terrie
in
deathmance
(no subject)
OH MY GOD ACTIVITY?? Sorry, busy busy busy. Anyway here is one of the many, many stories I have been working on. Crossposted (OH MY GOD I'M SORRY FOR CROSSPOSTING) to supersciencefic because it is Gen enough, I think.
--
November 1986. Ekaterinburg.
Hunter nudged Brock awake in a very gentle way by cracking him across the temple with the butt of his rifle.
Swearing loudly, Brock fell backwards out of the chair he had been resting in, tumbling unceremoniously onto the floor. Hunter leaned over, cherry end of his cigarette blazing in its holder, clamped firmly between his teeth.
“Goddammit Samson, do that shit a little more quietly, would you?! Jesus!”
Brock pushed himself up into a sitting position, rubbing at the back of his head. “Yeah,” he said irritably, biting his tongue. “What's going on?”
"What are you -- didn't they debrief you?" said Hunter, inflection rapid-fire and slurring.
“No,” said Brock, much more slowly than his mentor, “you didn't.”
Hunter looked at him, eyebrows knit, and even through the mirrored sunglasses, Brock could tell the colonel was squinting. “Of course I didn't, boy-o,” he said, turning back to the window and placing binoculars to the lenses of his glasses. “Need to know basis.”
Brock stared at the back of Hunter's head. He was here, why wouldn't he need to know why? Hunter's skull did not have the answers that Hunter himself was not giving, so Brock got up from the floor, righted his chair, and sat back down. He took out his cigarettes, all nearly crushed from when he had landed so heavily on them, and fished out one that was not broken to light it.
Hunter remained motionless at the window, focussed in his task, for what seemed like hours, not addressing Brock once. This is what stakeouts tended to be like, Brock had found: a lot of waiting, a lot of boredom, a lot of trying unsuccessfully to stay awake.
On his sixth cigarette, halfway through the third round of counting the ceiling tiles, Brock fell asleep again. Hunter didn’t wake him up this time; that task was given to Brock’s cigarette, still lit, falling out of his mouth and burning his hand.
“God -- ow,” said Brock, annoyed, swiping the cigarette to the floor, where he crushed it under his heavy boot.
When he finally looked up from scowling at the thing that had burned him, Hunter was watching him severely, cigarette holder held between his teeth at a stiff, irritated angle.
“Samson,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Were you sleeping again.”
“Not ... sleeping exactly,” said Brock slowly.
Hunter sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, sunglasses bouncing slightly as he squeezed his fingers together. “Listen, Samson -- I won’t be around to babysit you forever; you’ve got to take charge, man! Be alert! You have to be able to watch an empty house for days without sleep or food or moving. Or sleep! What? Don’t interrupt me.”
Brock had not been about to.
“This great nation is counting on you, boychick, to keep our enemies at bay, away from our borders, our children, our women,” Hunter continued.
“But we’re in their territory ...”
“Well, yes, of course we are; that’s what the -- good God, Samson, that is some advanced technique! You almost got me there,” said Hunter, grinning with avuncular pride. “There may be a promotion in this for you.” He turned back around to look out the window.
Brock just gaped at the back of his head for a few seconds, silent.
After a moment, without turning around, Hunter thrust a small, shoe box-shaped rectangle at him with the hand not holding his binoculars. Brock took it with some apprehension, looking back up at Hunter after giving the thing a quick once-over.
“Recording device,” Hunter clarified still without looking. Brock was beginning to suspect the colonel had eyes in the back of his head, like real ones, because he immediately explained further without seeing the look of doubt cross Brock’s face. “The Reds’ll be looking for the little ones. Big, outdated motherfuckers like that one’ll be easily overlooked.”
Brock still had his doubts, but did not voice them, only turned the thing over in his hands to inspect it closer.
“Coordinates two six three four,” instructed Hunter. Brock stood and headed briskly toward the door, pulling on his overcoat.
“And Samson,” Hunter called.
Brock turned back around; Hunter was looking at him intently. “Yeah.”
“Whatever you do, don’t light a cigarette; a good sniper can see a hot cherry for miles.”
Brock nodded, absently patting the half-empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket. He did not especially want to get shot tonight.
Hunter stood calmly for a moment, watching Brock, and then abruptly waved his arms around wildly. “Well? What the hell are you waiting for; get out there, goddammit! You’ve got a forty-five minute window so ske-fucking-daddle!”
