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  I jerked to move to the door… and the next moment I froze. I didn't know which apartment he lived in - or whether he even lived in the same part of the building as me. Looking for him was a waste of time - there was no way I'd make it in time. There was only one thing I could do.

  "Pavel!!" - I screamed at the top of my lungs, startling Natasha. "Pavel! Wake up, goddamnit!"

  The man must've been sleeping - he did say that he was going to pull an all-nighter on his shift. How sound was his sleep? What were the chances that he'd hear me while sleeping after being awake for almost twenty-four hours?

  "Pavel!" - Natasha helped me, shouting as loud as she could. She had no clue who Pavel was - she never had the chance to meet him. "Pavel, wake up!"

  "Pavel!" - I shouted again. "Does anyone here know Pavel? A former policeman, from the militia! He has a gun on him!"

  There was no answer. Someone else in the distance cried his name out, too.

  "Does anyone know him, goddamnit?!" - I screamed into the wind, demanded to know. "He's with the militia! He was walking around just yesterday, letting everyone know about us! Pavel, the former policeman!" - I screamed, glancing down at the beast. It was some five meters away from the old man, who froze and clung to the wall, too afraid to even move. Perhaps he was hoping that the beast would leave him alone if he played dead?

  "You should know that yourself!" - someone asked in return.

  "I've seen him!" - someone shouted. I turned my head: where did that voice come from? Where was that person who could point us toward the old man's only savior?

  "Lyuda! Go call Pavel! He's your neighbor, isn't he?" - the same voice screamed. Where was it?! I was ready to go there myself, even if it was a different stairwell, the creature on the roof be damned! I just needed to know where he was!

  "I'm going, going!" - a female voice replied. Why hadn't she gone for him when I was describing him!? Surely, she should have recognized who I was talking about!

  The beast was two meters away from the man. Someone dropped a frying pan onto it and it landed straight onto its head. The beast wailed - not from pain, but from annoyance. Its eye roamed around, trying to find where the strike came from, but then it turned its gaze back toward the man in front of it.

  He finally let go of the rope and collapsed to the ground. Using the wall as a support, he hopped along it, away from the beast. The man was trying to say something, but at that point, his speech was already unintelligible.

  "Go to the other side of the building!" - I shouted at him. "There are small windows that lead to the basement!"

  The basement, the basement, of course! Why didn't I think of it while I was calling out Pavel's name? He most likely spent the entire night there! If there was a place where I could find him, it would be there!

  The beast didn't pursue him, instead just gazed at the man. For a moment I thought that, perhaps, it wasn't hungry. Maybe it only attacked when provoked?

  With a mighty leap forward, the creature put an end to that line of thought. Natasha gasped and covered her eyes like a kid.

  It smashed the man against the wall with a fist producing enough force to make him cough out blood. People screamed. Not giving the man a chance to recover, it grabbed him by the leg and sped off into the town, pulling him with such ease one could think it was a paper doll in the beast's hands.

  Throughout all of his way there, the man screamed. Anyone would if they were in his shoes, but the worst thing was, those weren't the screams of terror. The man was hollering at the top of his lungs because of the unbearable pain – as he was being pulled away the broken femur was thrashed across the ground, sending waves of pain throughout his whole body.

  Even after they vanished from sight we could still hear his cries in the distance. For a full minute, his cries echoed across town, until they were suddenly cut off mid-exhale.

  Natasha winced, hang her head, and walked away. Some people were crying, others were discussing what had just happened in hushed voices.

  We could've saved him, I thought. We could've saved him had we been dedicated to our goal - the goal we had chosen for ourselves. Had Pavel heard our cries for help?

  I grit my teeth and tried to calm down. It had the same effect as trying to protect yourself from a bomb by covering yourself with a blanket - a second later I slammed my fists onto the counter, quickly put on my clothes, and headed for the exit. It didn't matter to me whether the man was to blame or not - Pavel was going to get a piece of my mind.

