Nail and Gus sat by the fire.
'I feel like a caveman,' said Gus, prodding the embers.
'That's because we are living in a cave.'
'I could use a big juicy bison about now. What do you reckon? The infected. They hate fire, right? Maybe we could cook the virus out of them.'
'You want to eat a sailor?'
'Right now I'm prepared to give it a shot.'
'You are the sickest of fucks. So how are you feeling? Hunger aside?'
'Parched,' said Gus. 'It's fucking ridiculous. We can't even go outside to grab some snow.'
He stroked the remains of his beard. Weeping blisters. Scorched stubble clotted with pus.
'The burns feel like they are tightening up, you know? Like the skin is contracting. I'm frightened to move in case I split right open.'
'Maybe you should lie still a while.' Nail was preoccupied with his own misery. He was starting to sweat cold turkey. He didn't want to talk.
'The pain comes and goes. Ice helps.'
'Maybe we should grease you up. I think that's what you're supposed to do with bad burns. Seal the wound.'
'What's she doing?'
Nikki stood at the bunker entrance, ear to the door. She was mumbling to herself.
'Is she talking to them? Look at her. She speaks. She listens. She speaks again. She's holding a conversation.'
'Trying to work out how many of those infected fucks are out there waiting for us,' said Nail.
'Looks like she's having a nice long chat with them through the door. They act in concert sometimes. You've seen that, right? Watched them out on the ice? What if she can read their thoughts? What if some people can actually tune in?'
'Doubt it.'
'Where's her boat? If she made it back here she must have a boat.' 'Yeah.'
'She's insane, you know that, right? All that stuff last night. All that babble. Walking cities. Oceans of fire. She's lost it.'
'She sounds better this morning. She's actually making sense.'
'Do me a favour, all right?' said Gus. 'Don't leave me alone with her. Just don't leave me alone.'
'I'm going to get some wood. Take it easy.' Nail stood up.
'Hey, Nikki,' he called. 'I'm going to fetch some more firewood. Care to join me?'
He led Nikki deep into the tunnels. They each held a piece of burning bed frame as a torch.
Damp concrete. Nail hadn't been outside for days. There would quickly come a time when he wouldn't want to leave. He would become habituated to the soothing silence of the passageways. A creature of the shadows.
'Better watch our step,' he said as they traversed damp, subterranean caverns. 'This place is only half built. They might have dug vertical shafts.'
'I think I might know this place better than you. These days I think of it as home.'
'What about food? What have you been eating this past couple of weeks?'
'Cans. I ate them all. None left.'
'So do you want to tell me about it?'
'Tell you what?' she asked.
'You took my boat. You sailed away. Now you are back, talking trippy bullshit about walking cities. Did you leave at all? Jane told us you sent radio messages. You went south, then sank. Was it all lies? Were you here all along?'
'It was a long journey. I passed Greenland. I nearly reached Norway. There were storms. I'm not entirely sure what happened. My memory plays tricks.'
'But why? Why come back? All that effort to get away, and you came back. If Europe has turned into some God-awful hell-world I need to know.'
'I saw cities on fire. And other stuff. I saw cities get up and walk. Strange creatures. Leviathans. It was madness. I knew it at the time. I knew it wasn't real.'
'But what will we find?' asked Nail. 'Your psychosis aside. If we actually make it back to Britain what will be waiting for us?'
'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.
The Vault
'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, slumpshouldered 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.
'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.
ОПАСНОСТЬ /Danger
РАДИАЦИЯ/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.
The Bomb
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.'
Jane took a mug of coffee to the observation bubble.
Sian was watching the blizzard scour the tanks and gantries of the refinery. She was weeping.
Jane put a hand on her shoulder.
'Easier if we just died,' said Sian. 'It would be better than this. A moment of fear, a moment of pain, then nothing. This is worse. This is slow torture.'
'Yeah.'
'Everyone I ever knew is dead. Family. Friends. But I had Punch. I was all right as long as I had Punch.'
'Yeah.'
'I've got nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Bit by bit it all got stripped away.' She gestured to the snowstorm. 'This place is hell. Barren. Sterile. It's like the universe has taken off its mask and we can see its true face.'
