“You can’t help her dead,” Tor replied, looking over her shoulder. “It’s suicide.”
Drawn by her fire, the blood caked crowd pulled from the sundered corpses of the soldiers. Their hazmat suits had been peeled away by festering fingernails and their torsos and ribcages splayed open, their abdominal cavities emptied – witnesses to their own crazed autopsy. Their hoods and breathing masks had been torn away, much like the flesh beneath it, gleaming bone glistened in places through the gore. Eyeless and shredded, the soldiers sat in a pile of their own half masticated viscera, staring sightlessly through a shambling masse of infected – beelining toward Tala and Tor.
Tala quailed and began backpedalling. Hate and gut wrenching sorrow sickened her worse than the sight of the soldiers and the dead. She raised her gun and peppered the onrushing infected, bullets snickered through petrified flesh as several bodies dropped to the deck. Tala kept the trigger depressed until the firing pin clicked against the empty magazine. Enraged, she tossed the weapon at the nearest abomination then watched it disappear beneath the throngs graceless shuffling feet.
“I’m sorry, Tala,” Tor said, his voice raised over the mournful lament. “Truly I am, but we need to go. It’s now or never.”
Tala turned to the Captain, his expression was apologetic but hard. Behind him the main entrance of Central Command lay clear, but the infected were closing on all sides. Tala felt her lip tremble as she gave one last useless glance to where Katja and Diego fell, then followed Tor into the stark passageway.
Chapter 22
Aidan woke with a start as the Riyadh jarred beneath him. Lose items rattled where they stood or toppled completely. One of the damaged EVA suits slipped heavily from its hook, the brass coupling clattered against the hermetic Perspex wardrobe. Aidan felt his body tense and gingerly sat up, wary of the convulsing muscles that still plagued his neck.
Within seconds the Riyadh fell still save for the pounding in his chest. The repurposed rivet gun had been jolted to the deck. Aidan grimaced as he awkwardly lowered his stringy frame to retrieve it, then sighed.
He’d been holed up in the Evacuation Suite for four days, occasionally checking the bridge chronometer when he dared abandon his watch. Chief Nilsen had powered it back up before he left and the livid digital display provided a fragile continuity to the humdrum life that existed before everything fell to shit.
In the first hours after the remaining crew departed for Murmansk-13, Aidan busied himself tidying the ship spaces nearest the airlock, rectifying the aftermath of the junk impact. Injured, the work had been slow, but it kept him loose and allowed his mind to empty of burdens. He’d then raided the galley for non-perishables, mostly tins containing food stuffs that were edible cold, stockpiling what he came to think of as his guard post.
Variety was scant, Aidan was shocked to see how meagre their supplies had become; no doubt lessened by the Chief Officer and further by items hidden by the Steward – perhaps conscious that Aidan would deplete what little remained. Dry flaked tuna in brine became a staple in the absence of Sammy, and tinned peaches for dessert. The dichotomic repast left a silvery film inside his mouth with each meal and he soon found his appetite lessened. At first he’d thought to ration his supplies, but it turned out consumption would not be a problem.
His stomach growled angrily, starved of a decent hot meal. Boredom and fear made for capricious partners during his lonely vigil. Fear was ever present, from the moment he watched his crew exit the airlock his innards were gnawed with it. Fear of abandonment, of dying a slow solitary death aboard a vessel lost in the vastness of space. With the transponders shut down and the communications array obliterated into millions of fragments, he would probably never be found.
But one can only experience the adrenaline sharpened edge of fear for so long before the body wearies and the mind dulls. Slowly the febrile, anxious energy dissipated. Then all he could do was think.
Occasionally he would wander from the Evac Suite to the bridge, stare out across the metallic spokes of Murmansk-13 into the black chasm through which his crewmates had alighted and failed to return, or beyond to the oil slick nebulae that smeared across the local system. But mostly he thought of Addy, of the stories of survival he could regale her with, if only she would wait. Would she remember her promise to him?
Even if they did manage to repair the Riyadh and obtain assistance, nobody knew how long it could be until they returned to Earth. In a few weeks, the Saudi’s would be informing kin that communications with the ship had been lost, that they’d failed to make the leap to Talus. If they weren’t on a rescuing vessel by then their families would begin to mourn. Deep space accidents were not uncommon, there would be little hope to cling onto, although Aidan imagined those closest to the crewmen would harbour some faith.
Addy however wouldn’t find out, at least not immediately, and once she did Aidan wondered how she would react. It had been such an ephemeral thing, fifteen months ago. She would be sad, he reassured himself, confident that that much was true, but with so few memories to keep him alive the sadness would pass, and quickly. She would move on, if she hadn’t already and new memories would soon smooth the small impact Aidan had made on her life.
There was nothing he could do. Aidan kept telling himself, finding that in solitude he began to speak to himself, his own voice and spoken out loud chastisements kindling for an under stimulated mind.
Communications were down and scrubbers were near capacity, with his crew absent Addy should have been the last of his concerns and yet as the hours passed, he became increasingly unfocused; then Addy would drift to the surface of his thoughts.
Once more, love sickness overrode his fear sickened heart. Then the Riyadh jolted sharply once more, throwing Aidan back into the foam padded coffee table. Inflexibly, he picked himself up and suddenly felt the weight of the rivet gun in his hands, wincing away the barbs of pain shooting down his neck. Something unusual was happening to the station, something that brought an effortless sense of peril surging to the forefront of his mind.
Indecisive, Aidan paused for a moment as the Riyadh resettled. Chief Nielsen had kept the ships manoeuvring thrusters on standby. The mechanical hum of the small thruster plant was gently transmitted through the vessels spaceframe, seemingly filling the empty atmosphere around him. Thankfully something other than silence and…
His blood chilled as Mihailov stirred, two decks down. The Second Mate bellowed maniacally from the Medical Bay, awakened by the lurching movements. Something crashed dully against the makeshift quarantine ward viewport. Nielsen had quietly sequestered Mihailov prior to the crews departure and Aidan was hard pressed to disagree with the decision.
He’d ventured to the dim Medical Bay on day two, to assess whether Mihailov required any food or water. He would not return again.
Standing naked, pressed against the far bulkhead, his back to the viewport, Aidan knew immediately Mihailov was wrong. Lingering listlessly at the definite ambit of the sharp blue light, Mihailov had spun round slowly. At first sight, Aidan fell back, yelping an exclamation to a deity he’d never believed in.
Sniffing the air like a rat searching for scraps, Mihailov had approached, his steps rigid and unsure. As he neared the screen, Aidan could recall the muscles in his own face screwing up in abject revulsion, unable to totally comprehend or believe the image before him.
Aidan had been in the Medical Bay when Sammy and the Chief first brought Mihailov in. The Bulgarian was in a bad way then; unconscious, his skin a blue hue and his hand degloved and fast frozen. Later he heard stories of Mihailov’s ailing health from Hernandez, second hand hearsay from Sammy. With the motorman’s flair for hyperbole he’d taken little heed. He’d been wrong too.