Sian sat at Rawlins's desk. The lights flickered. Slight tremor. A pot of pencils toppled from the desk and scattered on the floor.
Sian picked up the radio.
'Guys? Ghost? Do you copy, over?'
The lights flickered again.
'Guys, what's going on?'
A sudden alarm. A red ceiling strobe began to flash. A woman's super-calm voice:'… Emergency stations. Fire warning. Emergency stations. Fire warning..!
Sian checked the floor plan on the desk screen. The fuel store and adjacent corridor flashed red.
'Folks, I've got multiple alerts in D Module. What's going on?'
Punch ran down the corridor towards D Module. He fumbled for his radio.
'… Emergency stations. Fire warning. Emergency stations. Fire warning.. '.
'What's the deal?' he said, shouting to be heard over the emergency announcement.
'Fire and monoxide alerts on C deck,' said Sian. ' Lots of them.'
'Is this is a system fault or an actual fire?'
'I'm going up to the roof said Sian. 'I'm going to check. '
'Close the blast doors. Drop any left open. Close them all.'
'What about Ghost and Jane? '
Ghost and Jane ran up the stairs. They reached the top just as a blast door closed, sealing them inside the D Module stairwell. Ghost jabbed Open. The hatch didn't respond.
'There must be an override,' said Jane.
'There is. A key. Punch has it.'
He took out his radio.
'Sian? Sian, do you copy, over?' No response. 'Fucking stairway. It's a refuge point. Thick walls.'
'That's good, right?'
Wisps of smoke from below. They leaned over the railing. The bottom of the stairwell was hazed with smoke. Ghost ripped open a fire locker. He ran down the stairs with an Ansul extinguisher. Jane followed.
'These doors are supposed to hold back thousand-degree heat for twelve hours straight,' coughed Jane.
'It's not the door, it's the conduits. Electrical fires behind the bulkheads.'
Black smoke seeped from a wall-vent. Ghost discharged the extinguisher into the vent. The jet of carbon dioxide roared, sputtered and died.
'Sian? Sian, can you hear me, over? Fuck.'
They ran upstairs. Ghost took breathing apparatus from the fire locker. One air tank. One mask. They buddy-breathed, drew lungfuls of oxygen as they passed the mask back and forth.
'How much air is in this tank?' gasped Jane.
'Thirty minutes, tops.'
Sian vaulted stairs to the helipad. She forgot her coat. She ran outside in her T-shirt.
Smoke wafted from the adjacent accommodation block.
'We have a fire. A big one. C level. Are you getting this, Punch? Can you hear me?'
Sian leaned over the edge of the helipad to get a better view.
She was shivering with cold. Water gushed from beneath the burning habitation block and cascaded into the sea. A ruptured pipe.
'Punch, I'm looking over the side. Heavy damage. We're losing water. There are flames.'
'… Emergency stations. Fire warning. Emergency stations. Fire warning..!
Punch ran down the corridor to D Module. The hatch at the end of the passage had a porthole. Fire on the other side. A passageway clogged with smoke and flame.
Think like Ghost. What would he do?
Punch ran to the fire point. Breathing apparatus. He took out an oxygen cylinder and struggled to release the valve. He strapped it to his back and buckled the harness. So heavy he almost toppled backward. He tugged on the face-mask.
Rawlins drilled the crew once a month. A three-step procedure in the event of fire:
Seal the doors.
Put on a mask.
Find the nearest fire suppression wall box. Smash the glass. Pull the lever. Trigger the deluge system
Punch ran to a wall box. He smashed the glass with his elbow. He yanked the red lever to On. Nothing happened. He tried it twice more. Nothing. The lever should have released the Inergen gas system. Ceiling valves should have flooded the corridors with an inert mix of argon, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and choked the fire. Punch ripped off his mask.
'Sian, why the fuck haven't the suppressors kicked in?'
Punch unravelled a fire hose. He twisted the stop-cock. The hose swelled. He trained the low-pressure stream at the blast door. Water gulped and sputtered. It splashed against the hatch and fizzled like spit on a hot plate.
'This is fucked,' he muttered. He threw down the hose and took out his radio. 'I'm coming up top. There's not much I can do down here.'
Punch joined Sian on the helipad. He threw her a coat.
'Nothing from Ghost and Jane?'
'Nothing,' said Sian.
'Ivan knows how to operate the crane. He can lower me on to the roof.'
Punch stood alone on the helipad. He pulled a silver, fire-retardant proximity suit over his survival gear. The suit was comically big. He had to roll up the sleeves.
He buckled a SCBA cylinder to his back. The sun had set. He looked up at a fabulous dusting of stars.
Worse ways to go, he thought. Die fighting. Die for your friends.
There was a heavy freight crane mounted on the deck between the accommodation blocks. Sian and Ivan could swing him from one roof to another.
He could see them in the cab. Ivan at the controls. Sian crouched beside him.
