Outpost

They climbed on the snowmobiles and drove away leaving Alan still strapped to the sledge, snow settling on his face, a blue speck abandoned in a vast ice plain.

The sun set. They rode headlong into a blizzard. Rising wind-roar. Their headlamps lit driving snow. Punch wanted to erect the survival shelter but Ghost ignored his signals to stop.

Ghost checked his sat nav and headed for the cabin coordinates. The Garmin unit bolted to the handlebars counted down the metres. He was surprised the unit could still find a GPS signal. He guessed remnants of the US military were still active. A bunch of generals in a mile-deep war room trying to mobilise troops that were long dead or had abandoned their post.

YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION.

They pulled up. Featureless terrain. White nothing.

Ghost dismounted. He shone his flashlight into a locust-swarm of ice particles. He found a snow bank. He and Punch began to excavate, burrow like moles. Punch hacked at the snow with gloved hands. Ghost unfolded a trenching spade and dug. They exposed a window, and then they exposed a door. The door was chocked closed. They tugged the wedges free and pulled the door wide.

The interior of the cabin was bare. They revved the snowmobiles, drove them inside, and wedged the door closed. Wind noise dropped to silence.

Ghost erected a dome tent in the corner of the cabin. He hammered pegs into the floor with his boot. Punch set up a couple of LED lanterns. He burned a Coleman gas stove to raise the cabin temperature. He melted snow for coffee.

They wrapped Simon and Nikki in foil blankets. Punch cracked self-heating cans of chicken teriyaki. Nikki ate with trembling hands. Ghost spoon-fed Simon.

‘They wouldn’t tell us on the radio,’ said Nikki, wiping food from her chin.

‘Tell you what?’ asked Ghost.

‘Why the plane didn’t come.’

‘There’s been some kind of outbreak back home. A pandemic. Everything shot to shit.’

‘How bad?’

‘Pretty fucking bad.’

‘The whole of Britain?’

‘The whole of the world. Take off your gloves a moment. And your boots.’

Ghost checked Nikki for frostbite. ‘Your skin is cracked, but you still have circulation. See? If I press your skin it goes white then red. You still have blood flow. We have a doctor on the rig. She’ll check you over properly.’

‘Maybe we should go back for Alan,’ said Nikki. ‘When we have our strength. When the weather clears.’

‘It’s winter. The weather won’t clear for six months. It’ll be one storm after another from now on. We wouldn’t find him, even if we looked. What can I tell you? I guess we aren’t the good guys.’

Ghost turned to Simon.

‘Let’s take a look at you.’

Simon allowed Ghost to unbuckle his gauntlets. He sat back and let Ghost peel off his socks and shoes.

Simon’s toes were swollen and peeling. The fingertips of his left hand were blue. His entire right hand was black, cracked and weeping. The smell was foul. Punch covered his mouth and nose.

‘Probably looks worse than it is,’ lied Ghost. ‘Skin will grow back in time.’

He helped Simon dress.

‘Take it easy, all right?’

Ghost picked up the trenching spade.

‘I’m going outside to dig us out. Don’t want to suffocate.’

He stepped outside into the wind and snow. He shouted into his radio.

‘Shore team to Rye. Shore team to Rye, do you copy, over?’

Jane knocked on Rawlins’s door.

‘They reached the cabin,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d like to know. Couldn’t get much out of them. Bad atmospherics. Imagine they will push for the coast at daylight.’

‘Everyone all right?’

‘Punch and Ghost are okay. But only two members of the Apex team made it.’

‘What happened to the third guy?’

‘Like I say, bad reception. I could barely make out a word. But there were three of them. Now there are two. Maybe the cold got him.’

‘Christ. There will be a bunch of tears when they get back. A bunch of guilt. Well, that’s your problem. Pastoral care. Ghost and Punch are okay, yeah?’

‘We’ll hear more when they reach the bunker.’

‘Take a look at this.’

Rawlins had stapled an Arctic map to the wall. The island and surrounding ocean were dotted with red pins.

‘These are all the installations in our sector, as best I can remember. Mostly Gazprom. A couple of Occidental. I suppose most have been evacuated. But if they cleared out in a hurry they might have left some useful supplies. Food. Fuel.’

‘What’s that?’ Jane pointed to a pin tacked to the northern shore of the island.

‘Kalashnikov. A cluster of cabins built by whalers. Survey teams use it as a stop-over. There might be a cache of food, if we’re lucky.’

‘There’s a town called Kalashnikov?’

‘A Hero of Socialist Labour. He got a patch of ice named after him.’

‘So we take the snowmobiles and travel up the coast?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Our route would pass within a couple of kilometres of that impact site,’ said Jane. ‘A person could walk inland and take a look.’

‘Depends on the weather, but yeah.’

‘This time I go, all right? If the boat goes out I want to be on it. I need to get off this damn rig.’

Jane sipped coffee. Sian hurried into the canteen.

‘It’s Rye. You better talk to her.’