by David Bishop
"Well I couldn't care less," Yatsko replied, smashing the butt of his rifle into the dying woman's face. Her skull crumpled inwards like a broken egg.
"Damn you!" I protested, reaching him too late to intervene.
Yatsko glared at me with empty eyes. "We're all damned in this place." He walked away, not bothering to answer when Borodin asked what we should do with the bodies. The young convert came to look at the woman's remains and asked me the same question.
"We toss her back down into that basement, along with the old man. Then we find some fuel and set fire to the whole place. That way nobody else can eat the filth that was being cooked down there."
I studied the scrambled face of the dead woman, still troubled by not knowing what had driven her to such extreme measures. Were we all becoming monsters, like Yatsko seemed to think? What was the worse enemy: mythical creatures that survived by drinking the lifeblood of human beings, or a war that drove ordinary people to rob corpses from the grave and then eat the remains of their neighbours, gorging upon human flesh and bone?
Bojemoi, what sort of world were we fighting for?
Borodin helped me rebury the boy's remains. As dawn rose over Kolpino, we turned the basement kitchen into a funeral oven, burning the bodies of the butchers, the body snatchers and their victims. Black smoke belched from the indoor pyre, wafting the sweet smell of roasting flesh into the air. I wrapped a scarf over my nose and mouth, not wanting to breathe in any more of the fumes than I had to. The worst part was my stomach protesting at how hungry the scent of cooking meat made it. At least the pain from my punctured shoulder helped dull the craving, until my left arm went numb. Borodin told me I was turning white, but his voice sounded faint and distant, as if he was shouting from the far end of a long tunnel.
I decided that now would be a good time to get back to our encampment. I wondered if Sophia would still be there, or if Brodsky had succeeded in having her sent to another posting. I staggered a few steps forward before falling into an ocean of black, sinking further and further down into its inky depths.
Chapter Six
The next thing I can remember is being woken by the sound of another soldier screaming. I opened my eyes and was baffled to find myself staring at a ceiling instead of the sky. I did not know how long I had been unconscious, nor where I had been taken. All I knew was that the throbbing pain in my left shoulder had now spread across my chest, the fingers in my left hand did not respond when I tried to move them, and the soldier on the floor next to me would not stop screaming.
His constant shouting did have the effect of attracting the attention of a female doctor. She came over to examine him, stepping carefully through a throng of the wounded and the dying. But by the time she reached the soldier, his cries had abruptly stopped. The doctor knelt beside him, checking for a pulse before listening for his breathing. After a few moments, she brushed his eyes closed and folded his hands across the blood-soaked wound where his chest had been.
"This one can go straight to the morgue," she announced.
"Excuse me," I whispered, aware of how weak my voice sounded. My lips cracked and bled as I tried to speak up, making me cough. "Doctor, where I am?"
She climbed over the dead man to examine me. "An evacuation hospital. We found you outside, bleeding to death. Somebody left you there overnight."
The doctor had a narrow, oval-shaped face that would have been pretty but for the dark rings beneath her eyes. Her greying hair was pinned back from her face, but a few strands floated free. Instead of a doctor's white coat, she wore a blood-spattered sheet secured over her own clothes. Despite her brusque manner, the doctor had kindly, compassionate eyes. She took my pulse while studying my features.
"Any idea why you were dumped on our doorstep?"
"I'm with a shtrafroty. The other convicts probably figured I wouldn't get treated any other way," I said, trying to smile an apology.
"We treat everybody, regardless of rank or military record - the heroes and the cowards. You all bleed and die the same in my experience." She studied the bandage that was crudely wrapped round my wound. "We'll have to change that, for a start, and you're crawling with lice. Your head and body will be shaved, and your uniform burned, to stop the infestation from spreading."
I tipped my head sideways, looking at the dozens of soldiers all around me. Some of them were being examined by doctors and nurses, while others sat upright with desolate, empty looks on their faces. "What is this place?"
"What we laughingly call the reception area," my doctor replied crisply. "We take a medical history, assess your wounds and assign you to a particular ward if treatment is deemed worthwhile. Otherwise..." She frowned. "Let's get this bandage off, see what the damage is underneath, yes?"
I nodded, so she tipped me over onto my right side and slowly unpeeled the bandage. A stifling odour of rotting flesh escaped from the blood-soaked cloth as it came away. I glanced down and was shocked to see a mass of large, white worms squirming where the paring knife had punctured my skin. I cried out in dismay and tried to slap them away, but the doctor stopped me.
"I know it looks disgusting, but those worms are a good sign. They feed on putrefaction and clean out the wound. Without them you'd probably have gone gangrenous by now."
I couldn't bring myself to look at the worms. "Are you sure?"
"Trust me, I'm a doctor," she replied. "Judging by the presence of these worms, you must have been wounded several days ago. Where have you been since then?"
I confessed to having no memory of the intervening time. "It's ironic, in a way. I was stabbed in the kitchen of Kolpino Hospital, and now I'm back in hospital."
"You're in Evacuation Hospital 1012 at the Otto Gynaecological Institute in Leningrad. Kolpino is thirty kilometres away," the doctor said, confusion evident on her face. "Someone must care what happens to you, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered transporting you all the way here. What's your name, soldier?"
