"What do you mean?" - she inquired with genuine curiosity, and I felt a bit awkward: self-deprecating humor only worked when the idea at the center of the joke wasn't challenged.
"Well, you know, I'm just kidding..." - I tried explaining myself. "They're all grown men and I'm really not fit to be among them."
"Aren't you a grown man yourself?" - she asked me innocently. She wasn't judging me or trying to dissuade me, but it was making me feel even more awkward.
"Well, yeah, but-"
"Yura, if they've asked you to join them then they must see your worth," - she told me bluntly. "Don't put yourself down like that."
"Alright. Thanks" - I blurted out. It was uncommon and thus uncomfortable to hear compliments. As such, I didn't know what else to say, and with each moment the silence between us was getting more and more awkward.
"I gotta go, so… Talk to you later?" - I excused myself, pointing at the ladder to the roof.
She nodded: "Sure. Come see me after you're done. I wanna hear how it goes." With that, she closed the door, and I turned around to leave for the roof.
Once on the roof, I spotted the rest of the men: Maxim was explaining something to Pasha. No doubt he was informing him about the manhole in the basement.
"So that means that we can leave through it, without endangering ourselves?" - Pasha wondered, looking to the horizon.
"Not immediately," - the man in the hunting gear told him. "I want to explore it first - we need to know how far it goes. If it's a dead-end, it's going to be pointless to mobilize everyone."
"Not to mention that people aren't going to trust us in the future," - Pasha added, enthusiastically nodding. "Yes, that makes sense. I gotta tell you, you've got some balls on you for agreeing to something like that. What's your name, by the way?"
I barely contained a smirk: it turned out that I wasn't the only one who didn't know the man's name. At the same time, I felt a bit of relief: up until that point I had a small suspicion that I was the only one he didn't bother to introduce himself to, and I'd been thinking that it had something to do with my value in the militia.
"My name is Alexei," - he told us.
"You're the man, Alexei," - Pasha came closer to shake his hand. "When do you plan to go there?"
"Right now. It's best we don't postpone it anymore," - he said, pointing to the entrance to the furthest stairwell - the one me and Natasha explored a day before. "It won't take me more than half an hour to gather everything for the trip."
"Alright, got it," - Maxim said. "We'll be there. I think right now we should split to quickly cover the rest of the stairwells."
"I'll inform my neighbors," - Alexei said. "There's not a lot of them left, anyway, so I can do it alone."
"Mikhail and I will cover the third one," - he pointed at the old man, who nodded in agreement. "Pasha, Yura - why don't the two of you go to the fourth one?"
I wasn't excited to go there with Pasha - out of all the men he was the only one who openly disliked me. But I didn't show it - now was not the time to complain about such trivial things: "Sure. No problem."
"Damn right, no problem," - Pasha grunted. "You're coming with me, after all. I've got it all covered."
I restrained myself from giving him a piece of my mind. We had more pressing issues on hand than to argue and bicker.
"Don't argue with each other" - Maxim told us patronizingly. Neither of us answered, indicating that we'd do our best but wouldn't promise anything, and we headed to the furthest door.
"Listen, Yura, I'm going to need you to follow my lead there, alright?" - Pasha started lecturing me while we were walking. "If I tell you to do something - you do it, alright? Those people don't know us and everyone's very tense, so we need to stick together, alright? Have you served in the army?"
"No" - my answer was short. He offered a reasonable idea - to work as a team, but it didn't feel like he wanted to cooperate with me. More like he wanted a lap dog to follow his every command.
"Well, that's too bad - they would've taught you how to follow orders, as well as some discipline. But, I'll work with what I have..."
I zoned out: listening to his ramblings was pure torture. Out of all the people I could’ve gone with, I went with the type of person I liked the least. He and my mother would get along just fine.
Trying to distract myself, to mentally escape from the present moment, I looked at the forest. The place that had always calmed my nerves in the morning.
And there, in the distance, something caught my eye.
From the roof, I could see above the tallest branches, so the changes in the forest were easy to spot. The closest trees still had the same bright yellow and red leaves, but that wall of color ended abruptly after a few hundred meters. It was not just a coincidence: while the leaves had already started falling from trees, most of them were still hanging on branches. A hundred meters into the forest, however, something was going on. All the trees beyond that imaginary line were naked, without a single leaf, a single pixel of color. A sudden, stark difference that couldn't be missed or explained by the usual change of seasons. As if the winter came there prematurely and was just taking a rest before proceeding further - toward our town.
I knew that just a few days ago that hadn't been the case. Back then, when I was looking around with Natasha, the trees were all the same - otherwise, I would've noticed the difference. Something had changed since then. Something had happened in that forest beyond our town since the night it had started spawning those horrible creatures. It felt like it was dying out, like the wave of death was slowly rolling across it, coming closer to our walls with each day.
"Hey, are you listening to me?" - Pasha jerked my shoulder to get my attention. The sudden movement irritated me, and I angrily shook off his hand, forgetting about the forest in the process. "This is what I was talking about - you need to pay more attention to what's going on. This is serious, Yuri. If you're not up to it - go back home and spend your days there, okay?"
