Outpost

Tin mugs and plates. A broken welder’s mask used as an ashtray. A bottle of Stolichnaya long since evaporated dry.

Punch pulled off his gauntlets and began to load his backpack. He pulled ammo boxes from the shelves. He flipped the latches and removed patties of explosive wrapped in brown paper.

Jane explored corner shadows. A scoop-digger with a broken track.

Something smelled bad. She lifted the edge of a tarpaulin. An emaciated hand. She pulled the tarpaulin aside.

‘My God,’ said Jane.

‘What have you found?’ Punch kept packing.

‘A body.’

Jane crouched over the body. The corpse was jammed in the digger scoop. Thighs, calves and buttocks were gone. The upper arms, belly and chest had been flayed. Slow decay, despite the cold.

‘Who is it?’ asked Punch. ‘Can you tell?’

Jane trained her flashlight on the bearded face. Sunken cheeks.

A rictus grin. Scraps of neck flesh. Fragments of a barbed tattoo.

‘Gus. I think it’s Gus. It looks like someone ate him.’

Punch stuffed a tin of detonators into the side pocket of his backpack.

‘Ate him?’

‘He’s been butchered. Someone used a knife. Did a thorough job.’

‘Let’s get off this fucking island.’

‘Punch,’ shouted Jane. She trained her flashlight on the vault door. A figure in a red hooded parka was struggling to heave the door shut. ‘Don’t let him lock us in.’

Punch hurriedly shouldered his shotgun. He shot wide, and blew a crater in the lead wall. He fired again. The impact scoured a deep trench in the closing door. He threw the gun. It skittered across the concrete floor and jammed the vault door just as it closed.

He dived for the gun and grabbed the butt. He wrestled for the weapon with an unseen adversary. He pulled the trigger. Muzzle-flash. Blast like a thunderclap. A scream of rage.

‘Punch, get out of the way,’ shouted Jane.

Punch rolled clear. Jane fired the flamethrower. Screams. She ran across the room. Second burst. The walls and door dripped flame. Lead rivulets like lava. The chamber filled with smoke.

Jane kicked the door wide with her boot. A puff of fire from the flamethrower lit an empty tunnel. Scraps of smouldering fabric on the floor.

‘Run, you fuck,’ she shouted, her voice turned metallic by the tunnel walls. ‘Keep running.’

Punch picked up his smouldering shotgun.

‘Think it was Nail?’ he asked.

‘Who else would it be? Fetch the backpack. Let’s go.’

They trudged upward, counting the levels. Jane turned round every few paces to check they weren’t followed. Brief burst of flame at each junction. She inspected every crevice in case Nail was crouched waiting to launch a second ambush. He was injured but desperate enough to attack.

A distant wind-rush turned to an oceanic roar as they approached the bunker entrance. They leaned into the hurricane. The doors were open and a storm was raging outside. Jane’s torch lit swarming snow particles.

‘Where the hell did this come from?’ Punch shouted to be heard over wind-roar.

‘We can beat it.’

‘Maybe we should wait.’

‘No. Got your radio? Call Ghost. Tell him to switch the refinery floodlights on full and hit the foghorn every twenty seconds. That should guide us home safe and sound.’

They set off into the storm. They descended the concrete steps and walked out on to the frozen sea. They bent double against the gale. Snow furled around them like thick smoke. They couldn’t see the floodlights of the rig, but they could feel the foghorn every twenty seconds, a deep rumbling throb that pulsed deeper than incessant wind noise.

Jane turned to Punch. She lifted her ski mask.

‘We’re making good time,’ she reassured him. ‘We should see the floodlights any second.’

An infected passenger stumbled out of the blizzard. A man in a blue tracksuit. Jane fired her flamethrower at close range.

The man was blown from his feet like he was hit by a fire hose. He skidded backward across the ice, burning, flames whipped by the wind. He tried to sit up. A second blast put him down for good.

A sudden blow to her back sent Jane sprawling, face down. She slid into the burning man. Her arm caught alight. She slapped to extinguish the flames.

She scrambled to her feet. Punch was gone. His shotgun and backpack lay on the ice.

She shouted into the squalling wind.

‘Punch?’

She fired the flamethrower straight up. Flickering flame-light. She looked around.

‘Punch? ‘Where are you?’

She thought she heard Punch call her name. She ran in pursuit, ran headlong into the blizzard, but found nothing but darkness and driving snow. She wanted to search but was fighting hypothermia.

Jane headed for Rampart, a lone figure struggling through the storm.

The Bomb

Sian sat in Rawlins’s office and hit the foghorn every twenty seconds. Massive funnels at each corner of the rig blasted a mournful, booming note. The funnels were surrounded by safety barriers and ear-guard warnings. A deep rumble resonated through the superstructure like an earth tremor.