'Want to open a bottle of wine?' asked Jane, and immediately regretted the lame suggestion. Failing as a priest, failing as a friend. Absurd to think there was any consolation she could offer in the face of absolute despair, some combination of words that would make it all better.
She sat down.
A few nights ago, she and Ghost lay in bed and planned the future of the human race.
'If there are kids,' said Ghost, 'will you tell them about Jesus?'
'No,' said Jane. 'I'm happy to be the last Christian. If they come across a Bible I will tell them it's all fairy tales and nonsense.'
Jane put her arm round Sian's shoulder. They sat in the dark as the Arctic storm raged around them.
Jane visited Rawlins's office. She thumbed through the personnel files. Gary Punch. She snipped his picture from the front page of his file.
She took the picture to the improvised chapel she had established in one of the dormitory rooms. She taped the photograph to the memorial wall.
She sat and contemplated the mug shots.
Crew who left aboard oil supply vessel Spirit of Endeavour:
Rosie Smith.
Pete Baxter.
Ricki Coulby.
Edgar Bardock.
Frank Rawlins, first to succumb to the infection.
Dr Rye. Missing. Presumed suicide.
Ivan and Yakov. Both ripped apart aboard Hyperion.
Mal. Murdered.
Gus. Murdered and eaten.
Nail's picture lay on a chair. Jane didn't want to add him to the memorial wall. He didn't deserve it. No one would pray for him.
The canteen kitchen.
Sian sat morose on a bar stool while Ghost greased the damaged shotgun. He reassembled the weapon. He racked the slide. The mechanism jammed. He threw the gun down on the kitchen counter.
'Fucked. And Punch took all the ammunition.' Ghost took a cleaver from a drawer.
'Want to help me patrol?'
They walked the perimeter of the rig. Ghost brought the ruined shotgun. He swung it round his head and flung it far as he could. They watched it fall to the ice two hundred metres below. They looked towards the island.
'Nail can't stay out there for ever,' said Ghost. 'Nothing for him in that bunker. We've got food, heat, everything he needs. Sooner or later he'll try to make it aboard. I reckon he'll try to climb an anchor cable. Doubt he could make it, but he'll give it a shot.'
'What about Punch?' asked Sian. Jane hadn't told her about the cannibalised remains they found in the bunker. 'I don't think he's coming back.'
Ghost decided to give her a task, something to keep her occupied.
'Do me a favour. Disable the platform lift. Take out a fuse or something.'
Sian headed for the airlock. She opened the exterior door and walked out on to the platform. She could see infected passengers milling on the ice far below her. She reached for the platform controls. She hesitated, then pressed Down.
The lift descended the south leg of the refinery. Infected Hyperion passengers and crew looked up. They saw Sian descending to meet them, and stretched their arms to reach her.
She opened the railing gate and closed her eyes, ready to be torn apart.
The platform jolted to a halt. Sian fell to her knees. The lift rose. She looked up. Ghost high above her, leaning out of the airlock door.
He dragged Sian back inside the rig. He helped her to her feet.
'We'll pretend that didn't happen, all right?'
Jane sat with Ghost in the canteen. They emptied the backpack. They contemplated the stack of explosives and detonators on the table in front of them. Bricks of C4 wrapped in paper. DEMOLITION CHARGE Ml12 WITH TAGGANT.
'Sian's probably right,' said Jane. 'We're kidding ourselves. We're not moving an inch. We are trapped here for ever. This place is our tomb.'
'I don't know about that.'
'This is the endgame. Nobody is coming to save us. We've got no ride home. If the cables don't drop, we're done.'
'My dad died of stomach cancer,' said Ghost. 'He had a car, an E-type Jag. He was restoring it in his garage. He worked hard even though he wouldn't get to drive it. I asked why he bothered. He said, "Never leave a job half done.'"
'I'm so tired.'
'We've got a plan. We've got things we can do, moves we can make. Still plenty of fight left.'
'Yeah,' sighed Jane. 'I suppose. But that's the problem. I can cope with despair. But hope keeps fucking me up.'
Ghost stood and began to stack the explosives into three separate piles.
'Come on,' he said. 'Get the job done.'
