Red Holocaust

Chapter Four

The blind, mewing creature tied naked to the bed bore little resemblance to a human being.

Once it had been a farmer named Ivan Ivanovich. It had struggled broken-nailed for a pitiful existence in cruel fields of poisonous soil. It had been married to a wife who had died of a bleeding illness eight years back, leaving three squabbling children. Two of them were mutants, with grotesque facial disfigurements. One had a third, soft pineal eye, exposed and raw, weeping constantly in the center of his forehead.

Now there was only darkness.

Not the comfortable darkness of a cold night, with an iron stove glowing with heat and he and his family huddled together under blankets all in one huge bed.

"Not day... not night," he mumbled through his broken teeth. But Ivan Ivanovich couldn't hear his own words, because a sharp file had been thrust into his ears, bursting the delicate eardrums.

There had been no warning. Just the shaggy men, with some devilish women among them, looming out of the driven snow and the fading light. All with guns slung across their shoulders — real guns, not the battered muskets and old bolt-action rifles that the folk of Ozhbarchik could muster.

This band of guerrillas had visited them before. That time the butchers had stolen food and killed a villager who tried to resist them. This time, it seemed, the murderers were bent on killing all the villagers.

Most of the thirty-seven men of Ozhbarchik had fallen in a bloody hail of lead, massacred by the laughing strangers. The nineteen women and three surviving children were seized and held in several of the scattered huts. The cows were each shot with a single bullet through the skull. Ivan's two chickens were chased and caught with much merriment, decapitated, then thrown into a cauldron simmering over an open fire.

Ivan Ivanovich had been the chieftain of Ozhbarchik. His ownership of the pair of fowl had conferred that dubious honor on him. Now he was paying a monstrous price for that honor.

Before his eardrums were pierced, Ivan Ivanovich had heard the leader of the band, named Uchitel, ordering his followers to take what they wanted, roast the animals, eat their fill. He had warned his people to watch for concealed weapons. "A man may dine, yet feel his tripes spilled in his lap," he'd shouted.

There had been screaming; high, thin sounds, as the raiders took their pleasure with the women of the village; Ivan's sister had been taken in front of his eyes by three men at once, with others jostling in a queue behind, their breeches unlaced, and erect, hugely swollen penises thrusting ready.

He'd watched a man fail in his efforts to sodomize a woman then take out his anger by slitting her throat from ear to ear, cursing the dying woman as her blood fountained across his boots.

A huge woman with coarse skin had punched Ivan to the floor, holding him there with a muddied boot, while two other women cut away his clothes with their narrow-bladed knives. They had not been gentle, and his skin was streaming from a dozen shallow slashes from their weapons. They had mocked him as they took and bound him to the rude frame of his own bed, hands and feet pulled painfully apart in a great X. Blood trickled from beneath his broken nails from the tightness of the rawhide cords that bit into the skin at ankle and wrist.

He'd been conscious of the horrors all about him. One of his children had been butchered for refusing to use his tender mouth to pleasure a skinny killer. He'd smelled the scent of a huge fire outside and knew that some of the huts were being used for fuel to roast the slaughtered cattle. Gradually the screaming had died down. None of them had come to hurt him.

Not then. Not at first.

After an hour or so, the leader came to the bed and stared down at him. He wore a long coat made from the skin of a white bear, trimmed with soft sable. His eyes were a curious golden color, his mouth warm and friendly. Around his temples was a band of silver, a ruby at its center.

"This stinking hovel makes me want to vomit, old man. My good brothers and sisters may become sickened from being here. But we shall not stay long."

And he smiled down at Ivan Ivanovich. That was before the pain and the blackness, when Ivan still had a name and knew who he was.

The brutish woman came then, when everyone else was outside. The others called her Bizabraznia, the ugly one. Through the open door Ivan saw the bright flames as they danced and flared, caught the rich taste of the cooking meat, heard the devilish laughter. By then he supposed that everyone in the village was dead.