Punch waved. They swung the jib and lowered the hook. There was a cargo pallet hung from the hook, a wooden platform suspended by a chain.
Punch pulled on his face-mask. He stepped on to the platform. He gave a thumbs up. They swung him towards the burning accommodation module.
Jane and Ghost crouched in the stairwell. The air was thick with hydrogen sulphide. Ghost struggled to stay conscious. His eyelids drooped like he wanted to sleep. Jane crouched over him and pressed the mask to his face. She snatched the mask away and took a gulp of oxygen every few seconds.
The blast door raised. A slight figure in an oversized silver suit. Punch, smiling through the polycarbonate visor.
'Let's get out of here, shall we?' His voice was muffled by his mask.
They hurried down the corridor. They supported Ghost between them. He started to revive.
Ivan sat in the crane cab. Sian stood at his shoulder. 'Punch, do you copy, over? Punch?'
The wind changed. The cab was enveloped in black smoke from the burning accommodation block.
'We must go,' said Ivan.
'Wait.'
'I don't want to get caught up here. Nine-eleven. Jump-or- burn. I don't need it.'
'Just wait.'
They ran past Medical.
'Wait,' said Jane. She ran inside. She flapped open a red bodywaste bag. 'We have to save as much as we can.'
She swept armfuls of drugs into the bag. Ghost opened a cupboard and filled a bag with dressings and hypodermics.
Punch stood by the door. The floor felt soft and sticky. He lifted his boot. The rubber sole of his shoe had begun to melt. He crouched and held his hand over the deck plate. Fierce heat. The level beneath them must be ablaze.
'Folks, we need to leave this instant.'
'Go,' said Jane. 'I'm right behind you.'
They ran for the roof. Ghost pushed Punch on to the cargo pallet.
'You go,' said Ghost. 'I'm waiting for Jane.'
'… Emergency stations. Fire warning. Emergency stations. Fire warning..
The crew mustered in the canteen. They kicked off their heavy boots and zipped themselves into survival suits: insulated wetsuits designed to keep a man alive if he fell into the sea and was immersed in heart-stopping cold. Each man checked his buddy's suit seals and life jacket.
Nail zipped a deck of cards into his suit. Essential supplies. He instinctively retreated to the gym equipment in the corner of the canteen. His territory. His kingdom. He was joined by Mal, Gus and Yakov.
'Any idea what's going on?'
'Keep seeing Punch run back and forth,' said Nail. 'Fucker won't look me in the eye.'
He sniffed.
'Smell that? Burning plastic. If we all sit here waiting for someone to kiss it better, we'll choke.'
'Can we kill that fucking announcement, at least?' said Gus. 'It's driving me nuts.'
Nail ran to Rawlins's office. Empty. He sat at the desk. He checked the screen. The adjacent habitation block flashed red. Fire alerts on every level. He switched on the PA and grabbed the mike.
'All stations. All stations. Abandon rig. Abandon rig.'
The cargo platform swung towards the helipad. Punch touched down.
He ran down the stairwell towards the canteen. Thick smoke. Alarms and strobes.
'… All stations. All stations. Abandon rig. Abandon rig..!
We're going to lose the whole fucking refinery.
What would Ghost do?
Punch stood on a chair in the canteen and clapped for attention.
'Okay, folks. We're out of here.'
He led the crew down the smoke-filled stairway. They coughed. Their eyes streamed. He counted them off as he pushed them into an airlock. One man down.
He found Nail lying unconscious on the stairs. He gripped Nail's ankles and dragged him to the airlock.
They sealed themselves inside. They were choking. Three men puked.
Punch shouldered the exterior door. They whooped freezing air.
'We need to get to the boathouse. The elevators are out of action. We'll have to use the ladders.' The evacuation order was relayed to the crane cab.
'We must go,' said Ivan.
'What about Jane and Ghost?' said Sian.
'I am sorry for your friends.'
He climbed down the ladder to the deck. Sian stayed in the cab. She sat in the operator's seat and tried to make sense of the controls.
'Ghost? Jane? Do you copy, over?'
Ghost ran to Medical. Acrid smoke.
Jane was still throwing drugs and equipment into bags.
'What the fuck are you doing, girl?'
'Help me.'
They hurried up the stairs. They dragged bags.
Alarms. Smoke. Warning strobes.
'Who gave the evacuation order?'
'Sounded like Nail,' said Jane.
'I saw people down on the docking platform. They were climbing into the zodiac.'
'We can't abandon the rig. Without it we are fucked.'
'We don't have a choice,' said Ghost. 'There's plenty of octane distillate left in the pipes. Soon as the fire reaches the injection pumps this place will detonate like a fucking H-bomb.'
They reached the roof.
Driving smoke. They couldn't see the crane cab.
'Sian? Ivan? Do you copy?'
Ghost checked his radio. Low battery warning.
