Ivan stubbed out his cigarette on the eye of the mangled corpse at his feet and grinned, thinking how he would play with it next. He had already cut open its shirt with his knife, revealing the pale breasts. Disappointingly, her lower body had been blown off so her body terminated at the navel, with some intestines hanging out, which prevented him from engaging in the most satisfying games.
“Maybe I could find her other half if I look around,” he pondered, reaching again for his pack of cigarettes. The city around him was torn and burning by the bombing their forces had carried out earlier, so the lasts bits of smoke he exhaled were lost in the smoke that blanketed the street.
“Pavlov!” yelled Alexei, another member of the squad he belonged to.
“What the hell are you doing?” he continued, seeing him crouched over the bisected corpse. “Never mind. The sergeant sent me to search for you since we’ve already secured the target location and you were nowhere to be found. Follow me.”
He turned and jogged the way he came. Ivan spat and took out after him. He had intentionally stayed far enough to be out of danger but still so close that he could easily reach his squad if he came across enemy soldiers, so it was only a block’s run before they turned the corner to a blackened courtyard surrounded by shelled and burned buildings. The sergeant was looking over some maps while the rest of the group rested nearby, smoking in a huddle. Right next to them, a soldier was shoveling dirt on a female corpse covered with rags and resting in a shallow grave. Ivan licked his teeth and went to have a closer look but was waylaid by the sergeant who had put aside his charts and made for him with brisk, powerful steps.
Before he had the chance to stand at attention the sergeant backhanded him in the face, causing him to stumble back.
“Where the hell have you been, you coward?” the man spat. “I could shoot you where you stand for deserting. No questions asked.”
His angry sneer creased his face all the way to his shaved head. Ivan dropped his gaze and swallowed with difficulty as his throat seemed to constrict in dread. He knew the sergeant wasn’t exaggerating one bit. He had the power, power over others he could only wish for.
A wicked smile settled on the sergeant’s face. “In fact, why don’t I do it right now? You’re caused me nothing but trouble.”
The man grabbed the assault rifle he had slung by his neck and made a show of removing the magazine and checking it was loaded before snapping it back in place and thumbing the safety off. He raised the weapon almost lazily, pointing it at Ivan.
“Please sir, don’t!”
“On your knees,” the man said indifferently.
He complied, with tears now welling in his eyes. “Don’t do this.”
“Open your mouth.”
The rest of the men leered at them from the sidelines as the barrel of the gun was placed between his teeth. Tears streamed down his face as he sobbed and snorted, too afraid not to obey.
“Bang!” the sergeant shouted, making him jump and squeal.
He laughed along with the rest of the men as he pulled away his weapon. “You’re lucky I’m in such a good mood after a bit of stress-relief,” he japed, pointing at the dead girl with his thumb. “Otherwise, you would have taken her place, and then I would have shot you.”
He didn't dare look up, not move a muscle.
“Oh, I bet you’re waiting to have your turn. Here, allow me.” He turned fired at the girl whose body was jostled by the volley, blood sprouting where the flesh was punctured.
“The entry wounds should be the proper size for you,” he grinned before withdrawing, accompanied by the raucous laughter of the men.
“Human garbage,” muttered Dmitri, the oldest member of their band as he sucked what was left of his cigarette with a sour expression. He sat away from the others and had found none of the humor the others had in the unfolded events.
“Just he wait that I get my hands on him,” Ivan replied under his breath. “Then he’ll know who really has the power.”
“You’re just as bad as them, probably worse,” the grizzled man spat.
“It’s just a matter of the ends justifying the means. We’re here to selflessly liberate these parts from the Nazis, remember?”
“Don’t give me that shit. I know you don’t believe in it any more than the rest of us.”
Ivan just grinned in reply and got up from his kneeling position.
The older man went on: “You just go along with the lies because it is to your advantage, gives you a chance to realize your sick fantasies while claiming to be some type of a hero.”
“That sounds dangerously close to treasonous questioning of the special operation. Surely you don’t mean it that way, comrade, or otherwise I would be forced to report you. But beg for my forgiveness, and I would be willing to put this blunder of yours behind us.”
“There you go again; you grasp the tiniest leverage you have and try to tyrannize other.” He spat once more. “You must know that something is very wrong when a group like this is heralded as being in the right.”
“It’s what the government says, what the media says, what the people say,” he listed smugly. “It’s not your place to disagree.”
“That’s how it always starts. When the Soviet Union was created, at first the people thought ‘Finally someone listens to us and gives us back what was stolen by the upper classes’. That changed when the mass incarcerations began. And that was nothing compared with what was to come.”
