Alysa came and hugged Lena. Oksana was helping the nurse move bodies—Lena didn’t envy her rifle anymore—and the rest of the soldiers were digging. The One-Eighteen had left with two dozen men and Lena was looking at half of them alive.

  “Where’s Sasha?” she whispered to Alysa. Misha was speaking with Nemzhar who had all kinds of defensive attitude.

  “Went to scout with Nadya,” Alysa said, leading Lena away from the carnage.

  There were no wounded. Had there been any, they had died during the night. The acid had eaten through the flesh and wasn’t done consuming either. Someone’s skull collapsed, his face unidentifiable now, as Lena and Alysa walked past the pile of dead men. There was going to be a lot to answer for now, and a gloved hand waited somewhere to point the finger.

  “Well, at least I got the bitch. The first kill in a decade, that’s something, ain’t it,” she heard Nemzhar. That was his play now, she supposed. He was going to claim the kill and his unit was going to back him. As a commanding officer who’d been on sight, now this was going to be Misha’s fault. She frowned.

  “Isn’t Nadya a communications specialist?” Lena asked, and Sasha was an artillerist. Of the two Nemzhar sent to scout, neither was a marksman, a breacher, a sapper, or an actual scout. Were they in the pile now?

  “So?” Alysa shrugged. “Aren’t you a laundress?”

  “I was driving the tanker,” Lena said.

  “Tanker you call him, huh? Nothing wrong with jumping the queue, moving up in the world. Just don’t step in front of me.” Alysa winked, walking away.

  They were behaving as though they weren’t standing next to comrades who’d been alive yesterday but weren’t today. Perhaps veterans didn’t weep but it was a lot to take for Lena. She wanted to not be here but had to help the nurse at least, do something.

  Half an hour later, as she and Oksana were carrying a comrade into the grave, his spine separated and the insides fell out. They had to bury him in two pieces. They had to wear gloves to handle the bodies.

  Then Sasha came running, alone. Nadya had quite literally exploded, according to Sasha.

  “Where?” Nemzhar demanded.

  Seventeen’s garage, as it turned out. They had gone in to check if their vehicles were still there, and Nadya had triggered a trap.

  “They rigged their own perimeter? What in the devil?” Rurik asked.

  “Blowing up their own bridge, blowing up their own gear,” said Oksana. “I don’t know, it’s starting to sound like it may not be them, man.”

  “Where’s your sapper?” Misha asked Nemzhar, and in return, the lieutenant pointed at a grave and shrugged.

  Two of the graves belonged to drivers, and Lena drove the carrier as the unit refueled and moved out. The tanker was sent back to 47 with a young private who claimed he used to drive tractors for the union.

  A light gun truck was armored and carried a mounted Dushka only, and it would have been much lighter than a carrier to drive, but Nemzhar had said, “Fuck no. Don’t touch my truck.” He had left 47 with two of those and now the other was a bent and crumpled wreck. Even the paint had melted off.

  The troop carrier had a long open bed, a tail end that liked to skid on the mud now that it was half empty, and the engine was shot from having gotten acid in it. Nina had done a patchwork but everything on the dashboard was dead. Lena had no idea how fast she was going, how much fuel or oil she had, how hot the engine was getting, nothing. It rattled and the cabin vibrated, but at least it was going.

  Misha was behind her with the heavy truck carrying the enormous rocket launcher on its back, but she didn’t know how far behind he was because her side mirrors were gone, and the rearview had the pleasant sight of Alysa and Sasha making out, Oksana spitting over the side every other minute, the nurse inventorying her supplies—the medic was dead—and men who’d been digging all day getting some shuteye.

  Lena had never been to Seventeen, didn’t have a map, and followed Nemzhar through a bumpy dirt road eroded from rainwater and heavy vehicles traveling over it. Nina rode in the cabin with her, scolding her to slow down, but Nemzhar was hauling ass and she was only trying to keep up. She had a sneaking suspicion the lieutenant was making life difficult for her on purpose.

  “Do you remember Yurik?” Nina asked suddenly after riding for some time.