"I'm up to it" - I told him with irritation and looked him in the eye. Immediately I felt intimidated by him, but at the same time, I felt a strange excitement. It felt thrilling to stand up to him. It wasn't like barking back at annoyed elders with their off-handed remarks about me. The man in front of me could retaliate with more than a few harsh words, and I was nowhere near as strong as him.
And yet there I was. Openly challenging him to establish that I wasn’t just a lackey. Trying to let him know, to get it through his thick skull, that I was his equal. I had heard that sometimes, you don’t earn respect – you have to claim it, but it was the first time I was checking that theory.
"Well, I don't see it," - Pasha said, crossing his hands.
"You'll see" - I told him, going through the door. No further comments from him followed, and I wanted to think that it was because I'd gotten through to him - not because he's given up on arguing with me.
The room with a hatch was the same as the others I'd seen before. Below us was a part of the building I'd never visited, and everything that was going on around us opening that hatch felt like unsealing a catacomb or a nuclear vault with survivors inside. I knew that it was just a silly game of pretend, that just a few days had passed - but who knew what could've gone down there during that time?
I got the answer to my question the moment I opened the hatch: somewhere in the stairwell below, a chanson song was playing.
Chanson was an old-school Russian musical genre that had formed in the nineties during the time of turmoil when people weren't sure if the next day would come and the mafia ruled the streets. It was the direct product of that environment, and although those times had passed it still persevered to our days through fan-following alone.
I didn't like that genre - and neither did the majority of the population and yet I could sometimes hear it coming from a passing taxi cab or pick it up while radio surfing. It was a genre of music where forty-year-old men were singing about the tough life of a thief, about their lov
ed one marrying someone else while they were in prison for stabbing a snitch to the death, or sometimes simply about how the thugs dealt with those who opposed them.
A genre of music for those who romanticized crime life - or actively dabbled in it.
I looked at Pasha - although we weren't exactly getting along I wanted to see his reaction to that music. Predictably, he made a sour face: he was not looking forward to talking to people downstairs.
"You listen to such music?" - he asked me, giving me a mean eye.
Frankly, it was insulting and even a dumb suggestion. So, I decided to push my luck and humor myself a bit by teasing him.
"No. Do you?" - I asked him, looking him straight in the eye.
I expected him to blow up in anger, but surprisingly, the man laughed instead: "Good one. Come on, you go first."
I smiled and did just like he suggested. Internally, I congratulated myself on defusing the tension between us.
The music seemed to be coming from the fourth floor - not from any apartments, but straight from the staircase, as if someone had set up a camp right there. When I descended down the ladder, old metal squeaked and rumbled under my feet, alerting people downstairs to my presence. I heard hushed voices speaking to each other in a hurry, clanking of glasses being put down, and finally the shambling of feet as those people rushed upstairs to see what the commotion was about.
At first glance, I recognized that those guys were bad news. The men who were coming upstairs to greet us weren't young or particularly buff - in fact, out of five of them only one of them didn't look like a walking skeleton. Their skin was pale, their faces - sunken, and their eyes full of animosity. Despite the fact that it was not exactly warm on the staircase they were wearing nothing but wife beaters and tracksuit pants, and I could see their arms covered in tattoos. Not the colorful or flamboyant ones, meant to attract attention. No, those were rough ink paintings, displaying crosses, barbed wire, churches, and other cryptic words the meaning of which eluded me.
My blood ran cold when I realized who we were dealing with, and I was sure that Pasha recognized them, too - he had been dealing with people like these for the entirety of his career in the police.
The bandits. The thugs. The people who spent the majority of their lives in prison and only left them to commit another crime and go back behind the bars. The people who had spent so much time in imprisonment they had formed an entire prison culture - with its own rituals, symbolism, hierarchy, and even language.
The music made sense now. We were in a thug den.
CHAPTER 10 – Den
"Who the hell are you?! Got lost!" - one of them screamed at us with surprising volume. His voice echoed from the walls, bombarding me and Pasha with hostility. He reached out behind his back and pulled out a knife from behind his belt. Just one look into his bloodshot eyes told me that he wouldn't hesitate to use it.
"Come here!!" - he shouted, gesturing at us to come at him.
"Goddamn it" - I heard Pavel grunt. His clothes rustled, and I looked at him just in time to see him pull out his gun.
"Stand back!" - he shouted, raising his hand with a gun and getting ready to make a warning shot.
It worked: the people stopped just a few steps from our floor, their eyes glued to the weapon. They understood violence. It was the only thing they submitted to.
"Hold back, Pashtet[9]" - one of them stopped their aggravated friend. Judging by the fact that Pashtet did as told, it was easy to deduce that the man was their gang's leader. "Why are you coming into a house of honest people uninvited?" - he asked us.
"Honest people, right" - Pasha said, gritting his teeth. I could see that he was very worked up. While it was hard to keep my composure, I noticed that, surprisingly, I was doing a better job than him. He was slightly trembling, and his finger was already on the gun's trigger. Even though he should've had the experience of dealing with such people, he was seemingly more nervous than I was. Even if he had such an experience, it was seemingly working against him at that moment.
He didn't have any composure: he was ready to either fight or flee.
