The Winepress
By Longhand
Prologue: The New Order - Новый Порядок
AN: Dear readers, thank you for looking into the first chapter of this story. I'll warn you now that I have tried stories before, have succeeded in completing some, and failed for others. However, I've never tried an alternate universe setting, which poses some difficulties and some fun challenges. The surgeons you know and love will probably seem out of character, especially for the first little while. But if you hang around I'm sure they'll conform to the story and you'll find them recognizable. Along such lines, I've tried to preserve personality and manners of speech, but Dorothy ain't in Kansas anymore, which is to say behaviors and capabilities of the characters will probably seem alien to a lot of the situations in this story. In addition, I hope it goes without saying that backstories are radically different. My hope is to replicate characters in more than just what face occupies your imagination, but bear with the learning curve. Also, don't be afraid of what Russian I use. Even for someone who doesn't understand it, I find it's a very aesthetically pleasing script. It's only included to lend an air of some authenticity. Lastly, be prepared for time lapses and flashbacks. That said, thanks, and hope you enjoy.
Also, don't sue me. I don't own these characters and they're not being used for any commercial purpose whatsoever.
Russia, Tver Oblast
December, 1918
And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles…
-Revelation 14:17-20
И тогда другой Ангел вышел из храма на Небе. У него тоже был острый серп. А от алтаря подошёл иной Ангел, у которого была власть над огнём, и громко воскликнул, обращаясь к Ангелу с острым серпом: -Возьми свой серп острый и обрежь гроздья на винограднике земли, так как виноград созрел. И взмахнул Ангел своим серпом над землёй, собрал урожай винограда на земле и бросил виноград в виноградной пресс великого гнева Божьего. И отжали виноград прессом за пределами города, и кровь потекла из пресса и поднялась до уздечек конских...
-Откровение 14: 17-20
"Let me do the talking," Karev commanded. "And keep your eyes down. We won't know whether they're Red or White until they stop us. You know which papers to give them either way, right?"
"Yes, Alex!" Jo hissed.
"Keep your mouth shut, got it? They hear your accent and we're both dead in a ditch by morning."
"I know, Alex."
"Okay. Shut it." The skeletal horses dragged the buggy with great effort down the muddy road, on to the roadblock the guards had set up along the road to Moscow. There was only one running train going out of the country, only one means of secreting the woman beside him to some destination where she might not be raped, hanged, or shot for being both a foreigner, and –worse- a noblewoman.
"Stop right there, citizen!" one of the guards called from the roadblock, holding a hand aloft. He shifted his rifle into the crook of his arm and walked with the hesitant, theatrical gait of an interrogator.
"To Moscow?" he asked as he approached, dragging on a cigarette and passing the smoke through his nose.
"To Moscow," Karev confirmed.
"What purpose?"
"My wife is pretty sick," Karev lied. "Consumption, is my guess." Jo coughed, with convincing phlegm and severity. The guard stepped back from the carriage, disgust written across his cold-reddened face.
"And?"
"There are only peasants in my village. And all the doctors have joined the army."
"Which army?" The guard demanded. Karev's eyes flickered, briefly examining the roadblock. The soldiers' uniforms were generic enough that their affiliation was a mystery. His heart leapt into his throat. The soldier shifted as Karev hesitated, his hand moving towards the trigger guard on the rifle.
"The Red Army," he said, taking a chance. "Even the stupid peasants in my town know they're better off under Socialism than under the Tsar."
"Better off?" The guard challenged. "Are you suggesting the Communist Party is not competent, comrade?"
"Of course not," Karev answered with slight relief. "Only that the complexities of Comrade Marx and Comrade Lenin are lost on simple townsfolk like those in our town. But even they can understand when they are better off than before." The guard nodded his satisfaction.
"I see. And where did you say it was? Better yet- papers. Just yours, I don't need hers." Alex produced an envelope from his left coat pocket (the fraudulent papers for the "White" Mensheviks were in his right pocket), and passed them along.
"You were a surgeon during the war?" the guard asked, reviewing Karev's documents and raising a curious eyebrow.
"That's right."
"Where?"
"Lutsk."
"Under Brusilov?"
"That's right," Karev said with a smile.
"You don't say? I served under Brusilov in Romania, before I got shot and sent home. For all I know, you operated on me and saved my life."
"Maybe I did, comrade," Alex said with a forced laugh.