Bizabraznia, grimacing and farting, lowered her bulk to the side of the bed. He could smell her sour breath, the taint of kvass. The raiders had quickly found the kegs of the sour beer.

"The men enjoy their fucking, little grandfather," she said, reaching out with her broad hand and touching him beneath the chin. He tried to pull away, but the cords held him helpless. She smiled at his efforts, chided him.

Her fingers ran through his straggly beard and the gray hair matted with sweat on his chest. Lower and lower she touched him, bringing her face nearer to his. The little eyes, buried in fat like a suckling pig's, came nearer. Her lips opened and she kissed him, the stubble on her cheeks and chin scraping against his flesh.

For a second, he tried again to resist her foulness, but she gripped his shrunken penis, whispering, "Kiss me sweet, brother, else I'll tug this off your belly easy as wringing a chick's neck. Real sweet kiss, like you and your good wife relish."

Her lips pressed to his, and he fought to respond, closing his eyes against the vileness. Her hand caressed him, rousing him. Her mouth tasted of the stolen food that once belonged to the good people of Ozhbarchik.

She reclined, releasing him, fumbling with her leather breeches, dropping them over her pallid, wrinkled thighs. Bizabraznia belched, putting a hand to her mouth in mock politeness.

"Schchi da kasha pishchna nasha," she laughed.

"The only food is cabbage soup and gruel." Somehow the child's verse was a foul obscenity on her chapped lips, and he nearly threw up. Again he restrained himself, knowing that this monstrous harridan would kill him if he didn't please her.

The woman heaved herself up and squatted over his thighs, grinning, trying to bring him to erection. "Not much for you, is there? Not in the way of a man, eh? There's a good... Something's stirring, I swear. Not much of a fucking worm, but better than... ah."

The ultimate nightmare was that she succeeded. Despite everything that had passed, Ivan Ivanovich became more roused than he had for many impotent years. He thrust up against her, grinding his hips against her muscular buttocks. She reached a gasping climax, accompanied by the cheers of the dozen or so bandits that had come in from the bitterly cold night to watch the show.

Bizabraznia heaved herself off him, depriving him of the small pleasure of his own orgasm, sitting down again with a disgusting sucking sound.

"Please..." he said.

Her eyes narrowed and she slapped him brutally across the face, nearly knocking him unconscious. He could taste his own blood from a cut lip.

"'Please,'" she mocked. "I use you. That's all, you little shit. Honor, for him, isn't it, brothers?" Her appeal brought a chorus of agreement from the men. "If there's time after Uchitel's done with you, grandfather, I might come again and use you some more."

When the leader returned to the hut, the others crept out like beaten curs. Ivan Ivanovich looked up from eyes made puffy with weeping, seeing the great fire from the ruby on Uchitel's silver headband seeming to fill the room. Now that the others were gone, the fear was greater.

"Is there silver in this dung heap, old man?" His voice was courteous, not rough like the rest of the raiders'. "I see you've been hurt." He touched the cuts across Ivan's chest and thighs where the blood had dried. "Tell me about any gold or silver. Or guns. Or more food. Tell me, old man. Come, sing me a song that will make me smile, and you can go free and live."

Ivan's mouth opened and a single word crept out. "Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing."

"I am not a common bandit. I have the art of reading and writing, old man. I have books. Books from before the great winter. I have books that show where the towns stood, with pictures of the clothes that men and women wore. Do you hear me? Open your eyes."

The voice snapped at Ivan Ivanovich. It touched the dark places of his mind with a shudder.

Past and present ebbed and flowed.

It was a dream and soon he'd wake. He'd be warm against the rutting body of the little Yevgenia. Despite the cleft palate and the skin ailment that made her face like the scaly back of a fish, she could come closest to stirring him. The memory of the pain was only a shade of the blackness. He'd wake and it would all be done. Even the man Uchitel who...

