OUTSIDE Page 9

  Only the beast's roars were pulling me back into reality. It would announce itself every few hours, reminding us that we were its prisoners. When its roar echoed through the streets and forests, the entire building would fall silent, listening to the voice of their captor. Listening and trying to determine how far away it was.

  CHAPTER 7 – No Sleep

  I woke up to the sound of someone knocking on my door. Raising my head from the pillow, I glanced at the clock - it was half-past nine. People outside were already chatting, and I could hear that once again their tone was worried.

  Getting out of bed I went to open the door. I didn't know what the commotion was about, but I was hoping that it was the news about our liberation: perhaps the military finally decided to rescue us and everyone was getting in the line.

  But when I opened the door and took a look at the face outside, I immediately realized that it wasn't the case. The man outside was old - somewhere in his sixties, and his face did not indicate that he brought me good news. On the contrary - his apologetic look was telling me that he needed something from me.

  "Good morning, young man," - he said, tugging at his hat, which he held in his hands. "I'm sorry for disturbing you at such an hour..."

  "Yes, how can I help you?" - I asked him, trying to get him to finish his sentence already. While the old man did nothing to deserve my irritation, I was disappointed that the old man was not the bearer of good news I expected him to be.

  A couple of old men rushed downstairs past the old man, almost knocking him down. He had to grab the doorframe to regain balance.

  "I'm just wondering, do you perhaps have some insulin to spare? I'm out of my own," - he said quietly, averting his eyes.

  "Oh" - was all I could say. I felt like a dick for feeling irritated before. I could see that he wasn't comfortable going around asking people for help, but in his situation, it was a matter of life or death. "No, I'm afraid I can't help you" - I told him, looking away. While it was the truth, I felt bad for not being able to help.

  "Are you sure?" - he trying to look me in the eye. "I understand that everybody who has it needs it, but I'm all out of it," - he explained to me.

  "Sorry, but I don't have it," - I told him again.

  The old man deflated: "Do you perhaps know someone who has it?"

  "No, I'm not exactly... close with my neighbors" - I told him, feeling uneasy. If only I was more involved, more talkative! Perhaps then I'd be able to point the old man in the right direction.

  "I see..." - the old man deflated even more. "No one has it - or nobody admits they have it," - he told me. I sympathetically nodded. "This is the second stairwell I'm checking - I came all the way from the first one. I was going to grab it from the pharmacy yesterday," - he started to awkwardly explain it to me as if feeling guilty for not being prepared for the events that had happened. "They were out of stock the whole week and were supposed to bring it in from another town yesterday morning. I even got out of bed earlier than usual to go to take a place in a line but when I came down the doors were already locked..."

  "Excuse me," - I interrupted him. "When did you say you saw that the doors had been welded?"

  Up until that point, I was listening to him, letting him pour his heart out, but when he mentioned that he had tried to go out early my curiosity was peaked.

  "Oh, I think it was around 6 AM," - the old man tried to remember. "Yes, I think it was around that time," - he confirmed. "They usually bring in insulin early but there's not always enough for everyone, which is why I try to come as early as possible - to have a good spot in the line," - he explained.

  "I see..." - I nodded to him, rubbing my chin.

  If the doors had already been welded shut at 6 AM then it meant that the mysterious welder was already finished by then. Which meant that he had done it somewhere between 11 PM - the latest it could be done - and 6 AM - when the doors had already been found welded. An odd hour to do that - but perhaps that was the intention?

  While I was thinking, another old woman walked downstairs past us. She seemed in a hurry, and she was visibly worried about something. I could already hear the commotion downstairs growing.

  "Excuse me, do you know what is going on down there?" - I asked the old man, pointing at the woman's back. "Where is everyone heading?"

  "Oh, you know how they say, 'the misfortune never comes alone'" - he told me, rubbing his temple. "Someone found one of the tenants downstairs dead. I think her heart gave out from all the stress. What a horrible time we're living in..."

  The events of the previous day had already taught me that nothing was a coincidence. So, excusing myself to the old man I went to my room, quickly changed my clothes, and headed outside my apartment. I found it too suspicious that someone had already died in our building.

  As I was approaching the first floor, I could already hear the lamentations of the people downstairs. Some woman was crying. When I came to the first floor, there were so many people on it that they occupied the whole flight of stairs. From where I stopped I couldn't see inside the apartment, but I could hear what the people were saying pretty well.

  "What's going on?" - the old man who arrived just a few seconds before me asked.

  "A woman was found dead in her apartment," - a man standing a few steps lower than him answered. "Galina from 22nd - do you know her?"

  "Galina? Oh, dear… What happened, heart attack? Aneurism?"

  "Hard to determine, they say" - the man mused. "Her neighbor wanted to borrow some tea from her and noticed that the door was open. She came inside and found Galina dead on the floor, right next to the door."

  "Oh, lord. Dreadful, dreadful. Why do you think the door was open?" - the man wondered.

  "I don't know, but..." - the man talking switched to a sinister, conspiratorial whisper: "But they say that her eyes bulged and her tongue is sticking out. I haven't seen it myself, but it sounds like someone had strangled her."

