Day 3

Roman smashed his fist down on the workbench. "Fuck this shit!" he shouted. "I'm not a goddamn electrician! How am I supposed to take bits of wiring and -"

"Roman, calm down, please," Katia told him, hurrying down the stairs. "I'll help you, let me take a look. Isn't one of those a broken radio with no antenna?"

"Yeah, maybe, but I don't know how to fix it. If you've got any ideas, go ahead. I need a smoke."

Katia wasn't ordinarily this rude, but she was tired of his complaining. "Yeah, that's excellent. You proceed to kill a few more of your brain cells, fill your lungs with garbage, and stink up the place while I do all the work. Sounds amazing."

"How many times have you bitched, already, about not having coffee?" he demanded, throwing a roll of duct tape across the room. He continued in a high, squeaky voice. "Oh, no, I need coffee or I can't wake up! Are you sure there's no coffee in the cabinet?" He snapped. "Why do you drink that horse piss?"

"For your information, coffee drinking is a long and illustrious tradition. The philosophers of the Enlightenment laid the foundations of modern civilization while drinking coffee and talking in coffeehouses. The -"

"Oh, save it for someone who cares, egghead. I need a smoke. You want a fucking radio built, you fucking build it, bitch!" He stomped out of the room, headed upstairs.

"Jerk," Katia muttered at his departing back. Not for the first time, she questioned her choice of survival partner, but she really didn't have anywhere else to go. Grinding her teeth, she retrieved the duct tape, then began trying to make sense of the radio. She had learned some of this back in school, but this thing was complicated and she wasn't sure which parts they had. After some rummaging through the supplies, she found a damaged antenna from a different radio and started trying to connect it to the first radio.

Roman came back, walking slowly down the steps, about ten minutes later.

"I'm sorry," he said, coming in. "I'm so sorry. I just...I mean..."

Katia put down the diode she was holding (which end was positive again?) and looked at him. "If we are going to live here, like this, and watch one another's back," she said gently after a moment, "we - I - you need to know who I am, and vice versatum."

He stood there for a moment, face closed. Then his expression shifted. "Ah, what the hell," he said. "We - " He stopped speaking for several seconds, then tried again. "They - the Vyseni - have better, well, bigger things to do than track down one deserter."

Katia said nothing.

"We had to stand up to the Grazni oppression, you know?" he said, saying "Grazni oppression" like he'd said and heard the phrase a hundred times before. "We were all Vyseni back home. Before the rebellion properly started, me and my mates, you know, we all went round spraying up the walls, 'Vysena Lives', that sort of thing. Slung a few rocks at the cops...I threw a brick through the window of the Transport Office. So of course, when the war started, I joined up."

"You were a Vyseni?"

"Yeah. They even made me a corporal, the captain needed NCOs and there weren't enough men with experience. Everything was going well at first, the Grazni oppressors were, you know, disorganized. There were revolts all over the southeast. Ulria, Etrolia, Gravia..."

Katia nodded, knowing most of this.

"Then they confronted us. We took very heavy losses. We were quite simply outclassed. It wasn't pretty."

Katia shivered, but he kept talking, apparently unaffected.

"So after we lost Gravia, they pulled my unit back to Pogoren for some R&R. With the defeats, a bunch of Grazni bootlickers started crawling out of the woodwork here. We were here, so they sent us out to take care of them." His voice changed. "But they weren't. I mean, sure, there were some, but most of the people we rounded up, I don't think, they did anything, or were any, any threat. And nobody...nobody tried to, to find, to..."

"Investigate?" Katia said quietly.

"Yes, no one tried to investigate them or figure out who was innocent. We just shot them. I tried to stop them, I tried to talk them out of it, but I was just a corporal, keep my mouth shut and do my job. I...I went along, for a few days...then we caught...then..." His voice broke, and he turned and hurried out of the room.

Katia let out a deep breath, and thought for a few long moments. Then, noticing the light was failing, she returned to the radio. She needed to go take the rest of that stuff from the abandoned house as soon as the sun set, and couldn't spend much more time on this today.

