1850-01: A Survivor's Story (Part Six)
Pavel and the rest of Platoon 403 embark on a mission to explore the electrical institute.
This is part of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to go to the series’ page.
Wet, dirty snow crunched under Pavel’s boots as he and the rest of Platoon 403 trudged through the shattered streets of Hegeliopolis. In the hour since they left the gates of Nova Espero behind, a crust of one to two inches had formed on the already icy pavement. The precipitation had increased in intensity, piling onto Pavel’s shoulders and sending a shockwave of frigid snowmelt down his back.
With some food in his stomach and knowledge that his wife and children were safe beyond strictly guarded ramparts, Pavel gave himself time to truly look around for the first time. In that dazed and panicked state on Deka 28, 1766, Pavel had paid little attention to the re-arrangements in the streetscape that the War had brought. Old, familiar facades of upscale downtown shopping arcades, trendy nightclubs, and fashionable restaurants had been rendered into rubble more reminiscent of burned-out meteorites than former pieces of architecture. Trees in medians had been reduced to mangled stumps, their branches and leaves long reduced to atomized carbon now dimming the sun in the sky above.
As they neared the Great Imperial Way, the buildings themselves began to more closely resemble the tree stumps. Great stone bastions of the military, the bureaucracy, and the church had been reduced to ashen heaps and feeble colonnades. The way itself had always been an impossibly wide chasm separating the medieval Old City from the modern New City, but the near whiteout conditions made it appear to be an endless plain. Were he not walking alongside Corny Atwater, he feared that he could become lost amid the blizzard.
“So, you never really told me what happened after everything,” Corny said, breaking the silence made heavier by the insulating snow.
“I was working at the library when it happened,” Pavel replied, huffing and puffing, quickly remembering with clarity how much walking through the cold sucked the energy out of him. It brought back memories of meandering through the snow drifts to get to the one-room schoolhouse back in Kravozhodwo.
In between breaths, Pavel regaled his former mentor with his woes of the past two years. Hobbling through the firestorm-ravaged remains of Hegeliopolis, finding his family in his old basement. The different camps, settlements, and roving gangs that all provided some temporary protection. The Tzarkowskis “going-it-alone” periods that frequently ended with an all-too-close brush with death.
From his experiences sitting around countless campfires listening to the stories of other survivors, Pavel knew that his story was not particularly unique or interesting. And yet Corny patiently listened.
“What about you?” Pavel said, the sweat mixing with the slush in his increasingly saturated coat. “You weren’t even around when everything happened… you just disappeared one day a couple summers back.”
“Well,” Corny said, tutting his teeth. “I bet you can guess if you really try. I was at Fort Fortuna when the bombs fell.”
Fort Fortuna. Truthfully, Pavel could have guessed, but he didn’t particularly want to imagine it. “The Cinderblock” as it was colloquially called, Fort Fortuna stood on a spit jutting out into the Great Western Sea at the end of Hegelipolis’ peninsula. It had been constructed with seaward-facing cannons when the greatest military woes of Hegeliopolis were Ylrikian men-of-war emerging from the distant horizon. Around a decade back, the Empire had transformed it into a prison for the growing population of individuals held for political crimes – liberal professors, republican operatives, newspaper editors who refused to toe the imperial line. Rumors of torture and sadistic guards emanated from that place like a high-powered radio wave. Pavel didn’t know if they were true or another propaganda technique from the government to keep the “radicals” on their best behavior.
“After the war, the guards just up and left,” he continued. “They left the cells open. And just left!”
“You sound disappointed,” Pavel replied.
Dr. Atwater stared ahead, thinking for a brief moment.
“You know what,” he shouted. “I fucking am. Those bastards beat us to a pulp, whipped our feet until they were raw, and soaked our bedsheets in coyote piss. If they really thought we were dangerous enough to treat us that way, wouldn’t they have just shot us in the head?”
Pavel had only really seen him heated that way one other time. When the newly appointed dean of history announced the new “patriotism guidelines” for the department’s publications and coursework, he could’ve sworn Corny was going to have a heart attack.
“And they just left the fucking cells open,” Corny said in a huff. He had spent nearly a year and a half at the Cinderblock.
“I don’t know where they went,” Corny added, raising his shoulders in a shrug and then slapping his hands at his side. “I remember the fires in town. There isn’t a chance in hell that they made it through all of that.” Glancing over at Pavel, Dr. Atwater realized he was speaking to a living counterpoint.
“I mean present company excluded,” he finished, “there’s no fucking way they made it through all of that.” Pavel noted a hint of fear in his voice with that final note. Some might see confronting their torturer outside the walls of their prison as an opportunity for revenge, especially amid the anarchy of the apocalypse. But Pavel suspected that such a circumstance would only cause Corny to relive a million nightmares.
