Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

CHAPTER SEVEN

1905 EST, 16th November 1987

Eugene’s Apartment, New York City

“HE’LL BE LONG gone,” Mongol muttered as they trudged up the stairs. Vadim didn’t feel a thing. There was no breath to feel out of, no aching muscles. He was aware of his body, but it felt muted somehow.

“Where’s he going to go?” Gulag asked as they passed a long, smeared, bloody hand mark on the wall. Vadim caught shards of glistening skull on the rail. They had found a body at the base of the stairwell, far below. Vadim knew they were clutching at straws, trying to find a reason to continue existing. He had always prided himself on being clearheaded, regardless of the situation, but now it was a real struggle just to think straight. He at least should have told Princess and New Boy to make their own way; although perhaps their best chance at survival was with the dead members of the squad protecting them.

Skull was on point, Vadim following him. He had Gulag’s rifle now; Gulag had kept Farm Boy’s. The Muscovite had carved various obscenities into the wooden stock of his AK-74. They had split Farm Boy’s grenades and ammunition between them. The Fräulein had taken the big Georgian’s disposable RPG-18 to replace the one she’d used on the SWAT van.

Princess and New Boy were still some way behind them. He couldn’t blame them. He wouldn’t have wanted to be trapped in enclosed quarters with his dead squadmates either.

Skull reached Eugene’s floor and opened the door a crack, bringing the sound of moaning and the scrape of fingers against wood. Skull glanced out into the corridor and signalled that the source of the noise was round the corner. Vadim indicated for everyone to switch to suppressed weapons. Princess unsheathed her Dragunov, attached the suppressor and swapped out the magazine for subsonic bullets. The rest of them slung their weapons and drew their Stechkins, screwing suppressors into the barrels. All except Gulag, but Vadim didn’t have the capacity to deal with the criminal’s bullshit today.

Vadim followed Skull through the door, Gulag right behind them. There was red on the walls, on the light, meat on the floor. They passed broken doors to bloodstained apartments and rounded the corner. There were six zombies: four of them pawing at Eugene’s door with bloodied hands, and another two trying to get into the next apartment. A partially-eaten corpse lay on the floor.

Skull’s Stechkin coughed and there was a small explosion of bone, dry flesh and brain. Vadim fired and his target hissed as the bullet caught it in the shoulder. This should be easier, you’re not even breathing, he thought. He adjusted aim and fired again, and the zombie slid to the ground.

The others had noticed, faces raised like wild animals scenting prey. As Vadim passed Eugene’s neighbour’s door he heard sobbing from inside. Skull fired again, and another zombie dropped. They were on their feet now, charging. Vadim took his time, squeezed the trigger, and another one tumbled to the floor. A hole appeared in the head of the second-to-last zombie, and then Gulag pushed past them, sending Vadim’s shot wide. He caught a glimpse of Skull’s angry face as Gulag sidestepped the charging corpse and suddenly yanked the thing backwards off its feet. Vadim only realised what Gulag had done when the Muscovite started to saw at the zombie’s neck with his garrotte. Three piano strings with diamonds intertwined in them, to saw through the victim’s fingers if they managed to get them under the garrotte, as the zombie had.

“Shh!” Gulag soothed as he sawed through fingers and into the neck. Gulag had won the garrotte in a card game, from a member of the Bulgarian Committee for State Security’s Service 7. Vadim had always been surprised that Gulag hadn’t just fenced the diamonds. Instead, he’d used the garrotte to saw the heads off mujahideen sentries and then balance them back on their necks for their comrades to find. Vadim heard the spinal cord crack, the sound of the wire saw grating through bone. Blood seeped from the wound but didn’t spurt. Gulag cried out, exultant, as the head came off.

“Don’t do that again,” Skull whispered, still covering up the hall. Vadim heard two shots from Princess’s Dragunov round the corner and the thump of two bodies hitting the ground.