"I had my doubts about Brusilov when the revolution started. Not many generals joined the cause. But he's fighting the Poles as we speak."
"I'd be with him even now, except for this," Alex said, brandishing a crutch that lay beside him.
"Aleksandr Yakobovich Karev," the guard said. "Can I offer you a cigarette before you're on your way, comrade?"
"Thank you," Alex said, taking the tobacco from the guard. He made a show of having a useless leg as he climbed out of the carriage.
"No, comrade!"
"I'm maimed, but still a man," Alex responded. He dragged his "wounded" foot behind him around the carriage, and the two men shared war stories over their cigarettes.
"I had a Romanian nurse when the offensive started, and uh…" Alex looked back at Jo, whose eyes betrayed a patient terror. "Uh… sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
"Eine Kleine," the soldier affirmed.
"It was like going to bed with a wolverine," he said in German. The guard exploded in laughter.
"It's true!" the guard confirmed, switching back to Russian. "I think we feed our women too many onions, comrade. It takes their passion away, my personal theory. It's a shame about your wife. A pretty thing… Is she…?" Alex shrugged.
"That's why we're going to Moscow."
"In any case, I won't keep you any longer, friend."
"If- when- my wife recovers, I'll be back to the operating table. I hope I don't see you again, in that case."
"Nor I, comrade! But here, let me help you back into the carriage."
"No, thank you."
"Please. It's the least I can do to repay you for possibly, maybe saving my life in Romania." Alex decided to sell it, letting the man heave him under the arm and assist him back to the driver's side of the carriage. The man pushed on his butt as he climbed in. Alex's foot slipped on loose snow and knocked a bundle from the floorboard. Recognizing the bundle, hot adrenaline seared through his circulation.
"Oh, shhhhit!" Alex cursed under his breath
"Here comrade," the soldier said, bending down.
"No, I'll get it!"
"Don't be sil-" As the soldier picked up the bundle, a white china plate slipped from within the folds, landing with crunch in the hard snow. It bore the seal of the Dolgorukov noble family. The soldier snatched it from the snow and stared for a minute, and lifted his eyes. Their previously disarmed demeanor had been replaced by those of a wolf deciding on the easiness of its prey.
"We raided it from the manor near our village, when the revolution broke out!" Alex attempted.
"I went to the university, comrade!" the soldier sneered, his hands beginning to tremble. "You are a long way from St. Petersburg." The soldier's hand inched perceptibly to the revolver holstered on his belt. Alex's pistol was out in an instant. He ducked and pointed the weapon directly at the guard's face. He kept himself below the frame of the carriage, hiding the sudden confrontation from the guards further down the road.
"I don't wanna kill you," Alex said. "We're war brothers."
"Lies!" the soldier hissed, his face purpling with rage.
"It's true. I was recalled from Lutsk a year before the revolution," he pleaded. "I was part of the raid on the Winter Palace! You've gotta believe me."
"You are harboring a noble!" The soldier growled through gritted teeth, his eyeballs pacing within his skull as they scrutinized Alex and Jo both. "Or are one yourself!"
"This isn't worth dying for," he cautioned, jostling the pistol for effect. "Just let us turn around and go back the other way. Please." The soldier's eyes, trembling with adrenaline, flicked down the road, then back to Karev's. He steadied.
"Don't." Karev said, cocking the hammer back on the pistol. "Do NOT do this."
"WHIIIITES!" the guard roared, dropping the plate and swinging the rifle from its rest on his back. The man's head exploded in a spray of brain matter and clumps of hair as Alex pulled the trigger. The roadblock erupted with gunfire, overwhelming Jo's deafening shrieks. One of the horses collapsed with a hellish squeal as her companion began a wild uncontrollable buck. Karev dove from the carriage, grabbing the rifle from the dead soldier's hand and dropping prone. He crawled up behind the haunch of the squirming horse and kneeled. A bullet whizzed past his ear, concurrent with the crunch of snapping wood.