--
Brock reached the coordinates two six three four in twenty minutes, making it there with relative speed by ducking into a few alleyways and thankfully not having any encounters with enemy patrols. He set the device, triple-checked its connections and double-checked the transmitter, then turned around to return to base. He made it half a block when he saw two uniformed officers turn the corner at the end of the street, heading toward him.
Brock quickly ducked into the narrow space between two buildings, pressing himself up against the greasy brownstone, and listened to the footsteps approaching, drawing closer and closer. He strained to pick up the conversation between the two men, but they were speaking too fast and too quietly for his limited Russian comprehension.
Cursing silently, Brock inched backwards along the wall until the voices were right on top of him, at which point he went still, holding his breath, not even daring to turn his eyes to watch the men pass. Oblivious, the two continued on until their voices started becoming quiet again. Brock held his position for several minutes until he couldn’t hear them anymore, then finally crept out from his hiding spot.
The men were nowhere in sight along the street; they must have turned the corner again. After a moment of hesitation, Brock returned to the recording device to make sure it had not been discovered. By his accounts it hadn’t, as it appeared to be undisturbed, though it was still incredibly conspicuous, just sitting openly in an enclave in the side of the building. Perhaps Hunter was right, since those officers had walked right past it and apparently it hadn’t been noticed.
Letting go of the breath he hadn’t realised he had still been holding, Brock cautiously started back down an alternate route back to base, mentally pulling up the map of the city as he carefully crept around and between buildings, keeping an ear and eye out for more patrols. Thankfully curfew had been implemented, so he didn’t have to worry about running into civilians.
He was about halfway back, having taken the longer and safer route, when, just as he rounded a corner, he was face-to-face with two patrolmen. Brock couldn’t tell if they were the same ones from earlier but it didn’t matter; all three men stared for a few long, silent seconds, completely thrown off guard.
“Shit,” Brock said, then dove into the cover of a nearby alleyway as one officer opened fire, the other fumbling for his gun.
Scrambling to his feet, Brock charged down the alley to find better cover, and he could hear the men screaming at each other in Russian, again too quickly for him to understand. He was dead, he was sure he was going to be dead in a minute, maybe two, and his heart was pounding and his head was racing and god damn it this alley was a dead end, why didn’t he remember it was a dead end from the maps?
Whirling back around, Brock looked frantically for anything to hide behind, but there was nothing; just some small boxes and a fire escape mounted to the wall of one of the buildings trapping him, its ladder pulled up and nearly inaccessible. He swore again and could hear the two men getting closer, a flashlight beam slicing through the dark air as they neared him.
“Stoj!” one of the officers shouted, but Brock couldn’t see which one; the light was blinding him. But he could hear them; they skidded to a halt and he could swear he heard their hearts beating. They were afraid, they weren’t soldiers like him. They were just policemen.
But still, they were in his way.
Brock lunged forward quicker than the patrolmen could react, grabbing the face of one of them, his thumb and middle finger plunging smoothly into eye sockets. This one must have been the one holding the flashlight because it fell to the ground, beam swinging wildly, and broke apart on impact with the pavement, scattering batteries and bits of metal and plunging the alley into darkness. Brock could hear the man screaming but it only inspired further rage in him; he kept his hand on his face and lifted him up by it.
The other patrolman had just snapped out of his shock and fumbled with the gun still at his hip, aiming shakily at Brock. He got a shot off that just missed Brock’s shoulder, but it didn’t matter because Brock just threw the now-blinded man off to the side and grabbed the wrist of the other, wrenching it up. A few more shots were fired, but they went straight up or otherwise into the air; Brock could hear a few bullets ricocheting off the fire escape. He could also hear the man screaming as his bones snapped and splintered.
Soon the gun stopped firing, though the last bullet must have hit the fire escape in just the right way, because the ladder came swinging down. Brock glanced up at it and took a step back, letting go of the wrist just in time for the ladder to come crashing down to the pavement directly on top of the patrolman’s skull, splitting him sagittally and spraying the alley (and Brock) with blood and bone and bits of brain matter.
Brock observed this passively for a moment, then lit a cigarette. He stepped over to the other policeman, who was moaning wordlessly, half-delirious from pain and blood loss, and lifted him up by his blood-soaked jacket collar. He was about to just slam the man’s skull against the wall when something metallic caught the starlight up on the rooftop. He looked up toward it instinctively, and saw a young woman, dressed in black, her red ponytail swaying slightly in the wind. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing, and when he finally did, his eyes widened and he dropped the man, who landed with a loud thud and a faint moan.