He stood at the edge of the roof and yelled.
'Sian. Ivan.'
He looked down. White furnace heat.
Eight men in the zodiac. The boat rode low in the water. Overloaded. The outboard laboured. They weaved between pack ice.
They reached the island. They lifted Nail ashore. They carried him up the jetty steps to the bunker door.
The crew camped in the tunnel mouth. They lit a couple of storm lamps. They huddled round a hexamine stove for heat. Nobody spoke. They were all thinking the same thing. They were dead bodies. The refinery was life-support. Without the supplies aboard the rig they would last less than a day. Once the stoves burned dry, they would all freeze.
Nail was conscious. He lay still, breathing shallow. Punch crouched beside him.
'How you doing, big guy?'
Nail coughed and flipped him off.
'Take it easy, all right? Give your lungs a chance to recover.' Punch left the bunker. He stood on the jetty and watched the refinery burn.
D Module was ablaze. The fuel store had been on the lowest level. The fire spread upward, floor by floor, until the habitation block was a pillar of fire.
Flame lit the surrounding sea and ice, flickering orange.
'I'm taking the boat,' Punch told the crew. 'I'm going back to help. Any volunteers?'
They looked away.
Punch rode the zodiac back to Rampart.
He could see the underside of the refinery. Liquid, rippling flame washing over pipes and spars. The sight was mesmeric.
White light at the heart of the conflagration. Thousand-degree heat. It was like staring into the sun. He had to look away. Debris fell into the sea, spitting geysers of steam. A shriek. An explosion of sparks. A steady groan, like the refinery was in excruciating pain. A major structural collapse under way.
A cascade of girders: fatally weakened chunks of superstructure tumbled into the ocean with a roar like Niagara.
Punch gripped the side of the boat as waves rippled outward from the refinery, bucking the boat, cracking plates of ice.
Jane and Ghost crouched on the D Module roof. They held each other. They felt the roof begin to buckle and torque. The scream of tortured metal was so loud it became a strange, eye-of-storm silence.
Jane looked up. The crane arm. The cargo pallet descending out of smoke.
Brief glimpse of the crane cab. Sian at the controls.
'Come on,' said Jane.
They threw themselves aboard.
Punch docked the zodiac. He watched D Module fall from the refinery into the sea. Support girders beneath the habitation block, fatally weakened by hours of blowtorch heat, buckled and fractured. The blazing structure slowly toppled forward. It hit the ocean, sending a final mushroom-cloud of flame hundreds of metres into the air. Sudden darkness. Sound of on-rushing water. Punch ran for the stairs, anxious to get higher before seawater washed him into the ocean.
Punch crossed the deck. Devastation lit by moonlight. He stood at the edge of the smoking acre where D Module used to sit. Ragged, twisted girders. Broken pipes. Metal glowed red. Spars part-liquefied by heat. Steel hung in petrified drips. The mangled superstructure ticked and creaked as it quickly cooled in sub-zero air.
Plenty of smoke, but no flames.
The cargo pallet stalled four metres above the deck. The crane was dead. No power. Ghost hung from the pallet and let himself drop. He rolled. He lay on the deck. Jane dropped beside him. She helped Ghost to his feet. He coughed and retched.
'You okay?' asked Punch.
'I'll be all right.'
Jane and Punch explored the remaining habitation block.
They stood in the canteen. Moonlight shafted through the windows. Spectral smoke haze hung in the air. The tables and floor were dusted in a fine layer of soot.
Punch tried the lights.
'Everything is dead.'
'We better check the powerhouse.'
The powerhouse. They surveyed the destruction with an old Aldis lamp. Three John Brown generators, each the size of a bus. The generators were still and silent.
They climbed steps to the mezzanine level. The generator controls were fried. Cabling had burned through.
'You know,' said Jane, 'for a while there I thought we would be okay.'
The Long Game
Jane brought Ghost to the powerhouse. He walked with his arm round her shoulder. She helped him climb the steps to mezzanine level.
'Well, there it is,' said Jane.
Ghost examined the scorched ruins of the generator controls by flashlight. He could barely stand. He leaned on a railing for support.
Two of the control stations were burned and warped. Cracked dials. Cracked screens. A side panel had fallen from one of the consoles exposing melted clumps of cable that hung in tangles like jungle vine.
Ghost coughed and cleared his throat.
'One and Two are fried. Generator Three seems pretty intact. I say we get Three running and maybe cannibalise One and Two for spares.'
'You need to rest. You have a bad case of smoke inhalation. It'll get worse before it gets better. You've damaged your lungs. They'll start to fill with fluid over the next couple of days. Rye wants to get you on oxygen, soon as she can. Give you a chance to heal.'
'You seem okay,' said Ghost.
'Buddy breathing. You gave me most of the air.'
'Honestly. I'm fine.'
'Not for long. If you start chasing round trying to fix that generator you could do yourself serious damage. You could keel over with pneumonia, and there isn't much anyone could do to treat you.'
