Holding my rifle level with my eye and pulling back on the trigger, the flash of the muzzle lighting the world around me as the belt rattled as it spat out a chattel of locks, bullets rained, I felt the rough kickback of the recoil thumping my shoulder.
A voice ordered out commands, but we had no time for such things, war raged and bodies flew as earth lept and dust plumed; an explosion deafened our line.
White hot pain covered my right side as I pulled back and ducked behind cover, before my eyes found the wound they scanned the bloodied messes that wore young faces of spirits, fresh fodder for the meat grinder.
Searing white settled in my side as I slumped to the ground.
“Bashtard Kombat!” Spat a voice to my right, without looking I knew it was Ivanovich his slurred lisp outing him.
Breathing ragged cool air made my pain worse, my trembling hands narrowly unbuckled the top of my PKM, ripping free a new belt from my pack. I loaded it and lined the box magazine. Hands locking up in the cold of the morning as I pulled back on the bolt hearing another shout- this time of Mortar.
Fumbling into my breast pocket I pulled a cigarette free of the Prima packet drawing my lighter and wasting what felt like my last breath on savouring the taste. As an eternity passed to the whistling hail of the shell falling on our position my mind fell to thoughts of home, briefly wondering what my mother was cooking for dinner tonight, how my sister was going in college and whether my brother’s studies were keeping him out of trouble.
None such thoughts of my impending death or woes of choosing to stay in my unit arose, merely curious idle wondering.
Right as I exhaled a wave of smoke everything went black as the whistling of the shell stopped and a loud ‘Bang’ followed.
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When my eyes opened, I was laying against a tree, the world around me no longer blown out Chechen streets, melting armoured carriers, dead brothers and Commanders screeching for us to hurry up and charge down the barrels of our once brothers who spoke the same language as us.
But instead my vision was aglow with beautiful rolling plains, vibrant greens, luminous yellows and exceptional reds all coating the trees and bushes around. The fauna thriving on the land that wasn't overrun with muck and tank track marks, a landscape that seemed virgin in comparison to the the rape we witnessed on the battlefields.
My father and grandfather spoke of a place called ‘No Mans Land’.
‘A tall tale!’ I called in my youth, saying they were just trying to scare me.
I was wrong, they were trying to warn me.
Tell me of those battles, those horrid days when all you wished for was that the bigwigs in Moscow would simply take their pompous arses down to the border with Chechnya and fist fight with those leaders who want to secede from Russia.
I forget myself, this land-
Fertile and beautiful was a far sight from my homeland.
I wondered whether this was a dream, whether I had died and gone to heaven in some god be thanked miracle, but I could not prove such things. If this were real or heaven- hurting myself would feel real in either case. Breathing slowly and savouring the wonderfully refreshing feeling I noticed my wound was healed, my body was replenished, as though I’d never gone to war and become malnourished and thin as the dogs we often had to shoot for food when rations were destroyed enroute to us.
My lapping in the warm weather was cut short when a pile of smoke billowed over the far treeline across the rolling plains and beyond the a cool blue river that glistened the sunlight. The black plume was followed by many more and my mind turned to war again.
A soldier's duty is never fulfilled
The words of Maksym came to me as I stood, the clatter of my ammunition and tools following me as I righted myself.
Eyes scanning the horizon again a sigh escaped me, I wished for another Prima, but I didn’t want to check my pocket in case I found whoever put me here had taken such small victories from me. Checking that the PKM still hanging from its sling around my shoulders was loaded and ready to go- it was.
The crunch of the rubber of my boots on the dry grass pursued me as I set out for the smoke hoping that what I would come upon was simply a campsite. My kit weighed heavily on my shoulders as I pushed down the slope of the hill I was on, the hefty gun already beginning to wear on my arms before I’d reached the bottom and began the trek across the several kilometre stretch to where the dark towers reached for the clouds.
I had walked for barely a third of the way across the plain before my curiosity was far too much and I reached into my breast pocket-
“Aha! Yes!” I cheered like some go lucky fool as I pulled free the familiar red cardboard container.
Laughing a haggard sound for all but a moment my woes, worries and otherwise- I was free of them- placing the cigarette into my mouth and lighting up I felt the pressure of a thousand wounds being released.
Breathing out a blissful sigh of smoke, the nicotine coursed through me.
