Blood Red Army

by David Bishop

  Antonov grinned. "Grigori was just the same. He claimed he had been reborn."

  "Yes, that's it. Suddenly the world looks new and more terrifying than you'd ever realised, and nothing will ever be the same again." I took a sip before passing the flask back to Antonov. "You call Eisenstein by his first name. Nobody else ever does, not even Brodsky."

  "I knew Grigori before he was condemned to the shtrafroty," Antonov replied, choosing his words slowly and deliberately. "He was not always as you have known him, so bitter and so angry. Once he was a fine officer, making a name for himself within the Red Army, despite his religious beliefs not matching the atheism required by certain sections of the Party."

  I admitted having seen the Star of David round Eisenstein's neck. "Is that why all of you have shut me out since then, because I discovered he's Jewish?"

  Antonov laughed. "Is that what you think?"

  I shrugged.

  "That night, while we dealt with the bodies of all those from the convoy who got killed on the ice, Grigori went ahead to report what had happened. When he mentioned your name, the officer at Osinovets told him what you did to be sentenced to the penal company. You're quite the legend in certain circles."

  I grimaced. "Punching a ballet teacher in the face - ridiculous, isn't it? How was I to know she was married to the head of provisions for the Leningrad front?"

  "Is that what happened?" Antonov laughed when I nodded. "We heard you slapped a ballet dancer as a pretext to get yourself posted to the penal company."

  "Lenin's beard, why would anyone do such a thing?"

  "Grigori was convinced you must be a plant, sent by the NKVD to find out what we know about Constanta and his kind. You used to be a kommisar, so it made a kind of sense; certainly more sense than being sent to a shtrafroty for slapping a ballet dancer."

  "But why should Brodsky react so badly to having someone spy on his men? The captain has treated me worse than the rest of you in the past three weeks, but he's made it plain he couldn't care less if any of us live or die."

  "Brodsky has his own demons. He believes you're here spying on him. His father was a war hero, but the family also has ties to the nobility. Mistrust of the aristocracy still runs deep among those who fought in the Revolution of 1917. That's one of the reasons why the captain is stuck with us, commanding the worst scum in the Red Army. He and Grigori have quite a history." Antonov tipped his head back to empty the last drops of vodka from my hip flask. "Sorry, I seem to have finished this."

  "It doesn't matter, I'm not much of a drinker."

  "My grandfather was too fond of his vodka. He would sip it after dark from a porcelain flask he acquired on his travels, in a mountain region of Rumania sometimes called Transylvania. My grandfather said the only time he was ever truly afraid was the night he spent in a town called Sighisoara. He would look at his flask and tell me about monsters he saw there: creatures that could change their shape, and would become bloodthirsty, savage monsters. He said these djavoli feasted on the blood of living humans. They needed it to sustain their existence. The local people used an old German word to describe these creatures: vampyr."

  I could not stop myself from laughing. "When I was a student in Berlin, I saw a silent film about such creatures. It was called Nosferatu. But vampyr are a myth, a legend."

  Antonov looked at me with sad eyes. "I wish they were," he muttered. "You've already seen them at least twice. When you see them for a third time, then perhaps you will believe."

  "You're saying the hauptmann who tried to bite me, he was a vampyr?"

  "Not just any vampyr. We believe it was Lord Constanta, leader of the Transylvanian vampyr troops. He and his disciples have been seen at many major conflicts during the Great Patriotic War. For all we know, the vampyr may be fighting in other parts of the war. But our battle with these fiends is here and now. Constanta and his kind have been unleashed upon the blockade, a weapon of terror to complement the fascists' war of attrition." Antonov sighed. "I have said too much and now Grigori will be angry with me, but you deserve to know the truth. We must-"

  A woman's scream cut through the quiet of early morning, lingering long in the air, every second filled with pain and sorrow. We grabbed our weapons and ran round the church, searching our surroundings for the source of this anguished cry. The answer became obvious once we cleared the ruins of the church. A graveyard stretched away into the distance and a sobbing woman stood atop a mound of earth among the frosted headstones. Her hands were reaching towards the heavens in supplication, her grief audible even from several hundred metres away. We sprinted towards her, our pace slowing as we got close enough to see what had caused her distress.

