Outpost (17 page)

The
crew camped in the tunnel mouth. They lit a couple of storm lamps. They huddled
round a hexamine stove for heat. Nobody spoke. They were all thinking the same
thing. They were dead bodies. The refinery was life-support. Without the
supplies aboard the rig they would last less than a day. Once the stoves burned
dry, they would all freeze.

Nail
was conscious. He lay still, breathing shallow. Punch crouched beside him.

'How
you doing, big guy?'

Nail
coughed and flipped him off.

'Take
it easy, all right? Give your lungs a chance to recover.' Punch left the
bunker. He stood on the jetty and watched the refinery burn.

D
Module was ablaze. The fuel store had been on the lowest level. The fire spread
upward, floor by floor, until the habitation block was a pillar of fire.

Flame
lit the surrounding sea and ice, flickering orange.

'I'm
taking the boat,' Punch told the crew. 'I'm going back to help. Any
volunteers?'

They
looked away.

Punch
rode the zodiac back to Rampart.

He
could see the underside of the refinery. Liquid, rippling flame washing over
pipes and spars. The sight was mesmeric.

White
light at the heart of the conflagration. Thousand-degree heat. It was like
staring into the sun. He had to look away. Debris fell into the sea, spitting
geysers of steam. A shriek. An explosion of sparks. A steady groan, like the
refinery was in excruciating pain. A major structural collapse under way.

A
cascade of girders: fatally weakened chunks of superstructure tumbled into the
ocean with a roar like Niagara.

Punch
gripped the side of the boat as waves rippled outward from the refinery,
bucking the boat, cracking plates of ice.

Jane
and Ghost crouched on the D Module roof. They held each other. They felt the
roof begin to buckle and torque. The scream of tortured metal was so loud it
became a strange, eye-of-storm silence.

Jane
looked up. The crane arm. The cargo pallet descending out of smoke.

Brief
glimpse of the crane cab. Sian at the controls.

'Come
on,' said Jane.

They
threw themselves aboard.

Punch
docked the zodiac. He watched D Module fall from the refinery into the sea.
Support girders beneath the habitation block, fatally weakened by hours of
blowtorch heat, buckled and fractured. The blazing structure slowly toppled
forward. It hit the ocean, sending a final mushroom-cloud of flame hundreds of
metres into the air. Sudden darkness. Sound of on-rushing water. Punch ran for
the stairs, anxious to get higher before seawater washed him into the ocean.

Punch
crossed the deck. Devastation lit by moonlight. He stood at the edge of the
smoking acre where D Module used to sit. Ragged, twisted girders. Broken pipes.
Metal glowed red. Spars part-liquefied by heat. Steel hung in petrified drips.
The mangled superstructure ticked and creaked as it quickly cooled in sub-zero
air.

Plenty
of smoke, but no flames.

The
cargo pallet stalled four metres above the deck. The crane was dead. No power.
Ghost hung from the pallet and let himself drop. He rolled. He lay on the deck.
Jane dropped beside him. She helped Ghost to his feet. He coughed and retched.

'You
okay?' asked Punch.

'I'll
be all right.'

Jane
and Punch explored the remaining habitation block.

They
stood in the canteen. Moonlight shafted through the windows. Spectral smoke
haze hung in the air. The tables and floor were dusted in a fine layer of soot.

Punch
tried the lights.

'Everything
is dead.'

'We
better check the powerhouse.'

The
powerhouse. They surveyed the destruction with an old Aldis lamp. Three John
Brown generators, each the size of a bus. The generators were still and silent.

They
climbed steps to the mezzanine level. The generator controls were fried.
Cabling had burned through.

'You
know,' said Jane, 'for a while there I thought we would be okay.'

Jane
brought Ghost to the powerhouse. He walked with his arm round her shoulder. She
helped him climb the steps to mezzanine level.

'Well,
there it is,' said Jane.

Ghost
examined the scorched ruins of the generator controls by flashlight. He could
barely stand. He leaned on a railing for support.

Two
of the control stations were burned and warped. Cracked dials. Cracked screens.
A side panel had fallen from one of the consoles exposing melted clumps of
cable that hung in tangles like jungle vine.

Ghost
coughed and cleared his throat.

'One
and Two are fried. Generator Three seems pretty intact. I say we get Three
running and maybe cannibalise One and Two for spares.'

'You
need to rest. You have a bad case of smoke inhalation. It'll get worse before
it gets better. You've damaged your lungs. They'll start to fill with fluid
over the next couple of days. Rye wants to get you on oxygen, soon as she can.
Give you a chance to heal.'

'You
seem okay,' said Ghost.

'Buddy
breathing. You gave me most of the air.'

'Honestly.
I'm fine.'

'Not
for long. If you start chasing round trying to fix that generator you could do
yourself serious damage. You could keel over with pneumonia, and there isn't
much anyone could do to treat you.'

'If
we don't get the generators running we will all freeze to death. I can't sit
around and convalesce. And if I get pneumonia then all the more reason to tap
my expertise while we still can. We have to get to work right now.'

'Christ.'

'Do
we have any amphetamines? Anything that can give me a boost?'

'We've
got some pre-loaded adrenalin shots in the survival kits. It'll crank you for a
couple of hours, but once it's metabolised you'll be a wreck.'

'Go
and get them.'

Jane
fetched the shots.

She
found Ghost sitting on the deck with his back to one of the charred control
panels. She sat beside him.

