Privideniya – Chapter 36
The sun had not yet risen over Groznyj Grad when Lieutenant Vulich awoke. He had slept only four mercifully dreamless hours, but he felt refreshed. As he put on his coat and boots, he remembered the events of the night before, replaying them in his mind with methodic thoroughness; he was willing to concede to himself that he had been frightened then, but he would not allow those feelings to return now.
He didn't believe in ghosts, and yet it seemed that now he somehow must. Since his childhood, Vulich had considered compromise and flexibility virtues only of weaker men. He had no need of them, for he had always known the simple and incontestable truths of the world.
It was not for the sake of the creature in the courtyard that he would change, but rather for the woman he had seen the day before. It had been Olga Gurlukovich, and upon seeing her Vulich had felt a pang of remorse that he had not in the days following her death. He had been too busy trying to gather up the scattered Gurlukovich troops to think about much else, though he had briefly wondered if, by his presence, he might have been able to protect her.
He had quickly dismissed the notion as outmoded and patriarchal, yet he had returned to it from time to time. Sometimes, he even imagined that he had rescued her, that she loved him for it; but he was ashamed of these fantasies, and he hid them deep.
Vulich had never loved her, and he did not think he ever would have come to. At best, he had stood in a kind of half-terror and half-awe of her, for she alone had been able to understand the violent currents of his ambitions and his desires.
Until he had seen her ghost, it had not occurred to him that Olga might have her own life, apart from him, into which he had entered no more that she had entered into his own. That she might have her own secrets, and desires, and sad concealments. When he realized it, it had made him feel strangely nervous, as if he had some important task to attend to and no time left in which to complete it.
Anxious and troubled, Vulich dressed, putting his uniform into immaculate order, spared his unkempt hair a single pass with the fingers of both hands, and then went out for fresh air.
He knew that he was following a route through the corridors of Groznyj Grad that would not take him past the room where he had seen the phantom with the scarred face the night before. He knew, too, that once outside he chose to walk around the back of building rather than subject himself to the sight of broken glass on the pavement. He did it because he was afraid. His fear irritated him immensely, but he yielded to it, letting it carry him along.
As he crossed the lot that separated the main building from the small barracks where the Gurlukovich troops were quartered, the morning mist surrendered the figure of a man coming towards him. Vulich felt a weary resurgence of that old dread, but quickly forced it aside. He went on without hesitating or turning aside, conscious of each placement of one foot in front of the other, each incremental approach.
When the shadow called him by name, Vulich's blood ran cold.
"Lieutenant? Is that you? You're up early again—"
"Nikolai." The name came out in a strangled gasp, and Vulich found himself more irritated than relieved.
The boy coalesced out of the fog. Vulich could see that he was pale as death, except where his lips had turned blue from the cold. The shadows under his eyes seemed to have multiplied overnight.
"Didn't you sleep at all?" Vulich demanded, and he could tell by the way Kolya averted his gaze that he had not. His shoulders were hunched, as if a handful of snow had been slipped down his back and his hands betrayed a shaking nervousness.
Vulich tried to soften his demeanor. "Tell me what's wrong."
Kolya looked up at him with watery, red-rimmed eyes. He seemed about to speak, but he never got a chance.
It was at that moment that the Gurlukovich barracks erupted in flame.
Forty yards out from the building, Vulich saw the explosion before he heard it, felt the percussive displacement of air before his mind completely registered it. The black outline of the barracks emerged like a galleon out of the fog, and the sky turned red.
For a split second, Vulich could see Kolya's face very clearly. Eyes wide with unspoken emotion, he did not look older than he was, but in a way he seemed ageless. And then Vulich had him by the wrist and he was jerking him off his feet, throwing him down on the pavement. Vulich hit the ground beside him, and a roaring wave of hot air rolled over their backs.
A fist-sized piece of concrete hit the ground near his temple. Vulich did not hear it land; his ears were ringing from the explosion.
He sprang to his feet. The barracks was engulfed in a column of flame, and the pavement was littered with debris. Vulich was bleeding from a gash on the back of his wrist, from another along his ribs. He couldn't feel either of them, though the sleeve of his uniform was wet with blood from the cuff all the way to the elbow.
Vulich was not yet thinking that they were all dead, that they had all been betrayed again and that, if he had been astute, he could have prevented it. He was thinking only one name over and over again.
Revolver Ocelot.
And then he remembered Kolya was still with him.
The boy was still on the ground, face down on the pavement with his arms over his head. A curl of gray smoke rose from his scorched hair.
"Get up," Vulich tried to say, but he wasn't sure if he managed it. He couldn't hear his own voice over the pounding in his ears. He hauled Kolya to his feet and held him there until he had found his balance, then he pointed back towards the main compound, gesturing in that silent language of ambushing soldiers for Kolya to go.
Kolya shook his head fiercely. His skeletal fingers fastened onto Vulich's coat, refusing to let go.
Vulich relented. With Kolya straggling behind, he started toward the burning remains of the barracks. Thick black smoke was beginning to fill the air, and he didn't see the overnight guard Kostya Vladimirovich, until their paths nearly crossed.
Kostya was panting and red-faced from sprinting, breath steaming the icy air. His lips moved, but Vulich heard only a static blur and the staccato pounding of his own heart. He pushed his palms against his ears as if it might miraculously restore his hearing; blood from his cut wrist dripped into his mouth. Kostya was still shouting, stabbing at the air with one hand, gesturing frantically back in the direction he had come.
Vulich couldn't make sense of it. His head was spinning and he knew he was losing blood. When his vision started to blur, he wondered in a detached way if he would faint.
The sound of gunfire snapped him back to his senses.
Three shots. He heard them clearly, though everything else was still white noise.
Kostya froze, his expression going slack. His hands fell limp at his sides. A bloody flower bloomed on Kostya Vladimirovich's chest.
Slowly, his head rolled back so that he was looking up at the sky, and then he collapsed. It was only because he turned his gaze up that Vulich noticed the drone circling overhead.
It was a small ubiquitous mobile spy drones, modified with a machinegun where the camera should have been. It swiveled slowly on its axis, insectile, wobbling a little under the weight of the gun.
Vulich drew his pistol, and squeezed off a shot that struck one of the drone's rotary blades and sent it spinning to the ground where it burst into flames. He knelt, his movements quick and sure, the automatic pilot of a long-time soldier. A quick check of Kostya Vladimiovich's pulse confirmed what Vulich had already known: he was dead.
As he straightened up once more, he felt Kolya's fingers close around his arm. Vulich could hear a soft wailing sound, like a far away siren, but when he turned to look he realized that the boy was screaming.
Vulich slapped him once on the right cheek and Kolya quieted at once. He looked up at him; Vulich was seized with dread when he realized that Kolya still trusted him to get them out of here alive.
"Come on," he said. He heard a sound like radio static instead of the words, but it was an improvement over absolute silence.
Taking Kolya's hand in his, Vulich started back towards the main building. He didn't know what he would do once he got there, save that somehow he would find Revolver Ocelot, and somehow he would kill him.