Ralph Peters

by The war in 2020

  Babryshkin had found the woman and her children at the rear of the truncated refugee column just as his tanks caught up with the plodding survivors. The boy had been unable to walk, and the half-starved mother was struggling to carry both her infant and her son, accomplishing little more than dragging the boy a few paces at a time. No one offered to help her. The refugees trailing the column felt the breath of the enemy a bit too strongly on their backs, and each had his or her own personal misery. The world had gotten beyond charity.

  At the scene of the massacre, Babryshkin had abandoned his resolve to maintain full combat readiness at all costs. Instead of growing harder, he found that his strength of purpose had peaked, and that his will was now on a steeply descending curve. He had ordered the survivors of the bloody ordeal loaded onto his vehicles, and his column had quickly taken on a ragged, undisciplined look. There was a pervasive sense, almost as strong as an odor that little more could be done. The ammunition was virtually gone. The fuel hardly sufficed to continue the retreat. Against the political officer's protests. Babryshkin had continued to load the sick and disabled onto his tanks, personnel carriers, and trucks throughout the morning's progress. If he could no longer defend them, he could at least carry them.

  The turretless tanks had proved to have an unforeseen advantage under such conditions. Since only the narrow main gun housing rose above the flat deck, there was room for a greater load of human cargo than the older tanks could bear. Besides the young woman and her two children, an old man, two bent grandmothers and a sick teenaged girl cluttered the vehicle, hanging on to whatever bits of metal their gloved or rag-wrapped hands could grasp. The weather had turned very cold, and the air felt ready with early snow, but each of the passengers was glad for this opportunity to ride exposed to the wind. The alternative was to die by the side of the road.

  Not everyone could, or would, be helped. They had come upon a grandmother, sitting off to the side of the road on a battered plastic suitcase, resting her bearded cheeks on her fists. Babryshkin had ordered his vehicle out of the line to pick her up, and he jumped off the fender to help her climb on board. But she hardly found Babryshkin worth a glance, and her expression showed that she did not relish being disturbed by such a fool.

  "Little mother," Babryshkin said to her, "you can't stay here."

  She briefly raised her eyes, then lowered them back to the vacant steppe.

  "Far enough," she mumbled. "This is far enough."

  There was no time to argue. And there were too many others who wanted to be saved. Babryshkin remounted his tank, shouting at the driver to work his way back into the formation. Behind him, the shrunken black figure sat on imperturbably, balled fists pressed up against her cheekbones.

  The column's progress took them past blackened intervals of military vehicles that had been caught by enemy air strikes, by undamaged war machines that had run out of fuel and been abandoned, and past still more whose mechanisms had simply been overtaxed: the vehicular equivalents of starvation, stroke, or heart attack victims. Government vans and private cars, city buses and rusted motorbikes, farm tractors drawing carts, a carnival of wastage covered the dirt road cut through the steppes. Bodies lay here and there, dead of exposure, or hunger, perhaps of disease, or the victims of murderers who killed those who wandered too far from the mass in the darkness—looking for food, or money, or anything that might increase the killer's chance of survival, however slightly. A collection of ravaged tents marked the site where someone had attempted to establish an aid station. All pride was gone. The proud were dead. As Babryshkin's tanks grunted by, men and women simply continued to squat by the side of the road, emptying shriveled bowels, many of them obviously sick. Here and there, a husband jealously stood guard over his wife, but, overall, there was only a sense of collapse, of the absence of law or reason.

  The cold air narrowed Babryshkin's eyes as he leaned out of the commander's hatch. The nursing mother reminded him of Valya, although his wife was not yet a mother and had told him frankly that she did not wish to become one. "Why saddle ourselves?" she had said. Babryshkin suspected that few men who really knew her would classify Valya as a genuinely good woman. She was selfish and dishonest. Yet, she was his wife. He loved her, and, now, he craved her. He felt that, if only he could speak to her now, he might share some of his newfound wisdom with her—how important it was to be satisfied with what one had, to be grateful for the chance to live in peace, to love each other. He had not found new words with which to reach her, yet, somehow, his fresh conviction would persuade her. How lucky they had been just to be able to lie down together in a warm bed, without the slightest thought of death. To lie down in each other's arms with the sure knowledge that morning would come with nothing more unpleasant than the need to rise a bit before the body was ready and to go work. He realized that, before witnessing the spectacle of all this helplessness, failure, and cheap mortality, he had never grasped the spectacular beauty of his life. Cares that once had seemed immense were nothing now. He had been surrounded by beauty, bathed in it, and he had been blind.

  A desperate man tried to climb onto the tank ahead of Babryshkin's while the vehicle was still in motion. Unpracticed, the refugee immediately snared himself between the big roadwheels and the grinding track. The conscious watched helplessly as the machine devoured the man's legs below the knee, slamming him to the ground, then twisting him over and over before the vehicle could be halted.

