Grigori treats himself to a third vodka bowl, tilting it into his welcoming mouth. He chugs the drink in mere seconds and belches terribly. His vision turns wobbly, and so does his motion. Commissar Petrov notices Grigori having some trouble putting one foot in front of the other and offers him his left arm for support.
"All right, Grigori," grunts Petrov as the captain, who stands a foot taller than the commissar, leans on him. "I believe you've surpassed your daily allowance of poison for today."
Grigori responds with moans and groans only, much like a feral ghoul. The commissar is no stranger to this sort of degenerate behavior, practically everyone in the village is a heavy drinker, but he cannot blame them. There's plenty of guilty pleasures to go around in the Wasteland for no man or woman to be without sin, save for the pure and innocent children. It's when they reach adolescents that all hell breaks loose.
"A bottle a day keeps the dysentery away!" Grigori hiccups. He struggles keeping up with the commissar's swiftness, tripping over his own crooked feet ever so often.
"You'll have to abstain from alcohol starting now, Grigori. Our mission is just two days away, and you don't want traces of fermented potatoes floating around in your system, eh? Drinking can be appreciated from time to time, but not while on duty. Technically, we're constantly on duty, but you get my point. You'll want to be sober in the bog. It's nothing to scoff at."
"Ja!"
Grigori waddles next to the commissar some more, mumbling old adages to himself occasionally. The ball of his foot rolls over a large pebble. He stumbles to the left and nearly plants his hammered face into the sodless ground, but Petrov is able to snag him by the collar. Grigori gags from the breakneck force counteracting his downward foul-up.
"You all right?" Petrov comes around to inspect the captain's face. It's redder than the Soviet flag. "Well, you're not choking to death. Looks like I didn't crush your larynx after all. Splendid!" He pats him on the back several times.
"Uh-huh," Grigori says in a raspy voice.
"We should head over to the general store and see what Anton has for us. Let's hope he has some favorable supplies left on his shelves."
They head towards the pair of one-story houses hugging the village's west side wall. Unlike the brick and mortar dormitory, the general store is made up of cheaper, highly flammable material, birch wood, an easy target for bandit firebombers. Nonetheless, the owner carries on within his quaint shop, keeping the curtains on his windows closed.
Commissar Petrov messes with the latch on the sheet metal gate and invites himself onto the general store's front lawn. Silver-zinc batteries litter the ground, rakes and shovels stick up from the ground as absurd trees, and a wheelbarrow guards the porch, carrying gears, springs, pilot lights, and spools of copper wire. Grigori browses the diverse collection of junk while Petrov handles the screen door. He knocks on it, and a slender man answers.
"Good to see you, Commissar Petrov," greets Anton, his voice stuffy. "What brings you to my shop this afternoon?" He looks over the commissar's shoulder to watch the drunken captain shuffling around the displays, picking up every single item to inspect it, then putting it back. "Heh, your friend seems interested in my wares."
"Him and I are planning a trip to the bog."
Anton widens his baggy eyes. "The bog? I know you're a capable man, Comrade Commissar, but why in the world would you want to go there?"
"It's more for my friend. Grigori. You see—" He paraphrases the story so far to Anton. "And that's why I suspect the tribals had something to do with it." Petrov hushes his voice and comes closer to the shopkeeper. "I never told this to anyone, but months ago, a crazed drifter wandered into the village in the middle of the night, asking for the witch doctor. I told him, 'There is a medical doctor who can attend to you.' The drifter shook his head at me and said, 'No! He cut into my skull and stole a piece of my brain. I must get it back from him!' I tried escorting him out of the village, but he went into a trance and became problematic, so I had to—"
"Hey!" shouts Grigori. "I found the bastard!" He points to a scrap heap of metal and electronics. "There's its entrails, right here!"
"Is your friend . . . all right?" Grigori runs down a list of swears in German at the pile of salvage, though most of them are unintelligible to Petrov.
