Murmansk-13

In the wan emergency light, Sammy looked waxy, his skin moist with sweat or vomit. Tor found his anger with both Diego and Sammy diminishing as he neared the steward. Sammy did indeed look ill. In many ways, Sammy and Tor were kindred, of the remaining crew, it was Sammy whose sanity came as close to tearing. The elderly stewards friend died during the scouting mission, the rigorous routine of a ships galley, Sammy’s life, was in disarray. He’d been unable to adapt.

“Sammy, are you OK?” Tor’s voice hissed through the empty corridor, Sammy didn’t respond, they were less than fifty meters away.

In the pit of his stomach, Tor felt lightness grow into sickness. Trepidation denied urgency. A grim familiarity tugged at the back of his mind, Tor looked at Diego and pointed to the small hunting rifle bequeathed by Nilsen, gesturing for the AB to hand it him. Diego raised an eyebrow, his face perplexed, reluctantly he pulled the rifle free from its gaffer tapped scabbard.

For a brief moment, Tor wondered how the Chief Mate had managed to secrete three sizeable hunting rifles into the tidy confines of his cabin. He now realized the competing scent alongside aquavit within Nilsen’s cabin was gun oil, not Styntin. He also realized the collapsing .22 was the very weakest of Nilsen’s armoury he could have issued into the care of Tor, although ultimately it was Mihailov who’d wielded it. Fat lot of use it did him.

The remaining two rifles had removable parts for cleaning, but were considerably more robust. Tor couldn’t admit to knowing much about guns, but the weight of the weapon felt good in his hands, nervously he pulled the remaining tape from the highly polished and lacquered stock and raised the rifle. Sammy still didn’t react.

“Sammy, you asleep?” Tor asked around the body of rifle.

Ten meters away and Tor heard the wet sound of teeth ripping cartilage and tendons from bone. He felt bile rise into his throat, burning his oesophagus once again, the taste had become a familiar tang of wrongness. Something within the shadows was eating Sammy, the stewards flesh was grey. Numb, Tor wheeled to the opposite edge of the corridor, sidestepping until parallel with Sammy. Now he could see a shape flensing meat from bone, a dark outline working away at the Stewards left side.

Momentarily, Tor glanced at the face of Sammy. Muscles slackened, his mouth downturned, he looked partially melted but at peace. Then he noticed whatever lay in the darkness had stopped and was looking at him. Dry eyeballs reflected the flickering emergency lighting like orange peel. “Diego, stay back,” Tor said around the citric tang of bile.

A sepulchral grunt emanated from the shadow, Tor watched the figure rise to unsteady legs. The figure shambled out from the darkness, blood slicked everything below the nose, a ragged wound showed the internal workings of the necks musculature as it turned to look at Diego who stood to Tor’s right.

Tor stared down the scope, concentrating the crosshairs on the figures cranium and realized he was looking impossibly at Jovan Peralta, still wearing an EVA suit marked with the crossed green palms of the Saudi Shipping Company. Wide feral eyes stared at Tor, devoid of recognition. In death his face had regained the movement denied from Peralta in life, his mouth chewed pieces of Sammy Cruz with full mobility.

Tor had been here before, knew better. He yearned to squeeze the trigger but couldn’t. He’d mourned the loss of this man, albeit professionally and selfishly, and yet he stood before him, resurrected and deranged. A malfunctioning abomination to the man he’d been. Tor tried to remember, it was an infection. But infections could be cured. His finger palsied as his body once more succumbed to hesitancy. A madness wept like squid ink through his shattering synapses.

Peralta cocked his head backward, his features coloured in a bizarre wash of pallid postmortis Asian brown and crimson. His mouth distended far beyond its natural limit and a nascent inhaled screech shattered the silence of the moment.

Suddenly, Peralta dropped to the floor, a neat bullet hole perforated the centre of his forehead, old blood welled from the wound a second later. Tor paused, had he fired the rifle? He didn’t remember the bang or the recoil, as he lifted his eye from the rifles scope he felt the hot barrel of a silenced revolver singe the hair at his temple.

A little further down the corridor, to the extent his bodily frozen field of sight would allow, he could see Diego being accosted by a man in what looked like a lab coat, he was also armed and he was pulling Diego’s hands -up in surrender – down to bind them.

“You need to come with us,” an oily female voice said.