  “Yes,” said Lena. He was one of the comrades they’d just left behind, buried by the river.

  “Did you know he was nineteen? He just received a care package from his girlfriend back at home. We were from the same town.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lena said.

  “It sucks to die during war, but it’s worse to die during peace. I hope they degrade Arkhimov’s rank for this, I hope they send him to the labor camp up north where it’s always winter.” Nina wasn’t a vindictive person, so Lena assumed Nemzhar had been talking shit all night, appointing blame already.

  “How is this the captain’s fault?” Lena asked.

  “We shouldn’t have been out in the open with a drakon warning. We would have reached Seventeen last night had he not pulled us back. We could have sheltered there.”

  “The bunker that’s locked from the inside and the garage rigged with explosives? All right,” Lena said. “I’m sure there’s nothing bad inside it.”

  “Drakon don’t hide in bunkers,” said Nina.

  “They also don’t rig explosives.”

  “What do you think is happening?” Nina asked.

  “Fallen, devochka,” Lena said. “I think we’re looking for a group of fallen.” Someone who kept Shadow as a pet and named it Vasilisa.

  “That’s absurd,” Nina said. “They don’t travel in groups and sure as hell they don’t attack the republic’s bases. They are freaks is all.”

  “We’ll see.” Lena chewed her lip. A lot of it wasn’t sitting right. It felt like… a trap.

  The gun truck swerved wildly and fishtailed, veering off the road and running over some shrubs. Lena didn’t know why, assumed there was something on the road, and braked. She pressed both feet on the brake and lifted from her seat to get the thirteen-ton truck to screech to a stop. Misha tapped her from the back and the impact sent Nina's head flying into the windshield.

  “What is wrong with you!” she screamed, bleeding from the forehead.

  More curses ensued from the back, someone kicking the back window.

  “What the hell?” Lena yelled out the window as Nemzhar passed by her on foot, a grimace on his face.

  The lieutenant didn’t answer her, but Rurik hollered from the gun truck. “Landmine, little darling!” Then he showed the thumbs up. “Nice stop!”

  They were ten miles from Seventeen, or so Lena had been told, but the rest of the ‘drive’ was at crawl speed because someone had to walk in front of the convoy with a mine detector.

  nine

  The Devil

  The sun set around nine in the evening in this part of Rosya in July, and the convoy drove up to Bunker 17 when the sun was low on the western horizon, red and glaring in Lena’s rearview. Patches of dark clouds floated overhead, silhouettes in the sky the color of old blood. Lena parked the carrier behind the gun truck and hopped out of the cabin.

  “Bad omen,” Rurik mumbled as he passed by her, signing the cross of the Savior.

  “Or it just means it’s going to be hot as hell tomorrow.” Oksana jumped down from the carrier.

  Nemzhar gave orders for the marksmen to spread out and cover the entrance, as Lena stood outside the truck studying the front entrance of 17. To the right, where their garage had been, the brick structure was collapsed—that had been some explosion to rock that. She imagined poor Nadya had been pulverized.

  The antidrakon batteries were unmanned, the long muzzles of the Dushka pointed down. They hadn’t been shooting at anything in the sky, yet the antennas on the communication tower were corroded from acid and toppled over. The Shadow had hit that, and nothing else.

  Each bunker had a unique structural design due to the terrain and the condition of the soil the engineers had been working with, and 17 was built into the mountain. The cement was greyed in parts and mossed over, appearing as though it had been a castle before the ground rose up and swallowed it. The steel gates were enormous, obviously meant for hauling machinery in and out, and just from how far the batteries were from one another—assuming they were all connected underground—the bunker was far larger than 47. Yet it was silent. What happened to everyone?

  Nemzhar came around and put his hand on Lena’s shoulder. “Lenachka, I need you to crawl in through the vent and open the door for us.”

  “That’s not happening,” came Misha’s voice. He was unloading gear from the truck.

  “There is no room for favoritism in the republic’s army, Comrade Captain,” Nemzhar said.

  “She’s also not qualified, moron,” Misha said. “Send in your sapper, Lieutenant.”