“We’re here,” Lieutenant Suarez barked over the howling wind. The sorry squad of frozen ragamuffins shivered in the shadow of the hulking Dr. Erich V. Dolemayer Imperial Electrical Engineering Institute. A concrete mass with darkened windows gored into the side, the institute proved an imposing structure. “Let’s head inside,” Suarez said as he calmly stepped over the shattered glass of the sliding door. “Beck, you take point. Everyone, keep an eye out for any holdouts.”
The crew passed through the harsh, gray lobby in a breeze. The receptionists’ desk and the rotting entranceway rug were covered in a fine layer of snow, each errant gust pushing in a blast of white-gray powder. A modernist sculpture dominated the central hall, depicting a figure touching the ground with a bolt of lightning striking his upward-facing index finger.
Kara brandished her revolver, passing ahead of the rest of the platoon. Shining a light down the stairs leading to the basement, she led the way towards the institute’s subterranean library.
At the foot of the stairs was an ice-cold puddle of melted snow. Peering upwards, Kara and the others could see that water was continually leaking from the paltry street-level window above.
“Shit,” Kara said with exasperation as she shined her light down the library’s wall, revealing multiple windows leaking water directly onto the bookshelves below.
A few yards away, a clatter erupted. The members of 403 drew their weapons and aimed at a pile of fallen ceiling tiles. Pavel’s chest grew tight as he speculated what lay beyond. Suarez motioned forward to Boulanger, and the two slowly approached the source of the noise.
Suddenly, a rat of some ungodly proportions burst from the rubble, screaming between Suarez and Boulanger, darting past the rest of the platoon. Pavel let out an involuntary yelp as the dog-sized abomination scrambled up the steps.
A moment of silence passed before Corny let out a cackle, slapping Pavel on the back.
Lieutenant Suarez, unfazed, gave out his orders. “Alright everyone, you have your lists. Find as many of the volumes as you can,” Suarez ordered.
“Yeah, if they’re not moldy heaps by now,” Kara grumbled into her respirator.
Platoon 403 spread out among the stacks. A precious Journal on Electrical Grid Organization here, a slightly damp copy of Dr. Tristan de Champres’ Photovoltaic Cells and Hydroponics there. Each went into a plasticine sleeve for protection from further harm from the elements.
“Hey Pavel, check this out.”
Dr. Atwater led him over to a rank of carrels, each with an attached safe. They likely contained the notes, papers, and other belongings of long-dead graduate students.
“It looks like the guards didn’t pop any of them open,” Corny said, eyeing up and down the aisle. “Maybe it wasn’t worth the effort.”
“Watch this,” Pavel replied.
He had learned this trick from a less than noble classmate at the Imperial University, and had only used it once when he stupidly left his apartment keys in a friend’s safe. These carrel strongboxes were so cheaply made that they could be easily opened by jamming a flathead screwdriver behind the locking mechanism and simply popping it forwards.
Whipping out a weathered multitool from his breast pocket, Pavel jimmyed the lock for a second or two before hearing a metallic, internal clunk.
“Holy shit Pavel,” Corny said with a smile, “I never knew you were cool.”
Pavel and Dr. Atwater went up and down the carrels, breaking each safe open. They primarily contained notebooks, miscellaneous unhelpful readers, and sticky notes for meetings that had long been cancelled.
“Whoa ho ho!” Corny exclaimed as he reached into one of the safes. “Look at this!”
Dr. Atwater pulled out a darkened bottle of wine covered in a light film of dust. Perhaps a sort of contraband kept by one of the notoriously overworked engineering students for emergency use during late-night study sessions.
“It’s, uh.. ah, Vino de Concordia,” Corny said in a cartoonish Ferrian accent, raising his pinched thumb, index, and middle fingers in the air. “Concordia… hey boss, isn’t that where you’re from?”
Emerging from the bookcases, Lieutenant Suarez took the bottle from Dr. Atwater’s hands. “Viñedo Prats… that’s a good label,” he said, raising the bottle in the air before shoving it into his bag.
“Hey! We found it!” Corny protested.
“And we can all have a glass,” Suarez replied, walking back to the shelves, “once we find what we’re here for!”
Corny bore the look of an aggrieved child. “You know what pisses me off the most? He’s telling the truth,” he grumbled. “I almost wish he’d just drink it.”
Row by row, shelf by shelf, rack by rack, Platoon 403 slowly plied their way through the Phyllis J. Coleman Engineering Library’s stacks. The other carrel safes proved fruitless, though a professor’s office did yield a plastic-wrapped copy of Electrical Infrastructure in Undeveloped Areas. Together, the squad managed to cross off sixteen of the thirty-one textbooks, journals, and other valuable artifacts on Dr. Beck’s list. Given the firestorms that immediately followed the War, finding so many paper documents was an archivists’ triumph.
