by Chris Ward
An LED countdown timer informed him that he had three minutes to wait for his meal.
When the READY light flashed, accompanied by an ancient musical jingle that was slurred and out of tune, Kurou did a little dance of joy.
For his first meal he had gone with a simple beef stew and mashed potatoes. The smell when he opened the little plastic box was enough to tell him that the decades of disuse had left even dried food a lot to be desired, but for a man used to dining on the dried meat of murdered drug addicts, it was gourmet indeed.
Delighted at the way the stodge masquerading as beef and mash warmed his hollow stomach, he ordered a second portion.
As he sat down at a plastic trestle table to eat, he wondered how young Victor was getting on in his attempt to save the world.
26
Disaster in the snow
She was trapped here. As Patricia stood on the street and watched the last train carriage passing through the level-crossing three hundred metres distant, she felt a great pair of hands pressing down on her shoulders. An immense feeling of failure fought to push her to her knees, but she resisted, grabbing hold of a nearby lamp post for support as her legs sagged beneath her.
Never before had she felt so hopeless, so saturated with despair. The train was gone, and she was trapped here with the dregs of Brevik’s humanity, the leftovers, the unwanted, the rejected.
It wasn’t in her nature to give up. Life had never been easy, but she had always squeezed the best out of it, but now she had to face her greatest challenge.
Her house was just a couple of streets away. When she arrived, she found the front door locked, as if her father had just gone on a short vacation. Breaking in through a window at the front would likely be a calling card for every potential vandal in the area, so she took the subtler option and broke in round the back, smashing the kitchen window and climbing inside.
The house was nearly as cold as the street, and the oil in the living room had run out. The stove’s lid was open as if her father had planned to refill the kerosene, but had never got to it.
Patricia switched on the television, but the banality of the rerun dramas and documentaries made a dozen years ago was too much for her to handle. There was a computer on a desk in the corner, so she opened it, but the screen had been smashed with a hammer. With a frustrated sigh she pushed it aside.
On a table by the window she found a scattering of photographs. She picked one up, and nearly screamed as she saw a grainy image of Kurou’s fireplace, a pile of dirty blankets on the ground in front of it.
People had searched for her, and managed to trail her to Kurou’s apartment. What did her father think had happened to her since then? Did he think she was dead?
In a fit of anger, she ripped the cluster of photographs into pieces, tossing them away across the floor. In a cupboard against one wall she found a bottle of her father’s vodka, and took a couple of long swigs before flinging it across the room.
The sound of it breaking against the wall was so loud it frightened her, and she staggered a few steps backwards, still feeling the burn of the vodka in her throat, and bumped into a corner cupboard, knocking the door open.
Something rattled inside, followed by a metallic thud. Frowning, Patricia turned around and peered inside.
Her eyes widened at the sight of something she had never seen before.
On numerous occasions she had sneaked into her father’s drinks cabinet. Sometimes for the thrill of it, other times because in her early days of trolling the bars by the station she had needed a little courage to do what she did for the fistfuls of cash she craved. Other times she had picked though the cupboards in the bedroom looking for old Soviet loot passed down from her grandparents that her father had collecting dust. Old watches and war medals, antique computer equipment and fine, still-boxed pairs of boots; all of it had collected good prices in the back rooms of bars, where people passing through Brevik gathered to see what treasures they could accumulate before hopping on the next train out of town.
The living room cupboards, however, which contained various knickknacks of family life, china plates and framed photographs, rows of books and movie discs and some old Communist statuettes complete with their engraved slogans and rallying cries, had never interested her. If there was no gain, Patricia could spare no time for anything.
In the corner cupboard, a stack of her father’s old books had collapsed, revealing something hidden behind.
A rifle.
Patricia shoved the rest of the books aside and pulled it out. There were a couple of boxes of ammunition back there too, with some other musty objects that looked to be used for cleaning or dismantling it. There was also a strap that fitted into two clasps on the gun’s side.
Patricia knew little about guns. The thought of using it unnerved her until she closed her eyes and saw Kurou’s ugly face, heard that sarcastic laugh.
And she thought of her brother, lying dead in the snow, and she knew what she had to do.
The vehicle seemed only capable of driving in second gear. Every time Victor tried to change up, it wheezed and spluttered as if preparing to die on him, the wheels would spin in the icy ruts in the road and his breath would catch in his throat until the gears caught again and the car leapt forward.
Half a kilometre south of the mining operation Victor found the train tracks. They were glistening in the sun, cleared of the overnight ice by the thundering of dozens of wheels. The train had already left, perhaps just minutes before. Up in the sky, the circling dots were almost invisible to the naked eye, but they were up there nonetheless, biding their time, waiting for their orders and calculations to align.
He found the small road that followed the train line, used for maintenance access during the warmer months, but it was covered with a thick blanket of snow that reached Victor’s waist. For a car it was impassable.
Heading back the way he had come, he returned to the mining operation and then carried on north towards the highway that the mining trucks used to transport their ore to larger cities in the west and east.
