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Snippets and Speculative Fiction
Pt. 9
…
They sent him to the front for a long time after the incident with the girl, and Yurii had no complaints on the matter. Out where the snow drifted across the roads as soon as your back was turned his worries were halved and that niggling voice at the back of his head silenced. Whatever was beginning to spread across the West it wasn’t his problem. What was down to him was exacting as much revenge as he could on the men that wanted to destroy his home.
Smoke whipped away from the end of his gun and he saw the figure in its sights jerk and crumple to its knees.
‘Should pick your hiding places better Tovarisch.’
Yurii packed his gear away as quickly as his frozen hands would allow, right down to the last spent cartridge case. He didn’t see any reason to give the enemy any clues as to what was stalking them. If he was lucky they’d think it was just another disgruntled local upset at the rape of his daughter or the theft of his crops. Yurii bent double and fled through the ruins. He still needed to find somewhere to hole up for the night where he could light a fire.
‘Hssst…soldier. You come with me. I’ll see you right. I know where your group is.’
The newcomer was the same shape as one of the buildings roundabout and looked in about the same state of repair, But as the light hit them he realised that once upon a time the old man must have been strong as an ox despite the lines round his eyes.
‘Who are you?’
‘A teacher, I was head of the local school until they dropped a bomb on it. We need to get out of here. They’ll be after you already, you’ve been killing too many of their troops.’
‘They don’t even know it’s me.’
‘Yes, they do, you don’t think they’re chasing you but that’s because you can’t see what’s doing the watching.’
The old man pointed skywards with an odd expression on his face halfway between fear and awe. ‘There’s so much junk flying around up there I sometimes wonder why it doesn’t crash into each other. Now come with me, there’s something you should see.’
With that, he turned and crawled through a shell hole in the wall.
Yurii watched the empty space for a moment as he listened to the first artillery open up. He wanted, needed, another atrocity to mark down with the others otherwise he might not get up in the morning.
‘Fine, but you’re up and gone at the first sign of trouble remember Yurii,’ he muttered under his breath.
He found the old man two streets over holding the panel up on a building. The owners must have spent some time securing before they ran from the fighting. But the boards would have been more effective if there hadn’t been a gaping hole in place of a roof.
‘Through here, we’ll go to ground in the factory.’
‘You say you know where my group is? How are they?’
‘Oh fine, fine,’ said the old man as he squeezed his way through the gap. ‘One of them stepped on a landmine, got himself blow up, but apart from that casualties have been pretty light considering.’
‘Considering.’
‘Yeah,’ his eyes blinked back at Serikbekev from the buildings shadows, ‘considering what we’re going to do to them.’
Yurii had been getting used to the lack of light, but it still wasn’t enough to save him from the blow that came slamming into his temple.
END
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