  The man lay openmouthed and openeyed in the gravel. He did not scream or cry, but propped himself up on his elbows, amazed. Two soldiers jumped from the vehicle, yanking off their belts to serve as tourniquets. The soldiers had seen plenty of wounds, and they were not shy. They felt quickly along the bloody rags of the man's trousers, searching for something firm amid the gore and riven bone. But the man simply eased back off his elbows, still silent and wide-eyed, utterly disbelieving. And he died. The soldiers dragged him a little way off the road, although it made no difference, then hurried back to their tank, wiping their hands on their coveralls, with Babryshkin screaming at them to hurry, since they were holding up the column.

  Now and again, some of the refugees had to be forced off of the vehicles, usually because their pleas for food, when denied, turned aggressive. At other times, they were caught trying to steal—anything, from food or a protective mask to the nonsensical. One man even tried to choke a vehicle commander, without the least evident cause. He was a terribly strong man, perhaps a bit mad, and he had to be shot to prevent him from strangling the vehicle commander to death.

  Once, a pair of Soviet gunships flew down over the endless kilometers of detritus, and Babryshkin waved excitedly, delighted at this sign that they were not completely alone, that they had not been entirely forgotten. He attempted to establish radio contact with the aircraft, but could not find the right frequency. The ugly machines circled twice around the march unit, then flew off at a dogleg, inscrutable.

  The young mother had finished nursing, and Babryshkin felt it was allowable to look at her again. He wondered where her husband might be. Perhaps in some other military unit, fighting elsewhere along the front. Perhaps dead. But, if he was alive, Babryshkin sensed the intensity with which he must be worrying about his family now, wondering where they were, if they were safe.

  Babryshkin leaned back toward the woman, who was clutching her infant in one arm, while simultaneously cradling her son and holding on to the gun housing with the other. He felt the need to say something to her, to reach out somehow, to reassure her.

  He brought his face as close to hers as possible and could not tell whether he saw fear or simply emptiness in her eyes.

  "Someday," he shouted above the roar of the engine, "someday all of this will seem like a bad dream, a story to tell your grandchildren."

  The woman was slow to respond. Then Babryshkin imagined that he saw the ghost of a smile pass briefly over her lips.

  He reached down into his hatch, to where his map case hung, and he drew
out the tattered packet containing his last cigarettes. One of his sergeants had stripped them from the corpse of a rebel officer. He crouched to light one against the cold breeze, then held it out as though to insert it between the woman's lips.

  Again, she seemed unable to respond at first. Finally, she shook her head, slightly, slowly, as though the machinery in her neck wanted oil. "No. Thank you."

  The old man seated just behind her on the deck looked hungrily at the cigarette. Disappointed at the failure of his gesture, Babryshkin passed the smoke into the old man's quivering hand.

  By the side of the road, a man and a woman struggled to drive along two sheep who had balked at the grumble from the armored vehicles. Babryshkin was amazed that the animals had not yet been butchered and eaten. Lucky sheep, he thought.

  The dull, constant static in his headset sparked to life. "This is Angara." Babryshkin recognized the anxious voice of the air defense platoon leader. "We have aircraft approaching from the south."

  "Enemy?"

  "No identification reading. Assume hostiles.

  "All stations, all stations," Babryshkin called. "Air alert. Disperse off the roadway. Air alert. "

  At his command, his driver turned the steel monster on to the left, scattering the two sheep. Their owners ran after them, openmouthed. Soon, Babryshkin thought, they would have other, greater worries.

  "Don protective masks," Babryshkin shouted into the headset mike. "Seal all vehicles." He tugged hastily at the carrier of his mask. The refugees mounted on the vehicle's deck looked at him with fear, their faces vividly alive. He imagined that they were accusing him, as he pulled the mask over his head, temporarily hiding from their sight. There was no alternative. There was no point in dying out of sheer sympathy.

  The unclean mask stank in his nostrils. Looking around him, he could see his vehicles churning off into the steppe, spreading out to offer as difficult a target area as possible.

  No more time. He could see the dark specks of the enemy planes, popping up before entering their attack profile. They were aiming straight for the column.

  There was nothing else to be done. The surviving air defense gunners had no more missiles. All they could do was to open up with their last belts of automatic weapons ammunition, which was as useless as trying to shoot down the sky itself.

  All around, hatch covers slammed shut, leaving bewildered refugees stranded on the vehicle decks. Some of the civilians leapt to the ground, running off into the fields with their last reserves of strength, imagining that there might be someplace to hide, or that they might have time to distance themselves from the military targets. Babryshkin caught a glimpse of a struggle in the back of one of the infantry fighting vehicles as soldiers fought to clear away enough of the refugees to close the troop hatches. A burly civilian grabbed a soldier's mask, and shots rang out.

  No time.

  Without making a conscious decision, Babryshkin grabbed the woman's little boy, tearing him away from her. He forced the child wildly down into the belly of the tank. Then he pulled at the woman.

  She began to resist, not understanding. Swatting and staring in horror at the creature in the bug-eyed mask.

