Outpost H311

by Townsend, Sara Jayne

  He grabbed a torch from the supply kit and turned it on to navigate the corridor, holding it awkwardly in one hand as he climbed the ladder up to the surface, thick gloves making it difficult to grip the rungs.

  He pushed open the trap door, immediately assaulted by a cold blast of air. It was snowing again outside, thick icy flakes swirling against the trap door as Pete struggled to climb out.

  Shielding his face against the biting wind, Pete shone the torch around, trying to identify the way to the generator. He could see nothing beyond the swirling snow, hear nothing apart from the howling wind. The torch lit up the snowflakes but did not penetrate the darkness shrouding the island.

  It was even difficult to identify direction in the blizzard. He took a moment to put the hatch back over the tunnel opening, to keep out the snow and preserve what little heat there was in the base, and then he started moving slowly, in what he hoped was a north-easterly direction.

  The howling wind blew against him, making each step a struggle. It stung his face like needle points. He kept his head down, the torch pointing down at the ground, illuminating the thick snow before he took each step.

  Perhaps it had been a foolish idea to come up here alone, but someone had to fix the generator. He needed to focus on the task. Get the generator fixed and get back into the warmth as quickly as possible.

  The generator came into view, a dark blocky outline in the dark behind the swirling snow. Pete tromped towards it, the snow seeming to get deeper by the minute. It already came halfway up his shins; if it kept on falling at this rate, it would soon be knee height. With each step, he had to pull his foot up out of the snow. Progress was slow.

  He moved up close to the generator and shone his torch around every part of it, trying to identify the reason it wasn’t working. He soon found a wire hanging loose, detached from the connection port.

  If that was the only problem, it was an easy fix. Keeping the torch steady on the loose connection, Pete picked up the wire and plugged it firmly back into place. The generator emitted an alarming clanking sound but then settled into a reassuring hum.

  He continued his inspection of the generator, just to make sure there were no other problems, but he could find nothing else out of place. Hopefully that was it.

  He straightened up and turned around, ready to head back to the relative warmth of the base. A nice cup of tea would hit the spot right about now.

  A shadow fell across his line of sight. He frowned, trying to identify what it was in his path. It didn’t look like the right shape for a zombie; this was a creature moving on four legs.

  A snarl came out of the blizzard. Pete dropped the torch and struggled to pull the hand gun out of his belt, his fingers cold and stiff and encumbered by the thick gloves.

  The creature leapt, landing on Pete and knocking him to the ground. It was an enormous wolf, easily as tall as a man. It had a thick mane of silver-white fur, glowing red eyes and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.

  Pete’s last thought was of his daughters, and a regret he would never see them grown up, never meet his future grandchildren, before the wolf ripped out his throat. Before long all that was left of Pete were hunks of raw meat, scattered entrails and body parts strewn in the snow, stained crimson as the blizzard raged on.

  CHAPTER 39

  Pete had barely gone out of the hatch when Allison went back to her bunk to put on a few more layers – her thick coat, a scarf, gloves, hat. Then she went back to the kitchen and lit the gas hob underneath the kettle. After she made the tea, she huddled over the pot-bellied stove, trying to extract as much warmth from it as possible.

  The base was silent. It was eerie with nobody else around. Especially knowing that not far away, there were zombies trapped behind concrete walls. She couldn’t hear them, but just knowing they were there was enough. She kept convincing herself she was hearing noises – groans and clatters. And then chastising herself because it had to be her imagination.

  When the lights flickered back on, she started, and then sighed in relief. Pete must have fixed the generator. It would soon warm up again, and he would be back, and then maybe she wouldn’t be so spooked.

