Outpost

‘He’s dying,’ said Rye. ‘He was stumbling around out there dressed as a flamenco dancer. Blood loss and trauma are killing him as sure as they would a normal person. But it seems to be taking days. These filaments. This stuff embedded in gristle and bone. Definitely metal. It can be magnetised. But it seems to grow like hair. As far as I can tell it radiates from the central nervous system. All this stuff wrapped round his legs and arms can be traced back to his spine. And look at his head.’

Jane stood over the flayed man. The bloody skull-face watched her approach. Lipless jaws snapped and gnashed. Grinning, biting.

‘More metal, see? Lots more, centred round the brain stem. Seems pretty obvious we are dealing with some kind of super- parasite. This isn’t a man. This is a metal organism wearing a skin suit. Limited lifespan. Slowly kills the host. It’s like ivy round a tree. God knows where it is from. Tough to kill. I gave one of them a dose of Librium. Should have been fatal. Didn’t seem to bother him much. These things have the nervous system of a cockroach.’

Rye stood back and folded her arms.

‘We have no alternative but to destroy the carrier. This is a terminal illness. Nobody will recover. That much is clear. Memories, personality. All gone. So we don’t have to feel bad about killing them. It’s pest control. It’s not murder. Grenade, if you have one. Otherwise, a shot in the head will kill them stone dead. If you shoot them in the gut, if you blow off an arm or leg, they will keep trucking long enough to bite a chunk out of you. Headshot. Every time.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Jane. ‘Something is left. Something remains.’

Jane returned to the priest. She opened the Bible.

‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and God said: "Let there be light… "’

Father David thrashed and snarled, then slowly settled like he was soothed by a lullaby.

‘See? He remembers.’

‘You don’t know for sure,’ said Rye.

‘No, I can tell. He remembers the words.’

‘We have to find out everything we can about these creatures. We can’t afford to be sentimental.’

Jane left. She came back with a shotgun. She put the barrel to the priest’s head. He sniffed it.

‘It’s all right, Patrick.’

She blew his head off. Nothing above the neck but a flap of burning scalp. She shot the three remaining specimens. Lumps of brain tissue, flash-fried by gunpowder, lay on the floor and steamed.

‘Clean up this shit and scrub the room down,’ said Jane. She pressed the shotgun to the chest of Rye’s lab coat. The hot barrel burned a scorch ring. ‘You bring any more of these fucks aboard I will personally execute you on the spot. You think I’m kidding? Try me. Just fucking try me.’

Rye locked the door of her room. She sat on the bed. She shook a twist of foil from the battery compartment of her bedside clock. She tapped the powder into a spoon and cooked the mixture over a Zippo flame.

She shot up. She threw the hypo in the sink, lay back and relished the warm rush of well-being. A familiar sensation. She had taken the job on the rig to break an addiction to codeine. Seven years of general practice had passed in a blissed-out haze. It was a relief to give in to it once more. It felt like coming home.

Rye examined her left hand. The tip of her index finger was numb and starting to blacken. When did she become infected? Maybe it was out on the ice when she stunned the priest and tied him up. Maybe it was when she lashed him to the table.

She used a shoelace as a tourniquet. She stood at the sink with a pair of bolt cutters. She positioned the infected finger between the blades. This, she thought in a dreamy way, is going to hurt like a motherfucker.

Later, she sat in the canteen and watched scrolling interference on television. Punch asked if she was feeling okay.

‘Fine,’ she murmured, pushing her bandaged hand deeper into her coat pocket. ‘Walking on sunshine.’

Diary of Dr Elizabeth Rye

Wednesday 28 October

I dressed and re-dressed my mutilated finger. I examined the wound every fifteen minutes. As far as I could tell from TV bulletins I saw in the canteen, there were no reported cases of recovery or remission. This illness is certain death. Yet I hoped for a reprieve. Perhaps I had a chance. Maybe I amputated the finger in time to halt the spread of the disease. Maybe I would be the first to get lucky and cure myself of infection.

Nothing for nine hours. Then the first glint of metal among the raw flesh. I probed the scabrous wound with tweezers. A metal spine growing out of bone. I jammed the stump of my finger between the bloody bolt cutters and cut it down to the knuckle. I bound the wound and passed out. When I woke, my entire hand had begun to necrotise.