“Can I bring my sister?”
The spark of the match punctuated the still black night, and a flame shot up and along the stick and illuminated Pyotr’s fingers as he placed the tip of the flame against the wick of the candle. He opened the door and breathed a sigh of relief as he quickly ushered Vasily into the hallway and then closed the door and the curtains behind them.
“I had almost decided you were dead.”
“I might still be,” Vasily said. “But it seems that at the moment we’re free to go about our business.”
“Good, and what did you find out?”
“The town is in turmoil. It’s madness. We may have a civil war on our hands when we wake up to have our breakfast. People are choosing up sides.” Vasily exhaled deeply and shook his head at the waste and futility of it all.
“Four guards were executed and… your uncle… ” Vasily caught himself. There was no need to relay such news without compassion. “I’m sorry, Pyotr. He’s dead. It’s sure now. I just left off talking to the man who helped me dig his grave.”
“Wait, they had you digging graves?” Pyotr asked, narrowing his eyes and leaning his head to one side.
“Yes,” Vasily nodded, “Mikail is out of control, and Vladimir may even be worse. They’re now the little Lenin and Stalin of Warwick. They commandeered a group of us and made us bury the murdered men. They threatened my life several times. It’s just entirely unsafe to stay around here much longer.”
Vasily rubbed his hands together to warm them, and in doing so he recalled the weight of the shovel and the full night knocking on doors. “I’ve spent the last several hours trying to find someone, anyone, to come along with us,” he stopped, shaking his head. “The young man who lives on Gagarin Avenue named Kolya is the only one who agreed. He and his sister, Natasha, are going to come over at dawn and help us pack so we can leave.”
“Fine. Best to travel with a small group anyway, and we’ll have work to do before we can set out. Did anyone ask about me?”
“No, not yet. They did wonder about the backpack, and I’m certain they’ll eventually figure out where I’m staying since I didn’t sleep overnight in the gym. They know that you’re Lev’s nephew, or at least they should, and they just haven’t thought about it all yet. It’ll all come together for them at some point. I also visited enough houses since I left to fill a small phone book so, while I didn’t mention any specific names, it’s only a matter of time, as you said, before we’re found out.” Vasily exhaled deeply, looking at Pyotr to see how he was receiving the news. Pyotr looked back, calmly, and did not interrupt.
“Everyone I told was disinterested in our plans, Pyotr. They didn’t care to leave. They all prefer to join this senseless conflict that’s in the air…” Vasily dropped his hands, as if in defeat, “…rather than take a moment—just a moment—to face the bare facts of their unsustainable existence. Still, I talked to a lot of people on both sides, and once those people begin to talk to one another, our plan will become public knowledge.”
“Yes,” Pyotr said, nodding, “most likely. When they do, they will certainly come here, but we will be long gone by then, Vasily. I have most of our provisions already packed. If things go as Volkhov said they should, the EMP could hit tomorrow.”
Vasily’s face dropped. He’d certainly felt the urgency to escape, and to save as many of his friends and neighbors as possible, but he’d forgotten about the electromagnetic pulse that Volkhov predicted would likely come on America’s election day. Was that tomorrow? Tuesday? He flashed back to the lessons sitting in Volkhov’s study, the time he’d spent with the old man in prison just before death. The imminence of the catastrophe that was about to strike braced him.
Volkhov had explained that an electromagnetic pulse (usually abbreviated as an EMP) is a destructive burst of electromagnetic radiation. An EMP could happen willfully and purposefully from the high-altitude explosion of a nuclear device, or it could come from any number of other, less diabolical sources, including as a blast of solar radiation emitted from the sun. It was hard to tell how Volkhov’s predicted EMP might be triggered, since most of the militaries of the world had done extensive research into EMP weapons, and he was unclear as to who the various forces were behind the scenes that might desire such an end.
An EMP of sufficient strength could destroy most sensitive computer parts and equipment, melt down power lines, blow up transformers, and destroy just about anything that ran on electricity that wasn’t shielded from such an attack.
The memory of Volkhov’s warnings, and the minute and scary details the old man had given about what could happen to any technologically advanced society if an EMP of significant strength were to hit, rushed over Vasily in a cold wave. Absolute Destruction. And the EMP wasn’t even the war.
“The EMP is just the trigger,” Volkhov had said, “what follows will shock even the wildest imagination.” Vasily looked over at the candle on the table, and at the shadow of the man on the wall, and thought of what the implications of an EMP going off in an America already spiraling into chaos might be.
Pyotr looked at Vasily, his face ashen and drawn, and then suddenly realized how harrowing the last several hours must have been for him, and how remarkably brave he’d been in standing up to the experience. He turned and walked Vasily down the hallway and into a small room with a mattress on the floor and a wash basin near a chair. He told him to get some rest and that he would wake him in a few hours. Then he pulled the door shut behind him, before thinking better of it and opening it up again to catch the younger man’s eye in the shadows and the dark.
“My uncle knew that you were going to be a great man, Vasily Romanovich.”
“That’s funny, because I am not even sure of that myself. But there is one thing of which I am certain, Pyotr. It is that I will die before I stop trying to be.”
“I’m sure you will, my young friend. I’m sure you will.”
And with that, Pyotr smiled and blew out the light.
CHAPTER 13
Solzhenitsyn once wrote that the only substitutes we have for experiences that we have not lived ourselves are found in literature and art. While we may take his point with the consideration it requires, it is reasonable to object that, on this one point at least, the great man was partly wrong.
In dreaming, there are no boundaries of perspective or expectation. The uncontacted native in his hut hidden along the thickly-forested Amazon dreams with the same wild unconsciousness as the Queen in all her splendor, once they each gird their loins and dive into that deep, encompassing darkness. In dreams are found the ferocious beasts of our primitive nature and the angelic wings of our best aspirations. Though dreams are fueled by our waking experiences, in the netherworld of sleep, like death, our minds become universal.
Vasily, worn out from the turbulent day and night before, had fallen into a fitful sleep that quickly dipped into chaos and light. He dreamt of long, slow walks along Elysian streams, and then of plummeting, headlong flights through air as thick as water. He gripped himself and passed into a seamless world of dark foreboding. His unshackled mind flashed to beasts of burden in neon glow being torn by jaws of fury, and this he left unconsidered, as we often do in dreams, and instantaneously he passed through infinite waves of sound until he found a still, small island. There, he swam in the love of women he’d never met and basked in the praise of men who despised him.
In his physiological response, he merely laid on the thin mattress in the dark and his eyes fluttered under their lids while his muscles twitched on their stems. But in the caverns of his mind, he was magical and golden, not a soul tied to a body, but a star burning bright in its firmament. He slept the wondrous sleep of saints who have passed through the gates of hell to find their rest in the bosom of plenty.