Chapter 32
Moskvin and his soldiers still had no power in their base. Frozen silence and darkness ruled over the control room.
"Right. There will be no problem." somebody dared to whisper sarcastically since Moskvin could not see them. Combat engineer Boris Alekseyev growled as a sign of agreement, then more and more people joined the riot. But it did not last long. Moskvin turned on his flashlight with a click - he used the same watch with the built-in reflector as the kids - so the team fell silent as one person.
The commander checked first to see if everyone was in place, and then put himself in the spotlight. It put strange shadows to his face, strengthening up his barbaric features. He just wanted to show that he was not in a good mood. The person he looked at with his scorching gaze might want to vanish. This time he also showed signs of some kind of a shame, in a form of a faint pink stain instead of complete redness.
When he started speaking, his voice trembled with great fury.
"Comrade Alekseyev!" he snarled at the combat engineer and turned the light of the watch on him "Turn on the backup power! Move! Move!"
"Yessir" Alekseyev jumped out of his chair saluted and despite how confident he sounded, he walked toward the exit ungracefully. He passed at another soldier, who asked:
"What's the order for us, Commander?"
It set Moskvin thinking for a while, but he caught Alekseyev just in time on his way out.
"You're staying here, Comrade. I need you as soon as everything's back online. The game must continue. If there's no electricity here, there's no electricity in our whole territory, which means the kids can clear out. We won't let them roam freely. Volynski has the task, right, Comrade Volynski?"
The circle of the reflector now fell on Volynski, as every head turned to him as one person. Volynski nodded, then followed Moskvin's guidance by the lamplight to the door. From that point, flashing lightning showed the way onward through the windows. Moskvin sent out more people to look for any damages, then turned to Alekseyev again.
"You can restore everything to the pre-storm point, can't you?" it was more like a command than a question. He did not accept anything unsure, and Alekseyev knew it well.
"It... it's possible... yes it is" said the engineer.
By that time, Volynski, the man in his late 30's successfully made out of the main building of the base through the massive iron gates, turned right, and hurried along another building. The roofs partially covered him from the rain, even though it was not enough to prevent getting a soaking. When he got to the end of that building - it was a hangar for vehicles - Volynski found the rusty door, he was looking for.
"Such a moron!" he did not stop mumbling, which he had started since he left the control room. "No backups, it means the game had been lost. If we do have backups, then we're doomed. Great standings I can tell ya." meanwhile, he grabbed the handle, but the door did not open.
"Yes, of course... the key..."
This section was always locked, although it did not make any sense, because they all had access to the keys, so anyone could go down whenever they wanted.
"This is so stupid." he grizzled.
He had a great, warm jacket as everyone else here, which end touched his knees, so when the man reached deep into his seemingly bottomless pocket, his forearm had disappeared to the elbow.
"Damn that key!" since he had nothing better to do, he continued mumbling "And damn those Japanese kids, too! Damn that *sshole, with his bold actions and hunger for power! Paranoid b*tch! That stupid class would never go near the electric fences with or without electricity!"
He had no idea how wrong he was.
In zone A3, three kids not only went near the fence but climbed straight on it. Gouki Hayata and Baku Baisotei were already on the other side when Yamato Chiba, the head of their trio left the game field. He stayed behind because he wanted to make sure that no one was following them.
Now halfway on the fence, within reach of the top, where he could cross his legs and move to the safe side, Yamato stopped. Suddenly. Because someone was approaching, as Baku and Gouki also noticed. Yamato looked in the direction one of them pointed and saw a silhouette belonged to a girl. Was it Rena? Did she change her mind and returned? The blonde one rushed along the way between the fringe of the forest and the fence, and finally stopped when she reached the boys.
She took breaths gasping and appeared to be extremely exhausted.
"God, it's so good to see you, guys!" she, Fuyumi Morimoto complained "Fuyuki's here somewhere, and... and he already got Rena! I've heard her screaming! I couldn't do anything!"
Every inch of her was shaking, and probably not from the icy raindrops mixed with the sharpness of the wind. Yamato, escorted by the look of the other two boys, climbed back a bit, then jumped and landed on the ground without trouble from that three-meter height.
"Rena...? And Fuyuki... What...?" he asked. His mind was spinning so fast that his mouth did not even finish one sentence, his brain was already starting the next one.
