Murmansk-13

Papai, me ajude Papai, me ajude. Tor was sure that was what Olaf said, but he heard nothing, not even breathing. Tears crystallized against his cheeks as he pawed at his sons visor. Olaf struggled as if unable to breathe. Tor could feel his fingernails being peeled back as they grated against the insides of the gauntlets. Feel the moist flesh parting.

Finally the visor opened. A sleepy smile seemed to cross Olaf’s blue lips. His eyes unseeing. Tor pulled Olaf to his chest and held him. His son didn’t move in his arms. Frantic and confused Tor held Olaf back and looked at him. Olaf’s head cocked curiously to the left cataracted eyes glared out through the darkness of the helmet.

“Olaf?” Tor asked quietly. Olaf thrust forward, his jaw distending to an impossible angle revealing jagged and smashed teeth that raked across Tor’s cheeks. They found purchase in his nose.

Tor screamed as his sons teeth incised the flesh of his face and began pulling the cartilage from his skull.

Tor was still screaming when he woke, a weak stream of piss dribbling from his penis, soaking his crotch and the mattress beneath him. Acidic bile stripped the back of his throat as he rolled from the mattress, landing face first into the shag carpet beside his bed. He sobbed into the soft fabric, great heavy tears as he banged his head gently against the cushioned deck. Eventually the tears stopped, then Tor laid there in silence, surrounded by the silence of his ship and a profound implacable sense of loss.

Chapter 11

Tala was convinced she could hear the lactic acid leeching from her muscles, fizzling and bubbling as she slumped to the deck. The stairwell climb had taken at least an hour, maybe more. Katja remained an inert millstone since her dreamlike, unsettling words breached her dry lips. Jamal was mute and resigned, his stocky frame lessened. Inexorably he’d hauled Katja up eleven floors in silence, uncomplaining, but Tala knew her outburst had stolen his resolve. Jamal’s earlier actions were driven by hope, now Tala wasn’t sure what drove him.

Still, in her anger she’d been honest. The fall would only have been greater if she’d promised salvation and reneged at the last. Tala doubted she would be leaving Murmansk-13 again, let alone aiding Jamal’s coterie of survivors. She squeezed her eyes closed at the thought.

Jamal was stood beside a keypad controlled door, recessed into the curving corridor. The screen on the pad was smashed, black liquid crystal pooled around the cracks like fractured ink blots. At his feet the dust congealed into a morass of grey sludge, bonded by odorous, putrid fluids. The patina of grey granules throughout the corridor had been thoroughly disturbed, wafted into drifts against the bulkheads. The electric door was streaked with coagulated finger prints, palm prints and brown-black spatter. “Time to time, the packs congregate here,” Jamal said, looking down at Tala. “They’ve not made it in yet,” he added with a forlorn grin.

Jamal rapped his knuckles against the door, behind Tala could hear muffled movement, startled into action by the dull metallic report. After a moment the sound subsided, Jamal rapped again. In the smeared Perspex viewport of the door, Tala saw a figure, bald or hair cropped to the skull, peering into the dim of the corridor through the translucent film of cruor. “Eto ya, Jamal.” Jamal leaned toward the figure, his nose millimetres from the stinking membrane of gore.

“Jamal?” The heavily accented voice was faint beyond aluminium plating. “Why are you in the corridor?”

“I have guests,” Jamal said. “From the ship I told you about. They’re tired.”

“We’re not supposed to open this door, unless we have to,” the man drizzled English in a monotone dirge. “Use the vents.”

“I can’t.” Jamal snapped, he leaned close to the jam of the door. “One of them is hurt.”

“I’ll get Kirill.”

Tala watched Jamal tense. “Fuck Kirill, get Gennady.” The command was spoken in a calm, venomous timbre.