Red Holocaust

Chapter Six

"How do the wolves survive, Uchitel?" asked Bochka, the Barrel, astride the largest horse in the party.

"They eat the weak."

"If there are no weak, brother?"

Uchitel peered through the gap between his hood and the scarf around his nose and mouth. "Then they eat each other, Bochka." Raising his voice so the others could hear him, he added, "And if we fall on evil times and must devour each other, I take the leader's right of roasting Bochka all for myself."

A ripple of laughter ran back along the column until it vanished in the murk of wind-blown snow. Since the raiders had left Ozhbarchik two days back, the weather had been deteriorating. Three times Uchitel had ordered emergency shelters to be dug in the packed snow; they used the long-bladed saws that they carried for just such a purpose. It took less than five minutes to throw up a wall of large snow bricks six feet high to protect them all from the lethal wind. During the rare calms, Uchitel had gazed back, trying to spot any sign of pursuit. Away to the north, he could make out the smoke-tipped cone of one of the many new volcanoes that had appeared at the time of the wars. The snow around it was tinted gold from the sulfur fumes, and there was no sign of any living thing in all that dreadful wilderness. Nothing except the huge mutated white bears that occasionally loomed from the blizzard, threatening the column.

The bears... and the wolves — lean gray shapes with slavering jaws and thrusting muzzles, slinking at the corners of a man's vision. Several times over the years they had lost men to the wolves. It was one of the reasons that everyone feared becoming a straggler.

Only the day before a man had gotten left behind. It had happened to Nul, a quiet, gray-haired man whose nickname was Zero because it often seemed as though he wasn't there. His pony had stumbled over a twisted piece of metal; it was a large mortar shell with tail fins intact, a relic of the missile testing that had once occurred in that area, which was just across the frozen expanse of the Bering Strait from North America. A deep gash in the pony's right foreleg had exposed the tendons, making the pony limp badly. Nul knew the rules as well as anyone. Move slower than the group, and you stayed behind. But there was always a chance of catching up. A man riding alone moved farther and faster than a party.

There was always a chance of catching up again. All he'd have to do was stay alive.

"Fucking bastard! Cocksucking shit-swallowing bastard fucker!"

Nul punched the stumbling pony on the side of the head, making it stagger and nearly fall again. Blood was drying on the streaked flanks where he'd lashed the pony with the buckle end of his belt. He'd hoped that by now he'd be rejoining the band. But the shaggy animal seemed to go slower and slower. Now darkness was less than an hour off, and the band was at least five kilometers ahead. If Uchitel persisted with his plan to cross the ice and invade what had once been America, they could begin crossing the strait in less than a week, maybe in only four or five days. At this rate, Nul figured he'd be more than a day behind by the time they reached the strait.

It was time to stop, build a shelter and get a fire going. Their pyrotabs were often the difference between living and dying. Once lit, one of them would generate enough heat to burn brightly for three hours. Nul had about forty of them in his saddlebags.

That should be enough. If he didn't catch up with the others before they crossed the ice, then he might as well kiss the barrel of the 9 mm Makarov goodbye.

Urach squatted by his leader in the lee of the big snow wall. The flames of the fires fought bravely against the swirling sleet. From beyond the circle of light, they heard the keening of the wolves.

"Feedin' on Nul?" he said.

"That's the cry of hunger. When that stops, then maybe they will have found Nul."

"Britva will lose toes after falling through that pool this morning."

"He can use his own razor. It'll teach the imbecile a lesson. Trying to gallop when there is no trail! There may even be live mines this close to the ocean. I have read how they sowed these hills. MZDs and AKSs all over the place."

"What if the Americans are waiting for us, Uchitel? Then?.."

The reply was a silent smile.

"You think there is no danger?" asked Urach, holding out his hands to the flames.

"I know there is no danger. If they were a powerful country, do you not think they would have overrun this land by now?"

"I suppose..."

"Of course. Brother, go and fetch me some of that fine meat we took from that dung heap of a village. I am hungered." Then, as Urach was leaving, Uchitel added, "The Communists have gone from this country, Urach. And the Fascists have gone from over there." He pointed to the east. "They have lost, as they always will. Only we remain. As we always will." And he began to laugh.

The pony was growing weaker rather than stronger. It was impossible to ride it, and Nul plodded alongside, cursing in an endless monotone. Like Uchitel, he carried a Kalashnikov AKM and every couple of hours he was forced to fire off a short burst to chase a pack of wolves away.

But they returned, circling closer, bellies low to the ground, their gray-white coats melding with the sulfur-stained ice.