  “He’s dead, Mikhail.”

  “That’s your problem,” Misha said.

  “Nina!” Nemzhar hollered, turning away from Lena, now telling the mechanic to crawl in through the ventilation duct.

  Lena went to Misha and whispered, “I’m smaller than her. She may get stuck.”

  “No,” he said, buckling his weapon’s belt. “I don’t know what’s in there, and I have no way of going in if you don’t come out.”

  “It may look like favoritism, Comrade,” Lena said.

  “That’s because it is,” he said, walking away from her.

  Everyone had a role and was doing something except for Lena. She stood around for a moment trying to decide how brave she was. If there were people in there, stuck, and needed help, Lena was a trained soldier whereas Nina was a mechanic. Besides, the woman started panting at her lieutenant’s request, eyes wide with fear but unable to refuse.

  Lena tied her hair as she walked up to Nemzhar and took the electric torch he was trying to hand off to Nina. “Walk me through how to open the door once I’m inside,” she said.

  Nemzhar flicked his gaze to Misha who was preoccupied with the communication specialist discussing the state of the towers, then shrugged with a half-smile. “All right, Lenachka, the locking mechanism…”

  Lena climbed down the shaft, but the entrance into the vent duct had an iron grate over it. It was heavy. Holding the electric torch in her mouth, she’d been trying her best to lift the thing when Misha barked, “Get out of there, Private. Now!” His voice carried, boomed, and echoed through the shaft, reminding her how he was actually scary. Only a handful of days ago she wouldn’t have dreamed of defying him like she was now.

  She looked up, the torch still in her mouth, and he was looming over the edge of the shaft. “Now,” he repeated.

  She climbed up the iron ladder, and before she was even fully out, he yanked her up. “Don’t disobey me again. I’m still your commanding officer,” he hissed in her ear, then pushed her away from the shaft.

  “Yo, light is falling too fast. Soon we won’t be able to cover shit, guys!” Alysa’s voice came from the trees. “Predators we may be, but we don’t have nocturnal vision.”

  “I have an idea. How about we stand in a circle and jerk off?” Nemzhar ran his mouth.

  “There’s an iron latch there,” Lena found herself explaining, stuck between two officers who got along as well as birds and cats, or two dogs trying to piss on the same tree.

  “Make way, little darling. I got this,” Rurik said, climbing down.

  Lena assumed the giant meant he ‘got’ the iron grate and not the actual crawling. He wouldn’t fit a single leg through the duct if the dimensions were comparable to 47’s systems. It wasn’t like Misha was making her look bad because she was already a laundress who boiled underwear in a cauldron, but she wanted to help and approached the captain when he was speaking to the breacher.

  The breacher strapped on his helmet and spoke to Misha about possibly going in through the battery dugout.

  Lena was waiting for the conversation to be over because Misha hadn’t acknowledged her when a blast flung her forward into the captain. The column of fire behind her reflected in his eyes, and she spun around in time to see the iron grate land on the cabin of the carrier, smash the roof, and burst out the windows.

  Then it rained chunks of meat, Rurik in bits. She was beginning to see why so many of the veterans didn’t eat red meat.

  “Fuck,” breathed a soldier.

  “This thing is a death trap,” said another.

  Lena couldn’t tell who was speaking because her ears rang.

  Rurik’s was the only death Nemzhar had cared about so far, and he handled it by acting as though it had been Misha’s fault, as though this whole trip had been the captain's idea rather than a direct order from Command and Control. He collected the pieces of his friend into an empty ammunition crate to bury him when they returned to 47.

  “Well, at least he’s with his family now,” Lena heard the lieutenant mumble. Rurik had lost his wife and two daughters to the war. He’d had their names tattooed on his chest.

  The bunkers were built to withstand surface drakon fire, not bombs or shelling, and sometime after dark the breacher unit was able to blow out the gate with directed explosives.

  There was no response from inside, not a hello, not hostile fire, nothing, and with the generators off it was a gaping black hole into the mountain.

  “Right,” said Misha, perhaps speaking to himself because no one had said anything.

