Outpost

‘Watch the screen,’ she told Sian. ‘If that figure drops below thirty-five, yell.’

She took saline from the refrigerator and hung it from the drip stand.

‘Keep an eye on the bags,’ she told Jane. ‘Let me know when he needs a refill.’

She swabbed Rawlins’s arm just below the elbow.

‘Ghost. Keep hold of his shoulders, okay? He could buck. Right. Everybody ready?’

Rye sliced into Rawlins’s arm with a scalpel and clamped his arteries. Yellow globules of subcutaneous fat glistened like butter.

She sawed his arm. She worked through bone in short rasps like she was sawing through a table leg.

‘Think he will be okay?’ asked Jane when they had finished.

‘I’ll give him another shot when he wakes. After that, it’s aspirin.’

‘So what about you, Doc? What if we need to fix you up?’

‘Anything happens, shoot me a spinal and I’ll talk you through it.’

Rawlins’s face was pale and slack. Jane instinctively moved to wipe sweat from his forehead. ‘No,’ warned Ghost.

Husky exhalations through an airway tube. Steady beep of the cardiograph.

‘Done that before?’ asked Ghost. ‘Cut off an arm?’

‘Snipped plenty of fingers,’ said Rye. ‘Standard oil-field crush injury.’

‘Reckon he’ll make it?’

‘Normal circumstances I would expect him to recover from the amputation, as long as the wound doesn’t become infected. This disease, though. Never seen anything like it.’ Ghost thumbed through Rawlins’s medical notes. ‘Stress. Depression. Prostate trouble. Poor bastard. Should have cashed out of this game years ago.’

‘Put that down,’ ordered Rye. ‘That stuff is confidential.’ They stuffed Rawlins’s shredded clothes into a red body-waste sack. They bagged bloody swabs and dressings. They slopped bleach on the floor.

Ghost picked up the sacks with gloved hands. He held them at arm’s length.

‘Throw that shit over the side,’ ordered Rye. She used forceps to pick up the severed arm. She dropped it into a plastic box and sealed the lid. She handed the box to Jane.

‘And get rid of that fucking thing, will you?’

Jane called Punch on the intercom. She asked him to fetch a can of kerosene and meet her on the ice.

They walked from beneath the shadow of the refinery and stood at the water’s edge.

‘How is he?’

‘Out for the count,’ said Jane. ‘He might live. He might not.’

‘So who is in charge now?’

‘Fuck knows.’

‘This isn’t a democracy. If we vote on every little fucking thing it will be a disaster.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Somebody better step up. If Nail and his compadres start calling the shots we’ll be dead within a week.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You actually cut off his arm?’ asked Punch.

Jane peeled the lid from the box.

‘Christ,’ he said. ‘How did it happen?’

‘We won’t know for sure until he is awake and talking.’

‘Swear to God, I won’t let that happen to me.’

They put the box on the ice, doused it in kerosene and set it alight. It burned with a blue flame. The hand slowly clenched as it cooked.

Medical.

Rye checked on Rawlins. He lay on the examination table draped in a sheet. The stump of his arm was bandaged. Steady beep from a monitor.

Rye examined a drop of blood beneath a microscope. Red platelets. Black, barbed organisms swarmed and replicated. Hard to see detail. She wished she had better magnification.

Movement in the periphery of her vision. Maybe Rawlins stirred in his drugged sleep. Maybe she imagined it. She watched him for a while. She got spooked. She played music to feel less alone. Charlie Parker. Live at Storyville. CD fed into the player. Cool jazz echoed down empty corridors.

Jane helped make dinner. Spaghetti greased with a crude pesto made from dried basil, garlic paste and a squirt of tomato puree. She carried her bowl to the table.

‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ said Punch. ‘I’d rather my mother was dead than walking round with that shit sprouting out of her skin.’

‘Don’t. It’ll drive you nuts.’

‘We should take the Skidoos and split for Alaska. Seriously. You, me, Sian. Ghost, if you want. Anyone can see you dig the guy. A few more weeks and the sea will be frozen. We’d have a shot. We’d have a straight run.’

‘What about everyone else?’

‘Fuck them. Sorry, but fuck them.’

‘We’re not at that point yet. We’ve still got options.’

‘Then somebody better lay out the Big Plan. Look around you. Morale is down the toilet.’

Rye’s voice on the intercom: ‘Jane. Punch. We need you in Medical right away.’

The operating table was empty.

‘Where’s he gone?’ demanded Jane. ‘He didn’t leave a note,’ said Rye. ‘You left him alone?’

‘I need to eat now and again. And the occasional shit.’ ‘How long were you gone?’ ‘Fifteen, twenty minutes.’

The drip stand lay on the floor. The cardiograph was smashed. Jane kicked at a scrap of surgical dressing with her boot. ‘He tore the canula out of his arm,’ she said.

‘He’ll be losing blood.’

‘He had his arm chopped off two hours ago. How is he able to walk around?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Ghost arrived.

‘He’s gone walkabout?’ said Ghost. ‘You’re kidding me.’

‘We’d better find him quickly,’ said Jane. ‘It’s minus twenty in those corridors. The cold will kill him in minutes.’