Anton started telling it — level, monotone, like he’d told it a hundred thousand times already:
— Yeah. Shit follows me everywhere. Fine-looking fellow, easy to spot in a crowd. So. The standard hundred-gram doses of hell they serve new arrivals here — that’s bad enough, but it can get a lot worse. Shit today, chocolate tomorrow, dead the day after that! And come morning — hey there, asshole, happy New Year, you’re in the brig dreaming about a Toblerone bar. That’s the fancy chocolate from the dukan, if you didn’t catch that. Anyway, closer to the point, to where it all started, so to speak. My dad was deputy secretary of the regional Party committee, no small thing. And Mom, with her usual clear-eyed goals: you turned out a bit dim, so off you go into the officer corps. Being dim is actually a plus in the army. Comes with a state salary and respect, and every girl’s yours for the taking. Retire at forty-three, we’ll wrangle you an apartment in the building next door. Leave as a colonel, and colonels get the good pensions!
Anyway, thanks to some connections, after school I didn’t go to a technical college, I went to the Kremlin Combined Arms Academy. What a mess, honestly! Infantry with attitude and a little extra swagger from having the right connections. Four years went by, this and that, time to ship out to the troops. The assignment board didn’t find a general for a father, just some ass-kissing yes-man from a regional committee out in the sticks. Right. Back home Dad’s a big deal, but in Moscow he’s a tiny pimple on the backside of a big country. So instead of Europe, they sent me — the model cadet, the honor student, whatever you want to call it — not as a green platoon leader to some cushy post, but as a company commander straight to Siberia, to the Transbaikal Military District. Unbelievable! All my buddies whose fathers hung around the General Staff on Frunzenskaya went off to Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. And me, like in that heroic song off the TV — «the order has come, he goes west, and I go the other way» — I got sent god knows where, but with a gold star in my file. What can you do!
Yesterday a lousy cadet, today a company commander, salary of three hundred. But don’t get too cocky, twenty-one-year-old senior lieutenant, remember like the Lord’s Prayer that Transbaikal Military District stands for «Forget About Ever Coming Back.» If you didn’t catch that — I got assigned to the Transbaikal Military District. Handed four lieutenants under my command, all hardened screwups, twenty years of sandblasting their souls waiting on an officer’s pension, not much left to go.
Heh. In Borzya, out in the middle of nowhere, there were exactly two equally worthless pastimes — moonshine and cheap vodka, which amount to the same thing: pure grain alcohol in an aluminum mug, no chaser. Chasing your drink was considered soft. Anyway, within six months I turned into a genuine Soviet officer and immediately got divorced. What else was an officer’s wife supposed to catch out there in the Buryat steppe besides the clap and some godforsaken Mongolian dose? The little coward ran off to her mama in Kolomna with a suitcase full of Chinese contraband, no alimony, which I counted as a win, honestly. No hard feelings on my end. Decent enough girl, the horniest of the tramps hanging around the barracks in Kuzminki. Looking for a future officer and nothing else attached to him. Mom was right. Those little tramps love to hop on a cadet’s cock hoping for automatic placement in some decent dorm near a division headquarters in Potsdam, or Zhitomir at worst, but it didn’t work out that way with me — they sent the young family in the opposite direction. Not that I cared: six months before the wedding I was screwing her for love, free of charge, and six months after as her lawful husband. Came out ahead, honestly, while the little tramp wasted a whole year for nothing. What was I saying? Ah, right. The divorce.
Celebrated with a bender, and somewhere between drinking bouts I fired off a report to the chief of staff. Standard nonsense. A Soviet officer gets paid just enough not to drink himself to death, but not enough to starve a family either. Well, the family was gone, nobody to starve, and nothing stopping the drinking. Banged out a manifesto, more or less, calling it a report. Laid it out plain, officer-style, that the place was crawling with useless bastards and their bare-assed hangers-on. Some idiot sits on his ass doing nothing and calls the shots while the country’s defense capability goes straight to hell. I was the only one who gave a damn about discipline in the Armed Forces. And guess what happened? Kicked out of the Party? No! Given a formal reprimand? Hell no! Chewed out like a comrade and tossed in the brig where I belonged? Not a chance! Those miserable bastards recommended me for an early promotion to captain and sent me off to our Afghan brothers to build peace and friendship. As the most decorated soldier in the whole division, I swear to God! Turns out division headquarters had gotten an order: send their best company commander to Central Asian Military District as a battalion commander. And I’d just given my big performance right on time. So off I went. The regiment commander was sick of dealing with screwups threatening to get shipped «across the river,» and here I was — a perfect example to scare the rest straight. Found a screwup! They sent me to Afghanistan, and the rest of the screwups breathed easy and kept counting down to their quiet discharge.
The personnel bastards didn’t even let me sober up, put me on a plane to Tashkent the very same day. Spent a week there drinking at the officers’ club, and then, well, hello!
Standing across the river, my shaking hand pressed against my skull in an officer’s salute:
— Comrade Major General! Reporting for my next duty assignment!
