Murmansk-13

Hernandez felt the weight of the Chiefs rifle, tied to his long johns with elastic he’d pulled from the cuffs and ankles. He would be heavily outgunned, but at least he would have the bigger gun. A fatalistic smirk crossed his lips as he carefully removed the vent cover. The ducts had been a bust, he wouldn’t make it back in time. He just hoped Pettersson and Nielsen would distract the throng of infected long enough for him to cross Central Command and head off the hazmat squad.

Then what? He’d have to get the cell key and the code for the antechamber. After walking into the lions maw. Well too bad, there wasn’t an option now. Hernandez wished he was loaded up, somehow he thought certain death would feel more finite and less intimidating under the influence.

He pulled the vent cover into the shaft and eased himself out over the corridor, sliding to his full arms extent before dropping the last couple of meters to the deck. Hernandez wheeled around to ensure the passageway was empty. In the distance he heard a door close with a creek. The hazmat squad had entered the personnel corridor. The only way left was forward.

The “Welcome to Murmansk-13” sign was two hundred meters maybe less ahead. The corridor was otherwise empty. Devoid, yet Hernandez couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched and not just by the security camera above the doorway. Hernandez sighted the camera, then thought better. If someone was watching the video relay they’d see him coming anyway. If somebody wasn’t and he squeezed off a round on their doorstep everyone and everything would know he was coming for sure.

Hernandez cradled the rifle against his chest and entered a sustainable jog. He could feel his heart flutter in his chest as his bare feet padded over the cool epoxy coated decking, pleased with the stealth his state of undress afforded. His breaths came quick and shallow as much with excitement as exhaustion. Hernandez felt free as he ran toward the shadow of the valley of death, he only hoped he wouldn’t be late.

As he flatfooted across the threshold of the atrium, Hernandez sensed movement on his left. Figures obscured from sight until the very last second. He barely had time to turn as a blunt instrument swung round from the right. He felt the rifle skitter away from his grip as the pipe smashed into the bridge of his nose, the cartilage collapsing under the force of the blow.

Hernandez felt his arms reaching out behind him as his body atavistically switched to survival mode. He slammed backward onto the deck, his momentum carrying him a little way into the Command Centre foyer. For a second his eyes fluttered closed, the soft lights above him an orange faded to darkening red, black spots threatened to close out his vision altogether from the peripheries.

“Oh shit, did I kill him?” A light voiced male with a Russian accent asked.

“Better not, or you’re next. Get the rifle.” The second man was also Eastern European, his voice preternaturally deep.

Hernandez sensed light footsteps hesitate beside his ear. He tried to turn his head but the muscles in his neck were seized with whiplash, the very fibres in spasm.

“Oh, now she is a pretty little thing…”

“Give it to me, Mikhail.”

Hernandez could feel his eyes roll about in his head. Something in his face felt fractured, his cheek or orbital bone, a knifing ache that transcended the otherwise pained numbness. Two figures peered down, silhouettes obfuscated by the foyer lighting. One of them was bald and tall with broad shoulders, the other small with long hair.

“He’s alive,” the deep voiced man said with a detached nonchalance.

“He from the ship?”

“Ain’t no spiks here before, pick him up before more of those guys in yellow show up.” The deep voice man handed Mikhail something like a rag. “Bind him.”

Hernandez felt arms trying to scoop him off the deck, jarring whatever was loose behind the flesh of his face, jarring the damaged musculature in his neck. He yowled in pain and tried to make his body heavy and awkward, tried to marshal his fleeting thoughts.

“Keep quiet or I’ll fucking kill you, understand?” Something like a prison shank was waved in Hernandez’s face by the bald man. It was a cannibalized screwdriver, caked in dried blood. The bald man held his rifle in one hand, but preferred the tactile threat of the shank.

Hernandez couldn’t nod, didn’t want to although he had little doubt the man would kill him. His legs were dead, flaccid things beneath him. He felt his arms being pulled, tight behind his back. “No, no I need to be somewhere,” he slurred. Every movement of his face was like trying to shift marble slabs.

“So do we,” replied the ogre voiced man. “And you’re going to take us there.”