Outpost

Jane helped Ghost run wire from each explosive charge. They spooled flex along the walkways and metal steps. They taped the wires to girders and railings. The wires converged at the pump house, a cabin that housed monitor equipment for the three great distillation tanks.

They smashed a window and fed the cables inside. Ghost webbed the remaining windows with duct tape. Proof against the blast. He laid three pairs of ear-defenders on a desk.

One last inspection to check the charges were properly rigged and the detonator wire unbroken.

‘Beautiful sky,’ said Jane. She pulled back her hood and craned to see a dusting of stars. A delicate pink twilight to the east.

She looked out over the refinery. A crystal palace. White-onwhite. Frosted steel. Cross-beams and scaffold towers dripping ice. Snow-dusted storage tanks. Crane jibs heavy with icicles. Every north-facing surface caked and glazed.

‘Reckon Nail is lurking round here?’ asked Jane.

‘Keep a lookout for prints,’ said Ghost. ‘I doubt he could make it up the anchor cables, but he’s desperate enough to try.’ He lifted his boot and pointed at the sole. ‘Zigzag tread, all right? Anything else is him.’

Ghost struggled to unscrew the cap of his hip flask with a gloved hand. He swigged.

‘Back in a moment, all right?’

Ghost had spent the last hour thinking it through. This was their last chance of escape. If the anchor cables failed to detach they would be permanently marooned at the top of the world. In a few weeks the food and fuel would run out and they would be forced to choose between a knife-slash to the throat or a long walk in the snow. He pictured his body on a high gantry facing the sea. A grinning corpse cradling a blade. Maybe Jane’s mummified cadaver would be beside him, holding his skeletal hand.

He walked to the corner of the rig. He took a fist of explosive from his pocket. He had kept a small lump of C4. A vague plan. If the anchor cables failed to detach, he could prepare a small charge and tape it beneath a table in the canteen. Cook a meal. Invite Jane and Sian to sit for dinner. Make it quick and clean. End it all mid-conversation.

He told himself not to be so stupid. He had spent so long facing down mortal terror he had made a fetish of death. He had been planning an elaborate demise instead of fighting to live. He added the nub of explosive to the main charge.

Jane fetched the initiators from the canteen. A black plastic case. Three initiators sitting snug in a foam bed. Each initiator was a pistol-grip with a red Fire button on top.

Jane tested batteries in a Maglite, to make sure they held a charge.

She slotted batteries into the butt of each grip.

Jane looked for Sian.

‘I think she went outside,’ said Ghost.

Airlock 52. A winking red corridor light. An alert that the exterior door had been left open.

Jane put on her coat and stepped outside. She saw Sian standing at the end of a walkway. She was leaning over a railing, looking down at the ice far below.

Weeks ago, when Jane was fat and hopeless, she had leaned over a similar section of railing and willed herself to jump into the sea. She wondered if Sian was, at that moment, thinking of flinging herself from the refinery. Sian leaned further forward.

‘Hey,’ said Jane, reaching for the only words that might cut through Sian’s despair. ‘Come on, girl. We need your help.’

They walked to the pump house. Ghost twisted wire round the terminals of each initiator.

‘I taped up the windows,’ he said. ‘We should probably stand back from the glass. I’m not sure how big a bang this is going to be.’

They stood facing each other. ‘Want to say a prayer?’

‘No,’ said Jane.

‘Everybody ready?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay. Here we go. Three. Two. One.’

Countdown

Nikki pressed her ear to the bunker door. No wind noise.

She dug a crash helmet from a pile of snowmobile components heaped by the tunnel wall. She opened the bunker door. Two infected passengers stood with their backs to her, looking out to sea. She swung the helmet and smashed their skulls.

Nikki climbed crags. She crouched on high ground. She surveyed the refinery through binoculars. The fog had cleared. Rampart was lit by weak twilight, a dawn that would never break.

She adjusted focus.

‘You see?’ said the voice of Nikki’s dead boyfriend. ‘ They’ve cut away the stairs and ladders. There is no way to get aboard.’

‘I could climb the cables.’

‘Too steep. Too smooth.’

‘I could fetch rope. I could grapple a railing.’

‘Too high. You would never manage the climb.’

‘There has to be a way.’

She switched to infrared. The frozen steel superstructure of the refinery betrayed no heat signature except for Accommodation Module A. The module glowed weak orange. Someone had switched on the heating.

She scanned walkways and gantries. A red dot. Zoom in. A glowing stick figure, walking slow, looking down as if they were following a trail.

‘Those bastards hold all the cards. They’ve got food, they’ve got heat and they’ve got guns.’