“They got Willmore,” Avery said.
“He’s dead?” Samantha asked.
“No, I don’t know.”
“What does that mean? What do you mean you don’t know?”
Avery sighed. “It means that Commander Willmore turned. He turned into whatever Ivanov is. After her got bit and died, he turned.”
“Is this what your wife was trying to say? Is this what happened to Houston?”
“It must have been,” Avery said.
“My husband! My babies! Oh my God. My boys!” Samantha wailed.
“Sam, get it together!” Avery said, shaking her. “Get it together! We don’t know that anything bad happened to them.”
Samantha nodded and slowly calmed down. “What do we do, Ryder?”
“We need to get to the other Soyuz,” Avery said.
“But that’s all the way by the Zvezda module. Those things are in the way,” Samantha said.
Avery thought for a second about the word Samantha had used, “things.” That’s really what they were. Commander Willmore had been turned into a “thing,” into a savage with an appetite for human flesh.
They could hear them now, closing in. They were perhaps only a minute or two away.
“We need something to defend ourselves,” Avery said.
“What about the tools in Unity?”
Avery had passed right above the tools when he was fleeing Willmore.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think about that on my way here! Yes, there’s a hammer, there’s a crowbar and a few long screwdrivers,” he said.
They were about to head back to the Unity node, when they saw Willmore, Ivanov and Leonov. Leonov had his entrails dangling, and yet, he was still walking. The three creatures were in between the Destiny Lab and Node 2.
“What are they?” Samantha asked, bracing herself.
Ryder Avery didn’t have to think long before the most logical and yet absurd explanation came to mind. All those books, movies and TV shows were right. Someone out there had turned what was once thought of as a creature of the imagination into reality. It didn’t make any sense. It couldn’t be real, and yet, it was.
“Zombies,” he said.
“Did you say zombies?” Samantha asked.
“Yes. If you get bit and die, you turn. I saw it happen. I don’t know how this is possible and right now I don’t care. We need to get to the Soyuz,” Avery said.
“How?” she asked.
“We need to fight our way through,” Avery said. “Also, don’t get bit.”
The zombies were making their way toward them, but in zero gravity, they didn’t know which way was “up” or “down.” Although such concepts are non-existent in space, they still help the astronauts orient themselves in a relatively normal way. Basically, all the signage made it clear which way was meant to be “down.” The zombies, however, didn’t seem to comprehend this. While they were fast, nothing like the typical zombies Avery remembered watching in horror movies, they were clumsy and confused.
Willmore launched himself at Avery with the ferocity of a lion hunting its prey. Avery managed to capture Willmore’s momentum and flipped him over his head and sent him flying. Willmore’s teeth clattered so close to Avery that he could smell his decayed breath. As Avery did this, Samantha slipped past them and faced Ivanov. She looked around and undocked one of the many laptops. Ivanov leapt toward Samantha and she ducked almost instantly. The zombie tripped on her crouched body and did a somersault above her. As he flew by, she got up and smashed the laptop on his face, but not before he reached out and clawed at her arm.
“Are you okay?” Avery said, coming over to her.
“Just a scratch. I’m fine,” she said.
“Good hit,” he told her.
They easily maneuvered around what remained of Leonov. He was floating aimlessly, growling and reaching for them. Avery looked back and saw that Willmore and Ivanov were slowly making their way toward them.
They hurried down the Destiny Lab and made to Unity, where the toolbox was. Avery and Samantha opened the toolbox in front of them. Samantha grabbed a huge orange hammer, which would have weigh at least two pounds on Earth, but was weightless in space. Avery grabbed a crowbar and a sharp elongated screw driver. Two weapons were better than one.
They moved quickly. They entered the Russian part of the International Space Station, weapons in hand, and then they heard it. An alarm started blasting loudly over the speakers across the station. The zombies were distracted by this incessant noise, which bought Avery and Samantha a few precious minutes.
Samantha was leading the way. Avery covered the rear to fend off the two zombies following them. He knew that the alarm would probably turn off in a matter of minutes and then Willmore and Ivanov would focus their attention on them once more.
“What’s going on?” Avery asked, yelling over the alarm.
“I don’t know,” Samantha said.
She kept treading on, hammer held firmly in both of her hands.
“There’s a lot of smoke,” she said, pointing ahead.
“How did that happen?” Avery asked, thinking out loud.
Samantha held the hammer even tighter. She had slowed down her pace, but not by choice. They still needed to get to the Soyuz, but the smoke made it difficult to see and breathe. Avery pulled two oxygen masks, along with two canisters that were stowed away not far from the tools.
