‘Jane wants to get everyone home. I promised to help.’
Ghost gestured to an empty chair.
‘Has anyone seen Mal?’
‘No,’ said Punch.
‘It’s eight o’clock. Who’s taking over patrol?’
‘Me,’ said Gus.
‘So where is Mal? He should have checked in half an hour ago.’
‘Taking a shit. Changing his socks. Relax. He’ll be here. He’s not going to miss dinner.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Ghost. ‘We put a man on guard and he goes AWOL.’
Ghost stood in the corridor.
‘Mal? You out there?’
No reply.
Ghost stepped back inside the officers’ mess.
‘Everyone stay here, all right? Nobody go wandering off. Punch, get your gun.’
They searched Mal’s cabin.
‘Mal? Hello?’
They knocked on the bathroom door.
‘Hello?’
Empty.
They searched the passageways and checked the barricades. ‘Mal. Where are you?’
He wasn’t on the bridge. He wasn’t on deck. The zodiac still hung from a lifeboat crane. He hadn’t gone back to the rig.
‘Maybe he got drunk,’ said Punch. ‘Decided to go below deck on his own.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Bravado. He wanted something. Had a hankering for nachos or a cigar. Thought he could get it on his own. Outrun the freaks. Duck and swerve. Come back, brag, show off his trophy.’
‘Yeah, that’s the kind of idiotic thing he might do. I don’t like it, though. Not knowing for sure.’
Sian found them on the bridge.
‘There’s something you should see.’
She led them to a door at the end of a corridor. A small storeroom. Toiletries and laundry.
A trickle of blood from beneath the door.
‘Stand back,’ said Ghost. He hefted the axe. He tested the door. Unlocked. He pushed it open with his foot.
‘Hello? Mal?’
He reached round the doorframe and switched on the light. The trickle of blood snaked from behind a rack loaded with bed linen. Sheets, coverlets and pillow cases.
Mal lay dead on the floor. His eyes were open. His throat was cut. He held a knife in his hand.
‘Blot some of that blood,’ said Ghost. Punch threw down folded sheets to sop up the blood. ‘Close the door. I want to take a long look around before anyone else comes in here.’
Jane jogged a circuit of C deck. There was light, but no heat. Many of the corridors had split open when D Module fell from the rig. Several passageways terminated in ragged metal and thin air. Jane enjoyed the sensation of cold. The rest of the crew had embraced the luxury of Hyperion, but Jane volunteered to stay behind in the steel austerity of Rampart and man the radio. She broadcast periodic maydays to the Arctic rim, and listened to the static of an empty waveband.
She and Ghost spoke, morning and evening, by radio. ‘ Take care, baby cakes,’ he said, at the end of each call. She missed him.
Jane ran five kilometres, then stripped to her underwear and pumped iron in the corner of the deserted canteen. She used Nail’s abandoned gym equipment. She was both repelled and attracted by Nail’s pumped physique. Veins and striations. He was a human fortress. She envied his brute strength.
She played AC/DC on the jukebox as she hefted dumbbells. She played the music at full volume. ‘Bad Boy Boogie’ echoed down empty corridors.
Jane rested between each set of exercises by throwing a titanium shark knife at the canteen dartboard. The heavy blade thunked into cork, slowly ripping the board to pieces. Nail could hit a target at twenty metres. Jane trained herself to hit it at thirty.
Years ago, when the refinery was fully manned, the Starbucks coffee shop used to run a book exchange. The coffee shop was now a vacant retail unit with a couple of broken bar stools. Jane found a box of books among the litter, including thirty issues of Combat Survival magazine. Each issue contained carbine and pistol spec sheets. Back-page adverts for tactical holsters, mosquito nets and surplus Israeli gas masks.
She read about snake bites, reef knots and edible insects. She enjoyed the fantasy of desert sand and jungle heat. There were cut-and-keep plans for bear traps, squirrel snares and high- velocity slingshots. She made a mental note to search the boathouse for bungee line.
Jane made herself a sandwich. She sat in the observation bubble and read about bamboo jungle shelters. She learned the best way to cook a tarantula over a campfire. Ghost called her on the radio.
‘It looks like you’ll be doing another funeral, I’m afraid.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mal didn’t show up for dinner. I got worried. We went looking. We found him in a laundry cupboard. His throat was cut through.’
‘Do you think there is an infected passenger creeping round the crew quarters, hiding in the ducts? Someone you missed?’
‘We’re doing a sweep. We’re armed, moving in pairs. Nothing so far. The barricades are intact. None of the grenades has tripped. Besides, Mal was hidden in a cupboard. These diseased freaks maim and kill. They don’t clean up afterwards.’
‘So what’s the deal? What are we looking at?’
‘We found a kitchen knife with the body. He had it in his hand. Blood on the blade.’
‘Do you buy it? Did he kill himself? What’s your instinct?’
‘Dead man holding a knife. Hard to argue it was anything but suicide. I guess I will have to tell the lads. It’ll be bad for morale, but I can’t lie to them.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to give an address. God knows what I’ll say. I barely knew the man.’
‘Another day, another shroud. Do you think there’ll be any of us left by spring?’
Punch and Ghost wrapped the body in a sheet. They dragged the corpse outside and laid it on a bench. Moans and snarls. Infected passengers watched from the promenade decks beneath them.
They searched Mal’s pockets. A torch. A lighter. A packet of mints. No suicide note.
‘Take his boots,’ said Ghost. ‘We don’t need his coat, but we need snowboots.’
Punch inspected the neck wound with a flashlight.
‘Cut through his windpipe. Cut down to vertebrae.’
‘Did you speak to him much? Did he seem depressed?’
‘Talk to Nail. Mal was his buddy.’
They bound the shrouded body and laid it in a lifeboat to chill.
Punch and Sian retired to their cabin. A four-room suite with a king-size bed, home entertainment system and kitchenette. The previous occupant must have been a senior member of the crew. Punch had cleaned out the man’s possessions. He swept clothes, letters and photographs into a garbage bag. The guy was probably wandering mindless and mutilated below deck. Better not think too much about his fate.
Punch propped the door closed with a chair.
‘Are you worried there might be an infected sailor slinking around?’ asked Sian. She was running a bath.
‘You saw the wound. It was a clean slice ear to ear. These rabid bastards bite. They like to rip and tear.’
‘Maybe Mal couldn’t stand the isolation. All that stuff going on back home. No daylight. I’m surprised more blokes haven’t succumbed to depression.’
‘His head was virtually severed.’