  “Watch my six,” Nemzhar said to Oksana.

  “Got it,” she said. She and Alysa were going to stay outside to guard the exit, to signal if something went to shit.

  Nemzhar had asked Lena to take photographs and keep a written record of the events, the least she could do, and she followed the men in, staying at the back and close to the captain. The descent was dark and fear of the unknown beyond the few feet of torchlight unsettled her. As ridiculous as it was, because the stairwell beyond the ground floor where equipment and machinery were stored was narrow, space enough to fit only two people at the time, her imagination kept summoning a drakon waiting around the corner. The hair on the back of her neck prickled up as they descended deeper. She smelled death in the trapped air, days old death.

  The steps were laid with brick, but the walls were jagged as though they’d tunneled into a cave rather than a manmade structure.

  “Something died in here,” Sasha said. The two in front of him were careful with their steps, advancing slowly as they scanned for tripwires.

  Every little thing that glinted looked like drakon eyes to Lena and she thought she might throw up. She reached out and grabbed the hem of Misha’s shirt, the tough fabric of the army uniform familiar in her grip. She’d meant to comfort herself rather than make him turn but was glad when he gave her hand a firm squeeze. He felt warm, strong, and sure of himself.

  The bunker was many floors down, at least four, and comrades stayed behind on each level to clear it. Anton, Grusha, and Nemzhar were the first ones to break from the group. They had the most vital task of restoring power and establishing communications.

  Mercifully, the levels themselves weren’t vast, and men began calling out, “Clear,” as Misha, Lena, and Katya—she was a nurse—continued downward. They were looking for people, anyone who might still be alive. Katya carried her field suitcase, which was metal to keep vials from breaking, and the thing rattled because the woman was shaking too. It was the eerie silence, nothing but their own footsteps, breaths, and rats squeaking. And it was also the stench. Lena pulled down her sleeve and covered her mouth and nose. If they didn’t get the air circulating soon…

  Red marble balls on the floor, she’d thought, but they’d been rat eyes and the rodents scattered when Misha shone light on them. Lena knew electric torches had batteries that ran out, and a new type of fear besides claustrophobia emerged as she imagined the light dying and being stuck down here in the blind dark.

  Water dripped somewhere. Lena surprised herself by not screaming her head off when Katya grabbed her from behind, without cause, without warning. A rat had brushed her boots apparently, but this was how people shot at each other in the dark. Lena had Misha’s pistol, and the nurse had a field rifle.

  “You better give that to me,” Lena said, taking the rifle. The woman was more likely to shoot them in the back trying to get the rats than she was to find and kill an enemy… whatever that was down here.

  They were walking on empty cartridges. The little things carpeted the floor and rolled away with a jingle. The concrete walls were riddled with bullet holes but there were no bodies.

  Some furniture was piled in the corridor, metal doors screwed off the hinge and placed like shields. They’d had some type of last stand here and lost.

  ‘Mess Hall 4B’ the plaque on the wall read. Misha shone the torch into the hall, clicked his tongue, then said, “You girls better stay out here.”

  “You found them?” Lena asked.

  “Yeah,” was his answer.

  The power came on, the lamps flickering on, and the fans started with a deep hum.

  “Does anyone need help?” asked Katya with a small voice.

  “Not anymore,” said the captain.

  The nurse looked relieved and saddened at once.

  Without giving further orders, Misha stepped into the hall and Lena followed. She didn’t have a specific reason, it was just what she did.

  The upside down cross drawn with shit and blood was what she saw first. Maggots crawled on it. It was enormous, taking up a whole wall. Fallen, they were telling them who they were and claiming the carnage. Heads with their eyes dug out and tongues cut out were stacked on the long metal tables. Soldiers had their guts pulled out. A naked woman was propped up on a stool, her breasts cut off. A man in the captain’s uniform was impaled with a metal rod running from his rear and out through his mouth. His eyes had bulged out and though he looked young, all his hair had greyed.

  Lena set the camera on the corner of a table and walked out.

  She didn’t remember how she found her way out, but she was retching by the truck while Alysa laughed at her.

 

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