  She rinsed out the dregs of the tea with the last of the water from the kettle, then filled it up again and put it back on the ring. How many cups of tea had she drunk in the last hour or so while she’d been on watch? Three? Four? Back at home she’d been disciplined about caffeine intake. A latte in the morning on the way to work. A cup of tea mid-morning, and after that it was strictly caffeine- and sugar-free drinks all the way. Herbal teas in winter. Maybe a cup of caffeine-free English Breakfast tea with a drop of milk if she felt in need of a mid-afternoon pick-me-up at work, from the stash she kept in her desk drawer. In summer she drank mostly bottles of water with a splash of fruit juice. The kind with no calories and no additives.

  It all seemed so bizarre to think back on it now. That she was obsessed with healthy eating, healthy drinking, healthy living. She had gone to the gym three times a week, took weekly yoga and Pilates classes, and got off the tube two stops early so she could walk the rest of the way to work and get in her 10,000 steps for the day. She used the stairs instead of the lift, and walked up escalators on the underground. She cut back on red meat and carbohydrates and made sure she got her five fruits and veg a day.

  It all seemed so trivial, so pointless, now that she was stuck here in a frozen wasteland, thousands of miles from civilisation and the main concern was eating enough to stay alive and staying warm, rather than fretting about how healthy the food was.

  The base had warmed up nicely. She peeled off her hat, scarf and gloves and took off her outdoor jacket, piling everything up on one of the chairs. She realised with a start she’d finished her latest cup of tea. She couldn’t possibly drink any more, surely – she’d be too wired, and she had to go back to sleep again for a couple of hours when her watch rota finished. How long did she have to go, anyway? She looked at her watch, surprised to realise that her two hours were nearly up – only fifteen minutes to go.

  But where was Pete? It had been a good half an hour since the generator came back on. Why wasn’t he back yet? A growing feeling of dread began to gnaw away at Allison’s stomach. Putting her empty cup down, she stood up and headed for the corridor where the trap door was, where Pete had left the base.

  Everything was quiet in the corridor. Faint snores floated out from the bunk, where the others were sleeping. Allison reached the end of the corridor and shined her torch up the ladder. The hatch covering the opening was closed and secure. There was no sign of Pete.

  For a moment, indecision gripped Allison. Should she go out to look for him? Perhaps that wasn’t wise. Maybe there was something out there, and she shouldn’t face it alone. Besides, everyone else was sleeping and she shouldn’t leave the base unattended.

  But down here alone, what could she do? If there was trouble outside, they all needed to know about it.

  Eventually she went to awaken Ellen, who was next up for watch rota.

  Ellen was sleeping soundly, lying on her back in her sleeping bag with her mouth open, snoring softly. Allison shook her awake and called her name.

  Ellen stirred and opened her eyes, blinking up at Allison with a puzzled look on her face. “Is it time for watch already?”

  “A few minutes early, I’m afraid, but there’s a problem.”

  Ellen sat up, wrestling with the zip of her sleeping bag. “What’s the problem?”

  “The generator broke down.”

  Ellen groaned. “Oh, great. Our only source of heat.”

  “Pete went out to fix it. It came back on again, so he seems to have done it, but he never came back.”

  Ellen frowned, reaching for her boots at the end of the bunk. “What do you mean, he never came back? How long ago was this?”

  Allison looked at her watch. “It’s been nearly an hour since he left.”

  “What? And you’re just telling me this now? Why didn’t you start w
aking people up earlier?”

  “I didn’t hear anything and I was kind of lost in thought. I didn’t realise how much time had gone by.”

  Ellen hurriedly pulled her boots on and dodged past Allison to get out into the corridor. She looked down towards the ladder to the surface. “Did he go that way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you been out to check?”

  “Well no,” Allison said, a little defensively. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to go out on my own. You know. Just in case something’s out there.”

  Ellen looked at Allison. “If there is something out there, we might need to fight it. We need to wake up the others.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Jake and Daniel went outside together to see if they could find Pete. By the time they returned, grim-faced, everyone was awake. They were all huddled around the pot-bellied stove in the kitchen, where Allison was doling out mugs of tea.