  She was wailing beside an empty grave, the dirt beneath her feet having been freshly thrown from the rectangular hole in the ground. A simple memorial cross, constructed from two crudely hewn pieces of wood, had been kicked aside to allow better access to the grave. As we got closer, I noticed the discarded lid from a coffin thrown to one side. The woman saw us approaching and gestured beseechingly, no longer able to speak. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed on to the freshly dug mound at her feet, a small metal pendant falling from one hand. Antonov went to help the woman while I got a closer look at the grave.

  Most of the coffin was still inside the ground, but it was smaller than I had expected. Like the cross, the coffin had a makeshift appearance. It had been crudely built from a wooden cabinet, cut down to less than a metre in length. A simple cushion was all that remained inside the coffin, and that had been ripped and torn by knives. Satisfied that there was little more this pathetic empty box could tell me, I studied the ground around the grave. There were at least two sets of boot prints on the frosty soil, crossing and criss-crossing each other. They led away into the distance, towards the ruins of Kolpino. Curiously, there was a pile of embers from burnt wood lying nearby. I touched them but they were quite cold and lifeless, like almost everything else in the graveyard. Amid a war of such carnage and ferocity, hope came here to die, I thought.

  By now the grieving woman had recovered enough to whisper a few words, her voice weak and frail. Like so many citizens still trapped within the blockade, her face was drawn and hollow-cheeked, her eyes sunken back into her skull. A black woollen scarf swathed her head, a few wisps of greying hair sticking out from underneath it. Black rings encircled her eyes and her lips were cracked. She could have been any age between twenty and forty, but looked more like somebody's grandmother than their mother. The siege had stolen away her youth and whatever beauty she'd once had. I moved closer to hear what she was saying, while Antonov nursed her in his powerful arms.

  "My baby, they take my baby girl. Sasha, why have they done this to you? Why?" She sobbed fitfully, a few tears escaping her staring eyes.

  "How old was your daughter?" Antonov whispered.

  "Six, she was six..."

  "How long had she been in the ground?"

  "Two days and two nights," the woman replied hoarsely. "She died weeks ago, but the frozen ground was too hard to bury her. We kept her body outside in the snow, waiting for the thaw. Then, a week ago, the authorities decreed everything must be cleaned up: all the refuse, all the unburied corpses. I paid my cousins to dig a grave, so my little Sasha could rest in peace."

  The woman's grief became too much to bear, and her words died away. I retrieved the fallen pendant and carefully unlocked it to look at the tiny picture inside. A small girl smiled back at me cheerfully, dimples in both her cheeks. The photograph must have been taken long before the siege started, as few people in Leningrad had dimples any more. I handed the open pendant to the woman, who stroked the picture lovingly with cold, shivering fingers.

  "My cousins, they had to burn a fire for two days on the ground to thaw the soil enough so they could dig. I paid them with the last of my jewellery to give Sasha a decent burial. I came back today to say goodbye to her, before leaving for Leningrad. But when I got here, I saw she had been taken. Who would
do such a thing? Who would steal the body of a little girl? What kind of monster?"

  The questions and the dark imaginings became too much for the woman. She fled the graveyard, stumbling away, not daring to look back at where her daughter had been laid to rest. Once she was out of hearing, I asked Antonov the same questions the woman had spoken.

  "I thought you said these vampyr only drunk the blood of living humans. Why would they steal the body of a child long dead?"

  "This wasn't the work of Constanta or his disciples," he replied. "I have seen more than enough to recognise their presence. But the vampyr are not the only monsters you will see in this war, comrade, you may be certain of that." Antonov took one last, long look at the pillaged grave. "I've heard tales of other creatures within the blockade who feast upon the dead instead of the living. We must return to camp and tell Brodsky about this, see what he wants to do." He shook his head. "I would not have believed such horrors possible, had I not seen it myself. Now I wonder what else we must face before all this is over."