Ivan lit a cigarette of his own. “What’s your point, geezer?”
“My point will be wasted on you, but as you wish.” He gave Ivan a piercing look in the eye. “Once everyone starts going along with obvious lies, once willingly step into that fake world, there is no limit to the horror that will unfold. The descent will be slow at first, but then you will begin to fall, and you will find there is no bottom to the abyss.”
“Whatever,” he snickered mockingly.
“Just you wait and see. I’ll be jumping country the first chance I get.”
Before he had the chance to threaten him further the sergeant called out: “Alright, everyone! Our orders are to wait for further commands from the brass so let’s make camp. Pavlov, you have first watch.”
He grimaced but skulked to the determined lookout point without voicing any complaints. They would have done him no good.
Hours passed but no one came to relieve him from his watch, and when he called out to the others they told him to shut up. How he hated them.
“You may have the upper hand now, but just you wait. You won’t be so cocky when you’re all alone at my feet, unarmed and bleeding from where I’ve shot you.”
“That is all there is to life,” he brooded.
Power was the only thing that mattered. Watching wild dogs tear into the stray cats of his home town, and then tying down some of those dogs and cutting into them himself, he had learned that it was all about power, and those that had more of it could do whatever they wanted to the weak. Out there, in society, they had enacted all kinds of rules and laws to give the weak some added strength from the police, the justice system, the moral authorities. But none of that existed in nature.
Or the field of battle. Here, the civilians had no power at all, while they had the weapons, the numbers, the moral high ground. That’s what had lured him into this fight. The things he could do to them were worth kowtowing to his pompous superiors and the strict rules of the army. He hoped that he would be awarded a promotion automatically after sufficient service, and then he would have subordinates of his own, who would have to obey his every command, who would have to take whatever abuse he hurled their way, just like he had to swallow whatever caught the sergeant’s fancy.
His vile daydreaming was interrupted by a loud whistle from the sergeant. “Gather ‘round, everybody,” he called out.
He addressed the men who flocked by him: “Here’s the deal: the Nazis have taken position in the underground levels of a nearby steel factory and are using it to launch attacks on the innocent civilians of this fine town. Our artillery is keeping them pinned down at the moment and, publicly, we’re in negotiations for their surrender.”
He grinned. “Of the record, however, the leadership wants them gone so we can declare this town as fully liberated. And as we are the closest unit by, it has fallen to me to formulate a plan for their elimination. Here’s what we’ll do.”
Turning to look at Ivan with a sinister smile, he continued: “Private Pavlov here will perform reconnaissance, locate enemy positions and then lead an attacks squad to take them by surprise. For a job well done, he will definitely be awarded a medal of some sort, along with a promotion. Just remember not to return empty-handed or I’ll be forced to execute you on the spot for dereliction of duty. You have one hour to prepare. Any questions?”
Dmitri eyed him grimly while the rest of the men sniggered.
“No? Very good. Dismissed!”
From his vantage point on the roof a three-story building, he could just barely make out the steelyard in the thick, black smoke. Grey buildings towered in the haze and large structures of steel gradually disappeared to the dark, billowing clouds. Red glow emanated where something burned, the loud explosions from the shelling rattled his bones while the sounds of metal screeching on metal made his skin crawl. No people or other signs of life could be seen in the area surrounded by a rusted chain-link fence. The brutalistic concrete buildings, metal pipes surrounded by cage-like supports and tall, rusted chimneys had been off-putting on their best day, and now hidden behind the veil of smoke and blackened by soot the complex looked downright nightmarish.
He really did not want to go in, but as the sergeant had even commanded one of the men to make sure he did, he had no choice. He crossed the empty street and entered the compound grounds via a tear in the rusted fence. His footsteps clacked as he traversed the vast concrete expanse empty apart from the scorched shell holes dotting it. The vapors made him cough and his eyes water, and the blurrier his vision got, the more enemy shapes he thought he saw hiding behind every structure or suddenly rising from the ground. He passed under metal support structures crisscrossing in every direction, like a twisted spider’s web of cast steel. The looming dark shape he had navigated towards turned out to be a large hall, and he scrambled inside, taking cover by the wide-open doorway.