  Babryshkin launched himself out of the hatch as the planes grew larger on the horizon. He slapped the woman on the side of the head, then lifted her and the infant away from the gun housing.

  The planes were hurtling down into the attack, clearly recognizable as fighter-bombers now.

  "Come on," Babryshkin bellowed through the voice filter of the mask. He manhandled the woman over to the hatch and shoved her down inside, as though he were stuffing rags into a pipe. The other refugees watched in terror, struggling to hold on to the lurching vehicle as the driver maneuvered out into the steppe.

  No room. No time.

  Babryshkin kicked the woman's back downward with the flat of his boots, dropping in on top of her, kicking her out of the way. She tumbled to the floor of the vehicle's interior, attempting to wrap herself protectively around her infant. Babryshkin could hear the little boy screaming, even over the engine roar and through the seal of the protective mask.

  He slammed the hatch cover down behind him, fumbling to seal it. The last thing he heard before shutting the compartment was the huge scream of the jets.

  "Overpressure on," he shrieked into the intercom, aching to be heard through the muffle of his mask's voice-mitter. He slapped at the panel of switches in front of him.

  One more time, just one more time. He prayed that the vehicle's overpressure system would function. He didn't care what would come afterward, that was too far away. He only wanted to survive this immediate threat. He knew the filters were worn, and the vehicle had taken a terrible beating. Death could come in an instant. Irresistible.

  He felt a shudder through the metal walls. Then another.

  Bombs.

  Perhaps it would be a purely conventional attack, without chemical weaponry.

  But he doubted it. The chemical strikes had become too commonplace. The enemy had become addicted to them, having grasped the marvelous economy of such weapons.

  He tried to look out through his optics. But it was difficult with the mask on. The tank lurched over rough ground, and the bouncing horizon filled with smoke and dust.

  The first test would be whether the woman and her children lived. If they survived, the overpressure system was still functional.

  The boy continued to scream. But that was a good sign. Nerve gas victims did not scream. They just died.

  Radio call. Hard to hear, hard to hear.

  "This is Kama."

  "I'm listening," Babryshkin said, dispensing with call signs, trying to keep everything as simple as possible with the mask on.

  "This is Kama. Chemical strike, chemical strike. Kama was the last surviving chemical reconnaissance vehicle in the shrunken unit.

  "What kind of agent?" Babryshkin demanded of the radio, already envisioning the scene that would await him when he unsealed his hatch. Nothing helped, there was nothing you could do.

  "No reading yet. My remote's out. I just read hot."

  "Acknowledged."

  "This is Angara," the air defender jumped in. "They're leaving. Looks like just one pass."

  The voice sounded too clear.

  "Do you have your goddamned mask on?" Babryshkin demanded.

  "No ... no, we were engaging the enemy. We've got a good seal on the vehicles, and—"

  "Get your mask on, you stupid bastard. I don't want any unnecessary casualties. Do you hear me?"

  No answer. His nerves were going. He had stepped on the other man's transmission. They had merely canceled each other out. He was forgetting the most basic things. He needed to rest.

  "All stations," Babryshkin said, enunciating slowly and carefully. "Report in order of your call signs."

  This was the test. How many more call signs would have disappeared?

  The overpressure system had worked. The woman and her children were still breathing on the floor of the crew compartment. The boy screamed without stopping, making up for his earlier silence. Babryshkin was about to command the woman to shut the brat up, when the skewed angle of the boy's arm caught his eye, evident even through the camouflage of his winter coat.

  Nothing to be done. At least the boy was alive. Arms could be set. The woman looked up at Babryshkin, her eyes near madness. Her forehead was bleeding. She had protected her infant in the fall, not herself. A good mother. Hardly more than a child herself.

  He listened as his subordinates reported in. The voices were businesslike, if weary and a bit slurred. Everything was reduced to a matter of routine.

  The reporting sequence broke. Another crew gone.

  Babryshkin spoke into the intercom, ordering his driver to turn back toward the road. Then he ordered the radio reporting to resume at the next sequence number.

  Unexpectedly, his vehicle jerked to a halt. The engine was still running, however, and Babryshkin did not understand what was happening.r />
  "Wait," he told the radio net. Then he switched to the intercom. "Why in the hell did you stop? I told you to get back on the road."

  The driver mumbled something, unintelligible through the protective mask.

  "I asked you why the hell we've stopped, goddamnit," Babryshkin barked.

  "I can't . . ." the driver said in a flat voice.

  "What do you mean, you can't? Are you crazy?"

  "I can't," the driver repeated. "I'd have to drive over them."

  What in the hell are you talking about?" Babryshkin demanded, putting the eye piece of his protective mask as close to his optics as he could.

  The driver did not need to answer. Where there had been a plodding army of humanity a few minutes before, there was only a litter of dark, fallen shapes. No hysteria, no struggling, no shivering movements of the wounded, not the least evidence of suffering. Only stillness, except where scattered military vehicles continued their slow, aimless maneuvers, like riderless horses on an antique battlefield.