was trying to sit up.
‘My God. How can it be alive?’
‘He’s dying,’ said Rye. ‘He was stumbling around out there dressed as a flamenco dancer. Blood loss and trauma are killing him as sure as they would a normal person. But it seems to be taking days. These filaments. This stuff embedded in gristle and bone. Definitely metal. It can be magnetised. But it seems to grow like hair. As far as I can tell it radiates from the central nervous system. All this stuff wrapped round his legs and arms can be traced back to his spine. And look at his head.’
Jane stood over the flayed man. The bloody skull-face watched her approach. Lipless jaws snapped and gnashed. Grinning, biting.
‘More metal, see? Lots more, centred round the brain stem. Seems pretty obvious we are dealing with some kind of super- parasite. This isn’t a man. This is a metal organism wearing a skin suit. Limited lifespan. Slowly kills the host. It’s like ivy round a tree. God knows where it is from. Tough to kill. I gave one of them a dose of Librium. Should have been fatal. Didn’t seem to bother him much. These things have the nervous system of a cockroach.’
Rye stood back and folded her arms.
‘We have no alternative but to destroy the carrier. This is a terminal illness. Nobody will recover. That much is clear. Memories, personality. All gone. So we don’t have to feel bad about killing them. It’s pest control. It’s not murder. Grenade, if you have one. Otherwise, a shot in the head will kill them stone dead. If you shoot them in the gut, if you blow off an arm or leg, they will keep trucking long enough to bite a chunk out of you. Headshot. Every time.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Jane. ‘Something is left. Something remains.’
Jane returned to the priest. She opened the Bible.
‘In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and God said: 'Let there be light… '’
Father David thrashed and snarled, then slowly settled like he was soothed by a lullaby.
‘See? He remembers.’
‘You don’t know for sure,’ said Rye.
‘No, I can tell. He remembers the words.’
‘We have to find out everything we can about these creatures. We can’t afford to be sentimental.’
Jane left. She came back with a shotgun. She put the barrel to the priest’s head. He sniffed it.
‘It’s all right, Patrick.’
She blew his head off. Nothing above the neck but a flap of burning scalp. She shot the three remaining specimens. Lumps of brain tissue, flash-fried by gunpowder, lay on the floor and steamed.
‘Clean up this shit and scrub the room down,’ said Jane. She pressed the shotgun to the chest of Rye’s lab coat. The hot barrel burned a scorch ring. ‘You bring any more of these fucks aboard I will personally execute you on the spot. You think I’m kidding? Try me. Just fucking try me.’
Rye locked the door of her room. She sat on the bed. She shook a twist of foil from the battery compartment of her bedside clock. She tapped the powder into a spoon and cooked the mixture over a Zippo flame.
She shot up. She threw the hypo in the sink, lay back and relished the warm rush of well-being. A familiar sensation. She had taken the job on the rig to break an addiction to codeine. Seven years of general practice had passed in a blissed-out haze. It was a relief to give in to it once more. It felt like coming home.
Rye examined her left hand. The tip of her index finger was numb and starting to blacken. When did she become infected? Maybe it was out on the ice when she stunned the priest and tied him up. Maybe it was when she lashed him to the table.
She used a shoelace as a tourniquet. She stood at the sink with a pair of bolt cutters. She positioned the infected finger between the blades. This, she thought in a dreamy way, is going to hurt like a motherfucker.
Later, she sat in the canteen and watched scrolling interference on television. Punch asked if she was feeling okay.
‘Fine,’ she murmured, pushing her bandaged hand deeper into her coat pocket. ‘Walking on sunshine.’
Diary of Dr Elizabeth Rye
Wednesday 28 October
I dressed and re-dressed my mutilated finger. I examined the wound every fifteen minutes. As far as I could tell from TV bulletins I saw in the canteen, there were no reported cases of recovery or remission. This illness is certain death. Yet I hoped for a reprieve. Perhaps I had a chance. Maybe I amputated the finger in time to halt the spread of the disease. Maybe I would be the first to get lucky and cure myself of infection.
