Genesis
Filip Forsberg
Genesis
Copyright © Filip Forsberg 2018
ISBN: 978-91-984746-9-5
Somewhere in Russia
September 17 - 1922
Death grazed his head. Dimitri Konalev hunkered down behind the old fence and heard the heavy bullets strike the wood above his head. The dried-out wood splintered when the bullets tore holes in it.
He could barely breathe, his breath made small clouds in the chilly air. His heart pounded so hard that he thought it would jump out of his body. Another three bullets struck the wood in rapid succession and something sharp stung his cheek. He groaned when pain tore through his cheek and he noticed his fingers got wet when he reached up and touched his face. His mind raced, and his heart continued to pound in his chest, he had to do something, he could not stay where he was.
Searing smoke drifted slowly towards him and made his nose itch and his eyes water. If he stayed there, he would die. He was sure of it. Even though it was chilly he felt his wet shirt cling to his back, but he barely noticed it.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw the tree line. The protective, thick trees were close but still far away. If he could get there, he would have a chance. The uneven ground was littered with rocks and thick grass but there seemed to be a path that he could follow. He measured the distance; perhaps thirty meters but it could as well have been three hundred.
Behind the tree line, a large mountain reached towards the heavens.
Dimitri’s legs seared with pain when he heard the voices of the two men chasing him. They were close, too close. They would gun him down if he tried to make a run for the tree line. He cursed.
The day had started as usual. Dimitri Konalev was a private in the white army and had for the past few weeks been stationed outside a small, Russian village while they were preparing to meet the red. The whites were loyal to the new murdered tsar and fought against the Bolsheviks, the reds.
The white resistance did go well in the start and they had several initial victories but as time went by the reds had steadily grown stronger.
Dimitri had been drafted barely a year ago and as a miracle, he had survived the first year. But lately their campaign had taken a turn for the worse, and now their situation was quickly approaching disaster. He was not sure of what their military goals were and he doubted that their commanders knew. The only upside in all this was that they were close to his home village. When their unit had run out of food, Dimitri and his friend, Nikolai, had deserted together with several hundred in their unit. But he had not been able to contact his father about his and Nikolai’s plan, so he had to take his chances and roll the dice.
Rage tore through his body when he thought about the men that had killed his friend and hade made himself cower like a frightened dog. Damn them.
The sharp cracks from the rifles fell silent and the quiet silence was deafening. He glanced again over his shoulder and tried to muster enough courage to make a dash for safety, but he still hesitated. He was on the top of a small slope and he heard the voices close in on him. He peaked over the old, rickety fence where the bullets had torn up large holes.
Two men closed in on his position. One of them ran while the other provided cover. Dimitri glanced past them towards the slumped body on the road behind them. Nikolai lay motionless, close to the gate where they had met their assailants. There had been three of them, waiting in ambush and they had forced Dimitri and Nikolai to surrender their weapons.
Dimitri had a small knife hidden that he had tucked into his boot. The three filthy men were not regular soldiers in the red army but there was no doubt as to where their sympathies lay. These were perilous times for Russia and its people. The First World War had been followed by the Russian revolution and the disasters had continued to ravage his homeland.
Dimitri was a stern supporter of the Tsar. He knew in heart that the Tsar was the legitimate leader for Russia and he would gladly have given his life for the cause. But now, it was too late. The Tsar and the Romanov dynasty had been ended by the reds and now all hope was gone. A wave of desperation rolled over him, but he grinded his teeth and shook his head to clear his thoughts. His will to live was still strong.
He glanced down the slope and saw both dark-haired men edge closer to him. They were near now. Barely twenty meters. Dimitri could see the hatred in their eyes. He growled. His sweaty shirt clung to his back and he could smell his own, foul stench of sweat and blood. The knife in his hand, stained red with blood, was like an extension of his arm.
The men had demanded that Dimitri and Nikolai surrendered to them. At first, Dimitri and Nikolai had pretended to accept their fate but as Dimitri turned around, he pretended to slip on a patch of ice. The men had laughed as he fell hard to the frozen ground and struggled to get up.
In one sweeping motion, Dimitri had made them choke on their laughter. He had pulled out his hidden knife and plunged it deep under the chin of the man closest to him. The man’s smile had stiffened, and his eyes had rolled back in their sockets. Blood had filled the man’s mouth and a small cloud had risen from the man as the warm blood met the cold air.
In the same second, Nikolai had screamed and lunged at one of the other men but the man somehow managed to raise his rifle and shot Nikolai straight in the chest.
He could still see the image of Nikolai being thrown back from the force of the shot. The heavy bullet tore a gaping wound when it entered the body. It had gone by in a split second. Dimitri had reverted to instincts and he ran up the slope to escape. He had been able to put some tens of meters behind him and his assailants before they chased after him.
He carefully peeked over the fence and saw the two men edging ever closer. They were now not more than eight meters away. It was now or never, he cursed himself that he had hesitated so long. Another bullet struck the fence and he could feel it beginning to crumble. The sharp stench of gunpowder and burnt wood made his eyes and nose sear with pain.