  "Oh, dear. Just one day in isolation and people start to rob each other again. It's the nineties all over again..." - his interlocutor complained.

  The old man's guess was a good one, but I doubted that it was the case. Robbed on the first day? By whom - the neighbors she'd lived with for decades? And on the first day after the isolation had started, with the culprit having nowhere to run? It seemed far too reckless and spontaneous to be the case.

  No, if what the old man had said was right, then I saw the clues pointing to a different motive. The woman was strangled right in her hallway, next to the open door, and, most importantly, she lived on the first floor. These clues were lining up into an arrow, pointing towards a particular culprit - the same person who had welded our doors shut.

  The more I thought about it, the more it made sense: the one who had killed the woman was the same person who had shut us all in. He had been working at night, hoping to avoid being seen, but welding was without a doubt a noisy affair. Despite that person's precautions, it must've attracted unwanted attention - the attention of an elderly woman, living right next to the door leading outside, who decided to come out and see what the commotion was about. Many old people are light sleepers, after all. Old age makes one wary of dangers lurking in the night.

  The welder must've had serious reasons to remain unknown - so much so that when the woman came out and saw him, he realized that he had to keep her silent. By whatever means necessary.

  And if he was so afraid that she'd recognize him later, then perhaps the last face she'd seen before she tried to draw her last breath was a familiar one. The face of one of her neighbors. While I had little doubts that the welder was one of the tenants - he did go through the effort of sealing the doors from the inside - that last piece of the puzzle finalized the deal.

  Which meant that one of our eighty apartments housed not just the person who had jailed us - it housed a murderer. An individual who'd go to great risks to keep his identity and reasons hidden. The benevolent motive I had considered earlier - to seal the doors to
keep us protected - was now out of the question. Whoever did that, and for whatever reason, they were not driven by the care for their neighbors. If anything, it was rather the opposite.

  "Hey, what are you doing? Have you no shame?" - I heard someone downstairs lament.

  "Stand back!" - an old female voice replied. "I'm not taking anything valuable - it's just food. She won't be needing it anyway, and I want to live some more! You'd be wise to take something for yourself while there's something left to take!"

  The crowd became agitated: there was reason in the woman's words. In just a few moments, the people who had been condemning her a second before started arguing about their spot in the line and who needed the food the most.

  I thought about grabbing some food for myself, but I had seen the extent to which these people can get violent over the last discounted chicken in a store, and I could only imagine what would happen when they were presented with "everything you can carry" deal - especially during the food shortage. With me being at the very end of the line, there wouldn't be anything left for me. The most I could count on was a backhand insult being thrown my way.

  From the depths of the apartment, where people were already arguing about how much each of them should get, came a sound of a bag tearing, followed by the clatter of rice hitting the floor as if to confirm my suspicions. I turned around and headed upstairs. Leonid was supposed to contact me soon. Perhaps I would get some good news from him at least.

  ***

  A few hours later I was still waiting for him to contact me. It was almost noon, but he hadn’t shown up. I wanted to make some coffee. To cook breakfast. To brush my teeth. My bladder hadn’t been relieved once since the start of the day.

  But I was too afraid to step away from the radio even for one moment. I felt that his absence was due to other, urgent matters going on at the base. And if he contacted me and I wasn't there to get his message he wouldn't wait for me.

  The wait felt like he was drawing the bow's string. Like he was deliberately drawing out the suspense. Like he was teasing me. It was exhilarating, but I knew the payoff would be worth it.

  At half-past noon I allowed myself a quick break to relieve myself – only because I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

  An hour later I went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast - a couple of eggs. Whenever they didn't require my immediate attention I'd go to the guestroom to sit near the radio. Without me around to control the process, the eggs turned out to be a bit burned, and I forgot to add salt.

  At two minutes past noon, while standing near the window, I realized that I spoiled my breakfast for nothing. He was not going to contact me anymore.

  Perhaps his superiors weren't very keen on him talking to the civilians during the emergency, after all. Or he simply changed his mind and decided not to stick his neck out for someone he didn't know.

  "Or maybe," - I thought - "The base doesn't even exist anymore. Perhaps whatever has caused this all is much more serious than it seems, and this has gotten to them."

  My thoughts were interrupted by the bell ringing. Someone was at my door.

  It turned out to be Natasha. She seemed calmer than the day before, but at the same time more exhausted. I could see bags under her eyes. She didn’t calm down – she just didn’t have the strength to worry anymore.

  "Hey" - she quietly greeted me, looking at her feet. "May I come in?"

  "Sure" - I welcomed her in. "How are you today?"

  "Horrible," - she said. "I didn't get an ounce of sleep last night. Couldn't stop thinking about Nikita."

  "I get it," - I told her.

  "I think I'm going crazy from this isolation," - she complained to me. "This constant howling is driving me crazy. Yesterday I think I heard someone walking on the roof."

  "Maybe it was just one of the tenants" - I suggested, trying to sway away from the alternative. It was too horrifying to think that something could get up on our roof.

  "I thought so as well," - she sighed. "But it didn't help me get to sleep. I was thinking that maybe it was him, and one time I woke up during the night because I dreamed that he was looking through my window."

