Yelena was leaning at the doorway, she had listened. He hadn’t seen her when she stepped on the hallway.
“I’ll pack your things”, she said huskily. Homer walked over to her and took her hand. She clumsily laid his arms around him, it was embarrassing for her in front of the children, and asked silently: “You’ll come back soon? Nothing is going to happen to you, right?”
For the thousandth time in his long life he realized how much women longed for promises – it didn’t matter if he could fulfill them or not. “Everything is going to be alright.”
“You are so old and you still kiss like you two just married”, said the girl, making a grimace. The boy yelled after them cocky: “Daddy says that nothing of the story is true. There is no emerald city!”
“Maybe,” Homer shrugged his shoulders. “It is a fairy tale. What would we do without fairy tales?”
The connection was truly bad. A vaguely familiar voice fought against the terrible static: It seemed it was one of the recon team that they had sent to the Serpuchovskaya on the railcar.
“At the Tulskaya… we can… Tulskaya”, he tried to give their position.
“Understood, you are at the Tulskaya”, Istomin yelled into the receiver. “What happened? Why haven’t you returned?”
“Tulskaya… here… you can’t… everything but…”
Again and again parts of his sentence were swallowed by the static.
“What can’t we do? Repeat, what can’t we do?”
“Don’t storm the station! Everything but storming the station!” it sounded out of the telephone clearly for once.
“Why?” asked Istomin “What by the devil is going on?”
But the voice was no longer to be heard. The static became louder and louder, then the line went dead. Istomin didn’t want to believe it at first and kept the telephone in his hand.
“What is going on there?” he whispered.
CHAPTER 3
Afterlife
That look that the guard on the northern post gave him, Homer would never forget it, as long as he lived.
A look filled with admiration and melancholy, like for a fallen hero.
He could hear the salute shots of the honor regiment in the background. Like a farewell forever.
The living didn’t get those looks. Homer felt like he climbed the shaky ladder of a small cabin of a plane, unable to land, that the Japanese engineers had outfitted wit bombs. The emperor’s flag, with the red stripes flattered in the salty wind, on the summery airfield mechanics ran around, motors roared and a thick general with wet eyes, filled with the envy of the samurai, raised his hand in a military salute…
“Why are you so excited?” asked Achmed grimly. He on the other hand wasn’t in a rush to find out what happened at the Sevastopolskaya.
His wife was standing near the train track, his oldest son on one hand, a screaming bundle in the other, holding it carefully.
“It is like a sudden banzai attack: You stand up and run directly at the machine guns”, Homer tried to explain.
“Courage out of distress. In front of us lies a deadly fire…”
“No wonder why you call it a suicide-attack” growled Achmed and looked back to the tiny bright light at the end of the tunnel. “The right thing for somebody as crazy as you. A normal human doesn’t run straight into a machinegun. Those heroics don’t bring anyone far.”
The old one didn’t answer immediately. “Well, that’s the thing. When you feel that your time is over you are starting to think: What remains when I am gone? What have I accomplished?”
“Hm. I don’t know about you, but I have my children. “They won’t forget me.” After a short pause he added: “At least not my oldest.”
Homer wanted to reply upset, but Achmed’s last sentence took the wind out of his sails. Of course it was easier for him to risk his old and childless hide. That boy on the other hand had his entire life in front of him and didn’t need to think about achieving his immortality yet.
They had passed the last lamp; a glass can with a weak light bulb and a grit out of steel, full of burned flies and winged roaches. The chitin-mass moved almost unnoticeably: Some insects were still alive, trying to crawl out of a pit – like wounded death candidates trying to crawl out of a mass grave.
For a second Homer got stuck at the trembling, reaching, weakly-yellowish light, looking like it swelled out of graveyard’s lamp. Then he took a deep breath and dove into the deep-black darkness that reached from the Sevastopolskaja to the Tulskaya – if the station still existed.
It seemed like the sad woman and her children had grown together with the granite plate. They weren’t the only ones: A little bit next to them a one-eyed man with shoulders like a wrestler looked after the group that was vanishing into the darkness. Behind him a thin old man in a military jacket was silently talking with the adjutant.
“No, we can only wait.” said Istomin, while he crushed the self-made cigarette.
“You can wait.” answered the colonel edgily, “I will do what I have to do.”
“It was Andrej. The leading officer of the railcar that we sent.” Vladimir Ivanovitsch could hear the voice out of the receiver once again – he couldn’t get it out of his head.
“And?” The colonel raised his brow. “Maybe he talked under torture. There are specialists that new certain methods.”
“Unlikely. You didn’t hear his voice. There is something different going on. Something unexplainable. A surprise attack won’t matter…”
“I can explain it to you.” assured Denis Michailovitsch.
“At the Tulskaya there are bandits. They overpowered the station, killed some of our guys and took the others hostage. They didn’t cut the power of course, because they need power as well and they didn’t want to make Hanza nervous. They probably just turned off the telephone. How else would you explain that the telephone works some times and then it doesn’t?”
“But his voice was so…” mumbled Istomin as if he didn’t even listen to the colonel.
“Well how?” exploded the colonel. The adjutant carefully took a few steps back. “When I drive a nail under your fingernail then you will scream differently! And with pliers I could turn a bass into a soprano for life!” He knew what he had to, he had made his choice. Now after he had defeated his doubts he was on a new high and his fingers twitched to his sword. Istomin can complain as much as he wants.
Istomin didn’t answer immediately. He wanted to give the colonel time to blow off steam. “We are going to wait.” he finally said. It sounded assuring, but relentless.
Denis Michailovitsch crossed his arms in front of his chest.
“Two days.”
“Two days.” Istomin nodded his head.
The colonel turned around on the spot and returned to the barracks. He had no intention to lose valuable hours. The commanding officers of the strike teams already waited for about an hour at the long table. Only two chairs were empty: His and Istomin’s. But this time they would have to start without their leaders.
The commander of the station hadn’t realized that the colonel had already left. “It’s strange how our roles have been swapped isn’t it?” said Istomin sunken in thoughts.
When he got no answer he turned around and saw the helpless look of the adjutant. He made a hand gesture that he could go. He didn’t recognize the colonel anymore, he thought. Normally he always refused to give up even a single fighter. He felt something, that old wolf. But could he rely on his nose this time?
Istomin’s instincts said something completely different: Remain calm. Wait. The heavy infantry of the Sevastopolskaya would find some kind of mysterious and invincible enemy at the Tulskaya.
Vladimir Ivanovitsch searched his pockets, found his lighter and lit it. Smoke rings rose over him and he was