'If we don't get the generators running we will all freeze to death. I can't sit around and convalesce. And if I get pneumonia then all the more reason to tap my expertise while we still can. We have to get to work right now.'
'Christ.'
'Do we have any amphetamines? Anything that can give me a boost?'
'We've got some pre-loaded adrenalin shots in the survival kits. It'll crank you for a couple of hours, but once it's metabolised you'll be a wreck.'
'Go and get them.'
Jane fetched the shots.
She found Ghost sitting on the deck with his back to one of the charred control panels. She sat beside him.
'How you doing, fella?'
'Pretty fucked up,' he croaked.
Jane gestured to the broken instrumentation.
'Reckon you could fix it?'
'I'm not an electrician.'
'Neither is anyone else. You're the best we have.'
'Wish I could stand without coughing my guts out.'
Jane held up a yellow, pre-loaded epinephrine syringe from a survival pack.
'Do it.'
Jane stabbed the hypo into his thigh and pressed the plunger.
The rest of the crewmen returned from the island.
They cleaned the canteen by lamplight. The wiped a fine dusting of ash from tables and chairs. They swept the floor.
Nail slipped out of the canteen. Nikki followed. She trailed him down dark passageways. She followed his flashlight beam through the cavernous shadows of the pump hall. She found him in a storeroom examining Ghost's boat.
Nail circled oil drums welded to a scaffold pole.
'He didn't get very far,' he said.
He examined sketched plans laid out on a trestle table. A crude yacht. Top view. Side view.
'It's a good design, as far as I can tell. Single mast. Mainsail. Jib. I imagine it would be pretty stable.'
'Could you finish it?' asked Nikki. 'Ghost might be out of action for a while. Could you finish what he started?'
'I'm a dive welder. Been doing eight years, off and on. Yeah, I could do it.'
'Perhaps we'll get lucky. Perhaps someone will answer our mayday.'
'I'm tired of waiting. I don't like putting my fate in someone else's hands. It's not my style. You saw those guys up there. Sitting round, slack-jawed, waiting for Blanc to lace their shoes. Contemptible.'
'Morale is pretty low. The guys are feeling shell-shocked. Helpless.'
'Fuck their emotions. Do they actually want to live or what? Brain-freeze. Paralysis. That's what kills most people in a crisis. Well, not me, baby. I'm the survivor type.'
'So what should we do?'
'If Ghost recovers, then great. He can finish the boat for us. If anything happens to him, then we finish it ourselves. Take the food we need, and wave sayonara on our way south.'
Jane helped Ghost inspect the powerhouse controls. She worked under his direction. She levered a side panel. He shone his flashlight inside.
'Generator Three looks healthy enough.' He coughed. 'This console looks fine. So why the hell aren't the lights on?'
'Maybe the fault is further up the line.'
He shone his flashlight at the wall. Cable thick as drainpipe snaked into a duct. Ghost unzipped his coat and fleece.
'You're not seriously going in there?'
'I'd love to send you in my place,' said Ghost. 'But I need to see with my own eyes.'
He coughed and spat.
'If you pass out in there we will have a bitch of a job dragging you out.'
'That adrenalin shot will keep me juiced for a couple of hours. Let's make the most of it.'
Ghost ducked down and crawled into the conduit.
Punch unlocked the canteen storeroom. Colder than a meat locker. Frosted food. Sian joined him.
'Why don't we pass out survival rations?' she asked. 'Those self-heating cans?'
'Last resort. I want to save those in case we need them on a journey. I still think our best plan is to wait until mid-winter, take the Skidoos and head for Canada.'
'Just us?'
'You and me. Maybe Jane and Ghost if they want. It's an old argument. I've already talked it through with Jane. She dismissed the idea, but she'll come round.'
'I'm not sure.'
'To be honest, I don't talk to the other guys any more. They just sit in the canteen staring into space. They aren't going to make it home. It may sound harsh, but the way I look at it, they're already dead.'
Punch took a box from a shelf.
'Give them cornflakes. They'll have to eat them dry. Good carbohydrate. It's the best we can do.'
'We're all dying by degrees, aren't we?' said Sian. 'Every one of us.'
Punch smiled.
'We're not done yet,' he said, and kissed her.
Ghost wormed along the conduit. Tight tunnel walls. He had a flashlight in one hand and a radio in the other. He examined the thick cable running above his head.
'How's it going?' Jane's voice.
'Okay. Just stopped for a breather.'
'Any fire damage?'
'Nothing so far. There must be a break somewhere along the line, though. Just have to find it.'
'I feel bad. We're treating you like Kleenex. Using you up for the common good.'
'Comes with the territory. You chose to clip Rawlins's big bunch of keys to your belt. You have to take the shit that comes with it.'
Ghost suppressed a coughing fit.
'All right. I'm moving on.'