Got my orders and instructions and my head spun. Turns out we’re building friendship with the local farmers through a rifle sight, damn it! What else could it be? Full-blown war, like something out of a DEFA studio film. Straight out of that movie about Osceola, chief of the Seminoles, I swear! Bang-bang, boom, dead! And the paleface, meaning the shuravi, kicks his legs and flies off as cargo two hundred! And the local savages, playing at almond-eyed innocence, keep decorating the peaceful landscape and pushing the local kids to trade for hashish. I’m losing my mind here, dear listeners!
Three days after landing in Bagram, they attached me to a hundred striped screwups called a paratrooper company. Immediately got my briefing: get moving, Comrade Plotnikov, to the guards company, forward and up, to Hill 2840. Take the sector under guard and defense, end to end. Plotnikov’s my last name, by the way. My predecessor, as it turned out later, got discharged shell-shocked, meaning his brain was killed off by alcohol and local weed. That’s the kind of redeployment they had going on, as their way of fighting alcoholism and drug abuse in the field.
And what did I know, a green captain a year and a half out of the academy? Barked «Yes, sir!» Shovel to the skull and forward! Wind in my face, full speed ahead! Loaded onto a chopper, headed off to take up my post. Landed with the guards air assault battalion, and the guys there about pissed themselves laughing — I was shining like a Christmas ornament. What else could it be! My uniform was tailored fancy, gold-braid style, like it should be — boots pressed with an iron and a candle flame, inserts, linings, this and that, my cap like an airfield fit for the Führer. Then I toughened up, became a real ranger, swapped the fancy cap for a beret like real soldiers wear, the shiny boots for «Kimry» sneakers.
So, over a year I hardened up, became Akela with gray balls. Didn’t give a damn about anything, nothing mattered, hadn’t grown into talking to me yet. Ended up getting myself into it up past my eyeballs. After New Year’s, the division’s political officer swooped in like Karlsson, meaning by chopper. Filled our heads with nonsense — Grandpa Brezhnev had kicked the bucket, the Stirlitzes were cleaning house, we needed to fall in line too. Shoved a December issue of Red Star at me and flew off with orders: explain the Party’s new policy to the men! On his way out he mumbled something about running political briefings and making sure the striped baboons wrote proper notes with real letters, not dicks and squiggles copied off that foreign band Kiss, which, he said, translates to «kiss my SS ass.»
Nothing to do about it, so we sat down in a tent to approve Party resolutions. And then, damn it, out of nowhere — mortar fire.
Straight out of a Repin painting, «We’re Done For.»
My insides about dropped out. Now that was news! The bearded ones never showed themselves in daylight, and at night they’d quietly go about their business with their contraband. If we bothered them on orders from some idiot with gold shoulder boards, our neighbors would shoot back, friendly-like, no showing off. What else could they do — none of us wanted to be stuck in this armpit of the world, and the locals understood that. That was the order of things in the mountains. We’d gotten used to that order, didn’t interfere with their smuggling runs. Unless some genius at division headquarters ordered the artillery to fire a salvo at the mountains. In response, the locals would pop off with junk rifles left over from the last war with the British. I swear to God, flintlock muskets straight out of «Captain Blood.» Range was decent, but the rate of fire was basically nothing.
And then all hell broke loose. The locals rolled out a mortar, probably traded some grass for it off our own men. Mortar shells landing everywhere, tearing up the landscape like it was the surface of Mars. And off to the side, a machine gun opens up in bursts, and I swear to God, a DShK! That’s it, I think, bastards, this is the real thing coming. First time the dushmans had ever come at our position. I could feel it, this was serious, some idiot on my crew had probably cheated the local kids on a trade. The kids got pissed off, called in their elders to help. And what was I supposed to do?
Repel the attack!
Anyway, time had come for the striped primates to answer for all their cheating, the real war had begun.
Yeah… They cut us up good. I’ll admit it straight off, my own fault, let discipline slide too much. Too lazy to check the posts myself, figured the veterans, hardened old hands, could handle it without a babysitter. Wrong! They dozed off on watch, the pathetic bastards, stoned on hash. The dushmans slit their throats at their posts, took up positions, and started raking us over from every direction, by the book. Within the hour I caught a piece of shrapnel to the skull and flew off into space. Curtains for the kitten, call it «zero twenty-one.» The guys told me later half my skull got blown off — brains leaking out everywhere, nothing left inside but the tonsils, tongue slipped down through the esophagus into my ass.
I come to right here. A Kalashnikov in my hands, two magazines of tracers, a helmet on my head, a chest rig with grenades — five… no, I’m lying, six «RGD’s.» My rifle, as usual, packed with junk, but missing one thing — smokes. Smoked my last cigarette before the meeting, and the fresh pack, as usual, was with the quartermaster. Figured I’d stop by after the meeting. Right! Stopped by, all right… Ended up here instead, and eight of my men lying nearby. Little arms and legs twitching like kittens. My own men, striped uniforms and all.