  "This unfortunate incident is nothing to do with us," Brodsky decreed when Antonov and I told him about the theft of the child's body. The captain was sifting through a sheaf of papers, paying little attention to our joint report.

  "Captain, with all due respect-" I began, but Brodsky cut me short, slamming his left fist down on an ammunition box he was using as a desk.

  "Don't talk to me about respect!" he snapped. "If I had anyone's respect, I would not be in charge of the most disreputable gang of cutthroats, murderers and rapists in the Red Army. All of you should have been shot, not left alive to further disgrace good, hard-working, loyal officers like myself!" The captain arched an eyebrow at me. "Besides, I find that whenever somebody says the phrase 'with all due respect', the last thing they are about to show me is any respect whatsoever. Normally they are about to challenge my judgment and call me a fool!"

  "I would never call you a fool," I snapped back, unable to hold my temper at Brodsky's petulant outburst. "But the fact remains that somebody has stolen the body of a child from its grave. If we do not investigate this matter, who will?"

  "Who indeed? Thousands of people are dying every day within the blockade, Zunetov. Don't you think we should be concentrating on trying to keep the rest of them alive, rather than fretting about those already dead?"

  "What do you suggest we tell the mother of that child?" Antonov asked.

  "Why tell her anything?" Brodsky retorted. "We do not answer to grieving mothers; we answer to our superiors."

  "If we let this sort of activity continue unchecked, that makes us little better than the monsters we are fighting in this war," I protested. "What about the vospitanie of our people? Is that to be sacrificed for the sake of this war too?"

  "Do not lecture me about moral upbringing," the captain sneered, jabbing a finger at the papers he had been reading. "Our 'staff' at headquarters has already formulated an appropriate response to such activities. From this day forth any such offences shall be known as 'banditry' in our criminal code. Anyone caught transgressing in such a manner within the blockade will be arrested and shot. Does that satisfy your previous vospitanie, Zunetov?"

  I stormed from Brodsky's quarters, unable to stomach any more of his snide self-justifications. Antonov followed me out and went straight to Eisenstein. I watched the two of them talking, Antonov pointing at me several times during the conversation. Eventually Eisenstein gathered all the other members of the shtrafroty together. Once they were settled, he called for me to join them. I wasn't sure what to expect but the company's unofficial leader put an arm round my shoulders while pointing at me with his other hand.

  "From now on, we include Zunetov in everything we do. If what I hear is true, it seems we may owe him an apology. In the meantime, we have another situation to resolve: body snatching. Someone, or something, is stealing the corpses of freshly buried children from the ground. Yuri and Zunetov both witnessed this by the abandoned church, and Borodin and Yatsko saw something similar two nights ago in another location. Brodsky is refusing to do anything about it, so we shall have to stop this inhuman practice ourselves. Agreed?"

  The others nodded: Borodin and Antonov readily, Strelnikov and Yatsko more reluctantly. Uralsky said nothing, the slightest shift of his head indicating he was also willing to help. Satisfied, Eisenstein split the six of us into pairs, putting me with Borodin.

  "When you're not on patrol for the captain, you will maintain observation over one of the nearby graveyards," Eisenstein added. "Take it in turns to sleep, while the other keeps watch. I'll be moving between the graveyards, offering my support and adding another pair of eyes to the watch. Any questions?"

  Borodin nervously raised a hand. "How do we know this isn't the work of Constanta and his kind? We still don't know everything these creatures can do."

  "I've heard nothing about the vampyr raising the dead, except in cases where those corpses were their victims. If this is the work of Constanta, we need to know. That would signal a shift in tactics and we must be ready for any such change. If this is the work of some other supernatural enemy, we need to know that too. This is part of our crusade, to find the truth about these fiends, and hopefully discover a weakness. Once we find that, we can turn such knowledge against them."

  Chapter Five

  It was another nine days before I learned who was behind the incidents of grave robbing that plagued settlements along the front line. By then our shtrafroty had been bolstered by another new recruit, surprising all of us in the penal company. The increasingly distracted and surly Brodsky emerged from his quarters one afternoon clutching a new set of orders from headquarters.

