‘Then we’ll deal.’
‘And even if they made it to the rig? No one knows we are here. How do we summon help?’
‘You should rest. Seriously.’
‘How long do you think that lantern will lust?’
‘Standard batteries. Four or five hours at the most. I’m going to leave you here for a little while, all right? I’m going to take a look around. Check out the tunnels. I need to find more wood.’
Nail walked into the tunnel holding a piece of blazing plank before him.
Echoing footfalls. Burning wood crackled and fizzed. The torch flame flickered. The tunnels whispered and sighed. There must be ventilation chimneys deep within the complex. How extensive was the tunnel network? Did it undermine the entire island?
He walked deeper down the sloping shaft. Black archways, sinister shapes. He wanted to explore but worried, if he strayed from the central passageway, he would quickly become lost. If his torch burned out, if a gust of wind extinguished the flame, he might have to make his way back to the surface by touch.
Vast cyclopean chambers. Ceilings so high weak torchlight couldn’t penetrate shadow. The tunnel complex seemed built for some purpose other than nuclear storage. Too big, too elaborate to store fuel rods.
He stopped to catch his breath. Sudden, palpitating claustrophobia. Gut conviction that this ferro-concrete catacomb would be his grave. He was looking at the glistening, mildewed walls of his own coffin.
He wandered through caverns and halls. Incomplete galleries. Raw, unfinished bedrock. He was travelling downward through the strata, down through fossil layers. A coal-stripe of rainforest. Distant millennia compressed to a sliver of carbon crystal. The walls glittered with crushed shell and silica.
He once heard that a group of Soviet dissidents, exiled to work in a Siberian mine, discovered a mammoth preserved in ice. They cut strips and chewed it like jerky. It kept them alive.
Long corridors. Dormitories and offices. Desks and typewriters matted with stone dust. A military situation room frozen in time. Cold war Soviet maps. Portraits of Lenin. Rusted telex machines. Heavy dial phones.
Metal-frame furniture. Nothing to burn.
How much further should he explore? The plank was half burned down. He should head back.
He crouched and examined the tunnel floor. Fresh footprints in the dust. The grip-tread of his own heavy snowboots. And a second set of prints heading deeper into the tunnels.
He measured his foot against the print. Whoever had recently walked down this passageway wore small boots with chevron tread.
A white tiled chamber, dazzling after miles of drab concrete.
Nail knew he should turn back and head for the surface, but he was overcome by curiosity. This vast subterranean necropolis held secrets. He and Gus were in a hopeless situation, injured and marooned. Maybe if Nail pushed further, travelled deeper into the tunnel complex, he might unearth some kind of salvation.
Lockers, shower heads, a hatch in the floor.
Chemical warfare suits in the lockers. Rubber hoods with glass eye-holes.
The room was a decontamination suite. Soldiers could wash away radioactive fallout, unzip their suits, climb down the shaft and seal themselves inside the hermetic environment of Level Zero.
Nail approached the floor hatch. A hinged lid like the turret hatch of a tank. He heaved the door open. A gust of foetid air from far below ground. His torch fluttered and died.
Absolute dark. Nail fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. Three strikes. Sparks, then a steady flame. He re-lit the plank of wood.
He looked down the shaft beside him. Walls lit by flickering flame-light. For a moment, deep at the bottom of the shaft, he thought he glimpsed a figure looking up at him.
Nail returned to the bunker entrance an hour later. He carried a wooden chair over his shoulder. He smashed the chair and put the pieces on the fire.
Gus sat by the fire and rocked back and forth. The man was clearly in agony, sweating the pain minute by minute.
Nail chiselled ice from the wall with a spanner.
‘Rub it on your burns. It’ll help.’
‘You found some wood.’
‘There are some bunks down there. And some tables and chairs. Dormitories for the team that built the place. Enough wood to buy us some thinking time.’
‘Nothing to eat, I bet.’
‘I’ll check the Skidoo panniers in a minute. I need to sit down a while. I’m exhausted.’
They dried their boots over the fire.
They heard a thud against the bunker door. Then another. Fists pounded. Fingers scratched.
‘I truly don’t get it,’ said Gus. ‘Can they smell us? Is that it? How do they know we are in here? Some kind of super- sense?’
‘They can smell you all right. You stink like cooked bacon.’
They sat by the fire for an hour. A gentle draught drew woodsmoke down the tunnel like cigarette fumes sucked into a smoker’s lungs. They listened to fists thump against the doors.
Gus watched the smoke.
‘Are there vents down there? A second exit?’
‘Fuck knows. It goes on for miles. A secret city. Some kind of major naval facility.’
‘How many of them do you think are out there?’ asked Gus.
‘Two, I reckon. They’re half frozen. We could get round them easily enough. If more show up I’ll go out there and kill them. Thin out the herd. They’re slow. They’re stupid. I could do it. Wouldn’t be a problem.’
‘My face. Is it bad?’ ‘Yeah, it’s pretty bad.’
‘If I asked you to kill me, if it came down to it, would you help?’
Nail turned away.
A sudden flashback. The big argument. Mal shouting and cursing, jabbing his finger. A blur of steel as Nail lashed out. That shrill, bubbling squeal. That gush of arterial spray.
Nail hadn’t slept for a month. Scared to close his eyes.
‘Maybe it won’t come to that.’
Nail pushed a couple more chair legs on to the fire.
‘We have to get back to Rampart,’ said Gus. ‘That’s our only chance. There will be food, heat and morphine. I’m in so much pain.’
‘Let me think it over.’
A couple of nights earlier Nail had sat in the bridge of Hyperion unable to sleep. He sat in the captain’s chair and looked at the stars. He was joined by Reverend Blanc. They made small talk. Little more than noise. But he could tell straight away she knew his big secret. She seemed too pleasant, too casual. Somehow she had figured out he killed Mal.
Maybe Jane and her friends were dead. Maybe they were ripped apart or died in the fire. But perhaps they escaped Hyperion. They might have taken refuge on Rampart armed with shotguns. Would Jane shoot on sight? What would he do, if their situation were reversed? Sorry, guys. I thought she was one of those infected freaks.
‘I don’t want to worry you,’ said Gus quietly, ‘but I’ve been watching the shadows behind you for a while and I swear there is someone standing against the far wall.’
Nail slowly turned around. The fire cast flickering shadows across the tunnel walls. He saw a figure in heavy snow gear half hidden in darkness.
Nail stood up.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You’re welcome to join us.’
No response.
He took a burning chair leg from the fire and approached the figure.
A Con Amalgam parka patched with duct tape.
‘I’m Nail. Nail Harper.’
No reply.