"Easy," he whispered to himself as he aimed, pleading with the rifle barrel to stay steady. He pulled off a shot and the first of the two remaining guards dropped while the second stopped shooting and ran for the nearby outpost. Alex dropped the rifle and began a sprint after him, unsure of whether he would be signaling distress or finding cover to continue the shootout. He found out soon enough, when a bullet clipped his shoulder and sent him rolling through the snow. He let out a surprised yelp, but reacted quickly enough to use the momentum of his slide to roll up to his feet. A second shot missed him cleanly, giving him enough time to slide to the wall of the outpost. He lifted the gun to the window and fired inside, shattering it. With the few seconds of stunned deafness the soldier inside was bound to experience, Karev sidled around to the far side of the cabin and briefly popped his eyes over the sill of the window. The soldier was on the ground, clenching one ear with his hand and pointing the rifle clumsily towards the window with the other. Alex stood, pointed, and fired. The man fell limp.
Alex rushed to the other side again, where the other soldier lay sputtering and paling as his blood melted the snow around him in a cloud of steam. Alex approached with caution, watching the wounded man's hand clench and reopen some inches from the rifle beside him. His eyes looked up to Karev as he coughed blood up on his chin, they were desperate and mournful, devoid of the malice that had prompted him to shoot at Alex only moments earlier.
"I need my kit!" Alex yelled as he fell to his knees, holding his hands over the hole under the man's collarbone. "Jo! My surgical!" He looked back, unable to see her in the wagon.
"JO!" she screamed in response, a relief in itself if not total confirmation of her safety. "Jo, I need you now! My surgical kit! He heard a series of hysterical whimpers and moans as she appeared in the open. His eyes looked back to the man under his hands. His face was blank, disinterested. Dead.
"Oh god," Alex responded. He launched from the ground to his feet and kicked the dead soldier in the ribs with the toe of his boot.
"Dammit!" he yelled. Jo had made it halfway between the carriage to Alex when she recognized the situation and stopped. Alex's eyes found hers, puffy and oozing with tears that had frozen to her cheeks in spider-web patterns.
"Is he dead?" she called out to him, exuding more caution than compassion in her voice. Alex nodded, and ambled towards the outpost after a frustrated kick at the snow. He peeked inside the outpost, saw the limp body inside, and stepped away, spitting.
"Alex?" Jo queried again. "What's happened?" She approached with an outstretched hand, giving his shoulder a gentle touch.
He let out a shout in reaction and lunged. He seized her by the shoulders and threw her, rolling her backwards off into the snow bank.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" she yelled back after clawing her messed hair from her face.
"What's wrong with me?!" he bellowed, gesturing in disgust towards the steaming corpse not fifteen feet away from them. "How 'bout the fact that I just killed three men for your stupid dessert plate?!"
"It's a family heirloom!" she protested, pushing herself up from the snow.
"A family heirloom. Worth it?"
"They were ready to kill us over that stupid plate, Alex. This isn't my fault!"
"I know!" he snapped, and fit his hands to his waist. He took a deep breath and his shoulders slacked. "I know it's not your fault." Her tenseness softened, but she kept her distance.
"I'm sorry," he added, and turned to look at her. Her face was that of an animal kicked too many times by its master. But it quickly melted into fear.
"Alex," she gasped. "You've been shot!" His head turned reflexively to the torn fabric at his shoulder. The wound was numb, but obvious, and had soaked the length of his arm in blood. His eyes traced the wetness to his cuff, which dripped crimson into the snow below. He was suddenly faint. His knees buckled and he fell stupidly into the snow with a crunch. Jo's arms caught him and held him up.
"You're fine, Alex," she insisted. "You're just in shock. But you're going to have to help me get you inside."
"No," he refused. "There's a... he's…"
"I know. But we need to get you inside." She heaved, with a masculine grunt, and he found his feet enough to stumble along into the outpost. He fell through the door to share the floor with the man he'd killed minutes previous.
"Take off your shirt," Jo ordered.
"What are you doing? I have to."
"You'll pass out first," she said, throwing the surgical kit to the floor and untying it. "And I know what I'm doing."
"No you don't."
"My aunt's estate served as a hospital. And there wasn't much else to do but learn."
"Don't..!"
"Here," she said, snatching a bottle of vodka from the table in the corner. She stuck it in his mouth like a baby's bottle. He drank heavily, spewing the last gulp. She took a swallow herself, and dosed Alex's wound with some of what remained. He gasped with a stifled choke, eyes wide and straining for a brief moment before they rolled back in his head. Jo eased him to the floor as he passed out of consciousness. Sifting through Alex's surgical kit, she rolled several segments of linen together and placed them aside. Alex had not taken off his jacket, so she used his scalpel to slice at the cuff enough that it could be torn open. The bleeding in the wound was slowing, a sign that his wound was not so serious as his appearance. Even so, she'd seen enough of such type of wounds to know that improper treatment could easily end in amputation.
