Outpost (23 page)

Ghost
checked the breech of his shotgun. A shell in the chamber. Safety set to Fire.

Punch
hefted a fire axe.

'Lock
the door behind us,' said Ghost.

Jane
removed the crowbar and cranked open the door. An empty corridor. Ghost and
Punch stepped inside.

'Good
luck,' said Jane, and heaved the door closed behind them. They heard a muffled,
metallic scrape as she slid the crowbar back in place, sealing them inside the
ship.

'All
right,' muttered Ghost. 'Quiet as we can.'

Ghost
checked a hand-drawn map. He had plotted a circuitous route to the engine room.
He wanted to avoid communal areas where infected passengers might congregate.
If the diseased passengers were truly mindless they would wander all over the
ship. But if they retained faint memories of life aboard the liner they would
gravitate towards the bars and restaurants.

They
hurried down narrow service corridors. Company slogans interspersed with
maritime lithographs.

Excellence is our watchword

'Ridiculous,'
said Ghost. 'Everything in English except the stuff that matters.'

They
passed the entrance of a health spa. The Neptune Wellness Centre. The poolside
lit cold, medicinal blue. Upturned loungers. Signs for steam rooms, massage suites,
herbal and Finnish saunas.

They
heard a faint rustling, flopping sound. Something was trapped at the bottom of
the empty spa pool making clumsy, spastic attempts to get out. The slapping
abruptly ceased. The unseen thing had sensed Punch and Ghost standing in the
doorway. It listened to them breathe.

Punch
took a step like he was going to investigate but Ghost tugged his sleeve and
motioned to keep walking.

Ivan
checked the chart room.

'There's
an oil heater back here.'

'Fire
it up.'

He
dragged the oil heater on to the bridge and lit it with a match.

'You
know, if we are going to heat this place, it might be a good idea to deal with
the captain. He could stink the place out.'

'Yeah,'
said Jane. 'Let's put him over the side.'

They
dragged the dead man by his boots. They hauled him across the deck. They lifted
him by his coat and toppled him over the railing. The captain splashed into the
sea. He floated face down for a couple of minutes, then his waterlogged coat
pulled him under the waves.

'Probably
ought to say something,' said Jane. 'Can't think what.'

'I
wouldn't feel too bad about it,' said Ivan. 'That's a better send-off than most
people get these days.'

The
oil heater burned with a blue flame. The bridge began to heat up. Jane sat back
in the captain's chair and unzipped her coat. Something smelled bad. She
sniffed her armpits. She stank.

She
threw Ivan her radio.

'Back
in a minute,' she said. 'Keep my seat warm.'

She
checked the officers' quarters. Name tags on each door.

Ingrid Markstrom

Krysta Zimny

She
pulled open cupboard drawers. Fresh thermal underwear. T-shirts. Socks.

A
bottle of mineral water next to the bed. Jane filled the sink, stripped and
washed. Little sachets of conditioner, body scrub and shampoo. The first time
she had washed her hair for weeks.

Toiletries
and make-up in the washstand cabinet. She caught her reflection as she closed
the cabinet door. She hadn't seen herself naked for a while. She was thinner.
Her collar bones were more defined. Her breasts had deflated and sagged.

One
of the attractions of Arctic life: it was pretty much asexual. Men and women
wore the same quilted cold-weather gear. No hierarchies of beauty and glamour
on a polar installation.

Jane
toyed with cosmetics. She drew gloss across her lips. It made her mouth seem
like a bloody wound.

Ghost
and Punch headed for a stairwell. Down nine levels.

'Mind
your step,' said Ghost. The temperature had dropped even further. The stairs
were glazed with ice. They were deep below the waterline.

MASKINRUMMET

The
engine room.

They
shut themselves inside and jammed the door with a wrench.

They
found themselves on a walkway looking down on massive drive machinery. Gas
turbines. Alternators. Four great motors mounted on rubber dampers, four great
manganese propeller shafts.

Ghost
took out his radio.

'We
made it. We're at the engine room.'

There
was a glass control booth at the end of the walkway.

'Let's
flick every switch,' said Ghost. 'See what happens.'

A
slow dragging sound from below the walkway.

'I
don't think we're alone down here,' said Punch.

The
guy must have been an engineer. His badge said
Hilmar Larsen.
He limped from behind one of the
huge W
ä
rtsil
ä
Vasa engines. He dragged his leg like his ankle was
broken. His right hand was spiked metal like an armoured gauntlet. The fabric
of his boiler suit was lumped and stretched by a strange, spinal deformity. His
face was bloody and swollen and his eyes were jet black.

'How's
it going down there, Hilmar?' asked Punch.

The
engineer looked upward and hissed. He slowly stumbled across the engine room
and up the steps to the walkway.

Punch
and Ghost backed away.

'Dude,
it would be great if you could stop right there.'

The
engineer reached the top of the steps and limped towards them, sliding along a
railing for support.

'Larsen,
if you can hear me, if you can understand my words, you need to stop.'

The
man continued to advance.

Punch
and Ghost backed into the control booth. Ghost shut the door and held it closed
with his foot. Punch helped brace the door with his shoulder.

Larsen
slammed against the glass. Ghost saw himself reflected in jet-black eyeballs.
The engineer hissed and spat. Spittle dribbled down the glass.

'Shoot
him,' said Punch.

'We
need the ammo. I'll open the door. You hit him with the axe.'

