Nail and Gus were lost in the fog. Their flashlights lit snow and curling mist. Frozen beards. Clothes crusted with frost.
'We're lost.'
'We're not lost.'
Gus was badly burned. He leaned against Nail for support.
'Wait,' said Nail. 'Hold on.'
'What?'
Nail took a red bandana from his pocket and held it up like a wind sock.
'I think we're heading the right way. We just need to keep the wind behind us.'
'Then what? We're royally fucked.'
Nail's flashlight had started to fail.
'We have to keep moving. We have to find shelter.'
Hyperion had been overrun. Nail and Gus fled during the attack. They slid down knotted rope as the ship burned. Quickly rappelled down the smooth white hull to the ice. They didn't have coats. They each wore a T-shirt and fleece. They could survive maybe fifteen minutes before succumbing to the cold.
Gus sagged like he wanted to sit down.
'Keep moving,' commanded Nail, his voice flat and muffled by the fog. 'It can't be far.'
He was starting to shake.
They stumbled over snow and rock. Deep thuds behind them. Explosions aboard Hyperion.
Concrete jutted from the snow. The high arch of the bunker entrance.
'This is it,' said Nail. 'We made it.'
They reached the bunker door. An infected crewman stood sentry in front of the entrance. It looked like he had been there a while. Snow had collected on his head and shoulders. He was knee-deep, his uniform frosted white. He stood quite still, staring into the mist. He slowly came to life like a rusted robot. His clothes crackled with ice as he moved. He stumbled and reached for Nail and Gus. His face was frozen. His eyes couldn't turn in their sockets.
Nail kicked the crewman's legs from under him. He pushed the fallen man down the bunker steps with his foot. The body rolled into the fog.
Gus passed out. He fell against the door and slid to the ground. Nail tried to slap him awake but got no response. He checked for a pulse. Still alive.
Nail looked around. He glimpsed figures, grotesque silhouettes lurking in the fog.
'Gus. Wake up, man. We've got company. They sniffed us out.'
No response.
He checked the bunker doors. The padlock and chain were gone. He tried to pull the doors wide. They opened a few centimetres then jammed. They had been lashed shut from the inside with rope.
He searched Gus's pockets. He found a lock-knife. He flipped open the blade. He threw his flashlight into the mist to lure away the prowling figures that encircled them.
He worked by touch. He reached through the gap in the doorway and sawed at the rope.
'Gus? Still with me?'
No reply.
'Come on, dude. Don't check out on me now.'
He cut through the rope. He hauled open the door. He set his lighter to full-flame and dragged Gus into the bunker. A dark tunnel mouth.
He scanned shelves, picked through clutter. He found a lamp and switched it on. It was styled like a hurricane lamp, but had an LED bulb and a couple of Duracells.
He knotted the doors closed with scraps of rope.
He tried to wake Gus.
'Can you hear me? Can you hear what I'm saying? You have to focus, Gus. You have to listen to my voice. Shock and cold. Don't give in to it.'
Gus opened his eyes but couldn't focus. Semi-delirious.
Nail looked around. He had to create a fire or they were both dead.
Shelves against the tunnel wall loaded with Skidoo components. A few empty crates and fuel cans stacked by the wall. The snowmobiles themselves were under tarpaulin.
Nail swept the shelves clear and tipped them over. He stamped and smashed. He slopped a capful of petrol from a jerry can and set the shelves alight. He sat cross-legged in front of the fire and hugged Gus. He rubbed and slapped his companion until circulation returned.
'Christ,' murmured Gus. He struggled to sit up. He spat in the fire and watched spit fizzle.
'How are you feeling?' asked Nail.
'The pain comes and goes.'
Half Gus's face was scorched black. Cooked skin. Cracked and flaked. His hair was gone. His right shoulder was burned bare, scraps of polyester fleece fused to charred skin.
'Did you see Yakov?' asked Gus. 'Did you see him die?'
'Fucking horrible. Worst thing I ever saw in my life.'
'I didn't know a person could make that kind of noise. That's going to stay with me.'
