Anton started telling it:
— I finished the academy in eighty-one. Got sent from Moscow to Transbaikal on assignment. Got divorced there. From some Moscow-region tramp… And what did I do? Right. Wrote up a report and off I went. Went to help our Afghan brothers build socialism. Got there, and it’s a real war, like out of a movie. Instead of brotherhood with the local people — pow-pow and there goes another shuravi. Gave me a company of men and said: go on, Antokha, push forward, take the pass. Take the sector under guard and defense, end to end. And what did I know, a green lieutenant? Said «yes, sir» and off I went. Wind in my face, full speed ahead! Before long I toughened up a bit. Became a real soldier. Hardened. Ended up getting myself into it up to my ears.
About a year after I got to Afghanistan, it happened.
We were sitting with the men at some meeting, approving Party resolutions. Back and forth, who’s for, who’s against… And then — bam! Straight out of a Repin painting, «We’re Done For.» Mortar fire. Now that was news! The dushmans had always shot from tin popguns their whole lives, and here they’d gotten hold of a mortar somewhere. Probably traded some grass off our own guys for it. Anyway, no time to sort it out. Mortar shells dropping all around. Absolute chaos. And on top of all the trouble — a machine gun off to the side starts hammering the positions in bursts. And I swear to God, a DShK! That’s it, I think, this is the end of the line. Write me down as a Communist. Anyway, they cut us up good. Of course, it was my own fault. I’d gotten lazy checking the posts, and the sentries must’ve dozed off. The dushmans took them out in their sleep, got right up to our position, and started finishing us off. That’s the fight where I got mine. Shrapnel to the head, write your last letters. Yeah. Pain like nothing else, straight through the skull. Naturally, I went down like a sack. After that, I don’t remember a thing.
I come to right here, under a red sky. A Kalashnikov in my hands, a helmet on my head, grenades lying next to me. I look around. Well, would you look at that! Nine more of my men lying nearby. What is this nonsense, I think. And then — another bombardment, another war. Fine, I think, I’ll figure it out later. Right now I need to survive. My men come to as well. They look around, take up a defensive perimeter. We lie there, shooting back. Enemies coming at us from every side, firing away. War! Familiar work. Before long, another surprise. Down to a single magazine of ammo, that’s it. Well, I think, now we’re really done. Need to break through to our own side. And where are they? No idea, but we have to try. We split into threes and pulled out of that spot in short rushes. Lost two men killed, though. Three more got badly wounded. See that fighting over there? Right there, where the real battle is? Absolute hell over there, total chaos! We ended up right in the middle of it. Thank God, we managed to crawl out of there. Made it out from under fire somewhere around here. Caught our breath, spat the dust out, started asking each other what kind of nonsense had just happened. No answer. Then one of the badly wounded men, Seryoga the radio operator, died of blood loss. We decided to bury him properly, like Christians, but suddenly it started getting dark, fast. Fine, we decided to wait it out till morning. Digging ground at night — you know how much fun that is. Set a watch, agreed to switch every two hours, and — bam! — out like a light. How, why? Don’t remember. And then suddenly — boom! — morning. What’s this? We rubbed our eyes. Couldn’t believe it. No way! Seryoga, who’d dropped dead the day before, was right there with the rest of us, moving around. What kind of medical miracle is this? Our jaws dropped, nearly came unhinged. And even more surprising, all the wounds we’d gotten the day before had closed up, like they’d never happened. Everyone shining like new Christmas ornaments. There! And then another skirmish kicked off all around. This time, though, we ended up off to the side of the main action. Still no ammo, same as before. Decided to keep moving on. Formed up my men, and we headed off in short rushes toward the sands, away from the war.
We covered about four versts, took a break. Started debating what kind of devilry this all was. But no real thoughts came, just pure bewilderment. Fine, sat there, thought about it, understood nothing. I get up, tell the men: «fall in.» And they tell me — get lost, everyone’s equal here, quit playing commander. The bastards had figured out Soviet authority didn’t mean a thing out here. Fine, I say, boys, sort yourselves out however you like, I’m off. Turned around and walked wherever my eyes led me. Those fools said something behind me, like, don’t be offended, come back. But I’d worked myself up — no stopping me. Anyway, I stumbled into those sands over there. Well, I think, this is where I’ll die. Night again. Then morning. And I noticed — they happen strangely somehow. It goes dark instantly, you black out, and a second later you come to and — hello there, new day. Fresh as a cucumber, everything in order. If you got wounded the day before — not a trace of it. But this cursed arm, — the guy nodded at his bandaged arm, — still hurts, eleven years now, nonstop. Scratched it a week before I ended up here. It festered, the cursed thing, never got the chance to treat it, and now I suffer for it. Aches every day, dawn to dusk, nothing calms it. Except when you have a smoke, the pain fades for a bit. I figure it’s never going to heal. It’s a misery. I even cut it off once. Made no difference. In the morning it’s back on and hurting worse than before. Anyway, enough of the sad stuff.