“Or what?” Gulag asked, making a smile out of his facial wounds. Vadim felt eyes on him, and glanced back to see the Fräulein staring at him.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice, American, from the apartment next to Eugene’s: the source of the sobbing. Like Eugene’s apartment, the door was apparently strong enough to withstand the dead tearing through the building. Gulag strode over to the door and banged on it.

“Kill yourself! There’s no hope out here!” he shouted. There was a startled cry, followed by more sobbing.

“It’s unlikely she speaks Russian,” Mongol pointed out.

“Someone’s in there,” Skull said, nodding towards Eugene’s door. He fired another shot into the partially-eaten corpse on the floor, to be sure.

Vadim moved to the door and knocked on it.

“Eugene,” he called. “It’s us, let us in.” He just heard laughing. “Eugene, open the door now.”

Gulag shoved him aside and hammered on the door. Vadim felt his rage rising; he found himself staring at New Boy, down by the corner of the corridor, as he sought to control himself.

“Open the door, you fucking KGB cunt! Or we’ll blast it open and cut off your feet, let you bleed!”

Vadim managed to control himself, and once more found the Fräulein watching him. The door opened a fraction and Gulag pushed hard against it. A chain snapped, and the door knocked into someone on the other side. Vadim followed Gulag in. Eugene was lying on the floor, scrabbling for a snub-nosed .38 revolver. Gulag put the boot in hard as Vadim reached down and picked up the .38, noticing with distaste that it was nickel-plated, with mother-of-pearl grips. He opened the cylinder and emptied out the bullets.

“Do you think we can make any more noise?” the Fräulein asked as she and Skull pushed past, weapons at the ready, to check the rest of the apartment.

“That’s enough,” Vadim told the Muscovite, who was trying to stamp on Eugene, now curled up in a ball. Gulag ignored him.

“Gulag!” Vadim very rarely raised his voice. It was still enough to get the other man’s attention. Mongol was now in the doorway.

“Fuck’s sake!” Eugene muttered from the ground. “Fuckin’ kicking me, man!” He sounded angry, but not, Vadim noted, all that afraid.

“What, you think you’re still a captain?” Gulag demanded, turning on Vadim. “You think any of that matters, now?”

Eugene sat up, laughing at them; he didn’t seem to be the pants-pissing wreck they’d left a few hours before. Then Gulag turned to deliver another kick, and Eugene got his first good look at the walking corpse standing over him. He started scrabbling backwards across the floor, Gulag stalking after him.

“What the fuck! You’re dead, why are you talking, you’re just fucking zombies now! Holy shit, you’re going to eat me!” Now he was frightened. Gulag yanked him to his feet. The spy was white.

“I’m going to hurt you so much. I’m going to take my time. Make you a woman, keep you alive as I slice bits off and eat them in front of your face. Fucking understand me?”

The shot narrowly missed Gulag’s head; a small hole appeared in the window beyond him.

In the stunned silence that followed, Vadim lowered the rifle and met Gulag’s eyes.

“The next bullet I will put in your head,” he told him. “Let him go. Now.”

Gulag kept hold of Eugene. “You know I have guns as well, right?” he asked.

“Try and use them,” the Fräulein told him. She didn’t exactly have her light machine gun pointed at the Muscovite, but she was making her point.

“We’re all angry, we all want answers,” Vadim told him. “We can’t get them if you beat him to death.”

“You need to calm down, Gulag,” Mongol said over his shoulder from the doorway.

“Yeah, man, you need to chill, listen to your—” Eugene started.

“Shut up.” Vadim’s voice was like ice. The spy knew enough to be quiet. Gulag threw Eugene down on the sofa, and Vadim spotted a large, mostly-empty bottle of Jack Daniels and a huge pile of cocaine on the table. It might account for some of Eugene’s newfound bravery; but Vadim was pretty sure the KGB agent had played them. He was only now starting to work out what must be going on.

“Mongol, see if Princess and New Boy are prepared to join us.”

