A Prayer to Saint Strelok Read online

  “That’s a crude misrepresentation,” the scientist replied and strode over to a row of battered lockers on the far wall.

  “Outside. I saw- - ” Yuri shivered, struggled for the right word. “Things. Visions and shit. What was that? Drugs?”

  “The Verdansky emitter,” Iosif called over his shoulder.

  “What did I say about plain talk?”

  Iosif sighed. “Think of it as a short-range radio transmitter set to frequencies that stimulate the parts of the brain associated with psychic phenomenon. We used it to deter unwanted visitors.”

  “It’s still on after all these years? How?”

  “Geothermal power.”

  Yuri would rather shoot himself in the foot than ask what the hell that was, so he changed the subject. “You used URAN as a cover to get here.”

  The gaunt man didn’t turn around and didn’t reply.

  Yuri persisted. “Tell me, why are you here?”

  “Files,” Iosif said, then he seemed to consider something. “And rumors,” he added.

  “What kind of files?”

  “The classified kind.”

  The temptation to grab Sasha spiked. Yuri resisted. “And the rumors, they are classified too?”

  Iosif went still again. After a moment, he turned to face Yuri. “There are rumors of survivors,” he finally said.

  “Survivors?” Yuri scoffed. “Of your tests here?”

  Iosif nodded, serious as a heart attack.

  I am definitely NOT getting paid enough. Yuri thought.

  The scientist slammed a locker door shut and came to the doorway. He went to pass by but Yuri stepped in his way. “Where are you going now?”

  “To get those files, for starters. Then turn off the emitter. We won’t make it out of here unless we do.”

  Yuri pursed his lips. “And what about the rumors?”

  “There’s that too,” Iosif said, and slipped past Yuri into the hall. “Help me finish this and I’ll make sure you get a bonus.”

  Yuri watched the scientist walk away. This was supposed to be a babysitting job. Now it was like pissing while running. But the scarecrow men outside, the visions… what choice did he have?

  “Pizda rulyu,” he muttered, then pulled Sasha around and followed.

  There was a large cargo elevator off the main hall. It looked like it still ran but Iosif declared he didn’t want to risk getting stuck, so they took the stairs down, him in the lead.

  Yuri watched the skinny scientist, vintage Makarov in one hand, antique hand lamp in the other, checking his angles on the landings, rounding the corners, pistol at the ready… He knew what he was doing and seemed to be taking these ‘rumors’ seriously.

  Damn zhulik played me. Played the academics too, Yuri realized. This guy didn’t give a monkey’s toss about tubby Suchek or blubbering Artur. And if I snuff it here, he certainly won’t lose sleep over me either. Maybe I should be the one to deliver these ‘classified’ files...

  Yuri’s finger drifted down to Sasha’s trigger. WWSD? What would Strelok do? he asked himself.

  But you need him to get out, his wife’s voice said. To turn off the hallucination radio and get the rest of your fee.

  And now a bonus, Yuri noted. Or so he says. He watched the scientist’s pointy shoulder blades shift under the jacket as they descended.

  You’re Yuri Bonyev, expert guide, are you not? his wife’s voice asked.

  I am.

  Then be a man and keep eyes in the back of your head.

  That advice grew louder the deeper they went into the facility. Even without Iosif’s sparse ‘confession’, it was obvious the bunker was exactly the kind of dark and creaky place in the movies where ‘Very Bad Shit’ had happened years before and none of the actors came out alive. Peeling paint, echoes, shadows and grime, the facility was drenched in misery. It was a tomb fit for a cursed Pharaoh. The lights even flickered.

  How is that not a clue? Yuri asked himself.

  The files were on the next floor down, squirreled away in a safe behind a huge desk in a big office. The faded name plate on the door read ‘V.S. Grebennikoff’. This Grebennikoff must have been a big shot because the back wall was covered with fancy framed diplomas and even bigger black-and-white photographs.

  Yuri scanned the photos as Iosif knelt at the safe. All of them featured a bald, spectacled professor-type standing with assorted nomenklatura. These government patrons were his real credentials, because despite the degrees and awards, it was who you knew, not what that really mattered. Especially back then.

