Outpost

They ran on deck. Fire from below. Windows blew out. A row of burning lifeboats. The zodiac was reduced to scraps of burning rubber hanging from a crane.

Punch and Sian had already retired to bed. They fled the ship wearing tracksuits and sneakers.

‘We’re fine,’ said Sian, starting to shiver uncontrollably.

Jane switched off her flashlight. They stood in the dark.

‘We have to get moving,’ said Punch.

‘Everyone keep calm,’ said Jane.

‘There.’ A green, pulsing glow high above them in the fog. One of the aircraft warning strobes at the corner of the rig. ‘The west leg,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

Jane helped Sian. Ghost helped Punch.

They hurried across the ice. They were beneath the refinery, heading for the south leg. They ran so long Jane wondered if they had missed their target and were fleeing blindly out into the Barents Sea.

‘Do you think they are following us?’ asked Punch.

‘We’ve outrun them for now,’ said Jane. ‘But yeah, if we hang around long enough they’ll catch up.’

The south leg. A Cyclopean cylinder of steel. Jane’s flashlight played across a wall of metal studded with bolts and seams like the suture marks of an operation scar.

‘Jane,’ shouted Ghost.

She turned. A forklift truck drove straight at her. Pallet prongs slammed into the steel wall either side of her head. Wheels span on ice.

‘What the fuck?’

An infected crewman part-melded to the controls.

Ghost grabbed the cab cage and kicked at the driver. Flesh tore. The crewman ripped away from the forklift and fell on the ice, steering wheel welded to his hands. Ghost stamped on the man’s head until it burst.

‘Konecranes. Not one of ours.’

‘Must be from Hyperion. Most liners have a big marshalling area amidships. Side doors in the hull.’

‘He just fell out and started driving around?’

‘Sure. Why not?’

Punch and Sian hugged each other for warmth.

‘Hold on, guys,’ said Ghost. ‘Nearly home.’

‘I think the rope is round the side.’

They circled the leg and found a knotted rope dangling from the mist like a ladder to heaven. Jane seized the rope and climbed upwards into nothing. The platform lift was parked four metres above them. There was a brief silence, then a metallic grind as the lift descended to the ice. They climbed aboard. Jane hit Up.

‘So fucking cold,’ said Punch.

‘Soon be warm,’ said Ghost. ‘A couple more minutes and we’ll be inside.’

It wasn’t until Sian collapsed they realised she had been stabbed in the side and her red tracksuit was crisp with frozen blood.

They carried Sian to the canteen. They laid her on a table. She tried to sit up. They pushed her down.

Jane ran to Rye’s old room and swept medical supplies into a plastic bag. Bandages. Sterile dressings.

Jane examined the wound. Sian yelped and hit her. Punch held Sian’s arms. She turned her head to avoid looking at the hole in her hip.

Jane wriggled on surgical gloves. She selected tweezers from an instrument pack. She sterilised the tweezers with a Zippo flame then dug into the wound. Sian writhed. Jane extracted a big, rusted woodscrew dripping gobbets of flesh.

‘Any idea when it happened?’ asked Jane.

‘That last explosion as we reached the boat deck. I didn’t feel it at the time. Too much going on.’

Jane swabbed the wound and taped a dressing in place.

‘It should be okay, as long as you keep it clean. Let me rustle up some painkillers.’ She dug in the bag.

‘Did anyone see what happened to Gus?’ asked Ghost.

‘No,’ said Jane.

‘How about Nail? Did anyone see what happened to him?’

‘No.’

‘Yakov? How about Yakov?’

‘Dead,’ said Sian, struggling to sit up.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Punch and I ran from our room. He went back for his sneakers. I was alone on the upper deck. Just for a moment. Yakov was below me on the promenade. He was fighting off a guy in clown costume. Other passengers showed up. They had him cornered. I called to him. I leaned over the railing and held out my arm. I told him to jump for my hand. I don’t know. I still think he could have made it. I could have hauled him up. He pulled the pin from a grenade with his teeth and held it beneath his chin. He looked up, looked me straight in the eye. I shouted. He just kept looking at me. I was the last thing he saw.’

‘Jesus,’ said Punch. ‘I barely spoke a word to the man. He seemed nice, though. Quiet, but nice.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Jane. ‘Don’t give me that. He was one of Nail’s muscle clones. None of you could stand the guy.’

‘I asked him to sign his name on a couple of safety chits,’ said Ghost. ‘He put a cross. I don’t think he could write at all.’

‘How do you think they got in?’ asked Punch. ‘I swear those barricades were solid.’