Murmansk-13

At the edge of his narrowing peripheral vision he heard Katja break away from Peralta’s grip. She called ‘Papa’ as she closed the gap between herself and the shell of her father, Peralta in pursuit. Paralyzed, Tor willed his feet to comply, to intervene as Nikolai snapped around to the girl, his decimated maw chattering molars.

Nikolai surged, stumbling toward his daughter who limped on benumbed legs and atrophied musculature, closing like a sick caricature of a long awaited movie embrace. Tor saw the moment she realized her mistake, her eyes widening with terror as Nikolai’s ruined mouth fell open disgorging his decayed tongue and putrid breath. Mihailov, who’d remained silent and unnoticed between them, dived, pushing Katja to Tor’s feet.

Peralta and Nikolai fell into each other as Mihailov squirmed from the scene, pinning Katja to the ground beside Tor, unable to reach for the rifle at his back. Nikolai’s head lolled to Peralta’s weakened side. The pair struggled on the cold tiles, Nikolai moving in sharp spasms atop the bosun as Peralta struggled to gain the higher ground. The boson’s hands tried to gain purchase against the taut, skeletal frame of his former superior.

As fetid and dilapidated as Nikolai appeared, Peralta couldn’t force him over. The bosun looking dreadfully old and tired as his resolve failed. Tor heard a wet crunch, Peralta wailed, his eyes rolling back in anguish. Finally the dread that had held him in place was vanquished, no longer feeling the lethargy in his muscles, Tor grabbed the scalpel he’d placed on the autopsy table and lunged in aid of his crewman. If nothing else, finally assured that Nikolai was lost.

Before Tor could make up the three paces, Tala surged from his right, driving her mag boot into the top of Nikolai’s skull. The Chief Officer fell away from Peralta, dragging meat and sinew from the bosuns neck. Tala smashed the mahogany handle of the bonesaw into Nikolai’s face as she slipped forward. The solid wood handle snapped and the Russians nose stove inward with a crack.

For a moment the morgue lay silent except for the whimpering of Katja. She didn’t struggle beneath Mihailov. Peralta clasped his neck, gouts of viscous blood poured between his fingers, warming the white tiles beneath him.

“Bosun!” Tala regained her footing and rushed to Peralta’s side, unsure how to assist. Peralta was conscious but unresponsive, his lifeblood pumping directly into the morgue scuppers.

Tor watched agog and useless. Then he felt teeth and fingernails attempting to rent the thirteen layers of his suit. “Fuck!”

Nikolai, his jaw distended, had clamped around his shin. Tor toppled backward, his spine struck the autopsy slab as he fell to the floor. Nikolai, his features crushed into a coagulated pit above his rictus grin, crawled up his body.

Like an arachnophobe awaking to a spider scaling the bedsheets, climbing inexorably onward, Tor could not escape, could not even move. Nikolai’s searching hands and desperate teeth neared the vulnerable portions of Tor’s body. For an instance he felt alone, alone with his death masked Chief Mate.

As Nikolai grasped at the metallic neck coupling of Tor’s suit, dirty finger nails crawling stiffly over the rim, he felt a rush of air and the weight lifted from his chest. His head sank against the cold marble as bile scorched the back of his throat.

“Fuck you!” Distantly he heard Tala shouting the words over and over as she stamped Nikolai’s head into a crimson stain beside him.

Tor turned to look at the pulped remains of Nikolai Falmendikov, to assure himself he would not be reanimating again. Nikolai’s head had folded like a papier-mâché model. Skull fragments and the contents of his cranium had discharged across the floor in a clotted morass. The remnants from Tor’s stomach unconsciously parted his lips, oozing down his chin as the morgue disappeared into darkness.

Chapter 8

“Murderers, you’re all fucking murderers!”

Spittle flew from envenomed lips as Katja strained against her restraints. After a second, speechless spasm against the metallic board she fell limp and silent, her eyes open but unseeing.

Tor slumped to his backside as the plastic swing doors beside him rattled to a close. He held his head in shaking hands; eyes crushed into his palms, and let the surging pressure that throbbed within his skull eddy between his temples. His throat burned with freshly regurgitated bile and his emptied stomach twisted inside his abdomen.

But at least for a moment the metronomic clatter of mag boots on chequer plate had fallen silent.