“What the hell happened to you, Hernandez?” Nielsen asked through clenched teeth, pushing back against the blast doors. Gnarled, emaciated digits pawed through the crack in the doors the stench was becoming unbearable. Nielsen could sense the throng strengthening in the stairwell, the sheer press of dried flesh threatened to pop the doors, spilling the infected upon them.
“Doctor Fucking Smith happened to me. She collared me at gunpoint when I was headed to the rendezvous.” In the corner of his eye, he could see Hernandez becoming animated, rising to his haunches in the tight duct inlet. “She’s nuts, she has Tala and Diego and the Captain and some chicha I’ve never seen and two other guys locked up in cells. I think one of the dudes is turning into whatever is outside those doors.”
Another surge, the crack in the door widened, Nielsen and Pettersson were no longer getting it fully closed between surges, Nielsen could feel his strength and resolve sapping. “And you got out?”
“No chief, this conversation we’re having is by means of telepathy,” Hernandez replied, his tone sardonic. “ Yeah we got the key, well Tala, but only I got out. The key only opened the cell I was in. I was supposed to get you to get them out… shit.
“We have to get you out of here,” Hernandez scanned the wide and dark access way, his gaze fixing on one of the escape shafts.
“I tried those, more of these fucking things at the top.” Nielsen finished shoring up their defences as the infected surged again, something sharp jagged into the back of his leg. A brass coupling for a fire hose that had unspooled beneath the pile.
Hernandez eyes widened. “Oh, hoy! The hose, throw me the hose.”
Nielsen looked at Hernandez’s position speculatively, high up in the shadows. The hose was tightly corded, vulcanized rubber, pressure braced with steel wire that earthed into the hydrant coupling. Dragging it from the barricade, items toppling around him, Nielsen felt the heft of the object and the lack of flexibility in the pipe construct. “I don’t think this is going to work.”
“Ain’t much to lose now Chief.” Nielsen could see Hernandez shrug.
“He has a point,” replied Pettersson.
Removed in its entirety from the barricade, the hose measured thirty meters. Nielsen needed to propel a third of the stiff hose to Hernandez, his short arms reaching to their maximum extent as he leant out from the duct. Dampers and air ducts were always set up near deckheads in engine compartments, and the compartments themselves were always lofty. It permitted optimal air flow and space for colder air to recycle. It seemed unnecessary in the comparative cool of the stations heart. Almost obstructive and entrapping.
Nielsen considered removing the brass coupling, but it would help provide mass and momentum like an athlete’s hammer. Even with the coupling removed, he doubted he could slither the hose up ten metres of bulkhead without it collapsing under its own unsupported weight.
Pettersson continued to monitor the door whilst watching Nielsen. The Chief suddenly felt very small. This was their last hope and as he started winding up his throw, letting the hose twirl in his hand as he would a lasso, he knew it would fail. When there had been no plan there had been no hopelessness, just strategizing and surviving. Now there was focus and expectation. Even if they could get the hose to Hernandez, they both easily outweighed the motorman and there was no likely securing point in an aluminium air shaft.
He let the hose fly, watched it skitter and snake up the bulkhead. Hernandez strained, fingers wiggling, willing the coupling toward his hands. It barely made seven meters of the distance. Nielsen and Pettersson forced to run from the tumbling brass coupling as the infected surged once again.
Now a corpselike figure had pushed its torso through the opening, jamming the door with its ribcage. The skin was frostbite black and pulled thin and papery over the skeleton and skull, curling back in places to reveal arid bone. Sightless, jellied eyes looked nowhere as its jaws gnashed together. A few remaining long hairs, suggesting it had once been a female, swished from the thin bed of skin at the scalp. Calmly, Nielsen retrieved his rifle, sighted a point in its forehead and pulled the trigger. Rotten brain matter and skull fragments blew out the back of the cranium with a dry crack, instantly the infected ceased to move, its body becoming a bridge for the countless others behind.
“Oh shit, we’re fucked now,” said Pettersson, quickly gathering the hose and trying himself. His throw was rushed and panicked, the rigid hose barely reaching five meters and far wide of Hernandez anyway.
Before more of the infected utilized the gap in the door, Nielsen stepped forward and dragged the unanimated corpse through to their side, Pettersson rushing by to seal the breach. Where moments before it had flailed wildly at them, now the body was stiff with rigor mortis. Sinuous flesh felt like sundried driftwood.
“We’re going to run out of time,” said Nielsen, it was a statement of fact. “Did you find out why she brought us here, the doctor? If I’m going to die down here, I want to know why.”
Hernandez heaved himself back into the vent and slumped down. His manner was resigned. “This girl who’s with Tala, she’s the CO’s daughter. She said that Dr. Smith represents some kind of private security firm. They brought the rights to this whole deal, Chief. For military applications. Falmendikov was a fucking patsy, the Riyadh just an anonymous ride.”
“They’re going to take this to Earth?” Nielsen half asked, half stated. How many days had it been since he’d spoken to Tor in his office, about Freya, about Emma? He didn’t think he was a fearful man, didn’t think he was frightened to die but even then he’d known. Whatever had tainted their exotic matter wouldn’t kill him, but this moment, this decision would.
And it had to mean something.
He looked at the desiccated corpse at his feet, finally at rest, she’d been someone’s daughter once and now she was used up and gone. They couldn’t take this to Earth, that would be sheer madness, an unfathomable biological escalation of the Corporate and Cold Wars. This was a disease, the only mechanism of control they’d achieved was being surrounded by light years of uninhabited space and hard vacuum.
He pictured Freya and Emma, pinned down in his cabin in the Troms backcountry, much as he and Pettersson were now. They were both resourceful and independent women, they would dwindle for a long time in bucolic isolation as civilization collapsed around them, but they wouldn’t survive, nobody would. Eventually the two people he cherished most in life would end up like the girl at his feet, twisted and corrupted.
Unforeseen tears stung his cheeks as he thought of his daughter and his partner. Freya had not only accepted Emma after her mother’s death, but welcomed her father’s new companion. She’d been right, he’d been alone too long. Too much of his life had been spent in mourning, Heidi wouldn’t have wanted that and Freya knew it. He and Emma had been kindred, lovers of nature like Heidi had been, she would understand, so would Freya, they both would understand what he had to do.
“Hernandez, get out of here. There’s nothing more you can do. Get to the others.” He picked his last rifle back up from beside the dead girl and looked at it sadly.
Above him, Hernandez looked down a mixture of anger and dejection in his face. “Chief,” he began.
The rifle was almost weightless in his hand, the stock brushed lightweight carbon fibre. It had been his pride and joy, now he measured it up like a javelin, switching on the safety. “You wanted this earlier, hey?”