by Chad Huskins
The monster didn’t question her, he knew enough by now to listen to her every intuition. Spencer darted across the living room and went right for the kitchen, where he turned the radio back up. He flipped through a few stations, until he came to some really aggressive American music, some band Kaley thought she remembered somebody calling Disturbed? They were playing that song, “Down with the Sickness” or whatever. Spencer turned it up, way up, then went over to the kitchen window to peek outside.
Kaley went to one of the shattered windows of the little dining room, where the curtains were being pushed around by winds, and snow had collected on the rugs and pinewood flooring. She was just in time to see one of the black-coated men dashing behind a small shed with a waist-high stack of chopped wood beneath a not-secured blue tarp. Another black-coated man was moving fast around another open-door shed with absolutely nothing in it, just snow drifting inside and piling up.
“Spencer!” she hollered over the incredibly strident tunes of Disturbed.
“I know!”
“They’re surrounding us!”
“I know!”
“Then why are you doing nothing but turning up the fucking radio?” She shouted these words in both the lodge and in the bathroom stall at Cartersville Middle School.
Spencer moved from the kitchen across the living room, still crouching, his gun pointed at the ground, but she could feel his muscles—they weren’t taut but they were electrified; loose but ready—and she could feel the inhuman sea of emotions churning inside of him—anger and outrage at the audacity of others to challenge him, some excitement, a deal of cogitation, a level of awkward prurience, and all with a dash of glee; always with that irrational, demented glee.
“They’re gonna make it inside this place eventually,” he hollered over to her. “And sooner than ya think! It’s better if they can’t hear each other communicate, an’ can’t hear us movin’ around! Now, get up those stairs and protect that boy!”
Kaley looked at him. Those words had hit her almost as hard as a slap in the face, and with at splash of ice-cold water. That wasn’t like Spencer at all. It so stunned her that, for a moment, she forgot about the churning waters all around her ankles, and the things licking and tasting her, testing the parameters of her world, searching for a way through. “Protect the…?”
Spencer chuckled. “I ain’t goin’ soft on ya, but I did stay here because of that kid. If I’m goin’ through all o’ this, I wanna protect my investment,” he said while ducking from one window to another. “And you better not be lyin’! He better know somethin’! Now,” he said, looking dead at her, “go!”
His words broke the spell on her, as Spencer’s words often would do, and sent Kaley darting across the living room. Behind her, she heard Spencer singing, but not the words of Disturbed. “Sometimes I feel I’ve got to—bump-bump!—run away, I’ve got to—bump-bump!—get away from the pain you drive into the heart of me!”
At the top of the stairs, Kaley stopped, and in both of her worlds she felt dizzy. The walls of the lodge and the bathroom stall breathed, and the water spilling down them seemed to churn and froth, exactly like the water about her ankles. Something was moving behind the walls, swimming through the water trickling down the stairs. It whispered on the wind, and muttered into her bones, “She’s so close now. Keep searching, my brothers. Keep searching. It is possible to get to her. I’ve promised you, and now I will deliver.”
Back at CMS, Kaley stood bolt upright in the girls’ bathroom stall, shivering and wondering if she was going insane.
“The love we shared,” sang Spencer, “seems to go—bump-bump!—nowhere!”
Shcherbakov had pulled Vasilisa Rubashkin’s pants down around her ankles, removed her cap, shoes and socks. He used scissors to cut her underwear off, wadded it up, and stuffed it into her mouth before duct-taping her lips shut. Her eyes were just starting to flutter open and shut, open and shut, open and shut. Shcherbakov had given her another injection, this one to counteract the first, but it would be a few moments before it took effect.
Working with the rope had taken up the last five minutes of his time. He had to make sure it was secure. The Dyneema rope was tied around her legs and feet in a series of cinched climbing knots—an alpine butterfly bend, a bowline, a double overhand and a double fisherman’s knot.
