“Four… Mission critical… to kill.” The robotic sounding words drifted closer, voices and accents indistinct. She could hear the faint pad of plastic boots against linoleum. Then she saw the shapes, toneless boxes in the juddering light. At least three.
Her mouth was dry and her cheek ached. Finally Tala scoped the door, nary ten meters down. “Door!” Was all she said, pointing to the faint inconsistency in the bulkhead.
“There they are,” one synthetic voice cried out.
Tala wheeled around at the sound, strafing the darkened recesses of the corridor before darting into the transient shadows. She heard a static laced sob of pain as her shots were met in double time. She managed to pull open the door, providing her group cover as bullets shredded through the empty air of the passageway, snickering into deck plates and bulkheads. A couple of slugs lodged into the Formica door in her hand sending mini shockwaves through her flesh. It was a miracle she wasn’t hit.
Katja, Tor and Diego ran across the corridor as if it were hot coals, big loping steps as they disappeared through the door. Tala loosed another burst of gunfire before following them. She heard the returning volley of shots impact against the Formica as she sealed the entrance.
“Shit, we’re fucking trapped!”
Tala pivoted around at Diego’s exclamation. They were on a balcony overlooking the Central Command foyer, to her left office modules loomed, their black tinted glass walls only intersected by the occasional doorway. To her right an opaque glass balustrade curved the length of the cantilevered deck. Set back from her position, Diego, Katja and Tor flitted in a hysterical frenzy. She trained the muzzle of the submachine gun on the doorway, awaiting their pursuers ingress. “Find a stairwell, there has to be one!”
But that hadn’t quite been what Diego meant. The pungent stench of decay hit her last. Putrescine and cadaverine intoxicated the air around her, cloying and asphyxiating. Tala wretched. “How many?”
“A lot,” replied Tor, neutral.
The door burst open. Tala fired a single shot into empty space and scuttled backwards on her haunches. Two soldiers had taken position either side of the jam. A volley of shots chipped the tiling at her feet, throwing ceramic shrapnel into her face. Tala dived toward an office door, slamming hard against the glass. She could hear the lock rattle in situ.
Behind her, unarmed, the rest of the group ran for the far side of the deck. They would be trapped between the infected and the gunmen. Completely open, Tala loosed three rounds on her rump, forcing one soldier back into cover just as the other moved forward drawing a bead on her, using the door for protection. They knew they could keep drawing her fire, deplete her ammunition. She scoped the forward moving soldier and pulled the trigger, feeling the weapon jar in her hand. Wide eyed she stared down at the cartridge jamming the ejection port as the soldiers, sensing their advantage, slid across the threshold.
Tala closed her eyes as the pointman levelled his gun to her position, heard footsteps bounding from behind her and assumed it was Katja – hoped it wasn’t. “No,” she whispered quietly to herself.
She heard a colossal metallic boom and for a millisecond thought the trigger had been pulled heralding an eternity of darkness. Then she was tumbling backward, her body unusually heavy as she slid across frictionless and homogenous tiles, bereft of handholds. Her neck muscles locked against the rising gravity, Tala looked up at the Central Command dome as the stricken station began re-orientating itself in space and realised she was accelerating toward the far bulkhead against which Diego and Katja were already being crushed. Tor was a little distance behind her, scrambling for purchase to cease his fall.
Indeed, they were falling now, the bulkhead becoming the deck and vice versa, the metal structure of Murmansk-13 squealing against forces far exceeding its design parameters. Whatever Nielsen had set in motion was gathering momentum and relegating all within to mere passengers. She imagined the stabilizing thrusters firing madly, woefully underpowered to right the vast station against such an impossible catastrophe as the station lurched once more, catapulting her sideways and over the restraints of the balustrade.
She braced for a shattering impact and felt bile scorch her gullet as gravity failed, sinking from several G to nothing in an instant. The two soldiers eddied across her field of vision, disorientated and desperately seeking sanctuary, the sound of their squawking panic lost against the din of grinding metallic plates. What had been up became down, below her the structural ribs supporting the dome were at least a hundred meters away. If gravity returned now, she would plummet to her death, dashed across the apex.
Above the clusters of infected that had milled about the foyer now hung like moribund shoals of fish in mid air. Whatever physiological driver kept the infected operative, struggled to recalibrate in the zero G environment, the sneering mob of pitiful creatures pawed the air trying to reach their breathing prey.
Tala felt something reach out, brushing against her shoulder. Instantly reviled she tried to beat it away, turned, and found Tor screaming at her. “Grab my hand!” His voice was tiny against the grating aluminium, but his eyes were alert. She grabbed his hand and he pointed at the balustrade.
Uselessly they swam in the absence of gravity. Tala twirled around to see Diego and Katja floating listlessly out across the emptiness of the foyer. From her position she couldn’t tell if either were conscious, but neither seemed to struggle against their weightlessness, nor the rising tide of desiccated, gnarled hands reaching out toward them. Slowly they were descending into their clutches. As the station continued through its inexorable somersault, Tala felt her body become substantial again.
Gravity returned with crushing force and an instantaneous thud as Tala and Tor smashed into the foyer deck. All around bodies fell from the sky with a melancholy wail and a waft of decay. Tala picked herself up quickly, ignoring the numbness that wracked her right arm and shoulder. Tor lay motionless for a second as she wheeled round to where she’d last seen Katja. Other than herself, nobody was on their feet. The scene was like a battlefield abandoned to time, twisted individuals in various stages of decomposition littered the deck, then gunfire shattered the solemnity.
Backed into a corner by the first onrushing infected, the two hazmat wearing soldiers lay down a volley of fire. Forgotten in their desperation, Tala thought to step out across the carpet of bodies just as the remaining hoard began rising, falteringly, to their feet. She heard the crepitus of broken bone as the abominations picked themselves up, then their incessant moan began anew, only occasionally shrouded by bursts of gunfire and settling shell plates.
Frantic, Tala called out to Katja just as the press of unstoppable bodies descended on the soldiers. She barely acknowledged the feedback laced screams of pain as she scanned the foyer for other signs of life. All she saw was a rising wall of deathly, ossified figures, skeletons covered in tattered clothes and tattered flesh. She glanced down at her 9mm to find the stovepipe round had cleared. She sighted the gun and began picking off the closest infected, coolly trying to cut a path. For each body she dropped a new one took its place, trampling the lifeless corpse beneath its shambolic gait. It didn’t matter, Tala had to get to Katja, at least draw their attention. With each shot she stepped forward, toward the crowding, longing, outstretched arms.
Tor grabbed her from behind and yanked her back. “Are you fucking mad?” Rage and pity vied for dominance behind his eyes, his voice quietened. “We have to get out of here.”
“I have to get to Katja,” Tala said unsteadily, never lowering her gun. “She’s over there, vulnerable.”