"Uh-huh," Fuyumi nodded desperately with a sniff.
"Fuyuki, that piece of sh*t!" Gouki cursed. "Rena deserved better, not to die like that!
"There!" before any of them could say something, Baku cried out, pointing his long finger in the opposite direction.
Gouki, Yamato and Fuyumi followed the movement with their eyes, when the only girl cried out in terror. On the edge of the woods, Fuyuki Egami was standing, his body in the dark uniform seemed like a phantom in the flashing lights of the elements. Everyone was waiting for the other person to tell what to do.
Seeing the crossbow in the hands of Fuyuki, Yamato pulled himself together first. Rena kept the crossbow! She needed it more since she remained on the battlefield. Fuyuki killed her indeed. How could they defend themselves now?
Fuyumi was still in shock, she was unable to take her glaze off their murderer classmate. Yamato grabbed her by the shoulders with both hands and turned her against him in one move.
"We need to go, do you understand me?" he said, then led her to the fence and gently forced her to climb.
Fuyumi drew apart from the fence, saying, she's not that idiot to touch something with full of electricity. Yamato guessed her thoughts and answered while he pushed the girl closer and closer.
"There's no electricity there. How do you think Baku and Gouki could cross? But if we don't hurry, we're going to miss maybe the only chance to get out!"
That was the magic word to break Fuyumi's resistance.
"Now climb!" Yamato charged, and she obeyed automatically. She was talking to Yamato the whole time.
"You know, what happened with Baku? The Shoda?" as she turned her head towards Yamato, he could see tears running down on her fairy face. "I was there! I saw everything! As Nana did, too! He killed it! Fuyuki killed Baku!"
"You have to forget them, no matter how hard it is. Hurry up!" she got a restless answer from Yamato.
There was no treasure in the world right now which could distract his look to somewhere else than Fuyuki's position on the game field. Just to be safe, he took a larger stick to defend themselves in case it will be necessary. Baku, the Baisotei, and Gouki kept quiet, waiting for something to finally happen.
Volynski turned the battered key in the lock with one last groan.
"That's not the one either" he shook his head as the lock did not click as the sign of opening up.
He tried not to became angry and continued to look for the right piece on his collection, which was hanging on a metallic ring.
"C'mon, c'mon!" he urged himself during sorting. "Such primitive protection! If they preach about advanced technology, they can install at least a mechanical lock or something!"
Fuyumi finally reached the top of the fence. Yamato was maybe halfway there when he felt pressure on his ankle like somebody wanted to pull him down. Looking down, he saw Fuyuki's skinny hand on his leg. His first thought was, how Fuyuki could reach the fence so quickly? And why Gouki or Baku did not let him know, that he was coming?
Everything happened so suddenly. Yamato realized he was falling. Fuyuki pulled him back harder than expected, causing his foot and hands to slip out of the grid, which was already wet by the rain. During the fall he could claw at the fence again, but a sharp piece of metal injured his palm, causing enough pain to be difficult to stay there. He tried to get rid of Fuyuki with one leg, the other needed not to fall. But Fuyuki was persistent, pulled Yamato back with his full weight. The other three had to watch the fight passively because none of them carried a weapon.
Hey! The crossbow! Why did he throw it away?
And then Yamato realized everything. He looked down at Fuyuki's fierce face with widened eyes.
"You don't want to get out of here at all, do you?" he said flabbergasted "As you don't want to just kill us!"
Fuyuki answered with a wide grin, showing out his snow-white teeth, which he cleaned with great care every day. Not only in mornings and before bed, even in the breaks between lessons.
"As painful as possible." then he finally said out.
Meanwhile, Baku and Gouki started to hurl insults at him, like 'Stop that!' or 'Crazy motherf*cker!', and Fuyumi soon burst into tears at the top of the fence.
"Why did you do that to Shoda, tell me! What was the point?" she cried.
Fuyuki simply shrugged the shoulders.
"Neither of you deserve to live. You all are a bunch of double-hearted morons. Grabbers." He told these in the coolest manners as if recalling a section from a book. "You come to me and pull a nice face if you want anything. Otherwise, Fuyuki the sh*tface, Fuyuki the f*cker, right? Anyways..." he giggled "I didn't find any arrow for the crossbow, and pulling them out of poor Fukashi would be a bad thing, yes?"