"Ah, no. He's been binge drinking vodka to his heart's content as well as his liver's discontent. The alcohol is digging up his trauma, I'm afraid." Petrov hops down the doorstep and walks across the trashed lawn to wrangle the rowdy captain back to sobriety. "C'mon, Grigori. It's just junk." He tugs at the captain's sleeve, but his arm recoils back.
"No! I have a score to settle." Grigori rolls up his sleeves and kicks the mound of scrap over and over again. Pieces of riveted metal clink down the towering stack. Petrov wrestles with his flailing arms and restrains them behind his back. "Why are you doing this to me?!" Grigori cries out.
"Calm down, mein Freund. Listen to the voice of reason." Grigori continues squirming within Petrov's grasp. "Are you willing to listen to reason?"
"Just let me go! Please."
"All right." Petrov relinquishes his submission hold on Grigori in fear of frenzying him. "Let your anger out then. I'd rather you wail on inanimate objects than living beings."
Once Grigori is out of Petrov's bond, he's able to control his breathing and uncurl his fists. "I-I don't know what got into me. I'm s-s-sorry."
"Why are you upset with the trash pile?"
One by one, little pieces fly off the heap of scrap. They gather at the base, O-rings, bolts, widgets, pilot lights, vacuum tubes, and antennas. The hodgepodge of miscellaneous junk vibrates on the ground, then disperses into the air. Chunks of scrap metal melt into molten steel. The stream of industrial lava pours into a sphere mold and cools into a solid ball of aluminum-magnesium-titanium alloy.
Next in line are the vacuum tubes, blasting off as space rockets in orbit and docking to the sphere. The widgets teleport themselves inside the sphere to form its power core. The O-rings hermetically seal the two hemispheres together, the bolts thread into their holes, and the antennas attach themselves to the back of the sphere. Lastly, the pilot lights twist into their sockets, shining a yellow bug light into the horrific eyes of the captain.
"Grigori!" Petrov shakes him around, his head bobbing up and down. "What did you see?"
The captain stares back at Petrov with empty eyes. "The metal sphere," he says in a monotone voice. "It materialized from the salvage — right in front of me."
"No, you're hallucinating."
His symptoms are getting worse. Petrov thinks to himself. He's a time bomb ticking down to the last second. If I don't disarm him soon, I'll be repeating the same mistake I made with the crazed drifter. I never want to wash the blood of the innocent off my hands ever again.
"We'll have to wrap up our business here and head straight for the bog. There's scant time for us to wait two more days. The more we delay, the more your sanity slips. Right now, you're walking on a tightrope over a gorge, Freund." I probably shouldn't have said that last part, knowing his current mental state.
Grigori chooses to be mute and nods in silence. Commissar Petrov acknowledges him and proceeds to lead his companion into Anton's shop.
The interior of it is poorly lit up by a couple battery powered halogen lamps, and the blackout curtains are not helping by blocking out what little sunlight shines through the clouds. They walk through the dark as blind men, relying on the two pockets of light as beacons. The first bulb guides them to a workbench where Anton seems to be crafting something of interest. As for the second bulb, it illuminates a far corner of the house, sitting on a nightstand next to Anton's bed.
"Opa!" exclaims Anton as he admires his handiwork. "It's finished, at last." Anton naturally turns to his left and sees a pair of shadow people standing in the midst of darkness. He jumps out of his greasy overalls. "Ay, blin!"
"Scared you?" asks the commissar mischievously.
"Oh, uh, Comrade Commissar. I forgot you and your friend were still here. Uh," he puts his project aside, "what can I do for you, sir?"
"Ease up, Anton. What are you making there?"
"Oh, uh, one moment." His hands dance frantically through the clutter which came about by combining random scrapyard loot with everyday items, picking the contraption off the workbench. "I present to you, Comrade Commissar, the coin mine."
"Heh, how does it work?"
