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.

'Apex, this is Rampart. We need your location. We must have your position, over. There are men at Darwin, but they can't stay long. This is your only chance, Apex. If you don't respond you will be left behind.'

Simon picked up his radio but was too disoriented to work the buttons. 'Hello? Hello?'

He turned the frequency dial. Nothing but feedback. His fingers were swollen. He dropped the radio.

He scrabbled at the tent zip and stumbled into the snow. Weak sunlight. Intolerable cold. He fumbled in his pocket without understanding what he was looking for.

 

Ghost swerved and brought his snowmobile to a skidding halt. Punch copied the move.

'There.' Ghost pointed east. A red flare slowly drifted to earth two miles distant. They gunned their engines and set off at full speed.

They found Simon face down in the snow. They rolled him. Ghost stabbed him in the thigh with a syringe pre-loaded with epinephrine.

Simon's right hand was blue.

'Give me a spare glove,' said Ghost.

Punch took a glove from his backpack and threw it to Ghost. 'He's going to lose fingers for sure.'

Ghost threw the unconscious man over the saddle of his snowmobile.

Punch slit open the tent with a lock-knife. He injected Nikki and struggled to drag her to the bikes.

They strapped Alan to a sledge still covered in sleeping bags. Ghost hitched the sledge to the back of his snowmobile.

'Think he's dead?' asked Punch.

'Won't know until we get him unwrapped.'

Ghost slapped Simon and Nikki awake.

'You're both riding pillion, got it?' he shouted in their faces.

'All you have to do is hang on.'

Ghost pulled out. Simon sat in the saddle behind him. Alan was towed on the sledge.

Punch pulled away. Nikki clung to his back. They followed their own tracks. They drove fast, spewing slush. They checked the sky for the coming storm.

 

Jane sat with Rawlins in his office. They rewound radar footage. Jane pointed at the time code in the corner of the screen.

'Fourteen forty-six. Any second.'

'You didn't see it yourself?'

'Out of the corner of my eye. I was sitting in the bubble. The sky lit up.'

The radar sweep showed miles of empty ocean, the edge of the island, and the haze of the approaching ice storm.

'It fell to earth north-west of their position. That's what they said. It hit land.'

A sudden white flare, just out of frame.

'Jeez,' said Rawlins. He leaned forward. 'The debris plume must be half a kilometre wide. Stuff in the air for twenty, twenty- five seconds.'

'A meteorite?'

'Possibly. It wouldn't be the first up here. There have been a couple of strikes in Ontario and Troms. Chunks of asteroid the size of a football.'

'Yeah?'

'Back in '78 a Soviet reconnaissance satellite re-entered over the Northern Territories. Chunks landed in deep forest. The Canadian Army spent months looking for a plutonium power cell.'

'I'd love to take a look.'

'If things were different, I'd be out there right now with a rock hammer collecting a souvenir. But we only have two Skidoos. We can't risk them for a joyride.'

'I suppose.'

'Still manning the radio?'

'Calling for help at the top of every hour. Rest of the time we broadcast Queen's Greatest Hits. Let people know we have an active transmitter.'

'Good idea.'

'Sian thinks she heard a voice a few days back. A man's voice. Brief. Very faint.'

'What did he say?'

'Couldn't make out.'

'Well, keep on it. We can't be the only people stuck out here.'

 

Three hours in the saddle. Simon let go of Ghost's waist. He toppled backward. He fell from the snowmobile. He lay in the snow. He pulled off his gloves. He tried to take off his coat.

Ghost brought the Yamaha full circle. He dragged Simon to his feet and slapped him around.

'Look at me. Look at me. Come on, man.'

Simon's eyes were rolling. He couldn't focus.

Ghost jammed gauntlets back on to Simon's hands. Simon tried to slide them off again.

'No, dude. You have to wear gloves, you hear me?'

Punch pulled up.

'He's delirious,' said Ghost. 'Give him another shot.'

Punch slammed epinephrine into Simon's thigh. The guy gasped and snapped awake.

'Can you keep it together a couple more hours, Simon? Can you keep it together that long?'

He nodded.

They set off. Headlights at full beam. Fuel needle edging into red. Snow particles feathered Ghost's goggles, blurring his view.

They made poor time. Ghost's snowmobile laboured to haul two passengers and a sledge. The sledge flipped twice, tipping Alan into the snow. They took off Alan's goggles and face-mask. His eyes were closed. They couldn't get a neck pulse. They couldn't tell if he was breathing.

'Give me your knife,' demanded Ghost.

Punch handed over his lock-knife. Ghost snapped open the blade and cut the sledge rope.

'What are you doing?' asked Nikki, shouting to be heard over the gathering wind.

'He's either dead or dying. We have to outrun the storm.' Ghost pushed Nikki and Simon back towards the bikes. 'It's all right. I didn't give you a choice, okay? It's my decision. My guilt.'

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.'

She handed Jane a radio.

'Go ahead.'

'We're at the bunker. We're heading back in the boat. I need you to boot-up Medical.'

 

Jane flipped a wall switch. Strip-lights flickered.

The medical bay was a wide, white room with an operating table at the centre.

Sub-zero. Jane's breath fogged the air. She set convection heaters running.

'Okay. What do you need?'

'The resuscitation trolley. Plug it in. Get it charged.'

'Done.'

'An instrument pack from the wall cupboard. It's on a plastic tray, vacuum sealed in plastic.'

'Got it.'

'Bottom shelf. There's a blue nylon bag. It's a hypothermia bath.

Inflate it. Don't fill it, though. I'll need to adjust water temperature myself.'

Jane unrolled the rubber bath. It was shaped like a coffin. She recognised it from the survival skills training day Con Amalgam insisted she attend before getting shipped north.

She released the valve of a little C02 cylinder. The bath inflated like a child's paddling pool.

'Done.'

'Go to the refrigerator. Get a bag of saline and a bag of Haemaccel. Unlock the drug store and fetch pethidine.'

'Who's hurt?'

'Simon, one of the Apex team. Big-time frostbite. Oedema. Possible septic shock.'

'Shit.'

'Meet us on the dock. He's fading fast. We've got to get him in a hypothermic bath and raise his core temperature or we are going to lose him.'