Over time, Jamal had grown used to the hum of Murmansk-13, the noises of the inexorably decaying mechanics and electronics, he even grew accustomed to the ever present movement of the infected. Alone had never been quiet, but it had been the absence of sentience beyond the inhabited enclaves and Mikhail. Abandoning the sharp edged heliostat and the heavy flashlight and escape set, Jamal had scaled the trunk of District Three intent on intercepting his quarry.
He’d been too late though, had heard the groups encounter with an infected, the monotonous keening, a ships captain introduce himself and the confusing shout of “Papa”. Mercifully the assailant had been alone, unusual, and when Jamal reached the scene of the conflict he discovered a fresh corpse with its head bludgeoned to a pulp and a pool of blood. Their distant footsteps rang from the metal stepped stairwell, making good their escape.
Then he heard the rest of them, the crew, what remained of them. Alerted from their starved torpor.
Now the crew were somewhere above him, shambling and clattering down the very same metal stairwell while below Jamal could hear the faint sound of movement, searching movement within the accommodation floor, a deck below. He opened his eyes to the darkness and let the chill air quiet his screaming muscles. He could dally no longer. Two and a half more meters, come on man.
Tor tried the handle, like the rest the Formica door had been left unlocked and abandoned. He slipped into the cabin, decayed emergency lights seemed to squint into the room, twinkling off old retro reflective safety signs and picking at the shadows that held dominion within each nook and recess. Tor depressed the light switch, to his surprise the reading light above the bottom bunk flickered on, shafting artificial light around a bunched curtain that offered the bunk privacy. He pulled the curtain aside and let the yellowed light illuminate the cabin.
Like the rest, the room comprised a bunk, a single bedside table, shallow closet and a small desk, all mahogany veneered. The same grey-blue plastic veneers of the bulkhead enshrouding the fittings in a dismal miasma. Tor stepped into the middle of the cabin and sighed, unlike the rest, personal effects dotted the space he stood in. A dust coated, plastic aspidistra appeared to wilt in the gloom atop the bedside table beside him and family photos were stashed and jammed into each crevice offered by the louvered wood that separated the bunk beds from the bulkheads. Beneath his feet a worn Quba rug lay across the linoleum stretching into the darkness that cloyed the room.
They’d not found a single escape suit in any condition in the cabins that betrayed no evidence of habitation, Tor greatly doubted he would find one in here.
Tor sat heavily on the dishevelled sheets of the bottom bunk, a tsunami of dust particles slithered into the dim in response. His feet were numb with the weight of the heavy mag boots, EVA suits were never designed for protracted wear and Tor could feel the greasy build up of bodily effluent on the internal layer.
Tor had tried to rest in the many hours they’d spent in the morgue, but the chronic unease set his already enervated muscles and nerves into a perpetual state of nervous readiness that exhausted them further. If he closed his eyes now, Tor knew he would see Falmendikov, corrupted. He shook his head and clasped his gauntlets against the edge of the bed, uncomfortably higher than the thin mattress beneath him. There would be a time for processing the events of the morgue, aboard the Riyadh with a stiff drink and a cigarette. Now was not the time, Tor simply couldn’t, his neural circuitry had gone haywire. Singular focus was crucial and yet his mind kept skipping.
Ham-fisted, he plucked a handful of photos from the louvered bunk backboard, crushing them in his paw. Tor focused on the picture, vivid colours slightly blurred and faded with age. The edge of the print paper was peeling and frayed at the corners, a beach scene from the 60’s or early 70’s looking at the garb and the saturated blues, probably from some Soviet sanctioned workers holiday camp around the Black Sea. A homely Mom with winged spectacles and yellow floral summer dress stood beside a topless Dad in pose, hairy on the chest and shoulders, not on the scalp. In the foreground a small corral of children, probably not all theirs, Tor wondered which one had grown up to walk the grim corridors of Murmansk-13 so many millions of miles from the beaches of Sochi.
A life forgotten. Had they fled? Leaving their belongings to this Soviet crypt. What had become of them? Of all of them? In his pursuit of Falmendikov, Tor had wanted to know what had happened to his Chief Officer, now he wanted to know what had happened at Murmansk-13. Was that why the station had been quarantined? Would they all end up like Falmendikov?
Tor fought back another gout of bile that fizzled the back of his oesophagus and stood up, hoping gravity would drive the acidic substance back to his otherwise starved stomach. His head swam and he could make out the quiet searching of Tala and Mihailov in the adjacent cabins. Listlessly he hobbled to the closet, a blokovi styled pictograph of an escape suit sparkled reflectively green on the bottom drawer. Tor pulled the drawer back, bearings softly screeching, and found it empty. He let the drawer clatter to the floor and turned his back on the cabin and its artefacts.
Tor closed the cabin door, remembering the time capsules he’d buried as a school boy in the dells of Gudbrandsdalen. Little trinkets of his life, immured in cleansed mackerel tins, an old school photograph, notes to the future and a prized GI Joe figurine stolen from a forgotten classmate. Those tins had probably rotted into the earth, relinquishing their contents to the elements. He wondered how long the memories of the cabin behind him would endure in the vacuum of space.
Beside him Mihailov stood rigid, peering down the gentle curve of the corridor, his hand still on the cabin door handle from which he exited. His pose perturbed Tor. “What is it?”
Mihailov fanned his free hand, gesturing Tor to be quiet. In the apparent silence of the corridor he listened. Tala was still in a cabin, Tor could hear her opening a closet drawer, her suit creaking just louder than the insidious hum of the station. Beyond that he heard nothing. “Sec, what is it?”
Mihailov took a pensive step forward, his mouth opening as if to answer when Tala emerged from a cabin, two down. Her features shrouded by the gloom. Tor could see her turn toward Mihailov, his postures aggravated. In response she turned to look down the corridor. The sound of scuffling feet, childlike, reverberated like a wave in the emptiness, followed by the plastic clack of the doors.
Feeling suddenly cornered, despite the cylindrical design of the corridors, Tor began backing up, head swivelling to look forward and back. He felt the metal coupling for the suits helmet rub and clip the skin of his throat. “Tala. To us.” Tor hissed, the stocky Filipina hadn’t moved.
“Wait.” She whispered back, heading the opposite direction down the passageway.
“Tala!” Tor whispered, sotto voce as he watched her disappear into the darkness of the corridors braced curve. “Fuck.”