"Well, my first thought was to find a casing for the mine. No one wants to eat out of a rusty old lunchbox and catch tetanus, so why not weaponize it? Next up, I filled the empty lunchbox with kopecks. They're useless without a centralized economy, might as well turn the coins into shrapnel, or better yet, load them into shotshells. Anyway, I grabbed a sensor module and taped it to the lunchbox. Why, you may ask? When it detects movement, it detonates a small explosive inside the mine and unleashes a flurry of metal bits to any unsuspecting target. Simple, da?"
Commissar Petrov enjoys hearing Anton explain how he invents his crazy contraptions. Men like Anton are a dying breed in this world, and the commissar can't imagine anyone else in the village replacing a handyman as skilled and innovative as him. "Yes, a very simple and deadly concept at that. Perhaps I can take the kopeck mine with me to the bog and test out its combat effectiveness for you. What do you say, tovarisch?"
"You don't even have to ask, Comrade Commissar." Antov hands the latest and greatest version of the kopeck mine to him, now with double the amount of coins!
"Thank you, Comrade Anton." Petrov conceals the mine in his satchel.
"Anything else?"
"Yes, if you don't mind. I'm not sure how many tribals we'll be running into in the marshes, but I'm expecting a lot. With my revolver, I have seven tries to take down a tribal. An empty gun means I'm dead meat. I'll need a real weapon if I wish to cut through hordes of hopped up tribals with ease. Give me the best submachine gun you have in the armory."
"Wait just a moment." Anton goes outside, nips around the corner of his house, and confronts a set of chained doors leading into a root cellar. He pulls out a gas mask and wipes the dust off its visor, staring at his own reflection. "Back into the depths I go." The gas mask slips over his head, and he inhales his first breath through the musky filters, the eerie noise looping back into his conscience.
I shared this mask with a child in a bombed out Metro tunnel. The nuclear fallout had already settled into the underground, and we both gasped for fresh air. They say the adult is first to wear the gas mask, not the child. If the adult loses consciousness, then the child has nobody to help them put the bulky mask on, and very little time to hold their breath in their tiny, weak lungs. Sometimes, the chaos that surrounds them steals their breath. There was only one gas mask for both of us. I kept it on so that I could carry the child out of the irradiated tunnel to safety, but it was too late. The young girl had asphyxiated on my back. To this day, I carry the burden of her death on my shoulders, the weight of it heavier than her corpse.
Anton produces a key from his pocket and inserts it into the padlock. He pulls the heavy chains off the handles and lets them rattle to the ground. A steep staircase descends into the earth as glowing fungus lights the path down to the armory. He rushes to the bottom of the cellar as toxic-green particles start to flicker across his foggy visor.
Ignoring the countless glass jars full of pickled vegetables and meat, not to mention wine barrels, Anton focuses on a military shipping crate plastered in Cyrillic. He sets the lid aside and pulls out clumps of softwood shavings until he spots the submachine gun's barrel shroud.
He takes the antiquated PPD-40 out of its casket and cradles it in his arms. Examining the shipping crate's contents further reveals one extra drum magazine containing a spiral of sixty-five pistol cartridges. Anton bounces the drum magazine in his dominant hand and wields the submachine gun in his offhand, ready to bestow his lucrative findings upon Commissar Petrov.
"You're lucky, Comrade Petrov," says Anton through the gas mask, forgetting he still has it on. "The armory blesses you with Degtyaryov's machine pistol. It even comes with two Tokarev drums."
"Spasibo, tovarisch." Petrov hugs Anton and kisses him on the cheek.
Anton smiles back gingerly. "I'm anxious to hear about the kopeck mine and its debut in combat. If that is all, I wish you good luck in the marshes, Comrade Commissar!"
Petrov nods and turns his kirza boots around, seeing that Grigori is far from being sober. He's still drooling all over himself and bumping into things. "I suggest you fill up that belly of yours before we leave. The bog is an hour away on foot, and that's assuming we don't take detours or run into tribals. Most of them aren't fond of outsiders wandering into their land. My point is you don't want to venture out in the Wasteland on an empty stomach, so eat up! A hearty meal should cure you of drunkenness."
