Outpost (18 page)

'See
that doorway on the second floor?'

'Yeah.'

'That's
my old room.'

They
climbed through dereliction. The staircase creaked beneath their weight.

The
door to Nail's old room was charred and bubbled. He kicked it open.

His
room was black with soot. He kicked aside the skeletal frame of a chair. He
pulled the melted mattress from his bunk.

'Take
a seat.'

Nikki
sat on the metal bed frame.

Nail
closed the door to trap body heat. He set his flashlight on the washstand.

He
unfolded a hexamine stove and lit the fuel block with a Zippo.

He
stretched up and prised the grating from an air vent. He reached inside and
pulled out a scorched cash box.

He
sat on the bed next to Nikki. He took a key from round his neck and opened the
box. Money. Notes rolled tight, held by rubber bands. Nail tucked cash into the
inner pocket of his coat.

'You
could wipe your ass with it, I suppose,' said Nikki. 'Poker winnings?'

'Fruits
of entrepreneurial labour.'

Nail
tipped the box into his lap. A spoon. Packets of hypodermics. A Ziploc bag of
brown powder.

'Didn't
know you had a hobby.'

'It's
a six-month rotation. A person needs to chill now and again.'

'And
you go home with a triple pay cheque.'

'Loose
change. People go to Ghost for weed. They come to me if they want something a
little stronger.'

Nail
scraped frost from the shoulder of his coat and melted it in the spoon with a
pinch of powder. He unwrapped a syringe and siphoned the fizzing liquid.

'Want
to forget yourself a while?' asked Nail.

'Yeah,
there's plenty I want to put from my mind.'

She
took off her coat and rolled up the arm of her fleece. Nail rubbed the crook of
her elbow with his thumb to raise a vein. He carefully inserted the needle
beneath her skin and pressed the plunger. A wash of snuggling well-being. She
smiled and sat back against the wall.

Nail
took off his coat and rolled up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He tied a
shoelace tourniquet round his bicep and pumped his arm. He shot up.

He
pulled Nikki close and hung his coat round both their shoulders. He stroked her
hair.

They
sat in the burned-out room and gazed at the stove, mesmerised by the ethereal
blue flame.

Ghost
crawled through the conduit. He jackknifed his body to squeeze round a
junction. His belt-loop snagged on a bolt. He tried to twist free. Sudden,
sweating claustrophobia. He pushed at the duct walls. He heard himself sob.

He
stopped thrashing, closed his eyes and tried to compose himself.

'Talk
to me, Jane. Let me hear a voice.'

'Just thinking. Rawlins didn't want to lose himself.
That's what he told me. He didn't want the disease to win. I suppose that's
what everyone says. That they'd drive off a cliff in a blaze of glory rather
than waste away in a hospital bed.'

'So what do you reckon? This disease
.'

'I read a book about the Manhattan Project. When they
tested the first atom bomb in the desert, scientists wondered if the blast
might set the atmosphere on fire. Maybe this was the same situation. They, the
big, scary They, were toying with some kind of super-technology. Nanobots.
Bio-weapon. Something so cutting-edge, so unstable, they put the lab in space
to contain it in a vacuum. But something went wrong, something sudden and catastrophic,
and chunks of debris dropped to earth like our friend in the capsule
.
'

'Sure.
Why not?'

Ghost
squirmed in the narrow space. He unhooked his belt- loop. He crawled forward on
his elbows.

'Feel
like I've been wriggling around in here for hours.'

'
Nothing
?'

'Nothing.
The cable looks fine.'

'Find a way out and head back to the powerhouse. We'll
take another look at the generator
.'

Punch
sat in the observation bubble. He cocooned himself in a sleeping bag and stared
at the stars.

Footsteps
from below. Crazy, dancing light approaching up the spiral stairs. Sian with an
aluminium trunk under each arm and a Maglite clenched between her teeth.

'One
of the men on Raven is an electrician,' said Sian. 'If we can get him here, he
can help.'

'We
don't have power,' said Punch. 'We don't have radar. If they take to the
lifeboats they'll drift right past us.'

Sian
flipped the latches on each case.

'A
GPS kit and a radio. I found them downstairs. They run on lithium batteries.
They're charged.'

'They
won't have much range.'

Sian
contemplated the silhouettes of the gargantuan distillation towers, three
great shadows that eclipsed the stars.

'What
if we got them up high?'

Ghost
was overcome by a sudden wave of exhaustion. He rolled on to his side.

'I
feel like a fucking sewer rat.'

'I spoke to the careers counsellor during my last year
at school
.

He asked me what I would do if I were the last person
alive. If there were no social pressure, no one left to impress
.'

'What
did you say?'

'I'd mooch. I'd loaf. I'd sit on a riverbank and read
books
'

Ghost
reached in his pocket. He pulled out a yellow epinephrine hypodermic. He bit
the cap off the hypo and injected his bicep.

'You're
in charge now. You know that, right? I mean seriously. For real. With Rawlins
gone you are the only authority left. The crew are your responsibility. They'll
expect you to have the Grand Plan.'

'Is this your valedictory statement? Are you passing
the torch
?'

'I
can feel a breeze. There's something up ahead.'