In a couple of seconds, they would be upon him. That would be it, they would shoot him on the spot. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and was about to throw his knife at them and make a dash for the tree line when a strange light glided over his dirty, blood-stained hands. He stared at them. It looked as they had been dipped in molten gold.
His gazed focused on the ground and he saw that the grass looked as it had been colored in a deep, golden hue. He heard one of the men shout in a thick accent to the other.
”What’s happening?"
The other man sounded nervous.
"I have no idea! It has to be a trick!” the voice hesitated. "Do you see the mountain?”
Dimitri gazed at the mountain behind him and his mouth fell since it looked as the whole mountain suddenly had turned into gold.
Thin streaks of sharp light pierced the low-lying clouds and it gave everything an alien feeling. He squinted towards the sky and saw how a bright, shining sphere slowly descended towards the side of the mountain. He had never seen anything like it. He gasped when the sphere stopped its descent and seemed to hover midair.
After a few seconds, it resumed its decent and Dimitri felt heat radiate from it. The snow on the ground began to melt as the sphere approached and streaks of water trickled by Dimitris muddy boots. The men’s voices had fallen silent, it was now or never.
He closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and ran. His legs moved as jackhammers and he flew over the ground. He did not look back but kept his gaze firmly placed on the high pine trees that were closing fast. He exhaled explosively and felt a burning sensation in his chest.
Passing the tree line, he quickly jumped over a fallen trunk. He stumbled and almost fell but managed to remain upright. He scratched his hand on something hard but ignored the pain
. The voices seemed far away, and a glimmer of hope returned.
He ran like the wind and felt more pain when thin, sharp branches and twigs tear at him when he ran. His face was scratched when a branch grazed it and it drew blood. Tears ran down his cheeks, but he did not slow down.
After covering a great distance, he came to a clearing and sank down onto a knee. He was exhausted. The muddy ground was soft, and his knees sank deep into the cold mud. He listened intently but could not hear anything. Perhaps the men following him had lost his track. He took some deep breaths to calm down and waited while he listened for his pursuers.
A massive stone wall blocked his way and he staggered towards it. He reached out and was about to use it as support when he stumbled. He crashed into the wall and was horrified when he noticed that it was hollow. He fell forward, down into a long, winding shaft. He tumbled down. He crashed into a boulder that struck the air from his lungs and the last thing he remembered was hitting the ground, hard. Darkness came rolling in and he passed out.
He did not know for how long he had been laying there when he woke up. His head pounded, and he could feel something sticky on his cheek. He touched it and saw that his fingertips became covered in blood. He moaned when he carefully sat up. His mouth felt as if it was filled with sand and he tried to accumulate some saliva to moisten his lips but failed. His back ached since he thought he hit all rocks on the way down the shaft. He looked around and noticed that he seemed to be at the bottom of an old mining shaft. Streaks of weak light penetrated the darkness above him and water dropped from the roof and made his clothes moist.
He wobbly got on his feet and listened after the assailants that had chased him down here. Nothing. He staggered into a small opening and follow what seemed to be a tunnel deeper into the mountain. As he moved further from the weak light the surroundings became even darker and he bumped his head several times even though progressed very carefully. After another hard thump on his head, he cursed and sank to his knees. The cold emanating from the rock walls began to drive away the slither of hope he had felt as he moved into the tunnel.
A tingling sensation ran down his back and he starred quizzically on the walls as it appeared that a weak glow had begun emanating from them. He could see more of the tunnel as the walls became lighter. The shaft continued slightly downwards, and he could see that the ground was covered by small, sharp rocks but there was also a thin path that leads forward. He staggered onwards towards the deep.
He had not gone more than a couple of minutes when he approached an opening in the wall. Carefully, he stuck his head in the opening and peered in. A cave opened in front of him and he was amazed at how big it was. But it was the color of the cave that made him shout with excitement. The entire cave seemed to be covered in gold.
He crossed the opening and went into the cave and saw it. Something alive, somethings that resembled a figure. A figure was standing in the middle of the cave. Dimitri blinked as if he thought it was a hallucination and that it would be gone when he opened his eyes, but it was still there.
The figure was tall, over two meters and seemed to have two arms and two legs but the face did not seem to resemble anything he had seen before. Instead of a face, a shining, elongated surface covered the entire face. There were no noticeable features. Dimitri stared at the figure.
The faceless figure moved towards him and Dimitri felt a shiver of panic growing inside him, but the figure held up his arms. The faceless figure stopped about a meter from him and he could feel the heat radiating towards him from the non-existing face.
Slowly, the faceless figure reached back and pulled something from his back. He extended his arm towards Dimitri who stood paralyzed with fear. The faceless did not move but instead waited patiently for Dimitri to accept the gift. Dimitri swallowed hard and with trembling hands, accepted the gift.
In his hands, Dimitri held a small, three-colored, luminescent ring. The faceless fingers grazed Dimitri and in that same moment, a torrent of images flooded his mind. Amazing images of stars and planets welled up from within at a relentless pace. He understood that the true nature of the faceless entity before him was something completely different than the form that it had now in front of him. Its true form seemed to be made from radiation that raced through the universe in a frantic pace.