Day 10

Katia continued fiddling with the workbench, swearing almost as badly as Roman. The "Mechanic's Handbook" she had, said they'd need a temperature sensor to make an efficient furnace, a lamp to make the genetically optimized NewGen seeds produce vegetables in only 4 days' time (as she understood it, these seeds were included in aid drops for this purpose, but not used for normal agriculture because they were very expensive and an environmental hazard), and various other bits of electrical hardware. To make any of this, the book called for a soldering iron; they had one with a missing plug, which she was currently trying to hook up to the power. The problem was, she couldn't solder the connections on the iron, without a working iron.

As she tried to heat the solder, the wires loosely twisted around each other came apart again, and the iron went dead. "Fuck this s - tuff!" she said, giving up for the moment. As she pulled herself from under the workbench, Roman walked in.

"How's Bruno?" she asked him.

"He's still sleeping, but the herb meds you gave him seem to have helped."

"I look forward to some of his cooking," Katia said, a flicker of a smile crossing her lips. She got up. "How've you been doing?"

"I've been reading that book of yours," he answered. "It's interesting stuff, but I don't understand all the words. Maybe the Vysenan cause...well..."

That did give her a smile. "I can answer your questions later," she said. "I'm glad you're taking an interest in the history of all this, even if most of it is a confusing disgrace to humanity. Knowledge is power."

He snorted. "Power is having a bigger gun than the other guy, and knowing how to use..." She just looked at him. "Well, I walked right into that."

"Yeah, pretty much. Don't you trained soldiers know how to avoid ambushes?" she asked, teasing him. "As for having a bigger gun...well, that certainly -"

She had meant to make a joke about that, slip in an innuendo, but then she remembered what had happened to Roman just three nights ago. These days, either kind of big gun was all too effective on women.

He raised his eyebrows. "Forget it," she said quickly.

"Katia," Roman said, changing the subject, "even if you get this thing built, we don't have enough...stuff to put a garden together. Even the NewGen seeds'll take days to get us anything useful, and I'm hungry, Bruno is hungry...we need food."

"Roman, I suggest that we deal with one problem at a time. Please allow me to finish this?"

"Yeah, of course. I'll go take a little break for another chapter."

Day 11

There wasn't much to be done today. They had managed to finish the mixer for the new machine workbench, and the machine workbench itself, yesterday. After making more bullets from the materials they'd collected, there weren't enough materials or wood to build anything else useful.

The food wasn't quite gone, but they had only a little meat, no vegetables, and no more canned rations. Cooking that wouldn't do much to feed the three of them, and would take a lot of water and wood. Bruno, as there was nothing for him to do, was downstairs sleeping off last night. Katia had been out scavenging last night - oddly enough, despite being physically weaker than the other two, she seemed to be able to carry more stuff - but there was only the one bed.

Katia set down her book, trying to ignore her rumbling stomach, and went upstairs. She found Roman sitting in the armchair, trying to smoke a roll-up cigarette, which stank even worse than the normal ones and was making him cough and swear.

"Roman?" she said, as he was in between coughing fits.

"Maybe if this goes on long enough," he said, extinguishing the thing,"it'll get me off smoking for good. What's up?"

"We need food."

"You think?" he answered sarcastically. "That's the kind of insight only a journalist could have."

Katia briefly tried, but failed, to come up with a witty retort, and settled on making a rude gesture. He laughed. "You'd fit right in in the forces these days," he added.

Katia was startled for a moment, then realized he had a point. "It's not just me," she said. "You would never have considered spending time reading that book just a week ago. We seem to be changing each other, and doing it remarkably rapidly."

"Well, it's like in the forces, you become friends real fast because you have to trust each other. Maybe that's all it really is, anyway..."

"All what is..."

"Well, you know, my buddies and I before the war, we were tight, you know? But I wonder whether they...well, what they did. And whether they'd approve of what I did, and whether I should give a fuck about that, and..." He trailed off, then tried to take a drag on his currently unlit cigarette.

"Thinking for yourself is hard," Katia told him. "But it's what you have to do, if you want to be more than a pawn in someone else's game, an animal reacting to stimuli, a..."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," he cut in, but not as dismissively as he would have last week. "What I meant was, maybe there's no such thing as friendship. Maybe it's just everyone trying to get whatever they can."

