dung heap of a village. I am hungered.” Then, as Urach was leaving, Uchitel
added, “The Communists have gone from this country, Urach. And the Fascists have
gone from over there.” He pointed to the east. “They have lost, as they always
will. Only we remain. As we always will.” And he began to laugh.
THE PONY WAS GROWING weaker rather than stronger. It was impossible to ride it,
and Nul plodded alongside, cursing in an endless monotone. Like Uchitel, he
carried a Kalashnikov AKM and every couple of hours he was forced to fire off a
short burst to chase a pack of wolves away.
But they returned, circling closer, bellies low to the ground, their gray-white
coats melding with the sulfur-stained ice.
The snow had eased, and the wind had also died down. At least he was no longer
in immediate danger of freezing to death. The middle-aged man trudged
relentlessly eastward, his face set to the ground, one foot following the other,
trailing the rest of the party. Every step left him a little farther behind.
Apart from checking the endlessly weaving pattern of the wolves, Nul never
looked back.
HIGH CLIFFS stood like jagged teeth above the packed gray-green ice of the
Bering Strait. The sea was covered in a dense mist, overlaid with volcanic
fumes. The air was heavy and caught at the back of the throat, producing coughs
and reddened eyes.
Somewhere beyond them was what had once been called Alaska. Now it had no name
at all.
In the year 2000, half a million people had been scattered over the six hundred
thousand square miles of this inhospitable land. Now there were less than a
couple of thousand people in the whole barren waste. To Uchitel and his band,
the country that lay hidden in the acrid fog was the promised land, containing
legendary treasures and riches. The books all said so.
“We go that way, Narodniki,” shouted Uchitel, waving his Kalashnikov above his
head like a crusader’s sword.
There was a bellow of support from the men and women at his heels, the
Narodniki.
Uchitel had found the name in the ruins of what had been the central library of
the Communist Party amid the wreckage of nuked Yakutsk. He had come across a
passage about the populist movement in old Russia. Over two hundred years
before, in the late eighteen hundreds, there were terrorist and guerrilla
organizations with names like Black Repartition, and Land and Liberty. But the
parent of them all was the Narodniki.
It was a name that came to mean terror and blood, a name that appealed to the
dark side of Uchitel’s nature, which truly had no light side.
“We camp here in the cleft of the rocks that will keep us from the worst of the
wind.” Above him there was a deafening crack of thunder that made some of the
ponies rear and whinny. There was a searing glow of deepest purple from chem
clouds that raced hundreds of miles high.
“And tomorrow?” asked Bizabraznia, lashing at her horse with a whip of braided
wires.
“Down there, and across into the land of the brave and the home of many, many
dead.”
NUL WAS FEELING HAPPIER. The pony’s fetlock was mending, and in the last
twenty-four hours he’d made better time than he had for days. A biting fog had
come down from the direction of the icy sea, making progress difficult, but from
the fog’s salty taste, he guessed that he couldn’t be too far off.
The dried beef was lasting well. In one of the huts in Ozhbarchik he’d found
some delicious golubtsy and had taken enough to last him weeks. The thought of
the food safely wrapped in his bag made him hungry, and he reached in, taking
one of the cabbage rolls stuffed with fried turnip, biting voraciously into it.
The jolting of the pony made him choke on a mouthful. Cursing at the animal,
tugging brutally at the reins, he brought it to a dead stop.
“Better,” he said, his voice muffled by the food. The fog had drifted away to
the south, and visibility was unusually good. He stood in the stirrups,