  CHAPTER 13 – Despair

  The woman who claimed that she'd known him lived in an apartment on the third stairwell. I knew that the roofs were the dangerous territory now, but I didn't care. I was going to step outside for less than thirty seconds - if the unknown creature was waiting for me there, then it meant that it was simply not my day.

  A step outside, a quick rush toward the door in the distance - and I was back to safety. It almost felt like going from one section of a sunken submarine to the other through the ocean. I involuntarily held my breath as I ran.

  Once inside, I rushed to the fourth floor - where the woman had lived. The people were already outside of their apartments, discussing the earlier events. I only caught a bit of their conversation.

  "What a crazed old man. Why did he even venture outside? He should've waited for the army to come to rescue us," - a man argued, clicking his tongue and crossing his hands.

  "Don't be like that. He wouldn't do that if he weren't desperate. Oh, dear, what a horrible way to go..." - another man argued, shaking his head.

  "Everything is according to God's will - so it is said" - a woman proclaimed with a benign and wise look on her face.

  "Where does Pavel live?" - I interrupted them.

  "What Pavel? Who the hell are you?" - she countered with a question of her own, suddenly losing her temper. "What apartment are you from?"

  "Pavel! The policeman!" - I screamed at her. The shock of the man's death and the frustration of Pavel's inaction were still fresh in my mind, making me act out. "I was calling for him through the window!"

  "Oh, so that was you, making all that ruckus," - she noted with some cold indifference. "Way to make a scene."

  "A scene? Pavel had a gun! He could've warded off that creature!" - while I was fuming I was taken aback by her calmness. How could she be so indifferent to that man's fate?

  "Are you from the militia?" - she inquired.

  "Yes, I am" - I told her, puffing my chest out. She ought to know that I wasn’t just a pedestrian, making a scene – I was one of the few people who put everyone’s well-being above my own. Not that I needed an ego boost, but perhaps it would make her shut up. "What about it?"

  "Hmph! Figured as much. Should've done your job better" – she said bluntly. I started seeing red.

  "Pavel lives here" - I heard a female voice to the left of me. Looking there, I expected to see another indifferent face… But all I saw was a concern.

  A woman stood at the door of her apartment, giving me a careful look. "You said you were from the militia, right?" - she asked me.

  "Yes, I am," - I tried to calm down. "You must be his wife?"

  She nodded her head, then bit her lip. As much as I wanted to blow up at him, to make her go wake him up or to enter his apartment and pull him out of his bed, I didn't do any of that. I did not like the look on her face, and her next question confirmed my suspicion that something was wrong, making me shake.

  "Do you know where he is?"

  "You mean he still hasn't come back from the basement?" - I asked her in disbelief. The woman behind me let out a satisfied grunt, but I ignored it.

  "He must've fallen asleep there," - she whispered. Her eyes were open wide, but she wasn't looking at me anymore - she was staring at some point far beyond the walls. "He didn't get much sleep during the day. He's been falling asleep in his office many times back in the day. The night shifts… he never handled them well. Can you go… wake him up?"

  "...Sure," - I told h
er. "I'll go get him." For some reason, I smiled at her - I must've been trying to show her that everything was alright. She returned the gesture, but I could see that she did so on autopilot – her mind was elsewhere.

  Awkwardly nodding to her, I went toward the roof: there was a door leading to the basement in every stairwell, but it was locked and I had no tools to pry it open.

  Not to mention that it was possibly dangerous to leave it open now.

  "He has to be just asleep," - I kept telling myself as I traversed the roof. "His wife said that it's not the first time he falls asleep during the night shift. Once I see him I'm going to give him such a whooping, he won't sleep for days."

  He must've been a very sound sleeper if he'd missed everything that had been going on outside. Of course, the windows of the basement were facing the forest, so I could give him leeway. Maybe when I'd find him there, I'd go easy on him, after all...