The infected passengers had broken through the barricades at midnight. Somehow they circumvented locked doors, blocked corridors, and men on patrol. Hordes of them choking the passageways, some in fancy dress. Nail had been standing on the upper deck sharing a joint with Gus. They watched fog eclipse the moon and discussed girlfriends and heartbreak. If they'd been asleep in their cabins they would have been cornered, overwhelmed and ripped apart.
'We should go back,' Gus had said, as Nail pushed him across the Hyperion deck. The Rampart crew had prepared knotted ropes in case they needed to make a quick exit from the vessel. 'We should go back for the others.'
A burning passenger stumbled from a cabin doorway and gripped Gus in a bear hug. Gus screamed as his clothes caught alight. Nail kicked the passenger over a railing, then slapped Gus's fleece until the flames died out.
They glimpsed Yakov at the end of a companionway. He shouted and waved for help as he ran from monsters in party costume. He squealed like an abattoir pig as a Pierrot clown dragged him to the ground.
'Forget it,' said Nail. 'There's nothing we can do for him. We need to get the fuck out of here.'
They fled the ship. Grenades began to detonate with a concussive roar and set the ship ablaze. They were running across the ice when the fuel tanks blew. Heat washed over them. Smoking shrapnel peppered the snow.
'Do you think we are the only survivors?' asked Gus. 'Do you think anyone else made it off the ship? I didn't see any of the others. Jane and Ghost were in their room. Punch and Sian, too. We might be the only ones left. You and me.'
'I honestly have no idea.'
'But what if we are? What if it's just us?'
'Then we'll deal.'
'And even if they made it to the rig? No one knows we are here. How do we summon help?'
'You should rest. Seriously.'
'How long do you think that lantern will lust?'
'Standard batteries. Four or five hours at the most. I'm going to leave you here for a little while, all right? I'm going to take a look around. Check out the tunnels. I need to find more wood.'
Nail walked into the tunnel holding a piece of blazing plank before him.
Echoing footfalls. Burning wood crackled and fizzed. The torch flame flickered. The tunnels whispered and sighed. There must be ventilation chimneys deep within the complex. How extensive was the tunnel network? Did it undermine the entire island?
He walked deeper down the sloping shaft. Black archways, sinister shapes. He wanted to explore but worried, if he strayed from the central passageway, he would quickly become lost. If his torch burned out, if a gust of wind extinguished the flame, he might have to make his way back to the surface by touch.
Vast cyclopean chambers. Ceilings so high weak torchlight couldn't penetrate shadow. The tunnel complex seemed built for some purpose other than nuclear storage. Too big, too elaborate to store fuel rods.
He stopped to catch his breath. Sudden, palpitating claustrophobia. Gut conviction that this ferro-concrete catacomb would be his grave. He was looking at the glistening, mildewed walls of his own coffin.
He wandered through caverns and halls. Incomplete galleries. Raw, unfinished bedrock. He was travelling downward through the strata, down through fossil layers. A coal-stripe of rainforest. Distant millennia compressed to a sliver of carbon crystal. The walls glittered with crushed shell and silica.
He once heard that a group of Soviet dissidents, exiled to work in a Siberian mine, discovered a mammoth preserved in ice. They cut strips and chewed it like jerky. It kept them alive.
Long corridors. Dormitories and offices. Desks and typewriters matted with stone dust. A military situation room frozen in time. Cold war Soviet maps. Portraits of Lenin. Rusted telex machines. Heavy dial phones.
Metal-frame furniture. Nothing to burn.
How much further should he explore? The plank was half burned down. He should head back.
He crouched and examined the tunnel floor. Fresh footprints in the dust. The grip-tread of his own heavy snowboots. And a second set of prints heading deeper into the tunnels.
He measured his foot against the print. Whoever had recently walked down this passageway wore small boots with chevron tread.
A white tiled chamber, dazzling after miles of drab concrete.
Nail knew he should turn back and head for the surface, but he was overcome by curiosity. This vast subterranean necropolis held secrets. He and Gus were in a hopeless situation, injured and marooned. Maybe if Nail pushed further, travelled deeper into the tunnel complex, he might unearth some kind of salvation.
Lockers, shower heads, a hatch in the floor.
