Outpost (34 page)

She
lay waiting to see if the boat would shake itself to pieces. She waited to see
if the bolts and welds would hold. She waited to see if she would live or die.

She
wondered how long the storm would last. She checked the luminescent dial of her
watch. Seven hours of wind and rain.

It
felt like the waves were easing off. She switched on her flashlight. The
cardboard storage boxes had split open. The interior of the cabin was a jumble
of tins and cartons. Her sleeping bag was dusted with cornflakes.

She
wriggled to the roof hatch. She reached for the deadbolt. She hesitated. This
could be a big mistake. If the typhoon ripped the hatch from her hand the boat
would quickly become inundated and sink. Yet the waves seemed to be
diminishing. The boat was no longer hurled from side to side. Maybe the storm
had passed.

Nikki
released the deadbolt and lifted the hatch a fraction. Blast of frozen wind and
salt spray.

Flash
of lightning.

She
let her eyes adjust. A seething ocean. Surging, frothing waves.

Second
sheet of lightning.

Something
up ahead. Something big, oncoming, eclipsing the stars.

'Holy
fuck.'

A
massive wave, high as an office block.

She
slammed the hatch and hammered the deadbolts home. She threw herself on to the
bunk and curled tight.

Building
roar. The boat was rising, rising like an express elevator.

Brief
moment of balance at the summit of the wave, like a rollercoaster about to
plunge.

The
boat pitched nose-first. Smash impact. Fast tumble. The boat flipped end over
end. Nikki stayed foetal and protected her head as she was pelted with cans and
cartons.

Deceleration.
Slow spin, then calm and quiet.

She
pushed boxes and bags aside and sat up. A trickling sensation down her neck.
She took a pen torch from her pocket and switched it on. Blood on her neck. A
cut beneath her right ear. Nothing serious.

She
stretched. Her back was bruised. She sat in silence for a while, glad to be
alive. She pressed a sock to her ear to sop blood.

Wind
noise slowly began to ease.

A
trickling sound. Nikki sat forward. Steady, constant drip- drip.

She
kicked bags and boxes out of the way. A split in the hull. A cracked weld. A
steady stream of seawater.

She
stuffed a jacket against the crack and tried to stem the flow. Water sprayed
her face.

She
took Nail's dive knife from her pocket and tried to wedge fabric into the
fissure with the tip of the blade. No good.

Water
gathered at the bottom of the boat, covering her shoes. She threw open the roof
hatch and bailed with a tin cup.

She
tried to keep calm. If she allowed herself to panic, if she gave in to screaming
terror, she would die.

Brainwave.
She slapped a plastic plate over the leak and braced the plate tight in
position with a ski pole. Fierce jets of water sprayed from behind the plate
like sunrays. She hammered the pole into position. The leak slowed to a
dribble, then stopped.

Knee-deep
in freezing water. Bottles and bags floated around her. She bailed some more.

She
woke, damp and shivering. She ached. She stretched.

She
exhaled into a cupped hand. Her breath smelled like sewage. She found toothpaste
among the clutter. She squeezed paste on to her finger and rubbed it over her
teeth.

She
took out the radio.

'Rampart,
do you copy, over?'

It
took an hour to raise a reply.

'Rampart here
.'

A
faint voice. A murmur through hiss and crackle.

'Jane?
Is that you?'

'How's it going, Nikki
?'

'The
boat almost sank.'

'Say again? The boat sank
?'

'There
was a storm. I'm all right.'

'What happened to the boat, Nikki? What went wrong
?'

'It
was the welds. A big wave split the hull. If you build another boat, you'll
have to make it stronger. The waves out here are like mountains.'

'I'm losing you. You're passing out of range
.'

'I
just wanted to say goodbye.'

'Good luck, Nikki. God bless
.'

Nikki
unrolled global maritime charts. Depth contours. Tides, wrecks and buoys. She
had to be careful. The paper was wet and easy to rip.

She
examined ocean currents. A map of the Arctic covered in swirling arrows. She
was about to reach the Greenland Sea. She was caught in a current called the
Beaufort Gyre. Part of a bigger system of circular currents that meshed like
cogs and dictated transpolar drift. It would carry her south, then east to the
Norwegian coast. But it might take weeks.

She
was thirsty. She flipped open the hatch. She lowered the desalinator tube into
the sea and cranked the handle. Fresh water dribbled from the output tube. She
filled her canteen. It took an hour. Adrenalin was slowly ebbing away to be
replaced by boredom and despair.

Nikki
passed land. A serrated ridge on the pale horizon. A seagull wheeled high above
the boat. She checked her map. She was passing the island of Longyearbyen. It
was Norwegian territory. A barren rock. Russians used to mine coal. Whatever
sparse population once scratched a living on the island had probably long since
been evacuated, but there might be stores.

The
sea surrounding Norwegian territory was supposed to be closed. AWACS planes
were guiding a flotilla of gunboats. But she hadn't seen any planes and she
hadn't seen any boats. She watched for the winking red strobes of high-altitude
aircraft, but the skies were empty.

What
would happen if she were confronted by a gunboat?

Would
they tell her to turn round and head the other way? Would they take her
prisoner? Drag her off to an internment camp? Most likely they would open up
with a deck-mounted .50 cal and blow her from the water.