  The forest was getting darker: the dark wet bark of its trees, the skin of the forest was slowly being exposed. Some unseen shears were cutting down the leaves from the trees, cutting deeper and closer to us with each passing day. The yellow leaves were no more than a line, a thin border no more than fifty meters long.

  Once back inside our stairwell, I saw Maxim: the man was busy arguing with some of the elderly, assuring them that we were safe. When he saw me, he furrowed his eyebrows: our last conversation still tainted his memory of me. But he must've seen something on my face, so in a second he mellowed out and gave me a concerned, inquisitive look.

  I simply nodded for him to follow me and proceeded downward, hearing his footsteps behind me.

  "Pavel" - I called out into the basement when we entered it. "Where are you?"

  I wanted him to answer, to voice his usual dissatisfaction with me. To come to meet us halfway and ask us what the ruckus had been all about. When my echo was the only answer I'd gotten, I admitted it. I already knew that he wasn't in the basement anymore. The reason I was calling for him was to see if there was anything else besides him down there. Something that hadn't been there before.

  We proceeded carefully. Maxim wasn't asking any questions: he must've figured out what had happened.

  I was counting seconds until the moment we'd turn around the corner and see if Pavel was actually there. Hope, as usual, clung to me with its insectoid legs, trying to burrow in deeper.

  Three...

  Two...

  One...

  Zero.

  There was no one. Not even a body, either dead or alive. Just the proof that Pavel wasn't among the living anymore - a large stain of blood, and the drag marks leading toward the window. A thick, straight red line, going across the floor and then up the wall. I never thought that Pavel, with his large complexity, would fit through it. Apparently, with enough effort, you could even pull a hundred-kilo man through a hole half his waistline.

  No signs of a fight, no splatters, bloody fingerprints. Just a red line pointing in the direction he had been taken - a red carpet rolled out after him, in spite of the tradition. That, and his gun. The only thing left of a retired policeman.

  Maxim brushed his hair with his hand, grabbing it so hard at the end of the gesture it seemed like he was trying to tear his scalp off.

  Why didn't we hear anything? The man had a gun on him. Surely, he wouldn't hesitate to use it to defend himself. Even if the creature had appeared completely impervious to damage to him, he still wouldn't go down without a fight.

  "He's been falling asleep in his office many times back in the day. The night shifts… he never handled them well," - I remembered the words of his wife.

  I had just seen the ape-ish monstrosity that had been terrorizing us with its howls. There was no way it could enter or leave through that window. There was only one possible suspect - the same thing I'd heard the night before, scuttling across the roof just above my bed.

  Why didn't I put two and two together? Why didn't I think that it could crawl inside the basement? Even if it wasn't the case, why not warn the only man who was spending the night outside of his apartment, trying to protect the only way out of our building? If the creature could scale the wall, then surely it was nimble enough to fit through the window?

  If I hadn't been such a coward, such an egoist, I could've saved him.

  "Goddamn," - Maxim took a careful step closer to the puddle of blood, picked up the gun from it, doing his best not to get any blood on his clothes. When he inevitably stained his sleeve, he started rubbing it, trying to get the blood off.

  "I better go tell his wife. Someone has to," - he told me, heading for the door.

  The roof. Maxim would have to go there through the roof. He could fall prey to that creature, too, if he weren't careful.

  "Wait!" - I called him over. Maxim stopped and gave me an inquisitive look.

  I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. He still hasn't done anything to prove that he wasn't a welder. But seeing how shaken he was to see traces of Pavel's demise, seeing as he was concerned about the man's wife, seeing how he genuinely tried to do his best to keep it civil within the walls, I decided that he at least deserved a chance to be trusted.

  I told him everything I knew: I told him about my radio, about the encrypted transmission and the "Swan Lake." I told him about the conversation with Leonid and that the military wasn't our ally anymore. I told him about the last minutes of the expedition beyond our building's walls and the creature I'd heard on the roof the last night.

