The horse paws at the snow. Dima clicks his tongue and mutters something to soothe the animal. ‘Nice dogs you have there,’ he says.
Katvar signs, ‘Thank you,’ and I translate it for him, as well as his next words: ‘We are looking for a friend. Sari is her name. She and her dogs came through about a week ago.’
Oleg looks at Dima as if we have announced Christmas.
‘Might have. Or might not have. Take off your hood, so we can see you better. Want to know if you are honest folk,’ says Oleg.
Katvar scrapes off his hood and so do I.
Oleg grins and gets his knee slapped by the younger man. ‘We knew it!’ they say in unison and scramble off the cart. ‘Come. You need food and a warm bed. You’re tired. We can see that.’
Too much enthusiasm for me and too quick a change of mind. This reeks of lies. I plant my feet firmly in the snow and lift the muzzle of my rifle to point at the chest closest to us. ‘We have our own food and our own beds, thank you. Now move back, preferably all the way to where that horse is.’
Four mittens are raised up. The men retreat two steps and stop. Not far enough for me. ‘We've been waiting for you. Waiting and freezing. I, for my part, am thirsty and cold. What about you, Dima?’
Dima nods until his wool hat skids sideways.
‘Go home then,’ I say.
‘Your train is waiting. It needs to be fired up before you can leave, takes at least twelve hours. Be our guests. We need to talk. Can do that while we eat.’
I look at Katvar. ‘They know about the train,’ I sign. He nods at me and then at the men.
‘Okay,’ I say loud enough for them to hear. Behind my back, I sign a single word to Katvar: ‘Knife.’
‘Excellent.’ Oleg swings his behind back on the cart. ‘Are you coming, Dima, or are you staring at her?’
Dima blushes, if that's even possible with cheeks as burgundy as his, and clambers up onto the driver's seat. Oleg flicks the whip. The horse huffs and puffs and slowly, but steadily, pulls the cart northwards.
Before we jump back onto our sleds, Katvar signals to me that he’s keeping his knife ready. He makes it look as if he wants to protect me. Cute.
It’s a short ride. The two men stop in the middle of nowhere, although it’s probably still Minsk, or the nothing that's left of it.
Footprints lead to a hatch in the ground, just next to where the cart parks. Oleg opens the heavy metal lid, and waves us in. ‘You can leave the sleds here. No one will touch them.’
I grab my rifle and ammunition while Katvar pushes the snow anchors in and signals the dogs to be quiet. Dima leads the horse away.
Surprising warmth greets us as we climb down the metal ladder. The clonking of Oleg's boots reverberates in the circular ducts. I open my coat and see Katvar do the same. Our host pulls a squeeze light from one of his pockets and stomps ahead. I wonder where he got this thing and how he recharges it. I have yet to find a surface covered with solar paint. ‘Where does the heat come from?’ I ask.
‘Coal. Belarus has coal. Never mined it, though, until after the wars. During the wars, people hid in the sewers and cleaned them all out. Minsk is now an underground city.’ He turns around and points the light at my face. ‘We are two thousand people here. The BSA doesn't know. Our daughters are safe.’
I doubt that, but I nod anyway. ‘Good.’
He directs the beam of light to the ground at his feet. ‘You stop the BSA. Our train brings you there.’
‘Hm,’ I reply. Damn this stupid redhead propaganda! I'm like a parrot in the arctic. Katvar makes all of this even worse. Women with orange hair are rare, but not singular. A woman with orange hair in the company of a mute man, however, is. Another reason to send him away as soon as possible. Perhaps there’ll be an opportunity before I board the train.
We keep walking. Oleg chatters about the weather and the advantages of living underground. Ahead of us, the duct splits in three and he takes the left bend. After a few more metres, a small room opens up to us. It's even warmer than the duct. Threadbare rugs, straw, and brush are spread on the floor. A collection of tattered plastic bags and boxes pile up in a corner. Scrap wood has been banged and tied together to form a shelf for small treasures — books and broken, tiny statues of fat children with wings and pouting red lips, plates and mugs as fragile as ice and almost as transparent, cutlery with entwined roses on the handles.