They came to.
Took action by the book. The way you’re taught — balls to the ground, straight into the fight! Smoke, fire, everything in place. Troops in order, Budyonny on his horse! What the hell was going on all around, though, no idea. Red sky, chaos everywhere, artillery barrage, another battle.
Screw it, we survive!
Took up a defensive perimeter. I marked directions with tracers, the men opened fire. Where exactly — who the hell knew, and honestly, who cared. Filth crawling out from every direction, shooting for no reason, damn it. And skilled, too — tight, no letup. Couldn’t lift your head. I could tell — these weren’t farmers, these were pros. Fighting guys like that would cost you dearly!
Shot it out for half an hour, and then I look — damn it all to hell! — the ammo situation was dead! Nothing left to shoot back with!!! Needed to report to command, call for backup… and then — oop! Where was command? Hell if anyone knew… and staying quiet about it, while we sat in a deep hole. Anyway, we regrouped and pulled back off the position. Lost one man killed in the pullback, a couple got badly hit, dragged them out on our backs. Hear that shooting over there, see it? Right there? Yeah! Total hell, absolute chaos! And we ended up smack in the middle of it. Not exactly kids, real guardsmen, but pros were coming at us from every side — unbelievable! A nasty spot, but, thank God, we got out of it, banner held high, the way paratroopers are supposed to.
Crawled out from under fire, caught our breath, spat it out: what the hell was that? No answer. Nothing but nonsense not fit for the regulations! Then Seryoga the radio operator went down from blood loss. Shrapnel had torn his thigh open. We bandaged him up properly, I thought. Not a chance! He was gone. Decided to bury the kid Christian-style, but suddenly it got dark. Five seconds and total darkness. Like a cosmonaut in some science film — bam! and hello, dark side of the moon. Screw the natural disasters, we’re not Pink Floyd, no time for that kind of nonsense. Decided not to overthink it, smoke what we had on hand, and wait for dawn. No fun digging ground at night. And our nerves needed settling anyway. Set a watch, agreed to switch every two hours, and — bam! — out like a light. All of us, at once. How, why, we hadn’t even lit up! No answer! And then — smack! — morning rose up red.
What a mess, not even Syd Barrett could dream that up.
Rubbed our eyes, damn it, and Seryoga, who’d dropped dead the day before, was moving his mug around more than Lenin ever did. Well, damn! We were completely floored, jaws hanging, nearly dislocated. And then the real kicker: the wounds from the day before had closed up like nothing happened. The men were shining like a tomcat’s balls in March. Unbelievable! Totally stunned. Couldn’t make heads or tails of it, damn near lost our minds. And then another skirmish. This time we were off to the side of it. Weighed our options and decided not to get into another firefight, pull out quietly instead. Formed up the striped ones, and off we went toward the sands, away from the war. On foot, no choppers, which isn’t exactly standard for paratroopers!
Covered about four versts, took a break. Started debating what kind of nonsense this all was. No real thoughts, just pure bewilderment mixed with confusion. Sat there, talked it over, understood nothing, and I tell the men: «fall in.» And they tell me — everyone’s equal here, quit playing commander, let’s figure this out together without any posturing, and decide whether to fall in or just sit on our asses. The bastards had figured out Soviet authority didn’t mean a thing out here.
Fine, I say, boys, screw each other however you like, just don’t blister your palms or tear your buddy’s ass doing it. And I walked off. Turned around and headed wherever my eyes led me. Those idiots called something after me, like, cut the theatrics, quit sulking, come back. But I’d worked myself up, no stopping me.
What kind of nonsense was this anyway? I spent four years learning how to fight a war, and here these punks off some vocational track figured they had equal rights to it as me. So I decided: let the fools band together and find out what knowledge is worth against equality. Anyway, I ended up trudging into those cursed white sands. A real paradox: everything around is red, in various shades, and underfoot it’s genuinely white… maybe with a pink tint, not sure… Ever seen it? No? You’ll figure it out when you do.
Anyway. Walked about a verst, turned my mug this way and that, and understood: I was going to die out here, plain and simple. Wandered around a bit. Night again, then morning. And I couldn’t figure out how it happened. Goes dark instantly, you black out, a second later you come to: hello there, ugly mug, new day! Some kind of sick joke with a twist. Not rested at all mentally, but physically fine, sharp as ever, everything in order. If you got wounded the day before, not a trace of it. But this cursed arm, — Anton nodded at his bandaged arm, — hurts the same regardless, ten years straight, no breaks. Scratched it a week before I ended up here. Festered, the cursed thing, never got the chance to treat it in Afghanistan, and now I suffer for it. Aches like hell, dawn to dusk, nothing calms it. Except when you smoke, then the pain fades. I figure it’s never going to heal. Miserable business. I even cut it off once. Made no difference. Come morning it’s back on and itching worse than before, like a drill through bone. Anyway, enough of the sad stuff.