GULAG WAS GLARING at Vadim as Eugene did another line of coke. At this juncture, Vadim didn’t see what difference it would make, beyond making the spy more talkative. It was clear that Eugene understood how narrow and unpleasant his future options were and was pretty much past caring. Princess and New Boy remained by the door to the apartment.

“What was the plan? Drink and snort yourself into oblivion and then put a bullet in your head?” Vadim asked.

“Pretty much,” Eugene said, taking a belt of Jack Daniels.

“I don’t think much matters anymore. Do I need to threaten you, or are you happy to speak to us?” Vadim asked. Eugene was sat on the sofa now, the dead commandos standing around him.

“No,” Eugene nodded towards Gulag. “I think your road-kill friend here has made his position quite clear.” Gulag actually growled at him. “You all look like shit, by the way; I mean really disgusting.” Gulag took a step towards him, but the Fräulein put a restraining hand on his chest.

“You’re a superb actor,” Vadim said.

“It’s the pissing myself. To guys like you, shitting yourself is a fight-or-flight response, maybe I can’t help it; but pissing yourself? That’s cowardly, beneath you.” He looked at the Fräulein. “Unmanly.”

Dead eyes stared back at him.

“You set us up,” Mongol growled.

Eugene turned to look at him. “Grow up,” he told him, and Mongol tensed. “You were sacrificed for the good of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” Then he laughed, as though he didn’t believe it himself.

“You can’t win a nuclear war,” the Fräulein said quietly.

“You can if there’s nobody around to retaliate,” he told her. Then he did another line. His eyelids flickered, and for a moment Vadim thought he was going to pass out.

“The virus was a first strike weapon,” Vadim said. He’d worked that much out. “America would be too busy dealing with the dead in their streets.”

“They’d still press the button when they realised who’d done this, when the nukes started falling,” Mongol pointed out. The big medic was clearly thinking about his extended family back home in Mongolia. Not for the first time, Vadim felt it would have been better if the Spetsnaz only recruited orphans like him. Of course, the KGB generally got to the orphanages and asylums first.

“Not if there’s no-one around to press the button,” Vadim said.

Eugene lit a cigarette and nodded, pointing at him.

“It was a decapitation strike wasn’t it?” Vadim continued. “I’m guessing you made sure the infection reached NORAD and the White House?”

“And any silo we could manage, and some other strategic targets: the Pentagon, Fort Meade, military bases…”

“And of course civilian population centres, like…”

“New York.” Eugene was grinning at Vadim. Vadim’s expression didn’t change, but he could have killed Eugene there and then.

“Limited nuclear strikes to cripple the country’s infrastructure, make any response to the virus that much more difficult,” Vadim said quietly. “And then we roll into Europe and the Middle East. NATO’s crippled, and US soldiers in Europe will be more concerned with what’s happening at home.”

“The British, the French, they have missiles,” the Fräulein added. “Bombers, submarines.”

“The British and the French bases would have been attacked by your brethren,” Eugene countered. “Bombers can be intercepted. And—”

“And the sub fleet went to sea in wolfpacks hunting NATO and SEATO subs,” Vadim said, remembering the rumours at Rostock. “But that’s not foolproof.”

“No,” Eugene admitted. “Russia will have been hit. There are still tactical devices in play. It will get messy.”

“The virus will spread,” Mongol put in. Vadim glanced at Gulag. The Muscovite was staring at Eugene; not at his face, at his neck.

“It was only used on America,” Eugene told him.

“I don’t think you understand how viruses work,” the medic said.

“You’ve murdered an entire continent. Not just the imperialists; we have allies in South and Central America,” the Fräulein pointed out. Eugene sagged on the sofa. He grabbed at the Jack Daniels and emptied the rest of it before turning to face the Fräulein.