In the pale light filtering through the cover of smoke and small soot-stained windows high above, he could make out the massive iron barrels he knew were used to move molten metal around into molds of different kinds. The power was out, so nothing moved. He turned his flashlight on, which did little to penetrate the haze, and slowly advanced on the steel grid walkway by the wall until he found a hallway leading deeper into the complex. His footsteps echoed in the empty hallway. Dark doorways opened on both sides of the corridor, each one of them a possible hiding place for enemies lying in wait. He took position by the first door on his right, his back to the wall, his hands sweating as he tightened his grip on his assault rifle. He spun into the doorway, weapon raised to firing position and scanned the room in a quick 180 degree arc.
Stolen story; please report.
No one, just tables and cabinets with papers in disarray. His heart thumping, he checked the rest of the rooms out one by one, not wanting to leave unsecured rooms at his back, but found no signs of recent occupation.
He made it to the end of the hallway, where he found stairs of metal grating leading down to a dim underground tunnel.
“Screw the sergeant,” he cursed internally. “Screw the army, screw this military operation. Those bastards can keep their hidey-holes, I’ll just report that I’ve found the enemy, they can’t blame me that they’ve moved on before the strike for gets here, right?”
His scheming was interrupted by a sound coming from the darkness below. Far from the explosions and industrial sounds that had accompanied him thus far, it sounded human, but more than that he could not make out as it did not sound like speaking, yelling, laughing or crying, just voice without any usual cadence, rhythm or content. But there was one thing he could discern without a shadow of a doubt: the voice was decidedly female.
He descended the stairs slowly and quietly. Pipes of varying sizes lined the concrete walls, with fluids dripping from leaking valves and loose joints, forming stains and puddles on the floor. He just barely caught a glimpse of the pale flesh and long blonde hair before the person disappeared behind the corner at the end of the hallway. He pursued eagerly, licking his lips.
The tunnel ended in a room lit by a single dim lightbulb behind a sullied protective glass casing and floor made out of metal grating so he could see into the darkness below. The gurgling of pipes and watery splatter made him realized it was not an abyss he stared at, but a cistern of some kind, possibly the terminus of the many pipes he had seen. Shining his flashing below, his beam of light came to a stop on a large, turgid shape amid the smaller dregs floating in the foul drainage: it was hard to tell for sure but it seemed to him a swollen, mutilated human corpse.
“What the hell?” The surprise caused him to inhale deeply, and he gagged on the overpowering, cloying smell in the chamber. He could not make out whether the shape was male or female, one of his fellow soldiers or from the opposing side.
The splashing of someone walking into a puddle sounded from a corridor to his left and he raised his weapon, trying to keep his hands from shaking. The sound seemed to grow more distant again and then grew too quiet for his ears, and after a few minutes, he advanced to the corridor where they had sounded from. Peeking around the corner, he found the tunnel abandoned, but the muck on the floor had been disturbed in a way that could indicate dragging footsteps. A few full footmarks had been impressed in the sludge, clearly showing that whoever it had been alone, had quite small, dainty feet and was barefoot. Again, the thought of easy prey, all for himself, drove him forward.
The tunnel grew grimier as he progressed, what had started as a slight coating of ooze turning into slimy layer multiple centimeters thick, which made following the girl’s trace even easier. Turbid slime dripped on his face and neck from the ceiling. Ahead, the scum formed a mound by the right-hand wall of the tunnel.
“Dammit, not again,” he thought as the cause of the heap became apparent on closer inspection: another corpse. The carcass has been stripped of his clothes and was only covered by the filth, which seemed to be breaking down his putrefying flesh, making it hard to tell where the corpse started and the grime began. It seemed to pulse softly around the body, but it was hard to tell for sure in the lighting.
“Some kind of mold, maybe,” he thought, covering his nose and mouth with his fist. “These Nazis really are animals, to leave someone like this.”
He smiled maliciously. “They deserve everything I’m going to do to them.”
The tunnel grew hot, with bouts of steam erupting from cracks in the pipes. He came to a sudden stop when he could just barely make out a human shape concealed by the vapors and dim lighting. He sneaked forward as quietly as he could, controlling his breathing. As he grew closer, more details emerged, and he could hardly believe his eyes when he realized the female shaped was completely unclothed and had her back to him so he could admire the slender figure and pale buttocks. She swayed slightly where she stood. He did his best not to charge forward too soon and to control the pressure building in his trousers.
His lust must have partially blinded him since he was only a few steps away when he saw the rusted metal wires digging deep into her pallid flesh, around the neck, limbs and stomach. Not caring if she noticed he raised his flashlight and followed the wires to the ceiling where they seemed to be coming from.