"That is the evolutionary reason for friendship to exist, yes. It is the ability to cooperate, not tool use of itself, that is so valuable: people work together for their mutual advantage. But to incentivize that, there are emotional bonds: if it was just cold logic, the prisoner's dilemna would always assert itself, and no one could ever trust anyone else."

Roman thought about that for a few seconds, then gave up. "I'll have to think about that. You were saying about the food."

She started to sit down on the floor, but he promptly got up. "Sit down, I'll stand," he said. Slightly surprised, she sat in the chair, and he leaned against the wall, looking at the crude map of the city she'd sketched on a blank page in the back of a book.

"We've cleared out the flats, the supermarket, and that destroyed duplex, at least as concerns food," she said, pointing to the locations. "We can get food from other places, but we'd have to steal it, most of them."

"What's that, 'Quiet House'?" he asked, pointing to the edge of the map.

"That neighborhood is at the bottom of a shallow depression, near the edge of the city," she explained. "If the rebels tried to take it, they would be exposed to government fire from three sides." Roman nodded, seeing the logic. "And if the Grazni oppressors tried to come in, the same thing," he finished.

"Right, so it has generally been left alone," Katia went on. "Most of the houses have been stripped, but there are still some people living there, who might have food. I heard from the trader that one has this old couple living there. But..."

"Well?"

"I don't think they would be willing to trade."

"OK, I should be able to sneak or force my way in. If they're old, I can handle them, unless..." He saw Katia looking at him, and trailed off. There was a pause. "Look, if they're old, how much longer are they gonna live anyway? If not us, someone else will just go take everything."

"Maybe," she said. "And maybe not. Anyway...do you...remember what I said? About...why I am still here?"

"You came to cover the war and look for your folks, couldn't find them, and were stuck in the city," he answered immediately.

"Right," she said, a little bemused by the snap recall. "Well, what I didn't tell you was that I could probably have got through the lines before the army closed in around Pogoren. But there was this woman in my neighborhood, the army took her, for, well, you were at the supermarket...they wanted 'bail', id est, ransom. I made the decision to volunteer to deliver it."

"I see," he said, not completely understanding why she was telling him this. He already knew the Grazni oppressors were scum, who took whatever they could whenever they could.

"I got...held up...doing that for a while. By the time -"

"They didn't -"

"Not quite. I was...groped up, somewhat. They might have, but their commander was, if not halfway decent, a quarter decent. He stopped them, we got the transaction done, and she and I got out of there. The point," she told him firmly,"is that we aren't them, and we should never be. We don't steal."

"We don't steal," he answered, not quite as firmly, but almost. "But if we rule that out," he asked, practical soldier's mind asserting itself, "where can we find food?"

"The hotel," Katia said, "but no -"

"What exactly have you heard?"

"The trader said there were some...maniacs in there. Not just thugs, real sociopaths. There are screams coming out of there..."

"We have a pistol and a hatchet," Roman said, calculating. "I can take both. I'm rather good at killing these days," he added grimly. "How many were there? Do you know?"

"Roman, I really do not think -"

"How many?"

"Three or four," she told him reluctantly. "But anything could happen."

"I can deal with that many," he said firmly. "I can sneak up on them, we learned to do that too. If I'm lucky, I can neutralize one or two before the others even realize I'm there."

"Roman, I...I don't want you to go!" she told him, surprised by her own sudden burst of emotion. "We need you to protect us," she said, trying to cover for it. "If something - hell, I'll be blunt, if you got killed, the rest of us would be done for." To her relief, he seemed to buy it.

"Look, I've seen starvation," he answered, "and it's not pretty. The body feeds on itself to keep the vitals alive. After a few days, you know you're starving, want nothing more than food...but you're too weak to get it. And it just gets worse from there."

She didn't ask how he knew so much about this; she didn't really want to know.

"If you are willing to do this, for us, risk your life...then fine." She grabbed his shoulder. "Be careful." Shit - too much, he was confused...no, never mind, he's not. She shook him a little, trying to make the gesture as comradely and masculine as possible.