The snow had eased, and the wind had also died down. At least he was no longer in immediate danger of freezing to death. The middle-aged man trudged relentlessly eastward, his face set to the ground, one foot following the other, trailing the rest of the party. Every step left him a little farther behind.

Apart from checking the endlessly weaving pattern of the wolves, Nul never looked back.

High cliffs stood like jagged teeth above the packed gray-green ice of the Bering Strait. The sea was covered in a dense mist, overlaid with volcanic fumes. The air was heavy and caught at the back of the throat, producing coughs and reddened eyes.

Somewhere beyond them was what had once been called Alaska. Now it had no name at all.

In the year 2000, half a million people had been scattered over the six hundred thousand square miles of this inhospitable land. Now there were less than a couple of thousand people in the whole barren waste. To Uchitel and his band, the country that lay hidden in the acrid fog was the promised land, containing legendary treasures and riches. The books all said so.

"We go that way, Narodniki," shouted Uchitel, waving his Kalashnikov above his head like a crusader's sword.

There was a bellow of support from the men and women at his heels, the Narodniki.

Uchitel had found the name in the ruins of what had been the central library of the Communist Party amid the wreckage of nuked Yakutsk. He had come across a passage about the populist movement in old Russia. Over two hundred years before, in the late eighteen hundreds, there were terrorist and guerrilla organizations with names like Black Repartition, and Land and Liberty. But the parent of them all was the Narodniki.

It was a name that came to mean terror and blood, a name that appealed to the dark side of Uchitel's nature, which truly had no light side.

"We camp here in the cleft of the rocks that will keep us from the worst of the wind." Above him there was a deafening crack of thunder that made some of the ponies rear and whinny. There was a searing glow of deepest purple from chem clouds that raced hundreds of miles high.

"And tomorrow?" asked Bizabraznia, lashing at her horse with a whip of braided wires.

"Down there, and across into the land of the brave and the home of many, many dead."

Nul was feeling happier. The pony's fetlock was mending, and in the last twenty-four hours he'd made better time than he had for days. A biting fog had come down from the direction of the icy sea, making progress difficult, but from the fog's salty taste, he guessed that he couldn't be too far off.

The dried beef was lasting well. In one of the huts in Ozhbarchik he'd found some delicious golubtsyand had taken enough to last him weeks. The thought of the food safely wrapped in his bag made him hungry, and he reached in, taking one of the cabbage rolls stuffed with fried turnip, biting voraciously into it. The jolting of the pony made him choke on a mouthful. Cursing at the animal, tugging brutally at the reins, he brought it to a dead stop.

"Better," he said, his voice muffled by the food. The fog had drifted away to the south, and visibility was unusually good. He stood in the stirrups, wondering whether he might make out the rest of the Narodniki.

Uchitel urged his stallion on. The sea cliffs of Alaska were towering ahead of them, snow tipped, only a hundred paces away. Birds resembling gray gulls, but with a vastly larger wingspan, circled and wheeled from their eyries, their echoing cries like the moaning of long-drowned sailors.

Behind him in single file, came twenty-eight men and women, their horses advancing through the crumpled sheets of jagged ice, watching for the softer contours and crystalline outcrops that might hide gaps in the surface and for hidden crevasses through which a man and horse might easily slide, vanishing completely and irrevocably into the sucking waters.

For the hundredth time that day, Uchitel turned in his saddle, feeling a crick in his neck from continually looking back. Once they were across, they would be safe. He had never heard any legend or read any account of any Russian crossing this narrow shifting neck of ice. If it were true that they were being pursued, then the land ahead of them promised safety.

Nul raised the last mouthful of the golubtsyto his lips.

Then he was lying on his back in the trampled snow, staring blankly up at the dull sky.

There had been no sense of time passing. No sense of falling.

No pain.

The only feeling was shock; a sensation that someone had managed to creep up unseen and strike him in the middle of the chest with a huge mallet. He was aware that his feet were kicking and twitching. It felt odd, as though his feet belonged to someone else. With gloves that seemed to be filled with iron, Nul carefully touched the numb center where the hammerblow had come.

He suddenly felt very cold.

A full fourteen hundred paces to the southwest, the tall sniper lowered the Samozaridnyia Vintovka Dragunova rifle. The rimmed 7.62 mm bullet had done its work. Through the PSO-1 telescopic sight he'd seen it rip explosively into the target's chest. The man wasn't going to move very far with a wound like that.

"Good shooting, Corporal Solomentsov. An extra ration of food this month from the grateful party."

The speaker was about thirty, with a long, drooping mustache that hid a pockmarked chin. He stood five inches below six feet and wore a gray uniform of thick material, with long boots of tanned hide. Removing his high fur cap, which bore a single silver circle at the front, he revealed a totally bald head.