  The officials loved the camera, grinning like fat cats who’d swallowed the cream, while the Grebennikoff character was as stiff as a man facing a firing squad. Which he might have - later – because that too was how such things were back then: up one minute, down the next. Like a mad carousel.

  The safe opened with a soft click and Yuri was not surprised Iosif knew the combination. The scientist stuffed two bundles of papers in his backpack.

  “Where to next?” Yuri asked.

  Iosif pointed down.

  ***

  5. a man should face his enemies

  Half the lights were out in the stairway.

  “The radio thing is down there?” Yuri tried to keep the reluctance out of his voice.

  Iosif switched his flashlight on. “Bottom floor.”

  The stark purple-white light carved his face in hard shadows, made him look ghoulish. He aimed the beam at Yuri. “The transmitter is in a side room near the power station.”

  The beam made Yuri wince but his headache had subsided. “We’ll need that?”

  “I hope not.”

  “’Hope for the best’ is not a good strategy,” Yuri said as they started down. “And tell me why the flashlight.”

  “The lights are out, for one. Two, they hate bright light,” Iosif explained.

  “The survivors?”

  The scientist nodded. “Something to do with the changes in the regular sensory areas of their brains.”

  “So they worked, your ‘drug and shock’ experiments?”

  Iosif grunted. “Ninety percent of the subjects died. Five percent of those that lived would have been better off dead.”

  Yuri couldn’t help but comment. “Well that is a reduced sentence, I guess.”

  Iosif ignored that and continued. “The remaining five percent… they changed. In mind and body.”

  Suspicion crawled across Yuri’s skin like ants. “Changed how?”

  “They swelled, shrunk. Thickened. They became dwarves – on steroids. We called them zhaby – toads - but Kirov, the lead pharmacist insisted they be ‘Burers’, after this Gypsy girl who’d taken him for a good ride. “Twisted little mind-readers, just like her.”

  “They could read minds, these dwarves?” Yuri said worriedly.

  “No,” Iosif said. “We never saw any telepathic development. Telekinesis, however - - ” The scientist noticed Yuri staring angrily at him, and sighed. “They could move things with their minds.”

  They had reached a landing. The lights were completely out on this level and the stairway below was a well of black.

  “Move things…” Yuri repeated. “And you tell me this now?”

  The scientist looked over his shoulder, genuinely puzzled now. “Can you think of a better time?”

  Yuri had to admit he had a point.

  They reached the bottom and the instant Yuri’s boots hit the floor, he heard a baby cry out from the darkness. His skin prickled. “What the fuck was that?”

  “A gypsy toad,” Iosif said, and stepped carefully through the door. “Get your rifle ready.”

  They entered a large room with a tall ceiling. Iosif’s lamp played across heavy steel doors. A faded ‘X-17” was painted in white block letters on the wall and there were three corridors, each heading in a different direction. The harsh light flashed over the mouth of each. There was a faint humming from the middle passage and a sigh of stale air.

  “This wa
y,” the scientist said.

  They padded through the darkness, the bright circle leading them on. Iosif was doing his best to keep the flashlight steady but Yuri saw it shiver and dip. The man was scared. Not that Yuri could blame him; he was sweating despite the cool air. He pulled Sasha’s stock tighter into his shoulder.

  Next time, I remember to bring my own flashlight.

  Next time…

  The hallway was long and Yuri sensed they were passing open spaces, open doorways and rooms, as they went. After what might have been five minutes or fifteen, Iosif stopped and snapped off the light. The blackness sprang back and swallowed them up. Yuri heard cloth creak and suddenly Iosif’s breath was in his ear.

  “The generators are ten meters straight ahead,” the scientist whispered. “The transmitter room is the second door on the right. The second one. The first is the boiler room. Go in there and you’re stuck. So you must take the second door.”

  Yuri nodded, realized his mistake. “Yes” he said quickly. “But why are you telling me this?”

  “In case we get separated.”

  Yuri swallowed. “So survivors are there? The Burers?”

  “Well someone turned out the lights.”

  “And you think they’re down there?” Yuri was liking this idea less and less. Perhaps they should take their chances---

  Iosif put a hand on Yuri’s shoulder. His voice was tight. “I think if there are any, that’s where they’ll be. Remember, no matter what you see, if I say ‘shoot’, you shoot, got me? No hesitation.”

