Outpost (35 page)

'This
is your last chance. I'm leaving.'

'
Bye
.'

'Seriously.
I'm heading south. You could join me. If you stay here you'll die.'

'Then leave me. You can do that. You've done it before
.'

'Leave
you?'

'Yeah. Save your own ass. After all, everyone has a
talent
.'

'Who
are you?' demanded Nikki. 'What's your name?'

No
reply.

'Alan?
Is that you?'

Nikki
kicked at the door. Four blows then the lock splintered. The cubicle was empty.

'Have
I gone insane?' asked Nikki, interrogating her reflection. 'Is that the deal?'

'Let's just say,'
said her dead boyfriend's voice,'
that your perceptions have undergone a radical
adaptation
.'

Nikki
enjoyed VIP luxury. She sat in a club seat. A porthole gave her a view of open
sea. She wrapped herself in airline blankets and reclined. She clamped
in-flight headphones to warm her ears.

'This
place is a welcome piece of luck,' she murmured as she snuggled down to sleep.

'Yeah,'
said Alan. '
God
crashed this plane just for you
.'

She
pulled a TV from a slot in the arm of the chair. A little screen on an
armature. She jacked her headphones and selected
Brief Encounter
from the menu. She dozed as the
movie played.

'You realise that screen is completely blank,'
said Alan.
'The plane is dead. Nothing works'

'But
I like the movie.'

'Jesus. It's like that joke. My wife thinks she's a
chicken. I'd take her to the doctor, but we need the eggs'

'That's
fucking ironic. My dead boyfriend posing as the voice of sanity.'

'You think you left me behind? You're stuck with me as
long as you live. Bonnie and Clyde. Sonny and Cher. I'll look after you, until
the end of your days'

'Could
you get me back to Rampart?' asked Nikki. 'Could you master the boat? The
ropes, the sail? If I wanted to get back, could you show me the way?'

'I
can take you anywhere you need to go, Nikki.'

She
sat cross-legged on the wing of the jet and ate crackers.

She
saw a red glow on the skyline, a fine aurora. It was the wrong time of day, the
wrong point of the compass for sunset.

They
must have nuked the cities. Ahead of her, beyond the southern horizon, Europe
was burning.

Self-awareness
came and went like a weak radio signal. Stuttering, time-lapse moments of
consciousness. It began in the main lobby. She was sipping Scotch. She hated
Scotch ever since she vomited Macallan out of her nose during a college
drinking game. She retched at the smell of it. A shot glass full of bile. But
now she drank single malt like it was Coke. She couldn't taste it and it didn't
make her drunk.

Three
infected people in front of her. Two brass-buttoned waiters and an old lady
welded to a walking frame.

Blackout.

Two
naked old guys and a chef.

Blackout.

Two
officers and a cleaner fused to a broom.

Rye
smiled. It was like pulling the arm of a slot machine. Three different fruit,
every time.

One
moment Rye was sitting at the blackjack table, checking her cards, nudging
chips with the rotted club that used to be her hand. Next moment she found
herself standing in a deserted coffee bar staring out of a porthole at the
stars. She wondered how much time had passed. The next instant she found
herself standing in one of
Hyperion's
little gift shops cramming fistfuls of shortbread
into her mouth then spitting the biscuits because they tasted dry as dust. Time
passed in a series of jumpcuts, each lucid moment met with anger and
frustration. Why was she, among all the shambling, leprous passengers, one of
the few cursed with long moments of wakefulness in which she experienced the
full horror of her condition?

Rye
checked the diesel tanks. She descended a ladder. Her boots splashed,
ankle-deep. The floor of the fuel room was wet with octane. A flare would be
enough, or a struck match.

She
patted her pockets, tried to find a lighter. Next moment she couldn't remember
who she was or why she was standing in a strange, wide room. She stood staring
into space for hours, fuel slowly rising round her legs.

She
found herself pounding a door. Infected passengers jostled around her, scraping
and clawing at the metal.

She
backed away from the crowd.

The
hatch separated the Rampart crew from a savage horde that wanted to tear them
apart.

Rye
tried to drive the passengers back. She grabbed collars and pulled them away,
but they immediately returned to punch and kick at the door. She blasted the
crowd with a carbon extinguisher. Foam jetted over faces and bodies. The
infected passengers were oblivious. They dripped white. Rye battered heads with
the spent extinguisher. They shrugged off the blows.

Blackout.

Rye
found herself among the group once more, hammering and scratching the metal.

Rye
snapped alert. She found herself standing in front of a steel hatch, hand
gripped around the release handle. She was alone. A remote lower deck.

D
Ö
RR 26

She
backed off. She had learned the layout of the ship from multilingual
you-are-here wall charts mounted in each corridor to help passengers navigate
their way from one theme-bar to another. Hatch 26 would lead to a passageway
beneath the officers' quarters.

She
rested her forehead against the cold metal and fought the overwhelming
meat-lust that wanted to put her beyond the door and heading for the Rampart
crew. She was lonely. She wanted to see Jane and Ghost once more. But she
couldn't trust herself. She would seize them. She would rip and tear.

You
should turn round, she told herself. Turn around and head the other way.

Rye
cranked the handle and pulled the door ajar. She hesitated. The Rampart crew
would have sought out every entrance to the officers' quarters. They would not
have left the door undefended. They would have taken steps to protect
themselves.

