Murmansk-13

“We gotta get him to his feet,” Jamal yelled over the sepulchral longing of the infected.

Tor grunted as Mihailov was bonelessly slithered down the aluminium stairs, beside him Tala was yelling into the Second Mates ear. “You got to get up, Sec. Gotta get out of here!”

Mihailov’s head rolled back, eyes spinning unfocused up into the grey emptiness above. His face was blanched, sweat glistened over his waxy pallor.

“We can only drag him so far,” said Jamal, his voice undulating with the effort. He looked up at their pursuers. “They’re slow, but relentless.”

Tor watched as the infected ebbed and flowed just steps away. The confines of the stairwell was keeping them at bay as the shrivelled forms clawed at one another, each yearning to be at the front, following the trail of blood drops dripping from Mihailov. Tor’s calves burned with the effort of walking backward in mag boots, the counterintuitive steps required to move forward only further complicated in reverse.

“Mihailov, get the hell up.” Mihailov didn’t react, with his free arm Tor cuffed him hard around the back of the head. “Mihailov, stand the fuck up, we have got to move.”

Mihailov grimaced at the pain in his hand, the strike to the head returning him to a level of lucidity. Realizing the mortal danger he literally faced, Mihailov kicked out, writhing in Tor’s grip. His legs slid against dust and blood slicked metal. “Help me up!”

They pulled Mihailov to his feet as he cradled his bleeding and skinned hand. A shaky step indicated he could not move fast, Tor and Tala having to take him by the shoulders, acting as a crutch. Tor felt ill at ease as the omnipresent moaning washed now unseen at his back, his skin prickling at the sound.

“Quicker!” Demanded Jamal, acting as their lookout. Darting steps forwards then turning to monitor their progress.

Tor could feel their pace slackening – thought he could feel the fetid breath of the infected on his neck. They were slower with Mihailov on his feet as long as they had to support him. “Where’s Katja?”

“I told her to wait at the bottom of the stairwell.”

“I’m sorry, Captain,” slurred Mihailov, his usually hard eyes began to loll within their sockets again.

“Don’t fall asleep on us, Mihailov!”

☣☭☠

The final few floors slid past in a wash of fear and moaning; dragging on interminably as heavy footed mag boot steps clung to aluminium treadplate. Mihailov drifted in and out of consciousness but began walking unaided toward the last few steps, stoically maintaining control against the tremendous pain of the wound that was evidenced in his twisted countenance. Tor had been unsurprised when they didn’t find Katja at the base of the stairwell but had been too drained to remonstrate with the visibly exasperated Jamal. Tor could only hope Falmendikov’s daughter found herself someplace safe.

Images of the pretty, porcelain faced girl as a haggard, petrified corpse fired in his brain as he, Tala and Jamal braced the stairwell door with the shining white desk of the districts reception. The stark white atrium scorched retinas long accustomed to the dim abandonment of Murmansk-13.

Despite Mihailov’s injuries, they had put some distance on the clamouring infected, their animal desire a continued hindrance in the tight stairwell. Behind the white reception desk and stout fire door Tor could hear the muffled metallic advance of shambling footfalls and sombre lust. Beyond the atrium, the station opened out into cheerless wide service corridors where the infected’s movement would be unfettered.

“Gotta keep moving,” said Jamal, gravely.

Adrenaline had long been exhausted as the group retraced their own footsteps in the silence and greyness of the curving corridors, leaving their bodies spent and quivering. Tor felt his mind willingly numb to the metronomic beat of mag boots, heart aching in his chest and his eyelids heavy despite the imminence of the threat.

Tor imagined each of them had winced when the first screeching sounds were heard. The distant scratching of the District Three reception desk as it chipped across the once pristine and purposeless tilling. Office supplies, so long in service to time, scattered across the atrium.

Mihailov was still laying a trail of blood droplets from his ruined hand as they past the stations schematic. Reticent for anyone to touch the sensitive and exposed bones and arteries, Mihailov had finally relented when Jamal tore a strip from his hoodie to bandage the wound. “They will find us quicker if we don’t cover it,” Jamal informed. As he secured the strip of dirt covered fabric, Mihailov bit down on a further rag of Jamal’s clothing.

The bandage stemmed the flow for only a while and as Mihailov’s blood renewed its steady trickle to the deck, Mihailov became pallid and listless. Once more Tor and Tala were called upon to guide their crewmate as the drifting calls of the infected echoed along the tube of the service corridor.