by L. A. Larkin
T MINUS 4 DAYS, 11 HOURS, 40 MINUTES
6 March, 6:20 pm (AEDT)
Sydney, Australia
Almost seven thousand kilometres away, in a time zone on the other side of the international dateline and eighteen hours ahead of Hope Station, a bespoke tailor was ending his working day.
Sixty-year-old Jack Woo was tired but he gave his last client his undivided attention. He nodded every so often to demonstrate that he was listening as the chief executive officer of one of Australia’s largest listed companies talked animatedly about his frustration with his board. Lenny Reid did not use names but Woo knew exactly to whom he was referring. Woo made it his job to know such things; it was one of the secrets to his successful twenty years as a bespoke tailor. Woo read the Australian Financial Review and the Australian every day just so he could engage his corporate clients in conversation.
The other reason for his loyal client base was the sanctity of his small rooms on Castlereagh Street: his clients knew that whatever they revealed to Woo would go no further. That was why he had so many big names in the corporate world: CEOs, CFOs, COOs. Politicians and diplomats too. But he was more than just a very fine tailor. His clients left his shop feeling relieved, having vented their frustrations to the quiet Woo, who always nodded and smiled sympathetically. Occasionally, he would make an observation that would stop his clients in their tracks, surprised at the clarity of his insight. But tonight Lenny Reid’s verbal vomit was becoming tiresome.
In Woo’s hand was a triangular piece of chalk, which he used to mark the alterations to a jacket. He worked quickly and systematically, leaving tiny white marks on the charcoal pinstriped super 150 fabric.
The jacket, if you could call it that, hung together with giant child-like threads, and the uninitiated might find it hard to imagine why this man was happy to pay fifteen thousand dollars for it. But under Woo’s craftsmanship, these pieces of cloth would become a suit so perfectly fitting Reid’s body shape that it would be remarked upon in the highest of Sydney’s social circles.
‘Sir, how does it feel across the shoulders?’ asked Woo, as he glanced into the mirror to watch Reid’s expression. Woo, a small man, was dressed impeccably in a navy-blue suit, a pink shirt and a striped tie. His head was shaved so closely that no regrowth ever showed, and his bifocals sat halfway down his nose, giving him the air of a sage.
Reid shrugged up and down a few times to test the suit’s manoeuvrability, and then crossed his arms in front of his chest. ‘A little tight. I must be putting on weight,’ replied Lenny laughing, expecting Woo to contradict him.
‘Sir, I don’t think so. You simply carry a bigger burden on your shoulders,’ Woo said on cue, without taking his eyes off the suit.
‘That’s right, Woo. I feel like I have the fucking board on my shoulders,’ bemoaned Reid.
Woo noticed a stray pin under the chaise longue and picked it up. He stuck it in the felt hedgehog pincushion attached to his wrist. He was meticulous about such things and would have a word with his seamstresses tomorrow. They should never leave pins on the floor. Reid’s booming voice was giving him a headache so he decided to change the subject.
‘And how is your lovely daughter? She is getting married soon, I believe?’ Reid usually softened at the mention of his daughter.
‘Yeah, the wedding’s a year away but the whole house is full of bridal magazines and this poncy bloody events organiser. My home is not my own.’
‘Ah, but she will make a beautiful bride, sir.’
Reid stopped frowning and turned his head to the side to look at Woo. ‘She will,’ he said softly, smiling at the vision in his head of his daughter. He remained silent for the rest of the fitting.
Woo removed the suit and took it to the seamstresses’ workroom, leaving Reid to get dressed. Woo, who had fled China as a young man, momentarily thought of his only child, Wendy, who lived in Melbourne. He would love to see her happily married too.
‘And your daughter – how is she?’ Reid called over the partition.
‘Well, sir, thank you. Very focused on her career. I’m sure you understand.’
‘No time to visit her old man, huh?’
‘Unfortunately not, sir.’
While Woo waited for Reid to dress, he made his way to a tiny kitchenette that was hidden from the view of his customers. He removed the ice tray from the freezer and, as quietly as possible, dropped one ice cube into a crystal tumbler. He checked to see that Reid was still in the changing room, then took a bottle of Macallan single malt whisky from a cupboard over the sink and poured himself a drink. This was his little treat before the train ride home to Parramatta. But he wouldn’t taste it until his client was gone.