  “Pete’s dead,” Jake said. “We found him out by the generator. Looks like he managed to fix it, but something got him before he could come back.”

  “Was he dead dead? Or, you know. One of those things.” Allison handed a mug of tea to Jake.

  Jake accepted the mug. “He’s not coming back. He’d been completely ripped apart. It wasn’t a zombie that got him. It looked more like an animal attack.”

  “But more vicious than anything I’ve ever seen,” Daniel said. “Really, there wasn’t much left.”

  “Could it have been wolves?” Ellen said. “We heard wolves.”

  “So it’s not enough to worry about that there’s an army of zombies in here, with only a chunk of concrete between them and us,” Nathan said. “There’s a pack of killer wolves out there, as well.”

  “We don’t know what else is out there,” Jake said. “But it’s clear that it’s not just the undead Nazis we have to worry about.”

  “So what do we do now?” Allison said.

  Jake drained his mug and set it onto one of the worktops. “The sooner we can get that plane working, the sooner we can get out of here. Ellen and I will head out to salvage the wreck.”

  “What are the rest of us supposed to do while you’re gone?” Nathan demanded. “We’re sitting ducks, waiting here.”

  “Stay in the base,” Jake said. “We’ll be gone no more than twenty-four hours.”

  “A lot can happen in twenty-four hours. What if those Nazi buggers behind the concrete break out?”

  “Keep the weapons with you,” Jake said. “That plane’s not going anywhere without aviation fluid, and the only source of getting some is the wrecked plane. While we’re gone you could collect up barrels of kerosene and oil. We’ll need that too, and there’s some in the storage bunker on the surface.”

  “The sooner we set off, the sooner we get out of here,” Ellen said. “I’m ready to go.”

  Ellen and Jake packed backpacks each with essentials for the trip – food and water, including energy bars, spare socks, torches and batteries, a compass, ammunition. They each carried one pistol and a knife in their belt, and a spare pistol in the back pack. Jake also had the sub-machine gun.

  As they were in the corridor preparing to make the climb up the ladder and into the outdoors, Daniel appeared with a very large weapon slung over his shoulder. “I think you should take this.”

  “A grenade launcher?” Jake frowned. “We’ve got a lot of terrain to cover. That’s a bulky weapon to be carrying around.”

  “And you know what you’re going to be dealing with out there, do you?”

  “We took the zombies out easily enough with the revolvers and machine gun,” Jake said. “Just as long as it’s a head shot they go down.”

  “What took Pete out wasn’t a zombie,” Daniel said. “It ripped him apart.”

  “So what do you think is out there?” Ellen asked.

  “Don’t you remember our earlier conversation about what they were summoning?” Daniel said. “Loki. And his army of Frost Giants.”

  “You really think we’re going to have to deal with a Nordic deity?” Jake asked.

  “In the legends, Loki also commands a wolf,” Daniel said. “Fenris.”

  “You think we’re dealing with a supernatural wolf?”

  I don’t know what you’ll be dealing with. But whatever it is, it’s big. Take the grenade launcher.”

  Jake sighed and reached for the weapon.

  A few minutes later, Jake and Ellen reached the surface and prepared to start walking. Jake had the grenade launcher strapped to his back, and a bag of extra grenades secured to his belt pouch.

  The blizzard had died down, but the snow that had fallen had obliterated their earlier trail, and the terrain was smooth and white. The perpetual twilight made it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. Jake checked the compass and pointed ahead. “We need to head due south. That way.”

  “Lead the way, then,” Ellen said.

  They started walking, and for a while neither of them spoke. Jake took the lead, striding easily through the snow. Ellen followed a few feet behind, having to walk slightly faster than Jake to keep up with him. The grenade launcher, attached to his backpack, wobbled from side to side as he strode on. Ellen found her gaze fixed on the way his buttocks moved beneath his snow pants and felt her face getting warm. She tore her gaze away and moved a little faster, to fall in step next to Jake.