While he was talking, he successfully dodged Yamato's kicks. The boy's legs were not long enough to reach him when Fuyuki ducked.
"What is pulling arrows out of a dead body now? Now, that you murdered so many of us?" Gouki tried to dissuade him "We were a community! Friends!"
But Fuyuki's deep voice was louder than everyone else.
"I'm sure that the power will be back soon." he said "The Soviets won't let us escape. I'm going to win for the last time, and I will have fun, oh yeah!"
He wanted to laugh, but this time, Yamato was faster. The boy kicked him right in the face.
"Not until I'm alive!" Yamato said, and with another powerful hit, he managed to send back Fuyuki to the ground.
Despite his bleeding nose, Fuyuki got back to his feet in no time. Fuyumi had been sitting at the top until now because she did not dare go down. She was afraid that Fuyuki would shake her off the fence or catch her from the other side and hurt her some way. All she could do now was to cover her mouth in fright and just wish that she could help Yamato.
Baku and Gouki could not reach up to the height either, where Yamato and Fuyuki had fought. Since Fuyuki fell back to the ground, they followed the incidence with attention: as Yamato clung to the fence with one hand, while his other, the bleeding one bagged into the deep. He probably could not use it.
A clicking sound, then the door finally opened. Not only opened, thanks to Volynski it hurtled into the brick wall, who pushed impatiently into the dark, but rain-free chamber. He took the stairs by two as he was heading down and stopped only as he reached the bottom to wipe his forehead. Raindrops, sweat, too much water, he thought. As the rays of lights coming from outside lightened his way, he followed the corridor, then he stopped once again.
He sighed. Now he had to face an unending blackness.
"Guess, who forgot his flashlight in the control room!" he groaned to himself, then waved his hand angrily.
He could not go back, not without Moskvin tearing him apart, but he was down here enough to remember the path by heart. At least he thought. There was no electricity here either, it was obvious, yet he pressed the switch and hoped a miracle will happen.
An empty click.
"Or not," he commented.
So he had to touch the brick wall and keep his fingers there, that way he headed toward the generator room. The walls were slimy and mossy, so he tried to ignore his vision about a wide variety of the most disgusting insects and crawlers he just knew. This gave him the creeps.
Volynski pulled himself together and yelled:
"What are you dammit! A rabbit or a soldier!" he cursed and he spat out.
Then he continued his way to the generator without a word, still keeping his palm on the walls. At some point, when two corridors met he turned right. A few meters more, then he found the second fence which indicated that the room he was looking for was near.
So that was the good news. The bad news, that he needed another key to get in there.
Volynski cursed for the second time. Out of the dozens of pieces of his key chain, how did he know which one was the right one if he could not see anything? The last drops of his patience vanished in no time. Expressing his anger, he kicked into the fence many times. The chains which held the gate gave out a clanking sound. With time he managed to damage the gate so much, that it became folded, only the hinges were what held the whole thing in its place.
Volynski stepped across the wreck looked like crumpled paper and finally knew himself by the generator. If he was not mistaken by his memories of course. Thanks to the guidance of the brick walls again, he tried to find the control panels on the right side. After he made it, he was about to activate the machine. He just had to pull a large two-forked lever.
Volynski put all his weight in the lever, but it got stuck.
"Isn't it Friday the 13th?" he said almost cutting up rough. He was sure that all of these unlucky events were no coincidence, so he did not expect any good news for the rest of the day.
He was happy, however, that after some minutes of persistent trying, he could pull the lever. The movement was accompanied by a buzzing sound, and at the same time, some sizzles could be heard. The lights in the generator room returned.
"F-finally!" Volynski laid his head into the control panel, pressing the sound 'f' as a sign of relief.
He almost left the room, when he took a final look at the switches and buttons, and his gaze stopped on a switch near the lever which activated the generator. Above the long shaped pull-arm, which looked like a gearbox, he saw the board filled with warning signs about the danger of electricity and high voltage.
And then Volynski remembered.
"Oh, yeah. That's what's going to make the fence system work. I have to pull this, too." he slapped his forehead while he said that. Maybe a little stronger than it should be, the red print of his dirty palms appeared on his wet skin. He paid no attention to the dull pain, he was already reaching for the pull-arm.