Nail searched for supplies.
'I want to be ready. There's plenty of stuff we will need when we sail south.'
'The boat isn't even built yet,' said Nikki.
'You can never be too prepared. Besides, I'm bored. No point sitting round with those lethargic fucks in the canteen. I want to achieve something.'
There were lifeboat muster points at each corner of the refinery. The lifeboat stations were named after London underground stations. Moorgate, Holborn, Blackfriars and Pimlico. Each lifeboat station had a survival pack. Nail picked through each pack. Flares. Insulation blankets. Calorie bars. First aid. He threw supplies into an empty kit-bag and carried it over his shoulder like Santa.
He led Nikki across the deck. They contemplated the acre of twisted girders where D Module used to be.
A small sliver of D Module remained. Nail's flashlight lit a buckled staircase and a couple of burned-out rooms.
'Come on.'
'You're not going in there, are you?' asked Nikki.
'See that doorway on the second floor?'
'Yeah.'
'That's my old room.'
They climbed through dereliction. The staircase creaked beneath their weight.
The door to Nail's old room was charred and bubbled. He kicked it open.
His room was black with soot. He kicked aside the skeletal frame of a chair. He pulled the melted mattress from his bunk.
'Take a seat.'
Nikki sat on the metal bed frame.
Nail closed the door to trap body heat. He set his flashlight on the washstand.
He unfolded a hexamine stove and lit the fuel block with a Zippo.
He stretched up and prised the grating from an air vent. He reached inside and pulled out a scorched cash box.
He sat on the bed next to Nikki. He took a key from round his neck and opened the box. Money. Notes rolled tight, held by rubber bands. Nail tucked cash into the inner pocket of his coat.
'You could wipe your ass with it, I suppose,' said Nikki. 'Poker winnings?'
'Fruits of entrepreneurial labour.'
Nail tipped the box into his lap. A spoon. Packets of hypodermics. A Ziploc bag of brown powder.
'Didn't know you had a hobby.'
'It's a six-month rotation. A person needs to chill now and again.'
'And you go home with a triple pay cheque.'
'Loose change. People go to Ghost for weed. They come to me if they want something a little stronger.'
Nail scraped frost from the shoulder of his coat and melted it in the spoon with a pinch of powder. He unwrapped a syringe and siphoned the fizzing liquid.
'Want to forget yourself a while?' asked Nail.
'Yeah, there's plenty I want to put from my mind.'
She took off her coat and rolled up the arm of her fleece. Nail rubbed the crook of her elbow with his thumb to raise a vein. He carefully inserted the needle beneath her skin and pressed the plunger. A wash of snuggling well-being. She smiled and sat back against the wall.
Nail took off his coat and rolled up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He tied a shoelace tourniquet round his bicep and pumped his arm. He shot up.
He pulled Nikki close and hung his coat round both their shoulders. He stroked her hair.
They sat in the burned-out room and gazed at the stove, mesmerised by the ethereal blue flame.
Ghost crawled through the conduit. He jackknifed his body to squeeze round a junction. His belt-loop snagged on a bolt. He tried to twist free. Sudden, sweating claustrophobia. He pushed at the duct walls. He heard himself sob.
He stopped thrashing, closed his eyes and tried to compose himself.
'Talk to me, Jane. Let me hear a voice.'
'Just thinking. Rawlins didn't want to lose himself. That's what he told me. He didn't want the disease to win. I suppose that's what everyone says. That they'd drive off a cliff in a blaze of glory rather than waste away in a hospital bed.'
'So what do you reckon? This disease.'
'I read a book about the Manhattan Project. When they tested the first atom bomb in the desert, scientists wondered if the blast might set the atmosphere on fire. Maybe this was the same situation. They, the big, scary They, were toying with some kind of super-technology. Nanobots. Bio-weapon. Something so cutting-edge, so unstable, they put the lab in space to contain it in a vacuum. But something went wrong, something sudden and catastrophic, and chunks of debris dropped to earth like our friend in the capsule. '
'Sure. Why not?'
Ghost squirmed in the narrow space. He unhooked his belt- loop. He crawled forward on his elbows.
'Feel like I've been wriggling around in here for hours.'
' Nothing?'
'Nothing. The cable looks fine.'
'Find a way out and head back to the powerhouse. We'll take another look at the generator.'
Punch sat in the observation bubble. He cocooned himself in a sleeping bag and stared at the stars.
Footsteps from below. Crazy, dancing light approaching up the spiral stairs. Sian with an aluminium trunk under each arm and a Maglite clenched between her teeth.
'One of the men on Raven is an electrician,' said Sian. 'If we can get him here, he can help.'
'We don't have power,' said Punch. 'We don't have radar. If they take to the lifeboats they'll drift right past us.'
Sian flipped the latches on each case.
'A GPS kit and a radio. I found them downstairs. They run on lithium batteries. They're charged.'
