Siberius (27 page)

Radchek threw the towel into the sink, then cupped his hands and splashed ice water in his face. “I’ve relieved Colonel Barkov,” he said.

“You didn’t,” said Vukarin, and then cocked his head, unsure. “Did you?”

“
He wanted to leave,” Radchek said. “Tonight.”

“
What?”

“
There’s no contact with Yenisey.” Radchek wiped his face with his coat sleeve. “Probably the blizzard. The colonel was adamant.”

Vukarin nodded, a broad smile grew broader. “I commend you for your balls then,” he said. “You did the right thing, even if you did get whipped.”

Radchek sat on the edge of the sink, felt his nose. “Barkov’s a maniac.”

“
I couldn’t agree more,” Vukarin said as he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.

“
No, I mean he’s psychotic,” said Radchek. “Did you know he spent time at Krachinik?”

“
What’s Krachinik?”

“
Labor camp, 200 miles southwest of here,” Radchek said. “A military tribunal that included General Tomkin sent him there. No trial, just three years of punishment in one of the worst gulags in Siberia.”

“
I don’t understand.”

Radchek took a deep breath. “Barkov murdered his family.”

Vukarin waited for more, but when it didn’t come, all he could say was “Sweet Christ.”

“
Right after the war. He returned to Leningrad and found his wife having an affair with a major. Barkov murdered him, his wife and their three children. Shot them all in their sleep.”

Vukarin let it sink in. “How do you know all this?”

“Corporal Garkin was a guard at Krachinik.”

“
You believe him?”

Radchek thought about it, then said, “Yes.”

Vukarin nodded. “What happens next?” he said.

“
Garkin and the red-haired kid are locking Barkov up in a cell. I’m ordering us back to base tomorrow, after we resupply the trucks. We’ll radio General Tomkin once we arrive at Yenisey.”

Private Nierbanski tried again, depressed the handset button.

“
Yenisey Zero-One, this is Angara, over?” There was no response. “Comrades?” Nierbanski sat and waited for an answer. Of course there was none, and he knew that there never would be until the blizzard let up. But Radchek had given him an order, and after watching him relieve the colonel of his command, he thought it best to follow that order.

No matter how tired he was.

At least, he reasoned, they’d be going home tomorrow. Things weren’t so bad anymore. For the first time in days, Nierbanski managed to smile. He depressed the button on the mic and began to sing.

“A tractor, a cart and a soaring heart, dear brother,

please take mine. From our farm to factory, ‘round

the Urals to the sea, golden grains do…”

He reconsidered the ditty, searched for another song. His face lit up as one came to him.

“You like potato and I like po-tah-to, you like tomato

and I like to-mah-to; potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to-

Let’s call the whole thing off…”

Static.

“
Not fans of Gershwin, are you?” he said into the mic. “Maybe Rodgers and Hammerstein?” He cleared his throat.

“Oh what a beautiful mornin’, oh what a beautiful

day. I got a beautiful feelin’, everything’s goin’ my way…”

The rattle of heavy snow blasting the walls cut him off. Nierbanski shivered as the wind found its way into the building.

In their cells, Nick and Talia listened to the blizzard pound the cellblock. The little windows had grown white with crusted snow, and the wind had come in whistling bursts, finding its way down into the cellblock.

“
Its cold,” Talia said. She and Nick kept their conversation to a minimum. Neither was sure why their captor had been locked-up next door. Nick stayed cautious. He doubted the colonel was spying on them, but he also couldn’t explain why the soldiers had brought him down here. Unless, of course, he
was
crazy.

Earlier, Talia had told Nick everything she knew about the camp- its condition, the contingent of soldiers, the fences and vehicle yard. Her descriptions were vivid and detailed, coming from someone who had spent the better part of nine years making observations from tree hides.

After a quick study of his own cell, Nick saw that it was less than escape proof. Although the walls were thick, they were weak from age and elemental damage. When he had gone to test the window bars, he found that they spun within their sockets. No, escape wasn’t the problem.

The colonel in the adjoining cell, however, was.

32

Garkin and Ormskovo left the protection of the cellblock and were blasted with blowing snow, which now fell horizontally. Visibility was limited. Light from the main building was dim, as was light from the guard tower. The tall yard light posts struggled to illuminate anything because accumulated snow covered the lenses, diminishing their brightness.

Cold wind dug into Garkin’s and Ormskovo’s exposed ears and down their shirts, and both men tightened up their collars before walking down the stairs and across the grounds. With a sound like wailing children, the wind ripped through buildings and trees, past light poles and antennas. It was a different sound, however, that stopped Garkin in his tracks halfway through the yard.

It was deep, rumbling and somehow wet.

Trailing the corporal, Ormskovo walked right into the big man and it was all he could do to keep from falling on his back. “What are you doing?” said Ormskovo annoyed. “I’m freezing.”

But Garkin shushed him as he turned and scanned the perimeter fence, his eyes and ears focused through the storm.

Ormskovo turned and looked in the direction Garkin was looking, but saw nothing. “What?” he said, and then through the blasting wind, heard what he thought was the roar of an animal.

              Nierbanski stopped singing when he heard the sound. He looked over his shoulder to the door, as if it would help him pinpoint what it was. There was nothing but the rattling of the building under the duress of the blizzard. After a minute, he decided that he was hearing things. He depressed the radio handset button again.

