Murmansk-13

Jamal took a deep breath and braced himself, hooking a hand into the prison issue jumpsuit of Igor for no explicable reason or sentiment. The huge prisoner pulled the cockpit door release and was immediately blown out through the front of the personnel carrier, his body shredded by the twisted and serrated remnants of the cockpit, a few other prisoners slammed into the collision bulkhead as the fuselage rapidly depressurized. Jamal fought to maintain his hold on Igor’s suit as his body was pulled toward the door. Air vaporized to mist as pressure fell to zero and the artificial gravity failed.

The already damaged fuselage shrieked under the rapid loss of pressure and seemed to pull away from the docking rim, threatening to be thrown by the centrifugal motion of the station. Jamal felt his skin prickle as the temperature dropped, frost contrasted with his dark flesh. Blood began to boil in his veins and he knew he would be dead within a minute if he didn’t act. With Igor weightless, he grabbed his bench neighbour and pushed for the cockpit door like a swimmer pushing off the edge of a pool, a trail of floating blood droplets eddied in his wake.

Others quickly followed.

☣☭☠

Katja thrashed at her assailant, images shimmered through unshed tears. She felt her wrists grabbed mid pummel. Fully arrested, her stomach fluttered with fear. Teardrops tumbled down her cheeks, she was in a dark room, lit only by little pinpricks of coloured light and the lambent green of dimmed monitors.

The shadow before her was saying something, appealing. Blood rushed through her head. She pulled viciously at the shadowed figure grasping her wrists. At her second attempt, it freed her, she turned to the door.

“Stop. Katja.” She recognized the voice, it was Artyom and he was scared. “Don’t go back out there.”

She turned and fell into his arms in pure relief, gladdened to have finally found somebody. “What’s happening, Arty?”

“We lost containment,” his voice muffled in her shoulder. “The recon party are out.”

“All of them?”

“All of them,” Artyom kept his replies calm and gently released Katya from their embrace. He held her at arm’s length, hands on her shoulders. “At 12.16 am station time there was a power surge, for whatever reason it took thirty-two seconds for the districts auxiliary backup to kick in. By then they’d breached the doors.”

“Oh God.” Katya stepped out of Artyom’s reach and realized she was stood in quarantine control. Beside her a great wall of ballistic glass looked down on an empty ward. Wheeled beds lay askew covered in stained linen, each bore a human outline made up of pressure points where necrotizing flesh had wept into the material. The room was lit a sickly blue intended to pacify the infected.

“It was if they sensed it, the opportunity,” Artyom now stared into the quarantine ward, he spoke dreamily. “As soon as we lost power, they went for the doors.”

“But how, how is that possible? Their encephalopathy was so advanced, neurodegeneration so complete.” She tasted old alcohol on her breath, stomach acid burnt the back of her throat. “They should have been dead, not wandering around.”

“Should of, but aren’t.” Blue light uplit Artyom, colouring his skin a deathly pallor and casting great black shadows in his eye sockets. Horn rimmed Windsor glasses seemed to frame the empty looking cavities of his skull.

Katya tried to steady her racing mind. She reached for the water cooler. It shimmered an eerie blue green as bubbles raced upward. The flimsy paper cup shook violently in her hand, tepid, stale tasting water spilt onto the darkness of the floor. “Can we turn a light on?”

“I wouldn’t.” Artyom turned to Katja, a featureless shadow with tousled hair, then sat vacantly at the control console. The quiet hum of electronics in the background.

Katja felt her enervated legs almost buckle, she pulled the second wheeled office chair beside Artyom. “I saw blood in the corridor,” Artyom turned and looked at her, but remained silent. “Where are they now?”

“I… I don’t know,” he replied in a breaking pitch. “They got out, at first… At first we thought we could contain them. We tried to evacuate the ward, bring some guns in but they were on top of us too fast.

“I saw friends… I heard their screams and I ran. I didn’t think I could help them. I hid in here. For a while I heard scraping on the door, I didn’t want to check who was there. They didn’t say anything.”

Artyom cried and Katja draped an insensate arm on his shoulder. He lifted his spectacles and jerkily dried his face with his lab coat, carefully replacing the glasses on the bridge of his nose in an attempt to normalize his distress. “The two guards who were the first at the door when the system went down, they only had tasers. I saw them being attacked, it was ferocious, savage. They just tore and ripped at them, with their hands, fists. Teeth. I watched them bleed out on the floor, horrid ragged wounds in their necks and faces. One of them had no nose, no ears.”