Jamal grabbed Katja’s wrist, she struggled against his manful grip, pulling back. “Infected,” he said through gritted teeth. “We need to go. Now.”
Tor’s paternal and protective ire rose at the sight of Katja, so fragile, being handled so roughly. Her skin stark and ill juxtaposed against Jamal. “Ease the hell off.”
“There’s no time,” shouted Jamal, trying to pull Katja with him. “Run. All of you.”
“Oh God,” Tala said, taking a step back. “There’s more of them.”
Tor twisted, still grimacing at the impertinent scene below. Suddenly the caterwauling became deafening.
“Lots more of them.”
Emerging from the dim and dust were countless milky eyes, pale and opalescent, foreshadowing the arrival of their deathly housings. The noisome stench of decayed flesh, only just cleansed from Tor’s palette, wafted sickly down the stairwell. Dryly he wretched as he joined Tala, stepping backward. Only Mihailov remained stationary on the landing, his sights on the approaching horde.
The concussive report of rifle fire snapped in the confines of the stairwell. The round ripped into the approaching crowd. They kept coming. Mihailov released a second, then third round. The rounds chipped at papery skin as the emaciated, some near-skeletal, figures closed in, spent .22 cartridges whirled from the breach, chinking around his feet. The small survival rifle looked a pathetic match to the inexorable, innumerable foe.
“We have to move, Mihailov!”
Tor watched helplessly, his ears rushing as Tala shouted at Mihailov beside him. Tor saw a decomposed hand close over the muzzle of the rifle as the Bulgarian pulled the trigger once more. The hand atomized in a plume of mummified flesh, sinew and bone chips, joining the dust motes swirling in the air around them. The attacker curled its other intact hand around the gun barrel, pulling it from the receiver with a rictus grin splayed across its desiccated face. Disassembled and useless, Tor heard Mihailov grunt as he threw the twisted remnants of Nilsen’s rifle into the face of the infected, the Bulgarian realizing too late how close they had drawn as his awareness expanded beyond the rifle scope.
Beside him, Tor felt the rush of movement as Tala darted past and up. “No!”
Mihailov was stumbling backward, as clawing, emaciated hands reached out longingly toward him. Yellowed fingernails tore into the Bulgarian’s flailing gauntlets. Unconsciously Tor found himself scaling the steps towards his second mate.
Three steps back he heard a metallic pop, the gold couplings of Mihailov’s EVA suit deforming as he tried to pull away. Two steps away teeth joined fingernails around the gauntlet as others slowly closed on Mihailov’s flanks from the crowd. Tala was already behind him, adding her weight – pulling him back and away.
A step behind, Tor heard the couplings buckle, the gauntlet twirled up into the air, rotted teeth and cracked nails still imbedded within the fabric as it disappeared into the darkness of the trunk. Tor watched as Mihailov fell awkwardly, pushing Tala backward, his ankles hyper extending as he tried to release his mag boots. A grim face emerged from the ranks, jellied eyes sunken into calcified flesh. It moved deftly considering its advanced decomposition, ribs visible through ragged green flesh and tattered grey jumpsuit. It fell down upon Mihailov; its jagged, smashed teeth sinking into the exposed flesh of the Bulgarian’s right hand as he tried to push its widening maw away with his left.
Mihailov’s elemental yell cut through the frenzied keening that buzzed around the trunk. His boots releasing as he squirmed in agony, Mihailov managed to kick out at the cadaverous attacker, but couldn’t lever it away. Tala, who had regained her balance, swung her heavy mag boot into the face of Mihailov’s foe, it’s face stove inward with a dry crack, like the snapping of a saplings branch. The incapacitated attacker fell atop Mihailov with a lifelessness to match its exterior.
Mihailov shucked the corpse from his body and looked stupidly at his degloved hand, blood welling around the visible musculo-skeletal structure. Tor and Tala grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him backward as the gathering horde smelt the metallic tang of blood. Tor could see their eyes widen with hunger as he pulled his crewman down the stairs, degenerated mouths began clacking as if testing their atrophied muscles. Jaws opened cravingly beyond their living extent.
Jamal was suddenly beside them as the infected began pincering their flanks , moving like a festering wave, lapping up and down over the stairs on calcified limbs. He grabbed Mihailov’s helmet coupling. “How bad?”
Tor was abruptly aware how exhausted his arms felt as his body tensed with fear. “Hand. Think he’s in shock.” He replied, insensate.
“We gotta get him to his feet,” Jamal yelled over the sepulchral longing of the infected.
Tor grunted as Mihailov was bonelessly slithered down the aluminium stairs, beside him Tala was yelling into the Second Mates ear. “You got to get up, Sec. Gotta get out of here!”
Mihailov’s head rolled back, eyes spinning unfocused up into the grey emptiness above. His face was blanched, sweat glistened over his waxy pallor.
“We can only drag him so far,” said Jamal, his voice undulating with the effort. He looked up at their pursuers. “They’re slow, but relentless.”
Tor watched as the infected ebbed and flowed just steps away. The confines of the stairwell was keeping them at bay as the shrivelled forms clawed at one another, each yearning to be at the front, following the trail of blood drops dripping from Mihailov. Tor’s calves burned with the effort of walking backward in mag boots, the counterintuitive steps required to move forward only further complicated in reverse.
“Mihailov, get the hell up.” Mihailov didn’t react, with his free arm Tor cuffed him hard around the back of the head. “Mihailov, stand the fuck up, we have got to move.”
Mihailov grimaced at the pain in his hand, the strike to the head returning him to a level of lucidity. Realizing the mortal danger he literally faced, Mihailov kicked out, writhing in Tor’s grip. His legs slid against dust and blood slicked metal. “Help me up!”
They pulled Mihailov to his feet as he cradled his bleeding and skinned hand. A shaky step indicated he could not move fast, Tor and Tala having to take him by the shoulders, acting as a crutch. Tor felt ill at ease as the omnipresent moaning washed now unseen at his back, his skin prickling at the sound.
“Quicker!” Demanded Jamal, acting as their lookout. Darting steps forwards then turning to monitor their progress.
Tor could feel their pace slackening – thought he could feel the fetid breath of the infected on his neck. They were slower with Mihailov on his feet as long as they had to support him. “Where’s Katja?”
“I told her to wait at the bottom of the stairwell.”
“I’m sorry, Captain,” slurred Mihailov, his usually hard eyes began to loll within their sockets again.
“Don’t fall asleep on us, Mihailov!”
The final few floors slid past in a wash of fear and moaning; dragging on interminably as heavy footed mag boot steps clung to aluminium treadplate. Mihailov drifted in and out of consciousness but began walking unaided toward the last few steps, stoically maintaining control against the tremendous pain of the wound that was evidenced in his twisted countenance. Tor had been unsurprised when they didn’t find Katja at the base of the stairwell but had been too drained to remonstrate with the visibly exasperated Jamal. Tor could only hope Falmendikov’s daughter found herself someplace safe.
Images of the pretty, porcelain faced girl as a haggard, petrified corpse fired in his brain as he, Tala and Jamal braced the stairwell door with the shining white desk of the districts reception. The stark white atrium scorched retinas long accustomed to the dim abandonment of Murmansk-13.