“Don’t do that again,” Skull whispered, still covering up the hall. Vadim heard two shots from Princess’s Dragunov round the corner and the thump of two bodies hitting the ground.
“Or what?” Gulag asked, making a smile out of his facial wounds. Vadim felt eyes on him, and glanced back to see the Fräulein staring at him.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice, American, from the apartment next to Eugene’s: the source of the sobbing. Like Eugene’s apartment, the door was apparently strong enough to withstand the dead tearing through the building. Gulag strode over to the door and banged on it.
“Kill yourself! There’s no hope out here!” he shouted. There was a startled cry, followed by more sobbing.
“It’s unlikely she speaks Russian,” Mongol pointed out.
“Someone’s in there,” Skull said, nodding towards Eugene’s door. He fired another shot into the partially-eaten corpse on the floor, to be sure.
Vadim moved to the door and knocked on it.
“Eugene,” he called. “It’s us, let us in.” He just heard laughing. “Eugene, open the door now.”
Gulag shoved him aside and hammered on the door. Vadim felt his rage rising; he found himself staring at New Boy, down by the corner of the corridor, as he sought to control himself.
“Open the door, you fucking KGB cunt! Or we’ll blast it open and cut off your feet, let you bleed!”
Vadim managed to control himself, and once more found the Fräulein watching him. The door opened a fraction and Gulag pushed hard against it. A chain snapped, and the door knocked into someone on the other side. Vadim followed Gulag in. Eugene was lying on the floor, scrabbling for a snub-nosed .38 revolver. Gulag put the boot in hard as Vadim reached down and picked up the .38, noticing with distaste that it was nickel-plated, with mother-of-pearl grips. He opened the cylinder and emptied out the bullets.
“Do you think we can make any more noise?” the Fräulein asked as she and Skull pushed past, weapons at the ready, to check the rest of the apartment.
“That’s enough,” Vadim told the Muscovite, who was trying to stamp on Eugene, now curled up in a ball. Gulag ignored him.
“Gulag!” Vadim very rarely raised his voice. It was still enough to get the other man’s attention. Mongol was now in the doorway.
“Fuck’s sake!” Eugene muttered from the ground. “Fuckin’ kicking me, man!” He sounded angry, but not, Vadim noted, all that afraid.
“What, you think you’re still a captain?” Gulag demanded, turning on Vadim. “You think any of that matters, now?”
Eugene sat up, laughing at them; he didn’t seem to be the pants-pissing wreck they’d left a few hours before. Then Gulag turned to deliver another kick, and Eugene got his first good look at the walking corpse standing over him. He started scrabbling backwards across the floor, Gulag stalking after him.
“What the fuck! You’re dead, why are you talking, you’re just fucking zombies now! Holy shit, you’re going to eat me!” Now he was frightened. Gulag yanked him to his feet. The spy was white.
“I’m going to hurt you so much. I’m going to take my time. Make you a woman, keep you alive as I slice bits off and eat them in front of your face. Fucking understand me?”
The shot narrowly missed Gulag’s head; a small hole appeared in the window beyond him.
In the stunned silence that followed, Vadim lowered the rifle and met Gulag’s eyes.
“The next bullet I will put in your head,” he told him. “Let him go. Now.”
Gulag kept hold of Eugene. “You know I have guns as well, right?” he asked.
“Try and use them,” the Fräulein told him. She didn’t exactly have her light machine gun pointed at the Muscovite, but she was making her point.
“We’re all angry, we all want answers,” Vadim told him. “We can’t get them if you beat him to death.”
“You need to calm down, Gulag,” Mongol said over his shoulder from the doorway.
“Yeah, man, you need to chill, listen to your—” Eugene started.
“Shut up.” Vadim’s voice was like ice. The spy knew enough to be quiet. Gulag threw Eugene down on the sofa, and Vadim spotted a large, mostly-empty bottle of Jack Daniels and a huge pile of cocaine on the table. It might account for some of Eugene’s newfound bravery; but Vadim was pretty sure the KGB agent had played them. He was only now starting to work out what must be going on.
“Mongol, see if Princess and New Boy are prepared to join us.”
GULAG WAS GLARING at Vadim as Eugene did another line of coke. At this juncture, Vadim didn’t see what difference it would make, beyond making the spy more talkative. It was clear that Eugene understood how narrow and unpleasant his future options were and was pretty much past caring. Princess and New Boy remained by the door to the apartment.
“What was the plan? Drink and snort yourself into oblivion and then put a bullet in your head?” Vadim asked.
“Pretty much,” Eugene said, taking a belt of Jack Daniels.
“I don’t think much matters anymore. Do I need to threaten you, or are you happy to speak to us?” Vadim asked. Eugene was sat on the sofa now, the dead commandos standing around him.
“No,” Eugene nodded towards Gulag. “I think your road-kill friend here has made his position quite clear.” Gulag actually growled at him. “You all look like shit, by the way; I mean really disgusting.” Gulag took a step towards him, but the Fräulein put a restraining hand on his chest.
“You’re a superb actor,” Vadim said.
“It’s the pissing myself. To guys like you, shitting yourself is a fight-or-flight response, maybe I can’t help it; but pissing yourself? That’s cowardly, beneath you.” He looked at the Fräulein. “Unmanly.”
Dead eyes stared back at him.
“You set us up,” Mongol growled.
Eugene turned to look at him. “Grow up,” he told him, and Mongol tensed. “You were sacrificed for the good of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” Then he laughed, as though he didn’t believe it himself.
“You can’t win a nuclear war,” the Fräulein said quietly.
“You can if there’s nobody around to retaliate,” he told her. Then he did another line. His eyelids flickered, and for a moment Vadim thought he was going to pass out.
“The virus was a first strike weapon,” Vadim said. He’d worked that much out. “America would be too busy dealing with the dead in their streets.”
“They’d still press the button when they realised who’d done this, when the nukes started falling,” Mongol pointed out. The big medic was clearly thinking about his extended family back home in Mongolia. Not for the first time, Vadim felt it would have been better if the Spetsnaz only recruited orphans like him. Of course, the KGB generally got to the orphanages and asylums first.
“Not if there’s no-one around to press the button,” Vadim said.
Eugene lit a cigarette and nodded, pointing at him.
“It was a decapitation strike wasn’t it?” Vadim continued. “I’m guessing you made sure the infection reached NORAD and the White House?”
“And any silo we could manage, and some other strategic targets: the Pentagon, Fort Meade, military bases…”