Murmansk-13

Then what? Jamal wondered how long the little bands would hold together, how long before anarchy and fighting turned to cannibalism. Schisms were developing beneath Gennady, the stability he’d come to rely on was threatening to unravel. Ever since rationing was instituted, timid but contentious – and increasingly unhinged, Kirill was garnering support amongst those least satisfied in District Four and those cowed by his mule Ilya. Sewing the same atmosphere of fear and paranoia that had first split the community through nebulous propaganda. Jamal thought of the Rapa Nui, the people of the Easter Islands, impotently expending their resources, spiralling passively into violence and disaster. He’d found a book on anthropology while scouring the offices and had coldly read the passages on their demise. Perhaps Kirill was right to incite fear, but Jamal knew it was merely for his own gain. Kirill wanted to monopolize the station supplies, if he succeeded in a coup he would be sorely disappointed. Jamal had already explained that stores were dwindling, Kirill had simply branded him as a Gennady loyalist.

So be it.

Mikhail was now sat, cross-legged an outline embossed in red. Hands feverishly packing tins and packets into a large canvas backpack. A faint skittering of metal on metal floated up to Jamal and drifted away on a breeze of ozone scented wind. It occurred to him that a loud sound now and he could trap Mikhail on the upper shelves, the infected would not relent until he died.

Then however, the warehouse would become impassable, Mikhail could sustain himself for weeks on the dried food stuffs and emergency water supplies. Jamal would have to wait until either boredom or madness forced Mikhail to act. Only once Mikhail was either devoured, dead or out of reach would the infected mill elsewhere. By then he would surely have imperilled all the remaining survivors of District Four. Both the grateful and the ingrates.

Jamal wondered how many times Mikhail had watched him on the racks and came to the same conclusion. The thought raised gooseflesh on his skin.

Mikhail began his downclimb, backpack bulging out like a black widow’s abdomen, jostling against measured movements. Descent was the hardest part, the frames were aluminium, weight lightened by oval knotholes and otherwise smooth. The holes were big enough to jam a finger into and little more, there was no opportunity to properly test the weight of the backpack before mounting the frame as the shelves were just five feet high. Jamal had jury-rigged a waist belt to reduce the movement of his backpack, but the first few finger holes were always the most tentative.

Mikhail stepped lightly from the frame, his lithe form appearing small against the overstuffed backpack. Jamal watched him walk to the dwarfing viewport, bathing him in red spectral light that stole definition from his solitary figure. He pressed his hand against the glass in reverie.

Suddenly, Mikhail snapped his head to the side. Jamal held his breath, but Mikhail did not flee. He was looking at something, pushing his face into the glass. Peering. The subject of his interest held his attention for several minutes before he turned and began walking urgently, but quietly, in the direction of District Seven.

Jamal waited on the catwalk, his interest piqued. He daren’t risk running into Mikhail, any confrontation would at the very least render the whole excursion completely worthless. Instead, he listened for the tell tale scraping of a backpack being pushed into an air vent, the rustle of insulating substrate. After fifteen silent minutes he determined that Mikhail was better than he judged.

Jamal followed the gantry catwalk to where it terminated at an elevator. It was powered down and would be far too noisy anyhow. Beside it was a service ladder, yellow and black striped. Cotton mouthed he descended, his water supply for the trip had been expended earlier than he hoped and now his head pounded, exacerbating the import of each and every step and amplifying each dull clunk.

At the bottom spindly rack shadows spidered across the floor, obsidian black in the crimson starlight. At the base of the ladder Jamal stood in the loom of the shelves, stretching away. Light played through them like skyscraper skeletons.

Chary footsteps carried Jamal to the place he’d watched Mikhail stand not twenty minutes before, wraithlike fingerprints still imprinted the glass. The great red supergiant dominated the sky, sunspots sliding across a surface striated by bands of varying crimson like a palette of aging blood . The air was still here and the glass warm, streaked with cosmic dust. Jamal tried to recall the feeling of sunlight on a Californian summers day. Another life.

Peering as he’d watched Mikhail do, he traced the gentle curve of the docking ring as the station lazily rotated, out passed the pill shaped District Five and into black uninhabited space, beyond the span of the supergiant.