Outpost

‘I do. But think about it. All the people that made you feel worthless and small down the years. The bullies and bosses. All gone. It’s exhilarating, if you think about it. Freedom from other people’s expectations. We can finally start living for ourselves.’

‘We can’t be the only survivors. There must be others like us. We just need to find each other.’

Jane found a yellow Peli case on a shelf: a crush-proof, watertight plastic container about the size of a shoe box. She turned the box over in her hands.

‘Do you mind if I take this?’ she asked.

The crew ate dinner in the canteen. Mashed potato, a sausage, a spoonful of gravy.

‘Eat it slowly,’ advised Punch. ‘Make it last.’

Rawlins lifted his plate and licked it clean of gravy. The crew copied his lead.

Jane stood on a chair and called for attention. They looked up, wondering if she were about to say grace all over again.

‘Okay, folks. Here’s the deal. We’ve got a bunch of helium weather balloons downstairs. A week from today I am going to launch one of the balloons with this box attached. The prevailing wind should carry it south to Europe. If any of you want to write a letter to someone back home, then drop it in the box. Million-to-one shot? Maybe. Even if the box lands in the sea, one day it will wash up and one day someone will find it. You may think it’s a stupid idea, but do it anyway. Put it down on paper. Put a message in the bottle. The things you wished you’d said but didn’t get a chance. I’m going to leave this box in the corner. It’s a good opportunity to unburden yourselves. Make use of it.’

Sian sat in the corner of the canteen, pen poised over a sheet of paper.

She had a stepfather. Leo. A carpet fitter. He was a nice enough guy. He cared for Sian’s mother during that last year of ovarian cancer. Sian spent each Christmas Day at his little terraced house, ate a turkey dinner in front of the TV, but they never progressed beyond superficial pleasantries. It had been three years. Sian often wondered if he had a new girlfriend. A divorcee with kids of her own. Maybe he wanted to drop Sian from his life, but didn’t know how.

Leo was a fit, capable man. He kept a bayonet beneath the bed in case of burglars. He would be all right.

Sian screwed up the paper. Better this way, she thought. No one to worry about but me.

The coffee urn. She filled a Styrofoam cup. Punch no longer supplied milk powder or sugar. Everyone took it black and bitter.

Jane sat in her room with a pad on her lap. She wrote love-you letters to her mother and sister. Then she wrote on behalf of the crew.

My name is Reverend Jane Blanc. I am chaplain of Con Amalgam refinery platform Kasker Rampart. We are marooned in the Arctic Circle west of Franz Josef Land. We have supplies to last four months. Winter is coming. By the time you read this we may be dead. We have little hope of rescue and we are so far from inhabited land any attempt to sail to safety in an improvised craft would almost certainly fail. I often promise the men we will all get home, but I have no idea how this can be achieved or what horrors might await us beyond the horizon. So I appeal to anyone who may read this note: please do what you can to ensure that one day these letters reach the people for whom they are intended, so that they can know what became of us.

God bless,

Jane Blanc

Jane sealed the notes in an envelope and took it to the canteen. She slotted the envelope into the Peli case.

Sudden PA announcement: ‘Mr Rawlins, Reverend Blanc, please report to Medical right away.’

Sian. By the sound of her voice, something was very wrong.

Simon was curled foetal at the bottom of the shower cubicle. He was dead. He held a scalpel in the swollen, blackened fingers of his left hand. He had slashed his wrist. He lay naked in a puddle of pink blood-water and unravelled bandages.

‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

Rawlins shut off the water. Jane helped drag the dead man from the shower.

They carried Simon to the operating table. They watched Sian wash him down. They lifted him into a rubber body bag and zipped it closed.

There was no mortuary on the refinery, so they laid Simon on the floor of the boathouse overnight.

‘He was talking to me,’ said Sian. ‘Reaching out. Screaming for help and I was too stupid to hear.’

‘A person’s life is their own,’ said Jane. ‘It’s not your job to save them.’

Nikki sat in the observation bubble reading a magazine.

‘We’ll be holding the funeral at three,’ said Jane.

Nikki flipped pages like she hadn’t heard.

The crew processed down steel stairs that spiralled round one of the rig’s gargantuan legs. An ice shelf had solidified around each leg. They walked across the ice and congregated at the water’s edge.

Jane turned the pages of her service book with gloved fingers.

‘O God, whose Son Jesus Christ was laid in a tomb: bless, we pray, this grave as the place where the body of Simon your servant may rest in peace, through your Son, who is the resurrection and the life; who died and is alive and reigns with you now and for ever.’