Outpost (39 page)

'They
nuked the cities. The armies. The governments. Scorched earth. Whatever else I
dreamed, that much was real.'

'So
if we head south we'll hit a radiation cloud. Is that why you came back?'

'I
honestly don't know for sure. I was at sea, and then I was here. I can't
explain it.'

'But
where's the boat?'

'The
hull was crushed by ice as I approached the island. It's at the bottom of the
sea.' 'Shit.'

'Maybe
I didn't come back at all. Maybe I'm dead. Maybe I'm a ghost.'

'You're
sure they nuked the cities?'

'A
cleansing fire.' 'I'm from Manchester. You know that, right?'

'Rubble.
Plutonium dust. It'll be safe to go back and take a look in a half million
years or so.'

'Fucking
ironic. Jane and Ghost. Plotting how to get home, day and night. And it's all
gone.'

'Are
you going to tell them?' asked Nikki.

'We
don't exactly get along.'

'My
turn to wonder. Why are you and Gus skulking in this bunker when you could be
back aboard Rampart? Did they run you off with a pitchfork?'

'Like
I say. We don't get along.'

'Well,
that's a shame. They've got drugs and dressings. Gus will die without them.'

'So
why did you come back to this island? Okay: they nuked the cities. Plenty of
other places you could have gone. Plenty of wilderness. Why here? This place is
death.'

'I
love it. I truly love it.'

'Queen
of the Damned. Jesus. This gulag has driven you batshit.'

An
air shaft. Nail looked up. Massive turbine blades dripped rust.

'I
bet they were going to garrison whole armies down here.'

'This
is my little camp,' said Nikki.

The
installation manager's office. A leather chair and a desk. A faded Soviet flag
and a little plaster bust of Lenin.

A
mural. Farm workers driving tractors and combine harvesters across a golden
field of wheat. They gazed towards Lenin, who stood on the horizon shooting
rays like the rising sun.

Nail
examined a photograph on the wall.

'Brezhnev.
Early eighties.'

Scattered
tins on the desk.

'Like
I said. Ate them all, I'm afraid.'

Nail
picked through wrappers and cans. He found a muesli bar.

'Hey,'
said Nikki. 'How did I miss that?'

Nail
split the bar in half.

'What
about Gus?' asked Nikki. 'What about his share?' Nail didn't reply. He crammed
the bar in his mouth. He dropped crumbs. He picked them from the floor and ate
them.

They
found a couple of Russian Kraz trucks and a bulldozer parked in a cavern. The
vehicles were slowly crumbling to rust. Nikki found a copy of
Hustler
in the cab. She tucked it into
her coat pocket. 'Kindling?'

'Toilet
paper.'

'Maybe
there's some petrol in these tanks,' said Nail.

Nikki
kicked a fuel tank bolted to the back of a cab. Dull gong. Empty.

'What
about guns?' asked Nail. 'Find any weapons? Any old AKs lying around?'

'No.
I looked. There's nothing.'

There
was a leather jacket balled up on the bulldozer seat. Nikki checked the pockets.

'Give
me your knife,' she said. She cut a small strip of leather and folded it into
her mouth like a stick of gum. She cut a strip for Nail.

'Go
ahead. Chew. It'll fool your stomach. Keep the hunger pangs at bay.'

'Not
exactly a permanent solution.'

'It
buys us time.'

They
returned to the bunker entrance with armfuls of wood. They dumped the wood on
the floor and fed the fire.

'Miss
me?' asked Nail.

'Fuck
you.' Gus smiled. He was shivering.

'Are
you all right?'

'I
need to get back to Rampart, otherwise I'm a dead man. They've got morphine.
They've got antibiotics.'

Nail
thought it over. Would Jane shoot him if he tried to board Rampart? Probably.

'Their
medical supplies were pretty depleted,' said Nail. 'No guarantee they could
help.'

'At
least they've got hot food and water. I don't want to die on this concrete
floor, stinking of my own shit. I want to be warm and clean. I want to die in a
bed.'

Nikki
dragged a snowmobile to the bunker door. She stood on the saddle and chipped
away at ice accumulated at the top of the doorframe. She threw Nail and Gus a
chunk of icicle to suck.

'So,'
said Nail. 'Duke of Amberley. What was that all about?'

'Amberley.
West Country. A cute village on the side of a hill. That's where I'll go when
we get home.'

'Yeah?'

'Everyone
has their heaven. Amberley is mine.' 'Right.'

'There's
a house at the end of a long, country lane. I glimpsed it through trees. Ivy
and Tudor beams. That's where I'll go.'

'But
Duke?'

'Our
old lives are gone. We can be whoever we like. A lord. A duke. A prince. Who is
left to say No?'

Gus
fell asleep an hour later.

Nail
put more wood on the fire. He took the strip of chewed leather from his mouth
and threw it into the flames. The leather crisped and curled. Nikki sat on the
other side of the fire.

'Hell
of a way to check out,' said Nail. 'Stuck down this hole, swigging our own
piss.'

Nikki
ignored him.

'So
how about it?' asked Nail. 'Do you actually want to live? Do you actually want
to get out of here? Or is this your new home? I know why I am hiding in this
fucking mausoleum. But I don't fully understand why you came back to the
island, and I don't understand why you are lurking down here instead of back
aboard Rampart. You deserve desolation? You deserve hell? Is that honestly the
reason?' She didn't reply.

'Canada,'
said Nail. 'That's what I reckon. If a person took one of the snowmobiles they
could get a long way before the fuel ran out. They would need stuff from Rampart,
though. Food. Better clothes. You could tag along. Surely you don't want to
stay here and starve?'