Potholes and seemingly random drifts of snow made the journey hazardous even at just a few miles per hour. Soon Victor’s arms were aching from jerking the tired vehicle from side to side, and as he found himself rounding yet another heap of snow, with the remains of a wrecked vehicle protruding out from underneath, he wondered whether he ought to turn back.
And then he crested a rise and far below him he saw the train, chugging slowly along between hills of white peppered with snow-veiled trees.
The hillside dropped away towards the distant train line, but the highway arced back around to the south, heading away. Victor stared in dismay at the road ahead, blocked with rubble, overturned cars and more snow than he ever wanted to see again. The hillside angling down towards the train line was open and clear of trees, perhaps a vegetable field in summer. The cold had packed and hardened the older snow, and the wind had stripped the freshest layer away. From here it looked as smooth as a ski run. Victor stared at it, wondering whether he had enough luck left to take a chance.
Then something whizzed over the top of the car and Victor caught a glimpse of a grey smear just before it slammed into the side of the slowly moving train.
Robert had returned to sit beside Isabella as the train moved out of the station, finally leaving the sound of gunshots and the rioting crowds behind. She kept her hands on her lap and her eyes politely on the snowy landscape outside, trying to focus on the small things—the trees, a protruding fence post, a rundown shed in the corner of a field—anything rather than close her eyes and go searching for Victor’s face.
It didn’t matter what her father claimed. Victor wasn’t a killer and he wasn’t a kidnapper. Whether it was in his nature or not wasn’t in question; he was simply too meek, too shy, too much of a pushover. And Isabella realised, as she watched their life together receding behind her, that all the things she had outwardly hated were the very things that made her love him.
He was a fool and a dreamer, but he had belonged to her, and she had left him behind to die.
A wave of nausea began to accelerate up her throat, and Isabella jerked to her feet.
‘Bathroom,’ she gasped in response to her father’s astonished stare.
‘You can’t,’ he said, motioning towards the crowds filling every available space, but Isabella wasn’t to be denied. If her final act of rebellion before accepting the role of submissive refugee was to push and shove her way to a place where she could vomit in peace and privacy, then so be it.
It took some effort, but she finally made it to the end of the carriage and the small cubicle lodged into the space where the carriages joined. Someone had taken up residence in there, using the toilet as a spare seat, but Isabella remembered her old way with charm, and a few kind words got the man to move.
She went inside, closed the door, and then the world quite literally turned upside down.
Each of the six carriages took a direct hit, the missiles striking and exploding in a rapid line from left to right like a firework chain reaction. Victor’s scream was lost over the roar as the train became an elongated fireball. Shoving the reluctant vehicle into gear, Victor swung the car on to the top of the downward slope and floored the accelerator.
Accumulating snow and ice quickly clogged the wheels, and the car ground to a halt a few hundred metres short of the smoking inferno that had once been a train. Victor kicked the door open and climbed out, struggling across the snow towards the burning carriages.
His initial terror that everyone had been killed was quickly relieved by the sight of a few dazed passengers stumbling around in the snow. The first three carriages had derailed and rolled over, the impact with the snow helping to stem the spread of the flames. The rear three had remained on the tracks, and as a result the fire was raging strongest there, giving off a heat that made them hard to approach.
As he staggered through the snow he tried to find the strength to scream Isabella’s name. He stumped towards the front of the train where the damage was lightest, with a vague plan to start there and work his way back. Even in the face of this tragedy he wouldn’t let the mathematical part of his mind lose control. If he let his heart mislead him he might have no chance of finding Isabella at all.
He was within ten metres of the first carriage when a hand reached up out of the snow and grabbed hold of his ankle.
Victor cried out and tried to stumble sideways, but the grip was strong and he succeeded only in crashing down into the snow. As he twisted around he found himself staring into the bloody, charred remains of Robert Mortin’s face.
‘You bastard,’ Mortin wheezed, blood splattering on the snow around him. ‘This was your fault, wasn’t it?’
27
A game of cat and crow
Patricia found that pulling the trigger and ending someone’s life was remarkably easy when you no longer had any care for your own.
As the young man sprinted across the icy street towards the car that had been left idling with its doors flung open, Patricia lifted the gun, aimed at the young man’s chest, and fired.
He jerked and spun in midair, his arms flailing and his legs kicking out. Patricia screamed soundlessly, the roar from the gun so loud that everything else around her cut out, replaced by a ringing hiss that wrapped itself around her head like a rubber shawl.
She didn’t hear the thump as the young man’s body struck the ground, his limbs still twitching.
She rubbed her aching shoulder as she dashed for the car. She wondered if this was what dislocation felt like, a dull thud of misplaced blood that throbbed so hard she though her skin would burst. She wanted to rub it more, but she had the gun in one hand and needed the other to pull the car door shut.