Chemical warfare suits in the lockers. Rubber hoods with glass eye-holes.
The room was a decontamination suite. Soldiers could wash away radioactive fallout, unzip their suits, climb down the shaft and seal themselves inside the hermetic environment of Level Zero.
Nail approached the floor hatch. A hinged lid like the turret hatch of a tank. He heaved the door open. A gust of foetid air from far below ground. His torch fluttered and died.
Absolute dark. Nail fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. Three strikes. Sparks, then a steady flame. He re-lit the plank of wood.
He looked down the shaft beside him. Walls lit by flickering flame-light. For a moment, deep at the bottom of the shaft, he thought he glimpsed a figure looking up at him.
Nail returned to the bunker entrance an hour later. He carried a wooden chair over his shoulder. He smashed the chair and put the pieces on the fire.
Gus sat by the fire and rocked back and forth. The man was clearly in agony, sweating the pain minute by minute.
Nail chiselled ice from the wall with a spanner.
'Rub it on your burns. It'll help.'
'You found some wood.'
'There are some bunks down there. And some tables and chairs. Dormitories for the team that built the place. Enough wood to buy us some thinking time.'
'Nothing to eat, I bet.'
'I'll check the Skidoo panniers in a minute. I need to sit down a while. I'm exhausted.'
They dried their boots over the fire.
They heard a thud against the bunker door. Then another. Fists pounded. Fingers scratched.
'I truly don't get it,' said Gus. 'Can they smell us? Is that it? How do they know we are in here? Some kind of super- sense?'
'They can smell you all right. You stink like cooked bacon.'
They sat by the fire for an hour. A gentle draught drew woodsmoke down the tunnel like cigarette fumes sucked into a smoker's lungs. They listened to fists thump against the doors.
Gus watched the smoke.
'Are there vents down there? A second exit?'
'Fuck knows. It goes on for miles. A secret city. Some kind of major naval facility.'
'How many of them do you think are out there?' asked Gus.
'Two, I reckon. They're half frozen. We could get round them easily enough. If more show up I'll go out there and kill them. Thin out the herd. They're slow. They're stupid. I could do it. Wouldn't be a problem.'
'My face. Is it bad?' 'Yeah, it's pretty bad.'
'If I asked you to kill me, if it came down to it, would you help?'
Nail turned away.
A sudden flashback. The big argument. Mal shouting and cursing, jabbing his finger. A blur of steel as Nail lashed out. That shrill, bubbling squeal. That gush of arterial spray.
Nail hadn't slept for a month. Scared to close his eyes.
'Maybe it won't come to that.'
Nail pushed a couple more chair legs on to the fire.
'We have to get back to Rampart,' said Gus. 'That's our only chance. There will be food, heat and morphine. I'm in so much pain.'
'Let me think it over.'
A couple of nights earlier Nail had sat in the bridge of Hyperion unable to sleep. He sat in the captain's chair and looked at the stars. He was joined by Reverend Blanc. They made small talk. Little more than noise. But he could tell straight away she knew his big secret. She seemed too pleasant, too casual. Somehow she had figured out he killed Mal.
Maybe Jane and her friends were dead. Maybe they were ripped apart or died in the fire. But perhaps they escaped Hyperion. They might have taken refuge on Rampart armed with shotguns. Would Jane shoot on sight? What would he do, if their situation were reversed? Sorry, guys. I thought she was one of those infected freaks.
'I don't want to worry you,' said Gus quietly, 'but I've been watching the shadows behind you for a while and I swear there is someone standing against the far wall.'
Nail slowly turned around. The fire cast flickering shadows across the tunnel walls. He saw a figure in heavy snow gear half hidden in darkness.
Nail stood up.
'Hi,' he said. 'You're welcome to join us.'
No response.
He took a burning chair leg from the fire and approached the figure.
A Con Amalgam parka patched with duct tape.
'I'm Nail. Nail Harper.'
No reply.
'Hello? Can you hear me?'
He held up the chair leg so he could see the face beneath the hood. Chapped, peeling skin. Mad, staring eyes.
'Nikki. It's Nikki.'