"Wake up and look at me. Use your eyes." To Ivan, the words were senseless, as was the laugh that followed them. "I tell you I have books and I can read them. Even a book that tells me how to speak with the Americans across the ice river east of here. Think of that. But I talk and you listen. Now you must talk and Uchitel will listen."

"What?"

"The gold and the silver you have hidden. A book of old times, far before the long winter, tells that peasants — filth like you — hoard riches. You pretend to be poor. But you are not. What of that?"

Ivan Ivanovich was delirious, hardly knowing how he forced out a reply. Everything was blurred and shimmering, like objects seen through the glowing beat above a stove.

"Nothing."

"No?"

"Nyet,nyet, nyet."

Uchitel smiled then and stood up. "You will meet Pechal."

"Sorrow?"

"Yes, sorrow. He is well named, grandfather. He takes his only pleasure from torture. You will speak with him."

"But I swear, I know nothing, sir. Please, my lord. Nothing. By Saint Gregory I swear it."

"Swear by all the saints you want. Only the truth about your secret stores will spare your life."

Uchitel didn't truly believe that such a stinking hamlet as Ozhbarchik could possibly have anything worth hiding. But his men liked to dream. Sometimes they had actually discovered little caches of arms or a few antique coins of worthless copper.

The voice at Ivan's elbow was gentle, like the voice of a clerk politely requesting information. "Shall I ask him for his secrets, Uchitel?"

"Yes, Pechal. I'll wait and watch."

Pechal's appearance fitted his voice. He wore gray furs, with matching gauntlets and hood. Most of the band were bearded; he was as clean shaven as Uchitel himself. Pechal, the Sorrow, had pale soft cheeks and a rosebud of a mouth that was permanently pursed in disapproval of the world and its evil. He resembled a priest who had spent all his life in a closed seminary, speaking only of good works and following the pathways of the Lord.

Ivan stared up at him, seeing all of this. Pechal leaned over him, and the old man saw the eyes.

They were like chips of wind-washed agate frozen in the eternal ice of the farthest north.

"Tell me now and all will be well."

"Nyet. There is nothing. Please. On my wife's grave, I swear, nothing."

It began.

Gradually Ivan Ivanovich disappeared within the pain of the probing and cutting and rending of his body.

Pechal crooned to him constantly, like a father keeping a baby amused while he bathed it in warm water. At first Ivan's pain had been a light, fluttering thing, like touching a hot iron momentarily or feeling the prick of a needle that hurt a moment, then ceased.

"Tell Pechal of your hoard, grandfather. This is nothing to you. Ah, that made you start, didn't it?"

With a slow delicacy, Pechal forced the point of a knife down beneath a toenail, down to the quick, slowly thrusting and scraping until it seemed to Ivan Ivanovich that the marrow of his bones was being rubbed raw.

"You have your hearing, your sight, your voice. Even this." He touched Ivan's limp penis with the cold edge of a dagger. "You can keep them all, old man. Tell Pechal everything and live."

Nothing.

Pechal lit a tallow candle with a match. Then Ivan felt scorching heat on the inside of his elbows, then behind his knees in the soft crinkled flesh. Ivan smelled his own flesh burning. His body tensing upward, he pulled at the cords so hard that they cut into his bloodied, swollen skin.

From outside came the smell of roasting meat and loud, bellowing laughter. Pechal stopped for a moment and stood, stretching his arms. "It is tiring, this asking of questions, is it not?" he asked the old man, "Spare us both and answer me."

Uchitel was drinking from an earthenware mug of ryabinovka, a fiery vodka flavored with ashberries. Muttering something to Pechal, he rose and walked out, leaving the door open so that light from the fires outside the hut capered across the walls.

"I believe you, grandfather," whispered the torturer. "But if I relent, then Uchitel will flay the skin from my living body. I have seen him do it."

Ivan Ivanovich slipped painfully into madness. The agony deepened until he lost touch with it. Pechal pressed hard against Ivan's eyes with the balls of his thumbs, making the old man scream.

"Your eyes pain you. I can stop them hurting. Here."

