She pulled Kulvinder into an embrace, that was the part that hurt the most. The engineer had dragged the corpse away before it could sink its bloody teeth into her neck and yet it was Kulvinder who had received that small measure of human contact that he so craved. The engineer knew why, of course. Kulvinder was security, the focus of authority. Did the fact that his face didn't carry a lattice of raw pink scar tissue matter? Perhaps.
Cathy Morrison, comms officer second class. He wasn't sure if he knew everything about her by now but he must be close. Every time he asked different questions, every time a few more points of interest that he desperately tried to memorise. He tried to fool himself into thinking that if he could become her perfect man then perhaps he would have enough time... yet he had only made it through once, just once. There were too many in the ward...
Too soon, it was too soon to think of that. Johan was still here, whispering words that only Imogen could hear. Too soon to think of what must be. After all, it was the last supper in a few minutes. Don't ruin it.
Kulvinder waved his hand for the others to follow, naturally taking the lead. The engineer was happy for him to fall into that role it as it was the main reason for bringing him along, to take the strain, just for a little... and of course there was the yellow door.
Later.
Cathy had been holed up in her comms unit for hours – a cramped box filled with screens and dials - before finally giving up on getting a signal out and making a break for it, running into a group of three shambling corpses almost immediately. She was far from helpless and managed to lay two of them to rest with a fire extinguisher but the last one was always too much for her, which was where the engineer came in, making sure he was on time.
Their group was complete. Perhaps he could try to save more but if he was too late then all would be lost. Balance, that was the key. He had managed it once, he could do it again. How many times had he tried though, getting so far only to fall at the last hurdle?
They all made their way inside the large silver panelled magnetic lift before the engineer dragged the doors shut and quickly welded them in place with his spot welder, before discarding it on the floor. It wouldn't be needed from here on. Dead weight.
The lights flickered on and off overhead in a dizzying fashion and the engineer moved over the electric panel quickly, slipping it off and locating the loose wire instantly. An easy problem to fix but necessary, as Imogen's epilepsy would soon be triggered and he needed her upright.
Are they just meat to me? Fresh meat for the dead. They are the dead.
“Are you all right?”
The question was unexpected, new. Usually he would have spoken to them all by now, tried to calm their nerves, but he was still thrown by almost missing Kulvinder. Cathy's face bore concern and pity. He didn't want pity. He wanted lust, he wanted passion, he wanted her. The minor contact threw the engineer and his long forgotten stutter fluttered across his lips.
“Yes, f – f – fine.”
He pursed his lips and took a deep breath, pulling his arms out of the electric panel as the light flared into life.
“Is it safe in here? Won't we run out of air?” asked Liam.
“Yes, that's why I'm going to...” started the engineer, before reaching up and quickly unscrewing a ceiling panel's wing nuts and pulling it down, revealing the red tinged gloom of the lift shaft above, “make a hole.”
“Heading up?” asked Kulvinder, getting ready to jump for the hole.
“Not yet,” said the engineer, trying not to notice the way that Cathy was looking at Kulvinder as he flexed his shoulders, sweat running down his muscled arms and bare chest. Most of them had removed clothing as the station had heated up due to the colossal strain the engines were under, for reasons only the engineer knew. He hadn’t removed his own clothing though, as he was painfully aware of the ugliness of his overweight body. “There is a coolant leak on the medical floor. I need to clear it first or we won't make it.”
“If the dead are frozen...” started Johan.
“We won't make it,” said the engineer again, trying to keep the irritation from his voice. That was in some ways the hardest part of the whole sorry mess, the need for limitless patience, a parent among children who kept asking the same things over and over.
He pulled the mobile system maintenance controller out of the kitbag, a small touch screen with various connecting wires hanging from it, before selecting the connection he needed and clipping it into the open electric panel. When he had finally patched into the air-con, he diverted power from areas of the station that he knew were lost and shifted the resource to the medical bay. “Half an hour, that’s all we need. I’ve given extra juice to the scrubbers to get the level clear, then we can get up there.”
“Half an hour? What’ll we do in the meantime?” asked Kulvinder. He was anxious to get off the station, as they all were. The delay was necessary though, the only reprieve or safety they would encounter.
“We eat,” said the engineer, swinging his kitbag off his shoulders and opening it before handing out the ready eats. Johan and Imogen accepted the food in silence, while Liam carefully inspected the vacuum packed beef jerky he’d been given whilst craning his neck to see if there was anything better in the bag. Kulvinder simply stood with his arms crossed, unwilling to relax as always. The engineer knew what button to press though in order to get him to eat, as the last supper always went more smoothly when the security chief was a little less severe.
“You need to eat to keep your strength up. Who knows when you’ll get another chance?” said the engineer, whilst trying not to think about the answer to his superficially rhetorical question. I know. “You can’t keep going forever on an empty stomach.”
Kulvinder’s lip twitched but he finally sat down heavily against the wall of the lift and accepted a foil pouch of dried fruit with a nod.
The engineer didn’t interfere in the flow of the conversation but simply unpacked food and dispensed it, opening the largest packet to reveal a heavy soya bread loaf which he tore into chunks and passed around. Occasionally in the past he’d interjected and changed topics to see where it would lead but most of the time now he simply let it run, like the familiar soundtrack of a television program watched again and again, comforting background noise.
