Trial by Fire

by Trial by Fire (retail) (epub)

  ‘What the fuck?’ she rasped, confused and angry at his interference.

  ‘It’s a fucking dog,’ Drake snapped back, jerking his hand off to the left.

  Frost followed it, seeing the vague shape of an animal crouched beneath a transport truck, growling and snarling at them. Too afraid to charge but unwilling to back down. A wild dog, perhaps a descendant of the domestic pets that had been left behind in the chaos of the evacuation.

  God damn it, she thought, silently cursing her foolishness. Of course it was a dog. With humans gone, nature had gradually moved in and taken their place. One unexpected benefit of the disaster was that the resulting Exclusion Zone had effectively become a 1000-square-mile wildlife reserve. Many species that had become endangered in other parts of the country had flourished here, largely safe from human predation.

  Doubtless the interiors of these old vehicles had become home to a variety of animals, most of which didn’t take kindly to the group that had just blundered into their territory.

  When it became obvious they weren’t going to retreat, the dog’s growls quietened before the animal finally slunk off into the darkness, probably in search of a new den.

  ‘Alpha, I hear a commotion. Everything okay up there?’ Mason asked over the radio.

  ‘No problem. Just local wildlife,’ Drake responded.

  Frost exhaled, trying to regain her composure and force her heart rate to return to something approaching normal after the unsettling encounter.

  ‘Get a grip of yourself, Frost,’ Drake warned, swinging the hatch closed again. ‘Get a grip or fuck off back to the rendezvous point, because I’ve got no time to play babysitter tonight. Understand?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he brushed past her and resumed his march toward the target area. Frost waited only a second or so, her jaw clenched tight, before hurrying to catch up.

  Chapter 6

  Keira let out a painful, shuddering breath, wrapping her skinny arms around herself and trying to draw her knees up against her chest. Trying to generate some meagre vestige of warmth. Trying to stay alive as the temperature dipped close to freezing.

  It was two months since she’d fled her home with no plan beyond getting as far away from that place as possible, and armed with nothing but the clothes on her back and the contents of Shane’s wallet, which had amounted to a grand total of $112. Enough to buy a train ticket to Chicago, where she figured she could blend in and disappear. Enough to pay for food for a couple of weeks.

  But eventually the money had run out, and so had her options. Unable to seek refuge at any of the city’s homeless shelters due to her age and the inevitable interference of social workers, she’d been left with no option but to survive on the streets, sleeping in bus stations, underpasses, doorways, anything she could find. Always working to avoid the cops, the gangs, the people who preyed on the weak.

  And weak she was. She hadn’t eaten all day. Her stomach ached with hunger. Her already slender frame had shrunk further since she ran away. She hadn’t washed in a week. Her clothes were filthy, and so was she.

  A cold breeze whipped through the alleyway in which she’d taken shelter, chilling her to the bone. It had been September when she ran away, the days still flush with the warmth of summer, but winter was setting in now. The nights were cold even in the city. Sometimes she’d get lucky and find a vent or heating outlet to sleep next to, but they were always popular gathering places for people like her. Other nights she would shiver her way through until dawn, gradually losing the feeling in her limbs until she wondered if she would slip away altogether.

  Once or twice she’d even entertained the idea of going home, of facing her mom, facing Shane. But she knew she couldn’t do it. His abusive and domineering behaviour before was nothing compared to the wrath he would visit on her now. She would die before she went back there.

  Perhaps it would happen. She was so tired, so hungry, so sick of struggling just to survive, that she wondered how much longer she could take it. It was a daily battle, and one that she was slowly losing.

  ‘Hey.’

  Keira looked around, suddenly alert. She had learned quickly enough that you always needed to be alert if you were sleeping rough. There was always someone hungrier, more desperate than you, waiting for their chance.

  ‘Over here, dumbass,’ a female voice prompted her.