“First of all, I haven’t done shit,” he told her. The phrase was presumably an Americanism, it sounded odd in Russian. “I’m just a tiny cog and a lot of what I’m telling you is supposition, because guess what? I wasn’t told much either. But I mean really, how fucking naive are you? Did you not know you were here to spread chaos and terror? You think there’s a difference between this and nerve gas, a nuke?”

“Yes,” the Fräulein told him. “I do think there’s a difference between dying in a flash of nuclear fire and being eaten to death by a loved one, only to be cursed to rise again.”

“Listen to yourself,” Eugene scoffed. “Sentimental hypocrites, you’re just pissed off you got infected.” Vadim was keeping an eye on Gulag, making sure he didn’t kill Eugene before they found out what they needed to know.

“That was the point, wasn’t it?” They all turned to look at New Boy, standing by the door. Vadim almost wished the younger man hadn’t drawn attention to himself and Princess, and the smell of fresh meat he associated with them. “That’s why we had all the ammunition and grenades in the world but no body armour, no other equipment. You wanted us to make bodies for the virus.”

“Because you placed the canister in the locker and then reported us to the police,” Vadim added. Eugene didn’t say anything.

“Son of a whore,” Gulag said quietly. It wasn’t an insult he used often; Gulag’s own mother had been a prostitute. The gangster drew his knife and took a step toward Eugene, who edged away from him.

“Wait,” Vadim said. Gulag hesitated, but the captain could see he wasn’t going to listen for very much longer. “Why do we retain our intelligence, our personalities? Why aren’t we mindless, like the others?” Eugene was glancing warily between Gulag and Vadim. He kept an eye on the Muscovite as he leaned down to the glass table and snorted another line of cocaine.

“Sorry. You guys have been very patient with me, but I can tell you’re getting close to the end of that patience. Probably best I’m as numb as possible when it happens, eh?”

“I asked you a question,” Vadim said. It was suddenly very quiet and still in the apartment.

“How the fuck would I know? What, do I look like some kind of biochemist to you?”

“Motherfucker!” Gulag spat and reached for him.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Eugene cried. Vadim raised his hand and was surprised when Gulag hesitated.

“Wait for what?” Vadim enquired. He pointed round at the dead members of the squad. “Why was this done? Why didn’t the last member of my squad stay sentient?”

“This wasn’t done!” Eugene protested. “You weren’t supposed to be fucking smart! I mean, why would they want smart, pissed off, trained Spetsnaz zombies? That’d be insane!”

“There was nothing in our food? We weren’t given any kind of vaccine?” Vadim asked. Eugene just shook his head.

“My friend?” Gulag spat.

“Wasn’t strong enough.” They all turned to look at the Fräulein. Gulag’s eyes were wide, clearly furious. “We have held onto ourselves through sheer force of will. Think of who we are, our training, what we have done. We are strong, that is why we can still think.”

“Genadi was strong,” Gulag insisted, but Vadim could hear the doubt in his voice.

“Genadi was a good man,” the Fräulein said quietly. “The best, because he had a soft heart; and you know he did. How many times did you have to do something horrific because he didn’t have the stomach to do it?”

“Shut up!” Gulag screamed at her. “Shut your fat fucking Nazi mouth!” Vadim watched the Fräulein tense. It was about the worst thing that Gulag could have said to her.

“You’re not listening, Nikodim,” Skull said, surprising the captain. “Genadi is not here with us now, living this hell, because he was a better person than us.” Gulag stared at the sniper and then turned back to Eugene. Someone had to pay for the way the Muscovite felt right now. “Gulag, I pray, just a moment longer.” The sniper looked to Eugene. “Who did this to us? Who gave you the orders?”

Eugene was already shaking his head.

“Look, this is mostly guesswork. You guys probably know as much as I do, but I don’t do that. I’m not going to betray…”

“What?” Gulag screamed, spitting in Eugene’s face. “It doesn’t fucking matter anymore!”

“What do you think? The Supreme fucking Soviet! The head of the KGB! How the fuck should I know?” Now he sounded scared. Now he sounded desperate.

