Outpost

‘We can’t be the last men on earth. I bet plenty of people are hidden in caves, or cellars, or remote farms. Some of them will want to reclaim the cities, I suppose. Reboot the world. Set it going, just the way it was. And some people will want to go all Amish. Create a simple, wholesome way of life. Me? I’m a log cabin kind of guy. I think I’ll find a cottage in the Scottish Highlands. Somewhere wild and remote. Hunt and fish. Sit on a hill and count the clouds.’

‘I’m torn,’ said Punch. ‘I’d be scared to live alone with all these infected fucks running around. I’d want to live in some kind of stockade. Safety in numbers. But on the other hand I don’t want to find myself enslaved by some local tyrant. There will be no police, no law. Things will get feudal pretty quick.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you okay about Nikki?’

‘What about her?’

‘Jane said she took your boat.’

‘I welded a couple of oil drums together,’ said Ghost. ‘She and Nail did most of the work. I doubt she’ll make it home. And if she does? Well, good for her.’

‘But it was your boat. Your idea.’

‘Jane wants to get everyone home. I promised to help.’

Ghost gestured to an empty chair.

‘Has anyone seen Mal?’

‘No,’ said Punch.

‘It’s eight o’clock. Who’s taking over patrol?’

‘Me,’ said Gus.

‘So where is Mal? He should have checked in half an hour ago.’

‘Taking a shit. Changing his socks. Relax. He’ll be here. He’s not going to miss dinner.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Ghost. ‘We put a man on guard and he goes AWOL.’

Ghost stood in the corridor.

‘Mal? You out there?’

No reply.

Ghost stepped back inside the officers’ mess.

‘Everyone stay here, all right? Nobody go wandering off. Punch, get your gun.’

They searched Mal’s cabin.

‘Mal? Hello?’

They knocked on the bathroom door.

‘Hello?’

Empty.

They searched the passageways and checked the barricades. ‘Mal. Where are you?’

He wasn’t on the bridge. He wasn’t on deck. The zodiac still hung from a lifeboat crane. He hadn’t gone back to the rig.

‘Maybe he got drunk,’ said Punch. ‘Decided to go below deck on his own.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Bravado. He wanted something. Had a hankering for nachos or a cigar. Thought he could get it on his own. Outrun the freaks. Duck and swerve. Come back, brag, show off his trophy.’

‘Yeah, that’s the kind of idiotic thing he might do. I don’t like it, though. Not knowing for sure.’

Sian found them on the bridge.

‘There’s something you should see.’

She led them to a door at the end of a corridor. A small storeroom. Toiletries and laundry.

A trickle of blood from beneath the door.

‘Stand back,’ said Ghost. He hefted the axe. He tested the door. Unlocked. He pushed it open with his foot.

‘Hello? Mal?’

He reached round the doorframe and switched on the light. The trickle of blood snaked from behind a rack loaded with bed linen. Sheets, coverlets and pillow cases.

Mal lay dead on the floor. His eyes were open. His throat was cut. He held a knife in his hand.

‘Blot some of that blood,’ said Ghost. Punch threw down folded sheets to sop up the blood. ‘Close the door. I want to take a long look around before anyone else comes in here.’

Jane jogged a circuit of C deck. There was light, but no heat. Many of the corridors had split open when D Module fell from the rig. Several passageways terminated in ragged metal and thin air. Jane enjoyed the sensation of cold. The rest of the crew had embraced the luxury of Hyperion, but Jane volunteered to stay behind in the steel austerity of Rampart and man the radio. She broadcast periodic maydays to the Arctic rim, and listened to the static of an empty waveband.

She and Ghost spoke, morning and evening, by radio. ‘ Take care, baby cakes,’ he said, at the end of each call. She missed him.

Jane ran five kilometres, then stripped to her underwear and pumped iron in the corner of the deserted canteen. She used Nail’s abandoned gym equipment. She was both repelled and attracted by Nail’s pumped physique. Veins and striations. He was a human fortress. She envied his brute strength.

She played AC/DC on the jukebox as she hefted dumbbells. She played the music at full volume. ‘Bad Boy Boogie’ echoed down empty corridors.

Jane rested between each set of exercises by throwing a titanium shark knife at the canteen dartboard. The heavy blade thunked into cork, slowly ripping the board to pieces. Nail could hit a target at twenty metres. Jane trained herself to hit it at thirty.

Years ago, when the refinery was fully manned, the Starbucks coffee shop used to run a book exchange. The coffee shop was now a vacant retail unit with a couple of broken bar stools. Jane found a box of books among the litter, including thirty issues of Combat Survival magazine. Each issue contained carbine and pistol spec sheets. Back-page adverts for tactical holsters, mosquito nets and surplus Israeli gas masks.