They celebrated with a late lunch, sitting at a table likely once occupied by huddles of engineers sketching notes and schematics into overstuffed folios. True to his word, Suarez popped open the wine bottle, pouring a generous serving into each of the scavengers’ aluminum cups.
Pavel had never been a connoisseur of fine wines. The various particularities were lost on him – to the child of working class Zolds, wine was wine. Given that his last exposure to alcohol was an old campmate’s crude attempt at what he called “meadshine”, however, he found the Vino de Concordia to be exceptionally delicious.
They paired the vintage with packed rations of rye bread, chunks of peppered potatoes, and ham slices produced from canned, “pig product” manufactured before the War. Like all of the food in Nova Espero it was spare. But eating fresh potatoes grown in what was once the Imperial Garden was certainly better than nothing.
Over their meal, the members of Platoon 403 gave Pavel some helpful information on surviving in Nova Espero that the polished, government-approved presentations of the Aid Corps wouldn’t have necessarily shared. Kara told him that the Night Markets on the weekends, where off-duty guards and licensed merchants sold “nonessential” items seized during initial sweeps of the ruins, were a solid spot to get everything from cigarettes to watches to toys for the kids. Corny said the cooks at the cafeteria on Sutherland Street were the nicest, but the food at the one on Hornby was the most palatable. Frederic warned him to never, under any circumstances, head over to Delancey Street on the north side of town. That’s where the Public Health unit cremated the bodies they found during their sweeps.
Suarez spoke very little. A man of few words to begin with, he was focusing the entirety of his attention on the Vino de Concordia. As the others offered more insider knowledge, Pavel noticed the sweet and somber look of satisfaction on the Lieutenant’s face as he no doubt recalled the tastes of home. He could sympathize. Pavel still dreamed about the chewy, gingerbread pierniki from his father’s bakery back in Kravozhodwo.
Soon enough, they had finished their rations and the final drops of wine had been drained. Pavel, Dr. Beck, Dr. Atwater, Frederic, and Lt. Suarez packed up and prepared to head out. The draft from the shattered cellar windows provided a preview for the cold that awaited them outside.
The earlier blizzard had given way to that clear, biting cold that always follows it. Despite the perpetual, gray-brown haze above, the particulates in the air appeared to be weighed down by the fallen snow. Platoon 403 made muffled footsteps as they trudged back to the City’s gates.
Nearing the former Imperial Way and separated from the Lieutenant by some distance, Pavel gave Corny a nudge..
“So the lieutenant… what’s up with him?” He even asked the one thing that few true introverts ask of another silent figure: “Why is he so quiet?”
“Oh Suarez? I think he’s just like that,” Corny replied. “He was like that at the Cinderblock too.”
“He was at Fort Fortuna?”
“Oh yeah. Apparently he was a bigshot in some underground republican outfit over in Ferria,” Corny continued. “He had already been there for a year or two by the time I got in. At least that’s what he told me. The man isn’t exactly an open book.”
Soon enough, the gates of Nova Espero appeared ahead. The mid-afternoon sunlight rapidly gave way to twilight, whose onset appeared to grow earlier and earlier with each passing day. Platoon 403 made it through the City’s threshold just as the exterior watchlights clicked on.
Returning his weapons and handing over the documents he recovered to Kara, Pavel bid farewell to his colleagues.
“No one died. I’d say it was a stellar first day, wouldn’t you?” Corny said.
Pavel chuckled. “I would.”
“Take care buddy… say hey to the family for me,” Corny finished as Pavel waved and began to walk back down Renzi Street.
Take care. Say hey to the family. What a wonderful sentiment to make a comeback. Were it not for the boarded up windows, the pain of his feet in his too-large boots, and distant, unmistakable smell of burning flesh, Pavel could pretend for an instant that he had just met Corny for dinner at an upscale Old City eaterie.
When Pavel arrived back at the barracks, Filip and Elizabeta were getting ready for dinner.
“How was your day?” Pavel asked his wife, as he pulled his son in for a hug. The daily check-in. Another cherished rediscovery.
“Work was fine… I visited Anna at the sanatorium. She seems to be having fun with the other kids.”
Pavel asked about the hospital in a way that any good father would: did the doctors seem professional, was the building clean and orderly, did everything seem sterile? Not as though they could just whisk Anna away to another facility if this one proved to be dire – maybe this was just the instinct of a pre-War Hegeliopolitan, accustomed to multiple, well-appointed hospitals and clinics in short proximity.
The Tzarkowskis proceeded to the dining room for their supper, again a potato-heavy meal accompanied by some of the first products of the City’s fledgling fishing industry.
The meager fire once again crackled to life.
It was warm.
This is Part Six of a series centered on Pavel Tzarkowski’s experiences as a survivor in early Nova Espero entitled “1850-01.” Follow this link to read Part Seven.