  Turning left, Keira frowned at what she saw. A young woman was leaning out of a doorway a little further up the alley, hanging by one arm as if she were an acrobat. She was dressed in an oversized bomber jacket and ripped jeans. Her hair had been shaved down one side of her head, the rest dyed almost white and spiked up to resemble a Mohawk. She was grinning at Keira.

  ‘Yeah, you,’ she said, now that she had eye contact. ‘You gonna sit there staring, or you want to come in here and get warm?’

  ‘Not interested in being anyone’s bitch,’ Keira replied, instantly suspicious. For all she knew, there could be a dozen gang bangers behind that door, just waiting for fresh meat to come wandering in.

  The young woman feigned outrage, then flashed an odd, lopsided grin. ‘Big words for such a little kid.’

  ‘Fuck you. I’m not a kid.’

  Her grin broadened at this. ‘Oh damn. And here I am thinking you was just some little fish. You got balls talking to me like that, girl.’

  Keira knew a fight brewing when she saw one, and she had no desire to get involved in a turf war. Shit like that only went one way. Time to move on.

  ‘We’re done talking,’ she said, rising from her meagre refuge and making to leave. She would find another place to sleep.

  ‘Yo, hold up,’ the girl said, her tone changing. Some of the mockery had left it now.

  Keira turned as she jogged over, keeping fists clenched, ready to defend herself. Up close she could see the girl was a good couple of inches taller than her, probably a year or two older. Definitely better fed.

  ‘You know, I seen you around,’ she said, looking a little less confident now. ‘Past couple nights, sleeping in doorways and shit. You alone, not in with anyone?’

  Keira wasn’t sure what to say. Claiming to be part of a gang might have offered some measure of protection, or it might have provoked a more violent reaction from the girl. Rivalries between these ragtag groups were vicious and unrelenting.

  In the end, she chose simply to be honest.

  ‘Just me.’

  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw momentary relief on the girl’s face. She pointed back the way she’d come. ‘Look, I got a place in there. It ain’t much, but…’ She shrugged, though she had a more serious expression now. ‘I done my time out on the streets. You don’t last long alone, ’specially this time of year. But… if you got your own thing going on, it’s cool. Whatever.’

  She’d already turned away, heading back toward the doorway.

  Keira couldn’t rightly say why she did what she did. She had no reason in the world to trust this girl, no justification for following her. And yet she wanted to, perhaps because she recognised something else lurking beneath the bravado – longing and loneliness. A desire to have someone, anyone, to be with.

  ‘Wait,’ she said.

  The girl stopped and turned, and Keira approached her warily, still not sure whether she was making a mistake, but willing to at least try. It wasn't like she had much left to lose.

  ‘One night,’ she said. ‘After that, I’m gone.’

  The grin was back. ‘One night.’

  * * *

  As it turned out, the vehicle graveyard was situated just outside the city limits, because a few hundred yards further south they encountered the first outlying buildings of Pripyat proper. All were little more than plain, functional concrete blocks designed with characteristic Soviet utilitarianism in mind. And all had been gutted by years of neglect, their windows gone, their doors rotten or caved in by humans and animals. Many were heavily infested with trees, ivy and other vegetation that were slowly cover
ing and overwhelming them.

  Broken furniture and personal belongings seemed to have been dumped from upper-storey windows and scattered everywhere: everything from old couches to kitchen utensils and even children’s toys. No doubt an abandoned city like Pripyat had become a tempting target for looters over the years.

  Still, looting was the least of their concerns, and the group paid these ruins scant attention as they pressed on. Frost glanced at her watch – three hours and fifty-two minutes left. Time was not on their side tonight.

  A broad main road lay before them, heading roughly south-west toward the city centre, and relatively clear of obstructions save the occasional rusted frame of an abandoned car by the side of the road. At Drake’s instruction, the group proceeded down it, keeping as close to the buildings as possible and staying in the shadows. Broken glass crunched under their feet as they moved.

