Murmansk-13

“I don’t want to be in the corridors any longer than we have to be,” said Jamal, leading them to the stairwell door and looking at the burdensome Katja. “I’ve learnt not to do corridors.”

“You think they followed us?” She felt their phantom hands clawing at her legs, imagined their festering maws closing about her calves. Her skin crawled.

“No,” Jamal replied, resolute. “They’re not that clever. But track us, our smell. Maybe.”

They shuffled a few silent steps forward, pensively Jamal nudged the stairwell door open and peered up into the trunk of District Four. Cold air and dust whipped from the crack in the door. Tala watched Jamal, listening, tilting his stout square head to focus his ears up. After a moment he indicated the all clear and the trio entered the stairwell.

Like District Three, the stairwell was gelid and dimly lit by flickering emergency lights. Coruscating illumination captured flittering dust granules that seemed to coalesce where the passage of air was strongest.

“Track us by smell?” Tala repeated, picking up the thread. “You make them sound like animals.”

“You’ve seen them for yourself,” Jamal began indifferently, helping Katja onto the first step. “They are animals.” He gave a quiet mirthless laugh, “And we’re the prey.”

Tala felt her body shiver as her mag boot clattered onto the aluminium step, the sound rippling up and away. “How many of those… things, are there?”

“I don’t know,” Jamal said, his expression withering. “I haven’t carried out a census.” He, screwing his face up, apparently dissatisfied with his glibness. “Sorry. There’s a lot. They pack hunt. What we saw back there, that’s the most I’ve ever seen in one place, at one time. I guess you pissed them off, but was that all of them? I dunno.

“I’ve seen them split into several packs before. When they ain’t got a scent they sort of mill around alone, like sentries. I haven’t seen much of any kind of social hierarchy. When there’s food, it’s every corpse for himself.”

“You know a lot about them.”

“I landed here in ’88,” Jamal’s voice struggled against the increasing deadweight of Katja. “What year is it now?”

“1992,” Tala replied, sombre. “October.”

“Figured,” Jamal fell silent, processing the information, his jaw churned with a fleeting resentment that creased his smooth face. “Well after four years, you’ve either figured out how to survive or you’ve become one of them.”

Tala readjusted Katja’s positioning on her shoulder. “Become one of them?”

“We call them the infected for a reason. It’s some sort of transmissible virus. I don’t know.”

“Like a cold? I mean can you catch it from the air?” Tala could feel her skin cool beneath the air chilled layers of her EVA suit. They stopped stock still as a popping emergency light, somewhere within the trunk, silenced their thoughts.

“Not unless you get your colds from folk biting you,” Jamal continued quieter, smiling sardonically. “No, I don’t really know the mechanics of it, only that if you’re bit, you’re fucked. Ain’t no way back.”

Tala tensed again, her mind erupting. “Sec? You let the Captain take him back to the ship!”

Jamal let Tala’s ire subside before replying. “We ain’t got medicine and doctors here, girl. I figured he had a chance if we got him back to your ship.”

“Our ship is fucked, Jamal. Fucked. We’re out of supplies, out of air and out of cryo. And, oh yeah. No comms,” Tala quietened as Jamal’s eyes grew huge, afeard more by the beacon of her intensifying volume than the words themselves. “Why the hell do you think we came on board?”

“I didn’t… I don’t, I don’t know,” Jamal said, deflated, his deep voice trailed away. “I just hoped, prayed you guys could get us off this place.”

“I’m sorry.” Tala thought to continue, but let the apology drift away on recycled air. Unspeaking, she bore up Katja, easing the strain on Jamal.

Silently they continued up the steps, their pace slowed by the deteriorating condition of Katja. The girls face had slackened and she appeared to have slipped back into catatonia, her eyelids flickering against some unseen impetus. Tala had been aboard Murmansk-13 less than two days and her body was worn down, her emotions pulled taut like a drumhead. She couldn’t comprehend existing on the arcane station for four years. While Katja had benefited from her effective cryogenic coma, Jamal lived it. Tala prayed she would find something akin to civilization in the eyrie of District Four, lest the mere thought of Jamal’s ordeal would burst the gossamer thin skin of her sanity.

Those naive steps through the service corridor, following a now dead man’s trail, seemed an aeon ago. She longed to be with her countrymen, warbling to karaoke or pounding weights. She would even rather be home, in Vigan, amid the aged cobbled streets and colourful Spanish colonial architecture, bathing in the dry season sun. Homeless in her hometown aside from a roll mat in her local gym and the awkward incidental meetings with her disapproving father.