Ghost refilled the flamethrower. He used a SCUBA compressor to pump the tanks with diesel, and pressurise them with nitrogen.
They went outside and thawed the couplings. Jane fired a jet of flame at each giant lock pin. Ice liquefied and steamed, exposing metal.
Jane held the flashlight while Ghost rigged the explosives. He took off his gloves. He unwrapped C4. He slapped patties of explosive against the massive cable coupling, punched them with his fist, moulded them into a single tight mass. He pointed to a nearby wall.
'This is good. This should work well. We're boxed in. Nice, enclosed space. It should focus the concussion. Be a hell of a bang when it goes.'
He pressed blasting caps into the clay with his thumb before the explosive froze too hard to penetrate. They weatherproofed each charge with garbage bags.
'What do you want to use for detonation cord?' asked Jane.
'Strip some wire from a few extension leads. Nothing much to it. All we need is enough copper thread to carry a single six- volt pulse. Click. Bang.'
They returned to the canteen and spliced wire. Heaters. Dehumidifiers. Computers. Cases prised open with a screwdriver. Flex stripped, coiled and stacked on a Formica tabletop.
'We need about two hundred and fifty metres for each charge. We'll run the cord to a central point. We have to blow all three charges at once. If we blow the cables one at a time the last rope will take the full weight of the rig. It will be under so much tension we'll never get the pin to release.'
'Right.'
'No screw-ups. No breaks in the wire. We get one shot at this. No second go.'
The storm cleared. They slung cable over their shoulders and headed outside.
Jane helped Ghost run wire from each explosive charge. They spooled flex along the walkways and metal steps. They taped the wires to girders and railings. The wires converged at the pump house, a cabin that housed monitor equipment for the three great distillation tanks.
They smashed a window and fed the cables inside. Ghost webbed the remaining windows with duct tape. Proof against the blast. He laid three pairs of ear-defenders on a desk.
One last inspection to check the charges were properly rigged and the detonator wire unbroken.
'Beautiful sky,' said Jane. She pulled back her hood and craned to see a dusting of stars. A delicate pink twilight to the east.
She looked out over the refinery. A crystal palace. White-onwhite. Frosted steel. Cross-beams and scaffold towers dripping ice. Snow-dusted storage tanks. Crane jibs heavy with icicles. Every north-facing surface caked and glazed.
'Reckon Nail is lurking round here?' asked Jane.
'Keep a lookout for prints,' said Ghost. 'I doubt he could make it up the anchor cables, but he's desperate enough to try.' He lifted his boot and pointed at the sole. 'Zigzag tread, all right? Anything else is him.'
Ghost struggled to unscrew the cap of his hip flask with a gloved hand. He swigged.
'Back in a moment, all right?'
Ghost had spent the last hour thinking it through. This was their last chance of escape. If the anchor cables failed to detach they would be permanently marooned at the top of the world. In a few weeks the food and fuel would run out and they would be forced to choose between a knife-slash to the throat or a long walk in the snow. He pictured his body on a high gantry facing the sea. A grinning corpse cradling a blade. Maybe Jane's mummified cadaver would be beside him, holding his skeletal hand.
He walked to the corner of the rig. He took a fist of explosive from his pocket. He had kept a small lump of C4. A vague plan. If the anchor cables failed to detach, he could prepare a small charge and tape it beneath a table in the canteen. Cook a meal. Invite Jane and Sian to sit for dinner. Make it quick and clean. End it all mid-conversation.
He told himself not to be so stupid. He had spent so long facing down mortal terror he had made a fetish of death. He had been planning an elaborate demise instead of fighting to live. He added the nub of explosive to the main charge.
Jane fetched the initiators from the canteen. A black plastic case. Three initiators sitting snug in a foam bed. Each initiator was a pistol-grip with a red Fire button on top.
Jane tested batteries in a Maglite, to make sure they held a charge.
She slotted batteries into the butt of each grip.
Jane looked for Sian.
'I think she went outside,' said Ghost.
Airlock 52. A winking red corridor light. An alert that the exterior door had been left open.
Jane put on her coat and stepped outside. She saw Sian standing at the end of a walkway. She was leaning over a railing, looking down at the ice far below.
