SHATTERED WORLD II: RUSSIA
CHAPTER ONE
Red Square, Moscow, nine days after the opening
of the Russian portal
Ten flesh eaters broke through the line and swarmed General
Budenny. They were even more frightening up close, like the zombies from
American horror films, emaciated corpses with gray leathery skin and dull,
milky white eyes. They also had a taste for human flesh. These were the
tortured souls condemned to eternal damnation that now walked the Earth because
of the portal, the gate to another dimension. Unlike their movie counterparts,
a bite from one of these demons would not turn the victim into a flesh eater,
although that didn’t mean enough of these creatures couldn’t strip a man down
to his bones if given a chance.
Budenny raised his 9mm Makarov pistol at the flesh eater
rushing toward him and fired three rounds into its face. A blue eddy of light,
the creature’s lifeforce, separated from its body and drifted skyward. The
carcass went limp, forward momentum carrying it a few feet until it collapsed
and tumbled onto the pavement. The other flesh eaters maneuvered around the
body and swarmed the general. He shifted his aim to the next closest and fired
three more rounds. The bullets punched into its chest and head, freeing its
lifeforce and dropping the corporeal shell. Budenny continued his attack,
taking down two more flesh eaters before the breach of his Makarov locked in
the open position.
Major Rozhenko stepped in front of Budenny, his AK-47
automatic rifle raised. The major fired into the heads of the last six
onrushing flesh eaters, bringing each down. The last fell in front of the major
and rolled. Rozhenko stepped back so the carcass wouldn’t knock him over,
ejected the weapon’s empty magazine, and loaded a fresh one.
Rozhenko’s eyes pleaded with his commanding officer to end
this carnage. “You have to order a retreat.”
“No,” barked the general.
“But….”
“We can do this.” Budenny added under his breath, “We must.”
“We” referred to the five thousand soldiers of the Russian
Ground Forces surging across Red Square to close the portal that had opened in
front of the State Historical Museum in the wake of the scientific accident at
the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, seventy miles south of
Moscow. The portal measured seventy feet in diameter. The bottom five feet lay
buried beneath ground level, melting the surrounding stones and forming a
trough. Its circumference shimmered, creating a distorted boundary between the
two realms. An endless column of flesh eaters stumbled through, their numbers
stretching back into the other dimension as far as the eye could see. They had
been pouring into Red Square and spreading out across Moscow since the portal
first opened.
The electromagnetic pulse generated during its formation had
burnt out all electronic circuitry for thousands of miles, rendering most of
the military equipment useless. Not that it mattered. Budenny had scoured
armories throughout the Urals to find “old school” weapons to arm his
troops—AK-47 Kalashnikov automatic rifles, Makarov semi-automatic pistols, and
a dozen TPO-70 heavy infantry flamethrowers left over from the Cold War. He
also possessed four ten-man squads, each armed with a Special Atomic Demolition
Munition, more commonly known as a “suitcase bomb,” a portable low-yield
nuclear weapon they would use to blast shut the portal. The general had thought
his command would be able to deal with this threat.
To paraphrase von Moltke, no battle plan ever survived first
contact with the enemy.
The flesh eaters threatened Budenny’s force by their sheer
numbers. As his troops advanced up Red Square, they ran into a seemingly
impenetrable wall of the demons that slowed their pace. For every flesh eater
brought down, twice as many took its place. It had taken nearly an hour to move
only a few hundred feet. Their left flank was anchored by Lenin’s Mausoleum in
front of the Kremlin, with the line of advance stretching across Red Square
before swerving north in front of Gum Department Store where the right flank
pushed three hundred feet ahead. Two of the nuclear squads had fallen in behind
this surge to get closer to the portal. Budenny had used his left flank to
distract the bulk of the flesh eaters and give his right flank a chance. As a
hedge, he had ordered the remaining two nuclear squads to maneuver toward the
mausoleum to make an end run if the opportunity arose. Budenny hoped this would
work because his men had already expended more than half their ammunition. Once
they were out, the flesh eaters would overwhelm them.
A commotion came from the troops off to his left. Budenny
focused his attention beyond the portal toward the northeast corner of the
Kremlin, expecting to see more flesh eaters bearing down on them. Rozhenko
expressed the disbelief both men felt when he muttered, “You’ve got to be
kidding.”
A dragon had emerged from behind the Kremlin wall and
centered itself between the citadel and the State Historical Museum. It did not
resemble the mythical creatures from the childhood fairy tales his grandmother
had told him about dragons protecting the Motherland from foreign invaders.