It’s only the second time he’d seen her but he immediately recognised her; it’s the same woman who had left him pinned to a bed in a burning hotel room a month before. She’s even more beautiful now than she was that night, and Brock could hear his pulse in his ears, louder than the policemen’s nervous heartbeats had been.
Without knowing why, Brock took a hesitant step toward her, even though she was up on the roof, hand slightly outstretched. She just smiled down at him, then looked through the telescopic lens of the Kalashnikov she had in front of her, finger on the trigger guard.
Brock blinked, cigarette falling out of his mouth. Why had he not noticed that?
The woman told him something in Russian but she’s too far away for him to understand, and it doesn’t matter anyway because then there was a loud crack and then Brock couldn’t see anymore, blinded with pain, but he thought he was falling backwards and then his head hit the pavement and then he didn’t think anything anymore.
--
It’s light outside when Brock finally wakes up, and he’s not in the alley anymore but he’s not at base either, but Hunter is at his bedside, smoking despite the fact that they are obviously in a hospital. Noticing that he had woken up, Hunter leans toward him, breathing smoke in his face. Brock can’t tell if he’s doing this intentionally.
“Someone got you good, boy. Didn’t I tell you not to light up a cigarette?”
Brock squints a little, somewhat disoriented, and shrugs. “Yeah, I guess, but I --”
“But nothing,” snaps Hunter, smacking Brock over the head with a rolled-up Stars and Stripes. Brock flinches away from this, and Hunter continues: “You’re lucky he didn’t finish you off right there, though maybe he thought he did. You can’t handle getting shot very well, can you?”
“I dunno,” Brock says slowly, rubbing absently at the back of his head. He notices distantly that there is an IV in his arm. “That was my first time ...”
Hunter just ashes his cigarette impassively and stands up, handing Brock something small and cold to the touch. “Well, it won’t be your last. Learn to duck,” he suggests, then strides out of the room.
After he leaves, Brock looks down at what Hunter had placed in his palm. It’s a shell casing, and Brock immediately knows that it’s the one that had just been taken out of his body. It must have been intended as a memento, but it’s much more than that to Brock, so much more that he can’t even put it into words and gets a headache from thinking about it.
Sighing, he turns over to sleep, keeping the bullet in his hand, fingers curled around it.
--
November 1986. Ekaterinburg.
Hunter nudged Brock awake in a very gentle way by cracking him across the temple with the butt of his rifle.
Swearing loudly, Brock fell backwards out of the chair he had been resting in, tumbling unceremoniously onto the floor. Hunter leaned over, cherry end of his cigarette blazing in its holder, clamped firmly between his teeth.
“Goddammit Samson, do that shit a little more quietly, would you?! Jesus!”
Brock pushed himself up into a sitting position, rubbing at the back of his head. “Yeah,” he said irritably, biting his tongue. “What's going on?”
"What are you -- didn't they debrief you?" said Hunter, inflection rapid-fire and slurring.
“No,” said Brock, much more slowly than his mentor, “you didn't.”
Hunter looked at him, eyebrows knit, and even through the mirrored sunglasses, Brock could tell the colonel was squinting. “Of course I didn't, boy-o,” he said, turning back to the window and placing binoculars to the lenses of his glasses. “Need to know basis.”
Brock stared at the back of Hunter's head. He was here, why wouldn't he need to know why? Hunter's skull did not have the answers that Hunter himself was not giving, so Brock got up from the floor, righted his chair, and sat back down. He took out his cigarettes, all nearly crushed from when he had landed so heavily on them, and fished out one that was not broken to light it.
Hunter remained motionless at the window, focussed in his task, for what seemed like hours, not addressing Brock once. This is what stakeouts tended to be like, Brock had found: a lot of waiting, a lot of boredom, a lot of trying unsuccessfully to stay awake.
On his sixth cigarette, halfway through the third round of counting the ceiling tiles, Brock fell asleep again. Hunter didn’t wake him up this time; that task was given to Brock’s cigarette, still lit, falling out of his mouth and burning his hand.
“God -- ow,” said Brock, annoyed, swiping the cigarette to the floor, where he crushed it under his heavy boot.
When he finally looked up from scowling at the thing that had burned him, Hunter was watching him severely, cigarette holder held between his teeth at a stiff, irritated angle.
“Samson,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Were you sleeping again.”