  Sweat tickled behind Yuri’s right ear. “Yes.”

  Iosif clenched Yuri’s jacket in his fist. “Yes what?”

  “Yes. I’ll shoot. Yes.”

  “Good.” The scientist let go. “Now put one hand on my back and stay right behind me. Keep one eye closed for when I turn the flashlight back on, OK?”

  “OK.”

  The generator room was big and warm. There was a kiss of moving air and whirring noises from every direction. Faint lights blinked throughout the area, scattered across machinery and instrument panels: red and yellow, green and white. Tiny hazard stars. They gave off just enough light for Yuri to make out the geometry of hard shapes, pipes and equipment.

  Iosif stopped a few steps inside the room and crouched, coiled and taut as a spring. He had his pistol in one hand, flashlight in the other, with his arms folded across his chest. He was listening, perfectly still, as if he were frozen in the first position of a Cossack dance. Yuri knelt behind him, a hand on the man’s bony back. He held Sasha over the scientists’ right shoulder with the other.

  I shoot, he’ll be deaf for a week, Yuri thought. But better deaf than dead.

  After a full minute, Iosif relaxed and made a tick, tick noise with his mouth. He jerked his head to the right. Yuri spied rectangle door shapes, two of them.

  Good, good, good. All according to plan, Yuri nodded to himself. Second door.

  Another tick and Iosif rose, and started sidestepping toward the doors, still facing the center of the room. It was awkward, but Yuri stayed with him, the two of them struggling in tandem like drunken guests at the end of wedding celebration.

  They were halfway there when Yuri heard a wet huffing, shuffling sound.

  Iosif froze.

  A heartbeat later a squat shape emerged from the gloom at the far end of the room. It passed in front of a bank of illuminated meters and red-rimmed gauges, and Yuri saw a hunched man in a tattered robe with a hood over his head like a fat, short monk.

  Iosif’s shoulder trembled and he snapped on the flashlight. The purple-white beam stabbed into the darkness and pinned the hooded shape. The monk-thing roared and turned away.

  “Shoot! Shoot!” Iosif shouted. But Yuri was rooted in place.

  The creature scuttled away but Iosif kept the flashlight on it. “Shoot,” he screamed.

  Before Yuri could react, the scientist shouted in terror and frustration, and started firing his pistol. Iosif strode forward, beam centered on the hooded creature, unloading the Makarov. Yuri saw slow-motion bullet casings spin and glint in the harsh light. Puffs of red mist ejected from the creature’s head.

  The next thing Yuri knew, Iosif was on the other side of the room standing over a dark mound with one boot on the top of the heap like a hunter with his kill. He kept the flashlight aimed at its head.

  “I got him. I got him. I got him,” he kept repeating, as if to convince himself.

  Yuri’s nostrils were filled with the tang of gunpowder, his ears rang. He saw Iosif’s fingers work the magazine release button. The empty clip clattered on the concrete and Iosif inserted a fresh one. He had done it automatically, without thinking.

  Army trained, Yuri realized. Then he flushed with shame. I froze. I let him down.

  Yuri stepped forward, stammering. He had to apologize. He must. Some guide he was, locking up like that. The scientist stirred at the movement, looked up and smiled weakly. “I got hi- - ”

  Yuri was about to congratulate him, console him, embrace him, when the gaunt scientist folded like he’d been punched in the gut. Bent over, he looked up and for an instant his eyes met Yuri’s: confusion. Then fear.

  An instant later it was like a rope had jerked him away. Iosif was gone. Yuri gasped. The flashlight fell with a bang that was followed by a loud crash on the far side of the room.

  The purple-white beam flickered and stayed on, spilling across the grimy floor to frame Iosif in a semi-circle spotlight. He was splayed upside down, crumpled against an iron support strut, his head was at a wrong angle, his eyes the silver of tiny, unblinking mirrors.

  “Iosif?” Yuri said softly.

  As he stepped into the light, there was a raspy gurgling behind him. Yuri spun on his heel to bring Sasha to bear on another squat, hooded man-thing.

  What, two of them?

