Murmansk-13

Frantic, Tala called out to Katja just as the press of unstoppable bodies descended on the soldiers. She barely acknowledged the feedback laced screams of pain as she scanned the foyer for other signs of life. All she saw was a rising wall of deathly, ossified figures, skeletons covered in tattered clothes and tattered flesh. She glanced down at her 9mm to find the stovepipe round had cleared. She sighted the gun and began picking off the closest infected, coolly trying to cut a path. For each body she dropped a new one took its place, trampling the lifeless corpse beneath its shambolic gait. It didn’t matter, Tala had to get to Katja, at least draw their attention. With each shot she stepped forward, toward the crowding, longing, outstretched arms.

Tor grabbed her from behind and yanked her back. “Are you fucking mad?” Rage and pity vied for dominance behind his eyes, his voice quietened. “We have to get out of here.”

“I have to get to Katja,” Tala said unsteadily, never lowering her gun. “She’s over there, vulnerable.”

“You can’t help her dead,” Tor replied, looking over her shoulder. “It’s suicide.”

Drawn by her fire, the blood caked crowd pulled from the sundered corpses of the soldiers. Their hazmat suits had been peeled away by festering fingernails and their torsos and ribcages splayed open, their abdominal cavities emptied – witnesses to their own crazed autopsy. Their hoods and breathing masks had been torn away, much like the flesh beneath it, gleaming bone glistened in places through the gore. Eyeless and shredded, the soldiers sat in a pile of their own half masticated viscera, staring sightlessly through a shambling masse of infected – beelining toward Tala and Tor.

Tala quailed and began backpedalling. Hate and gut wrenching sorrow sickened her worse than the sight of the soldiers and the dead. She raised her gun and peppered the onrushing infected, bullets snickered through petrified flesh as several bodies dropped to the deck. Tala kept the trigger depressed until the firing pin clicked against the empty magazine. Enraged, she tossed the weapon at the nearest abomination then watched it disappear beneath the throngs graceless shuffling feet.

“I’m sorry, Tala,” Tor said, his voice raised over the mournful lament. “Truly I am, but we need to go. It’s now or never.”

Tala turned to the Captain, his expression was apologetic but hard. Behind him the main entrance of Central Command lay clear, but the infected were closing on all sides. Tala felt her lip tremble as she gave one last useless glance to where Katja and Diego fell, then followed Tor into the stark passageway.

Chapter 22

Aidan woke with a start as the Riyadh jarred beneath him. Lose items rattled where they stood or toppled completely. One of the damaged EVA suits slipped heavily from its hook, the brass coupling clattered against the hermetic Perspex wardrobe. Aidan felt his body tense and gingerly sat up, wary of the convulsing muscles that still plagued his neck.

Within seconds the Riyadh fell still save for the pounding in his chest. The repurposed rivet gun had been jolted to the deck. Aidan grimaced as he awkwardly lowered his stringy frame to retrieve it, then sighed.

He’d been holed up in the Evacuation Suite for four days, occasionally checking the bridge chronometer when he dared abandon his watch. Chief Nilsen had powered it back up before he left and the livid digital display provided a fragile continuity to the humdrum life that existed before everything fell to shit.

In the first hours after the remaining crew departed for Murmansk-13, Aidan busied himself tidying the ship spaces nearest the airlock, rectifying the aftermath of the junk impact. Injured, the work had been slow, but it kept him loose and allowed his mind to empty of burdens. He’d then raided the galley for non-perishables, mostly tins containing food stuffs that were edible cold, stockpiling what he came to think of as his guard post.

Variety was scant, Aidan was shocked to see how meagre their supplies had become; no doubt lessened by the Chief Officer and further by items hidden by the Steward – perhaps conscious that Aidan would deplete what little remained. Dry flaked tuna in brine became a staple in the absence of Sammy, and tinned peaches for dessert. The dichotomic repast left a silvery film inside his mouth with each meal and he soon found his appetite lessened. At first he’d thought to ration his supplies, but it turned out consumption would not be a problem.

His stomach growled angrily, starved of a decent hot meal. Boredom and fear made for capricious partners during his lonely vigil. Fear was ever present, from the moment he watched his crew exit the airlock his innards were gnawed with it. Fear of abandonment, of dying a slow solitary death aboard a vessel lost in the vastness of space. With the transponders shut down and the communications array obliterated into millions of fragments, he would probably never be found.