Once satisfied with the work he’d down on her lower body, he took the rope and looped it around her neck. Shcherbakov then planted one of his large feet at the base of her spine, and tugged hard at the rope around her ankles, managing enough slack to tie off a noose and loop it around her neck. Lying on her stomach, Rubashkin was now bent backward like a bow.
Shcherbakov stood there for a while, waiting for her to wake up. He held on to her ankles for a time, but occasionally slapped her face to speed her recovery along.
When she finally started to come through, Shcherbakov whispered in her ear, “It’s up to you not to kill yourself. The rope is around your ankles and neck. If you lower your neck or your ankles, the noose around your neck will tighten and you will strangle yourself. In fact, if you move at all the noose will only tighten. It’s best if you do not struggle or scream or move in any way.”
Rubashkin’s mind would still be addled for a moment, so while those words, and the reality, sunk in, Shcherbakov maintained his hold of her ankles. Slowly, her breathing sped up. The room was filled with the sounds of her panting heavily through her nose. Elements of the nightmare would slowly seep in—the powerlessness first, then the despair, and finally the sheer terror.
As she became more and more aware, Shcherbakov slowly relaxed his grip on her ankles, and now the lovely young model was in control of her own destiny. “That’s it,” he said, in the most comforting of tones. “That’s it, just relax and focus on staying bent. You’ll be all right as long as you remain just so.”
Shcherbakov backed away from her, and finally sat down on the handmade leather sofa her short but promising career had afforded her. The Grey Wolf crossed his legs, and reached into his coat pocket to fetch another Sobranie, which he lit with the same bear’s-head lighter and then sucked on it long and hard, looking up at the spackled ceiling and some of the artwork along the walls. Most were fakes, reprints of Rembrandt and Monet. There were one or two that were originals by some modern impressionists, one of which was her current boyfriend, if the Wolf’s information was correct. All of them looked quite lovely. On the table beside the couch was a collection of matryoshka dolls. He reached and opened one, found another finely-carved doll inside, and opened that one, of course finding another finely-carved doll inside, and another one inside that one, and another inside that one, on and on until he had reached the last doll. The artist of each doll had done their job admirably. “You have taste, at least,” he told her.
Whimpers. The eyes had gone wide, searching all around at the world for answers. Certainly some of her memory had gone blurry. With the concoction Shcherbakov had given her, Rubashkin would have only vague recollection of the last few moments before she went out. A tall, stout gentleman with a kindly face approaching her, an offer of some help, her bags of fruit, and then…
And then here she is, he thought, looking at her. The shape-shifting wolf had fooled her, too, just like he’d fooled all the others.
What a strange experience it must be, to wake up like this. Shcherbakov had often wondered what it must feel like on the side of his targets. How innocent most of them were just moments before their time came. What must it feel like to be going about their daily lives like normal, only to go unconscious and wake up in the direst of predicaments, the cruelest of nightmares? What a rude awakening, especially for one so lovely and young as this one. Such wide-eyed innocence was so easily and irrevocably shattered, like a child nearing the end of Mother Goose’s fairy tales, only to turn to the next page and find a detailed picture of a human autopsy. There was no returning to purity.
Shcherbakov took another long drag, exhaled slowly. The woman’s
eyes searched the room incessantly, until finally they landed on him. The Grey Wolf nodded his greeting. The woman started to cry, struggled a bit, and then choked her own cries short. Even the slightest flailing from her legs or feet pulled the rope around her neck, tightening the noose.
The Grey Wolf nodded again. “Let’s talk about a few things. I only want yes or no answers, you understand.” It wasn’t a question.
Tears fell from the woman’s face; she started hyperventilating through her nose. Shcherbakov took in a great big breath, let it out slowly, and said, “Breeeeeeeathe, Ms. Rubashkin. Breathe now.” She tried, failed, choked herself, and tried again. After a minute, the young woman just went as still as she could, but there was only so much slack and she was exhausting herself trying to remain as bent as she was. As soon as she tried to relax, the noose tightened some more. There was no winning this.
Then came the inevitable screaming, which was muffled behind the tape and the underwear stuffed in her mouth.