  When I was finished, I dreaded the moment when he'd ask me one particular question, and then the moment finally came.

  "Why didn't you tell me any of this sooner?" - he asked me. I shifted around uneasily but then regained my composure. It was no place for shyness. Whatever happens, happens.

  "You know why," - I told him, looking him in the eye. Was he going to get angry at me again for suspecting him?

  "This again," - despite the grim setting, Maxim let out a tired smile. "So, you think that I'm the welder just because I smoke the same brand of cigarettes as him? Yura, that's a stretch - I'm not the only one who smokes them."

  "Yes, but I couldn't ignore that fact," - I pointed out to him. "Tell me - wouldn't you do the same in my place? Wouldn't it be wise to suspect me if the roles were reversed?"

  "I wouldn't keep it a secret - I would approach you immediately," - Maxim argued. That made sense: he was a straight-forward man, not used to beating around the bush. He was the man of action. I wasn't, no matter what I kept telling myself. I felt shamed by his answer: he just wanted me to talk it out with him. In his eyes, I was probably a twenty-year-old kid, playing an investigator. It hurt deeply: the part of my soul that got struck by his words already had a lot of scar tissue there.

  Being shamed by an adult was nothing new to me.

  "That makes sense, but I… I didn't know if I could trust you," - I told him. Being honest was the only way I could repay it to him. "And if we're being honest, I still don't know if I can trust you - or anyone, for that matter."

  "Look, I appreciate that you opened up to me. It's very stupid of you to think it was me - but I appreciate it nonetheless. At least you confronted me about it in the end. If you want to know, if you think it's even relevant, what kind of cigarette butts you've found there and it's your only clue, I'm not the only one who smokes those in this building. Just the night before it happened a young man asked me for a cigarette so I gave him the rest of the pack I had on me - they're dirt cheap," - he told me.

  "What young man?" - I immediately asked. Whether the man agreed with my theory or not didn't matter. I needed more information.

  "I don't know. He had a scarf on his face. It doesn't matter! The point is, if you think that something so minuscule is a smoking gun, you are mistaken. Coincidences happen. Now forget about it, we have a lot of work to do," - with that, he turned on his heels and headed for the stairwell.

  I wanted to agree with him. To let it go, to concern myself only with the pressing issues at the han
d. But I knew it was unwise to ignore the identity and motifs of a person who not only sealed us in during such a critical hour but was willing to kill other people to keep his identity a secret.

  There was something bigger at play. I had already stopped believing in coincidences, and I didn't think that his appearance was one, either. The welder, the sirens, the monsters, "the Cricket", the military locking down the town and shooting all the survivors… There was more to it, I was sure of it.

  So, when Maxim told me that he had shared a pack of cigarettes with some young man whose face was concealed I knew immediately: back then, he had come face to face with the one who had denied us our freedom.

  ***

  I told Maxim to go alone: I couldn't face the woman after my inaction had indirectly led to her husband's death. Even if she didn't know that, I would.

  Instead, I went back to my apartment. The people all around me were worked up. They needed guidance; they needed to be told that everything was under our control and we could protect them… But I wouldn't be able to muster such a lie. I needed to recharge.

  Once back in my apartment, I just sat in my chair and stared into the ceiling. I wanted to take a break from that hell, to pretend that I had been evacuated along with the rest of the town.

  All was lost. We've had it under control for no more than a day, and even that was arguable. In just one day, our militia had been cut down to half its strength. Alexei was undoubtedly gone at that point, and although we hadn’t found the body, Pavel's fate was also not a mystery. We had failed. I had failed.

  Who was I kidding? I was not fit for such things. My mother had been right all along: I wasn't needed because I wasn't anything special. And now even my own town where I was supposed to spend the rest of my life had been rejecting me, summoning the crowds of monsters to either drive me out of there or bury me under the rubble of my own house.

  It was best to leave it to grown-ups.