Murmansk-13

Wracking his mind, he tilted her head back, preparing to commence resuscitation as best as he could remember when she sputtered to life. Coughing violently, spittle splashing against her lips as Tor cradled her head.

Dreamily, Tala opened her almond shaped eyes. For a moment she seemed to struggle to draw focus on Tor. “Are we dead?” She asked, her voice a thin rasp.

“I don’t think so,” Tor replied. Drenched in relief, he sank to his behind.

“You sure look it,” Tala said.

“I feel it too.”

The airlock completed its cycle, the interior door peeled back, bathing the insides of the airlock with a startling, clinical light. Tala and Tor squinted against its sharpness. The ship beyond was quiet.

“You don’t look so hot either,” Tor chided, still heady with survival.

Stiffly, Tala began sitting up. “Oh, I’ve looked much…” Tala froze mid sentence, her eyes widening.

With his back to the door, Tor felt gooseflesh fire across his skin. His saliva tasted of mercury. “What’s wrong?”

Tala didn’t reply, just scuttled back to the exterior door in slow movements. Her pupils dilated and fixed on some object behind him. Reluctantly, Tor turned to face whatever elicited such fear.

Atanas Mihailov, Navigations Officer, stood less than twenty feet away, naked in every possible sense, and regarded them with flat, lifeless eyes. His exposed musculature looked like blood drenched tree bark, the fibrous tissue beginning to shrivel, twisting and knurling his body. His feral gaze seemed to look everywhere and nowhere, he lifted his nose to the air.

Then his fleshless head cocked unerringly toward the airlock. Mihailov grunted, took a shambling step forward and opened his jaw, the muscles and tendons distending preternaturally. He emitted a shrill keen before rushing their position, proceeded by the pernicious scent of his decay.

Mihailov beelined for the cowering Tala, small and helpless against the exterior door of the airlock. So indomitable throughout their ordeal, a look of empty resignation now paled her skin. Tor rose to his knee, apparently undetected by whatever mode of perception the infected used. Tor watched Tala hug her knees and knew his time had come to redeem himself.

Still unnoticed as Mihailov rapidly closed the distance in a shambolic jog, Tor leapt across the threshold of the airlock. Like a running back upended by a chop block, Mihailov tumbled over Tor’s back. The Bulgarian fell, gnashing at the feet of Tala who kicked out at his fleshless face. Before he could rise Tor was on him, ignoring the lightning rod pains that flashed through his body.

Through his gauntlets, Tor felt Mihailov as a sinuous mass of writhing muscle, inhuman in strength. Were it not for the added bulk of his EVA suit, Tor was sure he would have been tossed clear. Instead he managed to pin his second mate to the deck, one gauntlet closed across the shoulder, the other across the blanched bone of the cranium, mottled with dried gore. Mihailov screamed in his grasp, a chilling retch as he tried to snap his head around. Tor watched the fibres of his neck muscles twitch like strummed guitar strings.

The rancid smell of necrotic flesh caught in Tor’s nostrils, weakening his resolve. He smashed Mihailov’s skull into the deck, once, then a second time. On the third attempt his hand slipped. In an instant Tor felt jagged teeth close across his gauntleted fingers with a crushing force. Tor yowled as Mihailov grunted, pressure threatening to snap bone or incise the material of the gauntlet.

“I’m sorry, Sec,” Tala’s voice was flat, she was stood beside Tor. Her magboot came down on Mihailov’s head, the first blow stove in the back of his skull with a dull crunch, the second popped it. Brain matter blew out across the deck, sickly grey and putrid. Dead eyes boggled, pushed from their sockets. Mihailov had stopped moving, his teeth parted freeing Tor’s fingers.

Tor rolled off Mihailov and threw away his gauntlets. The digits beneath were bruised, feint teeth marks indented his ring finger, he pulled at the flesh.

“Is the skin broken?” Tala knelt beside him, her gaze fixed on his hand.

“I don’t think so,” Tor replied, his heart was thumping and the coldness of Tala’s question chilled his already panicked mindset.

“You don’t think so?” Tala mimicked, incredulous. “It doesn’t take much, just a nick. Do you remember Oleg?”

Tor wracked his mind, the name was not familiar. Perhaps one of the people from the cells. That time was fuzzy. “No,” he finally admitted, feeling the tethers of reality tauten.

“Are you bleeding?” Tor could sense the agitation building inside Tala.

“No, I’m fine,” Tor rolled from her sight, he couldn’t see blood, just purplish brownish bruising.

Tala grabbed his arm and pulled his hand to her face, Tor barely bothered to protest. After a moment she let go, Tor let the limb fall limply to the deck. “Good. I don’t think I want to kill anymore of my crewmembers today.”