“Settle down,” he encouraged, “and breeeeeeeeathe.” It took another full minute for her to stop screaming, and she only did so because her legs relaxed a little and the noose tightened, choking her voice off. “The more you exert yourself the harder you make it on yourself, Ms. Rubashkin. Now, are you ready to answer my questions?” A few more whimpers. “Are you?” More whimpering, and finally, a resigned nod. It was so slight. She dared not even nod normally lest she strangle herself.
At last.
The Grey Wolf took another toke, let it out slowly. “You saw some things while working at your last few photo shoots,” he accused directly. “You saw some of the models you used to work with, and you saw them hanging out with their drug dealers, and you thought some of the girls were being forcibly put on the streets by these dealers. These pimps. And so, instead of asking the girls or the pimps themselves, you decided to go directly to the police, yes?” Rubashkin did not move. “This is where you nod.” The girl trembled, then peed herself. The piss spread slowly across the carpet behind her, and she nodded. “Yes, we thought so. And didn’t you also talk to the chief attorney’s office in Moscow by phone?” Another whimper, and another nod. “Of course you did.”
Shcherbakov leaned back in his seat again, took another long toke, and watched the urine stain crawl. Rubashkin started to sob, her neck dropped a little and the rope pulled tighter. She choked, and forced herself back into the bent position, arching her head as far as she could back towards her feet.
“Do you know, I could have helped you if you had gone directly to the girls or the pimps themselves and asked what was going on—we could have made other arrangements for you, arrangements that you would’ve found more agreeable, I’m sure—but you opted to forego asking anyone anything. You disrespected them all by presuming you knew what was best, and so now here we are.”
For a few more minutes he watched her lie there, stricken to the bone by terror, until finally he sucked up the last of his cigarette and put the butt in his pocket. No use leaving any more evidence for the forensics teams soon to come. “All right,” he said. “What do you say we finish this?” He stood and walked over to the duffel bag Zverev had left for him under his bed at the hotel.
The bag was large and full, and ought to have been heavy, except that Shcherbakov had always been gifted with considerable strength. No gym membership necessary, no walks or jogs to keep the weight off. A metabolism most would have envied had been gifted to him by genetics, and it came with a package of hard thews and muscle.
He plopped the bag down behind Rubashkin where she couldn’t see, could only hear. He unzipped it, and removed the first clear plastic tube. Three large brown rats were inside. If Zverev had done his job, they had been left starving for days on end. Shcherbakov removed the plastic top at one end, but there was still a flimsy cardboard cap that the rats could chew through in no time. In fact, they had already started.
Without ceremony, and without lubrication, Shcherbakov went about inserting the end of the tube into Ms. Rubashkin’s anus. There were screams, but he softly reminded her that should she struggle much more, she would only choke herself to death. Then, he used his father’s lighter to ignite a fuse at the back end of the tube. Ten seconds later, a small patch of kindling on the inside of the tube lit up, and the rats ran from the flames, digging and clawing at the cardboard cap buried deep inside Ms. Rubashkin.
She wouldn’t survive long. She might try to remain still, but with the rats clawing, biting, and tearing inside of her, she would soon choke herself. Her agony would not be prolonged, but that wasn’t important. What was important was sending a message.
In The Godfather, one of Shcherbakov’s favorite films, fish had been sent to the Corleone family to advise them that “Luca Brasi now sleeps with the fishes.” By this time tomorrow, any other models that had been inspired by Vasilisa Rubashkin’s courageous plea to the police to help her friends would hopefully understand what happened to rats who squealed.
5
Semyon’s people had fanned out. He’d watched Erik and Yulian hustle towards the two smaller sheds for cover, while Boris and Kirill darted around the shed with the Subaru still running inside. For the moment, Abram and Anton remained behind the SUVs with Semyon. But now, he gave them the thumbs up, and they both piled into Abram’s SUV and cranked it up, then drove off and tore around to the back side of the shed, and made a wide arc around the large cabin to the east, and finally circled around to the back of the lodge, where they would park and take up a guard at the rear, near the frozen lake.
