Outpost (27 page)

Rye
pulled back the sheet.

'Fucking
hell,' said Jane, covering her mouth.

A
flayed body. Jane couldn't tell if it had been male or female. Skin and muscle
stripped away. A skeletal frame of bone and sinew. The body was still strapped
to the table. Hands grasped. It twisted and squirmed like it was trying to sit
up.

'My
God. How can it be alive?'

'He's
dying,' said Rye. 'He was stumbling around out there dressed as a flamenco
dancer. Blood loss and trauma are killing him as sure as they would a normal
person. But it seems to be taking days. These filaments. This stuff embedded in
gristle and bone. Definitely metal. It can be magnetised. But it seems to grow
like hair. As far as I can tell it radiates from the central nervous system.
All this stuff wrapped round his legs and arms can be traced back to his spine.
And look at his head.'

Jane
stood over the flayed man. The bloody skull-face watched her approach. Lipless
jaws snapped and gnashed. Grinning, biting.

'More
metal, see? Lots more, centred round the brain stem. Seems pretty obvious we
are dealing with some kind of super- parasite. This isn't a man. This is a
metal organism wearing a skin suit. Limited lifespan. Slowly kills the host.
It's like ivy round a tree. God knows where it is from. Tough to kill. I gave
one of them a dose of Librium. Should have been fatal. Didn't seem to bother
him much. These things have the nervous system of a cockroach.'

Rye
stood back and folded her arms.

'We
have no alternative but to destroy the carrier. This is a terminal illness.
Nobody will recover. That much is clear. Memories, personality. All gone. So we
don't have to feel bad about killing them. It's pest control. It's not murder.
Grenade, if you have one. Otherwise, a shot in the head will kill them stone
dead. If you shoot them in the gut, if you blow off an arm or leg, they will
keep trucking long enough to bite a chunk out of you. Headshot. Every time.'

'You're
wrong,' said Jane. 'Something is left. Something remains.'

Jane
returned to the priest. She opened the Bible.

'In
the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and God said: "Let
there be light . . . "'

Father
David thrashed and snarled, then slowly settled like he was soothed by a
lullaby.

'See?
He remembers.'

'You
don't know for sure,' said Rye.

'No,
I can tell. He remembers the words.'

'We
have to find out everything we can about these creatures. We can't afford to be
sentimental.'

Jane
left. She came back with a shotgun. She put the barrel to the priest's head. He
sniffed it.

'It's
all right, Patrick.'

She
blew his head off. Nothing above the neck but a flap of burning scalp. She shot
the three remaining specimens. Lumps of brain tissue, flash-fried by gunpowder,
lay on the floor and steamed.

'Clean
up this shit and scrub the room down,' said Jane. She pressed the shotgun to
the chest of Rye's lab coat. The hot barrel burned a scorch ring. 'You bring
any more of these fucks aboard I will personally execute you on the spot. You
think I'm kidding? Try me. Just fucking try me.'

Rye
locked the door of her room. She sat on the bed. She shook a twist of foil from
the battery compartment of her bedside clock. She tapped the powder into a
spoon and cooked the mixture over a Zippo flame.

She
shot up. She threw the hypo in the sink, lay back and relished the warm rush of
well-being. A familiar sensation. She had taken the job on the rig to break an
addiction to codeine. Seven years of general practice had passed in a
blissed-out haze. It was a relief to give in to it once more. It felt like
coming home.

Rye
examined her left hand. The tip of her index finger was numb and starting to
blacken. When did she become infected? Maybe it was out on the ice when she
stunned the priest and tied him up. Maybe it was when she lashed him to the
table.

She
used a shoelace as a tourniquet. She stood at the sink with a pair of bolt
cutters. She positioned the infected finger between the blades. This, she
thought in a dreamy way, is going to hurt like a motherfucker.

Later,
she sat in the canteen and watched scrolling interference on television. Punch
asked if she was feeling okay.

'Fine,'
she murmured, pushing her bandaged hand deeper into her coat pocket. 'Walking
on sunshine.'

Wednesday
28 October

I
dressed and re-dressed my mutilated finger. I examined the wound every fifteen
minutes. As far as I could tell from TV bulletins I saw in the canteen, there
were no reported cases of recovery or remission. This illness is certain death.
Yet I hoped for a reprieve. Perhaps I had a chance. Maybe I amputated the
finger in time to halt the spread of the disease. Maybe I would be the first to
get lucky and cure myself of infection.

Nothing
for nine hours. Then the first glint of metal among the raw flesh. I probed the
scabrous wound with tweezers. A metal spine growing out of bone. I jammed the
stump of my finger between the bloody bolt cutters and cut it down to the
knuckle. I bound the wound and passed out. When I woke, my entire hand had
begun to necrotise.

Metal
spines protrude from my palm like fine splinters. My hand feels heavy and numb,
but otherwise I am in no discomfort. Codeine. Percodan. I'm so stoned I could
walk through fire right now and not feel a thing. I keep my hand sheathed in a
glove to avoid detection. I am, of course, infectious. If my illness were
discovered I would be quarantined; however I prefer to die on my own terms.

The
sea surrounding Rampart has started to freeze. The refinery will soon be joined
to the island by an ice-bridge. The horde of infected
Hyperion
passengers crowding at the
shoreline will be able to reach the rig. If they manage to board the refinery
they will roam the passageways ravening for blood. I suspect they will leave me
alone. They will take a sniff and decide I am one of their own. I will walk
around unmolested while they rip the Rampart crew limb from limb.

This
afternoon I helped Rajesh Ghosh and Reverend Blanc cut ladders and stairs from
each refinery leg using oxyacetylene gear. The platform lift is now the only
means of descending to the ice.
Hyperion
passengers may congregate beneath the refinery, hungry for fresh meat, but they
will be unable to reach the crew.