Wandered the sands for two days. That’s a nightmare out there. Whoever ends up in the sands doesn’t come back. Proven fact. I got lucky, like a drowned man gets lucky. Didn’t go far in, hung around the edge, but it messed my head up plenty. Constant visions, all kinds of demonic nonsense. Dragons flew past at low altitude, spitting bombs out of their mouths instead of fire, in neat rows like they were planting crops. Unbelievable, the things you see out there!…
Anton went quiet… smiled at the corner of his mouth, went on:
— End up there and you won’t even notice it pulling you in. That’s it! No coming back. All kinds of degeneracy going on, mother of God! Group violation on a grand scale, no lubricant involved! Bend you over, stick it up top, stick two more down the chimney at a full run.
Here in the rocks, it’s simpler. There’s a proper order, written down, confirmed, by the book. There’s you, and there’s the rest of the fraternity. Rule number one, also the only rule and the last one — hit whoever’s not yours before they hit you first. Nothing great about that rule, but honestly, nothing terrible either. That’s just life. You feel like a wrung-out mess, steam coming out your ears, shaking down to your balls, but that’s normal. It’s war, damn it, that’s how it’s supposed to be. But out in the sands, you’ve got nothing to do, you’re left alone with your own head. And that’s when this real hell creeps in, this… — Anton worked his lips, groping for the right word. Didn’t find it, went on:
— Ah, hell, everywhere’s awful! You kill, you get killed, then it’s you again, then you again. Everyone’s got something to do, and there’s something like a real purpose in life. Called — don’t let anyone get within rifle range of you. People are busy, tearing each other’s asses into ribbons and winding them up on a stick. It’s good when you’re the one doing the winding, and not the other way around.
I got unlucky in the sands. Ran into some fools, three of them. Fought them pretty well with my fists, but you understand, one against three isn’t going anywhere good. Wore myself out and them too, though not as bad. Then the next morning some scum swooped in, didn’t even see where from, and beat the hell out of all of us, covered in blood. Centurions, damn it, as it turned out later. Turns out there’s special squads here, worse than the SS. Ironclad discipline. March in formation, screw in chorus, comb the area, and if you’re not doing anything, they grab you by the collar and drag you off to their zone, — Anton waved his hand off somewhere.
— Anyway, the four of us got dragged there. City of unbelievable size, and nothing good in it at all. Marched us through back alleys and side streets, then shoved us into a windowless barrack, a real cattle pen. Thousands of people in there, all fighting each other savagely. Kicking, punching, biting, clawing, doing whatever they wanted, but no dirty tricks, clean fists only. Seemed decent enough, but… Three fools jumped me in a second and gave me a proper beating — kicked my legs out, hammered my liver on the way down, finished me off on the ground. Wiped me out completely, don’t remember a thing. Blacked out entirely. Next morning, same nonsense. Just came to, someone caught me with a fist to the head. But I’d already gotten the hang of it, 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, hell if anyone knows. You could beat down a dozen or two idiots, and then, boom, they’d flatten you right back. Basically, like here, everyone’s for himself, but sometimes they’d team up against some brute. Like, five desperate guys would jump someone in the morning, beat him down, scatter to the corners. Something to keep you entertained.
Anton smirked and lit up. His words flowed smoothly, with long pauses to watch the smoke he blew.
— Yeah. Fun barrack. They beat us, and we get tougher. That was the rule there. Every last one of us a fighter. Pure animals. There wasn’t any other kind. Even a chump like you would turn into a heavy hitter within a month. That’s how hard they’d work you over — out cold! Special forces have nothing on it. And the real kicker was, right next door, wall to wall, was a barrack with windows. Once a day they’d throw beaten-half-to-death punks over in tank tops. White tank tops. A shot at promotion. Yeah. They’d toss a mess of a kid in a white tank top into our barrack, and real carnage would kick off. Whoever beat everybody put on the tank top and walked off to the nice barrack, saying «keep working on love.» Hell if I know what that means… doesn’t matter, though. In the next barrack, picture this, everyone’s in white tank tops too, fighting each other, but not as intensely. More deliberately, damn it! And on a schedule. Lights out from midnight to noon, you can actually sleep on a real cot with a mattress. But no! Instead of sleeping, the serious ones whisper together, figure out who’s the toughest, ten of them pile on and throw the beaten-down loser into the first barrack. Like — here’s your white tank top. The more tough guys you take out, the easier it is for the rest. Because right there, wall to wall again, stands another barrack, nicer, taller. They toss out a beaten mess in a blue tank top from there. Same goal in the white-tank-top barrack — tear people apart, put on a blue tank top, move to the dream barrack. That’s roughly it. Get the tactics? The more real fighters you throw into the first hall, the easier it is fighting the leftovers for a blue tank top, your ticket to the dream hall. Right, you put on the blue tank top if you manage to get one, wave goodbye with «keep working on love,» and move to the third barrack, where the real bone-breakers hang out. Fists like watermelons, but the head’s not just for eating, the gears are turning too. Basically, you can’t take anyone down solo there. Different game, different rules. They fight differently. Not just tactics, strategy too, damn it! All that stuff they taught us at the academy. Wall against wall, fighting to the death, flanking maneuvers, ten guys in ambush to flip the enemy at the right moment in a bottleneck, then divide and conquer. Three guys jump a straggler and dump him in the white-tank-top barrack. On the other hand, everyone’s savvy there too. They might turn on their own toughest guy, stab him in the back or catch him at dusk, whatever works. No rules at all, the main thing is that it’s not you who ends up with the white-tank-top crowd, but whoever else. And if they toss a guy in a red tank top out of the next barrack, you get your next shot at «keep working on love» and moving up. Fight the crowd for a couple hours, everyone for himself by then, and you can win a tank top and move up to the fourth hall, which isn’t even a barrack anymore, it’s a house, where everyone’s in red tank tops. There’s a fifth house, a sixth, and so on, endlessly.