Weeks ago, when Jane was fat and hopeless, she had leaned over a similar section of railing and willed herself to jump into the sea. She wondered if Sian was, at that moment, thinking of flinging herself from the refinery. Sian leaned further forward.
'Hey,' said Jane, reaching for the only words that might cut through Sian's despair. 'Come on, girl. We need your help.'
They walked to the pump house. Ghost twisted wire round the terminals of each initiator.
'I taped up the windows,' he said. 'We should probably stand back from the glass. I'm not sure how big a bang this is going to be.'
They stood facing each other. 'Want to say a prayer?'
'No,' said Jane.
'Everybody ready?'
'Yeah.'
'Okay. Here we go. Three. Two. One.'
Countdown
Nikki pressed her ear to the bunker door. No wind noise.
She dug a crash helmet from a pile of snowmobile components heaped by the tunnel wall. She opened the bunker door. Two infected passengers stood with their backs to her, looking out to sea. She swung the helmet and smashed their skulls.
Nikki climbed crags. She crouched on high ground. She surveyed the refinery through binoculars. The fog had cleared. Rampart was lit by weak twilight, a dawn that would never break.
She adjusted focus.
'You see?' said the voice of Nikki's dead boyfriend. ' They've cut away the stairs and ladders. There is no way to get aboard.'
'I could climb the cables.'
'Too steep. Too smooth.'
'I could fetch rope. I could grapple a railing.'
'Too high. You would never manage the climb.'
'There has to be a way.'
She switched to infrared. The frozen steel superstructure of the refinery betrayed no heat signature except for Accommodation Module A. The module glowed weak orange. Someone had switched on the heating.
She scanned walkways and gantries. A red dot. Zoom in. A glowing stick figure, walking slow, looking down as if they were following a trail.
'Those bastards hold all the cards. They've got food, they've got heat and they've got guns.'
'They are my responsibility. That's why I came back. I have to save them. I have to save them from themselves.'
Nikki was halfway back to the bunker when she heard the explosion. A deep, rumbling roar like thunder. She ran to the shoreline. Two of the refinery's great anchor cables were gone. The ice beneath the rig was shattered.
Nikki uncapped her binoculars. They were still set for infrared. The corner coupling burned crimson. Reset. Focus, re-focus. Mushroom clouds of smoke hanging over each coupling.
The third cable hung slack. A moment later the lock-pin broke loose of the coupling, and the cable dropped. It smashed through the ice crust and threw up a geyser of seawater.
'Clever said Alan. 'Can you see what they are trying to do?'
'My God,' said Nikki. 'They want to float the rig free.'
'Yes.'
'Will it work?'
'I doubt it.'
'They keep trying. Despite it all, they never give up.'
' They must never leave the island. You understand that, yes? They belong here with us.'
Ghost replaced the platform lift fuse.
He and Jane rode the platform lift down to the ice. Jane walked out on to the polar crust. She circled the great wall of steel.
'Why the fuck is this thing not moving?'
'The rig is ice-locked,' said Ghost. 'We're stuck until the Arctic shelf melts and breaks up. We won't see our first full sunrise for three weeks. Then it will take another month or two for the ice to thaw and break up. Our food won't last that long.'
'How about thermite grenades? Any left? Any at all? They'd melt the ice in seconds.' 'No.'
'Explosives? Demolition charges from the bunker? Is there anything left? Anything at all?'
'No. Nothing.'
'Fuck. This thing weighs a million tonnes. Imagine the inertia. The momentum it would build up. If we could get it to shift a single centimetre it would keep going. It would be unstoppable. A juggernaut. It would plough through everything in its path.'
Jane sat on the platform lift. She pulled off a gauntlet and drew a smiley face on the frosted deck plate with her finger. 'If only there was some way we could give it a push.' Ghost looked out across the ice to the white horizon. 'Got it,' he yelled. 'Come on.'
He ran to the lift and pressed Up. The platform juddered to life. It began to ascend.
'Do you have the combination to Rawlins's safe?' he asked. 'I found it in his address book.'
'Go to his office. Look in the safe. There should be a couple of red keys in a plastic box, okay? Bring them to the pump house.'