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Before long I’d crested the last part of the plains and crossed the knee deep river, holding the gun over my head as I trudged through to the mossy stones beneath its surface I huffed out an exerted grey plume. Stomping on the other side of the bank I marched through the short treeline and sneered at the sight before me.
The remains of a torched and tortured place stood in my way, battered, broken and coated in the gore and viscera of its inhabitants. Corpses strung up like beasts, carved open and ripped apart by bladed weapons while some covered the paths of the small village pooling them in red rivers.
Men beheaded, women bludgeoned and children obliterated in messes of incomprehensible damage.
And yet it all seemed so familiar despite where it took place appearing like the old homes of paintings or those of the countryside instead of the rubble of concrete towers, rebar and other soviet constructions rising into the sky painted with my comrades and our enemies.
There were many scuffed and mangled marks in the unbloodied parts of the paths around the village as I stalked it, hand at the ready on the pistol grip and front hand guard to fire at a moment's notice. Steering myself around the despondent mess of people who didn’t deserve such fates I parted my course for a large trail of crimson that seemed to be following a figure dragging themselves away from the massacre.
Taking almost ten minutes to find where the trail led I found it went into the dark space left under a collapsed farmhouse, its thatch roof all dented inward with the shattered remnants of a door frame giving very little support to create the hole as I stopped before it. Looking around at the burning buildings, all clearly alight from their own hearths I hoped whoever had dragged themselves under the collapsed house had foreseen as much and put out whatever might cause the home to explode.
Kneeling down to steal a glance I heard a small high pitched hitch in someone’s breathing, finding some more confidence there was at least one living being in the village I called out to them as I lowered my pack to my side so I could stumble backwards unimpeded by its weight if I needed to.
Knocking on the frame of the hole lightly I spoke in a soft tone. “Hello? I’m a friend, the attackers are gone.”
Turning my head slightly so my ear was to the hole I thought about how the town now seemed as though spirits or other angry abominations had taken the place apart and simply vanished with no clear sign of who or what had dealt the damage in sight. As well there was little in the way of defences put up by these people before they were butchered.
The voice hitched again and my brow arched as I lowered my head some more to see if I could chance a look at whoever was hiding.
In the dark space tucked away was the form of a young girl, she was pale as snow and had hair the same colour, her eyes were a plum red. She wore a ruined white dress coated in muck and blood, fearful eyes sparking with terror as she caught sight of my visage.
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“Zdravstvuyte Little one, we are alone, you are safe.” I tried in as gentle a voice I could make.
The great equaliser is food brother- if you are to win the hearts of the hurt, you must first fill their stomachs.
Words Artur had once spoken when we found children hiding in the wreckage of our destroyed armoured carrier came to mind, the situation reminiscent of that scene.
Following his advice I reached into my pack noticing the darting of terror filled eyes from my own to my hand as I pulled free some rations I’d stolen before we were sent out. They were actually Kuzma’s but he’d hid them in the barracks poorly so I took them for myself.
Revealing the food changed little in the frail looking girl's eyes as she watched me more intensely, though out of worry and not for understanding what I held.
If I was honest I wouldn’t have been appealed by someone revealing rations either- but these were from Aunty Katja, a woman in the town our base was next to who often stopped us when we loitered in the streets and invited us to dinner. She was a ripe well endowed woman with the best home cooking I’d ever tasted, but she was also a widower from the war and had lost her two boys as well so she always treated those of us she invited to dinner as her sons.
It was a nice piece of home away from the beatings our betters dished out when they were drunk at night.
In any case I showed that it was food by taking a blissful bite from the pirozhki almost not wanting to part with it, my reaction and subsequent offering to the girl changed her demeanour as she almost leapt from the shadows of the hole to rip the food from my hands with the ferocity of starved beast retreating back with the MRE packet I had put the buns into.
The loud sound of her viciously devouring the found filled the air as I turned my eyes to the village behind me again, the glimmer of something over the destroyed buildings and trees surrounding it. I didn’t get time to ponder it for long before the sounds of eating stopped.
Crumbs and flakes of pastry covered the ground around the girl, she seemed more passive than before so I tried asking for her name.
“I am Illya, what is your name?” Seating myself I felt my weight settle on the mushy ground as I spoke.