Nothing for nine hours. Then the first glint of metal among the raw flesh. I probed the scabrous wound with tweezers. A metal spine growing out of bone. I jammed the stump of my finger between the bloody bolt cutters and cut it down to the knuckle. I bound the wound and passed out. When I woke, my entire hand had begun to necrotise.
Metal spines protrude from my palm like fine splinters. My hand feels heavy and numb, but otherwise I am in no discomfort. Codeine. Percodan. I’m so stoned I could walk through fire right now and not feel a thing. I keep my hand sheathed in a glove to avoid detection. I am, of course, infectious. If my illness were discovered I would be quarantined; however I prefer to die on my own terms.
The sea surrounding Rampart has started to freeze. The refinery will soon be joined to the island by an ice- bridge. The horde of infected Hyperion passengers crowding at the shoreline will be able to reach the rig. If they manage to board the refinery they will roam the passageways ravening for blood. I suspect they will leave me alone. They will take a sniff and decide I am one of their own. I will walk around unmolested while they rip the Rampart crew limb from limb.
This afternoon I helped Rajesh Ghosh and Reverend Blanc cut ladders and stairs from each refinery leg using oxyacetylene gear. The platform lift is now the only means of descending to the ice. Hyperion passengers may congregate beneath the refinery, hungry for fresh meat, but they will be unable to reach the crew.
I try to face death with stoic detachment but, let’s face it, my state of Buddhistic serenity is the result of heavy doses of morphine rather than any hard-won wisdom. I shoot up every couple of hours. I have a shoe box full of used hypos hidden beneath my bunk. There aren’t many syringes left. Enough to last the next few days. If, in months to come, the Rampart crew need to inject medication they will have to rinse and sterilise a used hypodermic. But that’s their problem.
The sensation of snuggling warmth, the Wash I used to call it, feels like coming home. It took me years to quit. Resolution and relapse. I underwent a full year of detox to win back my licence to practise. I lost my house, my child, my job. I had to work at a supermarket. Swiping groceries sixty hours a week just to make the rent on a one-bedroom flat. It was a mercy I wasn’t struck off altogether. But I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Might as well enjoy the buzz.
During my time at Kings College I used to watch lung cancer patients in nightgowns and pyjamas wheel their drip-stands out of the hospital back entrance. They would congregate on a loading bay and savour a cigarette. Why quit? The worst had already happened. The damage was already done.
Last night I felt compelled to go outside, stand at a railing and face the island. Forty below, but I barely felt the cold. I stood there a long while and listened to the whispering voices in my head. Insinuating murmurs in my back-brain, faint like a weak radio signal, too faint to make out words. I have often suspected those infected with this disease share some kind of hive mind. These past few days I have often stood at the railing and watched infected Hyperion passengers mass at the shoreline. From what little I’ve seen they flock like birds. They move as a crowd. Each individual is slow and stupid, but when massed together they become a formidable tide.
A crate of booze has been left in the canteen. Vodka, tequila, cognac. Dregs left over from the riotous toga party, along with dried sausage rolls and crackers greased with cream cheese. Ghost gave a speech at the party. He thanked Jane for bringing Hyperion to the island. A transparent attempt to win back the approval of the crew. Jane seized a cruise liner, the most absurdly perfect transport we could hope to find, and managed to wreck it. I’m surprised they didn’t build a gangplank and push her into the sea. Yet the crewmen seem strangely passive. The memory of their old lives has faded to such an extent they can’t remember anything but the refinery. Nothing else seems real. They haunt the corridors like the sailors of the Flying Dutchman. They have each retreated into their own personal psychosis.
Mal often sits in front of the TV, watching static and tattooing the back of his hands. Jailhouse method. Biro ink pricked beneath the skin with a bent safety pin. He already had tattoos, but following an acid-burn from spilled
