Geir was smart enough to know an invitation when he heard one. He shrugged in defeat.
“Beats being shot at by machines, right?”
Molly watched him undress.
“You know it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
2003
Something crunched beneath Losenko’s boot.
He looked down. A charred human jawbone lay in pieces atop the cracked and broken pavement. The grisly relic elicited only a rueful grimace. He was inured to such remains now. The port was nothing but bones.
A small fishing community situated near the mouth of the Ponoy River, it had not taken a direct hit from the enemy missiles, but it was a ghost town nonetheless. All that was left were the gutted remains of burnt-out homes and buildings. Torched vehicles, their windows blown out, rusted in the streets. Truncated iron beams jutted from the wreckage of an abandoned cannery. Industrial machinery had melted into shapeless heaps of solid slag. Thermal blasts, shock waves, and radioactive fallout had reduced the village to a rotting corpse.
Preliminary scouting teams had discovered evidence of looting as well. Losenko took that as a good omen. It meant that someone had survived the initial attack, at least for a time.
The Gorshkov was moored at the village’s one surviving pier, which an engineering detail was busily reinforcing. Armed sentries, hand-selected by Master Chief Komarov, stood guard over the work crew. Losenko wanted no more deserters. He wondered if he should post guards to watch the sentries.
Flak jackets and helmets protected the security team. Losenko wasn’t expecting an attack, but it paid to be cautious. Desperate survivors could be dangerous.
The captain paced along the shore. A bullhorn rested in his grip. He stepped onto a blackened concrete foundation and again raised the bullhorn to his lips. His amplified voice echoed across the desolate wasteland.
“Attention, citizens! This is Captain Dmitri Losenko of the Russian Navy. If you are hiding, please show yourself. We are here to offer you whatever assistance we can provide. Do not be afraid. We mean you no harm. Repeat: do not be afraid. Please let us help you.”
He lowered the bullhorn and listened expectantly, but without much hope. This was not the first time he or his officers had made such an announcement.
As before, there was no response. Was the village truly deserted, or were there still survivors huddled somewhere in the wreckage, afraid to come forward?
Who could blame them? Losenko mused. The military had failed to save them; indeed their unfortunate proximity to the naval base had brought this disaster down upon them. Why put themselves in the hands of strangers with guns? They had to assume that civilization had collapsed. It’s every man for himself now.
Duty compelled him, however, to make his best effort to locate any survivors.
A truck engine roared to life a few meters away. The sub’s mechanics had salvaged the abandoned pickup from the bottom level of a local parking garage. A dozen armed seamen were seated in the bed of the rundown vehicle. Its scorched blue paint job was cracked and peeling. Improvised patches kept its tires inflated. Ivanov kicked them, just to be sure.
Scowling, the XO crossed the pavement to join his superior. A Kalashnikov assault rife was slung over his shoulder. A dosimeter was pinned to the lapel of his heavy overcoat; the treated plastic film measured his exposure to radiation. Earlier scans had found the level of radiation higher than they would have liked, but not immediately life-threatening. Losenko suspected that they were going to have to live with a revised definition of “acceptable” from now on. At the moment, the threat of cancer was the least of their worries.
“Scouting team is ready to depart, sir,” Ivanov reported. “Request permission to lead the reconnaissance mission.”
Losenko shook his head. An identical dosimeter was pinned like a badge to his own lapel.
“Permission denied.” He lowered his voice to avoid being overheard. “We’ve already discussed this, Alexei. I can’t risk you. Zamyatin is more than capable of leading the expedition.”
Now that the truck was up and running, Losenko was dispatching a team to search further inland, looking for signs of life and foraging for supplies. The town itself appeared to have been stripped clean already, and what canned food remained was dangerously irradiated.
“Is that the real reason?” Ivanov challenged him. “Or is it that you don’t trust me out of your sight? Do you think that I will desert, to go searching for my family?” A bitter smirk twisted his lips. “Let me assure you, sir, you need not worry on that account. I have no illusions that my loved ones survived the Americans’ treacherous attack.” He spat upon the ground, barely missing the charred skull fragment. “I know they are dead.”
The starpom’s surly tone bordered on insubordination. Losenko’s right hand fell discreetly upon the grip of the semi-automatic pistol that was holstered on his hip. Conscious of Ivanov’s heart-breaking losses, he had made allowances for the younger officer’s sullen attitude, but he was not about to have his authority questioned— not even by a man he had once thought of as a son.
“I do not need to justify my decisions to you, Mr. Ivanov,” he said brusquely. “Do not forget that I am still the captain here. If you have a problem with that, I am more than willing to relieve you of your duties.”
As he spoke, Losenko kept a close eye on Ivanov’s rife. He held his breath, waiting to see if the combative XO would back down. He felt the eyes of the other crewmen fall upon them both.
“That won’t be necessary, Captain.” Ivanov stepped back and saluted Losenko, albeit grudgingly. “I will instruct Deputy Commander Zamyatin to commence scouting further afield, per your orders. Will that be all, sir?”
Losenko’s hand came away from his gun.
“Thank you, Mr. Ivanov. Go about your duties.”
Stone-faced, the captain watched silently as the XO marched back to the truck and gave Zamyatin some final instructions before waving them on. The tactical officer rode shotgun in the truck’s cab beside the driver. The pickup disappeared down a cratered highway heading west into the heart of the Kola Peninsula. Its spinning wheels raised a cloud of grey dust and ash. Scattered bones, human and otherwise, crunched beneath its tread.
Soon the truck disappeared into the distance.
Not for the first time, Losenko chided himself for not organizing a detail to collect and bury the strewn remains. It was a crime to leave the skeletal fragments exposed to the elements like this. But the sheer enormity of the task forced him to confront the futility of any such effort. The dead outnumbered the living now, and the whole world was their crematorium.
He wondered if there were enough people left on Earth to bury them all.
My duty is to the living, he concluded, not to lifeless bones.
He prayed that the scouting party would find survivors—perhaps clusters of refugees fleeing the former population centers. He desperately needed to believe that some remnant of the Russian people endured, that he and his crew were not entirely alone in this godforsaken new world. They had not even been able to make contact with another Russian sub. Whether this meant that all of them had been destroyed in the fighting after the attack, or that they were simply laying low as submarines were designed to do, remained unknown.
Where did his duty lie if there was no nation left to defend?
He surveyed the devastation, unable to escape it. Was this what Alaska looked like now? His own role in the holocaust still haunted him. Should I have launched those missiles? Did I retaliate against a computer glitch?