“May I reach into my pocket for the evidence?” he asked her, calmly and without the slightest hint of patronisation. She nodded like her head was caught in a vice, the rage tightening up every muscle. Slowly, Piotr unzipped his fleece and reached inside for an envelope sealed in a plastic bag. He passed it to her, causing her to uncock the rifle and sling it over her shoulder. She opened the packet and took out a handful of folded sheets of paper and began reading.
I looked around me for something to sit on. Piotr sat on the rock opposite me. Riley paced up and down as she read. The sky was cloudy but there was still some warmth to be gained from the sun.
“Have you eaten yet?” asked Piotr.
“Not since this morning,” I replied.
“I have some of that game left.” He reached into his pack and passed me some grilled strips of meat that I ate with some mouthfuls of water. It was tender and cooked to perfection - the way Dad used to cook it. He passed some to Riley who received it without taking her eyes off the papers.
We sat there chewing and drinking and reading. There was little noise other than the breeze in the air and the sound of our breathing and it made the situation seem absurd. Occasionally Riley would flip the page and the crackle of dry paper interrupted our own thoughts.
“Goddam it!” she yelled at one point before carrying on. She was wearing a patch in the grass with her heavy boots.
Eventually she turned and handed the papers back to Piotr.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I was out of line.”
“You understand?” he asked. She nodded but I was at a loss to understand how some paper had convinced her so easily.
“I don't!” I said, putting my hand in the air. “You're convinced after that?”
“Yeah, sadly, I am. I didn't want to be but the stuff makes sense. All the codes, the encryption data - even the names, they all check out. But how did you get this information? It's beyond top secret.”
“That, I do not know. That is beyond my humble trade. This packet was given to me by General Ibromavich himself for just this reason. It was to be used to convince any American I could find that there was a clear and present danger in this country and it had to be dealt with.”
“That was a hell of a risk. You could be shot for having this,” she said, sitting down on the grass.
“If it's top secret, how do you know about it?” I asked her.
“I don't - but I was special forces and I was trained to recognise Intel in the field, ours or the enemy's. If it was ours I was to retrieve it, if it was theirs I was to steal it. In order to do that I had to know access codes, encryption keys, that kind of thing. There wouldn't be stacks of papers with 'TOP SECRET' stamped on them - there'd be laptops and tablets and they'd be protected with software. It was my job to hack it and find out. That's why I know this is legitimate.”
“Okay,” I said. “So they ordered drugs to use as an antidote. That's one answer. The other way they could use them?”
“It's possible they might wish to develop it further. From what we could gather, the virus was in its test phase and not yet operational. They may be looking to continue the work using these ingredients to create something else.”
“So this third party could be a scientist of some kind,” said Riley. “He or she could be trying to get Saska and Alex to continue with the work.”
“Or prepare for his arrival,” I added.
“But we don't know who he is,” said Piotr. “Or what his intentions might be.”
“That's nothing new,” I said and got back on my feet. “Let's carry on. The more I think about it, the harder it gets.”
We walked on, each lost in their own thoughts as the evening came down around us. We camped east of an old industrial estate now overgrown with bind weed and tall, thick carpets of grass that garnished the rusting heaps of truck bodies that lay strewn around the fading, prefab buildings. We kept our distance, choosing to bed down in a belt of wild woodland beside a moss covered motorway. Piotr had only a tarp and a bivy bag to sleep in, explaining that to him this weather was almost tropical and he had little need of anything else. Riley set up her tent closer to my hammock with the entrance facing me. She sat in front of it with her stove, boiling up an MRE - tuna pasta this time.
I had some more of the game Piotr had brought with him and I offered him one of my own meals which he accepted gladly.
“I sometimes forget what vegetables taste like,” he said as he ate. “I had berries and nuts in the taiga along with deer but it only goes so far in keeping you alive. What did your Papa used to say?”
“Don't just survive, thrive, I think.”
“That's the one. It's not just about surviving out here, or anywhere, it's about thriving in that environment, conquering it, making it subject to our will.”
“Or at least thriving together with the environment. A symbiosis of sorts,” I added.
“You could look at it like that,” he said. Riley ate her food in silence, looking at each of us as we spoke. She hadn't said much since she'd read those papers and I had the feeling she was trying to come to terms with her own feelings on the matter. I couldn't relate to her struggle - after all, I owed no loyalty to any country or body of representatives. I was the last Englishman alive. I guess I only answered to myself.
“When I was a boy, my own Papa took me out into the wilderness and showed me how to hunt rabbits using a snare. I remember my first one, days and days of teaching and I still hadn't managed it. Then, before we're about to go home, my tiny wire finally traps something. When I got up that morning there it was - fat and ready for winter but very much dead. I skinned it, ate its flesh and made its fur into a hat for my baby brother. I was very proud that day. I had begun to do what my ancestors had done, I was conquering nature as mankind was meant to.”
“Why must we conquer it?” I asked though from past experience I knew that this was only the prelude to a long debate that Piotr had wanted from the start. In truth, the Russian was a lonely man, often hunting for years at a time, alone, without another soul to talk to and he and my Dad had gone on for hour after hour on some topic. This was just such a topic and he was trying to snare me too.