There was something in the ceiling, a mass of tentacles like writhing snakes out of which slender limb-like appendages sprouted, appendages with the wires wrapped around them. An appendage rose, pulling the female corpse’s left leg up in a fake marionette’s step. He screamed before he could stop himself and turned to run, but something was closing in from the filth-covered tunnel he had come from, an unclear bloated shape whose steps sounded like it was walking in a deep, viscous swamp. He fired at it but it did not even slow down, only responding in a deep, resounding roar, more like a fog horn or something industrial, nothing like a living thing. In a blind panic, he charged to a shadowy passage on his left, which ended soon in a rusted winding staircase leading down. He rushed down the stairs, and afterwards could not tell how long he had descended before they ended. Five minutes? Thirty? Surely he could not have gone down that long. The descent had left him dizzy and exhausted. The bellowing of that creature grew distant until it could no longer be heard, and no sounds of pursuers came from above, but he still didn’t dare turn his back on any direction where he could be approached.
He rested with his back to the rust-covered metal wall, trying to make sense of what he had seen on the upper levels.
“Must be the gasses I’m breathing,” he rationalized half-heartedly. “And the lack of sleep.” Still, he figured he would have to find another way out before he tried that route again.
The rusty hallways were lit only by dim, spotty halogen lights at spare intervals, so he had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the dark before continuing. As such, when the harsh industrial sounds drew his attention towards the end of the passage, he could spot the faint red glow emanating from the room beyond from quite a distance away.
He found himself on a factory floor illuminated by the scorching blaze of molten, churning steel as it was ferried forward by mammoth barrels similar to the ones he had seen on ground floor. Above, lighter drums running on rails fit to the ceiling transported metal junk to a furnace where they would be melted for repurposing. As one drum dumped its load he could have sworn he saw mangled corpses amidst the trash, but he blinked and it was already too late to make sure. The wheels and axles the machinery screeched infernally as they operated.
“Who’s running this show? The enemy? Could they be manufacturing weapons and ammo here?”
Something caught his attention in the cacophony of harsh mechanical sounds: the noise of many muffled wails.
On a factory belt leading from a pitch-black square aperture in the wall to one of the different hydraulic presses he could see humanoid shapes lying amongst the bits of steel. He wiped the sweat from his eyes, but that did not change what he saw: all the details were missing, like they had been rubbed away, so the creatures had no eyes, mouth, nose or any other facial features, no hair, no ears, no separate fingers or toes so their hands looked like fleshy mittens, their feet like they had socks of skin on. They brought to his minds the mannequins he had seen at clothing stores. They moaned and moved their limbs weakly, but were unable to get off the belt before they were dumped into the cavity whose metal walls begun to close in, letting out a rusty screech. The howls of the creatures intensified and their shrieks were accompanied by horrid wet crunches as the press broke their bones and bodies. His feet seemed to have lost their strength so he fell on his knees, but could not look away.
The compactor opened up again, and its bottom dropped on hinges so the blood and gore came rushing out into a cart on wheels which then transported them along its rails before dumping its load into one of the molds. When the cast was filled, a valve opened in a large metal barrel above so molten, red-hot metal came streaming down on the crushed remains. The stench of burning flesh filled the air, and he gagged. The downpour of liquid metal stopped and the was replaced by the cooling system spraying the cast with water that hissed when it came into contact with the superheated area.
Except, as he realized almost immediately, it was not water, but blood that coated the surfaces and filled the air with vapor that had a disgusting, iron-like smell so strong he could taste it on his tongue.
“What the hell is going on?” he wondered numbly as the fumes dispersed and revealed the machinery again. He only just realized that the cavity was roughly human-shaped when something in there begun to move. Impossibly, a man-shaped giant rose from the machine. Its flesh was covered in coagulated blood, its limbs long and muscular. The nails of its lengthy fingers and toes were long and cracked. The metal had hardened into a large mass burying its head in a load of iron so only an impression of a mouth opened to scream and small dents where the running metal had burned away the eyes could be seen. Even more metal formed a large, misshaped lump weighing on its shoulders and on top of its head, so had it was forced to bend down and steady itself with one of its long arms against the floor. With its other hand it scratch the iron enclosing its head, tried to pull of the cruel helmet melded to its skin while stifled screams could be heard from within the mask.
It turned towards him, an eyeless stare from a metal face, and wailed louder, starting towards him with one arm reaching out, the other bracing against the floor as it trudged forward.
