As I stepped towards the glowing pentagram of evil, I quickly tried to think up a strategy that might save my life. Stalin wasn't going to allow delays. His men were ready to shoot me down on his command. I could probably take out half of them before they hit me, and I could probably kill all of them before dying. But I didn't see a way to make getting filled full of lead into a good plan.

I stepped up to the pentagram. It was still glowing despite the damage that had been caused by the holy water. The light bulbs were still glowing and pretending to be candles. I stomped on the one closest to me. The bulb crunched, and the candle holder bent under my foot. I went to the next one to my left and stomped on that too. Hopefully, it would look like I was being prudent and not stalling. I smashed two more before Stalin grew impatient.

"Just get in there and take it," he growled.

"It would be easier to disable this circle if we still had some holy water," I commented blandly.

As I had hoped, one of the men spoke up. "I have some here," he said, pulling a jar out of an ammunition satchel. I had to resist the urge to grin. Bingo.

"No," Stalin snapped. "Keep that away."

The man, chagrined, tucked the jar back into his satchel, but now I knew it was there. I stomped another candle. Perhaps they were on the same circuit, because suddenly the others all went out. The glowing runes of the circle dimmed to a dull glow.

"Now get on with it," Stalin raised his revolver and pulled back the hammer with an ominous click.

I lifted my foot across the line and set it down inside the circle. Fingers of green energy crawled up my leg to the knee, but they barely tickled. I took another half step and eyed the center portion of the circle. The lines here were still bright. I wasn't sure what they would do to me, but a golem's body was resistant to magic.

However, it was not particularly resistant to bullets, so I didn’t waste any more time before leaning forward and reaching for the amulet. Even before my hand brushed it, I could feel the tendrils of evil magic reaching out for my arm. This was going to hurt. I had to make it good.

I snatched the amulet up. Green fire flared and exploded, tracing burning lines up my arm, sudden pain blossoming behind my eyes. I screamed and staggered back, waving my right arm with the amulet clutched tight through the air. It left behind glowing afterimages of green fire, like kids playing with glowsticks at night. The pain was intense.

Distantly, I heard Stalin shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

Everything was going according to my plan, but damn did this hurt. I turned, still screaming, and staggered towards the Russians. Some still had guns pointed at me. All wore terrified expressions. Even Stalin looked mildly concerned. He had a hand outstretched, as if he wanted to ask for the amulet, but he hesitated.

"Argh, it burns!" I yelled. I barely even had to act for this part. "Aaaah!" I mimed a full-body convulsion and then threw myself towards the man with the holy water jar in his bag, lunging forward as if I had tripped, fist-forward. I smashed it straight into the side of his ammo bag and felt a satisfying glass crunch under my fist. My impact sent the man sprawling. We went down in a tangle of limbs. Desperately, I kept the amulet pressed against the canvas ammunition bag as the water soaked through it.

"No, no!" Stalin was shouting. He rushed forward and grabbed at my shoulder to pull me off the other man.

The green fire that had been snaking at my arm reached out to ensnare the man I had landed on. He screamed and jerked as the flames worked their way through him. The tendrils of magic shied away from the damp bag, leaping past it to sink into the man's body.

"It burns! Make it stop!” he cried.

I left the amulet laying on the ammunition pouch as I leapt to my feet. It sat in the fist-shaped indentation on the side of the soaked canvas. Teardrops of smoke rose from it, and green light flowed outward.

Stalin brushed past me as I jumped backwards. "No, you fool, you’ve ruined it!" he cried, reaching out towards the amulet but stopping just short of the glowing energies.

I backed up three quick steps to get all the Russians in my field of view. Their eyes were on the screaming man and the green fire as my submachine gun came up.

There were seven of them counting Stalin, the solider with the map and the man with the magic detector.

I started with the men closest to Stalin. A short burst of machine gun fire dropped one then I serviced the other two targets near Stalin, from right to left, in short bursts. I avoided hitting the man with the magic detection device.

The soldier to my left was only a few feet away. When I opened fire, he spun toward me and tried to bring his Mosin-Nagant to bear. I reached out and caught the barrel a few inches behind the muzzle with my left hand.

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He twisted hard at the rifle and stepped to the side, trying to bring it to bear on me. This put him in the way of the man with the map, who had drawn a revolver and was trying to get a shot off at me. I held the submachine gun off to one side and fired a burst past the man whose rifle I held. The map man stumbled back and fell in a bloody heap on a pile of broken bookshelves.

"I have it!" Stalin screamed. He was on his feet with the amulet clutched in one hand. Fingers of green flame still licked out from it, but they were feeble. Its power was almost spent.

He clutched the amulet in both hands, and I saw he had dropped the revolver.

Without looking, I emptied the rest of my submachine gun's magazine into the man whose rifle I still gripped in my left hand. The dead man fell to the floor, and I took possession of his Nagant.

I shifted my grip on the Nagant and worked its bolt. The action ejected a loaded cartridge but it was better safe than sorry when it came to a loaded gun. Stalin just gaped at me. The green fire around the amulet had faded to almost nothing.

