Outpost

‘This is where it kicked off,’ said Walczak. ‘This is where the carnage truly began. Everyone gathered for a banquet. Trying to forget their troubles. About thirty infected passengers broke out of the infirmary and headed this way. Blood everywhere. Stampede. It was mayhem. That was the point we lost control.’

Rye looked around. Upturned tables and chairs. Infected waitresses stumbled over broken crockery and flowers.

‘Could you do me a favour?’ asked Walczak.

‘Sure,’ said Rye.

He picked up a heavy statuette that had fallen from a wall niche. A dancing nymph.

‘Kill me,’ he said. ‘Do it clean.’

He sat at a cocktail piano. He played ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’. Rye stood behind him.

‘You’re pretty good,’ said Rye.

‘Yeah. Always wished I’d gone professional’

Rye killed him halfway through the third verse.

She searched corridors surrounding the engine room. She opened every door marked with a red flame emblem. Paint. Lubricant. White spirit.

She found the fuel tanks. A long gantry overlooked vats of diesel and lightweight marine oil. She tried to spin stopcocks but couldn’t get them to turn.

She descended steps to the tank hall floor. She hacked at the pipes with a wrench. A joint ruptured, a narrow copper coupling at the foot of a tank. Fuel glugged and splashed on to the deck plates. A slow leak, but if she returned in a couple of hours the floor would be awash with diesel.

‘Codeine.’ The dealer dealt two cards. Queen five.

Rye pushed the cards away. Fold.

‘So what did you do? Write phantom prescriptions?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sweet. Must be great to be a doctor. Kid in a candy store.’

‘I lost a lot of years. I paid a heavy price.’

‘Yeah. Well. Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ said the dealer. He took a silver cigarette case from his pocket, placed a cigarette carefully between his deformed lips, and lit it with a click of his Dunhill lighter. ‘There’s that line by Larkin. "All they might have done had they been loved." Every one of us could have ruled the world if we’d got up early and done the right thing. But we limp around dragging our personal damage like a tourist schlepping a heavy suitcase through an airport. Blame your genes, your parents, your school. Just a long chain of cause and effect. Life was mapped out long before you were born.’

‘What is it about cards that makes people all priestly and sagacious?’

‘It’s like communion. Dishing out wafers. Dishing out fate. That’s the beauty of blackjack. Blind chance. A reminder that you’re not in control. You just sit back and watch the numbers dance.’

‘You can pretend that you’re not scared of dying. Personally, I’m terrified.’

‘Anything is better than this.’

‘Where’s the fifth bloke?’ Rye gestured to an empty seat. ‘There were five of you. Now there are four.’

‘Casper. A retired dentist. A pleasant man. A divorce, looking for love. That’s what he told me. Married thirty-five years. Wife took a bunch of cash and ran off with his brother. Didn’t seem too bitter about it, though. We had a lot of time to talk it through, back in the days when he had a mouth.

‘He finally went native. It happened yesterday evening. I saw it in his eyes. The moment the lights went out. He was looking at me. One minute he was Casper, next minute he wasn’t. He became one of them. Mindless. Blank. Lucky bastard. All of us round this table praying for the same thing. That blessed day when it will all be over. I never imagined it would come to this. I never imagined I would hate to be alive.’

She heard a faint scuffing sound. The rasp of a chair nudged aside.

‘That’s him,’ said the dealer. ‘Casper. He’s over there. He’s lying by the wall. He moves, now and again.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘Migrating. Would you like to watch? Everyone joins the flock sooner or later.’

The dealer stood up. Half his face was rippled metal like melted candle wax. His cheek was smeared over his bow tie and lapel. The rest of him seemed untouched.

‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, addressing his fellow players. They were so far gone, so far mutated, they could barely turn their heads. Each face was a mask of blood and spines. Their eyes followed Rye and the dealer as they stood to leave. ‘We’ll be back in a few minutes.’

Casper slowly crawled towards the door. His legs appeared useless and his right arm was fused to his body. He dug fingernails into the plush carpet and hauled himself, little by little, through double doors into a service corridor. He slithered on cold linoleum. He seemed unaware that Rye and the dealer kept pace.

He slowly dragged himself along the corridor, hand slapping on the tiles. He reached a stairwell and began to squirm his way up the stairs.

‘Where’s he heading?’ asked Rye.

‘I’ll show you.’

They left Casper behind them and climbed three flights of stairs. They found themselves standing at the back of a crowd.

Twenty or thirty passengers jostled in front of a locked door. They scratched and pawed at the metal.