‘My wife is a collector,' Oleg says. He’s beaming with pride as he wipes his moustache with the back of his hand. He shrugs off his coat and invites us to sit. ‘Tea?’
We nod.
Soon, the three of us are sitting on soft pillows, gingerly holding the fragile cups filled with a golden liquid that’s sticky with honey.
‘Where are the others?’
‘Working in the mines, hunting, at school,’ Oleg says and sips noisily at his tea.
I clear my throat. ‘I need to get my hands on ammo.’
His gaze flicks to the rifle on my lap. He bends forward. ‘Can I see it?'
I bristle. Seeing my forbidding expression, he leans back, raising his hands in surrender.
‘It's a suppressed .357 calibre highly accurized rifle with a range of one thousand five hundred metres,’ I tell him. ‘I need ammo for this one and my .40 calibre pistol.’ I tap at the weapon strapped to my thigh. ‘Katvar also needs ammo.’
Oleg pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Hm... Maybe in Moscow. I’ll find someone to take a message for you.’ He scratches his head and adds, ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘When can we leave?’
‘Dima is informing the driver and the crew. They’ll fire up the Matryoshka for you. You can leave at sunrise tomorrow morning. Do you need provisions?’
I look at Katvar. He shakes his head and signs, ‘Thank you for the tea.’ I translate for him. He rises to his feet, wary that he might hit his head on the low ceiling. ‘I’ll feed the dogs now.’
I nod. I hate being here, too. Oleg’s underground home reminds me too much of my first six months with the BSA.
Once Katvar is out of earshot, I say to Oleg, ‘I can’t wait until we reach Moscow. I can offer you our pots and longbows in return for the ammo. Plus, I need to get rid of my friend. He’ll get himself killed if he stays with me.’
Oleg frowns and shakes his head, playing the hard-to-get guy. By now, I’m boiling inside. He has been bullshitting us since the moment we met.
‘Okay, Oleg, name your price. You are obviously not interested in our cookware. What is it you want? Sex? You want me to suck you off?’
Maybe it’s my detached tone or my frigid expression. I really don’t care. My words knock him off his pillow, he stumbles backward, and cries, ‘Shame on you!’
‘Shame rolls right off me, man. I have no time for such crap. You want me to kill BSA men for you? I can only do it with sufficient ammo. Name your price and be quick about it. Katvar will return soon and my guess is that he’ll stick a knife into your back if he sees you touching me.’
‘Witch!’ he hisses and points his finger at me. ‘If it weren’t for the Good Tidings, I would kick you out of my home now.’
‘I’ll leave after I have my ammo. You and your friend Dima have rifles, so don’t tell me shit about not having ammo. We can barter with goods, services, or your life. Choose.’ My hands lie softly on my rifle. The bullet sits in the chamber. All I need to do is lift the muzzle a little higher and squeeze the trigger.
Oleg’s eyes are stuck to my weapon as he whispers, ‘I have two bullets. They are in my rifle. Take them.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘That’s all I have. Dima has another two.’
I shift my weight. ‘You are guarding this city with two rifles and four bullets?’
He nods once.
Stunned, I scan his face. The once-proud Oleg has surrender carved into the lines around his mouth. Disappointment and anger shine in his eyes. The woman with hair the colour of flame sucks. Big time.
‘You
imagined a noble heroine. Truth is, you need a witch to trap the devil. I will leave your home now. Tell me where I can find the train.’
Oleg insists on showing me to the train tracks. He doesn’t say farewell or good luck, simply leaves without a word. I hope he is pissed until tomorrow morning and refrains from joining us on our ride to Moscow.
When Katvar and I are settling down in our snow cave for the night, I heave a sigh of relief. He looks at me and asks what happened in Oleg’s tunnel while he was gone.
‘Nothing happened,’ I say, wishing a brilliant idea on how to leave Katvar behind would present itself.
