Murmansk-13

The guardroom terminated in a plain interior door, at odds with the defensive measures before it. Beside it, Andrei stood sentry; only after he knocked at the this door did Tala realize that further barricading was in place beyond. The sound of two heavy metal crossbars being pulled away from their strikes, grated dully from the other side. After a pause the door opened with a cautious squeal. Steady artificial light poured into the guardroom, forcing Tala to squint.

Andrei stared at Katja boyishly. His gaze bereft of the same animalism characterized by Ilya. Timidly he smiled at Tala. “Is she OK?”

Jamal ignored the inelegance of the lad. “Andrei, where is Gennady?”

“Office.” Andrei replied, pushing the door open. Two more curious heads peered round the door jam at the first visitors to District Four.

“Door watch.” Andrei’s smile waned at Ilya’s command. The diminutive man sank into the dark and webbed guardroom, occasionally glancing back at Katja. “And don’t fucking open it again.”

Beside the interior door, two cast iron bars had been propped against a row of vertical beige filing cabinets and a sizeable and dilapidated copy machine. Tala assumed these were in readiness for further reinforcement if the office kingdom were besieged from their guardroom.

They were now in what Tala guessed was the hub of the District Four enclave. Brooding Jamal seemed in no mood to provide a tour. This room, like the last, was once an office, or at least had been designed as such. Contemporarily appointed and considerably larger in comparison to the guardroom, there was little sign the office was ever used for the purpose intended. The cubicles, had there ever been any, were removed as was all evidence of office furniture. In one corner, a portable petrol generator had been rigged, its exhaust fed into a large tank of browned water that bubbled in rhythm to the rattling thrum of the machine. A soot-blackened gym mat was placed beneath to further dampen the noise. Tala noted, reassuringly, that a small stockade of fire extinguishers plundered from nearby units was in readiness in the opposite corner.

Snaking away from the generator, black wires ran about the compound into the numerous modular office spaces that lined both bulkheads like poisoned roots. Deck to deckhead panes of frosted glass, banded by the districts blue stripe, concealed what was now the survivors living quarters. In one, the flickering lambent blue of a television provided actinic silhouettes of two individuals, their heads visible above the rectangular outline of a settee. They were watching an action movie, Tala could just discern the fuzzy Russian and static report of weaponry above the generators din.

In another room, door ajar, Tala saw a roll mat and a book, open and upended its spine bent. The title was in Cyrillic, but the black and white picture was a scene of war, a panzer tank rolling over desert. Bedding pilfered from the districts living quarters had been cast aside in a hurried manner and a stack of scrawled upon paper lay nearby. Tala wondered if they were letters to loved ones, unsent, or a diary of incarceration. She wondered if they knew Earth had been told to forget them and their uncharted station.

At least their families would miss them, she supposed.

Tala surmised that many of the sterile prefabricated offices were commandeered as bedrooms, the frosted glass roughly blacked out with stark poster paint providing hostile privacy.

The remaining open space of District Four was empty, a byway for the generators wires that furnished the survivors with sanity maintaining amenities and entertainment. The essence of unfiltered gasoline and heated industrial carpet glue created a noxious atmosphere she doubted few dallied in unnecessarily. Graffiti, daubed in dripping Russian, was faded into one of the plastic veneers that separated the modular offices and showed signs of being cleaned away.

ВЫЕБАТЬ “ИХ”

“Seems your arrival is drawing some attention.” Tala sensed an uneasiness in Jamal’s words as she drew her eyes from the partially eradicated Cyrillic. Unseen, the community had gathered at their doors. Wearied grey faces, seven in total, conveyed expressions of hope and wonderment. Tala couldn’t help notice that Katja bore the most appraisal, Jamal’s hoodie was hitched above her stained panties and torn scrubs revealing pale female flesh.

Amid the more harried men, the eldest and most numerous she noted, Tala also detected looks of fear and uncertainty. Newcomers arriving in their caste society, so long isolate. And female to boot.