Outpost (9 page)

Three
hours in the saddle. Simon let go of Ghost's waist. He toppled backward. He
fell from the snowmobile. He lay in the snow. He pulled off his gloves. He
tried to take off his coat.

Ghost
brought the Yamaha full circle. He dragged Simon to his feet and slapped him around.

'Look
at me. Look at me. Come on, man.'

Simon's
eyes were rolling. He couldn't focus.

Ghost
jammed gauntlets back on to Simon's hands. Simon tried to slide them off again.

'No,
dude. You have to wear gloves, you hear me?'

Punch
pulled up.

'He's
delirious,' said Ghost. 'Give him another shot.'

Punch
slammed epinephrine into Simon's thigh. The guy gasped and snapped awake.

'Can
you keep it together a couple more hours, Simon? Can you keep it together that
long?'

He
nodded.

They
set off. Headlights at full beam. Fuel needle edging into red. Snow particles
feathered Ghost's goggles, blurring his view.

They
made poor time. Ghost's snowmobile laboured to haul two passengers and a
sledge. The sledge flipped twice, tipping Alan into the snow. They took off
Alan's goggles and face-mask. His eyes were closed. They couldn't get a neck
pulse. They couldn't tell if he was breathing.

'Give
me your knife,' demanded Ghost.

Punch
handed over his lock-knife. Ghost snapped open the blade and cut the sledge
rope.

'What
are you doing?' asked Nikki, shouting to be heard over the gathering wind.

'He's
either dead or dying. We have to outrun the storm.' Ghost pushed Nikki and
Simon back towards the bikes. 'It's all right. I didn't give you a choice,
okay? It's my decision. My guilt.'

They
climbed on the snowmobiles and drove away leaving Alan still strapped to the
sledge, snow settling on his face, a blue speck abandoned in a vast ice plain.

The
sun set. They rode headlong into a blizzard. Rising wind-roar. Their headlamps
lit driving snow. Punch wanted to erect the survival shelter but Ghost ignored
his signals to stop.

Ghost
checked his sat nav and headed for the cabin coordinates. The Garmin unit
bolted to the handlebars counted down the metres. He was surprised the unit
could still find a GPS signal. He guessed remnants of the US military were
still active. A bunch of generals in a mile-deep war room trying to mobilise
troops that were long dead or had abandoned their post.

YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR
DESTINATION
.

They
pulled up. Featureless terrain. White nothing.

Ghost
dismounted. He shone his flashlight into a locust-swarm of ice particles. He
found a snow bank. He and Punch began to excavate, burrow like moles. Punch
hacked at the snow with gloved hands. Ghost unfolded a trenching spade and dug.
They exposed a window, and then they exposed a door. The door was chocked
closed. They tugged the wedges free and pulled the door wide.

The
interior of the cabin was bare. They revved the snowmobiles, drove them inside,
and wedged the door closed. Wind noise dropped to silence.

Ghost
erected a dome tent in the corner of the cabin. He hammered pegs into the floor
with his boot. Punch set up a couple of LED lanterns. He burned a Coleman gas
stove to raise the cabin temperature. He melted snow for coffee.

They
wrapped Simon and Nikki in foil blankets. Punch cracked self-heating cans of
chicken teriyaki. Nikki ate with trembling hands. Ghost spoon-fed Simon.

'They
wouldn't tell us on the radio,' said Nikki, wiping food from her chin.

'Tell
you what?' asked Ghost.

'Why
the plane didn't come.'

'There's
been some kind of outbreak back home. A pandemic. Everything shot to shit.'

'How
bad?'

'Pretty
fucking bad.'

'The
whole of Britain?'

'The
whole of the world. Take off your gloves a moment. And your boots.'

Ghost
checked Nikki for frostbite. 'Your skin is cracked, but you still have
circulation. See? If I press your skin it goes white then red. You still have
blood flow. We have a doctor on the rig. She'll check you over properly.'

'Maybe
we should go back for Alan,' said Nikki. 'When we have our strength. When the
weather clears.'

'It's
winter. The weather won't clear for six months. It'll be one storm after
another from now on. We wouldn't find him, even if we looked. What can I tell you?
I guess we aren't the good guys.'

Ghost
turned to Simon.

'Let's
take a look at you.'

Simon
allowed Ghost to unbuckle his gauntlets. He sat back and let Ghost peel off his
socks and shoes.

Simon's
toes were swollen and peeling. The fingertips of his left hand were blue. His
entire right hand was black, cracked and weeping. The smell was foul. Punch
covered his mouth and nose.

'Probably
looks worse than it is,' lied Ghost. 'Skin will grow back in time.'

He
helped Simon dress.

'Take
it easy, all right?'

Ghost
picked up the trenching spade.

'I'm
going outside to dig us out. Don't want to suffocate.'

He
stepped outside into the wind and snow. He shouted into his radio.

'Shore
team to Rye. Shore team to Rye, do you copy, over?'

Jane
knocked on Rawlins's door.

'They
reached the cabin,' she said. 'I thought you'd like to know. Couldn't get much
out of them. Bad atmospherics. Imagine they will push for the coast at
daylight.'

'Everyone
all right?'

'Punch
and Ghost are okay. But only two members of the Apex team made it.'

'What
happened to the third guy?'

'Like
I say, bad reception. I could barely make out a word. But there were three of
them. Now there are two. Maybe the cold got him.'