She cleaned the surrounding skin of blood, and with a conscious glance at Alex's contorted face, she began clipping at the torn tissue surrounding the canal boring through his shoulder. It was a through-and-through, the exit wound of which had torn his rear deltoid to shreds. She suspected that only the density of the muscle allowed the bleeding of the wound to slow.
Despite her sense of inadequacy for the task at hand, she was learned enough to pack the wound with the linen she set aside, and to secure it tightly by weaving cloth through his underarm. Able for the time to ignore the brutality of her circumstances, Jo sheared a pant leg from the dead man on the far side of the room and- sitting Alex up as he drooled in near-consciousness- fashioned a sling that would hold his arm stationary.
"Urggh," Alex groaned, and began to feel the pain. "Urrrghh!"
"I know," Jo replied, as if to a child. "Can you stand up, Alex?"
"Unh…Mmhmm." She stood him roughly, and herded him toward the row of cots that lined the far wall. He laid down with some ease, and, remarkably, was sleeping in the minutes after she pulled the shabby woolen blanket to his chin. Once she felt some confidence that the situation had stabilized, her mental senses stung at the gravity of the scene. The white corpse on the floor, and the gelatin-like pool of blackened blood that surrounded him reminded her of the horror of the previous years. Despite the ferocity of the wind-chill streaming through the shattered window, she allowed a moment to watch the landscape as it grew golden with the early sunset, and all the mystique of alchemy. A few lone, hoary alders rustled and filtered their burden of snow through the rays of the dying sun. How bizarre, she thought, that the fullness of hell could graft so perfectly upon such a gracious and gentle landscape.
Yet for the past years of universal misery, in which time she had witnessed the cruelty and darkness of man's soul wax to its fullest, she could not miss even the concept of her native England, despite knowing with certainty that any sane human would. She knew, of course, that though her homeland was now a full month out from the war, it continued to reel from what was certainly the greatest and most universal tragedy it had experienced in half a millennium. Even so, their nightmare, if not their pain, had ended.
But Russia, like Prometheus, was disemboweled each day. The countryside they had traversed was only so bad as the proximity of the nearest army, but either army, Red or White, as well as a multitude of bandit parties and foreign occupiers, could be counted on to steal the food supply of any village it came across. That was their idea of mercy. Their ideas of vengeance were far more horrible.
Turning back to the cots, she checked Alex, whose pulse- though distressed- was stable. She lay in a dead man's cot and pulled the blanket over herself. She settled in for what was sure to be a long night.
XxX
As it turned out, both of the horses had been shot in the gunfight, and by whatever means the guards had arrived to the outpost was a mystery. There were no horses, and no vehicles. They were going by foot.
By all accounts, the road was a blip of concern on the part of the Bolsheviks, likely because the bulk of their power was concentrated to the defense of war fronts. Alex had not approved that they slept the night in the outpost, as several telegrams had arrived by night demanding status reports, but he conceded that he was in no condition to travel that night, and they did so today only because it was nearly certain that the location would be visited by a detachment much too overpowering for a (functionally) one-armed man and a gun-shy ex-countess. Remarkably, and probably due to the remoteness of their location, no patrol had arrived to survey the scene.
But any prediction they made functioned as a guess, and their best estimation was to travel along the road to Moscow and hope to make the town of Dmitrov by nightfall. From there- and if they could avoid capture or death- they'd be a day's walk from Moscow. Though, by now they'd learned that straight lines were the sole property of armies during wartime.
They mostly abandoned what few belongings came with them from St. Petersburg, save for Alex's surgical kit and Jo's troublesome plate. They raided what food and water was left in the outpost and had made themselves ready to go.
"We should bury them," Jo mused as the pair reflected on the destruction their presence had caused the previous day.
"You know we can't," Alex dismissed. "It's no use even moving them."
"I know. It just seems heartless."
"It is heartless," Alex confirmed, and took the first starting steps along the road. After a hesitant moment's longing at the death they left behind them, Jo scampered along behind him, jumping in the footprints that trailed the snow behind him. She was unsure of their fate, and her eyes continually searched the horizons in nauseating dread, but she was glad she was not alone.
It was the second year of the war.