This monster had the shape of a lizard, albeit one that stretched two hundred
feet from nose to tail and did not have wings. Its colorization was a deep red
streaked with tints of orange. The scales were as thick as armored plates, especially
around the head where the chin, nose, and brows extended outward in bony
structures, and along the chest and spine where the skin peeked into thick
ridges that glowed crimson. The beast crouched as if to lunge yet remained
still and observed the battle through a pair of glossy, pitch black eyes.
Rozhenko moved beside Budenny. “General, we have to fall
back now while we still have a chance.”
Before Budenny could respond, two soldiers, each carrying a
flamethrower, raced up on the dragon’s flanks and doused it in flames, the one
on the right aiming for its head, the other focusing on its massive chest. The
behemoth reared up on its hind legs and screeched in agony. When the attack
ceased, the dragon had not even been singed. It dropped onto all four legs,
lowered the front part of its torso, and leaned its head forward. The glowing
ridges along its chest and spine shone in intensity. Budenny sensed the panic
that raced through his men.
Rather than fire, the dragon exhaled a cloud of lime green
smoke tinted with thousands of crystals. The behemoth swung its head from side
to side, producing a cloud that stretched for five hundred feet and expanded
above Red Square, forming above the heads of flesh eaters and humans. It
floated for several seconds before settling onto the troops. When the first
crystal touched a hard surface, it ignited a flame no larger than the head of a
lit match, which then kindled the lime green gas around it. The cloud became a
raging inferno that burned itself out within seconds, incinerating flesh eaters
and Budenny’s men, leaving thousands of charred corpses sprawled across the
square. A few remaining green crystals smoldered on the blackened skeletons and
scorched pavement.
The left flank of Budenny’s front panicked and broke into a
horde of terrified men, including one of the nuclear squads, all of whom
dropped their weapons and ran for the Moskva River. Colonel Yurchenko, who led
the other nuclear squad, headed for shelter behind Lenin’s Mausoleum. Budenny,
Rozhenko, and a dozen soldiers followed, stopping only when they reached the
relative safety of the tomb’s southern wall.
Several of his men stood their ground inside the square,
many aiming for the ridges along the dragon’s chest and spine. The behemoth
glared at them. A guttural growl emanated from deep within its throat. One of
the flamethrowers circled to its right and released a stream of fire that
engulfed its head. The growl became an agonized screech. Budenny braced himself
for another gas attack. Instead, the dragon lifted its left leg and smashed its
foot on top of the flamethrower. The fuel tank exploded, splashing liquid fire
on the nearby troops. Those not burnt alive were crushed as the behemoth
lowered its head to the pavement and swung it sideways, flinging a score of
Budenny’s men into the air to be smashed against the Kremlin walls. One brave
comrade rushed forward and emptied his AK-47 into the dragon’s face, only to be
scooped up in its mouth. As the man screamed in pain and terror, the dragon
lifted its head and swallowed. The final shreds of discipline among Budenny’s
left flank collapsed and a panicked escape ensued. Surging ahead, the dragon
rampaged through the fleeing men, crushing them under its weight or hurling
them aside.
The right flank remained intact and took advantage of the
confusion. Moving toward the center of Red Square where the dragon’s fire cloud
had cleared away the flesh eaters, the other two nuclear squads, protected by
one hundred troops, raced for the portal. A handful of new flesh eaters had
passed through it to replace those wiped out, more than enough for the Russians
to handle. They had closed to within fifty feet when a roar came from
Nikolskaya Street, which ran alongside Gum Department Store and entered Red
Square near Kazan Cathedral. A second dragon thundered into the plaza. The
ridges along its chest and spine glowed crimson. Upon seeing the humans, it
exhaled a lime green cloud over the advancing soldiers. The two nuclear squads
rushed ahead, trying to plant their devices in the few remaining moments left
to them. The crystals struck a hard surface and ignited. In seconds, the cloud
became an inferno that incinerated another hundred troops and a score of flesh
eaters. An explosion erupted from the fire cloud as one of the nuclear devices
misfired, detonating with the equivalent of between ten and fifteen tons of
high explosives.
Budenny and the others ducked behind the wall moments before
the shock wave slammed into the mausoleum. The entire structure shook. Chunks
of red marble broke loose and fell on them. Budenny felt his internal organs
compress, fearing for a moment that they might rupture. The mausoleum took the
brunt of the force, and the general suffered nothing more severe than a ringing
in his ears. Leaning with his back against the wall, he shouted, “Is everyone
okay?”
“Yes,” Rozhenko responded. Budenny didn’t hear the words but
instead read his aide’s lips.