She
found tins but the labels had come off. She shook them. A rattle. Chick peas.
She couldn't find the tin opener. She stabbed at the tin with a nail file, but
barely made a scratch.

She
rationed her food. Three raisins for breakfast. A Ritz cracker with a scoop of
peanut butter for dinner.

It
took a long time to pump fresh water. A lot of muscle power. She filled a
two-litre bottle. She allowed herself a swig every hour.

She
drifted down the coast of Longyearbyen. Weak daylight. She found a pair of
rubber-coated binoculars among the clutter below deck. She scanned the shore.
Bleak volcanic crags. No birds, no grass, no life.

She
looked south. A smudge against the sky. Was it a cloud or was it smoke?

The
boat slowly rounded a headland. She saw the smouldering ruins of a wooden
cabin. The roof had partially collapsed.

A
fisherman's hut? Shelter built by whalers?

Nikki
shouted towards the shore.

'Hello?
Can anyone hear me?'

The
boat drifted past the distant house.

'Hello?
Is anyone there?'

Movement.
A figure in the cabin doorway. Maybe someone scavenging supplies.

'Hey.
Hey, over here.'

She
waved her arms.

'Hey.
Hello.'

The
figure looked her way.

She
took binoculars from a hook near the hatch. Focus, re- focus. Blood and metal.
The guy had no jaw. His tongue flapped loose. He was joined by two women. Their
faces were a mess of spines. All three wore furs streaked in blood. They stood
at the end of a wooden jetty, reaching for the distant boat with scabrous,
clawing fingers.

Nikki
let the current carry her south.

Morning.
The southern sky was tinged azure.

Nikki
saw a white dot on the horizon. A fragment of iceberg? A sail? The object grew closer.
It was a fin. The tail of a plane. An Air France 747 floating low in the water.

Nikki
drew alongside the massive passenger jet. She jumped on to the wing and slammed
the barbed spike of the anchor into a riveted seam. She walked back and forth
on the wing, boots crunching on the salt-crusted metal. She hadn't walked a
single step for weeks. She spent each day crouched in the cockpit and, once a
day, she crawled across the hull of the boat to check the mast and sail.

Nikki
wiped a porthole with her sleeve. She saw, through the misted glass, rows of
empty seats. She guessed the plane had been turned back from US airspace and
run out of fuel halfway back to Europe. The aircraft ditched and the passengers
used the evacuation slides as rafts. The last cabin staff to abandon the jet
must have shut the hatch behind them out of domestic instinct. The plane was
hermetically sealed, a steel bubble. It retained just enough air in its cargo
hold, empty fuel tanks and passenger compartments to keep it above water. It
would float for months, maybe years, riding out the squalls.

Nikki
pushed the wing hatch with her shoulder. The rubber seals gave way with a
squelch. The interior of the plane was lit by weak daylight shafting through
the starboard portholes.

Economy
class. Rows of empty seats. A tangle of oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling.
Luggage was scattered in the aisles. No blood, no bodies.

Club
and first class were both empty. Attaché cases and laptops had been left neatly
on the seats as if the passengers would soon return and resume their journey.

The
cockpit was empty. Banks of dead instrumentation and a view of empty ocean.

Nikki
sought out the galley at the back of the plane. She hoped to find soft drinks,
cartons of long-life milk and maybe biscuits.

She
found cartons of orange juice in an overturned stewardess trolley. The cartons
were frozen solid. She ripped away packaging. A yellow brick of juice. She
smashed the brick in the galley basin and sucked shards as she explored the
plane.

She
noticed one of the toilets was engaged. She casually kicked the door, then
jumped back when a voice said, '
Don't come in.'

'Jesus,'
said Nikki, addressing the bathroom door. 'How long have you been aboard?'

'
Leave. Just leave.'
A
male voice
.

'Look,
there's no need to hide. There's just me. I'm on my own. Come on out.'

'The door's jammed. It's staying jammed. Don't come in
.'

'Please.
Come out.'

'No.'

'Look,
this is stupid.'

'Fuck you
.'

'The
plane ditched. You know that, right? There's no one on board but you.'

'I'm not leaving
.'

'You're
in the middle of the fucking ocean. Everyone took to the rafts. You're alone.
And this plane is barely afloat. If it takes on even a cupful of water it'll
sink to the bottom and take you with it.'

'
Just fuck off
.'

'Well,
shit. I'm not going to argue with you.'

Nikki
found a pallet of bottled water in a galley locker. She stacked the bottles by
the hatch.

She
found a wash-bag and baby wipes among the scattered luggage and locked herself
in a club-class lavatory. She stripped out of her hydro-suit and wiped herself
down. She brushed her teeth and spat. She kept her lock-knife open on the edge
of the basin in case her unseen companion decided to emerge from his den.

She
found fresh clothes in a suitcase. Socks and underwear. She tried to repair her
cracked and wrinkled hands with moisturiser.

She
crouched on the wing and tried the radio. She hoped the metal plane would act
as an antenna and boost the signal.

She
couldn't raise Rampart. It was out of range, over the horizon and lost in
perpetual night.

Nikki
scanned the wavebands. A flickering LED. The radio was trying to lock on to a
ghost signal.

'. . .
God's help . . . terrible deci . . . arkest day
. . !

The
voice died away.

Nikki
loaded food and water on to the boat, then walked to the lavatory at the back
of the plane. She knocked on the toilet door.