Silence permeated as she stared at me for some time before finally speaking, her words sounded crude and harsh as though her throat had been crushed-
“Sv- Sveta…” She answered before coughing harshly, spitting a ball of blood onto the ground and wiping her mouth with her arm causing a red smear across her forearm and cheek.
“Sveta?” I repeated and the girl nodded her head. “Are there any other villages or towns near this one I could take you to?”
She shook her head wordlessly.
“Do you know of any safe places nearby, maybe where your other family are?” My question received the same response.
An unconscious sigh of exacerbation left my lips as I stared at her, she tentatively drew from the dark only to cower and yelp in pain when the light of day touched her, retreating again. A frown set into my face the action seeming odd, not thinking much of it however as I reached into my pack and pulled free a worn camo jacket I’d brought off Maksym for a packet of Prima.
Holding the jacket out for her she approached slowly and ducked under the oversized garment made for a man five times her size, a moment later she took the full weight of it and wore it like a cloak as it completely enveloped her dragging along the ground some. As she moved out into the light a bubble of excitement leaping from her as all that proceeded faded and she danced around for a moment before turning herself to meet my eyes.
The blood that splattered before she stopped reminded me of where I was.
The torched ruined village that was slaughtered for reasons far beyond me.
I felt something pressing against me, pulled from my thoughts, I found Sveta pushing her ghostly form into my side arms spread wide in an attempt at a hug, it was cute and a welcome distraction. Putting an arm around the girl and pulling her in tightly as an affirmation of safety my eyes turned to her hole in the ruined building and I asked a question that was on my mind.
“How long were you hiding?” My words caused her head to tilt up, the shadow the jacket's hood cast covering most of her face as she did so.
“A long time…” She eked out in a hoarse voice “before the man came.” her sleeve right arm pointed into her hiding place and I couldn’t stop my curiosity from making me look.
…
Taking a long look, one with great interest and no longer blocked by the pale girl I saw a familiar face.
His body was destroyed, his entire left side was blown apart and a mess of red and open wounds that looked almost as though they were gnawed on by rats lay just behind where the girl had been huddled. Wanting to be sure of things I retrieved a flashlight from my pack, turning it on I put it in my mouth as I ducked under the gap and crawled inside enough to get ahold of my friend's leg and pulled his corpse back out into the light.
The red eyed, white haired girl had the wherewithal to stay back as I made sure everything was set out in the light, it wasn’t just his body, but his rifle and pack were with him as well.
All soaked red.
“Ivanovich.” His name left my mouth as I stared, expression grim and reserved as I instinctively lit up a cigarette at the sight.
Breathing thick grey smoke to my side opposite the girl, I patted my friend down, he needn’t have died, but what good were his things now?
Sveta watched with intrigue from beneath her camo cloak as I stripped my friend of his belongings. I took his rifle- an AKM with its under-barrel grenade launcher- magazines, Prima, knife, belt and what was left of his clothing and boots. Stuffing them into his pack which aside from the blood was otherwise fine I hefted it to the side and placed his PM in its holster on the ground.
Stripping my friend derived no pleasure from me, but it was necessary with the destruction of this village a clear sign of how worse things could get if unprepared.
But it also brought to mind a new issue, if I was here in this weird new land and he was too- that must have meant the rest of our men caught in the explosion must have been as well.
I can’t possibly take a child with me while I look for my friends
The thought twisted in my side like a serrated knife as my eyes landed on the purplish-red of the small girl.
She’s the only survivor… and has nowhere to go… unless- unless I search for a new home for her as I look for my comrades?
“Sveta. My friend here, did he speak before dying?” I hoped she would, that something he said might lead me to the others.
Her snow white blood smeared face contorted into a frown as her mind worked to remember eventually nodding her head.
“He kept saying ‘Bashtard! Bashtard Kombat! Bashtard Chechens!’ until he died ” I could almost roll my eyes as I heard his slurred voice speak into my mind.
The girl also added with her nose scrunched up "he smelled like alcohol."
Breathing another sigh of cigarette smoke plumed to my side as I asked her another question.
“Do you want to travel with me, Sveta? We can find you a new place to live?” Happily she nodded her head with a smile on her face in contrast to the village around us.
“Alright, I will prepare myself and we will leave Okay?” I quickly got to putting my pack on, slinging my PKM over my shoulder again and picked up the blood soaked pack and pistol of my friend with my left hand before motioning for the young girl of no more than eight years to follow along with me.