Oleg gestured with his head toward the guardroom. The old copy machine and filing cabinets were clustered haphazardly about the entranceway. The iron bars rattled loosely within their strikes. In their sleep deprived state, the men grew heedless. It would suit Oleg and Jamal for their purposes as they inched in a crouch toward one of the thick black wires snaking from the generator.
Jamal felt his heart hammering in his chest and his palms slicken with sweat. He almost dropped the knife when one of Kirill’s men sneezed. The air was acrid with fumes, the water tank filtering the generator had filled with a tarry syrup. Huge bubbles plopped in slow motion at the surface. If the men didn’t change the water soon they would asphyxiate. Jamal wondered if they even cared, it seemed after their one final paroxysm of survival instinct in deposing Gennady, the District succumbed to the ennui of their situation. Jamal licked his lips and suddenly realized how dry his throat had become. He rolled the textured grip in his hand.
Oleg and Jamal pushed off from the frosted glass and on all fours and crept to the edge of the largest wire feeding into the generator. Tentatively Jamal gave one last glance to the men near the guardroom door and scanned the rest of the open District for signs of the other men. One of the missing men, Yuri, was staring at them, mouth agape. Wide eyed, Jamal just had time to hope he wouldn’t be electrocuted before plunging the knife into the wire.
The lights in District Four fell dark with a fizz and a crackle. The sudden blackout elicited a shrill cry from one of the men at the door. Yuri also shouted, betraying Oleg and Jamal’s position. “Better move, now.”
Jamal shut his eyes in the total blackness and ran, recounting mentally the door behind which Oleg indicated Andrei and Tala were being held. Behind them the sound of the still running generator faded as the stagnant air rushed past his face, only slowing as he neared the door. Jamal didn’t want to slam into it and indicate his new position or worse, knock himself senseless.
Carefully Jamal groped for the door handle, Oleg’s heavy breathing warm on his back. Behind them, Jamal could hear booted feet on the carpet scurrying around, but not toward them. He hoped he had the right handle as he wrapped his hand around the cool steel.
“Andrei, is that you? Wake up!”
The world was dark and it swam. Urgent whispered words, meaningless in their composition drifted like flotsam in the impenetrable blackness. When the last of the light extinguished, Tala assumed she was dead. But she could feel her head bob lightly to the irregular rhythm of her chest.
“What did they do to him?”
The core of her body felt hot, but her limbs were so very cold. Beyond that was only numbness. She tried to call out, but her mouth was clogged with an old rag, blood caked and hardened within the empty socket in her gum, pulling with each muffled word.
“Is he…?”
“He’s cold, I can’t feel a pulse. Shit. Shit.”
The door opened a second time, a headlamp blasted Tala in the face. She tried to cry out and shut her eyes. The newest entrant to the room made it two steps in before a knife flashed from the blackness into his throat, Tala saw the glint of the weapon in the head torch before it disappeared into soft flesh. Tala felt something warm and viscous spray across her face as the knife was removed and the man lowered quietly to the deck. The door was closed again and the headlamp switched off.
Now hands were on her. Tala squirmed against the grip. The smell of stale, earthy body odour, oddly familiar, filled her nostrils as moist hands explored her injured jaw. She felt the plug of blood in her gum come away as the rag was pulled from her mouth.
“Keep away from me,” Tala slurred.
“Tala, it’s me Jamal.”
Tala remembered the man’s smell from the conduit. The black man who’d she’d helped save… “Katja!”
“We’re going to get her, just hang on.”
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.