“Put this on,” he told her. He looked back and saw Willmore and Ivanov still looking around frantically, trying to figure out what the alarm meant.
“Good thing they’re not that smart,” Samantha said, pulling the mask over her face and fastening he canister to her pants. Avery did the same.
The alarm turned off. Almost instantly, the zombies stopped looking around frantically and focused on their prey. They set off in a mad dash, closing in on them in an incredible speed. They were hungry. Even from this distance, Avery could see the rage and madness in their eyes.
“No, I’m not leaving you behind,” she said.
“One of us needs to start preparing the Soyuz for departure. I’ll be right behind you, I promise,” Avery said.
She hesitated for a second, but then took off.
Willmore was the first to reach Avery. The thing that was once Willmore plunged itself, arms spread wide and clawing in midair. Avery stepped backwards and extended his crowbar forward, like a sword, the crowbar penetrated through Willmore’s stomach. Unbelievably, Willmore was still alive and biting the air close to Avery’s face. Avery then pushed Willmore off with his legs, while still holding on to the crowbar. He pulled it off from the Commander’s stomach, the crowbar covered in blood and vile. As Willmore fell backwards, he crashed into the incoming Ivanov.
Both zombies recovered quicker than Ryder thought it was humanly possible, but again was there any part of these things that were still human? Avery swung the crowbar like a baseball bat, knocking Willmore down, shattering a few of his teeth, but Ivanov was still coming at him. Avery’s arm was already extended from the swing, so he wouldn’t be able to retrieve it. He was going to get bit.
He was bracing himself, when he saw a giant hammer knock Ivanov down for good. The hammer hit him right across the head, crushing his skull and brain.
It was Samantha.
“You’re back!”
She helped him up.
“Why aren’t you getting the Soyuz ready?”
“There’s a fire blocking the way. I can’t get through it. I didn’t even see any flames, but I still got burned somehow,” Samantha said. Her voice was trembling.
Avery then remembered the odd behavior of combustion in a microgravity environment. Cool flames, as they became known after the FLEX experiment a few years back, were not visible to the naked eye. In fact, no one knows for sure if they are still present at all. All scientists know is that in space, a fire can still burn without flames. Even the chemical composition from “normal” flames in Earth differs completely than from th
ose started in space.
Avery examined Samantha’s injuries. Her right leg had at least second degree burns.
“You’re gonna be okay, Sam,” Avery said.
“I just want to get out of here,” she said. “I can’t believe I just killed a Russian flight engineer. I just killed someone.”
“Sam, you just saved my life,” Avery said, reassuring.
“I know, but I just killed another person. I killed a fellow astronaut.”
“That thing was not Commander Ivanov. I don’t know exactly what it was or how this whole thing began, but that was not a person. You hear me?”
Samantha nodded.
“Could you make out what started the fire?” Avery asked.
“No, I couldn’t get far enough. That’s how I got burned.”
“That’s alright, we’ll figure something out,” Avery said. He still had his oxygen mask on, but took it off and gave it to Samantha.
“Take it,” he told her and she did so. She had lost hers when running away from the invisible flames.
“What about him?” She asked, pointing to Willmore.
“I’ll take care of it,” Avery said.
Avery then headed to the dazed Willmore, but before he could strike him on the head with the crowbar, he noticed something, or rather someone behind Samantha. It was the third and final Russian crew member. He was an imposing man, at least 6’7 and 280 pounds. But he wasn’t a man at all. He was one of them.
“Sam, watch out!” Avery yelled.
Samantha turned around, hammer in hand, but it was too late. The Russian giant, who Avery now remembered was named Alexei, took a chunk off of her right forearm. The hammer fell off her hands and floated idly. In a moment of pure instinct and rage, Avery picked up the hammer and jumped high enough to be at eye-level with Alexei. In one quick swing, he smashed it against the giant’s head. The impact sent Alexei flying backwards, but the giant was not dead, just momentarily incapacitated. This kind of guy would have been almost impossible to take out during a fight, but as a zombie, it made it even harder.
Avery let go of the hammer, which floated away from him, and grabbed his crowbar and went to Samantha’s aid. She was holding her arm, trying desperately not to cry. She had had enough of those blobs that masqueraded as tears in microgravity.
“Let me see it,” Avery said.
He took a look at her arm and immediately noticed that it was bad. Tissue and bone were exposed and if not taken care of quickly, she would bleed to death.
“You’ll be okay,” he said.
“Please, get me out of here. I don’t want to be here,” she said.
