Outpost

‘Hello?’ called Jane. ‘Are you on your own, or did you come with friends?’

The spectral figure didn’t move.

Jane rested her flashlight on a ledge. She triggered the igniter flame. Quiet hiss of gas. She strode forward.

‘All right then, babycakes,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Let’s dance.’

The man shuffled towards her. A chef. He had bottles and jars taped to his chest like he was wearing some kind of suicide vest.

The chef tore a pickle jar from his chest and smashed it on his forehead. Kerosene. Jane backed away. He held a lighter in his left hand. He struck it. Jane ran. The blast threw her down the tunnel. Big dent in the SCUBA tanks. She got to her feet and retrieved her torch. The tunnel was blocked by a wall of fire.

Jane covered her face and ran through the blaze. Her boots caught alight. She stamped out the flames.

Ignition. Motor roar, amplified by the tunnel walls. Dazzling headbeams.

Jane shielded her eyes. Gear change. Escalating roar. Headbeams approaching.

Jane squinted into the glare. The serrated teeth of a digger scoop heading her way. She hugged the left tunnel wall. The digger drove straight at her. She dived clear at the last moment. The scoop dug into the tunnel wall, bringing down rock.

She glimpsed heavy caterpillar tread, and a hunched, misshapen figure in the yellow cab.

The digger backed up. Jane hugged the right tunnel wall. The digger drove at her. Dumb enough to fall for the same trick.

Jane dived clear. The scoop dug into the tunnel wall. Rockfall. The digger pinned by boulders, engine house partially crushed.

Jane got a good look at the driver. Two dinner-suited passengers fused together like Siamese twins. The digger tried to reverse. The damaged engine coughed and revved. Gouts of smoke from the exhaust. Caterpillar tread ground and span.

Jane fried the cab. The twin drivers were consumed in a typhoon of flame.

The jet of flame stuttered and died. Jane took off the SCUBA tanks and shook them. Empty. She left the spent flamethrower by the burning digger.

White tiles. Shower heads.

Some kind of decontamination area.

Lockers. Rubber radiation suits hung on pegs like human skin left to tan. Ghoulish, skull-eyed gas hoods.

The passage led to a bare chamber. Bloody letters:

WELCOME HOME, JANE

Dried blood drips. Black flakes.

Nikki knew she was coming. The guys in the tunnels, the men melded to the digger, had just been entertainment. Nikki knew Jane would make it to Level Zero, and prepared a welcome.

Jane heard a scratching sound behind her. Another fuel-soaked crewman trying to spark a Zippo. She snatched the claw hammer from her pocket and shattered his head. She crouched over his body. She ripped a kerosene bottle from his chest and slipped it into her coat pocket.

White tiles. Shower heads.

The school changing rooms. Hiss of water. Thick steam. Five girls jeering, chanting, screaming. ‘ Stinky bitch. Stinky bitch.’ Pelting their victim with soap. A small, Asian girl cowering fully clothed in the corner of the communal shower. Jane among her tormentors. ‘ Stinky bitch.’ A shameful memory. A reminder that Jane wasn’t always a righteous victim. Sometimes cowardice made her join the herd.

There was a steel lid in the floor like the turret hatch of a tank.

She heaved the hatch aside. A deep, vertical shaft. Flickering light at the bottom.

She checked her watch.

17:25

‘You’re nothing special,’ she told herself. ‘You’re not a hero. You’ve been a coward and a victim all your life. But plenty of others would turn and run right now. The girls who made your schooldays hell. That jeering, hateful crowd that drove you to the ends of the earth. None of them would have the courage to walk into this bunker and battle their way to the lowest levels.’

We are what we do.

She could be riding Rampart home. Instead she walked into hell to rescue a friend.

She climbed into the shaft and gripped the wall-rungs. She recited Byron as she began to descend.

I had a dream which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space.
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light.

The Hive

Approaching footsteps. Dancing flashlight beam.

Nikki grasped Nail by the ankle and dragged him down the tunnel. She was half Nail’s body weight, but possessed a maniac’s super-strength. He sobbed and begged. His fingers raked concrete. Punch could hear Nail pleading as he was dragged away down the corridor. Echoing screams.

Punch adjusted his grip on the sharpened coin. He cut as fast as he could. The cord binding his wrists had started to fray.