Probably fought my way for about two years, from the first barrack to god-knows-what palace, wasn’t counting anymore. My mind was completely wrecked, consciousness in absolute chaos, fists like steel, immune to pain, and a fighter’s cunning, twisted brain. You just endure and pound whoever’s in front of you, as long as they don’t get within striking distance. Yeah, total lawlessness. You get hit, you hit back, and the only thought in your head — get that final, ultimate, whatever-color, doesn’t matter which, tank top, so it’s all over, done, no more fighting!!! No more barrack nonsense!!! Out into freedom, into the open plains!
Nothing came of it. Went through every color of the rainbow and it was the same carnage, the same «keep working on love,» everywhere. After years of hand-to-hand fighting it hit me: I was jerking off into the void, grinding down guys just like me to dust, just to change the color of a tank top. And it would never end. Basically, like Count Tolstoy wrote — something like «she got to thinking, holding something else in her mouth…»
Yeah. I got to thinking, no distractions involved, and found a paradox! Academician Kapitsa, damn it! Picture this! Every barrack had an exit to the street, unguarded. Go on, walk out bare-chested and head wherever your eyes take you. Get lost with songs and dances, nobody’s stopping you! No question! But nobody ever left, everyone was obsessed with the tank tops.
What kind of screwed-up situation was that?
Thought about it a long time and understood. Nothing’s what it seems. In there, inside the barrack, existence makes sense. Fight for tank tops, aim for the final palace. But what happens on the street, and what freedom from the rules might cost you, hell if anyone knows. No telling how or what to fight for out there.
The idiots brawling in the barracks feared the unknown worse than a fight to the death. Gotta admit — a man, no matter how tough he looks, is a coward and a weakling deep down. Scared of the unknown. Doesn’t matter that he’s living in filth, at least tomorrow and the day after, that same familiar filth will still be there. Find a spot that stinks a little less, and go ahead, dream as big as you want and destroy your rival for a spot where you don’t have to smell it so much. Damn it! Good thing I’m not a coward, just reasonable. Nothing to lose! Threw off the tank top and got the hell out of that barrack! Looked around. Was floored!
Piles of sheds and hangars everywhere, none of them looking anything like a palace. Understood it too late, honestly. Go from a shed into a hangar, and there’s your palace! Yeah…
…what was I saying? Ah, right. Walked out of the shed, and there’s real fighting going on, tanks, cannons, all kinds of fire support. No planes, won’t lie, never saw any. But overall, absolute hell! Nothing to do out there without heavy weapons. You’d be dead in a second. Made it to a crossroads in short rushes, ducked into a shed to catch my breath and figure out my next move. And no luck there either! Same mind-numbing nonsense — people fighting to the death, but not for tank tops, for colored neckties instead, damn them all.
Didn’t take me long to decide. Didn’t need those little scraps of cloth for my belly. Walked back out to the street. Took three steps, took two rounds from a sniper, chest and skull, dropped like a stone. Came to the next morning in an assault squad. Handed a rifle, pointed at a target, and given a kick for motivation: forward, into the attack! Fought for some big shot with stars on his shoulders for about two weeks. Took three barracks, I think. And realized none of it meant a damn thing to me.
What’s that? Why were they taking the barracks? Hell if anyone knows. We never went inside. Whoever crawled out, and there were some tough ones, got signed up for the squad. There were three hundred of us, bayonets and all. Pure animals, real fighting machines. The rest never crawled out of the barracks.
Yeah, three hundred heads in the squad and not a brain among them. In that whole idiotic unit, Tishka was the only sane man. After a couple of skirmishes, we slipped out of the squad and started operating as a pair.
