Murmansk-13

Nielsen tore the rifle from the already heavily picked gaffer tape scabbard and sighted up the trunk. For a second he watched the jarring, spastic movement of the throng still flights above, difficult to discern. Then the odour drifted down the stairwell. Behind him Pettersson vomited as Nielsen fought against his own gag reflex. The essence of putrefaction, of rot, forced them back into the access way with the same clarifying effect as smelling salts.

Barricading the door was stalling for time. They’d started together, pulling fire fighting equipment like extinguishers and hoses from their brackets. Two large fifty kilo foam extinguishers on trucks were dragged against the door. Their attackers were slow and the heft of the door itself provided some defence. But it wouldn’t be enough, and Nielsen knew it. He’d left Pettersson to concentrate on fortifying their position while Nielsen tried to formulate a plan.

He’d come up dry.

They had their backs to the wall and were heavily outnumbered. The space beyond the blast doors was small, just the foot of the stairwell, a couple of meters square, and their attackers seemed to lack co-ordination. The doors would part slightly as the infected lapped against the exterior, the smell of necrotizing organic matter drifting through the gap before Pettersson resealed it. Then the Swede would dash away, find something else to place amongst the barricade before the process replayed over.

The items were growing smaller and less solid, now. An empty waste paper basket weighing less than a half kilo from the engine control room was his latest find, tossing it into the pile, then pushing back against the moaning throng. It didn’t inspire confidence, but they could hold their position for a while, the back and forth playing out at the blast door ad nauseam until either they or their attackers ran out of stamina.

Nielsen couldn’t even begin to conceive of the mechanism required to animate such abominations, lest estimate their metabolic rate. There were many more of them and they shifted with a single minded relentlessness that he had little doubt could outlast their efforts.

“Hey, Chief,” Pettersson called back over his shoulder. He sounded exhausted, his hair unusually unkempt, flattened with exertion. “Don’t these spaces usually have an emergency shaft?”

They did, and Nielsen had already thought of it. Murmansk-13’s engine compartments were actually furnished with two emergency escape shafts. An unusual extravagance for a Soviet build. Orientated at either side of the twisting access way were opposing doors with retro reflective stickers that effervesced dimly in the emergency light. The stickers showed a picture of a ladder and an arrow pointing up, Nielsen assumed the Cyrillic words were informing him he was at the emergency shaft.

He’d tried both, near identical shafts. Strip lights followed a vertical track that went up and curved slightly away against the shell of the egg timer shaped central superstructure. Plain bulkheads enveloped a simple ladder. Both shafts reeked of death, the coronach of the infected shivered down the shafts. Seemingly skinless skulls bobbed far above, peering down at Nielsen with lifeless eyes over the crest of the curve. At the portside, he’d dodged away as one of the figures overstepped the ladder top and tumbled down the shaft. Nielsen just had time to see the wizened body catch and twist against the rungs before slamming the door shut. He heard the body crumple dryly the opposite side of the Formica and chose not to investigate.

“They’re a no-go,” Nielsen replied his voice heightened with fear. “More of these at the top.”

Pettersson nodded. Nielsen saw what the infected had done to Mihailov’s hand without being able to appreciate the context. Now he knew scaling a ladder into their maw would be akin to forcing yourself into a meat grinder head first. He’d rather hold his ground, take a few shots. Maybe think of something else.

Somewhere above Pettersson and over the din of the infected, Nielsen could hear a light metallic scuffling noise. He brought his rifle up and trained his scope on the ventilator shaft. The scuffle became a clatter and Nielsen heard something heavy and fleshy crash into the pressed aluminium of the duct behind the bulkhead. “Shit, they’re coming through the fucking ducts!”

His finger tightened around the trigger, felt the spring of the firing mechanism go taut as he furtively depressed it. Around him, the sound of the infected swirled, yearning, keening, slowly battering down Pettersson’s defences. His grip tightened.

“Don’t fucking shoot, holmes!” The grating cover battered open, smashing against the opposite bulkhead before fluttering to the access way deck. Nielsen flinched as the grating landed at his feet, then lowered the rifle. “Shit, I’m too late.”