Reid made his way to the shop door and Woo followed. ‘Ready in a week?’ asked the CEO, knowing full well that they had agreed on three weeks.
‘Certainly, sir.’
Woo opened the door and Reid strode off into the busy street.
***
As Woo farewelled his client and locked the front door, another man silently entered through the rear, from an alley often used by the seamstresses for a quick ‘smoko’. This door was only locked when Woo left for the night. The intruder, known only as King, moved inside, spotted the glass and grinned. Men of routine were so easy to kill.
King unwrapped a tablet from its foil and dropped it into the whisky. It fizzed briefly. The intruder then heard the tap of Woo’s leather soles on the polished wooden floor and left, shutting the door quietly with his gloved hand.
The alley was strewn with large commercial bins. But someone had been careless with a bag of food scraps, which had exploded over the concrete. King almost stepped on a plastic Coke bottle as he ducked behind a bin. Sweat soaked his shirt armpits.
After a minute or two he peered through a tiny window into the rear of the shop. King saw the tailor sitting in a leather armchair that, he guessed, was for Woo’s spoiled clients. Opposite the armchair, on a neat desk, a computer screen was filled with a map. At first King thought it was of the United States, but the tail was pointing the wrong way. Upwards, rather than down to Mexico. Then he realised it was Antarctica. This seemed strange, but his briefings only gave him what he needed to know and nothing more.
Woo swirled his whisky to coat the inside of the glass, then held it up to admire the toffee-coloured spirit. He brought the glass to his nose. King held his breath. The target took a sip and raised his eyebrows in surprise. Woo shook his head in disappointment but sipped again, soon finishing his drink. He got up from the chair and then suddenly doubled over, dropping the glass, which shattered on the floor.
Confident of the massive dose he had delivered, King watched the tailor’s final throes. Woo grasped his chest in pain, as his mouth gaped hungrily for breath. He fell back into the chair as a second, more violent seizure engulfed his whole body. It was then that Woo noticed King. He mouthed, ‘Help me!’ King didn’t even blink. The dying man clawed at the phone but couldn’t quite reach it. Woo’s terrified eyes stared at the man watching him die. A final spasm of agony, and he took his last breath.
King looked at the computer screen and then down at Woo, now lying motionless, surrounded by glistening shards of glass. From his jacket he pulled out a pay-as-you-go mobile he had bought for cash that day, and texted ‘Job 209 complete. Antarctica on screen?’ just in case this had significance. Many times he had seen what seemed to be trivial or irrelevant, only for it to prove to be vital intelligence. Always observe. It was a necessity in his profession. The killer left the alley and vanished into the throng of weary commuters.
Woo’s lifeless wrist still carried the pincushion into which he had so carefully placed the stray pin a few minutes earlier. When his seamstresses arrived at seven the following morning, they would have more than stray pins to worry about.
T MINUS 4 DAYS, 9 HOURS, 17 MINUTES
6 March, 2:43 am (UTC-07)
Like the laptop in front of him, Luke was finally in sleep mode, slumped o
ver the desk. His head of dishevelled hair rested on his crossed arms. He had tried everything he could think of to get the phone, radio and internet to work, but with no success. He knew there had to be a means of rebooting the whole system and reloading the IOS images program, but he couldn’t find it anywhere on the server. And he couldn’t find the backup disks either. Eventually, exhaustion had claimed him.
But his sleep had been sporadic. He’d woken twice from the same nightmare: Mac was calling his name, over and over, from inside the crevasse. Mac’s arms were raised towards Luke, begging for help, as Luke stretched over the lip of the fissure, desperately trying to reach him. But Luke was too far away. He was calling to Mac, but something prevented him from abseiling down the steep walls. He thrashed about but couldn’t get any closer.
Luke woke with a start to find he had knocked over his coffee mug, which fortunately had been empty. He squinted at the bright lights overhead, rubbed his eyes and checked the time: 2:43 am. The station was silent except for the low thrum of the generators and the rhythmic snoring of its occupants. Craig’s was the loudest. Even with his bedroom door shut, his guttural gruntings resounded through the living quarters like a sow at feeding time.