I
try to face death with stoic detachment but, let's face it, my state of
Buddhistic serenity is the result of heavy doses of morphine rather than any
hard-won wisdom. I shoot up every couple of hours. I have a shoe box full of
used hypos hidden beneath my bunk. There aren't many syringes left. Enough to
last the next few days. If, in months to come, the Rampart crew need to inject
medication they will have to rinse and sterilise a used hypodermic. But that's
their problem.

The
sensation of snuggling warmth, the Wash I used to call it, feels like coming
home. It took me years to quit. Resolution and relapse. I underwent a full year
of detox to win back my licence to practise. I lost my house, my child, my job.
I had to work at a supermarket. Swiping groceries sixty hours a week just to
make the rent on a one-bedroom flat. It was a mercy I wasn't struck off
altogether. But I suppose it doesn't matter now. Might as well enjoy the buzz.

During
my time at Kings College I used to watch lung cancer patients in nightgowns and
pyjamas wheel their drip-stands out of the hospital back entrance. They would
congregate on a loading bay and savour a cigarette. Why quit? The worst had
already happened. The damage was already done.

Last
night I felt compelled to go outside, stand at a railing and face the island.
Forty below, but I barely felt the cold. I stood there a long while and
listened to the whispering voices in my head. Insinuating murmurs in my
back-brain, faint like a weak radio signal, too faint to make out words. I have
often suspected those infected with this disease share some kind of hive mind.
These past few days I have often stood at the railing and watched infected
Hyperion
passengers mass at the shoreline.
From what little I've seen they flock like birds. They move as a crowd. Each
individual is slow and stupid, but when massed together they become a
formidable tide.

A
crate of booze has been left in the canteen. Vodka, tequila, cognac. Dregs left
over from the riotous toga party, along with dried sausage rolls and crackers
greased with cream cheese. Ghost gave a speech at the party. He thanked Jane
for bringing
Hyperion
to the island. A transparent
attempt to win back the approval of the crew. Jane seized a cruise liner, the
most absurdly perfect transport we could hope to find, and managed to wreck it.
I'm surprised they didn't build a gangplank and push her into the sea. Yet the
crewmen seem strangely passive. The memory of their old lives has faded to such
an extent they can't remember anything but the refinery. Nothing else seems
real. They haunt the corridors like the sailors of the
Flying Dutchman.
They have each retreated into
their own personal psychosis.

Mal
often sits in front of the TV, watching static and tattooing the back of his
hands. Jailhouse method. Biro ink pricked beneath the skin with a bent safety
pin. He already had tattoos, but following an acid-burn from spilled caustic
soda his knuckles spelt LOVE and HAT. He re-inked the letters and added spider-
web decoration.

Gus
has moved into the old gym. Camped among freezing treadmills and steppers. He
has painted a bleak moonscape on the wall. He calls the place Tranquillity. He
affects a posh accent and has begun to call himself the Duke of Amberley. It
began as a joke, but he genuinely gets angry if he isn't addressed as Your
Lordship. The crew seem happy to comply. There is a tacit understanding that
they all need a holiday from sanity. I wish I could stick around and see how it
plays out.

I
suppose I shall endure this illness as long as I can, then jump in the sea. But
what if I don't die? What if lack of oxygen and skull-crushing pressure don't
kill me? I might find myself stumbling round the ocean floor in absolute
darkness. My lungs would be full of water. I couldn't even scream.

I
visited Nail in his room this evening. We made a trade. His arm looks better. I
asked him about Nikki. No one has seen her for a while. He said I should go
fuck myself.

Thursday
29 October

Jane
knocked on my door this morning. I was still in bed. I hid my infected arm
beneath the blanket then invited her inside.

She
persists in her attempts to redeem me. I'm not quite sure what form this
redemption is supposed to take. Maybe I should fall weeping and hug her knees.
I like her. She's a sweet girl. Yet she is still young and naive enough to
believe people help one another. She has yet to look out of the window and
realise the extent to which this great white nothing reflects our personal
reality. We are all serving a life sentence. Trapped in the confines of our
skull.

Jane
and Ghost have concocted a plan. An ice shelf has spread from the island coast.
It stretches towards the refinery. The sight of infected passengers jostling at
the water's edge has banished all compassion and has convinced Jane to embark
on an eradication programme. Ideally she and Ghost would like to move through
Hyperion
room by room systematically
executing passengers, but they don't have enough ammunition. Instead they want
to visit the old Russian bunker on the island. Ghost says there is equipment
stored on the lower levels that may help exterminate a swathe of the infected.
He refuses to be drawn further.

No
one from the rig, as far as I know, has ever fully explored the bunker. It is a
vast, multi-level catacomb intended to be a repository for nuclear waste. A
relic of the militarised Arctic, the long cold war stand-off. Decades of spy
plane over-flights, prowling submarines and incursion alerts.

Ghost
undertook a brief expedition last year. He sprayed arrows on the walls so he
could retrace his route to the entrance. He says he saw tiers of rooms that
might have been intended for offices and dormitories. He says there is
abandoned mining equipment parked in some of the deeper caverns. Rock drills as
big as a house. Conveyors to carry rubble to the surface.

We
leave the rig in two hours. We will ride the zodiac a kilometre north to avoid
Hyperion
passengers standing at the
shore. We will travel across land to the bunker, lock the steel doors behind us
and seal ourselves inside.

I
once visited the Valley of the Kings. Part of my self-imposed detox programme.
A cheap package holiday. Camels and sun cream. Escape my cravings, my fucked-up
life. I signed up for a coach party. A day trip to explore the tombs of the
Pharaohs.