Outpost

The internal door that connected the heated accommodation block to the rest of the rig was draped with silver, quilted insulation ripped from an airlock. Jane zipped her coat. She pulled the curtain of insulation aside and hit Open. The door slid back. She shone her flashlight into the dark. The corridor walls sparkled with ice. She closed the door behind her and set off, treasure map held in a gloved hand.

Jane’s route took her through miles of unlit rooms and passageways. She felt like an ARVIN drone exploring the silted dereliction of the Titanic.

Eerie silence. The hiss and hum of climate control, the constant background to life on the rig, was absent. No sound but laboured breathing and the grit-crunch of snowboots on iced deck plates.

Her torch beam lit gym equipment, vending machines and evacuation signs glazed in frost. Once the heating had been shut off, the temperature in the uninhabited sections of the refinery had quickly dropped to minus forty. Any moisture in the air had condensed to fine dew then crystallised. Ceiling pipes dripped ice.

The map led her to a dank storeroom on C deck. A vacant space. Nothing but a row of lockers against a wall. Four of the lockers were empty. The fifth locker had no back, and was the gateway to a hidden room. Punch had obviously positioned the bank of lockers to mask the entrance to an adjacent storage space.

Jane climbed through the locker into the hidden room.

A dome tent. Guy ropes pegged down with heavy turbine cogs.

Survival equipment stacked in the corner. Warm clothes, sleeping bags, a hexamine stove, frozen bottles of drinking water.

An emergency hide-out. The obvious implication: there isn’t enough food to feed the entire crew until spring. But three people could make it through winter if they sequestered themselves and let everyone starve.

Jane opened a box. Torch batteries, protein bars, and three vicious kitchen knives. A Post-it note pasted to one of the blades.

IN CASE THINGS GET UGLY.

Jane returned to her room. She locked the door and took a packet of M amp;Ms from its hiding place in her running shoe. One M amp;M per day. She lay on her bunk and crunched the little nugget between her teeth. She let the chocolate melt on her tongue. Then, in a sudden paroxysm of self-disgust, she hurled the bag at the wall. M amp;Ms skittered across the floor.

‘We can do better than this,’ she told herself.

Punch and Ghost reached Darwin Sound. They headed for high ground.

They dismounted the bikes. They took off their ski masks. Punch took a long, steaming piss while Ghost scanned the shoreline with binoculars. Miles of rocks and shingle turned blood red by sunset. Ghost took out his radio.

‘Shore team to Rampart, over.’

‘Rampart here.’ Sian’s voice. ‘ Good to hear from you.’

‘We’re at Darwin. No sign.’

‘Nothing? Nothing at all?’

‘I’ve got five-, six-kilometre visibility. No sign of them. How’s that storm?’

‘Big. Still coming.’

‘You’ve got fifteen minutes to raise them and get a fix. After that, we’re out of here.’

Ghost turned to Punch.

‘We gave it our best shot. Nobody can say we didn’t try.’ He pulled back the cuff of his gauntlet and checked his watch. ‘Ten minutes, then we head home.’

They shared a protein bar.

‘Personally, I’d do a Captain Oates,’ said Punch. ‘If it came down to frostbite and starvation, I’d take a long walk in the snow.’

The twilight sky suddenly brightened, like someone flicked a switch and made it noon.

‘What the fuck?’ said Ghost.

They both looked up. Something bright at high altitude, behind the cloud, moving fast.

‘A plane?’ said Punch. ‘A burning plane?’

‘Too white. Too constant.’

Later, when he was back aboard the refinery, Punch tried to describe what he saw to Jane.

‘It was like time-lapse footage. The sun zooming across the sky, dawn to dusk. It did crazy things to our shadows. I totally lost balance.’

The fierce glow crossed the sky accompanied by a high whistle. Punch pulled down the hood of his parka so he could hear.

‘It’s coming down,’ said Ghost. ‘It’s going to hit.’

The white glow sank below the western horizon. Seconds later they heard the impact. Deep, rolling thunder.

‘Now what in God’s name was that?’

Survival

Simon woke.

He studied the blue polypropylene weave of the tent fabric. Somewhere a voice was calling.

‘Apex, this is Rampart, over. Apex, this is Rampart. Can you hear me?’

He had lost a glove. His right hand was bare.

I’m dying, he thought. I’m dying, and I can barely remember who I am.

He looked for the glove.

Simon woke.

He turned his head. Alan lay sheathed in three sleeping bags, unmoving, lips blue. Nikki had wrapped herself around him to impart warmth. Her head rested on his chest. She was unconscious, mouth open, a patch of frost on the sleeping bag where her breath had condensed and frozen.

Simon’s fingers were numb. He looked for the glove.

Simon woke.

Semi-darkness. Daylight outside, but the tent was half buried in snow.