The dogs hate it. They’ve never been holed up in a rattling, swaying, windowless wagon. We were barely able to load the animals into the train and I had to postpone my abandon-Katvar plan. While the hunter boy stays with the dogs to keep them from panicking, I walk toward the front of the train, climb out of the first wagon and along the narrow gangway. Steam and smoke block my view as I make my way alongside the tender. I knock at the door of the cab; it’s jerked open a short moment later.
‘Oy! There you are.’
‘Yep,’ I answer and squeeze past the black overalls.
The man who introduced himself as Garth sports two missing teeth and an eyepatch. If I’ve ever pictured a pirate, he would look like Garth the conductor.
In the back, Mischa is whistling and shovelling coal. He’s patiently taught me how to pronounce his name. It’s taken me a while to get the sibilant right — short and soft, the vowels long and soft, a bit like Mee-sha-h. A name that rolls pleasantly off my tongue and doesn’t fit the scrawny crow-like figure with blackened face, hands, and clothes.
‘You wanted to talk to me?’ I ask Garth.
‘Aye! Good and bad news. Good news is, the tracks are free of snow. Bad news is, tracks aren’t free of dumbasses.’
Shit, I still don’t have enough ammo. Cold runs down my spine. ‘Where?’
‘Worst place possible: Moscow. Don’t know how you guys can switch trains under these circumstances, but we are working on it.’
‘Details, please,’ I say.
He shrugs. ‘We kinda saw it coming. The weapons factory in Moscow was bound to be attacked one day or another. I radioed my buddy…’ he taps on a small black box, ‘…and told him what kind of ammo you need. He is trying to…um…organise it for you. Oleg’s buddy is, well, as useless as Oleg right now.’
The little scene yesterday has robbed old Oleg of his illusions. He hates the woman with hair the colour of fire; she’s a nasty bitch is what she is. That’s what he hollered from midnight through sunrise. But he’d promised to come with us and get me my ammo, so he boarded the train this morning. Conspicuous clinking has been coming from his ruck and ever since he drained the first of his bottles, he’s been singing and dozing back in the coal box.
‘Your buddy will try to steal ammo from underneath the BSA’s asses?’ I ask.
‘Aye. Didn’t go into detail, but he has a few friends who are happy to help.’ Garth picks at his teeth and I don’t look too closely at what he’s extracting from between the gaps.
‘Any intel on the BSA forces? Number of men, weapons, locations? Anything?’
He frowns and wags his head. ‘The people there are not…you know, soldiers, warriors. They produce stuff, trade stuff.’
‘Steal stuff.’
He chuckles. ‘Aye.’
‘Can you ask your friend?’
He nods and wipes his fingers on his greasy pants.
‘I’ll go talk to Katvar for a moment. Say, is that exhaust thing very hot?’ I point to where the steam is rising.
‘The steam engine? You can fry food on it. We sometimes do.’ He smacks his lips and grins.
‘Shit.’
‘The problem being?’
‘I need an elevated point with a clear view to fire my rifle from.’
‘Oh, aye! Why don’t you use my dome?’ He points straight up at a dirty, knitted blanket taped to the ceiling. I lift my eyebrows. ‘It’s a curtain,’ he explains and pushes it aside. There’s a small glass dome, and above it, the pink evening sky.
‘That’ll work.’ I tap my knuckles on his shoulder.
Katvar is dozing in a heap of dogs when I enter our wagon. ‘Hey,’ I say softly. Images of his half-frozen body, curled up in furs, face pale like death push into my mind. His eyes crack open when the dogs begin to stir. He smiles at me and my mouth does a funny contraction thing. He is shocked. It’s the first time he’s seen me smile without sarcasm.
I wipe the stupid grin off my face. ‘How much ammo do you have for your rifle?’
He holds up nine fingers.
‘That’s…very little.’
‘We plan to stay hidden, to avoid BSA territory until we reach Svalbard,’ he reminds me.
‘Well…’ I sit down on my ass. ‘We’ll run into them approximately two hours after nightfall, just before we are due to switch trains. I only have eighteen bullets for my rifle and twenty-two for my pistol.’
‘I have fifteen arrows. Plus the dozen Birket gave you.’
