Outpost (40 page)

'Do
you think someone made it off
Hyperion
?'
asked Punch. 'Well, I can't picture any of those zombie fucks tying a reef
knot.'

They
entered the bunker. They swung the heavy doors shut and propped them closed
with a snowmobile.

Punch
examined the campfire. He kicked the burning planks. Burst of sparks.

'Fresh
wood. Someone was here a moment ago.' 'There's a bone. A rib.'

Jane
stood at the tunnel mouth and shouted into the darkness.

'Nail?
Gus? Hello?'

'Must
be Nail,' said Punch. 'Anyone else would come running.' 'Hello? Anyone?'

Jane
released a puff of fire down the dark passageway, a rolling burst of flame.
Brief glimpse of cracked concrete. Tunnel walls receded to vanishing point.

'Let's
get what we came for,' she said.

Punch
checked the map.

'Five
levels down, then keep heading straight. Be all right as long as we don't
deviate.'

'Don't
creep,' said Jane. 'Let him hear us coming.'

They
trudged down a passageway wide as a subway tunnel. Their flashlights lit damp
concrete archways Bedrock ribbed with reinforced pillars.

'How
much further?' asked Punch.

'Quite
a way. Ghost hid the explosives in one of the deeper galleries. Can't find it
by accident. You have to know where to look.'

They
approached something blue on the tunnel floor. A snow- boot. Jane crouched and
examined the shoe.

'Size
ten. There's blood in it. Blood on the floor.'

Her
flashlight lit a trail of drips.

They
kept walking.

The
tunnel terminated in a massive lead door. A skull etched above a cloverleaf
radiation emblem.

Jane
wiped away stone dust.

Ф
nac
И
OC
Б
/Danger

Pa
ДИЦИ
ra /Radiation

Beneath
it, written in blood:

HELLBOUND

Jagged
letters. Splatters and drips.

'This
place stinks of madness,' said Punch.

Jane
examined the blood. It was black. It crumbled and flaked to the touch. The
letters had been daubed by a gloved hand.

'You
know what?' she said. 'Whatever happened down here simply isn't our problem.
I'm just not interested. We get what we want then leave.'

The
vault was big as a church nave. The walls and ceiling were lagged with lead
plate. The chamber was built, Jane supposed, to house the decommissioned
reactor core of a Soviet submarine or a nuclear ice-breaker. Relics of the
Northern Fleet. The sleek hunter-killers that operated out of Archangel,
prowling beneath the polar ice cap, waiting for their comms to flash red and
chatter launch codes and target coordinates. The crusted, corroded reactor
would be towed down the tunnel on a freight wagon and parked at the centre of
the vault. The vault would be filled with salt and the doors sealed for a
quarter of a million years.

The
vault had been used as a temporary store for excavation equipment. There were
picks and shovels, a jumble of hard-hats, and a couple of pneumatic drills
propped against a wall. Hard to know why construction suddenly ceased. But the mining
teams downed tools one day and didn't resume.

Tin
mugs and plates. A broken welder's mask used as an ashtray. A bottle of
Stolichnaya long since evaporated dry.

Punch
pulled off his gauntlets and began to load his backpack. He pulled ammo boxes
from the shelves. He flipped the latches and removed patties of explosive
wrapped in brown paper.

Jane
explored corner shadows. A scoop-digger with a broken track.

Something
smelled bad. She lifted the edge of a tarpaulin. An emaciated hand. She pulled
the tarpaulin aside.

'My
God,' said Jane.

'What
have you found?' Punch kept packing.

'A
body.'

Jane
crouched over the body. The corpse was jammed in the digger scoop. Thighs,
calves and buttocks were gone. The upper arms, belly and chest had been flayed.
Slow decay, despite the cold.

'Who
is it?' asked Punch. 'Can you tell?'

Jane
trained her flashlight on the bearded face. Sunken cheeks.

A
rictus grin. Scraps of neck flesh. Fragments of a barbed tattoo.

'Gus.
I think it's Gus. It looks like someone ate him.'

Punch
stuffed a tin of detonators into the side pocket of his backpack.

'Ate
him?'

'He's
been butchered. Someone used a knife. Did a thorough job.'

'Let's
get off this fucking island.'

'Punch,'
shouted Jane. She trained her flashlight on the vault door. A figure in a red
hooded parka was struggling to heave the door shut. 'Don't let him lock us in.'

Punch
hurriedly shouldered his shotgun. He shot wide, and blew a crater in the lead
wall. He fired again. The impact scoured a deep trench in the closing door. He
threw the gun. It skittered across the concrete floor and jammed the vault door
just as it closed.

He
dived for the gun and grabbed the butt. He wrestled for the weapon with an
unseen adversary. He pulled the trigger. Muzzle-flash. Blast like a
thunderclap. A scream of rage.

'Punch,
get out of the way,' shouted Jane.

Punch
rolled clear. Jane fired the flamethrower. Screams. She ran across the room.
Second burst. The walls and door dripped flame. Lead rivulets like lava. The
chamber filled with smoke.

Jane
kicked the door wide with her boot. A puff of fire from the flamethrower lit an
empty tunnel. Scraps of smouldering fabric on the floor.

'Run,
you fuck,' she shouted, her voice turned metallic by the tunnel walls. 'Keep
running.'

Punch
picked up his smouldering shotgun.

'Think
it was Nail?' he asked.

'Who
else would it be? Fetch the backpack. Let's go.'

