Chapter Thirty-Five - Dead as Doornails

"Did... did you kill them?" the girl asked.

Alice paused by the door to glance back at the girl. "Kuzma and his friends?" Alice asked. She turned her attention to the corpse by the front of the room. "Yes."

"Why?" the girl asked.

"He pulled the trigger," Alice replied simply.

The girl swallowed. She was still in the chair she'd been tied to this entire time. "I... I don't know if I can think of murder as good."

"I never said it was the good thing to do. And it probably wasn't the right thing either," Alice said. "I've been to hell, you know, where bad people go. I think I can speak for all of them when I say that the bad things are sometimes the easiest. But sometimes the easiest is the right as well."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"It means that we've spared more people than you could imagine," Crystal said, and she sounded a little sad about having to say it. "But they often come back, and it's often a mistake to spare them to begin with. People who shoot innocent girls in the face and say that it's for the greater good are also the kinds of people that shouldn't be cried over when a girl shoots back. Or, uh, I guess rips his soul away with darkness magic, as the case may be."

"I feel like you diluted the point you were trying to make in the end there," Alice said.

"Eh, maybe a little?" Crystal said with a shrug. She turned back towards the girl. "So! I'm Crystal, this is my best friend and more, Alice."

"And more?" the girl asked.

"A-ah, as in, mentor, and stuff," Crystal replied. Then more quickly, "So what's your name?"

The girl swallowed. "Vasilisa," she replied. "Just Vasilisa. And I don't know if I'm real anymore."

Alice chuckled. "He had you convinced? If you're some sort of magical construct, then so what?"

"So what?" she repeated.

"Yeah. Can you still think for yourself?" Alice asked.

"I think so," she said, unaware of the irony there.

"Then as long as you're not making a conscious effort to end the world or anything, then I think it doesn't matter. Come on, Vasilisa, time to be brave and get out of here."

Vasilisa only paused for a moment more before jumping to her feet. She slipped forwards, and Alice wondered what she was up to before Vasilisa knelt next to Kuzma and then undid the straps on his under-the-shoulder holster. She was quick, deft hands pulling it loose and then she draped it over her neck and pried the gun from his hands before tucking it into its holster.

"You know, that revolver's a bullet shy of full," Crystal said.

"It's enough," Vasilisa said. She stood up, then rubbed her wrists some more. "If I follow you, where will we be going?"

The girl was brave, Alice would give her that. "Out of the Camp, for one. As much as we don't fear the locals, not being there when they find their boss dead is probably still a good idea."

"It'll avoid unnecessary bloodshed," Crystal pointed out.

"That's right. Otherwise, we're heading into the Zone. I think it's nearing the point where I want to see what's in its middle."

"Why?" Vasilisa asked. She straightened herself, locking eyes with Alice. "Why do you, and I, want to go into the Zone so much? I... I don't get it."

"We misplaced a friend," Crystal said. "And we wanna go find her. What about you?"

"I... feel like I've misplaced someone too," she said. Vasilisa glanced between the two of them, then nodded solemnly. "I'm coming as well."

Alice didn't mind that. She wanted an hour or two with the girl, preferably far from any distractions, and maybe with Crystal's help. They'd see what was weird about her, given time, because as much as she looked like just a normal... well, perhaps not normal, not dressed as a discount Stalker trying hard not to look like a girl. For as much as she looked somewhat normal, she was definitely not.

It was subtle enough that if Alice wasn't looking for it, she might have missed it, but there was a sense of... newness to Vasilisa.

A newborn babe had more age to its soul than this girl, and that very much didn't make sense.

She wasn't just an old soul, there was some magic at play that Alice wanted to dig into, but not here. "Let's get going," she said with finality before slipping out of the room.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Three men were jogging their way from one end of the corridor. Alice swept a hand, and darkness swallowed the space between them. It was no more than a paper-thin curtain where light wasn't allowed, but it blocked the corridor as well as a cement wall might have.

Humanity had a natural aversion to the dark.

Humanity had a much bigger, far more logical aversion to giant black walls of shadow that appeared out of nowhere.

"I guess... that way?" Crystal said with a gesture to their left.

"That way," Alice confirmed. Vasilisa paused to stare at the darkness, but scampered after them soon enough. She didn't want to be left behind.

"So, I think the Zone should be... west-ish from here?" Crystal asked. "I mean, we went around south, then east of it, and then around a little, yeah? So are we to the east of the Zone, or the north-east?"

"Your sense of direction could use some work," Alice said.

"Hey! I'm very good at navigating when there's a city around, or roads. This is all forest. Trees look like trees!"

"That's a statement."

Crystal pouted. "You know what I meant. They all look the same. And they look the same all the way around too. There's no using them to keep track of which way is which."

Alice led them out of the first exit she found. It happened to cut through the kitchen where a smoking cook gave them a rather telling look that let them know what he thought about having them cut through his workspace.

Once outside, Alice glanced up and discovered that it was well into the afternoon. The sun was past its zenith and was gently dropping down. The rise the Camp was on would make nightfall come a little later, but they only had an hour or two of light to work with.

"Oh, transportation," Crystal said. "Dibs on driving!"

She jogged ahead and over to the little golf cart-like vehicle with the pickup bed that the grunts had carried Vasilisa in earlier. The key fob was still in the ignition. Alice decided that it wouldn't hurt to let Crystal have a bit of fun, so she walked up to the cart and hopped into the bed. "Take the passenger seat," she told Vasilisa. They didn't need her falling off the back mid-way through their great escape.

There were two problems with their little cart. The first was that it was loud. A gasolene engine in poor repair and with no muffler than Alice could see was surprisingly noisy. Still, it wasn't the only one around and she figured the locals were probably used to the sound of it.

The other problem was that it was Crystal who was driving. She took turns gently, and stopped at every stop sign that they passed. She also had a tendency to look both ways at intersections even when the way was clear, and if someone was walking by, she slowed down.

That made their drive something of a slow crawl.

Which meant that when the Camp behind them came alive, and lights flashed, and the whine of a siren rose above the noise of the engines, they were still close enough that they could hear the ruckus.

A pair of men in army-issue gear raced down the road towards the front gate. Alice lifted a hand, and the men froze as if struck by an invisible wall. "We need to leave, Crystal," she said.

"Y-yeah. Sorry," her friend said. She put the pedal down and the cart sped up.

Behind them, Alice watched a pair of vehicles start up. They were more military, with their boxy shapes and dark paint, and they started towards them with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

"Crystal?"

"Sorry! Sorry!" Crystal replied. "My mom always told me to drive respectfully."

"Respectfully, Miss Crystal, they're going to catch up," Vasilisa said. She was hanging on by one of the bars of the cart's rollcage and was staring at the trucks starting up behind them.

"Do you want to drive this?" Crystal asked.

"Yes!" Vasilisa replied.

"... Well, you can't, I called dibs," Crystal said. She gestured, and the road filled with a row of thin crystal caltrops, the tips catching the light but their surface mostly transparent. That might work to slow their pursuit down.

And if they did catch up, there would just be more dead.

***