"Zunetov, Victor Zunetov," I said, praying she would not mention ballerinas. Fortunately, my infamy had not penetrated the hallways of the hospital.
"Well, Victor Zunetov, count yourself lucky. The paring knife damaged the nerves and severed two arteries. You'd have bled to death without this bandage being wrapped too tight; it acted as a kind of tourniquet. We've got some good surgeons here. They should be able to save your arm."
The thought of losing a limb chilled me. We all had to die one day, and sacrificing my life for Mother Russia had still sounded noble at one time. But the idea of losing my arm, of being a cripple for the rest of my life, that scared me more than dying. I thanked the doctor for reassuring me.
She laughed in response. "You haven't seen the rest of this place yet. Wait a few days, then see if you still want to thank me."
I spent the next week in the hospital: three days waiting to be operated upon and another three days recovering from the surgery. Life in the wards was a bleak, unhappy existence much of the time. Overhead lighting was fitful at best, supplemented by old-fashioned oil or kerosene lamps. The roar of shelling and the screaming air raid alarms kept us awake most of the night, waiting for the hospital to be hit. The wounded were often put two to a bed, to keep each other warm when the heating failed. The nurses told me tales of how medicine had frozen in its bottles over the winter. The first thing a doctor did while on their round was reach under your blankets to make sure you hadn't died in the night.
As I recovered from my wound, I had the chance to talk with some of the other soldiers. They ranged in age from eighteen to fifty. They were not just Russians, but also Ukrainians, Belorussians, men from Central Asia and the Far North. Some could hardly speak a word of Russian, making it even harder for the doctors and nurses to know how these unfortunate displaced souls were faring. All of us were united by the war, by a common enemy. But I knew another enemy lay beyond the front lines, an enemy worse than any fascist or Nazi.
With nursing staff few and far between, much of the caring for pati
ents was done by volunteers from the nearby university. They looked after the wounded, feeding those who could not feed themselves, reading out newspapers and books to those unable to see, and writing letters for those who could no longer put pen to paper. I was one of the afflicted when it came to writing, so an elderly woman who looked like she should be in hospital herself penned a letter for me. I wasn't sure what to put. I wasn't even sure if my family knew I had been sent to a shtrafroty, so she offered to fill in the blanks for me and I supplied an address. When she was finished, I scrawled my name with my right hand, the letters looking like the scribblings of a backward child.
Intrigued by the hollow-cheeked old woman, I asked her why she was doing this.
"I have no one to look after, no one else to worry about," she said, giving a slight shrug. "If I keep myself busy, it is better. Besides, my daughter is one of the doctors here. She lives in a temporary barracks by the hospital. Coming here to help is the only way I can see her." The old woman was a marvel, her energy shaming me from staying any longer than was necessary. On my last day at the hospital, I escorted her to her home to collect a copper samovar, then carried it back to my old ward so there would always be boiling water for the wounded there.
When I was deemed fit enough to leave, I chose new clothes from among those stripped off the dead and dying. Finding a gymnastiorka and sharovari large enough was not a problem, since most of them were far too large. I had lost any last, lingering reserves of body fat during my time in hospital. Finding clothing that had not been shot through with holes was more difficult, but I managed it. I wrapped my feet with a fresh set of portyanki and pulled on a good pair of boots. Unlike many of those I had met in the past week, I still had all my limbs. There was little doubt the previous owner of my boots did not have that luxury any more, judging by the amount of dried blood I washed off the black leather.
Once back in uniform, I reported to the nearest Red Army headquarters. On my way there I was surprised to see the city was slowly returning to something like normal life. Trams were running once more and many of the factories were busy. Long-abandoned flowerbeds and parks were being turned into vegetable gardens, with children and elderly women planting orderly rows of seeds. Air raid sirens still assaulted my ears, but nobody paid them any heed now, going about their business with grim-faced stoicism. Besides, the anti-aircraft gunners of the MPVO were doing a good job, keeping most of the German bombers away from the city. The blockade was slowly approaching its first anniversary, but life went on within Leningrad.
The same could not be said for me, according to the limited records held by the Red Army headquarters into which I walked that April. Victor Zunetov was listed as missing and presumed dead. It seemed that my letter home would come as something of a shock to my family, assuming they were still alive to receive it. Despite having been thought dead, my shtrafroty status remained unchanged, and I was ordered to return to Captain Brodsky's penal company. Its last known position was somewhere north of Shlissel'burg, a statement so vague it was next to useless, but that was the best anyone was prepared to offer me. They were equally dismissive when I asked about finding a transport to take me closer to the front line.
"The Red Army does not provide comfort or aid to convicts," a sneering junior lieutenant said. "Consider yourself fortunate I do not have you shot for desertion of duty."
So I began a long march to an unknown destination, unsure if my former comrades were waiting for me at the other end, uncertain if they were even still alive. It took me the best part of three days to reach our front line positions near the mouth of the Neva. Each night of my arduous trek I dug my way into the basements and cellars of long-abandoned buildings, determined not to spend the hours of darkness in the open. Summer was coming and the days were lengthening, but it was still bitterly cold after dusk.