  "You’re just tired," – I assured her, trying not to think about the implications of her words. My skin started crawling when I imagined what it was like – looking out the window on the fifth floor and seeing someone peeking in.

  "Yeah, I guess," – she threw a concerned glance at the door leading to my guest room. "Say, have you heard anything new on your radio?" – she wondered, trying to sound as casual as possible. Only her nervous gesture of putting her hair behind her ear betrayed the fact that she was worried. She was blindly hoping to find out something about her boyfriend’s fate, but it seemed she was ashamed to come off as desperate.

  "Nothing" – I shook my head. I decided not to tell her about my new acquaintance – why give her false hope? I had already been disillusioned myself, and I didn’t want her to share my fate.

  "Ah… I see. Let me know if you hear anything. About our situation," – she added quickly, worried that I would misinterpret her words, before turning around and heading for the door.

  "Do you perhaps want to stay? I was just going to put on some tea," – I suggested. Natasha froze. I already knew her answer – she was just picking her words to excuse herself.

  "No… Sorry, I can’t. I have… things to attend to back home," – she awkwardly explained. I knew that it was a bald-faced lie – there was nothing she could possibly be doing back home at such a time. She just didn’t want to say that she wanted to be alone. And I didn’t have it in me to call her out on that.

  "Sure," – I nodded and smiled, even though she wasn’t looking at me. "I get it. Go get it done. If you want to talk – you know where to find me," – I joked.

  "Yeah, okay," – she answered. Her mind was already elsewhere. "Bye, Yura."

  With that, she left. I spent the rest of the day waiting for either her or Leonid to show up, but neither did. In the evening, I went to bed feeling more lonely than usual.

  ***

  I woke up during the night from another roar. It seemed much closer this time than before, and even through the haze of sleep, I recognized the fact that it sounded different.

  I searched for my phone in the darkness and looked at what time it was. 3 AM. It was the dead of the night.

  I wanted to think that I made it all up in my sleep. It almost sounded reasonable, too: I had been listening to that beast's roars throughout the previous two days. So, of course it would haunt my dreams as well.

  But I had already made such a mistake before. The last time I was woken up by the beast during the night it wasn't just a dream - it was very much real as the creature was announcing its presence to us.

  Plus, I couldn't forget Natasha's words - that she heard something in the dead of the night. Her account wasn't the only one I could rely on - I knew all too well by now that the night indeed hosted something terrible. The time of our ancestors when they were scared of things in the dark, coming up with names for their new fears, was again upon us.

  I stood up and walked out onto my balcony. The air was chilly, and I could see my breath, but I didn't feel like going back inside to put on clothes - I didn't intend to stay outside for long. I just wanted to find out what the source of those howls was.

  Just as the day before, it was dead quiet outside, only now I also could hardly see anything. My eyes, not yet accustomed to the dark, could only make out a few grey shapes of the forest, but aside from it - nothing else.

  "You heard it too, Yuri?" - consumed in my thoughts about things in the night, I jumped when a familiar voice reached out to me from the dark. "Heh! Sorry, didn't mean to spook you," - the voice laughed.

  "I almost had a heart attack, Maxim" - I replied, taking a deep breath. Still, I was relieved when I realized that the voice was just my neighbor and not something else. "These past few days made me jumpy."

  "Yes, I can relate. Only an insane person would stay calm in
such a situation," - Maxim replied, leaning onto his balcony.

  Maxim was my neighbor - I've met him on that very same balcony when I first came out to smoke. Our balconies were close to each other - not close enough to climb from one to another, but close enough that we could chat during the night without being worried about waking up other neighbors, and we often chatted before going off to sleep.

  We weren't close friends - more like acquaintances. Someone you could vent to without bothering to listen to the other side. I didn’t know too much about him, but from what I could gather, he was a widower who lived alone. A lonely soul just like me, although for different reasons.

  I patted my pockets, looking for my cigarettes, and realized that I forgot them back in my room.

  "I'll be right back" - I told Maxim, but before I could leave he stopped me: "No need. Catch!"

  He threw me a pack of cigarettes and I caught it mid-air. Through the thin carton, I felt that the box was full - a surprising generosity. Even though I wasn't sure he could see me, I gave Maxim a puzzled look.

  "I've got a full block of these back in my room," - either Maxim saw my surprised face or he simply decided to explain himself. "More than enough to last me a few weeks…Though, I hope we won't be staying here for so long."

  I looked at the brand of the box, and in the dim light of the moon, I saw the brand.

  "Soyuz-Apollo."

  My guts sank when the terrible suspicion crossed my mind.

  Before that thought went anywhere, I suppressed it: I could look into that later. For now, I could continue chatting as if nothing had happened. If Maxim really had something to do with the state of our doors, he wouldn't just tell me - not after what had happened to the neighbor downstairs. But he could carelessly drop some hint in a casual conversation.

  "We've got ourselves quite a pickle, Yuri" - Maxim thoughtfully said, looking into the distance. "We're all locked up here, and the police aren't coming. Soon there are going to be food shortages. And then that woman from the first floor… Soon it's going to be complete and total chaos."