar system into uncharted space. Each day brought strange and wonderful vistas, stardust and nebulas, and took her a million miles further from home.
The fire quickly died down and the refinery was lost
behind a wall of steam.
Nikki brushed away frozen tears with a gloved hand. She slowly climbed to her feet. She took out her radio.
'Rampart? Rampart, do you copy, over?'
Ghost opened the airlock door. He and Jane quickly pulled on thermal masks as the chamber filled with steam and smoke. They walked out on to the platform lift wreathed in fumes and vapour. They rode the elevator down to the ice.
The polar crust had melted and re-frozen. Their boots splashed in puddles of steaming water.
They looked up and inspected acres of smouldering crossbeams and pipes.
'Looks like the underside of the rig got pretty cooked,' said Ghost.
Petrified drips of steel hung from girders and ran down the blackened legs of the refinery like it was sweating metal.
'How thick is this fucking ice?' asked Jane, grinding her heel into the rippled surface. 'A mile deep? We're at the very edge of the Arctic Circle, the very edge of the polar field.' She stamped. 'This stuff is fresh. It should be wafer thin.'
'Most of the heat went up. It didn't penetrate.'
'I can't take this. Hope dashed every five minutes. It's killing me.'
They heard a metallic creak. They looked up.
'Cooling metal?' speculated Ghost.
'No. Something else.'
A low, mournful moan. A sudden tortured screech. A juddering rumble as the superstructure of the refinery began to flex. It sounded like whale song. A chorus of booms, whistles and shrieks.
'Holy shit,' murmured Jane. 'It's actually happening.'
The ice between their feet split. It sounded like gunfire. Seawater bubbled over their boots.
They ran from a fast-spreading web of cracks and fissures. Puffs of ice-dust. Frothing water. They struggled to keep their balance as they sprinted across a tilting, slow-shattering crust.
They threw themselves on to the platform lift. The ice around them had broken into plates. The plates began to buckle and grind.
Tremors ran through the refinery. They gripped the platform railing for support.