Murmansk-13

“How far up is it?” Asked Tala, shifting herself against the scratching insulation.

“The most defensible position,” Jamal began. “The top.”

“She won’t make it, look at her,” Tala replied.

“We ain’t gotta choice,” Jamal now sat, but his voice and features were hard, wide brown eyes fixed Tala in place. “It’s up or back out into the corridors.”

Tala matched Jamal’s look, but softened her tone. “I’m telling you, she won’t make it.”

Jamal clenched his hands and turned his attention to his light skinned palms. Briefly glancing at the shivering girl beside him. He inhaled a long draft of breath and let it go in a spiral of condensed vapour. “We can rest, but not for long.”

“A rest isn’t going to be enough, Jamal,” Tala heard her rising voice echo up and away into the shaft. “We need food and drink. Katja needs proper clothing.”

“So,” Jamal sounded cowed. “What do you want to do?”

☣☭☠

Jamal muttered obscenities as he slowly levered the conduit grating from its housing. Behind his squirming form, Tala could see Katja’s glassy eyes stealing furtive glances at her, before turning to the darkened shaft they were leaving behind, air resonating through the conduit. The light breeze tousled her matted blonde hair.

“We should stay in the conduit,” Jamal hissed, the grating screeched free. “We’re safe in the conduit.”

“I thought you said we’d lost them,” Tala felt her stomach cramp with hunger, the bass grumbling had ceased. “And that was hours ago.”

“Keep your voice down.” Jamal slithered out of the vent as Tala scowled at his muscular backside, rumpled aluminium chinked quietly. Jamal offered Tala a hand as she took his place at the opening.

“And they say chivalry is dead.” Tala batted the proffered hand out of the way and rolled smoothly out the conduit, the ruffle of her suit the only audible indication of her movement. She rose agilely to her feet beside him.

Jamal regarded Tala with a single raised eyebrow before turning his attention to Katja. The girl looked diminished within the conduit, eyes darting from side to side like a trapped cat. “Come on Katja, we have to move.” Jamal gestured for the girl to join them, tried to coax her out, but she just glared at them both from the shadows.

“She killed my father,” Katja remonstrated, her voice fluting with emotion. She jabbed a fine white finger at Tala from the security of her den.

“Fuck! I didn’t kill her father,” Tala addressed Jamal. “Well, I did,” she corrected, throwing her hands toward the deckhead. “But her father attacked us.”

“That’s not how I remember it,” Katja wailed from the conduit, her words ringing around the tiled expanse of the atrium filled with uncertainty.

Jamal tensed. “Quietly.”

“Do you even know what you remember?” Tala spat, leaning into the vent. She watched Katja crawl around the corner of the recess. “Fuck her.” Tala pushed away from the opening and walked into the centre of the atrium, listening to her suit squeak with each angry, echoing step. Cantilevered decks loomed over her in the brightly lit space. Realization and fear stilled her step, had they left District Three?

“They’re all identical,” Jamal said, obviously watching Tala freeze. “We guess they built the districts modularly, somewhere in Russia, then fitted them out here.”

Relieved, Tala noted the differences. Russian words followed by the number four. The ubiquitous identifying bands of colour that ran like painted dado rails were blue here, not grey. The heroic Soviet mural was of rows of office workers, not farmers and factory workers. The abandoned reception desk remained in situ, dust coated stationary and notepads as they had been left, frozen in time. The duplicate desk in District Three had been jammed against the stairwell exit, desk furniture scattered in haste. She imagined the arching scratch marks that would have been ingrained into the ceramic tiles as the infected forced the fire door open. Here the tiling was unblemished.

At a safe distance from Katja, Tala watched the girl being cooed from the conduit by Jamal, her hawkish gaze fixed to where Tala stood, apparently expecting to meet a fate such as her father at any minute. It was a look caught somewhere between hate and fear, filtered through a lens of abject confusion.

After so long on her hands and knees, Katja struggled to straighten her legs having been lowered to the floor. Whimpering as Jamal tried to lift her straight, she continued to sag back to the deck like a puppet on broken strings. Jamal gave Tala a plaintive and appealing glance. Tala toppled a pot of pens, skittering lines through the dust atop the desk, hoping to shatter whatever limbic spell hung over the station.

Katja crawled behind Jamal as Tala approached, reluctantly. Ignoring the action, Tala helped Jamal lift the meekly struggling Katja to her feet. The girl flinched from Tala with each difficult step forward, her body vibrating with exhaustion and the horrors which had accompanied every conscious moment since she woke.