This left Semyon alone behind his own SUV, occasionally peeking through the windows to see if he could spot any movement around the front of the lodge. Once, he thought he spied a head bob up behind one window, but the flapping curtains on the inside, the growing darkness, and the increasing snow obfuscated his line-of-sight.
Semyon checked his watch: 6:00 PM on the dot. No, not much daylight left at all, especially out in this.
The dead whiteness, the frozen lake, and the silent, mournful woods made this place seem like some cursed land out of a storybook. There were ample stories about the wildernesses surrounding Chelyabinsk, some involving spirits and hauntings. Many said the lands here were unfit for habitation, owing to harsh weather, desolation, and stories about roving packs of starving wolves. Semyon had heard such stories. His father had believed the wolves were the angry spirits of this land, come to devour the wickedness of the living.
The wind howled angrily. It drove the snowdrifts up against the SUV and the lodge. The sky was bleak and cloudy, not a ray of sun from any direction. Semyon took one more peek over the hood of the van, then ducked back down and dug in another pocket for his radio. Radios often worked better than phones way out here, and in such a storm. The others had come prepared, as well. As soon as he called out to Abram, the man responded. “Go ahead.”
“Everything still looks the same here,” said Semyon.
“Same here.”
Semyon sighed. “All right. Everybody state readiness. Over.”
“We’re ready in the rear, over.” said Abram.
“We’re all set over here,” came Boris, accounting for himself and Kirill. “No movement from the windows that I can see. Over.”
Yulian said, “Erik and I are all set. No movement from our windows, either. I still hear loud music coming from inside, though. Over.”
“All right. Abram, Anton, fire off five shots each. Yulian, Erik, when they finish, you fire off five shots each, as well. Do you copy?”
“We copy,” said Abram.
“Got it,” said Yulian.
“All right, everyone. This is it.” He clipped the radio to the lapel of his coat, counted to three, then said, “Execute, execute.”
A second later, Semyon heard the sharp pops on the wind, a few more than just five shots, but what did it matter? That would draw Pelletier’s attention to the back of the house. Then Erik and Yulian also fired on the west side of the house, perhaps catching Pelle
tier and his people as they darted across the house to address the threat at the rear. At the very least, it probably got their heads down, and gave Semyon time to dart out from behind the SUV and run across the frozen yard.
He leapt over Timofei’s body without giving it a glance, ran up the porch, his boots crunching on ice and glass. He ignored Zakhar’s corpse lying there facedown, and pressed his back to the wall just beside the front door.
After a moment of silence, Semyon slowly hunkered down, and held his breath—the fog of his breath might attract attention if Pelletier were to peek out of a window. He kept one hand on his Makarov, aimed it at the nearest shattered window in case someone peeked their weapon out, and used his free hand to tap the alert button on the side of his radio just once. Everyone else’s radio ought to be tweeting at that exact moment, sending them the message that he’d made it to the front door.
Inside, music was still blaring. Some English rock band he didn’t know. Combined with the wind and the curtains flapping in it, Semyon could not distinguish any single movement or noise coming from the inside. He reached out with his gun hand and banged hard on the door four times, then backed away, before firing two rounds into the door. One of the rounds blasted the deadbolt, sending out splinters. He tapped the alert button on his radio twice, signaling that he’d done his part.
There were a few pops from the back of the house: Abram and Anton leading the charge. Then, a few more pops from the west: Erik and Yulian drawing more attention. Semyon turned and waved at the shed, and Boris and Kirill darted out in low crouches, Uzis aimed at the windows, as they moved up onto the porch and disappeared around the corner to the east side.
Semyon tapped the alert button twice, which signaled the others to stop their shooting. He waited patiently one minute, just listening to the wind howl. Then, he tapped the alert button twice again, and the others opened fire. When they did, both Boris and Kirill came around the corner of the lodge, ducking beneath the windows, and joined him. Once they were alongside him, Semyon once more called off the salvo with two more beeps on his radio.