Normally, this would have made Luke smile, but not tonight. He yawned and resumed his search for IOS images on Mac’s laptop, until gradually his eyelids closed and he fell asleep again. Something hit the outside of the sleeping quarters but the sixty-centimetre-thick aluminium walls, filled with polystyrene insulation, absorbed the sound. No one inside heard it.
Minutes later, Luke coughed in his sleep. He coughed again, this time more violently, and awoke. Where was he? His eyes stung and he was surrounded by a haze. He breathed in and it made him choke. He shot his hand out and hit the laptop, which lit up like a Christmas tree. Yes, the communications room. But why no power, except for the equipment still running on batteries?
A scream that sounded like an animal being torn apart pierced his eardrums. He stood so fast that his chair toppled backwards. He clocked the smoke seeping under the door. Fire. The station was on fire. Their worst nightmare. Luke had no idea who that scream came from, but it was excruciating. A man’s voice. He realised it had to be Tubs, Craig or Blue.
Luke opened the door and was met by dense, acrid smoke. The emergency floor lighting provided a dull glow. At the end of the corridor, the door to Craig’s room was a hole surrounded by a circle of flames. Luke ran to the bathroom, seized a towel and turned on the shower tap. The nozzle only dribbled. Why wasn’t there water? The towel was damp, but not enough. He threw it into a shower cubicle to mop up whatever moisture was left.
With the wet towel over his head and arms, Luke approached the archway of fire that was the entrance to Craig’s room. Above the doorway the roof was alight with golden waves that appeared to flow into the smoke-filled room. Backdraft, Luke realised. When Craig had opened his door to escape, the flames had been sucked into the vacuum. Luke ducked low and charged in.
Craig was rolling on the floor, his hair and clothes alight. Despite the thick smoke, Luke saw that Craig’s face was red-raw with burns, waxy and ghoulish. Luke threw the towel over him to starve the flames of oxygen. Craig stopped moving and Luke coughed as the smoke burned his lungs.
He pulled the towel away. Craig’s face had melted, and not a hair on his head, beard or eyebrows remained. His hands were like gnarled claws, twisted in agony, the skin bubbling. The poor man moaned and then was still. Luke touched the raw flesh of his neck to check for a pulse but there wasn’t one. Luke stepped back, then, horrified, he noticed his hands were covered with bits of Craig’s skin.
‘Luke!’ A voice called, hoarse and unrecognisable.
Luke felt lightheaded and confused. A flaming piece of timber from the ceiling collapsed, landing an arm’s length from him. Adrenaline and panic fought for supremacy of his body. The heat felt as though it was singeing his skin through his clothing. The towel was now useless, so he picked up Craig’s desk chair and held it over his head as he ran though the doorway.
In the corridor, Luke dropped the smouldering chair. Tubs had a fire extinguisher and was spraying dry powder onto the flaming walls. He only had on his candy-striped thermals – he’d been sleeping in them – and, incongruously, his expedition boots. It had been drilled into them that in an emergency they had to put on their boots. They couldn’t walk outside without them.
‘The others?’ Luke shouted.
‘Exit 1,’ Tubs spluttered. ‘Craig?’
‘Dead.’
Luke’s eyes were streaming caustic tears and he could barely see. Tubs stopped his useless attempts to quell the fire and the two stumbled down the corridor towards the exit. As they passed the kitchen, another part of the ceiling collapsed behind them. The cold night air was sucked in, further fuelling the flames. They turned a corner to see Blue in shorts and an open parka hurl himself at the door. It didn’t budge. Sue, dressed in pink brushed-cotton pyjamas and hiking boots, was kicking at it.
‘It won’t budge,’ yelled Blue above the roar of the flames.
‘Maddie?’ coughed Luke.
‘Went to check Exit 2,’ shouted Blue.
‘Shit!’ said Luke, glancing back down the burning corridor.
‘The door, Luke!’ screamed Sue, her round face creased with fear. Luke shook his head. How could it be jammed? Tubs had shovelled away the snow yesterday. Luke threw the full force of his weight into the door. Fit and strong, his broad shoulders had no impact. And again. The door creaked but didn’t budge. Tubs tried to ram it open with the fire extinguisher but it held tight.