Jane found the pump house ankle-deep in scrunched paper. Ghost sat at a desk rifling through box files and binders. He leafed through sheet after sheet and threw them aside.
Jane picked up a fistful of paper. System flow charts. Input/output schematics. Reciprocating compressors. Heavy octane filtration.
'What are you looking for?'
'I did a little work in here a few months back. A guy showed me something. Trying to find the damn thing.'
'What does it look like?'
'It's a red sheet of paper.'
Jane leafed through files.
'Yeah, baby,' said Ghost, triumphantly waving a red laminated checklist.
She glimpsed DANGER in big letters at the top of the page.
'What the hell is that?'
Ghost didn't reply. He spun his chair across the room to the console, kicking box files aside.
The pump room windows had shattered when the demolitions charges blew. Ghost wiped snow and broken glass from the screens and consoles. He cranked isolator breakers to On. The pump consoles lit up and winked expectant green.
He jabbed the main touch-screen plan of the refinery and set each system flag from Off to amber Standby.
'Okay,' he said. 'The treaters are back on-line. The super-heaters. The draw-pumps. Did you find the box?'
'Yeah.'
'There should be two keys inside.'
'Yeah.'
'And an envelope.'
Jane read out authorisation codes. Ghost typed. The screen in front of him flashed red.
The final code was Rawlins's employee number. Only he had sufficient high-level access to stop or re-start the refining process.
Jane read his employee number from an old payslip.
FAILSAFE WARNING DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE? YES/NO
Ghost slotted keys into the main console.
'We need to turn both keys at the same time.'
'Are we launching a missile?' asked Jane.
'Remember Chernobyl? A couple of bored technicians nearly incinerated Europe. This is the biggest Merox treater in the world, give or take. Press the wrong button and we could pollute the entire western hemisphere.'
They turned the keys.
FULL SYSTEM PURGE IN PROGRESS
The screen began a ten-minute countdown.
'Why the countdown?' asked Jane.
'Because we are asking the refinery to do something epically stupid and it wants us to reconsider.'
Punch woke. He struggled to open his eyes. A cut in his forehead. Lashes glued shut by clotted blood.
Punch was bound hand and foot. His arms were tied behind his back by nylon cord. The cord cut his wrists like wire. He twisted his hands to restore circulation.
He lay on the floor of a bare room. The strip-light flickered. The walls were concrete. The ceiling was concrete. The floor was cold, green tiles. He guessed he was in the bunker.
He tried to roll. He tried to wriggle his hands free. He felt blood trickle into his palms.
The door opened. Small snowboots. Blue Ventile trousers. He lashed out with his legs. Someone kicked him in the face. He spat blood. He looked up. Nikki stood over him. She crouched and checked his cuffs.
'Where am I?'
'Where do you think you are?' asked Nikki, calm and pleasant.
'What the fuck is going on? Are you going to let me go, or what?'
'An exchange,' said Nikki. 'I'm going to trade you for food and fuel.'
'Food for what? Where are you heading?'
'I wouldn't worry too much about that.'
'Where's your boyfriend? Where's Nail?'
'He's around.'
'Cut me loose.'
'Not yet.'
'Go fuck yourself, Nikki.'
'You want to get out of here, don't you?'
'You're lying. Food and fuel. Bullshit. I don't know what you are planning, but it's not going to work.'
'Jane will need proof of life. Tell me something only Sian would know.'
'Help me up.'
'No.'
'Come on. I need a shit.'
'So shit.'
'I'm bleeding.'
'So bleed.'
'Go fuck yourself, Nikki. Seriously.'
Nikki left. The heavy door slammed. A key turned in a lock. Footsteps diminished down a passageway.
Punch squirmed across the floor to the wall. He tried to stand. Maybe he could ambush Nikki next time she walked through the door. Knock her out with a vicious headbutt. Get her on the floor and kneel on her throat. She would almost certainly have a knife in her pocket. He could free himself, and find his way back to Rampart.
He lost balance. He toppled to the floor. He hit his head and shoulder. He lay and stared at the wall. He felt hopeless and defeated.
Nikki returned an hour later. She crouched beside him. Punch didn't look up.