  At one intersection, they passed a big stone statue of Vladimir Lenin, which Frost supposed had been an obligatory feature of most Soviet cities back then. He was decked out in characteristic suit and heavy overcoat, the bald dome of his head covered with bird droppings as his sightless eyes stared off into the distance, perhaps envisioning the utopian socialist future that awaited his country.

  Little could the man have imagined its true fate.

  They soon found themselves in what Frost assumed had been a residential district. However, there were no private houses that she could see, no family homes like one might find in an American town. Instead, rows of big apartment blocks reared up on either side of the main road, stark and unwavering in their conformity. One even sported a massive hammer and sickle encircling a stylised image of the world.

  They might once have exemplified the communist ideals that had inspired their creation, but now they were dark, empty and foreboding, their concrete frames standing as silent monuments to the tens of thousands of people who had once called this place home.

  She was just passing the derelict remains of a bus shelter when she paused, her heightened senses warning her that something wasn’t right. Frost wasn’t a believer in a sixth sense or any of the supernatural bullshit that some people put their faith in, but in the course of her life she’d come to recognise that odd, prickling sensation at the back of her neck when someone was watching her. Standing on that desolate, empty street in the midst of a dead city, she felt it now.

  ‘Frost,’ Drake hissed. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, struck by the disconcerting impression that she was being observed from one of those darkened windows overlooking the road, that if she glanced up quickly enough she might see a face staring down at her.

  Her eyes scanned the nearby buildings, almost afraid of what she might find, but encountered only darkness and broken windowpanes. ‘You see anything? Up there?’

  Drake looked up but apparently failed to see anything of interest. Nonetheless, he fired up his radio. ‘Charlie, what’s your sitrep?’

  ‘I’m about a hundred yards south of your position, Alpha. Next road junction, one floor up,’ Keegan’s voice crackled over the secure network. ‘Got a pretty good field of view from up here.’

  ‘Any activity in our sector?’

  ‘Nobody’s home,’ Keegan said. ‘Place is as quiet as a grave.’

  There was a hint of unease in his normally relaxed voice that Frost found more unsettling than any exclamation of outright fear. Maybe he felt it, just as she did.

  ‘Bravo, anything at your end?’ Drake went on.

  ‘Nothing here, Alpha,’ Mason replied.

  ‘Copy that,’ Drake acknowledged. ‘Charlie, proceed to the next rally point and cover us. Call out anything if you see it.’

  ‘Roger. Charlie’s on the move.’

  Drake glanced at his companion, his expression making it plain he wasn’t impressed by the delay. ‘We’re half a mile from the factory. Let’s go.’

  Resuming their journey south-west through the city, they made steady progress down the empty streets, and despite Frost’s misgivings encountered no trouble to speak of. Her morale was further boosted when the towering apartment blocks receded and they found themselves in open ground studded with trees and stunted bushes. Perhaps it had once been a park or some other public space, but regardless it was now little more than light untended woodland.

  ‘Charlie to Alpha,’ Keegan’s voice called out of the radio. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Go, Charlie,’ Drake responded.

  ‘Got something up ahead, just beyond the treeline.’

  The team leader tensed slightly. ‘Hostile?’

  ‘No, but you might want to take a look. You’re gonna love this.’

  Curious but wary, Drake and Frost pushed on to rendezvous with their scout. Sure enough, the trees thinned out after a short distance, affording them an unobstructed view of what lay beyond.

  Keegan was waiting for them, and flashed a brief smile as he swept his arm around to encompass their bizarre surroundings. ‘Anyone wanna go for a ride?’

  Frost’s earlier assumption about this place being a public park was proved partially correct, though not at all in the way she’d expected. For a moment or two she found herself staring up in amazement at the gigantic fairground Ferris wheel towering above them, its bright yellow gondolas swinging idly in the breeze on rusted arms, in stark and obscene contrast to the urban decay all around.

