Outpost (2 page)

He
showed Jane to the accommodation block. 'This is your room,' he said, 'but
there are plenty of others if you want to switch. You have this entire block to
yourself. Most of the crewmen meet for dinner in the canteen at seven. Other
than that, people keep to themselves. Better get used to your own company,
because this place is a ghost town.'

Jane
threw her cassock over a chair. She took a chocolate bar from a stash hidden
behind a big Bible in the vestry cupboard. She perched on the altar and ate. She
was useless, alone and unloved.

She
headed back to her room. It was a long journey down white corridors that
receded to vanishing point. The refinery was so big some guys used bicycles to get
around. The infirmary had a stretcher-car like a golf buggy. It was kept
chained to stop the crew taking joyrides.

She
walked the route out of habit, but stopped by an exterior door when it occurred
to her there was no reason to return to her room. Earlier that morning she had
resolved to jump from the rig. Why wait until nightfall?

She
spun the hatch wheel and stepped into a quilted airlock.

WARNING

EXTREME COLD

SAFETY CLOTHING AND TWO-MAN
PROTOCOL

AT ALL TIMES

She
heaved open the exterior door and the sudden shock of cold sucked breath from
her body. Vicious wind-chill. Minus thirty and no coat. Her skin burned.

Jane
stepped out on to a walkway. Boot clang. Bleak daylight. A vast machine-scape.
Massive storage tanks. Gantries, crossbeams and pipework dripped ice. A steel
archipelago. One of the largest floating structures on earth.

She
leaned over a railing. She touched the iced metal for a moment then snatched
her hand away like it had been scorched on a stove. She looked down. Far below,
hidden by mist, was the sea. She could hear water lapping between the great
floatation legs of the refinery. If she climbed the railing and allowed
herself to topple forward it would be over in an instant. A hundred-metre drop
through white vapour. The impact would smash her bones as if she hit concrete.
Quick extinction, like an Off switch.

She
put one foot on the railing and willed herself to jump. She had been outside
less than a minute, but was shivering as if in an epileptic seizure. Her vision
blurred. She wanted to jump but couldn't do it. Muscle lock. Too scared of
falling. Too scared of pain. She went back inside and stood beneath a corridor
heat vent. She cursed her cowardice. She plucked a frozen tear from her cheek
and watched the little jewel liquefy between her fingers.

Plan
B: retreat to her room and swallow a fatal overdose of painkillers.

Jane
had been collecting painkillers for the past couple of months. Each time she
bought deodorant or gum from the table in the canteen she took a packet of
paracetamol. The pills were in a bag beneath her bed.

She
stopped at the canteen kitchen to collect a tub of ice cream. The steel door of
the refrigerator rippled her face like a funhouse mirror.

Accommodation
Block Three. Long passageways. Empty stairwells.

Each
crew member was assigned a small cell with a bed and a chair. They got a
clothes locker, a washstand cubicle and a metal toilet. A scratched Perspex
porthole allowed Jane a view of the basalt cliffs and jagged crags of Franz
Josef Land. Desolate, lunar terrain. Volcanic crags dusted with snow. In a few
weeks the sun would set and the long Arctic night would begin.

'Hi,
honey. I'm home.'

She
stripped, sat on the bed and popped pills from their foil strips. She piled the
tablets on the blanket until they formed a little white mound. She mashed the
pills into a tub of Cookie Dough. She wanted to write a note but couldn't think
what to say.

She
opened her laptop. She wanted to hear a familiar voice. She selected an old
message from home. A cam clip. Jane's sister, sitting in a sunlit room. Jane
clicked the Play arrow.

'Hi,
Janey. How are things at the top of the world? Just wanted to say hello and
tell you how proud we are of what you are doing. Can't imagine what it must be like
up there. It must be tough looking after all those guys. Or maybe you are
enjoying a bit of male attention. Fighting them off with a chair. Anyway, Mum
sends her love
.
. .'

If
she were home, she might pick up the phone and reach out for help. But the only
contact with the mainland was the microwave link in the installation manager's
office. An open line with a stilted, two-second delay.

Jane
scooped pills and ice cream, and sucked the spoon clean. Bitter. She grimaced.
She scooped more painkillers. She didn't want to lose consciousness before she
ate enough pills to kill herself outright. She didn't want to wake. For once in
her life, she would do the job right.

Ice
cream. A sweet kiss goodnight. It would be a meek, apologetic death. She
consoled herself with the thought that, in these final moments, she would be
communing with countless lifelong losers who extinguished the world with a
glass of Chablis and a bellyful of painkillers.

She
was about to swallow a third mouthful of tablets when there was a knock at the
door. She quickly shut off her laptop. A second knock. Must be Punch. No one
else knew where to find her.

'Hello?
Reverend Blanc? Are you in there?'

Jane
sat still as she could.

'Reverend?'

Jane
wondered if it might be easier to answer the door and get rid of him. Claim she
was ill. Tell him to come back later. Much later.

Punch
tried to open the door but it was locked from the inside by a plastic dead bolt
like a toilet cubicle.

'Reverend?
Hello?'

Jane
spat pills and ice cream into a tissue. She put on a dressing gown and opened
the door.

Punch
in a mad, Hawaiian shirt.

'Sorry.
Sleeping.'

'Rawlins
sent me to get you. He wants to talk to everyone in the canteen right away.'

Jane
sagged against the doorframe for support.

'Reverend?
Are you okay?'

Jane
bent double and vomited over his shoes.

Punch
helped Jane to her feet. He saw the pill packets on her bunk.

'Oh,
Christ.'