“It's natural to dominate, to thrive through the conflict,” he replied. “It's what puts us at the top of the food chain.”
“But our role at the top should surely be to ensure our dominance through careful, respectful use of...”
At some point in the conversation Riley cooked her desert - lemon sponge pudding - and ate it inside her tent, half-zipping the door shut before finally drifting off to sleep. But Piotr and I continued in more of a whisper though with the same zeal he'd always had.
When the morning came I realised that I'd woken later than usual and the sun was already up. I smelled coffee and saw that Riley had a cup in her hand and was sipping at it whilst waiting for her breakfast to heat up. My stove was where I'd left it and so I reached over and set some water boiling.
“Tired?” she asked.
“Kind of,” I replied.
“You two sure can talk.”
“We don't often get so deep and meaningful,” I said, not wanting to leave the warmth of the hammock but knowing that I needed to relieve myself. “How was your pudding?”
“Fantastic as always So much lemony-goodness.”
She paced the camp, taking gentle sips from her cup as she tried to warm herself. I could see the tension in her shoulders - she still hadn't come to terms with it all. I couldn't blame her.
“Good morning!” said Piotr, emerging from under his shelter. “Still warm here I see.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Riley. “I'm freezing my fucking ass off here.”
“Where is the tea?” he asked.
“There,” I said, pointing to his pack. “Whatever you brought.”
“I thought someone might have started boiling water,” he said, bending down slowly to open up his back pack. “I am an old man. I need caring for.”
Eventually I dra
gged myself out of the hammock but it took the smell of coffee to do it. Riley had already packed her kit away and was sat with the comms relay in her hand, trying to check for a signal.
“Any joy?” I asked as I ate my breakfast.
“No, still nothing,” she replied. “It doesn't look good. I had 3 satellites. Now I have none and even this thing has started to fail. It's picking up interference of some sort.”
“What is going on?” asked Piotr.
“We were supposed to hear from the US but we've had nothing from them on the comms kit Riley brought with her,” I said.
Piotr shrugged. “I have no news for you I'm afraid. I was on a boat most of the way here and we had no radio contact. I know as much as you about what is happening at home. I did hear about the trouble, the riots, but nothing more.”
“I know, it's okay,” said Riley, packing the tablet away. “I just hoped to hear something. We still need to find Alex and Saska regardless of what's happening back home.”
We packed away and set off about mid-morning just as the grey clouds began rolling in from the south. I could almost taste the rain in the air and I quickly put on my poncho just as the heavens opened in a dreadful storm. The sky darkened and even in the woodland it was difficult to see more than a few feet in front of our faces.
“Ah yes, we are in England!” cried Piotr over the din of the downpour. “I almost forgot.”
“Some people have a nice walk, some people get wet,” said Riley. “But it's starting to piss me off now.”
“All you two do is complain,” I said, laughing. “It's beautiful out there - look at that wasteland coming to life!”
They turned away and Riley flipped me the finger. I laughed but I knew what she meant. The rain, the constant dampness, it was demoralising and we began to long for the house which didn't turn up for another two days - our progress being slowed by the floods that soon rose up from the riverbanks. Twice we had to wade knee-deep through streams that had become violent torrents of water and being wet had now become the norm. My legs often itched with it and sleeping was almost pointless. Even my dry clothes I carried had managed to get wet despite my best efforts.
When we arrived home, perhaps in the first few days of January now that I thought about it, we saw the cleared patch of land and the huts and the house and we all sighed with relief. I was happy to see the place and eager to change into dry clothes. We were tired, exhausted and keen to refuel before heading back out again.
“Nothings changed,” said Piotr. “I thought that when I came here looking for you.”
“There was no reason to change it,” I replied, unlocking the front door. “The only thing different is the garden where I grow my veg. I’ve planted more durable crops given the change in the weather.”
“This change is that obvious?” said Piotr.
“Yeah. The winters have been getting colder, the summers far wetter. I’ve started concentrating on onions, potatoes, that kind of thing. Stuff I can store easily and that don't require much maintenance.”
Riley took off her shoes and carried her kit upstairs without saying a word. She looked shattered. Piotr followed me into the kitchen, leaving a trail of muddy footprints behind him.
“I love the outdoors but you can't beat a warm hearth and a cup of tea,” he said, dumping his pack on the floor. He took the kettle and filled it with water from the barrel before sitting it on the stove I was trying to light. After a few attempts it burst into life. Piotr found two cups and a tea pot and measured out some tea leaves he'd brought in a small sack. “Some caravan tea for you. One day I will bring you a samovar and show you how to use it properly.”
“You always make it sound like a threat more than a promise,” I replied.
I put some biscuits I'd made on the table and went upstairs to change whilst the pot brewed. When I came back down, Piotr was sat with his pack open, taking out steaks of game he'd cooked, piling them on the table. He threw them into the fire and watched them burn.
“Such a shame,” he said. “But they won't keep any longer and I think they've collected enough dirt from my pack.”
