Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Habitats and Hibernation.

The laboratory section sits on Level 5 of the station, just below the security level and just above the engineering section. Half of Level 5 is actually part of engineering itself, not the laboratories, as it ascends the spine linking up power, water, air, and maintenance to the rest of Walker. There is an open area around the elevator here, with food vendors and a decently large cafeteria area.

Well, decently large for a space station. Vast open spaces inside space stations are anathema when you consider the cost. Every piece of space has a function here, so we lab rats ate in the same space that the engineering managers and specialists did.

The lower rating engineers, the grunts that hauled around heavy wielding lasers and worked in the aromatics section where the air and sewage got cleaned had their own cafeterias closer to where they worked below. When lunch was busy, there could easily be over a hundred people packed in to eat, quickly scarfing down their food before hurrying back to finish their shift.

My laboratory came with a nutrient dispenser, which I had often used to avoid going through security twice more during the day. I’d long gotten used to not tasting my food since childhood. It was fuel. I needed it to run my brain, the part of me that kept a roof over my head. I’d been more active since the Fall, trying to maintain muscle mass, but that still did not make me athletic.

I will admit that to dithering over exiting the security of my lab section. Pun not intended. I held a strong suspicion that there was a horde in the cafeteria section. I’d seen hordes swarm and devour deer, cattle, cats and dogs over the years. They didn’t defend their kills and snap at each other like wolves.

Zombies were rather egalitarian in that the zombie herd portions out its kill so that each member gets a bite, at least. The first to reach the prey go for the kill and then they move away, allowing others to feast. It happens quickly, each one ripping off a piece and wandering away to consume it.

That would not be me, I vowed. The thought that other human beings had made similar vows before being slain did not escape my notice, though.

Zombie sensing ability was another area where I had little practical data. They seemed to home in on sound as well as visual cues, but I had no idea what the threshold for that would be. I crept forward as slowly as I could, using the grip of my gloves and boots to remain grounded. It was difficult. I should have trained with the suit before exiting my lab, but the impending power failure was a sign even I could not miss.

The last hatchway between me and the cafeteria was open when I came upon it. Rather, it was torn open. Battered down somehow. That had to have happened some time in the first couple of years, when there was still gravity on the station.

There was no way a group of infected that could barely control themselves in micro would have the leverage to do that. The ragged edges of the opening were filthy black and brown, and through the opening I could see a drifting cloud of detritus, thicker I suppose you would say than the mess in the corridor I was in.

Creeping closer along the wall, I could see glimpses of the elevator on the right side. The doors were open, and within was something I could only call a nest. There were filthy cushions and scraps of clothing, meal wrappers and dirty napkins, all wedged together and twined about one another. It looked like the cozy little hole a scavenger mouse or especially lazy bird might make but on a much larger scale. This was new.

In my observations of the world below, I hadn’t seen such things. Zombies did not, as a rule, build things. They chased things, ate things, and stumbled about aimlessly otherwise. Was this something unique to the station zombie population? Surely it was not constructed by a surviving human.

No zombies in that direction. I looked around, up, and through the portal before peeking around the edge. There I froze. The horde I had suspected was right there.

I’d wondered if the fight in the security corridor was audible outside of it. The gunshots had been unconscionably loud. The zombie was not quiet, either. Its howls and growls would have called any other zombies within hearing distance based on what I’d seen and suspected. But the zombies here seemed not to care if they had, indeed heard. Which suggested, of course, that they had not.

In fact, they floated peacefully as if in a deep sleep. Eyes closed, posture relaxed. It was too much to expect that they’d somehow died and this was a field of corpses. On a deep, instinctual level, I knew that these were not dead things no matter their wasted and withered appearance. Of course, I distrusted such intuition.

But logic said that the consequences of proceeding as if they were already dead and being wrong vastly exceeded the consequences of the inverse proposition. Logic and gut were in harmony. I crept in, hugging the deck to keep myself as low and hopefully inconspicuous as possible.

The elevators were out of the question. There was no way to know if the doors would even shut, assuming I could excavate the elevator controls from the nest. Or even if the elevators were in proper working order, given seven years of not only no maintenance, but outright abuse by the station’s former inhabitants.

I remembered the emergency procedures we’d had to suffer through well enough. Decompression events, military attacks, where to shelter in place, where to go for the escape pods, who to contact in an emergency and so on. There were maintenance shafts that could be utilized in some emergency situations.

The station designers had never conceived of a disaster of this magnitude, however.

Or if they had, they’d kept it to themselves. The maintenance shafts were supposed to be unlocked so people could use them to escape to more fortified locations if we were ever attacked, but they were across the open cafeteria and deep within the engineering section.