  "We will be moving to a new posting within the next thirty-six hours," he announced. "Now that the Neva is flowing free of ice once more, we are required near Shlissel'burg."

  "Why the delay in leaving, captain?" Eisenstein asked, echoing a question already forming in my mind.

  "A fresh convict is joining us from headquarters: a communications specialist called Gomorov, sent to replace Kamarov, who should be here any day. Once Gomorov arrives, we depart for Shlissel'burg." Brodsky retreated to his quarters, swaying slightly on his feet.

  The captain's intake of vodka had increased noticeably in recent weeks, though he tried to conceal it from us. We exchanged looks at his unsteadiness, then set about packing for our new posting. As a penal company we were given the oldest and the worst of everything, since those in charge of allocating equipment refused to give us the luxuries other units enjoyed. As a result I had become an inveterate scavenger like my comrades, supplementing the few items of equipment I was officially allocated with whatever I could beg, steal or borrow.

  I only stole from the dead, taking superior equipment clothing and boots from those who had fallen on the front line. Even this troubled me, after seeing the distress grave robbing had upon those still alive, but I decided stealing clothes from dead comrades was a lesser crime than taking their bodies. I had finally found a pair of spectacles with a prescription similar to my own. To supplement my PPSh submachine gun, I had also acquired an officer's Nagant pistol, two knives and an entrenching tool whose edge I kept razor sharp. Like many Red Army soldiers, I envied much of the equipment used by our enemies. One advantage of our occasional forays behind German lines was the chance to purloin such prized possessions. I had no qualms about disarming the enemy, even if I had to do it one stick grenade at a time.

  I was becoming quite adept with this distinctive and highly destructive device, using the extra daylight hours of spring and summer to practise my aim. I was testing my throwing arm when the new convict arrived. I lobbed a stick grenade over a high wall and heard a stream of obscenities from the other side. When I ran round the corner, I found a figure in an ill-fitting rifleman's uniform on the ground, the stick grenade lying nearby.

  "Dubiina! Are you the one who threw that?"

  I nodded, surprise robbing any words from my mouth.

  "Bojemo
i, don't tell me I've joined a pack of mutes," the newcomer spat.

  I shook my head, still unable to speak out loud. Antonov came round the corner to see who was shouting and burst out laughing. "You must be our new radio operator," he said between deep, throaty chuckles.

  "What's so damned funny about that?"

  "Nothing. But we were told your name was Gomorov, not Gomorova."

  The new recruit stood up, running a hand through her dark brown hair before putting her khaki beret back on. She was wearing a matching khaki gymnastiorka blouse and sharovari pants along with black leather boots. The newcomer picked up a small khaki knapsack with an olive green plashch-palatka rain cape half wrapped around it. She grimaced at me before offering to shake Antonov's hand.

  "Sophia Gomorova reporting for duty," she said sternly.

  He accepted the handshake warmly and told her his name before pointing out the lack of insignia on his uniform. "You should report to our captain for duty, not me. His name is-"

  "Alexandr Brodsky," Sophia replied. "Where do I find the captain?"

  Antonov gave her directions before standing aside to let her pass. Once she was gone, he gave me a nudge in the ribs, nearly winding me in the process.

  "You made quite an impression. Maybe you two will become sweethearts, da?"

  I retrieved my stick grenade and ignored his suggestion. "This is never going to work. Having a woman in the shtrafroty, it's madness."

  "Why? There are dozens of women already on the front line. One more or less shouldn't make any difference."

  "Brodsky said one of us was a rapist. Whatever Gomorova did to get sent here, she doesn't deserve that."

  "Grigori will never let her be raped," Antonov maintained, leading me back to our encampment. "He'd castrate the lot of us first."

  I thought about the others in the penal company. Late at night, when I was struggling to find sleep amidst the sound of German bombardments and our anti-aircraft guns hammering at the sky, I had often wondered what crimes my comrades had been guilty of committing.