“What have you got there? Is that sweet?” asked Liam, scrutinising Johan’s food with a mouthful of beef.
“Not sweet in the least. Nice and savoury,” replied Johan, biting into the deep fried tofu. Liam scrunched up his nose and looked back down at his own food as he kept chewing, before eventually asking what the engineer knew was on everyone’s mind.
“Do you think we’re the only ones?”
“Only ones?” asked Imogen, taking a sip of juice.
“The only ones still alive,” said Liam. The engineer busied himself with looking through his bag but he knew the fat man’s eyes were on him.
“He’d know, I think,” said Johan a little too loudly to be considered a whisper, obviously wanting to draw the engineer into a conversation.
“I do know...” he found his lips saying, almost of their own accord. He stopped looking through the bag and stood up.
He had meant to ignore it, of course he had. After those first few times that he had explained the situation, hoping that it would make a difference, he had fully realised the strange juxtaposition of power and powerlessness that he possessed. He was a child playing in a bathtub, splashing and rippling waters that were forever contained. He had long ago given up on recounting what he knew about the prison they were all in. It only made it harder if they knew and it threw him under a spotlight that he wasn’t comfortable with. He longed for their lack of knowledge, their blissful ignorance, and he felt needlessly cruel when he saw the despair that ran through the group whenever he had started to explain. And yet for some reason, he was continuing to speak. Maybe he was becoming weaker in spirit, the bloody dark reality becoming more dreamlike with every rotation. He just wanted to talk...
“There’s Hugh Lawrence, currently trapped in the air vents between his apartment and the commercial district. He cut his thigh badly when part of the vent gave way, nicking an artery. He has no first aid training and doesn’t realise that he needs to tie off his leg. He’ll be dead from blood loss within... twenty two minutes. He lived alone but was fighting for the custody of his daughter as he believes her mother to be a drunk.”
The sound of distant alarms seemed quieter in the face of his knowledge of life and death. All eyes were on him, with the others wearing expressions ranging from awe to horror.
“Within four minutes Xenia Hoffman will be killed as she takes a wrong turn in smoke filled corridors. Her seventeenth birthday was going to be in two weeks. She recently started seeing an engineering student named Dmitri. I never asked his last name but I know he’s already dead...”
“Stop talking,” said Cathy, her mouth a thin pale line of disgust.
“... his arm was pulled from his shoulder by one of the dead, causing fatal blood loss.”
“Didn’t you hear her?” said Kulvinder, standing up and grabbing the engineer’s collar, wrenching his head around. The engineer couldn’t stop though, the lines between lives blurring and blending and bleeding out of his mind. He felt himself start to babble but he could see them all, every one, every different route he had taken before this one, the most familiar, the one with the most lives saved, at least until...
“Imane Hadji is seven years old, hiding in a closet. Her parents are dead and walking, circling their former home. She’ll try to run in the next thirteen minutes...”
The blow was hard, knocking the engineer’s skull back against the wall of the elevator and making his head spin. He could feel blood rushing to his now broken nose, relishing the pain and using it as an anchor to pull him into the world. He smiled through bloody teeth as Kulvinder held his fist back, bristling with anger as he flexed his fingers, ready for another strike.
“Why are you making up these stories?” asked Imogen from her position huddled against the lift wall, her eyes red with emotion. The lights flickered above again as a distant explosion rocked the station, making the room vibrate.
“True, all true,” said the engineer as a bout of dizziness started to wash over him. He let his head drop, watching in curious fascination as the blood that dripped from his nose fell and gradually crept into the lines in the vinyl tiled flooring. It was finding its route, as they all were.
“He's tapped,” hissed Liam, obviously trying to be secretive but for some reason assuming all except the engineer could hear him. The engineer looked up and smiled at the fat man, not aggressively or threateningly but with genuine warmth.
“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... I've ruined this one. I don't know why. I promise, I swear, the next one will be better,” he said quietly. He looked at all of them in turn and shook his head. “I wasted this one.”
Johan stood up before walking carefully over the still shifting floor, which rocked and swayed with each distant sound.
“Give me the details,” he said carefully, guiding Kulvinder’s hand away from the engineer’s collar and allowing him to slump against the lift wall. The engineer shook his head.
“You always want to know,” he said, wiping his sleeve across his face to clear some of the blood.
“Then tell me,” said Johan. “I promise I won’t ask next time...”
The engineer looked at Johan’s face, taking in the wide eyes and pale skin. He’s terrified, terrified because part of him already believes me. He’s playing along with what I’m saying so he can get to the truth. Am I really going to let it all out?
“You won’t remember next time, none of you will. You’ll be just as scared, just as alone, just as in the dark.”
“Tell me.”
The man was persistent, digging like a hound for something foetid and dark, buried deep.
“We’re drifting into a black hole.”
“Rubbish, that’s rubbish,” said Cathy, bristling with anger. “Who told you that?”
The engineer looked at Cathy with eyes grateful for anything from her, any contact, even her rage.
“You did.”