"Thank you, Major Zimyanin," said Solomentsov, giving a click of his heels and a sharp bow.

"Holster the Dragunov rifle, Corporal. You know what ice can do to the sight. Last time you left it uncovered the frost cracked the bulb of the reticle lamp."

"Yes, Major," the corporal replied, taking the long gun and pulling a cloth shroud over the neat sight.

"And send Tracker Aliev to me."

The tracker was less than five feet tall, with the slanted eyes that revealed his heritage. He had the waddling gait of a Mongolian who'd spent most of his life astride a barrel-chested pony. A thick woollen scarf was wrapped about the lower part of his olive-skinned face.

"Aliev, do they still move on toward the sea? Be sure."

The rest of the hundred-strong militia unit kept well clear of the tracker. Some of them crossed themselves when they went near him. His skill at scenting the enemy was so developed that there were those who said he was a witch. As he approached the head of the column, past the depression where Solomentsov had knelt to fire, he unwound his scarf. Though Major Zimyanin had seen him many times, he still fought hard to restrain a shudder.

The nukes used by the Americans in this part of once-mighty Russia had been awesome in their power. Aliev came from a family that had always lived near the Kamchatka Peninsula, and his face was the stigma of his background.

Most of the lower jaw was missing. Where the nose should have been, there was only a large hole fringed with damp pink tissue like rotting lace. The mouth gaped, with a few yellowed teeth left jutting crookedly from the upper jaw. Aliev had no way of closing his mouth, and all food had to be sucked into his gullet.

Across the dark cavern of his nasal orifice, Aliev had a veil of crumpled skin as thin as the wing of a moth. It moved raggedly in and out in time with his raucous breathing. To stand close was to inhale the odors from the entrance of hell, as Aliev only accepted meat that was rotting and crawling with larvae. He would bury his snout in it and devour it ravenously and noisily.

Now he dropped to his hands and knees, closing his eyes, laying his nose to the snow, sniffing. The others watched from a distance, each man holding the muzzle of his horse to quiet it.

Then, as he had a thousand times, Zimyanin wished that he could be transferred to a militia unit far, far to the west. There they had petroleum in some quantity and trucks. He knew because he had seen pictures of them. Soon, he was told, his cavalry would be given trucks. He had heard it several times from his superiors in the last three years. If the party told you something was true, then it was.

"Well?"

The face turned to him, and he nearly vomited at the nauseous panting, sniffing noise that Aliev made in his eagerness.

The brutish head nodded.

Aliev was a wonderful tracker, but he had drawbacks. Apart from the horrific look of the man, he could neither speak nor read or write, which made communication difficult and taught others to avoid unnecessary questions.

"The same ones? Yes. How many days gone? Five? Four? Four. Good." He gestured with a gloved hand for the creature to return to his place in the patrol.

Four days journey ahead of them, twenty-eight men and women seemed to be preparing to cross the strait and move into what had been America. Zimyanin's heart thrilled in his chest. He knew that no unit of the party's militia had ever been this close to the enemy's land. They could not refuse him promotion if he... But this was leaping a wall before he had even mounted his horse. Nobody would applaud the singer just for clearing his throat.

But to catch and destroy the band of slaughtering butchers ahead would be so good. He had been trailing Uchitel and his marauders for weeks now, even closing in at times. But if they crossed the ice river, then his band of militia might be seen. Perhaps a camp for a day?

Perhaps the body of the man they'd just shot would yield a clue, Zimyanin's head was becoming cold so he replaced his fur cap and walked thoughtfully toward his horse. There was much to think about.

Confused, Nul pulled off his gauntlets and again felt the numb patch in the middle of his chest. He felt chilled, but his fingers encountered a sticky wet warmth. Disbelievingly, he painfully held his hand in front of his eyes. It was dripping with blood, as though it had been thrust into the belly of a slaughtered beast,

"Is this?.." But his words faded.

As he lay on his side, his eyes caught the great lake of crimson growing around him. The numbness was sliding away and there was a dull ache. He touched himself again, and his fingers could feel the brittle sharpness of shattered ribs.

He could dimly make out a group of people. At least a mile away, they were mere dots against the blurring whiteness. "Uchitel?.." he said. It was good that friends came to watch you. Even that heartless bastard Uchitel. He'd come back for him.

Uchitel’s horse galloped off the jagged edges of the sea ice onto the wind-swept boulders of the beach. "I claim the old land of America in the name of the Narodniki. In the name of Uchitel," shouted the rider.

Some seventy miles away, Nul lay still, eyes closed, locked into the mystery of his own passing.