Something else drove me below ground, something I saw on my first night after leaving Leningrad. As twilight swallowed the sky, I heard the sound of dozens of wings flapping in the dark blue overhead. I looked up at the moon in time to witness a colony of bats pass in front of it, heading north. I still wasn't convinced by all I had heard about the vampyr, but the sight of so many bats together in the air chilled me to the marrow. As I watched, they flew round and round in the sky above a nearby settlement, calling to each other with high-pitched squeaks. After studying the empty hamlet, the bats performed a banking manoeuvre and flew back south towards the German positions at Shlissel'burg, on the far side of the river.
It sounds incredible, but I was convinced that the bats were flying in formation, like a squadron on a reconnaissance mission. I knew little about bats then, but I was certain such creatures of the night were not in the habit of mimicking the movements of fighter planes. Thinking back, I remembered hearing the sound of at least a dozen creatures flying overhead shortly before the wolf pack attacked us on the frozen lake. It could be no coincidence. After making that connection, I determined to get below ground before the sun sank beneath the horizon each night.
I finally reached our front line positions on the workers' holiday, May Day, but could find no trace of Captain Brodsky or his unit. The most anyone could tell me was that seven convicts and their commander had apparently been sent on a reconnaissance mission across the Neva. Seven convicts? Did that mean Sophia had remained with the shtrafroty, or had she been relocated and another outcast joined our band of the damned? I would not discover the answer until they returned - if they returned. In the meantime I was an unwanted encumbrance for the regular Red Army units along the front line. None would accept me into their ranks and few would share their limited rations with me. I would have to scrape an existence until the shtrafroty returned.
Chapter Seven
May was the loneliest month I spent inside the blockade, even worse than the three weeks when the penal company had treated me as an outsider. At least with the shtrafroty I was among equals. Now, I was the only convict in a forward position where nobody would trust me. If I got wounded or fell into difficulty, I knew none of the other soldiers would lift a finger to help me. I had never felt so alone in my young life. I mention this only to illustrate my state of mind at the beginning of June: alienated, depressed and despairing. I had come to view the others in Brodsky's company of the damned as my friends, despite having little in common with them besides our shared status as outcasts. In other circumstances, I would have crossed the road to avoid getting near many of my fellow shtrafroty. But this was different. This was war.
May passed without any significant changes inside the blockade, certainly not along the front line facing Shlissel'burg where I was stationed. Supplies improved a little as navigation across Lake Ladoga finally resumed, steamers towing across barges laden with food, ammunition, fuel and military equipment. I heard reports of Red Army forces launching fresh offensives aimed at relieving Leningrad, but saw no sign of it where I was. We knew there was little more than twenty kilometres between our position and the main Red Army front line due east along the shore of Lake Ladoga, but the efforts to break through the German forces foundered. All over-ground routes remained closed.
During that long, lonely month, I saw little evidence of vampyr activity around Shlissel'burg. My doubts about the supernatural threat had finally been silenced by the sight of those bats flying in formation above the blockade. Somehow, I knew that what Antonov had told me months earlier was true. The next time I saw Constanta or one of his Rumanian troops, I would recognise them for what they truly were: undead creatures that survived by feeding on humans.
As a former political officer, I could see parallels with the way the vampyr treated us, and how the Russian aristocracy had treated the vast majority of Russia's people in the past. Both the undead and the nobility were parasites, feeding on others, and satisfying their own wants and needs at the expense of the majority. Would we need a new revolution to wipe away these creatures, just as the tsar and his kind had been wiped away? Perhaps, I decided. But the bloated parasitis
m of the nobility was all too obvious. Constanta and his vampyr remained hidden in the shadows, a dark whisper at the edges of our nightmares. There could be no revolution until the presence of such monsters in our midst was widely known.
All these thoughts I kept to myself, noting many of my musings down in a ragged sort of diary etched into the cloth of my portyanki. I wish I had been able to keep that safe, so I could include extracts from it here. The results might be embarrassing to me now, but they would also have a passion and honesty borne of the moment which I cannot easily replicate now. Knowing what happened to the world after this, my perceptions and memories of the past are inevitably tainted by the passage of time. But I recall these events as best as I can. Make of them what you will and discard the rest as you see fit. History will be my judge.
The beginning of June brought a new threat to the front line, one that escaped notice until it was too late. I was on patrol as dusk settled upon the Neva, sitting alone on a rise overlooking the river valley below. None of my supposed comrades from the Red Army would stay alongside me, such was the stigma of being part of a shtrafroty. I had learned to live with their derision, finding solace in my own company and the ever-shortening nights.
With the summer solstice approaching, each day seemed to last an eternity so far north. Soldiers I had spoken to who had been raised in the region called this time of year the "White Nights", because even when the sun set the sky rarely became black. By the end of June there would only be two or three hours of night, but even with so short a night there was still a dramatic drop in temperature after sunset. At times in the open air on a clear night, temperatures would fall to freezing. It was on such a night when I first saw fog rising from the Neva. It was clear, crisp and bone-chillingly cold.