Rye
squinted through the crack. She could see a red canister taped to the back of
the hatch at eye level. A grenade, trip-wire pulled taut.

Rye
squeezed her arm through the gap and gripped the grenade, careful not to
dislodge the pin. She ripped the grenade free, snapping the thread. She examined
the case. AH-M14 thermite grenade.

She
put her eye to the gap and studied the barricade beyond the door. She could see
a jumble of furniture. Desks and office chairs. A couple of filing cabinets.
She could also see a couple of fine nylon threads, like wisps of cobweb. More
grenades rigged around the doorway. If she opened the door wide she would have
three seconds' grace before blowtorch heat seared flesh from her bones.

Rye
sealed the hatch.

She
wandered through the ship. She followed a draught of Arctic wind until she
reached the gash ripped in
Hyperion's
prow by the collision with the rig. An evacuation
sign, a running man fleeing flames, pointed to where jagged, ice-dusted metal
framed the night sky.

Rye
stepped over buckled floor plates. She stood in the great wound and looked out
at the stars, the sea, the lunar crags of the island.

There
had been rumours. Months ago, Jane and Punch had returned to the rig from the
island with crates. They had visited the site of a seismic research station and
returned with some kind of munitions. The secret revealed: boxes of thermite
grenades.

The
grenades were not designed to explode and spit shrapnel like conventional
anti-personnel ordnance. Once triggered, they burned at four thousand degrees
for a full minute. The brief nova-heat could turn an engine block to a puddle
of liquid metal in seconds. Arctic drill teams used them to melt quickly
through permafrost.

Would
it hurt if she lay down, pulled the pin and quickly wedged the grenade beneath
her head like a pillow? Three, maybe four seconds of unimaginable pain as flesh
crisped and flaked from her skull, then her brain would fizz and boil away. Her
thoughts and memories would be vapour.

Do
it, she told herself, for the sake of the Rampart crew. Do it for them.

The
diesel tanks. A steady gush of fuel. Rye descended a ladder and waded
knee-deep. She held the grenade. No more excuses. All she had to do was stand
between the huge fuel tanks, wreathed in diesel vapour, and pull the pin. The blast
would measure in megatons.

She
hooked the grenade ring with her finger. What about the Rampart crew? She shook
her head, tried to think straight. The guys were a couple of floors above her.
If she detonated the grenade they would burn.

She
looked down at the red cylinder in her hand. She was tired. She just wanted to
sleep.

Rye
woke. She lifted her head from a table. Green felt.
House must stand on 17.
She looked around. The casino.
The blackjack table. The game.

'Welcome
back,' said the dealer. He smiled with cracked and bloody lips. His face had
begun to disintegrate. Skin hung in strips. 'I thought we'd lost you. Thought
your lights were out for good. Well. Maybe tomorrow, if you're lucky. It surely
won't be much longer.'

He
skimmed a couple of playing cards across the table. Rye didn't bother reading
her hand. She pushed a couple of chips towards the centre.

'Not
going to check your cards?' he asked. 'Dancing to the music of chance?'

He
drew seven. Bust.

Rye
gestured to the empty seats around her.

'So
the others all turned?'

'One
by one. I'm glad for them, but I can't help asking, why not me? Why am I left
behind?'

'The
breaks.'

'Those
fucking breaks. It's just you and me now. The living dead.'

'I
feel like I've drawn the short straw all my life. Forgive the self-pity. I just
want it to be done.'

'It'll
happen, sister. Don't you worry.'

'I'm
scared. I want to do something, take steps, if you know what I mean. But I have
to admit, I'm scared.'

The
dealer gestured to his legs. Rye craned to see beneath the table. Metal
tendrils had burst from the dealer's shoes. They had punctured the carpet and
fused with the deck plate beneath. It looked like he had taken root.

'Sadly,
I'm not as mobile as I was. If I could get out of this chair I'd jump over the side.'

Rye
took the grenade from her pocket and placed it on the table.

'I
found this. I don't have the courage to use it.'

'Mind
if I take it from you?'

'Be
my guest.'

Rye
slid the grenade across the table. The dealer examined it like a barstool drunk
contemplating the bottom of his shot glass.

'Obliged
to you.'

'Thank
you for your company these past few days,' said Rye. 'It's been a comfort.'

'Good
luck, Liz.'

Rye
woke. She was sitting on a bed. Whose bed? She was in a third-class cabin.
Cramped. Trashed by a previous occupant. Clothes and coins on the floor.

Blood
on the bed sheets. Whose blood? Hers? The blood was black and old.

She
stood up. A monster in the mirror. A face weeping metal. Eyes behind a mask of
spines. She smashed the mirror with a grotesque club-hand.

Rye
woke. Silver walls. She was standing in one of the walk-in freezers. A mouthful
of rotten meat. A big slab of ribs, furred green, hung in front of her on a
hook. Bite marks on the ribs. Rye spat half-chewed fat and splintered bone on
to the floor. No substitute for fresh sinew, for sinking her teeth into warm
flesh.

She
turned to leave, but jerked to a stop. Her left hand was frozen to the wall.
How long had she stood catatonic? Her clothes were stiff with ice. She tugged
her hand away from the metal. Skin tore. No pain. A palm-print glued to the
wall.