From a shelf on the far side of the stove, he took a carved box of black powder that Ivanovich used for his ancient musket. Holding the lids open, he piled a neat little heap on each eye. The powder felt gritty, like having specks of sand in his eyes.

"Now?"

"Mercy," sobbed Ivan Ivanovich. He might as well have begged the north wind or the layers of ice that were forming over the corpses of his friends.

He heard, actually heardthe sizzle of his own eyes burning when the guerrilla touched the candle flame to the black powder. His nostrils were filled with the stench.

When Pechal burst his eardrums, Ivan felt only the stabbing pain. The lack of sound was somehow a relief, as though it was the start of a complete sensory withdrawal from the pain. Cutting the tendons in his jaw, burning his nipples, slicing his genitals from his body, leaving only the weeping, raw wound — none of that registered with the poor creature that had been Ivan Ivanovich. Day and night, hot and cold were gone. After that, it was over.

He still breathed. His heart still pounded desperately. But his mind was dead. His head rocked from side to side and a toneless, faint whimpering sound was all that came from his peeled lips. Uchitel returned and stood alongside Pechal, looking down emotionlessly at the old man's naked, ravaged body. His cold yellow eyes registered the blood, the raised blisters, the scorched eye sockets, the dreadful mute evidence of the castration.

"You have taken him too far, too fast, Pechal," he said, quietly. "Now he will tell us nothing."

"Da, I fear that's true."

Uchitel shook his head. "The meat is nearly cooked, and all the animals are butchered and jointed. We can sleep here tonight and move on in the morning."

"Why not stay here for a week or so? The snows are passing. Every time we move, it is farther north, farther east. Soon we shall be at the sea."

"Yes, Pechal. Soon we shall be at the sea. If your whining continues, then I shall pin you out on the ice for the white bears to feed on."

"But..."

The tall, lean man shook his head. "You should learn to hold your tongue, my brother Sorrow, or I will rip it from its roots. You know why we move on."

"What the merchant told you?"

"Yes. Now, take this offal out and slit its throat. I am tired, Pechal."

"Did?.."

"What? You are making me weary, brother."

Despite the chilling note of warning, the other man continued. "Did he say where they were? Or how far behind us?"

For a moment, Uchitel stared at him in silence, oblivious of the dying man on the bed behind him.

"Pechal... the merchant said he had heard that there was a band of militia hunting us down."

"But did he say where?"

"They were bastard whores' sons, spawned in middens, from the port of Magadan, where, they say, there are houses and many stores and mongrel codsuckers who sit with their thumbs buried in their own asses while they send their puppies on horseback to hunt down men such as you and I, my brother. He said that they had heard we robbed and plundered and raped and burned and slaughtered. His very words, from what I recall of his blubbering. This so-called governmentthat believes in some party..."

He spat out the two words as if they soiled his lips. Pechal nodded. "And they will chase us down. Then we shall kill them." He clenched his hand, soft as a woman's, yet with long, curved nails of horn. "Fool."

"What?"

"You are a fool. These will not be puking peasants like this old shit here on the bed. They will have good guns. No. It is best that we run."

Bizabraznia came staggering in, beer running down her chins, over her open blouse, trickling across her huge, veined breasts. In one hand she held a great smoking haunch of meat, the outside charred and black, blood leaking from its center.

She sniggered at Ivan Ivanovich. "Can I have some sport with him?"

"No. Pechal will cut his neck open outside, and then I can get some sleep. We must all sleep. We have a dawn start tomorrow."

"Then we run from these militia boys, eh?"

Uchitel nodded. "Aye. Lead them far enough, and they'll give up the chase. Then we can return to our hunting grounds once more."

"Where do we run?" asked Urach, standing in the doorway.

"That way," replied Uchitel, pointing east.

"There is nothing there but the frozen sea."

He smiled. "We shall cross it where the strait is narrowest, no more than ninety kilometers wide."

"To the other side?" said Urach, wonderingly.

"Yes, brother. On the morrow we head for America."