  “You really think we’ve got more to contend with than just the zombies?” she said eventually. “Is Daniel right about what they were summoning?”

  “You mean did the Nazis summon a Nordic demi-god?” Jake snorted. “Well, I would say it was all rubbish. But a week ago I dismissed zombies as fiction as well, and here we are having to fight them. So who knows?”

  “Do you remember the churned-up snow outside the hut when we went to take a look at it?”

  “Now we know it was the zombies wandering about,” Jake said.

  “But was it, though? All the zombies were inside the base. What we’ve seen suggested some of the Nazis were trying to get out when their colleagues started turning into zombies. We’ve found none of them outside.”

  Jake looked at her. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m saying maybe Daniel’s got a point.”

  “You think there are fucking Frost Giants wandering about out here?”

  “I don’t know what they are. But I think there’s something other than zombies out here,” Ellen said.

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.” Jake quickened his pace.

  “Neither can I, but you said yourself we’ve been dealing with zombies despite all of us assuming they were fictional monsters. Who knows what else is out there?”

  “I suggest you save your energy for walking, not talking,” Jake snapped. “We get to the plane as quickly as we can, we get the fluids we need and we get back to base. The sooner we get what we need, the sooner we can get out of here.”

  * * * *

  Minutes rolled into hours, and their pace never flagged. Ellen had no idea how far they had walked or how far they had to go. She kept up pace with Jake, scanning the horizon periodically for anything that might be out there. She saw nothing other than the bleak white landscape. With every step they took, they left imprints in the virgin snow. The recent snowfall had eradicated all trace of the tracks they made on their previous journeys. She had no idea if they were even going in the right direction; everything looked the same. She had to trust Jake and his compass to get them to the wrecked plane. She had fallen into a rhythm with her footfalls; right, left, right, left. She did not allow herself to dwell on her trembling thigh muscles or the bone-penetrating cold.

  Eventually, though, she glimpsed a dark shape on the horizon. Her first reaction was relief – they had reached the plane. But then she realised that the shape was too small to be the wrecked plane. It was the approximate size and shape of a man. And it was moving.

  Jake stopped walking and reached to his belt for the pistol. Ellen fum
bled for the gun in her own belt, her movements awkward and clumsy with her hands covered in thick Arctic mittens.

  Jake had pulled off the first layer of his hand coverings, revealing thermal fingerless gloves. He began moving forward again, cautiously, holding the pistol up in front of him, indicating to Ellen that she should stay behind him.

  The figure moved with an awkward, shuffling gait. It was fewer than twenty feet away now. Ellen heard its guttural moans. Still Jake continued moving closer and did not shoot. The zombie was unarmed and was not fast enough to be much of a threat to two people with guns, but Ellen’s heart hammered in her chest as she stayed close behind Jake.

  When the zombie was ten feet away, Ellen gasped in recognition as Jake fired his pistol, hitting the zombie point blank in the forehead.

  The undead thing that had once been Andres, the expedition’s pilot, fell facedown into the snow and remained unmoving, the bloody mess that had been his head leaving a wet black stain in the white snow.

  CHAPTER 41

  The wrecked plane was covered in snowfall, a white camouflage. They almost missed it. Only because Ellen noticed first that there was a mound rising up from the ground and then that the churned-up footprints in the snow went around the mound instead of through it, did they manage to spot it at all.

  The plane’s interior was largely clear of snow. Ellen sank gratefully into a wrecked seat. Jake burrowed through the wreckage, pulling off a panel to access the engine. He looked back at Ellen. “No time to rest yet. I’m going to need your help.”

  Ellen sighed and picked her way across the wrecked fuselage. “Please tell me we’re not going to do this job and then head straight back. My stamina’s good but not that good.”

  “We can rest for a little while,” Jake said. “But I just want to get this done first. And there’s something else out there.”