'All
right.'

'Ready?'

Ghost
opened the door.

Punch
stood back. He adjusted his grip on the axe. He held
it above his head like he was
about to whack a fairground test- your-strength machine.

'Last
chance, Hilmar,' he said. 'Can't let you come any closer.'

The
engineer got ready to lunge.

Punch
brought down the axe and cleaved the man's head in two. The engineer staggered
backward, out of the booth. He toppled on to the walkway, axe buried between
the two halves of his head. His legs danced a jig, last signals from a
scrambled brain.

They
stepped over the dead man and descended from the gantry to the floor of the
engine room.

'Flick
every switch you find,' said Ghost. 'Turn every light green.'

They
cranked dials and isolator breakers to On. Faint hum of current. Ghost took out
his radio.

'Raise
the anchor,' he told Jane. 'Let's get this thing going.'

Brief
warning klaxon. Turbines hummed then roared. The propeller shafts slowly began
to turn.

Jane
stood at the helm and watched the turbine rev needles rise from zero to full
power.

'Feel
that?' she called to Ivan. 'We're moving.'

'No
shit,' said Ivan. He was standing at the back of the bridge looking down into
the stairwell. Heavy impacts against the barricaded door. Jumbled furniture
began to shake and shift.

'Hate
to say it, but I think we woke the neighbours.'

Ghost
walked the floor of the engine room. Turbines roared.

He
checked an engine panel. He tapped a dial. A drop of blood splashed at his
feet. He looked up. The dead engineer was lying on the gantry above him. Blood
dripped through the grate.

'Better
clean that up,' said Ghost. 'Any fire blankets around?'

They
climbed the walkway. Ghost tugged the axe from the engineer's head. He crouched
and inspected the wound.

'His
brain is full of metal. Look.'

'I'll
take your word for it,' said Punch.

'Little
wires. Little filaments spread through his body. There's some coming out of his
nose.'

'Sure
he's dead?'

'Pretty
sure. Better bag him up.'

Ghost
wiped the axe blade on the engineer's leg.

They
wrapped the dead man in a couple of fire blankets and lashed his body with
flex. They threw the body from the gantry. The corpse lay by a wall.

'He'll
be okay down there for a while,' said Ghost. 'We'll put him over the side when
we get a chance.'

Ghost
hefted the axe.

'Mind
if I take this?' he asked. 'The gun is too loud. If I shoot, it will bring a
shipful of freaks down on us.'

Punch
found a big power drill. He revved the trigger a couple of times to check the
charge.

They
stood at the engine room door. Ghost removed the wrench.

'Ready?'

He
twisted the handles and pulled the hatch aside. An empty passageway.

'Okay.
Let's go.'

Jane
sat at the helm. She tried to make sense of the screens. At a guess: engine
output, fuel management, course correction.

She
turned the joystick. She slowly pushed the thrust levers forward. A
ball-compass mounted in the panel beside her rolled like an eye slowly looking
left. The Alstrom dynamic positioning system. The ship was turning east towards
the rig. It was exhilarating to think she could steer an object the size of a
mountain by the touch of her fingers.

Jane
dry-swallowed Dexedrine. Amphetamines were a basic Arctic survival tool. Rye kept
an extensive stock of stimulants locked in a trunk under her bed. Hoarded them
like a connoisseur. Treated them as her personal wine cellar.

Ivan
stood guard in the stairwell behind the bridge. He watched the door at the
bottom of the stairs. The steel hatch was wedged shut by a stack of chairs. He
could hear relentless pounding from the other side like someone was hurling
their bodyweight against the door.

He
searched for more furniture to wedge the hatch. He fetched a sofa from the
officers' quarters. He rolled it through the bridge.

'You
okay?' called Jane, over her shoulder. 'Need any help?'

'I'm
okay.'

He
tipped the sofa over the railing. It hit the barricade with a crash. Brief
respite from the pounding, then the impacts resumed.

Ivan
descended the stairs. He put his ear to the hatch. Scuffling. Grunting.

He
tried to reinforce the barricade, pile more furniture against the door.

'Got
a moment?' he yelled. 'I think they're going to break through.'

Chairs
shook and toppled. Ivan put his shoulder to the door. He strained to keep the
hatch closed. He blinked sweat from his eyes.

Jane
ran down the stairs and joined him at the barricade. She pushed against the
door.

'This
is no fucking good,' she said. 'Any more of those fire axes around? Maybe we can
wedge this thing closed.'

'Don't
know. Think I saw a toolbox in the purser's office.'

Jane
ran up the stairs.

Ivan
braced his back against the door. His boots slipped on the metal deck. The
barricade slowly began to collapse.

The
hatch was pushed ajar. Ivan snatched an extinguisher from the wall and directed
a jet of foam through the gap. He used the empty extinguisher to pound at
clawing, scrabbling fingers.

'I
need some help here,' he shouted up the stairwell. 'Jane? Jane, you there?
We're in some deep shit.'

Jane
vaulted down the steps holding a claw hammer. She flailed at the squirming
hand. The hammer sparked metal. She mashed fingers with heavy blows.

Jane
and Ivan threw themselves against the steel door and tried to slam it closed.
They heard bone crunch. They threw themselves at the door twice more. Blood
spurt. The grasping hand fell to the deck, cut through at the wrist.

Jane
cranked the hatch levers closed, and jammed them shut with the shaft of the
hammer.