He fired, the bullets piercing its skin eliciting screams but not even slowing it down. He scrambled away, taking the first way out which was a walkway above large vats of murky liquid, which he had taken for runoff water from the cooling system earlier, but which now appeared like blood. But there was more: to his horror and stupefaction he now realized that at some point his surroundings had begun to shift, the rusted and stained metal structures around him turning organic, the hard walkways now moist and pulpous surfaces of flesh, the chains running from the ceiling now intestinal tubes, peristaltic waves progressing down their length. Even the control panels had been replaced with mounds of protuberant flesh, their dials now gnashing mouths, buttons wildly spinning eyes and levers forearms that grasped towards him. The walkway swayed as the iron-headed creature pursued him and he was forced to head deeper into the sickening depths of the unnatural bowels of the hell he found himself in. He dashed into the first hallway out of the chamber he found.
The passageway was covered was covered with thin fleshy layer, like skinned hide, and he passed shapes like people stuck under that layer. All this registered just vaguely at the back of his consciousness, panic-stricken as he was, and past trying to make sense of what he saw. His iron-headed pursuer was falling behind but showed no signs of abandoning the chase.
The corridor opened up and he found himself in a small room at the juncture of multiple hallways, similar to many other he had seen before. But this one had something new in it: a small tent, some clothes spread around and a Primus stove with a pot of water coming to a boil over it. The unearthly overgrowth stopped, seeming to not cross out of the humid darkness of the tunnel.
Someone peeked from the tent.
“Out!” he shouted, half-mad. “Out or I’ll shoot!”
“Don’t shoot!,” she answered, and crawled out, and was followed by a man. Both were pale, thin and had dark brown hair and eyes.
“We want no trouble,” he mumbled with his heavy accent, eyes downcast.
“How do I get out?”
They pointed the way he came. “That is the shortest path.”
“I’m not going back there!” he screamed. Listening closely, he was sure he could find the iron-head’s lumbering gait getting closer. “Tell me now or I’ll shoot!”
“What’s wrong with that way?” she asked.
“Go that way,” her companion said quickly, pointing at another corridor. “It’ll take you to the stairwell, eventually.”
He stared down the tunnel. He could not see the end as it was covered by darkness. He looked at the couple, who were now looking at him from the corners of their eye, as if not daring to face him but still wanting to see what he was going to do.
“What’s down there?” he screeched. “You’re trying to get me killed, aren’t you?”
“No, no there’s nothi-“. Their assurances were cut short as he gunned them down. He could now just barely make out his stalker’s large shape in the darkness, hear its heavy steps against the soft, damp surface. Grimacing, he charged down the dark corridor they had indicated.
It took a while of jogging, but eventually the tunnel terminated at a set of ascending spiral staircase. The couple seemed to have been telling the truth, as he had come across nothing out of the ordinary on his way there. He begun ascending.
He could hardly believe his eyes when he got out of the stairwell at the top and could straightaway see he was on the ground floor as he saw the outside through a broken window. He exited the building via an emergency exit door and realized he was not far off from the spot he had entered the complex from. A heavy weight lifting from his chest, he ran even faster towards where their squad had made camp.
He reached the campsite no problem, but found it abandoned. Even the corpse of the executed girl was gone.
“Nothing to worry about,” he rationalized, suppressing the worry that was again starting to build up. “We’ve been forced to move camp or fall back many times already, this is nothing unusual.”
He left the campsite, walking back the way they had come from in the morning, where the last command post he knew about had been located. The amount of the black smoke had increased from the last time he had been topside, making it all but impossible to see far ahead.
“The whole city must be burning,” he figured.
He marched ahead, not knowing whether it was day or night. The smoke ahead was getting impenetrably thick now, like a solid wall.
“No…” he whispered silently as he realized it was not smoke that lay ahead in the street he had walked the other way that morning. He ran ahead, and stopped when there was no way to run anymore.
What he had taken for thick smoke at first was a solid wall, made of rusted, stained metal like those in the lower levels of the steel factory. He pressed his palm against its cool, hard surface to make sure he was not hallucinating. Screaming, he then struck it with all his might with the butt of his rifle, to no avail. He took some steps back and craned his neck, seeing the wall curved like it formed a dome high above his head, but the ceiling disappeared behind the clouds of smoke.
“I’m still inside,” ran the thoughts through his head, repeating over and over. “I’m still inside the factory.”
Heavy, plodding and irregular steps sounded from behind him, and he knew what he was going to see even before he turned. The iron-headed creature still came lurching after him, its heavy head drooping and swinging with every step. Heavy as the terror that now settled on his chest, heavy as the weight of the realization that no matter how far he ran, eventually he would be too tired to escape, and it would catch up to him. For—as he dashed away, keeping the metal wall to his left, looking for an exit—he knew he would find no stairs leading up or to the outside.
Only down.