The commissar stirs the steamy pot around with a ladle, scoops up a piece of the salamander's rubbery tail, and plops it into Grigori's bowl. The captain sits down on a stump and picks at the stew with a fork while Petrov prepares to tell his wife the news. Their departure is imminent.
Thirty minutes later, Grigori and Petrov are halfway to the mystical bog. At the trailhead, a crooked signpost reads in Glagolitic script, "Crusaders, begone! Pagans, welcome!"
"What does it say?" asks Grigori.
Petrov fails to translate. "I-I'm not sure. Either the tribals brought back a dead language or made up their own. Let's move on." He gets off his rusty knees and follows a wooden arrow staked to the ground, pointing to a dirt trail bordered by seven-foot grass on both sides.
The commissar stays vigilant up in the front with his submachine gun while the captain lags behind. Petrov doesn't mind the space between him and Grigori too much so long as they're within each other's sights. He looks to the rear every fifteen paces to make sure Grigori is still with him. To Petrov and the villagers, the tribals may be savages, but they're not clumsy oafs. If there's one thing Petrov can compliment them on, it would be their sneaking capabilities.
Tribals travel light, meaning they only have the garbs and sheaths on their backs to worry about. Meanwhile, scavengers and the like have to lug around pounds upon pounds of gear with them. Every step they take, a mess tin or a bag of cartridges rattles around in their rucksack, becoming walking noise makers to nearby tribals and mutants. To them, an overencumbered explorer is easy prey, like wolves hunting a pack mule.
At any moment, a tribal could come charging out of the tall grass, and with a healthy thrust, spear them both at the same time. The chieftain would be satisfied if a kindred soul were to come back with such bounty, a two-man kebab for the tribe to roast over a bonfire. The commissar suppresses his morbid curiosity. Instead of distracting his mind with the hypothetical, he focuses on the linear path ahead.
It's awfully quiet in the marshes. No bloodsucking parasites buzzing around. No tribals shouting to their sky gods. Just the sounds of boots stepping on wet ground. The commissar can appreciate silence once in a while, but this silence in particular is deafening.
Why haven't we been ambushed yet? Petrov asks himself. He knows he's an intruder in someone else's land, and he knows he doesn't belong here, that he should turn around this instance, but for some reason, he keeps moving forward. An animal-like instinct barks at Petrov to put one foot in front of the other. It wants him to probe further.
They're coming up to an overgrown patch of land where chunks of mossy cobblestone lay in disarray. Commissar Petrov dislikes the idea of chatting in the middle of a tribal hotbed, but the unbearable silence is inflating his inner thoughts, and he needs to let them deflate before they burst in his head.
"I've been here before," Petrov says with a slight lump in his throat.
"You have?"
"Yes. The first time I went, I had to fetch some healing herbs for Doctor Rostov. The second time . . ." He bites his tongue in contemplation. The shallow grave of the crazed drifter isn't too far from where they stand. Commissar Petrov can still hear his corrupt spirit wandering around, pleading for his mortal life over and over again. A living nightmare that ceases to end.
It was a mercy kill damnit! Petrov tries to justify the swift execution in his head. I had no other choice. His fate was sealed as soon as the chieftain mesmerized him. What's so immoral about putting down a feral human anyway? We do the same to ghouls. Atom converts them into zombies, and so we baptize them in holy lead. Blin, I sound like a Nevsky preacher. No amount of rationalization will get rid of my guilty conscience.
"You were saying?" questions Grigori.
"Oh, right. You'll have to excuse me, Grigori. I was hit by a surge of negative energy just now."
"What do you mean by that?"
"As we get closer to the bog, the black magic these tribals dabble in will have a stronger influence over us, but as long as we guard our minds with steel domes, no ounce of dark energy should enter our heads."
"So what you're saying is we should've brought along army helmets."
Petrov rolls his eyes. He treads cautiously across the field of weeds and wildflowers, overanalyzing every square inch of dead grass. For all he knows, there could be booby traps lying about. The commissar counts his blessings as he reaches the other side intact. He gestures at Grigori to come over and join him. The captain tiptoes through the field with a racing heart, constantly following the impressions of Petrov's boots on the ground with his eyes.
