“Do something!”
In the corridor beyond, Captain Tor pleaded, for what Tala could not see.
“ Oh God, oh God no!”
It was Diego. The poor boy had a crush on her and Tala had knowingly strung him along as an emotional confidante, a shoulder to cry on when both their lives were a litany of failure, only his was about to end. She heard the screech of the infected.
“White coats. Finally, we see them.” Oleg said, although Tala never heard, before she knew what she was doing she was piling through the grate, somehow pressing through the meaty throng of Oleg and Jamal. Behind her she heard Jamal yell something about guns, but she didn’t listen, two pairs of hands trying to haul her backward slipped away against the soft fabric of her jumpsuit.
The scene fell quiet. A strangely unfeminine woman Tala recognized as Dr. Smith, stripped of her dichotomous beauty for the moment, held Captain Tor at gunpoint, his face pressed to the floor, wrists bound. A memory, unimportant and ill-defined, tugged at her mind, Tala winced.
Beside the woman and behind Tor stood another man in a white lab coat, like the rest of the players in the bizarre diorama, his focus had shifted through thick, circular spectacles to Tala.
Further down the corridor, a deathly ill and half eaten Sammy loomed over Diego, mouth distended like a boa constrictor, tiny blood shot eyes peering down his nose against the tilt of his jaw. Beneath him, Diego cowered, like Tor he was bound and the same flashing memories of District Four were summoned and gone in a millisecond.
Tala barely noticed the movement of Dr. Smith’s hand, but she felt the bullet scythe past her face, nicking away the top of her right ear. There was no bang, and Tala didn’t react, or perhaps she yelped in pain, she wasn’t sure, but she felt her blood warm against her neck and saw the dilation of the stewards pupils.
She knew Dr. Smith wouldn’t miss again, time seemed to slow around her, she saw the micro adjustment required for the next bullet to enter between her eyes. Distantly, Tala wondered how a practicing doctor had become such a crack shot that she could clip an ear with a silenced pistol from over thirty meters.
Like an animal in headlights, Tala awaited silent death, hardly noticing Sammy diverting toward her.
There was a crash, a second grating twenty meters further down skittered across the corridor. Oleg burst from the recessed opening, rugby tackling Sammy to the ground. Jamal followed closely behind as the Belorussian infantryman smashed the skull of Sammy into the deck face first again and again, his large hands gripped around the back of the stewards head. Days before Sammy had made Tala her dinner, some variant of Singapore noodles, now his brain was being dashed across the deck of Murmansk-13.
Jamal closed the distance rapidly toward Dr. Smith and Tor, he didn’t see the second person in a lab coat; the bespectacled assailant fired a single shot. Jamal cried out, tumbling at the feet of Dr. Smith.
Sammy was dead now, or dead again and Tor watched on in surprised horror. Dr. Smith lowered her revolver to Jamal’s head. Tala could hear herself screaming something, imploring the former crewmate who’d just taken a pot shot at her to stop.
Oleg was scrambling to his feet, but wouldn’t make it.
Pulsing white noise degenerated the fidelity of the scene before her, Tala was running forward, then everything stopped.
“Arty no! Arty don’t, please!”
Arty put his hand on the doctors shoulder and shook his head, his face was twisted with confusion. Jamal writhed in pain, clutching his splintered shin, blood diffused into the fabric of his jogging bottoms. Oleg got to his feet, hands raised slowly at gunpoint, his pupils shrunk to pinpricks. Tor stayed on the ground, as did Diego, both weeping. For a second Katja was beside Tala, then she swept past as if ready to embrace Arty. Tala felt a hot wellspring of jealousy, even as Katja was warned to stop by Dr. Smith.
“Katja,” Arty said, his face modulating between bewilderment and surprise. “My God, you’re awake, you’re alive!”
Katja stood small and diminished in the sights of the doctors pistol. “Arty. I thought you were dead, your name in the morgue was crossed off,” she took in the scene as if only just noticing the carnage and gunplay. “What’s happening here?”
Arty regained his composure and gestured for Dr. Smith to lower her gun, instead the Doctor turned her sights to Oleg, at this point the standoffs greatest threat. The infantryman leered at her as the insides of Sammy’s cranium slicked the deck around him.
Arty approached the girl, “Katja, I’m so happy you’re OK,” his words were laced with caution, he moved to embrace her with stiff arms, reluctantly she reciprocated.
“Arty, what’s happening?” Katja repeated, quietly into his shoulder.
Arty held the hug for an uncomfortable moment, then stepped back. Tala was suddenly aware of the pounding of fists and the clawing of hands emanating from the entranceway to District Six. The infected were just a malfunctioning set of hydraulic doors away, their muffled moans and grunts an appropriate undertone for the reunion of Arty and Katja.
“You must come to Central Command with us,” Arty said, the man looked harried, much as Tala imagined a mad scientist would look at the nexus when youth gave way to physical decline and the seeds of insanity took root. “I can explain when we reach Central Command.”
“I won’t go anywhere without my friends,” Katja replied with the petulance of a preteen denied her sleepover.
“And your friends don’t go anywhere without us,” Dr. Smith said, rolling the pistol to the side casually. “So long as they behave.” She looked at Oleg, Oleg grinned in response. “I can and will kill you all, if you do not cooperate.”
Again the pounding fists and sepulchral groans of the infected grew in intensity. Jamal sat up, still clutching his shin. “Well then,” he said through gritted teeth, “I guess that’s settled. Can someone give me a hand?”
“Don’t think about running at the front,” commanded Dr. Smith, “Else I’ll open fire on all of you.”
“Rebecca,” Arty said, reproachfully.
The two lab coat wearers positioned themselves at the rear of the chain gang, in front of them Captain Tor plodded solemnly, head bowed and muttering to himself. Beside him, Katja limped, she’d grown paler and weaker, new blood spotted the crotch of her jumpsuit. Arty promised her medical aid once they arrived at Central Command, occasionally placing a protective arm around her that she quickly shrugged off, he would ask her what happened, what they had done to her. Tala understood they as herself, Jamal and Oleg, her body shook in response with anger and exhaustion.
At the front Diego led the group through a featureless secret back passage, lit with banks of bright, mirror plated strip lights that were strong and steady. Under duress, Diego had pissed himself and the smell of urine drifted from his suit, competing with old ammonium astringent for sensory dominance. Diego hadn’t spoken since the incident with Sammy, like the Captain he simply moved forward as if in an unstoppable flow.
In the middle, Oleg and Tala bore up Jamal. Across her back, she could feel his arm quiver in pain. The bullet had shattered his shin bone, he bit at his lip drawing blood in a stoic bid to defy the agony. Aboard Murmansk-13 he’d defined himself as a runner. Now hobbled, he was like a race horse with a broken leg. Tala wondered what his prospects would be if returned to the care of the outer districts. In nature, crippled animals didn’t survive.