“Put pressure on it,” he said and helped her float. He looked back at Willmore and realized that he had gotten tangled with a myriad of cables, therefore trapping him, at least for the moment. Avery thought about going back and finishing him off, but Samantha was losing a lot of blood and the first aid kit was back at the Unity node. He couldn’t let her die. She couldn’t become one of those things.
“Where are we headed?” Samantha asked.
“To take care of that wound,” he said.
“But what about after? What do we do?”
“Plan B,” Avery said. “The only other way to get to the Soyuz is to do an EVA.”
An EVA, or an Extra Vehicular Activity was basically a formal name for a spacewalk.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish I was. It’s the only option we got. The Zvezda is on fire, which means that we can’t access the Soyuz from there. And the other Soyuz, the ones the zombies came on, that one needs to be refueled and I don’t think we’ll be getting any resupply missions anytime soon.”
“EVA it is,” Samantha said in agreement.
They reached the Unity node and Avery immediately started dressing her wound.
The sluggish Leonov started floating towards them. Avery took his crowbar and used it as a blade, penetrating through Leonov’s forehead. He stopped moving. He was dead, but not the kind of dead these things came back from. This was the real and final death. It was an odd sight, to see a half-dismembered astronaut floating lifelessly aboard the International Space Station.
Avery had never killed anyone before. He knew that he would ruminate on that later, but right now, he had to focus on staying alive.
“I need to go finish them off,” Avery said. “Willmore and Alexei, they won’t be far behind.”
“This whole place can go up in flames any second now,” Samantha said, wincing. “We need to get out of here.”
“The fire hasn’t spread beyond the Zvezda yet,” Avery said looking at a laptop above him. There were red flashing signs all over the schematics of the space station. “These guys are going to catch up to us, especially that giant.”
“Don’t risk your life going back there,” Samantha said. “We have an opportunity to leave here now. Those things don’t seem to be coordinated. You saw Willmore tangled in the cables. He’ll probably bite his way out of it eventually, but this is a big station, we have a bit of time before they find us.”
“Okay, you’re right,” Avery said. “But we need to start getting ready.”
“I don’t think we have time to get tethered though,” Samantha said.
“No, definitely not. We need to use the SAFER,” Avery said, helping her to a chair.
The SAFER, or Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue, is a device that looks like a backpack. It was meant to be used to rescue astronauts who somehow found themselves untethered when performing EVA’s. The SAFER relies on small nitrogen-jet thrusters, which allows the astronauts to maneuver in space. However, the amount of propellant is limited, so Avery and Samantha had to make every second count.
Samantha strapped herself into the chair. She took of the oxygen mask and offered it to Avery.
“No, keep it,” he said.
“You need to breathe pure oxygen too, otherwise you’ll get the bends out there. You know that,” she said.
She was right, of course. If he went out there without breathing pure oxygen for a while, he would experience decompression sickness, very similar to what divers experience when they ascend too quickly. He could pass out, which wasn’t an ideal situation when floating around in space. It was already bad enough that the airlock had not been decompressing at least 24 hours prior. Of course, 24 hours ago, the astronauts had no idea that any of this would be happening to them.
Avery took it. “Alright, but I’ll give it back you in a few minutes.”
They were only a few feet away from the Quest airlock. Avery started the process of decompressing the inner hatch. The chamber would probably not reach the desired ideal pressure, but they had to go with close enough.
“Let’s get you donned,” Avery said.
He looked beyond Samantha and could hear the growls getting closer. It sounded like Willmore had either untied himself, or bit his way out of the cables like Samantha predicted. The zombies were disoriented because of the microgravity environment, which slowed them down, but Avery knew that sooner, rather than later, they would make their way to their location. He couldn’t even imagine how fast those things would be on Earth, where gravity was king.
The Quest was only big enough for one astronaut to enter at a time. Once that astronaut entered the pressurized airlock, he or she would have to wait until the pressure was gradually decreased. One the desired level was reached; he or she would open another hatch and reach the unpressurized payload bay. From there on, the astronaut would go out to outer space.
“You go first,” Avery said.
“You need to don your suit, too,” she said.
“I need to deal with the zombies,” he replied.
“You need to put on your suit, or I’m not putting mine on,” Samantha said.
“Sam, we don’t have time for this,” he said.
“We do,” Samantha said. “I can put on my suit by myself. We can get through the airlock quickly and we can both get out of here alive. Let those things burn.
”
“Fine,” Avery said. “Start putting yours on.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to buy us some time.”
Avery started pulling cables and extension cords from all sides of the ISS. Up, down, left and right. In less than five minutes, he had created what appeared to be a poor man’s rendition of a spider web. He also tied four laptops and the large 3D printer to the web, thus using them as a barrier.
Dead Space: A Short Story Page 3