'They won't have much range.'
Sian contemplated the silhouettes of the gargantuan distillation towers, three great shadows that eclipsed the stars.
'What if we got them up high?'
Ghost was overcome by a sudden wave of exhaustion. He rolled on to his side.
'I feel like a fucking sewer rat.'
'I spoke to the careers counsellor during my last year at school.
He asked me what I would do if I were the last person alive. If there were no social pressure, no one left to impress.'
'What did you say?'
'I'd mooch. I'd loaf. I'd sit on a riverbank and read books '
Ghost reached in his pocket. He pulled out a yellow epinephrine hypodermic. He bit the cap off the hypo and injected his bicep.
'You're in charge now. You know that, right? I mean seriously. For real. With Rawlins gone you are the only authority left. The crew are your responsibility. They'll expect you to have the Grand Plan.'
'Is this your valedictory statement? Are you passing the torch?'
'I can feel a breeze. There's something up ahead.'
Ghost wormed his way along the conduit. A section of duct broke open when D Module fell from the refinery. He leaned over a jagged metal lip. Frayed cable swung in the ice wind. Far below him was the sea.
'I think I found our problem.' He coughed up phlegm. He retched. He vomited. 'I'm turning round. I'm coming back.'
Jane helped Ghost limp to his room. She laid him on his bunk. He was pale and breathless. He shivered. She draped three coats over him.
She lay beside him; let his head rest on her shoulder.
'Take it easy for a while,' she said. 'Get your breath back.'
'Just need to rest.'
Liquid in his lungs. Each breath died away in a bubbling rattle.
'Take your time.'
'I can splice a domestic extension lead into that powerhouse console. We can run a couple of heaters. Cook food. It'll keep us alive. Buy some time.'
'After that?'
'Look for an intact length of three-thousand megawatt cable. A few metres. That's all we need. Patch that break in the line and we are back in business. Just need to rip up floor plates until we find some.'
He took an epinephrine syringe from his pocket. 'Sure you want to do this?' she asked.
'Yeah. Final lap.'
Lifeline
Punch stood at the refinery railing and looked east. Ice surrounded the refinery and spread towards the island. The sun no longer rose. Daytime was a brief pink twilight. The Arctic was entering perpetual night.
He took an old Sony radio from his coat pocket. He had found it alongside a drum of paint and a roller. Someone had been redecorating a corridor and quit halfway through the job. The batteries still held a charge.
He extended the aerial and adjusted the dial. Whistling static.
A ghost voice. Male. French accent. Tired, distressed. Punch pulled back the hood of his coat and pressed the radio to his ear.
'… est advice… safe place and don't venture… can hear me… refuge… hopeless… God help.. '
Punch returned to the observation bubble.
'Anything?' asked Sian.
'Nothing. Doesn't seem to work.'
Punch shook batteries from the radio and tossed it aside.
He and Sian had turned the observation bubble into their base camp. They had pushed chairs back from the transmitter console and erected a dome tent. Each night they cooked on a stove. They ate and counted stars. They zipped sleeping bags together and slept skin-to-skin.
'What do you think is waiting for us back in the world?' asked Sian. She was sitting cross-legged by the stove stirring noodles in a mess tin.
'I bet the worst is over. People will have got organised by now.'
'You think?'
'Yeah. When the chips are down, neighbours help each other out.'
Punch wanted to say: 'Promise you'll kill me. If I get infected, if I turn like Rawlins, finish me off. Don't let me become a monster.'
Instead he asked: 'How are the noodles coming along?'
'Soon be done.'
The powerhouse. A steady hum from Generator Three. Massive megawatt output, enough to power a small town. Ghost had run a single domestic extension lead from the control panel. It ran through an air vent into the submarine hangar next door. A single plug socket. A single convection heater. Crewmen took turns to sit in the orange glow.
The crew were camped in front of the submersible. Steel manipulator claws curved above them like a protective embrace. A couple of crew huddled in blankets and played chess. One crewman relentlessly sharpened a knife. Bottles of drinking water were lined up in front of the heater to keep them thawed.
Ghost lay beneath three parkas. Short, bubbling breaths. Jane sat beside him. She stroked his head. Once in a while he opened his eyes. She smiled. She wanted him to see a reassuring face. She didn't want him to feel alone.
He opened his eyes wide and steady.
'How you doing, champ?'
Thumbs up.
'Warm enough?'
Nod.
He stroked her face. Peeling skin.
'Guess I got too close to the fire,' said Jane. 'Sunburn.'
He licked dry lips.
'Drink something.' She put a canteen to his lips. 'Wet your mouth.'
She rearranged the coat beneath his head to give him a better pillow.
'Get as much sleep as you can.'
'Feel like I've been punched in the gut,' whispered Ghost. 'I can barely breathe.'
'Getting worse?'
'Yeah.'
Jane looked for Rye.
'She's in the sub,' said Ivan.