  Yuri glimpsed a bloated, scabbed face in mid snarl. The man made an angry choking noise and thrust both his hands to one side. Sasha jumped from Yuri’s grip and was flung into the darkness. Yuri barely had time to blink before the hooded creature thrust his hands out again, this time in a shove.

  Yuri flew backwards, air knocked from his lungs. It was like a mule had kicked him in the chest.

  He slid and skidded to a stop on the floor to one side of the light beam, on his back, chest on fire. He could see rag-doll Iosif out of the corner of his eye. You’re not much help, he wanted to say, but he could hardly breathe.

  Praporshchik Dygalo popped into his head, shouting like he had that hot afternoon when it had rained Kurd rockets. “Cover, you idiot. Find cover.”

  Yuri began to kick his legs, use his elbows to scramble deeper into the gloom. He tucked himself behind an iron pipe. Above his own broken wheezing, he could hear the scuff and growl of the hooded man - thing. The little bastard was looking for him, trying to find a way around the bright light.

  The darkness was bad enough but Yuri’s vision was blood rimmed and hazy. His ribs grated, shifted like broken sticks. He sat up and bite back a yelp of pain. He felt around, frantic to get his bearings, and his groping hand found something hard and metal: it was Iosif’s Makarov.

  He pulled it in and clutched it to his chest like dying man with a holy icon.

  Which I might be, he realized. Dying, that is.

  It’s loaded, he remembered. Iosif had loaded a new clip.

  Yuri wanted to laugh, to cry, to rage at the irony of it all; here he was, down in the dark facing a monster, and his life depended on a hunk of Vanya’s surplus.

  The shuffling was closer. Yuri racked the pistol’s slide.

  OK, OK, OK, he thought. What next? Pop off some rounds and run? Hope to reach the door before the mutant gets me?

  Could he even run? And what if he did make it to the hall with broken pieces in his chest? Could he make it to the stairwell? Up to the top level? What about the transmitter, the scarecrow men? What about Sasha? Could he make it out of the Zone and to the Cordon without her?

  L
aughter bubbled on his lips.

  Where the hell did that come from? He had no idea but it was there, an absurd, ill-timed joy lifting him with strange and scrawny wings.

  Yes, he could try to get up and out. He could run. But even if he made it, he could never enter the Zone again. This he knew in his bones. To flee would break him. But to stay?

  He looked over to Iosif, skinny, deceptive, unaccommodating Iosif staring away in his clumsy, upside down death pose. So tell me, Honored Bioplasma Junior Researcher, what do I do now, eh?

  No reply.

  Yuri closed his eyes. Well then, WWSD? he asked, and even as he asked, he knew the answer.

  A man should face his enemies. Look them in the eye. This Yuri knew in an instant as certain as if it were written in stone. If now is my time, he thought, I’ll at least meet Death like a man.

  Yuri glanced over at the flashlight. It was perhaps two meters away, shining like a sliver of bright mercury. The hooded man grunted and hissed. Yuri could feel tension coiling in the air. Ready to strike like a viper.

  I have to try, he said to himself. He looked into the vaulted darkness above him, up through the floors, to the sky he imagined in dappled silver, rose, and gold. I will try, he said.

  At that, Yuri Bonyev rolled out from behind the pipes and scrambled across the concrete floor. He heard a surprised snort, a menacing growl. The air thickened and swirled but Yuri’s fingers closed around the plastic handle and he rose to his feet, Makarov in one hand, flashlight in the other, a prayer to Saint Strelok on his lips.

  Gratitude and Acknowledgments

  Any endeavor, even a short piece of fiction, rests on a deep bed of inspiration and support, without which it wouldn’t exist. The list is long: from Boris and Arkady Strugatsky to Andrei Tarkovsky, on to GSC Game World and Sergiy Grygorovych. They developed the concepts and expression, creating worlds within worlds where such melancholy, terror, adventure and revelation could thrive. Special thanks to my long-suffering friends and members of the Cape Cod Wargame Commission who endure my prose and remain gracious, to the online readers at the HSSJ and Stalker7 blogs who keep coming back. And to my wife, who even though she doesn’t understand, smiles and lets me write. Thank you all.