Wandered the sands for about two days. That’s a nightmare. Whoever ends up in the sands doesn’t come back. Proven fact. I just got lucky — didn’t go too far in. Hung around the edge, but it messed my head up plenty. Constant visions, all kinds of nastiness slipping past. Even saw some dragons flying around, spitting nuclear bombs out of their mouths instead of fire. Unbelievable. At first it was constant tension, but the right kind of tension. It’s a war, after all, you can’t let your guard down. But out in the sands, with nothing particular to do, you’re left alone with your own head. All kinds of things crawl in there, like… — Anton waved his hand, groping for the right words. Didn’t find them, swore, and went on:
— Anyway, it’s crap everywhere. But here, at least it makes sense. You kill, you get killed. Everyone’s got something to do, and it feels like there’s a point to life. Everyone’s busy, ready to tear each other apart with their bare hands, use each other for experiments. Like what happened to me out in the sands. On the second day I ran into three clowns in firefighter helmets. Wandering around aimless and unarmed, same as me. Tussled with them a bit, but you understand, one against three isn’t a fight, it’s a slog. And then some strange mob showed up and beat the hell out of all four of us — we were covered in blood. «Clerchata,» they call themselves. There are these special squads, worse than the SS. Their discipline is ironclad, they comb the desert, and anyone not doing anything gets grabbed and dragged off to their zone, — Anton waved his hand off somewhere.
So, they dragged us there. The city was staggeringly big, and other than barracks, I didn’t see anything good there. Led us through the city for about twenty minutes, then shoved us into some enormous barrack. Thousands of people inside, all fighting each other savagely. Kicking, punching, biting, clawing, doing whatever they wanted, but no weapons. A couple of clowns immediately smashed my face in — knocked out teeth, broke my cheekbone. Then finished me off with their boots in five seconds flat, don’t remember the rest. Next day, the same nonsense. Just came to, and someone caught me with a fist to the head. But I’d already gotten the hang of it by then, put up a block, this and that, fought back, and started reshaping other people’s faces myself. What the whole point of the brawling was, no idea. You could easily take down a dozen or two guys, but then just as easily get trampled yourself. Basically, like here, everyone was for themselves, but sometimes they’d team up against some brute. Ten guys pile on, beat him down, scatter. Fun times.
Anton smirked, lit up, and went on. If the first part of the story practically flew out of him, now he spoke slowly, pausing to watch the smoke rings he was blowing.
— Fun barrack. They beat us, and we get tougher — that was the rule there. Every last one of us a fighter. Pure animals. There weren’t any other kind. And the real kicker was, right next door — wall to wall — was another barrack. Sometimes they’d throw beaten-half-to-death kids over the wall in tank tops. White tank tops. Like a shot at promotion. Yeah. They’d toss a bloody mess of a kid in a white tank top into our barrack, and real carnage would kick off. Whoever survived pulled on the tank top and moved over to the neighbors. Over there, everyone’s in white tank tops, and they fight each other less intensely, but with more purpose. They figure out who’s the toughest, ten of them pile on, and throw the beaten-to-death loser into the first barrack. Like — here’s a white tank top for you. The more of those tough guys you carry off, the better. Because right there, wall to wall again, there’s a next barrack, where they regularly toss out a guy in a blue tank top. Same goal — put the tank top on, move up. So, the more real fighters you take out in the first hall, the easier it gets fighting for a blue tank top afterward. So you put on the blue tank top, if you manage to get one, and move to the third barrack, where everyone’s like you — hardened veterans, you can’t take anyone down solo. They fight wall against wall, to the death, there. Basically, your own guys might crack you in the back of the head with a kick, too. No rules whatsoever — the main thing is that it’s not you who gets carried over to the white-tank-top guys, but someone else. And if they toss a guy in a red tank top out of the next barrack — you get another shot at promotion. Fight for a couple hours with the crowd — and by then everyone’s for himself — you can win the tank top and move up to the next, fourth hall. Everything was interesting there… — Anton went quiet. Even smiled a little at the corner of his mouth. Probably remembering something good. — If you end up there, you won’t even notice it pulling you in. No coming back. It’s a different world in there, different rules. Here, in the rocks, it’s a lot simpler. There’s order in everything here. And it’s understood right away. There’s you, and there’s everyone else. Take everyone out, before they take you out. Not much good in it, but that’s how it is. Even here, you’re basically all in red tank tops. There’s a fifth hall, a sixth, and so on.