The flood of images did not yield, and Dimitri could not do anything to stop the visual waterfall within. Images of the moon, Mars and the other planets in the solar system kept coming. In many of them, he could sense something hiding under the surface. Something hidden, something out of sight.
Tears began to trickle down his cheek from the sheer effort and then, the faceless entity removed his hand. Dimitri panted from exhaustion when the stream of images suddenly stopped.
Dimitri heard himself breathe heavily when the faceless figure came closer and turn its featureless face towards him. It did not speak but instead turned and went back to the middle of the cave. Dimitris jaw dropped when the faceless figure dissolved into light and beamed straight up through the roof.
***
It was time. Anton Konalev sighed when he looked around the room. The flickering candle on the worn, wooden table gave rise to long shadows that danced on the crude stone walls in the cold room, and he shrugged. But it was not only because of the chill that he shrugged. Their entire world had been under violent attack for several years and now they had finally reached the end. It was not easy, in fact, it broke his heart, but it had to be done. Time was up. The reds were closing fast and if Antonov wanted his family to have any remaining chance of surviving it was time to leave.
Their family had relatives in Aschaffenburg, a small town in Germany and Antonov already had planned their escape there. His wife had gone into the village to get the final supplies they needed for their travel. His mind wandered to his son, Dimitri, and his heart was overwhelmed with grief. He had not heard from him in months and he feared the worst. The chaos around them crept closer every day and he had not been able to contact anyone from his son’s unit. Dimitri was a private in the white army and had valiantly fought the reds, but their situation now was futile.
He blinked away a tear in the corner of his eye when he thought of his son. It was their family’s destiny. To fight for the dead Tsar and the Romanov dynasty. Antonov had dedicated his life to defending the Tsar. It had been his life’s purpose from when he had been old enough to walk and he had passed his calling to his own son but now the future had something else in store for them.
He shook his head and struggled to let go of the melancholic feelings within. His steps echoed when he walked over to the table and the small, sturdy, marron-colored metal box that was on the table. He placed his hands on it and felt the cool metal. This was his final effort for his Tsar. He smiled to himself when he thought about how much he had sacrificed to save the treasures within the box. This would be his final legacy. He gently opened the lid and saw the priceless artifacts that he had helped keep from the reds, greedy claws.
Seven people had died protecting the three treasure he had in front of him. An officer colleague to him had smuggled the artifacts out the Kremlin and by the grace of God, the mission of safekeeping them had now fallen on him.
Three Fabergé-egg lay in the box and he stared at them.
He was jolted from his thoughts when it pounded on the thick, oak door.
“Yes?”
It was Ilir, the family servant. His raspy voice was excited.
"You need to get down to the main door. Right now.”
Antonov frowned. It was now like IIir to give instructions like that.
”Excuse me?”
Ilirs voice became even more eager.
”It’s Dimitri. He’s home!”
Antonov’s heart skipped a beat. He rushed over to the door and yanked it open. “What are you saying?”
Ilirs smile showed two missing, yellow teeth.
” He’s down in the hall. Alive!”
Antonov muscled his wa
y past Ilir when he did not move fast enough, and he came to the top of the stairs and stared down. There! Dimitri! Filthy and covered in old, dried blood but alive.
Dimitri saw his father and his smile widened. Bolts of joy shot through Antonov and he rushed down the stairs, taking three steps at the time and embraced his son. He could feel tears of joy rolling down his cheeks.
“You are alive.”
Dimitri smiled and nodded. Antonov saw dried blood on his son’s cheek and gently wiped it away. Dimitri did not move when his father removed the blood.
“Yes, I am.”
Antonov embraced his son once more and gripped his long-lost son that had come back from the dead. After a few moments, he loosened his grip and struggled to regain some self-control. Dimitri noticed his father struggling and whispered.
“It’s alright, it’s ok, I’m here now” he looked around, “Where’s mother?”
Antonov nodded towards the doors when he led his son up the stairs. Dimitri seemed injured, so he had to help him when he took one step at the time. Antonov pulled out a chair and helped him to sit down.
“She’s in the village, getting the last supplies we need”, he held his son's arm until he was sure he would not disappear, “What happened?”
Dimitri recounted the past few months and how their military campaign had grown increasingly difficult over time. He fell silent and could not meet his father’s eyes.
”I and Nikolai fled, we could not stay. Last night we left the battalion in the cover of night and set our course here.”
Antonov did not move.
”You deserted?”
Dimitri slowly nodded and kept his gaze to the floor.
A cloud of disappointment welled up within Antonov. His own son. A deserter. He shook his head and tried to quench the feeling of shame that welled up within. He pondered his son’s actions. He knew that the struggled was over. The reds were unstoppable. It was only a matter of time before the red wave would swallow the entire country. There was no point or pride in giving your life to a lost cause. Then it was better to survive to fight on another day. He nodded and placed his hand on his sons’ shoulder. Before he had the chance to say anything, Dimitri looked up. Antonov looked on in suprisement as his son’s face widened into a smile.
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