On one hand, easier — no more fighting for some big shot. On the other — such a bitch of an ache tears at you… When I was fighting in the barrack, I didn’t want to smoke at all, no time for nonsense like that. The moment I was on my own, that was it! Went crazy for it. Wanted to smoke worse than Hitler wanted to fight. Nothing else mattered! And on top of it, the arm started hurting worse than ever. Now life’s whole purpose is simple — get a smoke. And to avoid getting captured by some armed bastard, you’ve got to be armed and ready to defend yourself at all times. Good thing I hooked up with Tishka. Reliable sidekick, always ready to stand watch. Won’t let a single soul get within rifle range. By the way, he’s the one who found a little stash nearby, a year ago. Or two…
A damn fine stash, by the way!
Every morning, hell knows from where, ammo shows up there, enough to outfit a whole airborne battalion, enough to take a beachhead. But I’m no Marat Kazei, and neither is Tisha. We behaved ourselves. Didn’t show off, didn’t get into firefights, took a little at a time to always have ammo on hand, and pulled back. Never went too far, but never hung around it long enough to draw attention either. Just shoot whoever wandered past and duck out of sight. Then six 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 went quiet, put a finger to his lips: «Shh.»
After a tense, drawn-out pause, he spat on the ground: «Thought I heard something,» and went on:
— Anyway. The stash was big, we didn’t mind sharing. But if every quick hand started topping up their own supplies, what would happen? Some clever bastard would show up and announce: «That’s it, boys, the free ride’s over! It’s all mine now, and you’re not children, kiss each other goodbye and get lost.» Then he’d dig in and back it up with action.
And once that happens, you’re never digging him out of there. A hundred thousand elite cutthroats without ammo are nothing but garbage against one bastard with a working machine gun and endless ammo.
Anyway, we decided to teach the thieving bastard a lesson he’d never forget. Worked out a plan. Tishka headed off toward the sands, like he was on watch, and I trailed behind, like I was following… not far. There was an unremarkable little rise with a gully nearby. Tishka and I checked it twice — couldn’t be seen from anywhere. I went into the gully, doubled back after fifty meters, and climbed up top, settled into ambush. Sat there four hours, blistered my eye on the scope, and — guess what? — movement off to the side! Had to be that bastard sneaking around. Ha, I think. You’re about to get a collar full of surprise instead of ammo. We’ll show you how the Soviet paratroopers deal with thieves. Like they used to say in the company before a combat mission: «We’re gonna screw them raw!»
Took the movement in my sights…
No luck! Turned out to be a seasoned little bastard. Hell knows how, but he spotted me. Vanished for a while… half an hour later started shooting at me from a rifle, from the side, almost from behind. And, damn it, put his shots in tight. Got peppered with gravel all over. Well, I’m no fool either, let off a burst from the Kalash in his direction to quiet him down, and sent a grenade after it. Got an answer right back — two lemons flying my way. Well, damn it, I think, ran into a real fighter here. About seventy meters between us, and neither of us was an Olympic discus thrower. Turned it into a proper backyard shootout. Wore myself out fighting that bastard, sweated through seven shirts, nearly gave birth to an elephant. Good thing Tishka showed up. Easier with two of you. As they say, whoever’s got the bigger army is the peacemaker.
Anyway, restored order the guards way, calmed the enemy down. What else could he do! Ran out of ammo. Perfect! Time for a chase scene like out of a movie. Caught the bold bastard, started giving him a proper beating for all his trouble, saying: get the hell out of here, friend, and don’t show your face here again.
And the guy answers back cursing in Russian, damn it all to hell, let me go!
My jaw about dropped to the floor.
A countryman!
Well, would you look at that, I think!
Stopped beating him, nearly cried with joy.
Hadn’t heard my own language in ages, hell knows how long, it was lonely, nobody to trade curses with. And here’s a countryman cussing me out like his own mama taught him! Well, the little bastard caught on too, that a fellow Russian was giving him a hiding, and started smiling.
Anyway, ordered Tikhon to stop beating the kid up.
Oh, forgot to say. Tikhon’s some kind of German. Understands everything, but doesn’t speak Russian. Actually, I think he’s mute.
Exchanged the traditional triple kiss with the guy. Turned out his name was Mityai, and he’s been kicking around this place since the Russo-Japanese War, since 1905. Doesn’t remember how he ended up here. Mumbled something about defending Mukden, or maybe storming it… Anyway, that’s where he got finished off. Came to right here, his whole company hacked to bits lying nearby, battles raging all around. As usual, his fellow soldiers came to soon after too, rubbed their eyes, didn’t bother sorting anything out, grabbed their rifles and charged the enemy. Fought here about a month under some sergeant, then scattered on their own. Mityai’s been looking for a way back to Russia ever since. Saw a lot here, told me plenty of it. Mityai’s a real fool, but he’s seen some action, no doubt about that. Turns out, in this godforsaken place, a man can’t die no matter what you do to him. Blow up a grenade in his ass, doesn’t matter, by morning he’s right as rain. Checked it on myself, actually. At one point such misery hit me, I decided to shoot myself. Stuck the barrel in my mouth, pressed the trigger. Come morning, didn’t matter, sitting there groaning in the same spot. Head buzzing a little, like a hangover, but fine overall. Surprised me a bit. Made me realize, damn it, you can’t outrun fate.