For about two years, I think, I fought my way from the first hall to god-knows-which one, wasn’t counting anymore. My mind was completely wrecked, all that was left was steel fists and immunity to pain. You just endure and beat down whoever’s in front of you, as long as they don’t get within striking distance. Yeah, total lawlessness. You hit, you get hit. And only one single thought in your head — get that final, ultimate, whatever-color tank top, doesn’t matter which, so it’s all over, done, no more fighting!!! Nothing came of it. I went through every color of the rainbow and it was the same situation everywhere. Anyway, after about two years, it hit me that I was doing something completely pointless — grinding down guys just like me, to dust, just to change the color of a tank top. And it would never end. The barracks stretch to the horizon there. The very last barrack, where, rumor has it, nobody gets beaten — that’s everyone’s dream. Basically, like Count Tolstoy wrote — well, something like that. Anyway. I got to thinking, and what did I see? Every barrack has a way out to the street, unguarded. Go on, walk out, if you want. But for some reason nobody does, everyone’s consumed by the tank tops, because in the barrack everything’s clear and understood, but what happens out on the street, and what it might cost you, nobody knows. People are afraid of the unknown. Better to live in filth, at least tomorrow and the day after the filth will still be there. But I’m not a coward, so I walked out. Looked around. Was stunned. Piles of barracks everywhere, and around them, real street battles. And serious ones, too, with tanks, cannons, fire support. Grim! No point being out there without heavy weapons. You’d be gone in a second. I ducked into the barrack across the road, and it was the same nonsense there — people fighting to the death, but not for tank tops, for colored neckties instead. Quite the dilemma. Didn’t take me long to decide. I don’t need any neckties. Went back out to the street. Took two steps, got three holes punched in my gut, and dropped dead on the spot. Came to the next morning in some assault squad. They handed me a rifle, pointed out a target, and sent me forward, into the assault. Fought for some big-shot for about two weeks. Took maybe three barracks. And then I realized none of it meant anything to me. What’s that? Why were they taking the barracks? Hell if I know. We never went inside. Whoever crawled out of one, if they looked capable, got signed up for the squad. There were three hundred of us, bayonets and all. All animals, real fighting machines. The rest never crawled out of the barracks. And in that whole fighting unit, Tishka was the only sane man. I grabbed him and got the two of us out of the city, here, into the rocks.
When I was fighting in the barracks, I didn’t want to smoke at all — but the moment I ended up here, that was it, Hitler’s finished, done, whatever — I want a smoke so bad it’s unbearable. And the arm started aching worse than before. Now the meaning of life is simple as a stool — find some makhorka and light up. And to avoid getting captured by some armed scumbag, you have to be armed to the teeth and always ready. Good thing I dragged Tishka along with me. A reliable sidekick, always ready to keep watch, won’t let a single soul get within rifle range. By the way, he’s the one who found a little stash nearby, two years ago, maybe three… A fine little stash, I should say. Every morning, out of nowhere, ammo and grenades show up there, enough to defend the Brest Fortress with. But I’m no Marat Kazei, and neither is Tikhon. We didn’t show off, didn’t get into firefights, just took a little at a time to always have ammo on hand, and pulled back. Never went too far from the stash, but never hung around it long enough to draw attention either. Just shoot someone for a pack of cigarettes and scram. Then a couple of months later, Tishka noticed some bastard had taken to swiping ammo and grenades from our stash. Not that we grudged it, there was enough for everyone, but… — Anton suddenly went quiet, put a finger to his lips: «Shh.»
