Exoteric
Page 27
Firelight streamed into the distance, spiralling one moment, bouncing madly from one surface to another the next. The flames’ roar, and the dull tolling of the alarm, overlaid a quaking cacophony from the clinic. Symmetries collapsed, topologies shattering in grinding, kaleidoscopic transpositions, as reality calved into the abyss.
He could see a figure, far away, at the end of the sinuous corridor. It was Molchanov, oscillating and distorted, but unmistakable. Elbows and wrists bent, back arched and head thrown back, he seemed paralysed by tetanic convulsions. Arkady tried to stand up, to push himself away from the wall, but the world had turned to quicksand and his efforts no longer resulted in movement. The hallway was no longer a passage—it was a pit. A shaft leading down, down to the heart of an inescapable, phantasmagorical nexus.
The pandemonium in his head was obliterating him now. Every frequency, every tone, every timbre of sound simultaneously flooding him in an overwhelming barrage of white noise. His hands were over his ears, trying to block it out, but it made no difference. The sound was in him, was pouring from him, in fact, and him streaming with it, an effigy of sand dissolving on the wind.
Molchanov had gone limp, like a kitten in its mother’s jaws, dangling in the air. There was nothing behind him—no hallway, no wall, no clinic door—just darkness: a Vantablack shadow, spreading like spilled ink, eclipsing everything it touched. Arkady gaped at it, immobilised and prostrated by the pain in his head, his muscles locked in spasm.
The stove’s propane supply exploded in an incandescent flash. Arkady felt the air around him pulse. He was pushed onto his back as streamers of orange fire whirled down the corridor, vanishing in the singularity’s atramentous maw. Molchanov’s body was spinning in the flames and the blackness was reaching for it, was touching it, was engulfing it in darkness like a spider rolling up a fly.
Arkady was passing out, his senses in full retreat. His peripheral vision was failing, his field of view constricting until he could see nothing—nothing but that void, that hellish lacuna—and then, mercifully, not even that.
*
“Wake up, you moron! The place is on fire!”
He was moving. He was choking. Smoke was burning his throat. He opened his eyes to the stinging air for a second, then quickly screwed them shut. Another lurch—pain in his back—he was being dragged.
An alarm was ringing, strident and obnoxious. Raising his head, he forced one eye half-open. It was Galina, pulling him by the ankles, slogging through a hurricane of billowing soot. They were in the reception area. When the storm of smoke momentarily thinned, he could see the doors ahead of them, and the brake lights of the truck parked beyond.
He tried to call out, but immediately began to cough, the membranes in his mouth and nose streaming with mucus as they tried to clear themselves of ash. She heard him and turned, dropping his feet and taking hold of his wrists instead.
“Come on, get on your feet.” The woollen scarf tied across her mouth and nose muffled her words, and she had to shout to be heard over the incessant clanging of the alarm. “Up, up, up!”
She hauled on his arms, pulling him into an unsteady crouch. Still coughing, he remained doubled over, dribbling and spitting at the floor.
“Get moving! Fresh air, outside—let’s go!”
She hooked an arm through his and dragged him with her, while he shuffled his feet as best he could to keep up. He was dizzy, he was sweating, and his eyes were streaming, but the door was getting closer. She was leaning into it, pushing it open, and—ah, relief!—ice-cold, unpolluted air was streaming through.
Galina gripped his arm more tightly as he stumbled and almost fell past her out of the building. Once the door had closed behind them, she tore the scarf from her mouth, and they both stood for a few seconds, hands on their knees, gratefully sucking down the crisp, night air. Exhaust fumes from the patiently-chuntering Ural blew over them, but at concentrations that were homeopathic compared to the smog they’d left behind.
She recovered before he did, and rounded on him in a fury.
“You fucking demented idiot!” she spat. “What were you doing in there? I had to drag your silly arse halfway through the building! Why didn’t you just come with us? Idiot!”
“I’m sorry,” apologised Arkady, coughing and clearing his throat. “It had to be done.”
“I saw his body, at the other end of the corridor. I wasn’t going to drag you both out. Did you shoot him?”