Hell.
Anyway. Mityai told me this thing — past the rocks there are quarries with countless people in them. And a city across the way where only women live. And the women are just as messed up as everyone else, meaning armed. Two differences: those bitches don’t fight each other as often, and fistfights are rare among them. But don’t relax — the gals are armed and dangerous. Mityai, the pitiful romantic, would drool at the mention of the town, kept egging me on to go raid it with him for some action. Set up an ambush on the outskirts, grab a wet crack for himself. Too risky alone, the women could tear a man apart in a mob, easy. But together, he figured, we could handle some little tramp. Women mean absolutely nothing to me here, believe it or not. Never once got hard in this whole rotten place. Back in Afghanistan I used to suffer with it, always leaking. Getting to a local girl was pure happiness. But once I got here, turned into a genuine impotent, no need for any of that. Fine by me. Sure, it stings a bit, deep down. Before Afghanistan I was a real terror in that department. Get it going between someone’s thighs, no need to ask twice! God, how many girls I plowed through at the academy, it was a whole song! 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. Miss it, can’t help it, but I miss it in my head, not my body. My body, damn it, doesn’t want a woman at all, and 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, reeked of it something awful. You’d think I’d lose my mind with wanting. Nope, didn’t care! Aimed and took one down clean, then the other. Two bullets, two corpses. Makes my skin crawl just remembering it. Ugly as crocodiles in the face, but the tits weren’t bad, third-place material. Decent enough for the job… What are you laughing at? Didn’t catch it, kid? Look here, the jokes and giggles are over. Life’s different here, cruel but understandable. Anyone armed is your outright enemy. And anyone wandering around unarmed, gawking, like you, for instance, gets snatched up in no time and put to work at the quarry like a chain gang.
Mityai said he somehow managed to lose his three-line rifle. Guess what happened? Before the day was out, some soldiers grabbed him by the ass and — off you go, Mityai Petrov! — sent him to the quarry. And there, things turned out worse than in the city barracks.
The quarry was unbelievable, people everywhere, terrifying! Counted Mityai off, one-two, sent him to move boulders around. Backbreaking work, wore him down like an old horse. Every evening he nearly dropped dead from exhaustion, every morning fresh and lively again, back at it moving rocks for the sake of nonsense. And the work made no sense, that was the awful part. First you haul stones bottom to top, then once the guards get bored, they give the order and you go top to bottom instead. Drives you insane, that kind of thing, he nearly lost his mind from the sheer pointlessness. But that was just the start. At the quarry, everyone hauling rock is split into squads, odds and evens. Every two hours, a signal sounds. If the even squad moved their boulders better, the evens get to beat up the odds. And vice versa. So, they’d pound each other for half an hour, then go back to hauling rock. No slacking there. Get lazy and you’d get it too. Your own squad would beat the hell out of you, so you didn’t let the team down. Collectivism in action, damn it. Absolute grimness. And at the end of the day, the best squad out of the whole lot, more than a hundred of them, gets moved to guard duty, and the guards get sent to haul rock instead. That’s how it worked. Everyone pounding on each other, guarding each other, and hauling rock, all at once…
Yeah. Mityai slaved away there, slaved away, turned into a real chain-gang worker, and eventually got out. As they say, for every clever ass there’s a screw that fits, and for every screw there’s an ass with the right angle. Mityai pulled a clever trick. Up top, cracked a guard over the head with a rock, dropped a couple of boulders below to block the way, and was gone. Covered about three versts, reached the sands, sat down to rest. And guess what? Out in the sands, his own kind, not guards at all, just other outcasts like him, caught him and gave him the full treatment — cracked him between the ears, jumped on his ribs, tore off his cock and shoved it up his ass, then buried him headfirst in the sand. Cruelest punishment there is, Mityai says. Sand packs into everything at once, nose, mouth, lungs, and you suffocate to death. You count to two hundred and fly off to hell. Next morning, you come to fresh and lively in the exact same folded position, head down. Cock back in place, ass tight as new. Sand all around, packing that same bastard way into every hole and crevice of your suffering body. You count to two hundred again, and fly off again. Countless times, over and over.
After a year or two, Mityai started figuring out how to get out. Nothing sensible comes to mind, naturally. Picture it — sand all around, you’re suffocating within three-something minutes, and in that time you’ve got to somehow find a way out. Hell knows 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, he figured out later, took him thirty years. Mityai got out. His cock, thankfully, not up his ass but where it belonged, but no reason to celebrate. Soldiers from the Second World War pouring in by the hundreds. Rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, even cannons and tanks. Mityai says life got a lot worse. Firefights, all sorts of hotheaded soldiers, no personal life at all. Used to be simpler.