“The virus was a secret program, it had to be,” Vadim said. Though Eugene was right: the rulers, the strategic planners, they would have had to know about it, to factor it in to their plans. One step at a time, Vadim thought. “I want to know who you answered to, so you need to decide how much Gulag needs to torture you before you tell us.”

“His name is Yurinov, Major Yurinov, that’s all I fucking know, okay?” Eugene told them.

“Where is he!” Gulag screamed in the spy’s face.

“How the fuck would I know! Russia! He’s probably a pile of radioactive ash by now!”

Gulag looked up at Vadim. Vadim nodded. Teeth sank into flesh. The smell of blood filled the air. Vadim didn’t even hear the screaming. He had gone by then.

VADIM HAD NO idea how or why he recovered. His face and hands were deep in Eugene’s chest cavity, and he had a mouthful of viscera. With difficulty, he managed to push himself back, leaving bloody handprints on the white carpet. His revulsion at himself warred with the red hunger. He dry heaved, spitting out the foulness in his mouth.

New Boy, Princess were nowhere to be seen. The door to the apartment was wide open. Mongol, the Fräulein, Gulag, Skull, they weren’t soldiers anymore, his comrades, they were carrion eaters now, a pack of wild animals like the hyenas he’d seen in Africa. His AK-74 was still hanging off his front. Blood-slippery hands grasped the soiled weapon. He would kill the others and then himself. He should have stuck to his original plan. He raised the weapon to his shoulder. The Fräulein’s head rose, face covered in blood, looking like a wolf. She drew back from Eugene’s corpse and held up a dripping hand.

“Wait,” she managed and then she half-belched, half-retched, blowing a blood bubble.

“Why?” Vadim demanded. “We’re monsters.”

The Fräulein slumped against the no-longer white sofa. “We always were,” she told him. “You… you have to lead… We have unfinished business.”

It wasn’t much. In fact, it was more of the same. More wading neck-deep into violence. And it would be pointless. It was all far too late. But Vadim had just been going through the motions for far too long now. Any feeling other than hunger was muted. Feelings were a consideration for a time back when his body had been warm. A time he’d wasted. When he thought of the extent of the crime that had been committed here, and the way they had been used to commit it, the anger consumed him.

“Stop!” he ordered.

IN THE END they’d had to pull Gulag out of the nest of serpents that was Eugene’s intestines. Vadim had thought they’d lost him to the hunger, that he would have to be put down, to join Genadi, his friend. At the last moment, however, with a gun in his face, Gulag had returned to them.

BLOOD RAN IN the sink as he tried to wash it off his hands and arms up to his elbows, off his glistening red face. His clothes were utterly soiled. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He didn’t look dead, or not yet. Pale, his features slack, he looked sick. He pulled up his sodden jumper and opened his shirt with the neat hole in it. His wound, his stigmata, was a dry, blood-ringed black hole in white, sickly skin. Jagged black lines grew from it like faults in the Earth. He stared at it for as long as he could, and then back into the mirror at the animal, the monster he saw there.

BY SOME UNSPOKEN agreement, they had moved away from the ruins of Eugene’s body. Gulag, Mongol, the Fräulein and Skull stood in a rough circle, unable to look at each other. The shame at what they had done was palpable. They cleaned themselves up as best they could, checked their weapons to make sure they hadn’t been fouled and pretended to be soldiers, if only briefly.

Vadim had walked past them and out into the corridor. New Boy was down by the corner leading to the stairwell. Vadim found himself looking down the barrel of the scout’s AK-74. He whispered something to Princess, who must have been just round the corner. Vadim was both surprised and impressed that they hadn’t run.

“Well?” New Boy asked.

“Can you come back and listen, and then make your decision?” Vadim asked.

“Are you asking, or is that an order?”

Vadim gave the question some thought before answering.