He didn’t answer until she repeated the question more forcefully.
“Yes, I shot him,” he lied. It was easier than trying to explain what he had seen, and more believable.
“Good.” Galina nodded. “Come on. The girl is in the truck. I’ll drive. You don’t look up to it.”
Arkady wanted to protest, but was wracked by another fit of coughing, which left him with tears in his eyes.
“It’s a big vehicle,” he croaked, with an apologetic shake of his head, fist still pressed to his lips. “Do you know how to drive one?”
“I’m sure I can figure it out. Now though, before this fire roasts our backsides!”
She started walking to the cab, and Arkady limped obediently after her, going around to the passenger side. He had to pause and pool the last dregs of his strength to pull himself into the vehicle next to Sophia, who sat staring straight ahead, traumatised and mute.
Galina swore and wrestled with the Ural’s transmission, yanking the stick this way and that until she found first gear. Behind them, the fire had reached the altitude clinic’s second storey now, and windows began blowing out, admitting more oxygen to feed the flames. The truck jerked a few times as the surgeon released the clutch, then began to move, rolling slowly towards the distant treeline. Arkady rested his head against the cab’s window, and watched in the rear-view mirror as the building burned.
*
It took an hour to negotiate the track through the frozen woods, branches scraping the roof and windows the whole way. Galina fretted and cursed as she inched round each bend at full lock, until eventually they reached the shallower slopes, and then the road.
She was gunning the engine even before they reached the tarmac. As they turned onto it, she slapped the steering wheel in triumph and began working her way up through the gears, sending the Ural bounding forwards. Arkady opened his window a crack as she lit a cigarette, adding its fumes to the stench of smoke already rising from their clothes.
“This is the right direction, yes?” she asked, squinting through the pall of fresh smoke she was creating.
“Yes. Just keep following this road, for now. Do you want me to drive?”
“No. I’m getting the hang of it now. Is she all right?”
She jerked her head towards Sophia, sat between them, still staring at the windscreen in frozen silence.
“She’s in shock,” said Arkady. “I think we all are.”
In the wing mirror he could see the grey thunderhead now rising from the plateau, its underside tinged by the conflagration’s glow. His mind’s eye, though, was endlessly replaying the sight of that unnatural nothingness, that swelling, annihilating shadow, pushing its way into the world to reclaim its fugitives. He kept remembering what the presence residing in Molchanov had said to him:
“You are an old man. How long do you think you have?”
His mouth suddenly filled with the flavour of blood. His chattering teeth had sliced the inside of his lower lip. He swallowed and cursed, and dabbed his mouth with the back of his hand.
Galina looked across at him.
“What is it?”
“Bit myself.”
“Oh. You know, Roman didn’t believe any of the shit you told him—about what was going on, why you were doing it. He knew you were bullshitting him. He just thought it was his chance. He’d been waiting for it all his life.”
“Right.”
He wondered whether the fire would have managed to breach Zapad’s cryostat. Possibly not. Maybe he was still in there, buried un
der the rubble, scratching, trying to get out…he shuddered, and tried to force his mind elsewhere.
Galina rolled down the window to pitch her cigarette. Both hands back on the steering wheel, she sighed and rolled her shoulders, eyes still watching the road ahead.
“Where are we going, anyway? What do we do about all this? Who’s going to tell them we burned their place down?”
“We head back to Gorno-Altaysk. We can take hotel rooms there, and sleep before we decide what to do next.”
Galina considered it. “Fine,” she agreed. “Does that sound good to you, Sophia?”
They both looked at the girl between them.
“Sophia? Hey, can you hear me? I said, ‘how does that sound to you?’” repeated Galina. “Are you with us?”
“Yes, that sounds fine,” replied Sophia, speaking quickly, still staring straight ahead. A curious and strangely-familiar smile spread across her face. “Take me to where there are people.” She turned her head finally, looking straight at Arkady. “Lots and lots of people.”
Arkady looked away, but couldn’t avoid her eyes reflected in the windows around him. Eyes which suddenly seemed much older than they had before.
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