Katja was painfully slow on point and hours seemed to pass before they reached merciful quiet. As the noise from District Four faded into the darkness behind them, it was replaced by the static accumulating scratch of velour against insulation. Several times Katja was forced to stop, her arms shaking as she braced them across her chest, her pale flesh now deathly white. Katja had lost a lot of blood, so much so that her lips bore a bluish hue in the weak light and her forehead was clammy despite the cold.
At each rest, Katja stared into emptiness, her head sagging atop her neck. Once, Tala had asked if she could administer her wounds, Katja refused with a harried shake of the head. While the bleeding appeared to have abated, Tala found little heart in the inanimate expression Katja wore. When they’d first traversed the conduits of Murmansk-13 together, Tala had found the confused girls sobbing irritating, now she longed to see or hear some evidence of emotion. Instead, Katja was like a wiped video tape.
In silence, Tala seethed. Beside Mihailov and Captain Tor, she’d revived Katja, brought the girl back from her frozen oblivion, and for what? Since waking she’d been subjected to one torment after the next and for her part, Tala was responsible. She’d failed to protect Katja against Ilya in District Four and now she wondered how much more of Katja had eroded in his hands.
Tala found tears forming when she thought about the alternative. The poor girl would have been better off if they’d left her asleep, forever entombed in the station morgue.
“What did Gennady give you?” Tala jumped, Jamal’s voice boomed after the protracted quiet. “Before he… died.”
Tala reached into the hand warmer in her jumpsuit and pulled out the battered Raven MP-25, in the tight conduit she turned awkwardly and passed it back. “I forgot I had it.” A sad smile crept across Jamal’s face as he paused to look at the beat up weapon, the chrome finish so scratched it had lost all lustre. Reverently, he secreted the junk gun in his torn up hoodie.
“I never did find any .25’s.” Jamal said.
“I’m not sure it would be much good against… That,” replied Tala, thinking back to the swarming mass of wizened flesh that overwhelmed District Four.
Jamal’s expression became dark. “It was never meant for them.”
Tala understood Jamal’s meaning well enough. Katja was lumbering ahead, disinterested by the conversation behind her. Even on all fours, she’d developed a pained limping gait. Tala had little trouble catching her up and Jamal didn’t want to talk.
The temptation to continue in silence was exquisite and for a time she did. All of their scars were fresh and every avenue of conversation led potentially to darkened paths. But Tala found warmth in Jamal’s smile, however short-lived, and there was also healing in to be found in talking. If nothing else, it kept the futility of their situation at bay. “Why did Gennady keep his Gulag uniform? I didn’t see any others.”
Jamal spoke as if waking from a coma. “I’m sure some of the other guys kept them, if for no other reason than laziness.” Jamal paused, after a minute he spoke again, his tone strengthened. “That wasn’t why Gennady kept his though. He wanted to make right for all the shit that had happened to him, he wanted to remember where he came from what he had already overcome.” Jamal’s voice softened. “If nothing else it was his link back to Earth and his family. I guess to them he was already dead anyway. I mean, we all are.”
“You sound like you’re giving up.” Tala heard Jamal stop behind her, so she turned back to face his glittering eyes. “You’re still breathing, aren’t you? Don’t you want to go home, clear your name or something?”
Jamal stared at Tala in the dim. “I don’t care about clearing my name, my name is long forgotten by most and mud to everyone else. I wanna visit my Moms grave though, make sure my sister never fell into the wrong crowd,” a smile crept across his face. “Maybe now I have nieces or nephews, I just wanna be there for them. It’s tough in Compton and after all this I’m fucking tough.”
Oleg peered from behind Jamal, Tala caught his eyes. The Belorussian was tireless and stoic, but taciturn. Only revealing his true nationality when Tala had confused him for a Russian; in the process evoking a response that threatened his concrete equilibrium. “What about you Oleg, are you giving up?”
“I’m deserter. If I return to my home, I will be arrested again.” Oleg spoke monosyllabically, his accent clipped and stolid.
“Why did you dessert?” Tala wondered if her question had offended the impenetrable infantryman again, his eyes squinted and for a moment he stared at the base of the conduit without answer.
“I saw many things as soldier, but in Afghanistan.” Oleg’s voice drifted away. “It was ’85 when I deserted. I only served for three years and I was still a boy. The army had been my only option, I hoped it would make father proud.
“I already seen children shredded apart by butterfly mines, heard fellow infantrymen boast about murdering civilians. Executing them, even though they were unarmed,” Oleg shook his closely shaved head. “We overpowered them by… so much. Our aggression was senseless.
“Then one day my unit invade village, it had been abandoned ahead of us except for one man; farmer, and family. We were going to secure the area for radio relay on hill overlooking the farm. It was hot, there was little cover. I always remember the heat that day.
“This man, he was no threat, all he asked was that we leave him alone to tend cows. Instead the sergeant ordered us to kill cows, we opened fire, slaughtered them. Even me,” his voice trembled. “I thought, the faster we kill cows the faster he will leave with family.
“I hadn’t seen the other men pull his wife and children from their shitty little shack. I didn’t see them, they were made to watch us, me, destroy their life.” Oleg swallowed hard, tried to steady his tone. “I was nobody to them, and they were nobody to me, just people brought together by fate.
“After that the men turned on the farmers family. The sergeant – he pulled out pistol and shot the farmers youngest, a boy, maybe five, point blank in face. The wife screamed this inhuman scream, the farmer leapt up and I gunned him down, three round burst in the back. I shot him to avoid the pain he would have otherwise been forced to bear.” Oleg stared at the bulkhead, but Tala could tell in that moment he was somewhere else. “What those men did to that woman and her daughter that night – we brought hell to Earth.”
“As we loaded up the trucks to head back to the barracks, I slip away. I wasn’t alone, but I wanted to be. I lose the other deserters and travelled into the hills near the Tajik border. I felt sick and betrayed by motherland, but I had nowhere else to go – to escape the bloodbath. The night’s were cold, I almost died I was so unprepared and… didn’t care. I was captured by the Mujahedin after three days and nights in desert, by then completely disorientated and dehydrated. I spent next two years a slave in their compound. Some of my fellow prisoners turned native, converted to Islam and stayed, but I was never a religious man and even less so after the army. I returned to Belarus hoping I would be forgotten POW, instead I was arrested on the border and a year later found myself on Murmansk-13. But I already lose everything, my pride, my honour and my soul a long, long way from here.”
Tala held her breath, unfelt tears traced shimmering lines down her cheeks. Behind her Katja had turned back and sat in rapt silence. “Why do you want to leave here?” Katja asked, the first fragile words to part her lips since District Four.
“Sergei Borovsky, he sergeant who ordered the slaughter of cows, then kill boy,” cold fire lit Oleg’s eyes, but his voice was now steady. “If somehow I can slip into Russia, I find him. I want him to look on me, when I put a gun in his mouth. I want him to know terror.