“Wait here.” The general made his way to the corner of the
mausoleum and checked on the situation in Red Square. The blast had devastated
everything within a two-hundred-foot radius. Those soldiers on the right flank
not killed outright had been crushed or maimed from the concussion. Every flesh
eaters in the square had been ripped apart, the blue light of their life forces
mixing with black smoke as both drifted skyward. Even the dragon had not come
through unscathed. The blast had thrown it against the front façade of Gum
where it lay amongst a pile of debris. A gaping wound in its abdomen oozed
blood and the torn remnants of internal organs. It tried to raise its legs and
swing its tail, an effort that ended in a pathetic mewl before the behemoth
went limp. For all the destruction it caused, the blast had one positive
effect. It had cleared away all obstacles between them and the portal.
“Yurchenko,” Budenny ordered. “Move while you have the
chance.”
The colonel did not waste time responding. He circled
Budenny and rushed into Red Square, knowing the others would follow. The
general watched as the squad raced toward the portal, confident they would make
it.
As Yurchenko’s squad approached the
portal, half a dozen flesh eaters wandered through onto their side, only to be
taken down by a barrage of automatic weapons fire. The squad stopped twenty
feet from the opening, most providing suppressing fire against the demons that
came through. Yurchenko slid off his backpack, lowered it onto the pavement,
and unzipped it to reveal a cylindrical-shaped device eighteen inches in length
by four inches in diameter. An LED display and keypad were built into one side.
He would set the timer for two minutes, place it against the portal, and then
get as far away as possible before the one kiloton explosion detonated and, in
theory, blasted shut the portal. Yurchenko unlocked the keypad. The six spaces
on the LED device lit up in a series of 0s. Once he typed in 120, he would—
A distorted roar shot across Red Square. The way his squad
backed away from the portal told Yurchenko in which direction the sound came. A
third dragon raced toward them from the other dimension. It rushed the opening,
though still a thousand feet distant, crushing or pushing aside the flesh
eaters heading in the same direction. Another roar came from behind him near
St. Basil’s. The first dragon had reversed direction, abandoning its pursuit of
the fleeing humans to defend the portal. It had already approached to within
one hundred feet, the ridges along its chest and spine a radiant crimson. The
behemoth stopped, crouched low to the ground, and exhaled a cloud of lime green
gas.
Yurchenko had a few seconds at most. He set the timer on the
LED display to 1. Picking up the device, Yurchenko stepped up to the portal and
initiated the countdown.
The first crystal touched one of Yurchenko’s men, erupting
into a spark that ignited the expanding cloud.
The LED counter switched to 0.
Budenny shut his eyes and ducked
behind Lenin’s Mausoleum as blinding light flashed across Red Square. Rozhenko
scrambled over and threw himself on top of his commanding officer.
The dragon reared back, screeching as wisps of smoke formed
on the skin and scales exposed to the fireball. A moment later, the shock wave
slammed into the behemoth, tearing it apart and flinging the shattered carcass
across the square to land in a bloody heap in front of St. Basil’s.
The same shock wave slammed into the mausoleum, shearing off
the top layers of marble and the reviewing stand, and dropping the fragments
onto those hidden along the southern facade. Rozhenko groaned when a chunk fell
on him. Budenny did not hear the major, being only vaguely cognizant of his
surroundings for the next minute, sliding in and out of consciousness. When he
regained his senses, he heard a low rumbling, and immediately knew what caused
the sound.
“Rozhenko, get up. It’s over.”
The major did not respond. Budenny reached up to shake his
shoulder. A warm liquid covered his palm. Rozhenko’s body slid down the
general’s back and onto the marble debris surrounding them. Blood flowed from
the torn skin around his crushed skull. His blank eyes stared up. Budenny
placed two fingers over the major’s lids and closed them. When the general
stood, he could not see out of his right eye and the skin on that side of his
face felt warm and numb. He would worry about his wounds later. Right now, he
needed to confirm that Yurchenko had closed the portal. Placing his left hand
against the mausoleum’s wall, Budenny stumbled through the debris until he
reached the corner of structure.
Smoke and dust shrouded most of Red Square. The rumbling
came from a cloud that billowed skyward, the top forming into its familiar
mushroom shape. Budenny could not see the section of Red Square where the
portal once stood. He leaned against the wall and waited as the dust settled.
His heart sank when he saw something shimmer on the other side of the smoke.
The blast had not affected the portal. The explosion had penetrated the opening
because the dragon and the closest flesh eaters on the other side had been cut
down. The portal, however, remained intact. He had lost almost five thousand
men to seal off this portal and had been unsuccessful.
Budenny slid down the wall and sat on the rubble from the
mausoleum. He laid his head back and closed his eyes, wishing he had died along
with the rest of his men. His failure meant that nothing would stop the demons
from flooding into Moscow.
Shattered World II: Russia is available in print and on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
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