Murmansk-13

Behind her, another man whose scent she wasn’t familiar with, gently cut away the plastic ties binding her wrists and ankles. Despite taking great care in the darkness, Tala felt the bite of the blade and winced. The man apologized.

“How you feeling?” There was an urgency in Jamal’s tone.

“Weird.” Tala tried to stand, but her legs and feet felt like dead meat. “Sick.”

“Can you stand? Walk?”

“Do I have a choice?”

☣☭☠

The first iron bar fell to the carpeted deck with a dull thunk. Somebody had had the presence of mind to kill the deadheaded generator to conserve fuel and now the sound of the infected increased in fervour. The remaining iron bar clinked within its strikes as the pounding on the door grew in intensity. From what Jamal had observed of the infected, they possessed no intelligence, only instinct. But they sensed, sensed that District Four was in terminal decline and its denizens trapped. The resonant keens and moans of longing ululated like a war cry.

Andrei was gone and Jamal wanted a moment of silence for his friend. It would have to wait, nobody else had ventured in the footsteps of Yuri. Oleg had stabbed him in the throat and was mercifully not called to defend their band again. Jamal heard activity at the generator, but nobody seemed to be moving to investigate in their direction, nor rectifying their failing barricade.

As order fell apart the men seemed to be favouring safety in their diminishing numbers.

Still Jamal and Oleg tried to keep quiet, edging along the bulkhead that separated the storeroom from the office Tala and Andrei had been held captive. Jamal had not heard Ilya move from storage since killing the lights, apparently transfixed with torturing Katja. Even now, Jamal could hear the throttled cries of the girl, just feet away beyond a modular wall of veneered plastic. The sound seemed to awaken Tala, she pressed into Jamal’s side urging him to move faster. He felt her fists clench and unclench with each increasingly purposeful step. Whatever had been injected into her system seemed to be rapidly diluted with seething rage.

Oleg opened the door, Jamal and Tala slipped quietly in behind.

“What is it?” I’m fucking busy.” Ilya sounded gruff from exertion. The room smelt of oniony sweat and cum. There was a distinct metallic tang Jamal placed as blood.

“The generator has failed,” Oleg fought to keep his voice impassive. In the darkness they could hear flesh pound against flesh. Katja had fallen near silent, a stuttering mewl was punctuated with each unseen thrust of Ilya.

“Oleg? Where is Kirill?”

“Dead,” answered Jamal. The pounding stopped.

Somewhere at the far end of the room Ilya laughed, joylessly. “Useless old fool.”

“Let the girl go,” Jamal said, stepping forward.

“Come any closer and I’ll cut her throat,” Ilya had turned toward them. His voice clear and unrepentant. “I’ll let you and Oleg go, but the girl… After so long, she’s just exquisite.”

“You’re forgetting someone,” said Oleg.

At the far end of the room a headlamp illuminated the scene. Ilya stood towering naked above Tala, comingled blood and semen slicked his still erect member. A small sneer crept across his face, eyes wincing against the sudden burst of light, before the small Filipina thrust Oleg’s kitchen knife up through his lower jaw. The six inch blade imbedded to the guard, Ilya was momentarily lifted from the deck, his arms gripping Tala at the shoulders. Tala stared, eyes bulging into Ilya’s face as she wriggled the knife deeper into his cranium, blood dribbled down the guard. Ilya spasmed, ejaculated hard then fell limp, his arms slipping from Tala’s shoulders.

Tala released the knife and Ilya crumpled to the deck, ragdoll. Tala rushed to Katja who had been bound with her wrists and ankles tied beneath her buttocks. Blood and seminal fluid wept from her raw and torn genitals. Jamal felt bile rise in his gullet, Oleg turned away.

Tenderly, Tala parted Katja’s binds. The girl fell limp and apathetic into Tala’s arms. As Tala cuddled and cooed to Katja in the shifting light she left little bloody handprints on Katja’s naked flesh. After hours of torment, Katja was slipping into shock.

“Please, help me.” From beyond the veil of the headlamp, Jamal could see tears streak Tala’s battered face, she looked imploringly to him with one eye. The other was swollen shut.

Oleg and Jamal rushed over. Katja had been stripped in the room and Oleg retrieved her panties and the blue jumpsuit Jamal had given her from where they’d been discarded. Mindful of her ordeal, Oleg and Jamal were reluctant to try dressing the girl. She shook in Tala’s arms and her lip quivered. Her neck was striated with lurid purple bruises, at some point ligatures had been placed around her throat.

“I… I don’t know how to stop the bleeding.” The fear in Jamal’s voice was mirrored in Tala’s expression. He glanced around the room, the headlamp cast cavorting shadows amongst the roughshod and sparse shelves of the stockroom.