He
helped Jane crouch over the toilet bowl. She vomited ice cream, then she vomited
chocolate, then she vomited green stuff she didn't recognise. She sat panting
on the floor.

Punch
counted the tablets to see how many she had swallowed.

'I
suppose you'll be all right,' he said. 'We should get you to Medical.'

'Fuck
that,' said Jane.

Punch
rinsed his shoes under the tap.

'Promise
you won't tell anyone,' she said.

'Let's
get you up.'

He
helped Jane to her feet. He waited in the corridor while she dressed.

'How
do I look?' she asked.

'Wipe your eyes.'

'What does Rawlins want?'

'I don't know, but it sounded serious.'

Crewmen
sat in a semicircle round the plasma TV in the canteen. Roughnecks. Bearded
frontiersmen. Oil trash. They watched BBC News bounced by Norsat in
geostationary orbit over Greenland.

Ridgeback
armoured cars parked outside hospitals. Gas-masked soldiers manning checkpoints
and barricades. Desert-yellow vehicles blocking each high street like an
occupying army.

Helicopter
footage of gridlocked traffic. Motorways at a standstill. Family cars jammed
with suitcases, furniture lashed to the roof.

A
food riot. Supply trucks stormed by refugees. Rifle butts. Warning shots. Sky
News correspondent in a flak jacket:

'...
approached the tent city and were literally overrun by hundreds of desperate
families that haven't eaten for days. The troops are struggling to contain the
situation, but as you can see
. . .'

'Martial
law, of sorts,' explained Rawlins, the installation manager. 'Some kind of
outbreak.'

Rawlins
was a burly guy with a white Santa Claus beard. His badges of office: a Con
Amalgam cap, Con Amalgam insulated mug, and a big bunch of keys clipped to his
belt.

'When
the fuck did this happen?' asked Nail, a diver with a bald head and bushy
lumberjack beard. A huge man. Six-six. Massive biceps.

'It's
been building up for a couple of months. You lot were watching the Cartoon
Network and blowing your wages on fucking PokerStars.'

'Terrorists?'

'No
idea.'

'Did
they mention Manchester?'

'I
honestly can't tell you what on earth is going on.'

'The
supply ship is still coming, yeah?'

'That's
why I asked you here. The ship is coming a month early. That's the big news.
Seven days, then we are out of here. Total evacuation. Pack our stuff and power
down.'

'We
still get paid for a full rotation, right?'

'That's
the least of your worries. The ship is due on Sunday morning. In the meantime
if any of you want to use the ship-to-shore, if you're worried about relatives,
then let me know. You can use my office. The signal is shaky but you are
welcome to try.'

Punch
distributed coffee and sandwiches. The crew watched TV in silence. They wanted
to see their home towns. Birmingham. Glasgow. York. Jane wanted to hear about
Cheltenham but the news channels were running the same images over and over.
Some kind of bloody plague was sweeping through the cities. Was it a
bio-weapon? A spontaneous mutation? Nobody knew. Most of the footage was shaky
phone clips mailed by viewers. Armed police suppressed supermarket riots.
Gangs fortified tower blocks against intruders, declared them a city state. The
Prime Minister called for courage, called on God. Studio pundits discussed
Ebola, AIDS, haemorrhagic fever.

Jane
joined Punch in the canteen kitchen and helped grate cheese. A steel room.
Counters, fryers, dishwashers and mixers. Smell of fresh bread.

'How
are you feeling?' asked Punch.

'Okay,'
said Jane.

'Want
to talk about it?'

'Not
really.'

'All
fucked up.'

'The
TV? I've seen snatches these past few days. I've been trying not to think about
it.'

'My
mother lives in Cardiff,' said Punch.

'The
centre?'

'Riverside.'

They
had glimpsed images of Cardiff on the news. Part of the town centre was
burning. A department store caught alight and the fire spread building to
building. Black smoke over the city rooftops. A church spire crumbled in a cascade
of rubble dust. There were no fire crews left to respond.

'She'll
be fine,' said Jane. 'People know what to do in this kind of situation. Fill
the larder, lock the front door and stay out of trouble.'

'I
should be there.'

'Three
days to Narvik. Four hours to Birmingham International.'

'Then
what? Doesn't exactly look like the trains are running.'

'Steal
a bike. Hitch a ride. You'll find a way.'

'Do
you have a family?' he asked.

'My
mother and sister live in Bristol.'

'Do
you think they are okay?'

'You
saw that riot on TV. Things are getting tooth and claw. My dad is long gone.
They have no one to fight for them.'

'Come
to Cardiff. We have a spare room.'

'I
couldn't.'

'Seriously.
We are going to touch down in a war zone. You'll need somewhere to go.'

Punch
lived in a storeroom at the back of the kitchen. He dragged a couple of
kit-bags from beneath his bunk and began to pack. Jane sat on a chair in the
corner and sipped black coffee.

Clothes
on the floor. Jeans so narrow Jane wouldn't be able to pull them past her
ankles.

'It
seems a bit premature,' said Punch. He stripped out of chef's whites and a blue
apron. 'I'll probably have to unpack half this stuff during the week. But I
just want to be gone.'

'You
like comics?' asked Jane. Posters of Batgirl, Ghost Rider, Spawn.

'That's
why I'm here. Six months, no distractions. I was going to draw my masterpiece.
Blast my way to the big-time. Brought my inks. Brought my board.'

'No
joy?'

'I
pissed away the time. Thing is, what does a hero look like these days? Muscles
and Lycra? Life isn't a contest of strength any more. Jobs, banks, taxes.
Boring social reality. You can't solve anything with a fist. Those years are
long gone.'