“I've plenty of dried stuff in the pantry,” I said. He got up and poured a measure of tea into the bottom of his cup and added some hot water to it from a second kettle he'd put on the stove. Then he added honey from a jar I'd put out there, some of Dad's preserve, and stirred it carefully with a spoon. He poured a cup for me and I took it, put it on a tray with some of the biscuits and went up to Riley's room. I knocked on the door twice but there was no answer. I pushed it open slightly and saw that she was led across her bed in her underwear, snoring softly with the blankets at her feet.
I set the tray on the table and pulled the bedding over her sleeping form. Then I gently nudged her until her eyes opened. She stared at me, then jerked into life.
“I must have dozed off,” she said.
“I made you some tea. You'd better drink it before you go back to sleep. We got pretty cold out there,” I said, gathering her wet clothes up from off the floor. “I'll hang these up in the drying room.”
“Hmm,” was all she said as she added sugar to the cup. “Miller?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you trust him? The Russian?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Good enough for me.” I turned and left, pulling the door shut behind me.
“She's very pretty,” said Piotr as I passed him on my way to the drying room. He'd poured another cup and offered it to me. I sat down, tired and ready for my own bed, and nodded a thanks to him from across the table. His keen eyes surveyed me and he broke into a chuckle. “Who'd make this up, eh? Three nations in the same house and not trying to kill each other for a change. It's very funny.” He'd switched to his native language now and I almost hadn't noticed, automatically giving my reply in Russian.
“Why are you here, Piotr?” I asked. Fatigue was now a fog that hung over my skull, seeping into the flesh of my scalp and crawling down my neck.
“To find Saska, of course!” he said with a wry grin.
“The real reason?” I said.
“You think I am lying?”
“Maybe not lying, but not quite telling the truth either.”
He stared into the bottom of his cup and the grin faded. The rain had started again and it tapped against the window with a steady rhythm as if pacing our conversation for us. It was funny how a sombre mood quickly became infectious.
“You're as perceptive as your Papa once was, God rest his soul.” He sipped the last of his tea, then poured himself some more from the pot. “How long would you have waited to tell me of his death, Miller?”
“You know it wasn't like that,” I said. “I had no way of getting in touch with you. The Americans were breathing down our necks in the days leading up to his death and the ones after it. Any attempt to make contact would have been totally misunderstood.”
“Eight weeks. Eight fucking weeks, Miller. I still haven't gotten over it, you know? Not being there. Not saying my goodbyes.”
“He knew,” I said. “He knew how you felt.”
“Did he? All I can think about is the last argument we had. It was something trivial.”
“It always was,” I said, grinning.
“Not always. Sometimes we just couldn't see eye to eye on something. Neither of us could back down.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “It was here that I last saw him. It was in this chair that we last spoke. Then I returned to Russia and only found out once he was in the ground.”
“I can't change that, Piotr. I can't fix it for you.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “I just felt I had to say it again. Not to you, not as a rebuke, but to the house, to the place your Papa called home. Call it atonement or something.”
I smiled and got up to put another pot on the boil, feeling the weight of what he was saying. Could I have done more to tell him about my Dad? Maybe. I was a mess back then, I wasn't thinking straight and the Americans had expected
me to just pick up where he left off. It would haunt me as much as it haunted him.
Once we'd put that conversation to rest, I returned to the question of why he was here. Now. In this place.
“What I told you is the truth,” he began once the tea had been poured. “The General wants his beloved daughter back. But you're right, it's not the whole truth. Do you not feel it, Miller? Do you not sense what is wrong?”
“I don't know what you're getting at.”
“I don't know if it's reached this far,” he said, but not to me, to the room, to himself perhaps. “It's certainly in America. I must admit, I haven't felt its presence here.”
“Felt what, Piotr? You're speaking in riddles.”
“The darkness, the black depression, the...” He wrestled with the idioms, even in his own Russian, to describe what he knew. “The dog, following, chasing you, sapping you of all will to act...”
I waited, watching the pained expression on his face pass through several worrying stages as he tried to explain it to me. I was at a loss to understand him.
“It began as a small thing,” he said. “Doctors began noticing a rise in suicides, in people coming to surgery suffering from depression, people feeling tired and not wanting to get out of bed, that sort of thing. It was easily dismissed. Lethargy, too much alcohol, that sort of thing. The newspapers were the first to alert us to what was happening. It began to pull figures together, figures from everywhere it could, the army, the students, the workers, a broad sweep of people. They began to see a pattern. A growing number of deaths from suicide or neglect, like people were just giving up and choosing to just die the way a wounded animal might, or an old dog trying to find a dark corner to lie down in.”
“How long ago was this?” I asked.
“I can't be sure. Some say it began 10, maybe 15 years ago and we just never noticed, it was that subtle. The figures weren't perfect but it seemed to show the rise beginning about then. The first places that were effected were near the north, near the taiga, but then it crept slowly downwards, heading south. I saw a graph once. Someone suggested wind patterns but it was dismissed. No one was thinking virus or contagion at that time. It was too wide spread.”
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