'Christ.
There will be a bunch of tears when they get back. A bunch of guilt. Well,
that's your problem. Pastoral care. Ghost and Punch are okay, yeah?'

'We'll
hear more when they reach the bunker.'

'Take
a look at this.'

Rawlins
had stapled an Arctic map to the wall. The island and surrounding ocean were dotted
with red pins.

'These
are all the installations in our sector, as best I can remember. Mostly
Gazprom. A couple of Occidental. I suppose most have been evacuated. But if
they cleared out in a hurry they might have left some useful supplies. Food.
Fuel.'

'What's
that?' Jane pointed to a pin tacked to the northern shore of the island.

'Kalashnikov.
A cluster of cabins built by whalers. Survey teams use it as a stop-over. There
might be a cache of food, if we're lucky.'

'There's
a town called Kalashnikov?'

'A
Hero of Socialist Labour. He got a patch of ice named after him.'

'So
we take the snowmobiles and travel up the coast?'

'Yeah.'

'Our
route would pass within a couple of kilometres of that impact site,' said Jane.
'A person could walk inland and take a look.'

'Depends
on the weather, but yeah.'

'This
time I go, all right? If the boat goes out I want to be on it. I need to get
off this damn rig.'

Jane
sipped coffee. Sian hurried into the canteen.

'It's
Rye. You better talk to her.'

She
handed Jane a radio.

'Go
ahead.'

'We're at the bunker. We're heading back in the boat.
I need you to boot-up Medical
.'

Jane
flipped a wall switch. Strip-lights flickered.

The
medical bay was a wide, white room with an operating table at the centre.

Sub-zero.
Jane's breath fogged the air. She set convection heaters running.

'Okay.
What do you need?'

'The resuscitation trolley. Plug it in. Get it charged
.'

'Done.
'

'An instrument pack from the wall cupboard. It's on a
plastic tray, vacuum sealed in plastic
.
'

'Got it.
'

'Bottom shelf. There's a blue nylon bag. It's a
hypothermia bath
.

Inflate it. Don't fill it, though. I'll need to adjust
water temperature myself
.'

Jane
unrolled the rubber bath. It was shaped like a coffin. She recognised it from the
survival skills training day Con Amalgam insisted she attend before getting
shipped north.

She
released the valve of a little C02 cylinder. The bath inflated like a child's
paddling pool.

'Done.'

'Go to the refrigerator. Get a bag of saline and a bag
of Haemaccel. Unlock the drug store and fetch pethidine
.
'

'Who's
hurt?'

'Simon, one of the Apex team. Big-time frostbite.
Oedema. Possible septic shock
.'

'Shit.'

'Meet us on the dock. He's fading fast. We've got to
get him in a hypothermic bath and raise his core temperature or we are going to
lose him
.'

Jane
and Sian waited on the floodlit dock with a stretcher. Jane had binoculars.

'Here
they come.'

The
zodiac came in fast. Ghost killed the engine and threw Jane a rope. Simon lay
on the aluminium floor of the boat. Jane helped drag him from the boat. They
laid him on a stretcher, put it on a cargo trolley and wheeled it to the
freight elevator.

The
stretcher buggy was parked at habitation level. Rye drove Simon to Medical.
Jane and Sian jogged behind the little electric car as it hummed down dark
corridors.

They
moved Simon on to the operating table.

'Cut
off his clothes,' said Rye. 'Get him under the shower.'

Jane
and Sian hacked through Simon's clothes with trauma shears. His genitals were
so shrivelled by cold he looked female. Nothing between his legs but a tuft of
pubic hair.

There
was a bathroom at the back of the bay. They dragged Simon to the shower and
stood him under a jet of hot water.

Rye
stripped out of her survival gear and filled the hypothermia bath, tested it to
forty-six degrees.

'All
right. Let's get him immersed.'

They
laid Simon in the bath.

'Keep
his hands and feet out of the water.'

She
shone a penlight into his eyes.

'Ideally
I would like to test rectal temperature, but we'll spare him that indignity for
now.'

'His
hand is fucked.'

'We'll
see how his condition develops as we restore circulation. Of course, that's
when the pain will begin.'

Jane
jogged a kilometre circuit of C deck. She was joined by Sian. 'Spoken to
Ghost?'

'Briefly,'
said Jane.

'What
did he say about that Apex guy? The one who didn't make it back.'

'He
refuses to talk about it.'

They
trotted down unheated corridors. Each puffing exhalation was a great plume of
steam-breath. They both wore three tracksuits. The metal floor was slick with
ice so they ran in snow- boots with thick rubber tread. Their route was lit by
weak daylight shafting through the corridor windows.

Jane
ran fast and lithe. She had lost four kilos. Her clothes felt loose. Sian
struggled to keep pace.

Jane
had been fat all her life. Her body had been nothing more than a sweating,
aching encumbrance but now she felt an intimation of what it would be like to
be supple and strong.

'What's
the deal with you and Punch?'

'How
do you mean?' asked Sian.

'Both
young, both bright. An obvious match.'

'I
always thought Nail and Ivan seemed like a happy couple. Pumping. Preening.
Oiling each other down.'

'Nice
deflection.'

They
ran the kilometre circuit then ran it again.

Sian
returned to her room to shower.

Jane
walked past Medical on her way back to the accommodation block. Dr Rye was
packing packets of drugs into a box. Jane felt obliged to offer help.