Jane lowered herself through the roof hatch. Her flashlight lit tight banks of instrumentation. Rye sat in the co-pilot seat. She was listening to an iPod.
'Rocking out?' asked Jane.
'About an hour of battery left. My last tunes.'
'What's the prognosis?'
'Ghost? Not so great. I'm dosing him with antibiotics but the pneumonia is caused by chemical damage to his lungs, rather than infection. If his throat closes much further I might have to intubate.'
'What are his chances?'
'Fifty-fifty. His lungs might recover, given enough time. He could be back on his feet in a couple of weeks, if he's lucky, if he doesn't exert himself like he did yesterday. Another shot of speed would kill him stone dead.'
'So there's nothing we can do but wait?'
'Like I say, I've been giving him antibiotics as a preventative measure. It might help, it might not. And plenty of painkillers just to keep him comfortable.'
'Okay.'
'Question is, when do we pull the plug? He's used up his share of meds already.'
'Give him everything he needs.'
'I appreciate you two are close.'
'He was a systems technician. He kept the lights on, the water running. He's worth more than most of the crew out there, worth more than me.'
Jane climbed the side of distillation tank A. The tank was a cylindrical tower one hundred and fifty metres high. The ladder was glazed with ice. Her boots slid on slick rungs. She had a coil of red kernmantle rope slung over her shoulder.
She reached the frost-dusted expanse of the roof. She lowered the rope. Punch stood at the foot of the tower. He tied the rope to the radio case and Jane hauled the case skyward.
She set up the tripod dish and switched on the transmitter.
'Rampart to Raven, do you copy, over? Rampart to Raven, do you copy?'
'Jesus, Rampart. We thought you had been picked up and left us behind. We've been calling for days '
'There was a fire. We lost power. We've managed to get heat to a single room, but we're still in a bad way. You have an electrician called Thursby, is that right?'
'Tommy. Yeah.'
'We desperately need his help. And we need a twenty-metre length of high-voltage cable.'
'What kind of load?'
'Our generators put out about three thousand megawatts.'
'All right.'
'You have a medic?'
' Ellington.'
'We lost our infirmary in the fire. Most of the drugs and equipment got torched. We desperately need whatever you can bring.'
' Okay.'
'When can you take to the rafts?'
'We've been ready for days. We've been waiting to hear from you.'
'Then get going, soon as you can. We've still got GPS. We'll watch for you round the clock. Good luck, guys. God bless.'
Jane explored the powerhouse.
She crawled inside a conduit. She wrapped a scarf over her mouth and nose to protect against soot particles that swirled around her. She rolled on her side and inspected the high-voltage cable that ran along the duct roof. Burned and twisted. Melted insulation hung in ragged strips.
'Reverend Blanc?' Ivan's voice.
Jane backed out of the duct.
'It's Ghost. You better come quick.'
Ghost panted for air. His chest heaved. He clutched his throat.
Rye ripped open his coat and fleece. She held him down and pressed an ear to his chest.
'Can't you get a tube down his throat?' demanded Jane.
Rye prodded his chest and diaphragm.
'Fluid in the pleural cavity.'
'Can you drain it?'
'I can try. Surgery by flashlight. Outstanding.'
Jane grabbed a SCUBA tank from a wall rack. She opened the valve and forced the regulator mouthpiece between Ghost's teeth.
'Breathe. Suck it down.'
Ghost gasped the rich Heliox mix.
'Just keep breathing.'
Nail sat cross-legged on the storeroom floor. Ghost's boat. He tried to make sense of the plans. The central hull had a cockpit for the skipper and storage space below. No clear explanation of how it was to be built. Plenty of panels designated ' AFC'.
He thought it over.
Brainwave. AFC. Air Freight Container.
Specialist hydrocarbon pump equipment had been shipped to the refinery in aluminium crates. Two or three crates shunted to the back of each plant room. Lufthansa. Emirates. Gulf Air. Each crate could be broken down into sheets. Lightweight. Easy to cut. Easy to shape. Easy to weld.
Nail got to work. He wheeled an oxyacetylene tank through derelict plant halls. Smoked visor. Heavy gloves. Vaulted chambers lit incandescent by crackling flame-light. He piled silver panels on the storeroom floor.
He stripped to his waist despite the cold and pounded scaffold poles until a skeletal ship frame began to take shape.
Sometimes Nikki watched him work. His skin steamed with sweat. She was revolted. She needed Nail. It was a tactical alliance. He was a strong, amoral survivor. But she gagged at the smell of him as she shivered through their brief, brutal fucks on the storeroom floor. Trading sex for a ticket home.
Nikki studied the plans.
'The sail. What's it made from?'
'Guess.'
'B Fx3. What does that mean?'
'Puzzled me for days.'
'Figured it out?'
'Balloon Fabric times Three. Mylar. Thin. Light. Rip-proof.'
'So how do we get this thing outside?'