"I've seen how honest your kind is," - he told the gang's leader, licking his dried-up lips. "And this ain't your house, either. I've lived here for a long time and I've never seen any of you here."
"Have you heard it, men? Looks like we've got some trash[10] here" - someone from the group in front of us said. The rest snickered.
"Who said that?!" - Pasha screamed, pointing the gun at the crowd. "Come out, say it to my face! Don't cower behind your friends!"
"Like you cower behind that gun?" - the man who was threatening us with a knife smiled; the dry, yellow skin parted to expose black teeth.
"You're a cop, aren't you?" - the gang's leader inquired. His eyes narrowed and the way he shifted around reminded me of how a cat prepares to leap at its target. I wanted Pavel to lie, to tell them that he was anyone other than a policeman. But that wasn't meant to be.
"Damn right, I am" - he confirmed, taking a step forward with a trembling leg and pointing the gun at the gang. Not a single one of them showed signs of being intimidated, although the gang leader raised his hands in mocking concern.
"And I know who you all are" - Pasha said, wiping the sweat off of his face. "What the hell are you doing here? Has it been you who has sealed the doors?!" - he shouted, becoming horrified at the prospect that us being stuck here was just a part of their plan.
"Be careful where you point that thing," - the man calmly told him, smirking. "And don't shoot your runt there by accident," - the man carelessly waved his hand in my direction to let us know who he was talking about. "Your hands shake so much you're going to drop it any moment."
"Answer the question," - Pasha hissed.
"Locking people up is what trash like you does - we're just here to pay a visit to a good friend of ours while we're passing through the town," - the gang leader explained. "We were sitting here, protecting the good people who live on this stairwell from those beasts outside, and you just barge in, uninvited? Tell us - did we do something to deserve the police staining the air here with its presence?" - he inquired. The men behind him laughed.
"We're this building's militia," - Pasha told him. "We've come here to check if people need any help so that they don't have to deal with scum like you," - Pavel said. He tried to sound confident, but his heavy breathing was giving away that it was just an act.
"Militia, huh?" - the man raised one eyebrow and rolled the unfamiliar word on his tongue as if tasting it. "So, you play the police here, huh?" - he smiled when he managed to make the connection in his head. "I guess once trash - always trash."
There was that word again - the one that made Pasha reeling before. The man said it with his head held high, his eyes staring straight into Pasha's. He was openly challenging him, openly calling him 'trash' in front of everyone, and he even puffed out his chest to make it easier for the former policeman to find his target… And he was waiting on whether Pasha was going to do something about it.
It was a big risk on the man's part, but it worked: Pasha hesitated to act. He didn't open fire, didn't say anything - he was just standing there, frozen like a deer in headlights.
Seeing Pasha became unresponsive, the man shifted his bloodthirsty gaze toward me. I tried to keep a straight face, but I wasn't sure if I managed to pull it off when the man asked me: "And who are you, boy? Are you also playing the police here?"
"So young and already trash" - somebody snickered in the crowd.
The man came closer to me, and I had to do my best to keep staring at him. I knew that if I looked away, it would be recognized as a sign of weakness, an invitation to attack. He was like some mythical creature, a Zeno paradox in action - he could only strike me, only change his state and position when I wasn't looking at him.
"You know, you can stay with us, if you want to," - he told me quietly, but just loud enough that the rest of the gang behind him could still hear him. "You've already stain
ed your reputation by associating yourself with this trash, but we've got a nice spot for you. Right near the toilet."
The rest of the thugs started laughing again, and my eyes went wide from horror. I had never listened to any of the chanson songs, never met a person who had ever gone to prison - but some things about the prison culture, some most shocking aspects of it had inevitably become known to the general public, me included.
"What?! You think we won't mess you up?!" - Pavel suddenly woke up from his stasis, taking a step closer to the man. Surprisingly, his bravery came back when the man decided to threaten me instead of him. I could clearly see why: his intense, reckless gaze was freezing you on the spot, hypnotizing you like a snake mesmerizes a mouse before lunging at it. The man didn't fear death to such an extent that when he was facing you, it was easy to believe that he was indeed immortal.
"Stand back!" - Pasha shot a warning shot at the ceiling. I'd heard it in the past that the gunshots were loud, but I'd never really experienced just how loud they were. Pestered by the Hollywood movies and Russian flicks where the action heroes were spraying the bullets by the dozen, I had never realized just how loud and terrifying the gunshots were. It was one thing to observe a tense situation on the screen, and completely different to get a first-hand experience of it. To know that the deafening sound that was echoing from the walls and bombarding my ears was a real deal. A weapon – a thing made to kill – going off just mere meters away from me.
I was getting concerned that Pasha was going to shoot them - from the beginning, he wasn't taking the pressure very well, and their constant mocking wasn't helping either. The man was taking himself way too seriously to endure that. Perhaps if he shot one of them, if he showed that he wasn't scared of a confrontation, they'd back away. But what if they wouldn't? After all, they weren't strangers to danger, not to mention that to them, backing away from the confrontation with the police was considered to be a disgrace. Once the fight broke out, they wouldn't stop until one side was annihilated.
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