             
“Oh! How I hate to get up in the morning,”
he belted out in song.
“Oh! How I’d love to remain in bed-”
But the sound came again, and this time, it was louder. And unmistakable. Nierbanski wondered what kind of animal could make such a noise.

              “Nick.” Talia clutched the bars.

“
I heard,” Nick said from his cell across the corridor. They listened for more of the same, but it didn’t come.

“
Maybe it was the wind,” said Talia.

Nick shook his head. “Wind only sounds like that in horror flicks.”

He was right, and Talia knew it. Her thoughts segued from the gulag and Nick to animal migrations and Beringia and drawings of the sun on cave walls. And of the adaptive resilience of Smilodon siberius.

              Garkin scanned the perimeter fence and strained to see through the intermittent white chaos. Sporadic ice crystals stung his eyes, and he jammed them shut before refocusing.

             
“What is it?” Ormskovo said. He was having no luck seeing at all.

             
Garkin pointed with excitement and said, “Look.”

             
On the other side of the fence and emerging from the storm were tiny lights. Garkin brushed snow from his eyelashes and brows, and then looked again. Like little fireflies, the lights glowed in the stormy night. “There,” he said. “Look there.”

Ormskovo saw what Garkin saw. He squinted, tried to separate the stormy veil from his field of vision. It had to be an illusion. The Northern Lights, perhaps.

              Garkin inched forward, closer to the fence. He wanted to get a better look. His boots sunk into foot-deep snow as he stepped toward the little lights.

There were dozens of them.

They didn’t move much in the wind.

             
They blinked in and out.

             
And, he realized, they traveled in pairs. Wasn’t that strange?

             
Then, with snow crusting over his freezing red face, Garkin gasped. He began backing away, for he realized that what he was staring at was staring right back at him.

“Just behavior, huh?” said Nick in as quiet a voice as he could muster.

“
That’s right.” Talia mimicked his tone. “Just behavior.” In the next cell over, Barkov sat on the wood bench, motionless and quiet. Talia went to the far side of her cell, away from the colonel, and whispered across the corridor to Nick as loud as she dared. “They attacked my cabin, an area outside their studied territory. The Chukchi village was 20 miles away from the cat’s easternmost territorial perimeter, and yet they suffered an attack as well. You and I were miles south of that when we were attacked.”

“
What does that have to do with-”

“
Wait,” said Talia, her voice now that of a zoologist, archaeologist and detective all rolled into one. “What you said in the cavern, about everyone in America moving west for business opportunities.”

“
Yeah, so?”

“
Growth, Nick. America isn’t the only country that’s growing.”

“
Honey, this is Siberia, not California. Houses aren’t being built on every hillside.”

“
Its not structures or people that drew these animals south,” said Talia. “Not initially, anyway. What they’ve homed in on is something we can’t see, smell or hear, but it’s there.”

“
You’re losing me, Talia.” Nick was growing more frustrated. “We can’t see, smell, or hear it? I thought long-tooth was here because we’re here. Isn’t that right?”

“
Yes, that’s right.” She was getting keyed up; she calmed her voice and looked over at Barkov, who still sat unflinching. “People have been in Siberia for thousands of years. But because siberius stayed in the colder, more northerly parts of the Central Plateau, they didn’t know about us.”

“
They sure as hell do, now.”

Talia nodded. “Yes, they do.”

“And they’ve come to remove us?”

Talia considered Nick’s clinical description. “I believe so.”

Nick grinned in disbelief. “In the Army, we called that a preemptive strike.”

“
That’s exactly right. It’s the basis of their relationship with homo sapiens.”

“
Pretty damn smart.”

“
The skull room, the crypt, the mummies. And above all the Cro-Magnon cave drawings. It all fits together in a way that expounds Leonid’s theories. Something primeval is going on here, and if I’m not mistaken,” Talia said, coming to grips with her missing husband’s theory. “You yourself are the best clue to the sudden change in their behavior.”

              Garkin lifted his rifle and fired into the night. Beyond the fence, the glowing orbs drifted up and over the barbed wire, landing inside the perimeter. Garkin turned and bolted.

             
“Run,” he screamed, bounding through the snow toward Ormskovo.

Even through the blizzard, the private could see Garkin’s terror-stricken face. He turned and fled toward the administration building, unsure of why he was running or what Garkin saw. His breathing was rapid in his narrow chest, his legs ached from cold and muscular atrophy. Ahead, the main building loomed, the glowing light inside visible. Ormskovo saw the shadow of Nierbanski at the radio, an image that inspired a sense of relief.

Before he had even gone 10 feet, Corporal Garkin was knocked to the snow by something powerful, so powerful in fact that it forced the wind from his lungs before he hit the ground. He couldn’t breath, couldn’t say anything, and panic ensued as he raised his head and watched Ormskovo run on, unaware that he was down.

And then, there was a pain in his back he could never have imagined. It was a stabbing power, piercing both sides of his spine below his shoulders. The pain went deep, and Garkin had the strange sensation of something jutting from his chest, forcing the skin but not breaking it. He struggled, clawed the snow, and tried to inhale. His lungs filled with blood as he attempted to get up and run again. But something heavy kept him on the ground, and he soon felt another incredible force as his back compressed in a vice-like grip, crushing muscles and spine together.