"Enough sleeping," Bruno asserted, stamping up the stairs. He went into the kitchen. Katia and Roman sat there, looking after him, knowing what was coming. He quickly came back. "Look, I can't cook air. We need food."

"We have a plan," Roman told him, before Katia could decide what to say. "I'm going to go to the hotel, the big one downtown."

"Is there food there?"

"We believe so."

"All right. I wonder, are there any cigarettes left?"

Roman snorted. "You can have this if you want it, but it sucks."

Katia rolled her eyes. "You two should be trying to get off of those." She left before they could respond, and the inevitable argument about coffee was used. That was different!

"You should get some rest," Roman called after her. She'd sleep tonight.

Day 12

Katia awoke suddenly. With the bunks underground (easier to keep warm, and much harder for someone to just walk in and slit your throat), it was impossible to tell what time it was. She staggered out of bed, shivering slightly, and found her wristwatch on top of an old crate she was using as a nightstand: 5:09 AM.

She put most of her (increasingly filthy and smelly) clothes on, groaning and rubbing her eyes as she staggered out of the basement and up the stairs. The first rays of sunlight were shining through the front window, illuminating the room dimly (they kept some lights turned off when on watch: it improved your night vision and made it less obvious the place was inhabited).

Bruno came hurrying downstairs, knife at the ready, but saw who it was and stopped. "Oh, Katia, you're up early."

"I suppose I am," she said. She began a probably futile search through the kitchen cupboards for any remaining coffee. "Have you seen Roman?"

"I'll go look," he told her, heading for the front door.

After some more rummaging, she found no coffee, no more food, and some dead bugs. She started to throw away the latter, but then stopped and put them back: they weren't at that point yet, but they might be soon. Where was Roman?

"Katia!" Bruno bellowed suddenly. She ran out of the kitchen and to the front door, which was open, to find...oh God...Roman was staggering up the walk, blood, blood all over him, a huge gash in his side...

"Help me!" Bruno yelled to Katia, who was standing there, frozen. She snapped out of it, dashing forward and supporting one of Roman's arms. With Bruno holding him up by the other, they got him through the front door. They got his pack off quickly. He moaned.

"We need to dress the wound!" Katia shouted.

"No, wait!" Bruno answered, as she was about to run for the bandages. "We don't have enough of that stuff to get him healed! You can help him to the hospital tonight, then we'll use our supplies to finish patching him up."

"You're right, of course," she answered, heart pounding. "I just...well, we need to get this bleeding stopped. Get those extra sheets from the cabinet upstairs. They're clean. We can slow down the flow."

Bruno turned and ran for the stairs. Katia helped Roman into the armchair, lowering him carefully. "What happened?" she asked, gripping his hand.

"I climbed up...near side of the hotel...center of building...huge shell hole, couldn't get through...went upstairs, all these...mutilated bodies..." He gasped in pain, clutching his wound, and trying to keep himself together. "I snuck up on one...smashed his head in with the hatchet, the others...didn't hear it. Bagged another one coming up the stairs...his crony heard that, but I put three bullets into him...before he could do anything. I started...breaking the prisoner out...and the last son of a bitch snuck up on me...and knifed me. Got all the food I could carry...God only knows how I got back." Bruno came crashing down the stairs with the sheets and threw one to Katia, who began ripping it into strips.

"OK, don't try to talk," she said. "Just stay with me." She decided (more or less arbitrarily) that she had enough strips, and hesitated, unsure what to do next. Desperate to do something, she just started tying them tightly around his body over the wound.

"Fuck, Katia, that hurts!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she told him.

"Here, let me," Bruno said. She moved aside to let him take over; her hands were so covered in blood she couldn't handle the strips properly. She clutched Roman's hand, noticing the rough heat, and held on. "You're going to be all right," she told him, with nothing else to do.

"Hopefully the hospital can get you some antibiotics, because this won't do shit about infections," Bruno added (very helpful, Katia thought) as he tied up the last strip. "Right, let's get him in bed."