After a minute of tense, drawn-out silence, he spat on the ground: «Thought I heard something.» Went quiet again, then continued:
— Anyway. The stash was big, we didn’t mind sharing. But if every quick hand started hanging around it, topping up their own supplies, what would happen? Some clever bastard would show up and say, this is mine now, you lot stand aside. And he’d dig in, and you’d never dig him out of there. Tishka and I decided to teach the thief a lesson he wouldn’t forget, worked out a clever plan. Tishka went off toward the sands, like bait, and I set up in ambush. Sat there about four hours, and suddenly I see — someone crawling. Ha, I think, you little punk, you’re about to get a surprise instead of bullets. We’ll show you how the Soviet paratroopers deal with thieves. But this guy turned out to be no rookie either. Somehow he spotted me and started shooting at me with a rifle. Well, I’m no pushover either, let off a burst from the Kalash to make him settle down, and lobbed a couple of grenades after it for good measure. He answered right back — two lemons flying my way. Well, I think, ran into a real fighter here. Wore me out fighting him, sweated buckets, but thank god, Tishka came to help. Twice as easy to make peace with two of you. We calmed the guy down. The moment he ran out of ammo, he tried to make a run for it. We caught up and started beating some sense into him, saying:
— Get lost from here, friend, and don’t show your face again. And he answered right back, cursing in our own language — my jaw just dropped. A countryman! Well, would you look at that! I stopped hitting him, nearly cried with joy. Hadn’t heard my own language in ages, it was lonely, always alone. And here was a countryman! He caught on too, that a fellow Russian was giving him a hiding, and started smiling. So I told Tikhon to stop roughing the kid up, and we started making up like brothers. Oh, forgot to mention, Tikhon’s some kind of German. Understands everything, but doesn’t speak Russian, strange fellow. Actually, I think he’s mute. So, we exchanged the traditional triple kiss. Turned out his name was Mityai, and he’d been wandering around this strange place since the Russo-Japanese War, since 1905. Doesn’t even remember how he got here. Said something about defending Mukden, or maybe storming it… Anyway, that’s where he got bayoneted. Came to right here, with his whole company hacked to pieces lying next to him, and some baffling battle raging around them. Naturally, his fellow soldiers all came to soon after, rubbed their eyes, didn’t bother sorting anything out, grabbed their rifles and charged the enemy — for the Tsar, for the Motherland, for the faith. Fought here for about a month under some sergeant, then scattered on their own. Mityai’s been looking for a way back to Russia ever since.
He’d seen a lot of interesting things here, and told me about them. Turns out, in this place, a person can’t die no matter what happens to them. Blow up a grenade up his backside, doesn’t matter — by morning he’ll be right as rain. I checked it on myself, actually. At one point such misery came over me that I decided to shoot myself. Stuck the barrel in my mouth, pressed the trigger with my foot. Come morning, didn’t matter one bit. Came to in the same spot, head buzzing a little, but otherwise fine. Surprised me a bit, that. Made me realize — you can’t outrun fate. Miserable business. Anyway. Mityai told me this thing — there are huge quarries here, with countless people in them. And there are also cities where only women live. And all the women there are just as messed up in the head as everyone else. All armed, and the only difference is these gals fight each other less often, and barely ever with their fists. Mityai, a real ladies’ man, would drool at the mention of women, kept egging me on to go with him to some little town, meet a girl. Too risky alone — the women could tear a man apart in a mob, easy. But women mean absolutely nothing to me here, believe it or not. Not once, in this whole gloomy place, have I gotten so much as a stir. Back in Afghanistan I used to suffer with it constantly, always making a mess of my underwear. Getting your hands on a local girl was a stroke of luck. But once I ended up here, I turned into a genuine impotent, no romance, no urges needed. Fine by me. Though, sure, it stings a bit, deep down. Before Afghanistan I was a real one for it, believe me. God, how many girls I ruined around the academy, it was something! A genuine sex terrorist, that was me. But here — no desire, no ability either. Stings to the point of tears, like someone tore the best pages out of a book. I miss it, can’t help it. But I miss it in my head, not my body. The body just doesn’t want anything at all, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Saw a couple of gals with weapons here, once. Well, «gals» is a strong word… Two grim specimens of the female persuasion, armed. Thought, ah, they smell of something distant and forgotten, I’m about to lose my mind with wanting. Nope… Thought about it, aimed, took one down clean, then the other. Two bullets, two corpses. Makes my skin crawl just remembering it. Ugly as sin in the face, but the figures weren’t bad, had some shape to them. What are you laughing at? Out here, anyone armed is your worst enemy. And anyone wandering around unarmed, gawking, like you, for instance, gets snatched up in no time and put to work at the quarry, slaving away like a chain gang.
