Murmansk-13

Over time, Jamal had grown used to the hum of Murmansk-13, the noises of the inexorably decaying mechanics and electronics, he even grew accustomed to the ever present movement of the infected. Alone had never been quiet, but it had been the absence of sentience beyond the inhabited enclaves and Mikhail. Abandoning the sharp edged heliostat and the heavy flashlight and escape set, Jamal had scaled the trunk of District Three intent on intercepting his quarry.

He’d been too late though, had heard the groups encounter with an infected, the monotonous keening, a ships captain introduce himself and the confusing shout of “Papa”. Mercifully the assailant had been alone, unusual, and when Jamal reached the scene of the conflict he discovered a fresh corpse with its head bludgeoned to a pulp and a pool of blood. Their distant footsteps rang from the metal stepped stairwell, making good their escape.

Then he heard the rest of them, the crew, what remained of them. Alerted from their starved torpor.

Now the crew were somewhere above him, shambling and clattering down the very same metal stairwell while below Jamal could hear the faint sound of movement, searching movement within the accommodation floor, a deck below. He opened his eyes to the darkness and let the chill air quiet his screaming muscles. He could dally no longer. Two and a half more meters, come on man.

☣☭☠

Tor tried the handle, like the rest the Formica door had been left unlocked and abandoned. He slipped into the cabin, decayed emergency lights seemed to squint into the room, twinkling off old retro reflective safety signs and picking at the shadows that held dominion within each nook and recess. Tor depressed the light switch, to his surprise the reading light above the bottom bunk flickered on, shafting artificial light around a bunched curtain that offered the bunk privacy. He pulled the curtain aside and let the yellowed light illuminate the cabin.

Like the rest, the room comprised a bunk, a single bedside table, shallow closet and a small desk, all mahogany veneered. The same grey-blue plastic veneers of the bulkhead enshrouding the fittings in a dismal miasma. Tor stepped into the middle of the cabin and sighed, unlike the rest, personal effects dotted the space he stood in. A dust coated, plastic aspidistra appeared to wilt in the gloom atop the bedside table beside him and family photos were stashed and jammed into each crevice offered by the louvered wood that separated the bunk beds from the bulkheads. Beneath his feet a worn Quba rug lay across the linoleum stretching into the darkness that cloyed the room.

They’d not found a single escape suit in any condition in the cabins that betrayed no evidence of habitation, Tor greatly doubted he would find one in here.

Tor sat heavily on the dishevelled sheets of the bottom bunk, a tsunami of dust particles slithered into the dim in response. His feet were numb with the weight of the heavy mag boots, EVA suits were never designed for protracted wear and Tor could feel the greasy build up of bodily effluent on the internal layer.

Tor had tried to rest in the many hours they’d spent in the morgue, but the chronic unease set his already enervated muscles and nerves into a perpetual state of nervous readiness that exhausted them further. If he closed his eyes now, Tor knew he would see Falmendikov, corrupted. He shook his head and clasped his gauntlets against the edge of the bed, uncomfortably higher than the thin mattress beneath him. There would be a time for processing the events of the morgue, aboard the Riyadh with a stiff drink and a cigarette. Now was not the time, Tor simply couldn’t, his neural circuitry had gone haywire. Singular focus was crucial and yet his mind kept skipping.

Ham-fisted, he plucked a handful of photos from the louvered bunk backboard, crushing them in his paw. Tor focused on the picture, vivid colours slightly blurred and faded with age. The edge of the print paper was peeling and frayed at the corners, a beach scene from the 60’s or early 70’s looking at the garb and the saturated blues, probably from some Soviet sanctioned workers holiday camp around the Black Sea. A homely Mom with winged spectacles and yellow floral summer dress stood beside a topless Dad in pose, hairy on the chest and shoulders, not on the scalp. In the foreground a small corral of children, probably not all theirs, Tor wondered which one had grown up to walk the grim corridors of Murmansk-13 so many millions of miles from the beaches of Sochi.

A life forgotten. Had they fled? Leaving their belongings to this Soviet crypt. What had become of them? Of all of them? In his pursuit of Falmendikov, Tor had wanted to know what had happened to his Chief Officer, now he wanted to know what had happened at Murmansk-13. Was that why the station had been quarantined? Would they all end up like Falmendikov?