It was as freezing inside the car as it was out. The sub-zero temperatures had done their work wherever they could, icing up the windscreen, the side windows, and the door mechanisms. Patricia threw the rifle down on the passenger seat and hauled at the door with both hands, wincing at the pain in her shoulder, getting the door closed and the lock down just as the sound of running feet appeared further up the street.
Others would see an idling car as the same gift she had. Locks and a rifle wouldn’t protect her from a mob, and with Brevik raging at its abandonment one would form quickly. Patricia put the car in gear and lurched forward blindly, scraping at the windscreen with one hand in an effort to see out.
As the shouts and cries became louder, she increased the car’s speed, seeing the road ahead from memory alone, keeping the car as central as she could, trying to recall where other vehicles had been parked.
The street had been empty as far as—
The car jerked as it collided with something on its left side. Patricia heard the crunch of metal and then the passenger side window burst open, pierced by the protruding face of a street sign, showering her with safety glass. She screamed in frustration. She had no hope of ever clearing the windscreen so she lifted the rifle, pointed its barrel at the glass, and then squeezed her eyes shut as she pulled the trigger.
The windscreen exploded. Patricia wiped glass shards out of her hair, feeling blood trickling down her face. Freezing air billowed around her, but at least she could see again. The street ahead was clear of cars, but several people had appeared in doorways to watch her bumbling escape attempt.
She stamped the accelerator just as someone leapt in front of the car. The bumper connected with a heavy jacket with a muffled thud, then the wheels were bumping up and over the fallen body. Patricia hadn’t seen it closely enough to know if it was a man or a woman, but as she felt the front wheels land she urged the car faster. The back wheels hit the body so hard that the rear bumper thumped down on the snow.
Don’t feel. Don’t think. Just drive.
Shock would be setting in amongst the townsfolk. Shock that they had been abandoned by everyone they had ever looked up to, and shock that they were now left to fend for themselves amidst a growing sense of anarchy. The sounds of violence and vandalism came from the side streets she passed, and the billowing smoke of several fires was already rising up over the houses. When night came the cold would drive people back inside and dampen their anger, but for the next few hours of daylight people would riot and rage.
There was only so far she could get in the car on the snow-clogged roads. It took her as far as the point where Kurou and Victor had released her, but from there she had to continue on foot. To disguise her passage, she turned the car around, then released the handbrake and jumped out, letting the vehicle trundle back down the road until it veered too close to a snowbank and overturned.
She hadn’t thought to bring any supplies. She had the clothes on her back and her father’s rifle. It would have to be enough.
Climbing up into the trees, she followed the line of the valley as Victor and Kurou had done, eventually happening across a few footprints not filled in by the wind. By the time she had made it to the lookout point overlooking the overhanging rock where she had seen them disappear, the sun was starting to dip, and she had perhaps an hour of daylight to make it before she risked getting lost in the snow.
Unlike Kurou and Victor had done, Patricia took a more direct route down through the trees, in places slipping and rolling in the deep snow. She even dropped her gun a couple of times, feeling a momentary horror on each occasion that it would discharge and give her away, but she made it to the valley floor quicker than she would have done by following their tracks. Here, where the wind was less intrusive, she was able to see their passage easily. Their tracks headed up through fluffy thigh deep snow to disappear under the huge, overhanging rock.
They had to be holed up in a cave. With no way to keep warm other than building a fire with frozen driftwood, eventually they would have to come out and head back to the town. Patricia checked the gun and found she had three bullets left. It was enough.
Arcing around to the right, she tried to find a good viewpoint to see beneath the overhanging
rock. A fire ought to be visible, but in the darkness beneath the lip of the rock there was nothing.
She could only wait for so long before she would also freeze to death. The temperature was already several degrees below zero, and would plummet as soon as the sun dipped below the edge of the valley. It was already low in the sky, shining wanly through the snow-covered tree branches.
If you won’t come out, I’ll come in.
She had felt Kurou’s strength up close, but he had no weapons. If she kept him in sight she could kill him. He would be the trickiest of the two, but Victor would be like executing a lame deer, almost too easy. Checking the gun was cocked and ready, Patricia crept towards the overhanging rock, peering into the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust.
The rock was looming high above her when she realised there was no one there.
Instead of the people she had expected, there was just a pair of large metal doors.
At times, as the huge overhead lights revealed the contents of one giant cavern after another, Kurou found it difficult not to spur his patchwork body into pirouettes of glee. Decades before, he had hidden great hordes of his own treasure in vaults around the world, and while the advancement of his own work made this dusty museum collection look positively antique, it was a meal for a starving man, the oasis for a weary traveller dying of thirst.
Part weapons storage and part research facility, several vast chambers contained lines of old military vehicles parked so closely it was impossible to squeeze between them. Others were vast ammunition stores, while some stone rooms were turned metallic by guns of all description stacked high. It was enough to arm a small country, albeit with archaic weapons that wouldn’t stand much chance against a modern army. Whatever invisible enemy Victor feared would barely scoff at such a thorn of resistance, but pitting one war arsenal against another was not a path Kurou had any intention of pursuing.