"How?" he demanded. "You were under compulsion to obey me."

"I never take orders from commies.”

He sneered at me. "So, you will just shoot me out of hand like the abomination you are? Like you did to Lenin?"

My rifle was aimed, steady, at his heart.

"No. I listened to what you said before. You were right, I shouldn't judge people from their actions in a different history. But you were here to capture that device, not destroy it. You craved the power. You wanted to control zombies and gain power over all of the Russian army wearing those amulets."

"Yes!" he hissed, his eyes defiant. "It would assure success of our glorious revolution. We would-”

*Boom*

Stalin gaped at me in surprise. He hadn't thought I would do it. He had been all warmed up to keep talking. But I had learned talking with a true-believing communist was a waste of time. I’m a slow learner, but I’d had several lessons by now.

Slowly, he crumpled to the floor. The amulet dribbled from his fingers. I stepped forward and stomped down, crushing it against the floor. It made a satisfying crunch under my boots.

Some might say shooting an unarmed man was murder. But he wasn't unarmed. He had been holding the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. And he could not have been allowed to live with it in his possession.

The man with the magic Geiger counter gave a sharp cry and bolted for the door. I lunged forward and caught his arm before he made it. The boots in the hall were quite loud now, accompanied by shouting. I bodily dragged the man across the room towards another door I had seen peeking out from behind the tumble of bookcases, slinging the Mosin Nagant over my shoulder as I moved. Fortunately, the bookcase in the door was empty of books, which were strewn on the floor nearby.

I grabbed it one-handed, not wanting to let the terrified man go. The bookcase splintered in my hand, and then the door splintered under my kick, and I was dragging him through. Behind us, shouts echoed. A bullet thudded into the door frame just as we were clear. I dragged him across the dark and dusty floor. Just to be safe, I growled, "If you drop that machine, I will kill you."

The man squeaked. I could feel the trembling in his limbs through the arm I clutched. Then we were through the next door. I slammed it closed behind us and bolted it. We were in a dusty office of some kind. There was no time to lose, but I took a moment to address the man.

"They will kill you if they can. If you wish to live, come with me quietly and quickly. If you help me with that machine of yours, no harm will come to you. Do you understand?" His head jerked up and down. From the smell, I was pretty sure he had peed himself. "Now let's go."

I pushed deeper into the labyrinth of the Kremlin, racing through room after dusty room. In two of them, bone monsters lay slumbering, but they had no trace of the glowing green energy. Wherever Rasputin's attention was, it wasn't on us. The man stumbled along beside me. I kept a hand on his arm but didn't grip as hard as before, and he came meekly.

Finally, after a few twists and turns, we stopped in front of a room that had once been an important man's office. A large desk stood on one side and a sitting area on the other. An impressive bank of windows opened onto the courtyard beyond. “Now.” The man jumped when I turned to him. "Can you make that machine find Rasputin? Yes or no?"

The man's mouth opened and closed in mute fear at my growl, but he nodded vigorously.

I tried to make my tone softer and more coaxing, but it was difficult to achieve the right effect when you're a hulking brute. "Okay, please do it."

The man was almost hyperventilating as he set to work with the device. He flipped switches and dialed a knob, and then started waving the wand around as he adjusted it further. The machine warbled through a series of tones before settling on a consistent womp-womp noise that made it sound like a cheap knock-off of a lightsaber as he waved the wand around.

"It's this way!" he settled the wand in a direction pointed out the window. I looked and saw a imposing square building of particular opulence in the distance.

I pointed. "You mean that palace over there?"

"Yes, yes, the Grand Kremlin Palace.” He glanced down at the needles again, made another adjustment, and then looked up, eyes wide as plates. "I'm sure of it."

"All right," I said. I could have turned and left it at that, but I felt I owed the man a little something. "Here, take this." I handed him the Mosin Nagant. I kept a half an eye on him as I set about reloading my submachine gun from the pouch. There were two more magazines in there. When I was finished, the man was still standing there, holding the rifle as if it was a live cobra. I plucked the Geiger counter-like machine from his hands.

"Now," I told him, "I am going out that window with your little machine. You can go back and look for the army, or you can follow me out and try to escape from the city. There are a few bullets left in that gun, so it's up to you. But if you're quiet and careful, and if I'm able to dispose of Rasputin, you have every chance of getting out alive. If you get out of this, tell them what happened here. Tell everyone how Stalin was planning to keep the zombie control for himself." I put a little menace in my voice. "Do you understand?"

The man's mouth opened and closed as he did his best impersonation of a fish. He made no move to check the weapon or its load. I didn’t know owe him anything more. I did, however, listen carefully for the sound of a bolt as I climbed out the window and started across the courtyard.

When I glanced back, he was still standing there, staring after me and holding the rifle like it was a bomb. I continued on, confident that the poor sap wasn't planning to shoot me in the back, assuming he even knew how to work the weapon.