Murmansk-13

“No, my crew,” Hernandez vision quaked, little aftershocks of the impact. A shimmering veil of tears traced the ruined mess that had been his nose. The tears comingled with blood, pulsing from his nostrils, that made it difficult to breath, made everything smell and taste like iron. The suicidal excitement and freedom ebbed away leaving a void of sorrow and failure.

The mural of Lenin looked down upon Hernandez blearily. His lifeless, black eyes expressed a grim, hard pity as Hernandez was escorted from Central Command.

Chapter 21

“Jamal,” Oleg spoke his name like a question, eyelids flickering over blackened sclera. His voice was a thin rasp, “I’m sorry.”

Oleg was fading. Even talking exhausted him. He inhaled, a ragged rattle, his chest fluttering. His flesh was ulcerated, in places it had darkened and cracked seeping a thin yellowy mixture of pus and lymphatic fluid. It had been two days since he became infected, soon he would be dead. Jamal suspected Oleg had spoken his last words.

“The infection will begin to dictate his actions soon,” Katja was stood at the bars of her cell. She’d spent most of her time asleep, or avoiding Oleg’s decline. Jamal understood, she’d been through a lot. Now the medical student in her was intrigued and it irked Jamal. It hadn’t taken humans long to segue from observing the infection to experimenting with it. Instead of leaving well alone, they were going to take it back to Earth.

“I know,” said Jamal.

“He’ll become dangerous.”

Oleg had always been dangerous, but not in any way Katja would understand. Jamal had watched Oleg kill Kirill with a regretting dispassion. For years Jamal had watched Oleg tread a steady line between trauma and self destruction. Stolid yet fighting demons, Oleg lived each day in District Four in a quiet, personal torment. Oleg wasn’t a killer, but he could kill easily, Kirill had been the moment the spirit level was tipped. Jamal only wished he’d known about Afghanistan sooner. Oleg was a difficult man to know, or like. But Jamal had liked him, knew he was almost gone.

“I ain’t killing him till he’s dead.”

“But, how will we know when he’s dead?” Katja’s tremulous voice rose.

Jamal turned to Katja, she seemed paler in the whiteness of the cells. Her knuckles paler still, tight against the bars. Her pockmarked skin made her look like a castoff doll, her face was sad. Jamal felt his irritation ebb away. “They don’t breathe, once they’re dead.”

They. The word depersonalized it, made it seem like a transition. Acceptable. It would make killing him easier, it wouldn’t be Oleg, just another They. Infected. But they had all been somebody else once.

“The rate of infection is so much faster than before,” Katja said, trace elements of fear crept into her observation.

Jamal looked back at Oleg and shrugged. “It’s an alien virus, it’s adapting to our physiology. I’m no doctor, but even I can see that. They have no idea what they’re about to unleash.”

The apocalypse. If it wasn’t for his sister back in Compton his own inevitable death would be a lot easier. Maybe his brother was still alive, maybe he would take care of her. Jamal doubted it, Stupid fucking gangbanger, ain’t going to be much value in turf when this shit hits LA.

Jamal watched each laboured breath Oleg took, half expecting it to be the last one. He missed the weight of his old junk gun. It still wasn’t loaded, but maybe he could have used it as a cosh. Any weapon would be better than no weapon. Oleg would be most vulnerable at the nexus between death and reanimation. Jamal imagined it was like a rewiring phase as the infection assumed sole control over the various biological systems it deemed necessary, wiping away the last remnants of the former occupant. Once reanimated, Oleg could easily overwhelm Jamal with his injured leg.

The time was growing near, Jamal eased himself upright, eyes fixed on his friend. He felt the momentary wave of nausea rise up his gullet as blood welled back into the spaces around the bullet wound, the movement akin to sand in an egg timer. He was relieved to discover that he’d mostly lost all sensation beneath the knee, the sickness quickly passed.

“Has he gone?” Katja asked. Tala had joined her at the bars, wrapping her arms around the girls waist.

“No,” Jamal replied. “Not yet, but soon. I have to be ready.”

He said the last part as much to himself as to anybody else. Jamal limped a few feet to the steel cot and slumped onto the mattress. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Oleg.”

Oleg didn’t open his eyes.

☣☭☠

“Where did you get the suits?” He’d not spoken in a while and his voice seemed to bear a fuzzy quality, as if he was talking through a wad of cotton or listening to himself from another room.

Neither men answered, neither really paid him any heed.

They’d tracked back to the service corridor in uneasy silence and saw no more of the hazmat suited mercenaries.