Mityai said he’d somehow managed to lose his three-line rifle. Guess what happened next? Before the day was out, some soldiers grabbed him by the scruff and — off you go, Mityai Petrov! — sent him to the quarries. And life there turned out to be scarier than in the city barracks. Picture it. An enormous quarry, people slaving away, awful stuff! No machinery at all, everything by hand. They counted Mityai off, one-two, and sent him to move boulders around. Hellish work, wore him down like an old horse. Every evening he nearly dropped dead from exhaustion, and every morning he’d be fresh and lively again, back at the quarry to move rocks around some more. And the work was pointless, too, that was the awful part. First you carry stones from bottom to top, and then, once the guards get bored, they give the order and you haul them top to bottom instead. Drives you mad, that kind of thing, he nearly lost his mind over the sheer madness of it. But that was just the start. At the quarry, everyone swinging a pick or hauling a cart is split into squads, odds and evens. Every two hours, a signal sounds. If the even squad moved their boulders better, they get to beat up the odd squad. And vice versa. So, they’d pound on each other for half an hour, then go back to moving boulders. No slacking there. Get lazy, and you’d get it too. Your own squad would beat you down good and proper, so you wouldn’t let the team down. Collectivism in action. Absolute grimness. And at the end of the day, the best squad out of all of them — there were over a hundred — got moved to guard duty. And the guards got sent to move boulders. That’s how it worked. Everyone pounding on each other, guarding each other, and moving rocks around, all at once. Ran the whole operation like a proper collective farm.
So Mityai slaved away there, slaved away, turned into a real chain-gang worker, and eventually escaped. Made it about three kilometers from the quarry, reached the sands, and that’s where they caught him. Gave him the full treatment — cracked him over the head and buried him headfirst in the sand. Cruelest punishment there is, Mityai says. Sand fills up your nose, your mouth, your lungs, all at once, and then you slowly suffocate to death. You count to two hundred and fly off to meet your maker. Next morning, you’re back, fresh and lively, in the exact same folded-up position, head down, surrounded by that same sand, which packs right back into every hole and crevice of your suffering body. You count to two hundred again, and fly off again. And so on, countless times. Mityai said after about a month of that mind-numbing routine, he’d had enough. Tired of dying of suffocation every single day, he started figuring out how to get out. Nothing sensible comes to mind, naturally. Picture it — sand all around, you’re slowly suffocating over two hundred seconds, and somehow in that time you have to find a way out. Don’t know how, but Mityai got out. Water wears down stone, he says, and here’s a healthy man, surely he could manage it too. Getting out of there, he figured out later, took him thirty years. Yeah, he got out, and meanwhile soldiers from the Second World War started showing up here. Automatic rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, even cannons and tanks appeared. Mityai says life got a lot worse. Endless firefights, all sorts of hotheaded soldiers, ugly disputes, no peace at all. Used to be simpler. He wandered here and there, made it to the rocks, and decided to attach himself to someone. So a couple of days later he fell in with some Kyrgyz cavalrymen, twenty guns in the unit, and started roaming the rocks with them. War every day, they killed him about five times, but his own men never left him behind. He’d come to in the morning with his weapon and go back into the fight. After six months, Mityai finally ditched them, says he got sick of the prayers and the political briefings. Besides, by then he’d figured out how things worked here, and decided to strike out on his own. He kept pushing me to do the same — send Tishka away and stop relying on anyone. I mostly agree with him. A loner’s always more mobile and more combat-effective than any squad of fighters. In these strange conditions, even the most disciplined fighters turn into an anarchic mob of slackers and deadbeats who don’t care about anything. How do you punish a soldier here anyway? Shoot him? He’ll open his eyes in the morning and brain you with a brick, bury you under rocks while he’s at it. Proven fact. — Anton smiled sourly, probably remembering his old company.