I bury my head in my hands and try not to laugh. His rifle is a shitty old thing. I doubt he can hit a man from a distance of fifty metres. And his bow? He might as well use that for firewood.
I groan and pull myself together. I’ve functioned well enough under worse circumstances.
‘I’ll talk to Garth. Don’t worry, I’ve got this. Keep your head down and the door locked when night falls. If the train slows down or even stops, keep your weapons ready.’
He gifts me his darkest expression as I leave for the cab.
Garth is still on the radio when I walk in. He speaks a mix of English and what I think must be Russian. I wait until he switches off the radio.
He inhales and grunts. ‘The BSA is about a hundred to a hundred fifty men strong. They’ve rolled in several heavy machine guns and three rocket launchers. They’ve used explosives to get over the walls of the factory. They now control the supply of energy and drinking water to break the people. They’ll need them to work the factory and to keep up the deliveries of steel, food, and whatnot. In less than two days, the BSA have taken control and established a base camp.’
‘They are getting better at it,’ I mutter. ‘How many can we expect to show up when our train rolls in?’
‘They don’t know we’re coming, so maybe a handful? I don’t know. My buddy said most of them are inside the factory now with about twenty men patrolling the perimeter.’
‘Where do they keep the heavy weapons?’ I ask.
‘At the factory. All the men are armed. Semiautomatics, pistols, knives, hand grenades.’
I look up at the dome, pull down the short ladder and climb in. The view is perfectly clear. Steam flows along the side of the train and only an occasional wisp trails over the glass window of the dome. The dome’s size is on the tiny side — only my upper body fits in, my legs have to rest on the ladder and the muzzle of my rifle has to stick out of the front window. ‘I’ll have to smash the glass,’ I tell Garth.
‘Hold on,’ he says and throws a few tools around, then hands me a glass cutter. ‘Use this one.’
The tool has a black suction cup and a tiny white crystal fastened to an adjustable metal arm. I measure the diameter of my suppressor and cut a hole into the window that fits my weapon, but only just. Then I slap my forehead. With the window blocking my scope, my night-eye is worth shit. So I cut a much larger hole. The wind blasts in my face, but I can now see the glaringly white heat signature of the steam dome ahead, the piping and engine.
The disappearing sun paints the clouds violet. ‘Garth?’
‘Aye?’
‘Can we switch trains somewhere else?’
‘Oh, sure. Buddy and me already talked about it. As soon as it’s dark, he’ll move his train some fifty kilometres northeast of the city.’
‘Why can’t this one go to Syktyvkar?’ I ask.
‘Not enough coal and water.’
‘Do you know the precise location of the BSA and factory?’
‘’Course I do.’ He pulls at a drawer and rifles through papers, then peeks behind all kinds of measuring devices fastened to the walls, and finally finds a stack of maps in a tattered bag underneath an even more tattered coat that hangs off a broken pipe.
‘There.’ He slams his finger on the map.
I have to squint to find what’s what on the faded paper. ‘The train tracks split up here, here, and here.’ My index finger trails over black lines. ‘Which way is our train going?’
Garth answers by poking his pinky at a line that’s half a kilometre from the factory.
‘Okay, this can work. I was worried we would take that route.’ I indicate the tracks that pass right by the factory.
‘No, that’s the supply route and a dead end.’ He looks up through the windows. ‘Moscow should be visible soon,’ he says quietly, as if the enemy were in earshot.
‘Tell Mischa to fire up the engine; I need us to blast through this shit as quickly as possible.’
Garth nods and hollers a command at his colleague. I take my position in the dome. My scope shows me the city at the far horizon.
‘Lights off,’ I tell Garth.
The metal tracks disappear in the blackness. Far ahead, one small light gleams in my scope’s night-eye — it must be the factory. My breathing is calm. The landscape before me is painted in shades of grey and green. The automatic image amplification compensates for the white hot engine just in front of me. Within seconds, it’s muffled to a dull, flat grey.
‘Tracks are free,’ I say softly. ‘When I tell you to get down, you don’t ask questions. How bulletproof is the engine?’
Ice: The Climate Fiction Saga Page 10