They
trudged upward, counting the levels. Jane turned round every few paces to check
they weren't followed. Brief burst of flame at each junction. She inspected
every crevice in case Nail was crouched waiting to launch a second ambush. He
was injured but desperate enough to attack.

A
distant wind-rush turned to an oceanic roar as they approached the bunker
entrance. They leaned into the hurricane. The doors were open and a storm was
raging outside. Jane's torch lit swarming snow particles.

'Where
the hell did this come from?' Punch shouted to be heard over wind-roar.

'We
can beat it.'

'Maybe
we should wait.'

'No.
Got your radio? Call Ghost. Tell him to switch the refinery floodlights on full
and hit the foghorn every twenty seconds. That should guide us home safe and
sound.'

They
set off into the storm. They descended the concrete steps and walked out on to
the frozen sea. They bent double against the gale. Snow furled around them like
thick smoke. They couldn't see the floodlights of the rig, but they could feel
the foghorn every twenty seconds, a deep rumbling throb that pulsed deeper than
incessant wind noise.

Jane
turned to Punch. She lifted her ski mask.

'We're
making good time,' she reassured him. 'We should see the floodlights any
second.'

An
infected passenger stumbled out of the blizzard. A man in a blue tracksuit.
Jane fired her flamethrower at close range.

The
man was blown from his feet like he was hit by a fire hose. He skidded backward
across the ice, burning, flames whipped by the wind. He tried to sit up. A
second blast put him down for good.

A
sudden blow to her back sent Jane sprawling, face down. She slid into the
burning man. Her arm caught alight. She slapped to extinguish the flames.

She
scrambled to her feet. Punch was gone. His shotgun and backpack lay on the ice.

She
shouted into the squalling wind.

'Punch?'

She
fired the flamethrower straight up. Flickering flame-light. She looked around.

'Punch?
'Where are you?'

She
thought she heard Punch call her name. She ran in pursuit, ran headlong into
the blizzard, but found nothing but darkness and driving snow. She wanted to search
but was fighting hypothermia.

Jane
headed for Rampart, a lone figure struggling through the storm.

Sian
sat in Rawlins's office and hit the foghorn every twenty seconds. Massive
funnels at each corner of the rig blasted a mournful, booming note. The funnels
were surrounded by safety barriers and ear-guard warnings. A deep rumble
resonated through the superstructure like an earth tremor.

Jane
climbed into the platform lift. She dragged Punch's backpack on to the deck.
She pressed Up. She collapsed against the railing and sank to her knees.
Movement out of the corner of her eye. An infected man in a white tuxedo had
gripped the platform lift as it began its ascent and was hauling himself over
the railing.

Jane
aimed the flamethrower and pulled the trigger. Dribble of fuel. No fire. The
wind was too strong. The igniter flame wouldn't spark.

She
aimed Punch's shotgun. Click of an empty chamber.

She
struggled to her feet and backed away from the advancing man, holding the
shotgun by the barrel and swinging it like a club.

Ghost
sat in the observation bubble and watched the storm. He listened to Mahler.

'Hey, Gee:
Sian's voice.

'Yeah?'

'
They're coming up in the platform lift
.'

Ghost
waited in the south leg airlock. The airlock was a padded chamber lined with
lockers and snow gear. A porthole in the door allowed Ghost to examine the
underside of the refinery, the girders and pipework lashed by the gale.
Floodlights strung beneath the rig glowed through the storm like a row of weak
suns.

A
yellow warning strobe above the airlock door began to revolve, accompanied by
an insistent warning beep. The platform lift was active. Ghost watched through
the porthole as the elevator cage drew level with the door. Two figures crusted
in ice. One figure was wearing a tuxedo. He had a melted face.

Ghost
grabbed a snowboot from the airlock floor. He hit Open and reeled from the
sudden wind-blast. The lumbering mutant reached for Jane as she crouched
exhausted and helpless on the platform deck. Ghost wore the snowboot on his
hand like a boxing glove. He punched the infected man in the face. Repeated
blows. He drove the man to the edge of the platform and kicked him over the
railing. He threw the blood-spattered boot over the side.

He
dragged Jane inside and hit Close. The door slid shut and the roar of the storm
was silenced.

Jane
shrugged off the flamethrower and slumped to her knees. Ghost pulled back her
hood and tugged off her ski mask. Her skin was blue. Her eyelids drooped like
she was half asleep.

'Jane,'
shouted Ghost. 'Hey. Come on.' He gently slapped her face left and right. 'Come
on, girl. Focus.'

She
coughed back to life.

'Get
the pack,' she said. 'It's out on the lift.'

Second
blast of blizzard wind as Ghost retrieved the backpack. He emptied it on to
the airlock floor. Explosives. Detonators. He examined the shoulder straps.
They had been cut with a sharp blade.

Jane
had dropped the shotgun. Quick inspection. Burned stock. Scorched metal. The
gun beyond use.

He
checked the breech. No shells. He
s
niffed the gun. Pepper smell of
cordite. Recently fired.

Jane's
eyes fluttered like she was struggling to stay awake. 'Jane? Can you hear me?
Where the fuck is Punch?'

Ghost
helped Jane to her room. He helped her strip and stood with her beneath the
shower until she revived. She stood beneath a torrent of hot water and basked
in the heat.

She
got out, towelled and dressed.

'So
we are down to three,' said Ghost.

'Nothing
I could do,' said Jane. 'Nothing at all.'

'Nail?'

'He's
turned that bunker into a fucking abattoir.'

'I
hope he comes aboard. I really do. I'll make it slow. I'll make it last days.'