Nikki
pushed more wood into the fire.

'I
wish you could understand what we have here,' she said. 'Every one of you
aboard Rampart was on the run, fleeing the world. Why are you all so anxious to
get back home? It's all here. Everything we need. You just need to embrace the
silence. Let it enter your head, fill your thoughts.'

'Everything
we need? We're sitting here eating a leather jacket. You want to join those
fucks out there? Get yourself bitten or something? Is that your big plan?
Whatever. You can stay here if you like. Hang out with your invisible friend.
But I want to live. I don't want to die in this sewer. I want to live.'

They
sat in silence. Nail winced and clutched his stomach. Cramps. He stretched.
Hunger had intensified from vague discomfort to an acute, stabbing pain. He
hated himself for what he was about to do.

He
struggled to his feet, careful not to look at Gus. He took a burning chair leg
from the fire.

'I'm
going for a walk,' he said. 'I'm going to look around for anything useful. I
might be gone a while.'

Nikki
nodded and smiled.

He
headed into the darkness of the tunnel mouth leaving Nikki alone with Gus.

Nail
returned an hour later. He sat by the campfire. He looked into the flames.

Nail
was a murderer. He had stabbed Mal in the throat, then crouched over the dying
man and begged forgiveness. He tried
to
stem the flow, got sprayed as he tried to patch the slit jugular with bloody
fingers.

Scrubbing
in the shower. Blood on white porcelain. Scrubbing for hours.

Now
this. Step by step into hell.

He
gestured to Gus's immobile body.

'How's
he doing?'

'Dead.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'Well,'
he heard himself say, 'then I suppose he won't mind.' He sat and stared into
the flames.

Nikki
flicked open her knife, slit the fabric of Gus's trouser leg and cut strips of
flesh from his thigh.

They
roasted flesh over the campfire. Nail wept as he ate.

'There's
no reason all four of us should travel to the island,' said Jane. 'I'll take
Punch for company.'

'I
should go,' said Ghost. 'I know the bunker.'

'No
point,' said Jane. 'My plan, my trip. Let me achieve something for once.'

Ghost
drew a map.

'All
right. The explosives are five levels down in a storage vault. You'll pass
plenty of side tunnels. Ignore them. Stick to the main passageways. I spent two
days down there exploring the bunker. Seemed like there was no end to the
place.'

Jane
folded the crude treasure map and tucked it in her pocket. They were sitting in
the observation bubble. It was late January. A faint azure tint to the southern
sky.

'Spring
is coming,' said Ghost. 'We should have our first real sunrise in a couple of
months.'

'Hyperion
will float free. What little is left of it. Probably sink like a stone.'

'All
those guys who died. None of it is down to you. They made their own luck.'

'How
much explosive do you reckon we have stored in the bunker?'

'We
used up the grenades. Used some C4 out on the ice, but there's still a bunch
left. Couple of cases at least. Thirty or forty kilos. Enough to put an office
block on the moon. You'll need a backpack.'

'I'll
take the flamethrower as well.'

'I
doubt you'll have much use for it. Most of the infected crowd from
Hyperion
fried aboard the ship. The rest
seem to be succumbing to the cold. As long as you keep running, you should be
okay. Once you reach the bunker you'll be home and dry.'

Jane
and Punch dressed in the airlock. Ventile over-trousers. Heavy snowboots secured
by ankle latches. Triple-seal parkas: zips, toggles, Velcro.

Jane
shrugged on the flamethrower harness. Punch unsheathed the shotgun and
chambered rounds.

They
stood on the platform lift and descended the south leg of the refinery. They
halted the elevator two metres from the surface and slid down a rope to the
ice.

They
walked across the frozen ocean.

'Ghost
says avoid blue ice,' advised Jane. 'It's fresh. Looks pretty, but you could
drop through it like a trapdoor. You won't get any warning.'

The
sky was pale pink. They had a clear view of
Hyperion.
It was a scorched shell. The cabins were burned out. The decks were buckled and
black. The funnels had collapsed.

She
could smell it. Burned plastic. Cooked meat.

They
could see a handful of infected passengers out on the ice. Black dots on the
slopes of the island like sheep on a distant hillside.

'Let's
make this a quick trip,' said Jane. 'Smash and grab. Hopefully, this will be
the last time any of us leave the rig. The last time before home, anyway.'

A
woman in a gold ball gown stood alone on the ice, slump- shouldered and
forlorn. She saw Punch and Jane. She staggered forward, arms stretched towards
them.

Jane
checked the little blue igniter flame at the mouth of the flamethrower barrel.

'Let's
see what this thing can do.'

Punch
stood clear.

Jane braced her legs, took aim
and pulled the trigger. She
fired.
An arc of burning fuel spat twenty metres. The woman
was engulfed in fire. She
stumbled. She fell to her knees. A second burst. Clothes and hair seared away
by a typhoon of flame. She crawled on her hands. She fell forward and slowly
melted into the ice.

They
hurried across the frozen sea to the shore. They climbed on to the jetty and up
concrete steps to the bunker entrance. Two infected crewmen were slumped in
front of the bunker doors. Officers in brass-button dress uniform. Ice crackled
as they struggled to their feet.

Punch
kicked their legs from under them, and pulped their heads with the butt of his
shotgun.

'The
chain is gone,' said Jane. She tugged at the doors. 'They seem to be tied shut
from the inside. Do you have a knife?'

Jane
took off her glove, squirmed her fingers through the gap and sawed through the
rope.