Ghost
wormed his way along the conduit. A section of duct broke open when D Module
fell from the refinery. He leaned over a jagged metal lip. Frayed cable swung
in the ice wind. Far below him was the sea.

'I
think I found our problem.' He coughed up phlegm. He retched. He vomited. 'I'm
turning round. I'm coming back.'

Jane
helped Ghost limp to his room. She laid him on his bunk. He was pale and
breathless. He shivered. She draped three coats over him.

She
lay beside him; let his head rest on her shoulder.

'Take
it easy for a while,' she said. 'Get your breath back.'

'Just
need to rest.'

Liquid
in his lungs. Each breath died away in a bubbling rattle.

'Take
your time.'

'I
can splice a domestic extension lead into that powerhouse console. We can run a
couple of heaters. Cook food. It'll keep us alive. Buy some time.'

'After
that?'

'Look
for an intact length of three-thousand megawatt cable. A few metres. That's all
we need. Patch that break in the line and we are back in business. Just need to
rip up floor plates until we find some.'

He
took an epinephrine syringe from his pocket. 'Sure you want to do this?' she
asked.

'Yeah.
Final lap.'

Punch
stood at the refinery railing and looked east. Ice surrounded the refinery and
spread towards the island. The sun no longer rose. Daytime was a brief pink
twilight. The Arctic was entering perpetual night.

He
took an old Sony radio from his coat pocket. He had found it alongside a drum
of paint and a roller. Someone had been redecorating a corridor and quit
halfway through the job. The batteries still held a charge.

He
extended the aerial and adjusted the dial. Whistling static.

A
ghost voice. Male. French accent. Tired, distressed. Punch pulled back the hood
of his coat and pressed the radio to his ear.

'
...
est advice . . . safe place
and don't venture . . . can hear me . . . refuge . . . hopeless . . . God help
. . '

Punch
returned to the observation bubble.

'Anything?'
asked Sian.

'Nothing.
Doesn't seem to work.'

Punch
shook batteries from the radio and tossed it aside.

He
and Sian had turned the observation bubble into their base camp. They had
pushed chairs back from the transmitter console and erected a dome tent. Each
night they cooked on a stove. They ate and counted stars. They zipped sleeping
bags together and slept skin-to-skin.

'What
do you think is waiting for us back in the world?' asked Sian. She was sitting
cross-legged by the stove stirring noodles in a mess tin.

'I
bet the worst is over. People will have got organised by now.'

'You
think?'

'Yeah.
When the chips are down, neighbours help each other out.'

Punch
wanted to say: 'Promise you'll kill me. If I get infected, if I turn like
Rawlins, finish me off. Don't let me become a monster.'

Instead
he asked: 'How are the noodles coming along?'

'Soon
be done.'

The
powerhouse. A steady hum from Generator Three. Massive megawatt output, enough
to power a small town. Ghost had run a single domestic extension lead from the
control panel. It ran through an air vent into the submarine hangar next door.
A single plug socket. A single convection heater. Crewmen took turns to sit in
the orange glow.

The
crew were camped in front of the submersible. Steel manipulator claws curved
above them like a protective embrace. A couple of crew huddled in blankets and
played chess. One crewman relentlessly sharpened a knife. Bottles of drinking
water were lined up in front of the heater to keep them thawed.

Ghost
lay beneath three parkas. Short, bubbling breaths. Jane sat beside him. She
stroked his head. Once in a while he opened his eyes. She smiled. She wanted
him to see a reassuring face. She didn't want him to feel alone.

He
opened his eyes wide and steady.

'How
you doing, champ?'

Thumbs
up.

'Warm
enough?'

Nod.

He
stroked her face. Peeling skin.

'Guess
I got too close to the fire,' said Jane. 'Sunburn.'

He
licked dry lips.

'Drink
something.' She put a canteen to his lips. 'Wet your mouth.'

She
rearranged the coat beneath his head to give him a better pillow.

'Get
as much sleep as you can.'

'Feel
like I've been punched in the gut,' whispered Ghost. 'I can barely breathe.'

'Getting
worse?'

'Yeah.'

Jane
looked for Rye.

'She's
in the sub,' said Ivan.

Jane
lowered herself through the roof hatch. Her flashlight lit tight banks of
instrumentation. Rye sat in the co-pilot seat. She was listening to an iPod.

'Rocking
out?' asked Jane.

'About
an hour of battery left. My last tunes.'

'What's
the prognosis?'

'Ghost?
Not so great. I'm dosing him with antibiotics but the pneumonia is caused by
chemical damage to his lungs, rather than infection. If his throat closes much
further I might have to intubate.'

'What
are his chances?'

'Fifty-fifty.
His lungs might recover, given enough time. He could be back on his feet in a
couple of weeks, if he's lucky, if he doesn't exert himself like he did
yesterday. Another shot of speed would kill him stone dead.'

'So
there's nothing we can do but wait?'

'Like
I say, I've been giving him antibiotics as a preventative measure. It might
help, it might not. And plenty of painkillers just to keep him comfortable.'

'Okay.'

'Question
is, when do we pull the plug? He's used up his share of meds already.'

'Give
him everything he needs.'

'I appreciate you two are close.'

'He was a systems technician. He kept the lights on,
the water running. He's worth more than most of the crew out there, worth more
than me.'