“Not ... sleeping exactly,” said Brock slowly.
Hunter sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, sunglasses bouncing slightly as he squeezed his fingers together. “Listen, Samson -- I won’t be around to babysit you forever; you’ve got to take charge, man! Be alert! You have to be able to watch an empty house for days without sleep or food or moving. Or sleep! What? Don’t interrupt me.”
Brock had not been about to.
“This great nation is counting on you, boychick, to keep our enemies at bay, away from our borders, our children, our women,” Hunter continued.
“But we’re in their territory ...”
“Well, yes, of course we are; that’s what the -- good God, Samson, that is some advanced technique! You almost got me there,” said Hunter, grinning with avuncular pride. “There may be a promotion in this for you.” He turned back around to look out the window.
Brock just gaped at the back of his head for a few seconds, silent.
After a moment, without turning around, Hunter thrust a small, shoe box-shaped rectangle at him with the hand not holding his binoculars. Brock took it with some apprehension, looking back up at Hunter after giving the thing a quick once-over.
“Recording device,” Hunter clarified still without looking. Brock was beginning to suspect the colonel had eyes in the back of his head, like real ones, because he immediately explained further without seeing the look of doubt cross Brock’s face. “The Reds’ll be looking for the little ones. Big, outdated motherfuckers like that one’ll be easily overlooked.”
Brock still had his doubts, but did not voice them, only turned the thing over in his hands to inspect it closer.
“Coordinates two six three four,” instructed Hunter. Brock stood and headed briskly toward the door, pulling on his overcoat.
“And Samson,” Hunter called.
Brock turned back around; Hunter was looking at him intently. “Yeah.”
“Whatever you do, don’t light a cigarette; a good sniper can see a hot cherry for miles.”
Brock nodded, absently patting the half-empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket. He did not especially want to get shot tonight.
Hunter stood calmly for a moment, watching Brock, and then abruptly waved his arms around wildly. “Well? What the hell are you waiting for; get out there, goddammit! You’ve got a forty-five minute window so ske-fucking-daddle!”
--
Brock reached the coordinates two six three four in twenty minutes, making it there with relative speed by ducking into a few alleyways and thankfully not having any encounters with enemy patrols. He set the device, triple-checked its connections and double-checked the transmitter, then turned around to return to base. He made it half a block when he saw two uniformed officers turn the corner at the end of the street, heading toward him.
Brock quickly ducked into the narrow space between two buildings, pressing himself up against the greasy brownstone, and listened to the footsteps approaching, drawing closer and closer. He strained to pick up the conversation between the two men, but they were speaking too fast and too quietly for his limited Russian comprehension.
Cursing silently, Brock inched backwards along the wall until the voices were right on top of him, at which point he went still, holding his breath, not even daring to turn his eyes to watch the men pass. Oblivious, the two continued on until their voices started becoming quiet again. Brock held his position for several minutes until he couldn’t hear them anymore, then finally crept out from his hiding spot.
The men were nowhere in sight along the street; they must have turned the corner again. After a moment of hesitation, Brock returned to the recording device to make sure it had not been discovered. By his accounts it hadn’t, as it appeared to be undisturbed, though it was still incredibly conspicuous, just sitting openly in an enclave in the side of the building. Perhaps Hunter was right, since those officers had walked right past it and apparently it hadn’t been noticed.
Letting go of the breath he hadn’t realised he had still been holding, Brock cautiously started back down an alternate route back to base, mentally pulling up the map of the city as he carefully crept around and between buildings, keeping an ear and eye out for more patrols. Thankfully curfew had been implemented, so he didn’t have to worry about running into civilians.
He was about halfway back, having taken the longer and safer route, when, just as he rounded a corner, he was face-to-face with two patrolmen. Brock couldn’t tell if they were the same ones from earlier but it didn’t matter; all three men stared for a few long, silent seconds, completely thrown off guard.
“Shit,” Brock said, then dove into the cover of a nearby alleyway as one officer opened fire, the other fumbling for his gun.
Scrambling to his feet, Brock charged down the alley to find better cover, and he could hear the men screaming at each other in Russian, again too quickly for him to understand. He was dead, he was sure he was going to be dead in a minute, maybe two, and his heart was pounding and his head was racing and god damn it this alley was a dead end, why didn’t he remember it was a dead end from the maps?