  The remnants of other fairground rides stood nearby, frozen in time from the day of the disaster. Not far from the Ferris wheel, she spotted the metal skeleton of an umbrella ride, designed to spin and sway around a central axis, while a little further away was the frame of another building. Its roof had long since succumbed to the elements, but its function was made clear by the dozen or so bumper cars still sitting where they’d been left, their long metal conducting-rods reaching for a ceiling that no longer existed.

  ‘Holy shit,’ she whispered, momentarily forgetting their situation as she took in the incongruous scene.

  ‘I read about this place,’ Keegan said. ‘They were due to open it a few days after the disaster, but the evacuation beat them to it. Place has never been used.’

  Venturing a short distance away from the others, Frost looked down at the child’s swing before her, its old chain creaking and groaning as it moved slightly in the breeze, and she could almost picture what this place might have been on its opening day. She imagined the excitement of the local kids, saw families queuing up to ride the big wheel, heard children laughing and squealing as the umbrella ride spun them around, the smell of cotton candy in the air.

  It was a day that never came.

  Then the scene evaporated, and she was jolted out of her thoughts by an urgent warning from Mason, who had been covering their backs.

  ‘All units, contact inbound! Contact inbound!’

  Chapter 7

  Frost’s heart went into overdrive as Mason’s frantic warning sank in. Already she could hear the rumble of vehicle engines at high revs drifting through the still night air, and see the glow of headlights through the trees, heading straight for them.

  This was no false alarm or passing danger that could be easily avoided. Armed men were coming for them, and they’d been caught out in the open. Within seconds, they might well be fighting for their lives.

  ‘Take cover now!’ Drake ordered, as he and Keegan retreated into a dense stand of fir trees near the Ferris wheel.

  Caught out, Frost immediately knew she was too far away to make it into the treeline before the vehicles arrived. Instead she spotted the decomposing frame of a ticket booth next to the bumper-cars ride, and made for it without thinking.

  Barely had she leapt over the rotting counter top and landed hard amongst the sodden debris on the other side, when the clearing around the amusement park was suddenly flooded with harsh yellow light.

  Gripping the USP tight in her now clammy hands, Frost dared to peer through a crack between two warped wooden planks in the booth’s frame. A pair of 4x4s
had pulled into the clearing and come to a stop. She didn’t recognise the makes or models, but they appeared to be civilian rather than military, their paintwork streaked with mud, steam billowing from their exhausts as their engines sat at idle. After the near-total darkness the team had been moving through for the past hour, the glow of their headlights was blindingly intense. It was all she could do to look at it.

  The engines shut down and silence descended on the clearing, cold and oppressive next to the roar of machinery. Frost heard the click of a lock disengaging, the creak of a door swinging open, and the sound of boots on broken tarmac. Hardly daring to look, she watched as a pair of men exited the lead vehicle, the long barrels of AK-style assault rifles slung idly over their shoulders.

  Both men were dressed in winter clothing, their already sizeable frames bulked out by heavy jackets and thick trousers. They were talking in Russian as they strolled away from the lead 4x4, though their tone was neither anxious or aggressive, but relaxed and conversational as if they were friends out for an evening walk.

  She saw a flare of orange light as one lit up a cigarette, then felt her heart leap as the other angled toward her makeshift refuge. She dared not observe his progress any further for fear of discovery, instead curling into a ball and trying to make herself as small as possible, hoping her dark clothing would help her blend into the general shadows within the booth.

  Her radio earpiece crackled faintly. ‘Got four Tangos in sight, spreading out around the vehicles. Looks like a standard roving patrol set-up,’ Keegan said. Wherever he was, she assumed he must have found cover and retreated far enough from the scene to feel comfortable speaking.

  ‘We must be close to the factory,’ Mason remarked. ‘Think they’re looking for us?’

  ‘Hard to tell, but they’re packing AKs and body armour. These guys are serious players.’

  ‘Nobody makes a move unless I say so,’ Drake commanded, no doubt fearful of what would happen if this turned into a firefight.