Outpost

C deck. Household stores. Sian scanned the shelves by flashlight. She loaded a trolley with toilet roll, liquid soap and paper towels.

She pushed the trolley down unlit passageways, Maglite clenched between her teeth like a cigar. Movement in shadow up ahead. ‘Hello?’

She reached a junction. She shone her flashlight down a side tunnel. A figure. A glimpse of bare flesh.

‘Hello?’

Sian stood in a doorway. A dark chamber. Stacked lengths of pipe.

A naked man crouched in shadow. Rawlins. ‘What’s the deal, Frank?’

She stepped closer. She saw the bloody, bandaged stump where an arm used to be. And she saw the face. One eye was jet black. The other eye looked at her in cold calculation. She felt herself appraised by a keen alien intelligence. She backed away and ran.

They searched rooms and passageways near Medical. They found the airway tube. Rawlins had pulled it from his throat. It was lying on the deck plate. It was glazed with frozen saliva.

‘We better split up,’ said Ghost. ‘Cover more ground.’

‘Hold on a moment,’ said Jane. ‘This has to be the same shit we saw on TV, right? Drives you nuts like rabies. Maybe Frank is okay. But maybe not. We have to be prepared.’

‘What do you have in mind?’ asked Punch.

‘I think you should go back to the accommodation block. Warn the others and barricade the door.’

‘What are you and Ghost going to do?’

‘Head to the island and fetch the shotguns.’

The Hunt

Ghost hauled open the bunker door. His flashlight lit shelves and boxes, and the snowmobiles shrouded in tarpaulin.

‘Okay. Better be quick.’

Jane unboxed shotguns.

‘Give them to me.’

Ghost checked the breech of each weapon and dry-fired to make sure they were safe. He zipped the guns and their cleaning kits into a holdall.

‘Get the shells.’

Jane snatched boxes of 12-gauge shells from a shelf and stuffed them into her backpack.

‘There’s a sell-by on these boxes. I didn’t think ammunition expired.’

‘Let’s get going.’

Rawlins found he could see in the dark. Not clearly. Not well. But he could make out shapes.

He stood naked at the centre of the dive room. He wondered how he got there. Self-awareness came and went. Sometimes he was Frank Rawlins. Sometimes he was something else.

He lit a Tilley lamp so he could see better. Benches. Racks of diving equipment. The white, steel bubble of a hypobaric chamber.

He opened a locker and examined his reflection in the door mirror. One eye was as black as onyx.

Rawlins took a dive belt from a wall hook. He unsheathed the knife and used the tip to prise the eye from its socket. He did it left-handed. He sawed through the optic nerve. The eyeball plopped at his feet.

He stared at his reflection. The empty socket wept blood. He took a scuba tank from a wall rack and pounded the mirror to glass-dust.

Rawlins’s office. A sign on the door:

STRICTLY NO UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL

Punch switched on the lights. It felt like trespass.

‘The desk drawer,’ said Sian. ‘That’s where he keeps it.’

Punch levered the latch with a screwdriver. He took the Taser from its case.

‘It feels like a toy. Should stop him dead, though.’

‘Then what?’ said Sian. ‘If he has this infection we can’t lay a finger on him.’

‘Improvise a straitjacket. Tie him up in a sleeping bag or something. Lock him in a freight container. Quarantine, until we see what’s what.’

Sian examined the desk screen. A couple of clicks brought up a floor plan of the refinery.

‘He’s on C deck, right? We can track him.’

Punch leaned over her shoulder. The C deck schematic was speckled with red dots.

‘We dropped some of the blast doors when we powered down the rig. The doors show up on the status board. Keep watching. He might betray his location.’

‘Don’t move from that chair, all right?’ Punch gave Sian his radio. ‘If you see movement, shout.’

Punch lowered the blast door, sealing himself inside the accommodation module.

He was armed with a pool cue and the Taser.

He slid down the wall and sat on the corridor floor with the Taser cradled in his lap.

‘How’s it going?’ Sian’s voice. Punch took out his radio.

‘Sentry duty.’

‘Can we lock the hatches? Can we stop him moving around?’

‘The blast doors seal tight in an emergency. Otherwise anyone can raise them. Only the airlocks have keypads. Protection against piracy.’

‘We have to assume he is infected.’

‘What else can we do? We have to treat him as hostile until we know better.’

‘I wish we could be sure. Severe blood loss. He’s going to freeze .’

‘I know. I know. ’

A thud against the door. Punch jumped to his feet. ‘Frank? Is that you?’

Punch trained his Taser at the door. The hatch began to slide upward. He hit Close.

He pressed the intercom.

‘Frank? Are you okay?’

‘I’m cold. Very cold.’

‘Are you infected? Your arm. Can you tell me? Did it halt the infection?’

‘So cold.’ Rawlins sounded weak, delirious.

‘You’ve got to tell us, Frank. We have to know.’

‘So tired.’

‘We can’t let you in, Frank. Frank? Are you there?’

He waited a full minute. He hit Open. The door slid back.

Nothing beyond but an empty corridor.

Punch called Sian.

‘Frank just tried to get in.’