'How
you doing, fella?'

'Pretty
fucked up,' he croaked.

Jane
gestured to the broken instrumentation.

'Reckon
you could fix it?'

'I'm
not an electrician.'

'Neither
is anyone else. You're the best we have.'

'Wish
I could stand without coughing my guts out.'

Jane
held up a yellow, pre-loaded epinephrine syringe from a survival pack.

'Do
it.'

Jane
stabbed the hypo into his thigh and pressed the plunger.

The
rest of the crewmen returned from the island.

They
cleaned the canteen by lamplight. The wiped a fine dusting of ash from tables
and chairs. They swept the floor.

Nail
slipped out of the canteen. Nikki followed. She trailed him down dark
passageways. She followed his flashlight beam through the cavernous shadows of
the pump hall. She found him in a storeroom examining Ghost's boat.

Nail
circled oil drums welded to a scaffold pole.

'He
didn't get very far,' he said.

He
examined sketched plans laid out on a trestle table. A crude yacht. Top view.
Side view.

'It's
a good design, as far as I can tell. Single mast. Mainsail. Jib. I imagine it
would be pretty stable.'

'Could
you finish it?' asked Nikki. 'Ghost might be out of action for a while. Could
you finish what he started?'

'I'm
a dive welder. Been doing eight years, off and on. Yeah, I could do it.'

'Perhaps
we'll get lucky. Perhaps someone will answer our mayday.'

'I'm
tired of waiting. I don't like putting my fate in someone else's hands. It's
not my style. You saw those guys up there. Sitting round, slack-jawed, waiting
for Blanc to lace their shoes. Contemptible.'

'Morale
is pretty low. The guys are feeling shell-shocked. Helpless.'

'Fuck
their emotions. Do they actually want to live or what? Brain-freeze. Paralysis.
That's what kills most people in a crisis. Well, not me, baby. I'm the survivor
type.'

'So
what should we do?'

'If
Ghost recovers, then great. He can finish the boat for us. If anything happens
to him, then we finish it ourselves. Take the food we need, and wave sayonara
on our way south.'

Jane
helped Ghost inspect the powerhouse controls. She worked under his direction.
She levered a side panel. He shone his flashlight inside.

'Generator
Three looks healthy enough.' He coughed. 'This console looks fine. So why the
hell aren't the lights on?'

'Maybe
the fault is further up the line.'

He
shone his flashlight at the wall. Cable thick as drainpipe snaked into a duct.
Ghost unzipped his coat and fleece.

'You're
not seriously going in there?'

'I'd
love to send you in my place,' said Ghost. 'But I need to see with my own
eyes.'

He
coughed and spat.

'If
you pass out in there we will have a bitch of a job dragging you out.'

'That
adrenalin shot will keep me juiced for a couple of hours. Let's make the most
of it.'

Ghost
ducked down and crawled into the conduit.

Punch
unlocked the canteen storeroom. Colder than a meat locker. Frosted food. Sian
joined him.

'Why
don't we pass out survival rations?' she asked. 'Those self-heating cans?'

'Last
resort. I want to save those in case we need them on a journey. I still think
our best plan is to wait until mid-winter, take the Skidoos and head for
Canada.'

'Just
us?'

'You
and me. Maybe Jane and Ghost if they want. It's an old argument. I've already
talked it through with Jane. She dismissed the idea, but she'll come round.'

'I'm
not sure.'

'To
be honest, I don't talk to the other guys any more. They just sit in the
canteen staring into space. They aren't going to make it home. It may sound
harsh, but the way I look at it, they're already dead.'

Punch
took a box from a shelf.

'Give
them cornflakes. They'll have to eat them dry. Good carbohydrate. It's the best
we can do.'

'We're
all dying by degrees, aren't we?' said Sian. 'Every one of us.'

Punch
smiled.

'We're
not done yet,' he said, and kissed her.

Ghost
wormed along the conduit. Tight tunnel walls. He had a flashlight in one hand
and a radio in the other. He examined the thick cable running above his head.

'How's it going?'
Jane's voice
.

'Okay.
Just stopped for a breather.'

'Any fire damage
?'

'Nothing
so far. There must be a break somewhere along the line, though. Just have to
find it.'

'I feel bad. We're treating you like Kleenex. Using
you up for the common good
.'

'Comes
with the territory. You chose to clip Rawlins's big bunch of keys to your belt.
You have to take the shit that comes with it.'

Ghost
suppressed a coughing fit.

'All
right. I'm moving on.'

Nail
searched for supplies.

'I
want to be ready. There's plenty of stuff we will need when we sail south.'

'The
boat isn't even built yet,' said Nikki.

'You
can never be too prepared. Besides, I'm bored. No point sitting round with
those lethargic fucks in the canteen. I want to achieve something.'

There
were lifeboat muster points at each corner of the refinery. The lifeboat
stations were named after London underground stations. Moorgate, Holborn,
Blackfriars and Pimlico. Each lifeboat station had a survival pack. Nail picked
through each pack. Flares. Insulation blankets. Calorie bars. First aid. He
threw supplies into an empty kit-bag and carried it over his shoulder like
Santa.

He
led Nikki across the deck. They contemplated the acre of twisted girders where
D Module used to be.

A
small sliver of D Module remained. Nail's flashlight lit a buckled staircase
and a couple of burned-out rooms.

'Come
on.'

'You're
not going in there, are you?' asked Nikki.