Grigori catches his breath and embraces the commissar. Petrov can't help but flash an awkward smile at him. Their relief is short-lived once they embark upon a fork in the wall of marsh grass.
"Which path should we take?" Grigori consults Petrov. "I trust your instincts."
"I'm glad to hear you have great confidence in my pathfinding, but I'm afraid your flattery won't put me more at ease." Petrov wipes the sweat off his graying mustache. "I hold a heavy dilemma in my hands. Left or right? It seems both spell death for us."
Grigori brainstorms for an alternative solution while the commissar battles with his indecisiveness. He imagines a silver coin in his open palm like the one he flicked into the air before breaking into that fisherman shack. Perhaps the captain can try his hand at luck once more. He turns his pockets inside out and remembers that all his belongings were washed away in the Pripyat.
Feeling poor and desperate, Grigori turns to Petrov for a monetary favor. "Can you spare a coin?"
"What for?"
"It'll decide our fate for us. If it lands on heads, we go left. If it lands on tails, we go right."
"All right." Petrov agrees. "Seems simple enough." His hands pat around his grimy zampolit uniform. Hopefully he still has a kopeck or two left on him from the Pre-War days. He unbuttons both breast pockets and finds lint instead of old currency. Political officers rarely carried loose change on them while on duty (unless they were just bribed by Mafiosos).
"Blyat." The commissar mutters under his breath. "Sorry, Grigori. The only coins I have on me are contained within this explosive mine." He shakes the rusty lunchbox around.
"We should detonate it."
Petrov laughs uncontrollably. He wasn't expecting such a suggestion. "The risks outweigh the reward, Grigori. How about this instead? I'm going to close my eyes, and when I open them, we'll take whatever path my finger is pointing at. All right?"
He proceeds to follow his own instructions, his finger alternating between the two paths blindly until his wrinkly eyelids naturally separate. Petrov points to a naked savage standing two yards in front of him, his shoulder length hair tangled up in knots. The savage doesn't react at all to the two foreigners trespassing. He gazes into their shaken souls with his large black eyes.
Did he utter something? Petrov wonders as he could've sworn he just heard the savage welcome them in Russian, though the movement of his lips is almost indiscernible.
"Izumėješi-li rúsĕsky?" asks the savage.
"Do you speak Russian?"
"I wish not to speak your imperialist tongue, but I'd rather there be no language barrier between us. Do you want to have a meaningful conversation with me, outsider?"
"As long as you'll continue speaking to me in Russian, I'll accept. As for my companion . . . he doesn't know any Russian, so you'll have to excuse him. By the way, what language were you speaking just now? It sounded ancient."
"My sacred tongue shouldn't concern you at the moment." The savage rejects him with a slashing arm. "What brings you here?"
"I've come for your leader."
"Why is that? Do you seek spiritual guidance from him?"
"No. My companion . . . I believe he's fallen victim to one of his mind-opening rituals."
"Slander, you spread!" The savage curls his toes into the mud.
"I've heard the rumors. Your people lure vulnerable travelers into the marshes, away from witnesses, and subdue them with crack pipes in order to mutilate their brains. That's why the chieftain has a large congregation of naked, lobotomized tribals following him. He's been brutally hacking away at people's gray matter, and you're none the wiser! I wonder why?"
"So what? Me, my brothers and sisters are still able to communicate with each other just fine. We don't have the sociopathic urge to step on each other's feet to get ahead in life. We are a hivemind of like-minded individuals, therefore conflict within our tribe is avoidable. Can you say the same for the rest of your selfish kin? No, because they'll always kill and maim themselves over petty differences. The chieftain truly is a saint amongst men. He is the opener of mortal minds!"
Suddenly, Petrov feels something whiz past his right ear. It sounded close to a mosquito, but more violent. Another object, seven inches long, thin as a toothpick, flies over his head. The savage flees. A different savage emerges from the wall of grass, wearing salamander-backed armor and wielding a long pipe in one hand.