Whirling back around, Brock looked frantically for anything to hide behind, but there was nothing; just some small boxes and a fire escape mounted to the wall of one of the buildings trapping him, its ladder pulled up and nearly inaccessible. He swore again and could hear the two men getting closer, a flashlight beam slicing through the dark air as they neared him.
“Stoj!” one of the officers shouted, but Brock couldn’t see which one; the light was blinding him. But he could hear them; they skidded to a halt and he could swear he heard their hearts beating. They were afraid, they weren’t soldiers like him. They were just policemen.
But still, they were in his way.
Brock lunged forward quicker than the patrolmen could react, grabbing the face of one of them, his thumb and middle finger plunging smoothly into eye sockets. This one must have been the one holding the flashlight because it fell to the ground, beam swinging wildly, and broke apart on impact with the pavement, scattering batteries and bits of metal and plunging the alley into darkness. Brock could hear the man screaming but it only inspired further rage in him; he kept his hand on his face and lifted him up by it.
The other patrolman had just snapped out of his shock and fumbled with the gun still at his hip, aiming shakily at Brock. He got a shot off that just missed Brock’s shoulder, but it didn’t matter because Brock just threw the now-blinded man off to the side and grabbed the wrist of the other, wrenching it up. A few more shots were fired, but they went straight up or otherwise into the air; Brock could hear a few bullets ricocheting off the fire escape. He could also hear the man screaming as his bones snapped and splintered.
Soon the gun stopped firing, though the last bullet must have hit the fire escape in just the right way, because the ladder came swinging down. Brock glanced up at it and took a step back, letting go of the wrist just in time for the ladder to come crashing down to the pavement directly on top of the patrolman’s skull, splitting him sagittally and spraying the alley (and Brock) with blood and bone and bits of brain matter.
Brock observed this passively for a moment, then lit a cigarette. He stepped over to the other policeman, who was moaning wordlessly, half-delirious from pain and blood loss, and lifted him up by his blood-soaked jacket collar. He was about to just slam the man’s skull against the wall when something metallic caught the starlight up on the rooftop. He looked up toward it instinctively, and saw a young woman, dressed in black, her red ponytail swaying slightly in the wind. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing, and when he finally did, his eyes widened and he dropped the man, who landed with a loud thud and a faint moan.
It’s only the second time he’d seen her but he immediately recognised her; it’s the same woman who had left him pinned to a bed in a burning hotel room a month before. She’s even more beautiful now than she was that night, and Brock could hear his pulse in his ears, louder than the policemen’s nervous heartbeats had been.
Without knowing why, Brock took a hesitant step toward her, even though she was up on the roof, hand slightly outstretched. She just smiled down at him, then looked through the telescopic lens of the Kalashnikov she had in front of her, finger on the trigger guard.
Brock blinked, cigarette falling out of his mouth. Why had he not noticed that?
The woman told him something in Russian but she’s too far away for him to understand, and it doesn’t matter anyway because then there was a loud crack and then Brock couldn’t see anymore, blinded with pain, but he thought he was falling backwards and then his head hit the pavement and then he didn’t think anything anymore.
--
It’s light outside when Brock finally wakes up, and he’s not in the alley anymore but he’s not at base either, but Hunter is at his bedside, smoking despite the fact that they are obviously in a hospital. Noticing that he had woken up, Hunter leans toward him, breathing smoke in his face. Brock can’t tell if he’s doing this intentionally.
“Someone got you good, boy. Didn’t I tell you not to light up a cigarette?”
Brock squints a little, somewhat disoriented, and shrugs. “Yeah, I guess, but I --”
“But nothing,” snaps Hunter, smacking Brock over the head with a rolled-up Stars and Stripes. Brock flinches away from this, and Hunter continues: “You’re lucky he didn’t finish you off right there, though maybe he thought he did. You can’t handle getting shot very well, can you?”
“I dunno,” Brock says slowly, rubbing absently at the back of his head. He notices distantly that there is an IV in his arm. “That was my first time ...”
Hunter just ashes his cigarette impassively and stands up, handing Brock something small and cold to the touch. “Well, it won’t be your last. Learn to duck,” he suggests, then strides out of the room.
After he leaves, Brock looks down at what Hunter had placed in his palm. It’s a shell casing, and Brock immediately knows that it’s the one that had just been taken out of his body. It must have been intended as a memento, but it’s much more than that to Brock, so much more that he can’t even put it into words and gets a headache from thinking about it.
Sighing, he turns over to sleep, keeping the bullet in his hand, fingers curled around it.