This struck me as poor planning. The laboratory seemed to be cut off in its own armored pocket, a fortified location if there ever were one. The engineering staff should be sheltering with us in a crisis, yet I hadn’t seen a one on my way out. We obviously didn’t have an escape route that did not involve going out the front door- at least not that I knew of- probably because they’d then have to defend that access point as well, and that would defeat the point of a concealed escape tunnel.

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My thoughts had again distracted me while I crawled slowly towards the engineering section. This hatchway was open as well, but not torn open as the lab side had been. Amber lights over the hatch indicated it was in standby mode. This was against several regulations.

Interior doors and hatches were to remain closed on station unless you were going through them. We were told that this was to prevent a chain reaction should there be a decompression event, but seven years on there was still pressure. At least in this part of the station.

I looked up at the horde as I went. Still peacefully asleep. Probably. Their chests did not seem to be moving from what I observed, but a tattered bit of cloth was stuck to one’s nose. It fluttered gently every few moments. Very slow respiration. Perhaps zombies could hibernate? The infection and nanite worm were even more sophisticated than I thought.

This seemed to imply that the threat was not a short term one, wherein it would slowly subside within a few more decades as the infected population dwindled through winter starvation and misadventure. I wondered if zombies could suffer from age related maladies. I hadn’t noted any octogenarians pre- and post infection.

One of the drifting bits of detritus poked a zombie in the eye. It looked to have been a part of a bench at some point, and had some mass behind it. This caused the zombie to open its other eye. The other eye was pointed right at me. I froze. It screamed. Suddenly there were tens of eyes focused on me, and others turning to face my direction.

The entire mob howled and growled. They used one another as launching platforms, claws outstretched to rip and tear. I had no doubt that they could, should even one of them grab hold of me. I was not idle while they were doing this. I was scrambling for towards the open hatch to engineering.

Some of the detritus was liquid, or at least semi-liquid. It splashed onto me, some of it starting to cover my helmet. There was no time to wipe it off. I reached the hatch in what seemed like minutes but was more likely only a handful of seconds.

I slapped the hatch control as I passed shutting it just in time for a zombie body to slam into it from the other side. The entire bulkhead shuddered with the impact. I did not believe it would stop such assaults for long. Perhaps my earlier assessment of the lab side falling early was in error. These interior bulkheads might be more fragile than I expected.

Engineering had no massive security checkpoint blocking access to it like the lab side. Colored lines ran along the floor and the bulkheads. Directions to different sections within engineering, as I recalled. I had no idea what they indicated, though. The route to the maintenance shaft was fairly direct from what I could recall. Straight through the managerial offices, right, left, right.

The offices were much closer together here compared to the labs. I did not try to open any of them for fear of getting trapped or worse, releasing a trapped zombie that would slow me down enough for the horde to catch and eat me. Left and right and left again I went, thankful that there weren’t any zombies in the corridor itself. I hadn’t considered the possibility until that point and by then there was no need to worry. The maintenance shaft was open. I flung myself into it, grabbing the ladder on the opposite side.

Looking upward I could see small patches of light and long stretches of darkness. Another cost saving design, perhaps. Maintenance workers used these spaces occasionally, but they likely were equipped with their own lights. Which reminded me of my own looted light source. I grabbed it and flicked it on, pointing the beam into the shadows.

Bodies were illuminated by the weak beam of my torch. It evidently was not designed for peering into long stretches of shadow like this, more likely used to add a bit to low light spaces than to illuminate vast darkened maintenance corridors. I could not tell if the bodies were simply dead or zombified at that point. The shaft was broad, though, larger than I expected. If zombified, most of them would be swimming in the air, too far from a wall to push off and attack from.

I could go up and try for the escape pods in the living area. But that level was likely packed with hordes. My current hypothesis on horde habitat was that they congregated in areas that would have been familiar to them when uninfected and that were also close to sources of sustenance.

The living area, with its many people and abundant water in the form of decorative fountains and the like would definitely qualify. Most apartments were on Level 3. Mine was.

There was nothing in there I wanted to risk my life over, though. I kept little in the way of personal possessions. Spare clothes, mostly.

Or I could go down below, to the engineering level. They had escape pods down there, too, but it was a maze of blind corners and hiding spots where a nesting zombie could ambush me and call all of its friends. A more adventurous sort would go there, and try and find a way to fix the station. I was no engineer. Going that way was just a quick way to get me killed, too.

Or maybe...

That gave me a bad idea.

A rotten, terrible, no good idea that might just get me killed. It wasn’t the horde problem of Level 3 or the sneaky zombie ambush problem of Level 6. The security level had possibilities. I found myself moving upward before I knew it.

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