Mityai wandered here and there, made it to the rocks, decided to attach himself to someone. Fell in with some Kyrgyz cavalrymen, twenty guns in the unit, roamed the rocks with them. War every day, they killed him about five times, but his own men never left him behind. Came to in the morning with his weapon and went back into the fight. After six months, Mityai finally ditched the Kyrgyz. Says he got sick of the prayers. Besides, he’d figured out how things worked by then, and decided to strike out on his own. He kept pushing me to do the same — send Tishka to hell and stop relying on anyone. I mostly agree with him. A loner’s always more mobile and combat-effective than any squad. In these godforsaken conditions, even the most disciplined fighters turn into an apathetic 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 beat the hell out of you first thing, then bury you under rocks second. Proven fact.
Anton smiled sourly. Probably remembering his old company.
— Yeah, — he went on. — One thing I figured out for sure here. A man’s a predator. As long as he’s tearing into others, nobody’s going to work him over. The moment you go soft, that’s it, done! Get your neck ready for the yoke and bend over for what’s coming. You know why the sky’s that color here? So you always see blood hanging over you and never forget about death. As long as you’re killing others, nobody’s killing you…
Got sidetracked there. What was I saying? Ah, right, Mityai…
Anyway, the poor bastard never complained about his lot. Shot at anything that moved, kept looking for the road back to Torzhok. Talked a lot of nonsense, I didn’t remember half of it. Oh, remembered one funny bit of his. Told me some garbage — here in these godforsaken rocks, there are places where all sorts of decent stuff shows up out of nowhere every morning, smokes, ammo, shells, gear, fuel in barrels. Basically, everything you’d need to run a proper war, — Anton waved his hand toward the fighting rumbling in the distance. — Fifty squads are fighting over one of those right now. Fewer squads every year. Supposedly, one day there’ll be just one insanely tough squad left in the desert, and it’ll beat everyone else. War will end, people will go home. Nonsense! Don’t believe it for a second. Any squad, even the toughest, will fall apart and split into a dozen smaller ones, a hundred times over. Every fighter thinks he’s a strategist, waiting for his chance to lead his own outfit. Never trust a crowd of fighters. They’ll tear you apart.
What was I saying? Ah, right… About that fighting. Mityai told me he saw it with his own eyes: every morning a mountain of crates with ammo and grenades shows up out of nowhere. When he was fighting with the Kyrgyz squad, they took that exact deposit off somebody. Not alone, of course, the whole squad. Held it for two days with songs and dances, why not. Fired into thin air, plenty to spare. More ammo than you could ever need, way more. But the party didn’t last long, on the third day they got kicked out themselves. After that, Mityai ditched the Kyrgyz. Says he’s been wandering alone for forty years since, doesn’t complain about his lot, hasn’t aged a bit, still the same fiery character. The only «but» — he’s sick of fighting, dead tired of it. And without a war, there’s only one road here: the quarries to haul rock, or the barracks to fight for tank tops and neckties. Mityai also told me everyone here’s a real bastard, garbage on top of garbage, you can’t trust anyone. Let that go in one ear and out the other. Just got sick of his stories. Mityai, for instance, was happy as a kid that he’d been 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 minor offense. Two thousand years, crushed to death every single day. Can you imagine? By the way, those chumps in the firefighter helmets, Roman legionaries, nasty bunch. Fight like gods, captured a tank somewhere, and ruthless bastards on top of it. Take everyone apart like cats. Fought one of those bitches with the ears sticking out for two days here. The idiot got separated from his unit, ran into me, tried to take me prisoner, real dreamer… anyway, got sidetracked.
Anyway, Mityai talked my ear off good, my skull was swollen with all his stories. Then evening came. Lay down to sleep, and by morning, before I could even open my eyes, Mityai cracked me over the head with a rock. I dropped like a stone, and the rotten bastard grabbed my rifle, two magazines of ammo, and was gone. Tishka took off after him to take a shot at him, and vanished too. Only found him a week later, by his shoes. Buried Tishka headfirst, only his shoes sticking out. 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, wind his balls around his neck, and cut his little prick off, but I won’t shove it up his ass. I’ll dig a hole and bury him under rocks instead. They say in that case, a man wakes up in the morning without his cock at all. Teach him not to try 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 seen recently. It all fit. I was even amazed at how small this little world was. An hour ago, the non-smoking Mityai had been giving Anton grief, and now here he was, a nicotine sufferer, sitting right across from 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.
— 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 be scared, countryman. There’s a gathering here once a year. The Day Your Dreams Come True.
Anton laughed. He definitely had some issues going on upstairs. Laughing for no reason at all…
I sat up to see which direction to go. Tired of sitting 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, the stiffs will wake up come morning and you won’t like it. Let’s go.
— Where to?
— To the sands. You’ll walk in front. Hey, Tishka! Over here.
Out of the rocks, about fifty meters away, a kid popped up in a blue bulletproof vest, unarmed.
— See anything? — Anton asked him. Tishka spread his hands, meaning nothing interesting.
— Then let’s go.
Tikhon vanished at once back among the rocks. Anton and I trudged away from the wrecked jeep, toward where I’d been brought from an hour before.