He takes a knee, puts his mouth on the rear end of the pipe, and blows hard into it. Thoop. A paralyzing dart spirals out the other end of the blowgun and enters Petrov's left pectoral. He staggers and immediately pulls the foreign object out from his chest, retreating to the cobblestone ruins.
"Come on, Grigori!" Petrov drags the captain by the arm. As he's running, the half pound lunchbox full of coins and explosives bangs aggressively against his hip. He acts accordingly and deploys the kopeck mine mid-stride, smacking the sensor module awake and tossing the kinder-looking bomb a few feet behind him.
The commissar takes cover behind a column, waiting for the tribals to mindlessly charge his defensive position. The blowgun savage hangs in the back and fires more darts from afar while his buddy comes barreling down the middle. Two beeps go off before a bronze storm of shrapnel erupts from the lunchbox and tears the savage into crimson ribbons.
More darts are blown at Petrov and bounce off the column. Firing short bursts from his PPD-40, he manages to pick off the blowgun tribal with ease. Now that the dust is settled, the two can collect themselves.
"Gennady, are you all right?" asks Grigori out of breath.
"Feeling a bit woozy." Petrov is seeing double of everything, so he leans on the column for support until the side effects from the poison wear off.
"Did you bring antivenom?"
"No." He shakes his head foolishly. "Should've come more prepared. Eugh. Felt hurried back at the village. Didn't want you turning feral like the others." Petrov snaps his head up and breathes laboringly.
"Wh-what can I do to help you?"
"Not much, I'm afraid."
"You're dying, aren't you?" Grigori notices the commissar is sweating profusely and losing color in his face.
"Heh, don't know. Never been poisoned before." Petrov licks his lips. "Grigori? If I don't make it out of here alive, tell my wife, tell her . . ." Grigori watches him suffer, feeling powerless in this situation.
"Maybe I can suck the poison out."
"Grigori? I want to tell you what a Nazi is. A Nazi is a national socialist, an Aryan boy conditioned to believe he is a part of the Master Race, that he is superior to everyone else. A Nazi is a soldier who tramples over the dead with his jack boots because he has blinders on. He follows orders, no matter how immoral they are, burning holy books and bodies, never washing the soot off his dirty hands before going to bed. At the end of the day, a Nazi is just a man like you and me. How can eugenics matter so much to Nazis when bayonets, bullets, and bombs all butcher our flesh the same? We all bleed, we all die, we all rot away from existence."
Commissar Petrov rolls his eyes back and slips out of consciousness. Grigori catches his body just in time and places him on the ground gently. He wiggles the PPD-40 out of Petrov's arms and scans the area for any more tribals. Once he deems it clear, Grigori bends down and checks on the commissar. Miraculously, he's still breathing, but Grigori doesn't know when he'll regain consciousness. He thinks about hiding Petrov in the ruins for now and returning back to the village for some assistance.
Thoop. Grigori feels a sharp pain enter his neck, then a tingling sensation all over his body. Thud. He collapses next to the unconscious commissar.
A group of naked savages surround Grigori and Petrov. They roll their stiff bodies onto cowhide stretchers and lift them off the ground. Torch carriers illuminate the pitch-black path ahead. The tall, muscular chieftain leads the recovery party back to the swampy bog, and he is not pleased about his two dead hunters. On the other hand, he sees great potential in their killers.
Nature taketh two of my kin away but also giveth me two new initiates from civilization. That is the beauty of balance. I shall mold them in the palms of my hands like clay and sinter them into hardened warriors. The chieftain takes a hit from his crack pipe.
A/N: I'm making a minor change in detail. The metal square that attacked Grigori will now take the shape of a sphere for worldbuilding reasons. I'll get into more on that decision in later chapters. Also, I apologize for not posting consistently, but I'm sure most of you understand. I won't be following a schedule anytime soon. That isn't to say this story will eventually be abandoned in the depths of fanfiction. I look forward to posting more stuff. Soon.