— Yeah, — he went on after a pause. — One thing I figured out for sure here. A man is an animal. As long as he’s tearing into others, nobody touches him. The moment you go soft, that’s it, you’re done! Get your neck ready for the yoke and bend over. You know why the sky’s that color here? It’s red so you always see blood hanging over you and never forget about death. As long as you’re killing others, nobody’s going to kill you. Anyway… I got sidetracked. What was I saying? Ah, right, Mityai… He told me another bit of nonsense — here in the rocks, there are places where all sorts of useful stuff shows up out of nowhere every morning — smokes, ammunition, shells, military gear, even barrels of fuel sometimes. All kinds of parts and supplies you’d need to fight a war. Actually, hear that fighting over there? — the guy waved his hand toward the battle rumbling in the distance again. — That’s exactly what they’re fighting over, one of those ammo deposits. Mityai swore he saw it with his own eyes, a mountain of crates with ammo and grenades showing up there one morning. He was serving with the Kyrgyz unit at the time, and they’d taken that deposit off somebody. Held it for two days, but the party didn’t last. On the third day, they got kicked out themselves. That’s when he left the Kyrgyz. Says he’s been wandering alone ever since, doesn’t complain about his lot, still a fiery character. The only thing — he’s tired of fighting, dead tired. And without a war, there’s only one road here — the quarries to move rocks, or the barracks to fight for tank tops. Mityai also told me everyone here is a real bastard, you can’t trust anyone. I let that go in one ear and out the other. He talked my ear off with all sorts of nonsense, I didn’t remember half of it. Oh, remembered one funny bit. He said he got lucky, being buried in sand instead of under rocks. Says when he was slaving at the quarry, they pulled a wet stain of a man out from under some boulders, and by morning it woke up a healthy man, and guess what? Turned out to be one of Vespasian’s legionaries, buried by his own men for some offense. Two thousand years, crushed to death every single day. Can you imagine? By the way, those guys in the firefighter helmets — Roman legionaries, nasty bunch. Fight like gods, even captured a tank somewhere, ruthless bastards on top of it. Take everyone apart like kids. I fought one of those brutes in a firefighter helmet for a couple of days here. The fool got separated from his unit, ran into me, tried to take me prisoner, dreamer that he was. I think I’m getting sidetracked. Anyway, Mityai told me a lot of things, then evening came, and we lay down to sleep. Next morning, before I could properly open my eyes, Mityai cracked me over the head with a rock. I dropped like a stone, of course, and the rotten bastard grabbed my rifle and two magazines of ammo and was gone. Really can’t trust anyone here. Since then I don’t let anyone within a hundred meters. Unless they’re tied up, then I’ll come closer. Or a corpse. That’s how it is, countryman. And I’ve got a short conversation planned for Mityai. Catch that bastard, and I’ll wind his balls around his neck and pull his ass over his ears. So he never tries that again. I can feel he’s wandering around here somewhere. Oh, I’ll catch him…
Anton reached for another cigarette. Stunned by the story, I compared what I’d just heard with what I’d recently seen. It all fit. I was even amazed at how small this little world was, despite Vespasian’s legionaries and other characters in it. Just an hour ago, the non-smoking Mityai had been giving Anton grief, and now here he was himself, a nicotine sufferer, sitting right next to me. Seemed like the rest of it was probably true too. No, it didn’t seem true at all. Maybe Anton had lost his mind from nicotine withdrawal. Or some other reason. I decided to check a bit further:
— Really? Is it actually that bad here?
— What do you think yourself?
I shrugged. — Well, I don’t know yet…
— That’s fine. You’ll find out soon enough. — Anton took a drag on his cigarette, blew out a thick stream of smoke, and, it seemed to me, smiled dreamily. — Don’t worry, countryman. There’s a gathering here once a year. The Day Your Dreams Come True.
Anton laughed loudly. He definitely had some issues going on upstairs. Laughing for no reason at all… I sat up. Decided to finally figure out which direction to go. Tired of sitting among the rocks in the company of an armed dreamer. Anton got up too, looked around, and said:
— Yeah, it’ll be getting dark soon. Time to clear out of here. Those stiffs from the jeep will wake up come morning, and you won’t like it. Let’s go, — he ordered.
— Where to? — Over to those sands. You’ll walk in front. Hey, Tishka! Over here.
Out of the rocks, about fifty meters away, another kid popped up, in a blue bulletproof vest, but unarmed.
— See anything? — Anton asked. Tishka spread his hands, meaning nothing interesting.
— Then let’s go. Tikhon vanished back among the rocks. Anton and I walked slowly away from the wrecked jeep, toward where I’d been brought from an hour before.