Nail took a lamp from the table and held it up.
'See? A winch in the ceiling and a hatch in the floor. They used it for hauling shipping containers aboard. The floor opens like a bomb bay. Hydraulics. Big enough to lower our boat. The winch can take about ninety tonnes.'
'But there is no electricity.'
'That's right. We need the power back on. Two, three minutes. That's all it would take. Get the hatch open and we're out of here.'
They carried Ghost on a stretcher.
'We need to get him somewhere clean,' said Rye. 'Some place that hasn't been used much.' They took him to the chapel.
'Get some light,' ordered Rye.
Jane positioned a couple of battery lamps.
'Help me get his shirt off.'
'He'll freeze.'
'Fine. It'll reduce bleeding.'
'Want me to get the altar? Lie him down?'
'No. I need him sitting with his back towards me.'
They dragged Ghost to the front of the chapel and positioned him straddling a chair.
'So what's the deal?'
'I reckon there is liquid building up beneath his lungs.'
'Infection?'
'Maybe. Antibiotics tend not to penetrate the pleural cavity. It's kind of a blind spot.'
'What's the plan?'
'Pleural tap. Siphon off the liquid with a big-ass hypodermic. Place is about as sterile as a toilet seat, but it's the best we can do.'
Rye emptied her pockets on to the altar: 20cc hypodermics; gloves; iodine; dressing.
Rye prepped a needle.
'Ghost? Can you hear me?'
Ghost struggled to focus.
'The cable,' he whispered. 'Listen. In case I don't make it. You need fourteen-centimetre, single-core. Easy to splice. Bolt sockets every thirty, forty metres. Should say Con-Ex on the insulation. Look beneath C deck corridors. One length. That's all it takes.'
Rye measured ribs with her fingers. Second intercostal space. Iodine swab.
'Hold his shoulders.'
Ghost lolled semi-conscious until the tip of a big-bore needle pricked his side and punctured his skin. He convulsed. Jane gripped his shoulders.
'Look at me. Look at me, Ghost. We have to do this. We have to get this done.'
Ghost clutched the back of the chair. Rye drew off three syringe-loads of fluid. She patched the wound. She pressed a stethoscope to his chest.
'Better?'
Ghost gave a thumbs up and passed out.
'Let's get him out of here,' said Rye. 'Get him back in front of that fire.'
C deck. Jane lifted floor grates. Fire had spread through the conduits carried by melting insulation. The cables were burned.
Jane glimpsed Nail at the end of a corridor. He was carrying a sheet of aluminium. She quickly shut off her flashlight. She followed him to the pump hall.
Ghost lay with his back to the yellow hull of the submarine. He took occasional Heliox hits from a SCUBA tank.
'You look better,' said Jane.
'A little less dead.'
'Doing okay?'
'Dr Feelgood and her magic pills.'
'Jesus, you are tripping your brains out.'
'Ask for the pink ones. Seriously.'
'Nail is building something next to the pump hall. Know anything about that?'
'A boat. You saw it. I was going to carry you off into the sunset. Sketched a few plans. I suppose Nail and Nikki found them and decided to finish the job.'
'I'm not sure I can be bothered to intervene.'
'Let them go. Nobody will miss them.' 'You're staying?'
'I'm not in much shape to embark on a long voyage,' said Ghost. 'Besides, I can't ditch these lads.'
'No?'
'You and me. We'll get them home.'
'Want to shake on it?'
Ghost held out his hand.
'Last men off?'
'Last men off.'
Jane visited Punch and Sian in the observation bubble. They had invited her for dinner. Mushroom risotto. They ate from mess tins.
'So you cook for yourself now.'
'The men have stoves,' said Punch. 'They've got pasta and sauce. They've got dried figs. They aren't helpless.'
'Cosy little den.'
'All this doom and gloom. You don't resent a few snatched moments of comfort, do you?'
'The guys are jealous. You can't blame them.'
Sian looked over Jane's shoulder out to sea.
'See that?' she said, pointing at the horizon.
'What?'
'Look west. The stars are going out.'
'Christ.' Jane threw her mess tin aside and stood up. 'That's a serious cloud bank.'
'It's coming fast.'
'God just keeps on shitting on us.'
They zipped their coats and ran outside. Sian and Punch carried the radio case between them.
Jane climbed the distillation tower. She hauled up the radio on a rope, hand over hand as quick as she could. She set up the tripod. She crouched on the roof and shouted into the handset.
'Rampart to Raven, over. Rampart to Raven, do you copy, over?'
No reply.
'Rampart to Raven, come in.'
No reply.
'Raven. Come on, guys. Tell me you haven't taken to the rafts yet.'
No response. A fog bank approached from the west propelled by a bitter wind. A moonlit wall of mist. Jane collapsed the tripod and slammed the case, anxious to quit the tower before cloud eclipsed the moon and left her in absolute dark.