In zone A3, things could not have been worse than that. And the kids had no idea what kind of danger they were in, thanks to Volynski, who only did his job by activating the electric fences. Fuyumi has not moved from the top since then, as Yamato and Fuyuki were still fighting. Fuyumi felt dizzy as she looked down at the boys, so she preferred to watch the landscape drawn into the darkness if there was no lightning in the sky.
Just like Sonoko before, she was able to spectate the lights of neighboring bases, as many fireflies on a grassy meadow, along with the hills, forests, and rivers. The only difference between the two views were many yellow obscure squares coming out of the blue, forming the shape of windows of a huge building complex. Moskvin's base had come back to life.
Fuyumi had bad feelings.
"Lights!" she shouted, pointing one hand wide in the direction of the new phenomenon "There's electricity again!"
Her statement hit her in the head as the fences had already had power in them, she released the grids as she was touching something hot.
"Oh, God, what now?"
Gouki and Baku heard her discovery, so they also stopped grabbing the fence.
"Fuyumi, you have to jump!" said Gouki, seeing his classmates still in a healthy state "And Yamato, you have to hurry! You don't want to stick on the fence when the electricity's back!"
Baku just nodded.
"But it's going to be back any minute!"
While Gouki was trying to make himself clear with Yamato, who was still hanging while Fuyuki tried to pull him back, Baku tried to lure Fuyumi down from that height.
"Jump, Fuyumi! I'll catch you!" he was the tallest boy in the class anyway.
"Are you crazy?" Fuyumi screamed, "Do you know how tall is this?"
Her features on her face froze into tension. She was considering to jump, no matter what her heart dictated. And that was when a deep whirring broke out of the pillars, and the red lights came back to life again.
Before the wave of electrons could circulate in the veins of the fence, Fuyumi jumped from the top and threw herself into Baku's arms with a seven-octave-high scream. Fuyuki released Yamato's foot in time, and at that moment he did not bother the fall. He did not get hurt anyway.
Unlike Fuyuki and Fuyumi, Yamato was not that lucky. He just did a kick with his leg, when Fuyuki let him go, so he thought that as his success. Everything that happened around him was one with the background noises, so Yamato did not know what was going on around him. The last thing he could do was to turn to his friends and see Fuyumi laying on the two boys, who could not catch her so the girl fell on them. A few seconds later he felt nothing else, just the pain which tore him to bits.
A mysterious tingling became unbearable so fast, forcing his muscles to turn into stone, so no matter how hard he tried to get rid of the fence, he could not let it go. Despite losing consciousness, he was not freed from the hellish agony. Tiny little creatures clawed and mauled him from inside, leaving him no peace for a minute. He felt that his head wanted to explode, and even though he would like to scream at suffering, not a voice came out of his throat.
From that second on, more separated Yamato Chiba from his classmates than a fence. Gouki, Baku and Fuyumi witnessed his suffering with the deepest horror, as pale as ashes. The lights of the sizzling, creaking, and shaking electric fence drew a wide variety of shadows on their surroundings. Fuyumi Morimoto burst out crying, covered her face with two hands, and ran into the forest that covered the edge of this zone. Gouki Hayata and Baku Baisotei also could not take much longer. Seeing Yamato like this, twitching and burnt with the uniform torn into rags, they both felt nauseous. The smell of burnt flesh and clothes.
They followed Fuyumi into the bushes while they tried not to vomit. They wanted to be as far from that place as possible, as fast as possible. They mourned Yamato as were deeply disgusted with Fuyuki, but there was not much they could do right now. At least Fuyuki missed his last chance to escape. Moskvin's defense line that had locked them up from the outside world was working again.
Yamato's death seemed to frighten the sky. Soon the wind and the rain lost their strength, the lightning bolts were showing themselves less and less, and the storm clouds began to vanish. The eye-catching infinity of the star-dusted sky has slowly returned.
Fuyuki would normally have been jealous of their classmates to see them free, but at the moment he was shocked by Yamato's death. He was shocked by how it happened. He lost his balance so he fell into the muddy ground. He did not understand. Perhaps for the first time in his murderous career, he felt slight guilt. But it went away quickly, as he helped himself to his feet again and started to sprint towards the forest without looking back.
He ran hard, even though he has not eaten or had a drink for a long time. He ignored his exhaustion. He did not slow down, he had to escape the death rattle that frightened all hearts, which, after disappearing in the air, continued to echo only in Fuyuki's mind.
[Number of students: 13]
Yamato Chiba eliminated