“I’m asking you now. If you choose to stay, then you do what I say.” He turned away from the door and headed back to the others. It was a few moments, but New Boy appeared in the doorway, Princess covering his back in the hall.

“We’re going back home—” Vadim began.

“How?” Mongol demanded. Under normal circumstances the big medic would never interrupt him like that. Vadim could hear the anguish in his voice.

“Nergui,” the Fräulein said quietly. Skull put his hand on the medic’s shoulder. Mongol’s head dropped.

“Why?” Skull asked, black eyes fixed on Vadim.

“To help your loved ones survive, see them one more time, die in the Motherland, whatever reason you choose. When we reach the borders of the USSR we can decide whether to stay together or not. You don’t want to come? You stay here, now. If you can’t live – exist – in this new world, I’ll put you out of your misery right here and now; there’s no shame in that.” There was a snort of derision from Gulag. “But if you come with me, there are rules.” He pointed at Eugene’s body. “This never happens again.”

“You think this is the first time I ate human meat? I was in a Siberian Gulag. What about you? I’ve heard about the siege of Stalingrad.”

“Shut up, Gulag,” the Fräulein told him.

“No, we’re going to talk about this!” Gulag spat.

“You come with me you don’t eat human meat. You want to feed, stay here,” Vadim told him. “You almost didn’t come back this time. How many times do you think we have to lose control until we’re like those things down in the street?”

“What are we supposed to eat? Rations?”

“We’re dead,” Mongol told the Muscovite. “I don’t think that’s why we eat.” All of them turned to look at the medic. “I think it’s about spreading the virus.”

“Can you prove that?” Gulag demanded. Mongol just shrugged.

“Gulag?” the Fräulein asked. Gulag shook his head.

“I’m not making any promises,” he told them.

“Disobey me and I’ll kill you,” Vadim told him.

“I’m already dead, comrade captain.”

Skull caught Vadim’s eye, his hand on his Stechkin. Vadim gave the slightest shake of his head.

“The second rule,” Vadim told them and glanced at New Boy, still in the doorway. “We protect our still-living squad mates, no matter what.” He could see the Fräulein nodding.

“Why are they so important?” Gulag demanded.

“It’s just the same thing it’s always been,” the Fräulein told him.

“Oh, bullshit!” Gulag shouted. “You know what I see? Meat-on-the-hoof. If they had the slightest bit of loyalty, they’d join us.” He made a move towards New Boy. New Boy cleared the doorway, his AK-74 levelled at Gulag. Princess swept into the room, moving to the other side of the doorway, levelling her Dragunov sniper rifle at the criminal. Skull’s Stechkin was out of its holster.

“You don’t like the boss’s rules, Gulag, stay here, or die now,” the Fräulein told the Muscovite levelly.

“A big girl like you managing to climb so far up the captain’s ass,” he said quietly, but he was staring at Princess.

“What’s it to be?” Vadim asked. Gulag turned to him and took two steps, stopping nose-to-nose with the captain.

“This is a fucking war! This is the war! There’s no rules.”

Vadim opened his mouth to retort.

“This isn’t a war, it’s a blasphemy,” Skull said. Gulag looked over at him, opened his mouth to retort and then noticed the pistol in the sniper’s hand. “And I am growing tired of you.” Gulag stared at Skull. The sniper held the look. In the end it was Gulag who looked away.

“I’ll obey your rules,” Gulag told Vadim. “For now.” Then he backed off.

“Are you with us?” Vadim asked New Boy and Princess. They glanced at each other. New Boy nodded.

“For now,” Princess told him.

“Why are you going back?” Skull asked the captain.

“I am going to find this Major Yurinov and make him tell me what he knows. Then I’m going to hunt every single person responsible for this and make sure they suffer before they die, then I’m going to kill Varishnikov,” he told them. Skull nodded. There was even a slight smile on his death’s head face.

Eugene sat up.

“What are we going to do with him?” Mongol asked.

“Close the door after us,” the Fräulein told him.