‘Exit 2?’ gasped Blue.
Luke nodded and they ran, crouching low to avoid the suffocating smoke and flames. Why wasn’t the ventilation working? They stepped around burning debris. The heat was unbearable but Luke knew the smoke would kill them first. They reached the first internal fire door and shut it behind them. This would give them ninety minutes, as long as the fire was only at one end of the station.
Sue fell to her knees. She couldn’t breathe. The smoke was everywhere. Luke pulled her to her feet and held her up. He had never realised how short she was till then, having always thought of her as one of the lads. He now realised how her personality had made her seem larger than life.
‘Get to Exit 2 and look out for Maddie,’ Luke said, wheezing. He dragged Sue past the mess and the kitchen, towards the laboratories. ‘Maddie,’ he tried to shout, but his voice was strangled and weak.
The further they stumbled towards Exit 2, the thicker the smoke became. Not good, thought Luke. Like an apparition, Maddie staggered though the smoky darkness towards them.
She fell to her knees, gasping for breath. ‘Exit 2 won’t open.’
They were trapped.
T MINUS 4 DAYS, 9 HOURS, 4 MINUTES
6 March, 2:56 am (UTC-07)
‘Both exits are blocked,’ Maddie said, coughing. ‘Fire’s coming from both directions.’ She was wearing the same clothes as last night. She must have fallen asleep fully dressed. ‘I was about to … try the lift.’
‘Power’s out,’ Sue croaked.
‘Break a window?’ suggested Luke.
‘Triple-glazed. Take … too long,’ Maddie coughed.
Luke’s mind worked with hangover-like slowness, and his lungs felt as if they were being torn to shreds. He peered into the inferno of flames coming at them in a pincer movement.
‘Lift shaft!’ he said. ‘Follow me.’
They moved deeper into the stinging smoke like drunks, tripping and falling. Luke shut another fire door but the conflagration seemed to be all around them. At the lift, Maddie leaned against the wall, unable to stand.
‘The ladder,’ Luke said as he tried to open the maintenance door to the lift shaft. It was locked and the key was in Maddie’s office, on the other side of the corridor fire door. ‘It’s locked – I’ll get a knife. The kitchen.’
Blue grabbed his arm. ‘I’ll go. You’ll need to carry Sue – I can’t,’
he said, nodding at Sue, who lay semi-conscious on the floor. Blue lurched back down the corridor in the direction of the kitchen.
‘Lie low,’ Maddie directed them. ‘Avoid the smoke.’
Before anyone could respond, an explosion shook the whole station, throwing them to the floor. It tore at their eardrums. Debris hurtled through the air. Luke felt something hit him in the back and bounce off. Ting, thwack, crack, as metal, wood and glass fell around them. The heat felt like a blowtorch. Maddie shrieked. Luke looked up and could see she was hugging her left calf.
Disoriented, Luke’s balance was shot to pieces. Tiny shards of glass were embedded in his hands. What had exploded? What in God’s name was going on? The fireball had come from the direction of the kitchen, but Luke didn’t want to believe Blue was dead. Tubs had been thrown against the wall and lay winded.
Maddie sat up, her hands trembling as she stared in shock at the triangular piece of metal protruding from the side of her leg. Sue stared blankly at Luke, her mouth opening and closing like a ventriloquist’s doll. She was impaled on a length of steel pipe.
‘God, no,’ said Luke, crawling towards her on all fours.
Sue tried to say something, then her mouth stopped moving. He couldn’t find any pulse, and for an instant he felt completely overwhelmed. His head dropped forward onto his chest. Tubs was now sitting up, stunned. He touched his face and stared at his bloody hands like a child fascinated by a strange new toy.
‘Luke,’ pleaded Maddie. He stared at her, his face blank, uncomprehending. ‘Luke!’ she said, louder this time. ‘Help me!’ He moved at last and kneeled at her side.
‘Get it out!’ she screamed, holding her leg and rocking backwards and forwards in excruciating pain.
‘Not now,’ he gasped. ‘You have to stand. Come on! There could be another explosion.’
‘You fucking bastard!’ she screamed. ‘Get it out!’