"Bed, yes..." They didn't even try to have him support himself, just each took one end. With Katia in front and Bruno behind her, they climbed carefully down the stairs, then took him quickly to the bed. Once they had got him in, there wasn't much else to do. They stood there, breathing hard, cooling down for a few moments.

"Someone should go see what he got - if there's meat, it needs to go in the refrigerator," Bruno stated. Katia looked at him, then back at Roman.

"Right," he said, with an odd little smile. "I'll deal with it, you stay with him." He turned and left, muttering something Katia didn't quite catch about having been young once too.

Katia knelt by the bed. "Do you need anything?" she asked quietly. Roman asked her for some water, and she hurried to retrieve it, accidentally splashing some on herself as she ran back down the stairs. She slowly poured it into his mouth, telling him to keep still, then realized she was watching the firm muscles of his jaw flex, and stopped herself abruptly.

She stayed with him for about two hours. He slid in and out of consciousness; they spoke quietly whenever he was awake and lucid. She was startled how well they already knew each other, but they'd ended up just talking for hours on end over the last week, with nothing more to do once they ran out of materials. To her relief, there didn't seem to be very much more blood coming from underneath the torn-up sheets. She was surprised how much time had passed when she checked her watch. Moved by some impulse, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek before departing.

Katia was an intelligent woman; it didn't take long for it to hit her as she went upstairs. No, she thought. We're nothing alike, and now isn't the time anyway.

Tell that to my estrogen, responded another part of her.

How about we wait until he's not slashed full of holes? responded the first part (probably the left hemisphere, now that she thought about it; maybe any internal argument was just the hemispheres of your brain going at it?).

Day 16

"Feeling all right?" Katia asked Roman. He had healed quickly after treatment at the hospital, and although he would be left with a nasty scar, he was almost as good as new already. He was out of bed and moving around, a bit gingerly but otherwise normally.

She'd been removing things, bit by bit, from the hotel over the last few nights. One more trip might make sense, but after that there would be nothing left. They now had everything needed to construct a garden, and grow NewGen vegetables, except some electrical wiring; there just were not enough parts to connect the lamp. There was certainly no more wiring in the hotel: everything accessible had already been ripped out by looters, and they didn't have and couldn't make the necessary tools to tear open the walls enough to get at the remaining wiring. Which left them with no source of vegetables, no canned food, and no way to cook efficiently.

"I'm fine," he assured her. "I got worse than this from that mortar round when we were falling back. My whole side looked like it had been through a sausage grinder."

"You told me that story, minus the sausage grinder," Katia told him.

"What have you been working on?"

"Katia and I," Bruno responded, coming in, "have been trying to figure out how to connect the power to the vegetable garden. Here, Katia, I'll give it a try. You and Roman go...relax."

Slightly amused, but indeed relieved, she got up and followed Roman downstairs.

"Do you think he'll figure it out?"

"Maybe. If you couldn't do it, I doubt he can."

"So we need more wiring then? And thank you, flattery will get you everywhere."

"Everywhere?"

"Oh stop."

"Now who's walking into ambushes?"

Reaching the bottom of the stairs ahead of him, she stopped and turned away. The moment he set foot on the bottom, she jumped on him, catching him by surprise and sending them both crashing to the floor.

"You are," she told him sweetly, pinning his arms down.

He expertly shifted and rolled his body, suddenly whirling them about, and soon she was the one pinned. "Surrender to the superiority of Free Vysena," he told her.

"Fine, I surrender. Congratulations, you've won the war against the Republic of Katia. The Grazni must be shaking in their boots."

He laughed. There was then a pause, while they both hesitated.

"Well, are you going to kiss me or not?" Katia asked.

"What?"

"Well, you know, we've kind of gone through the whole procedure here: exchange of teasing, impromptu playful wrestling, et cetera. To put it in your terms, kissing me is kind of standard operating procedure at this point."

He did. She did. He was quick and rough with his lips and tongue, she slower and more sensual, but they soon got it sorted out. God, the taste, the smell...the war and the world melted away, and there was nothing but blazing passion throughout Katia's body...or something like that; she would be eternally shamed to use such a cliche.