The Glooming (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 1) (20 page)

Andrei turned back to Ilya. “See, it wants us to come in.”

“Yes, so it can eat us.”

Andrei shook his head. “A hut does not eat people. Let’s go in for a few minutes and then leave. It looks so small, we both could barely fit in it anyway.”

Ilya bit his lip. His friend was right, the hut itself actually looked pretty small, its dimensions seemed hardly bigger than an outhouse. “Okay.”

Andrei got close to the door just as Ilya made his way to him. There wasn’t a knob but rather a thick wooden latch. Andrei touched it at first and then pulled it back as the door slowly opened outwards. Both boys could see a dimly lit interior. A warm draft of air drifted out to them and the smell of something cooking gnawed at their now grumbling stomachs. Momentarily forgetting their caution over curiosity, both boys went inside.

As soon as Ilya stepped in past the entrance, he stood beside Andrei and his mouth was wide open with amazement. The inside of the hut was much larger than they had anticipated. The main interior was the size of a small hallway, with the thatched roof at least fifteen feet high. An old stone fireplace at the back was roaring with burning and crackling firewood that provided steady warmth to the entire hut and cast an orangey illumination. A large cauldron hung over the fire, suspended by an iron bar and both boys could smell a savory meat stew wafting from it. A cupboard was beside it with stacks of wooden bowls on top as well as various bunches of leaves, roots and herbs that were hung on wooden beams near the ceiling. Ilya noticed that there was another large wooden table over at the other side and it was full of bottles and beakers of strangely colored liquids. Two very large but empty wooden cages with metal locks were suspended over the ceiling. At the end of the room they could see a set of wooden stairs that seemed to indicate that there was another level below.

Andrei turned off the flashlight and put it back into his jacket, but he kept the knife in his other hand. “It’s so much bigger on the inside, it just can’t be.”

“Okay, we saw the inside, now let’s go,” Ilya said as he turned around and pushed at the door. But for some reason the door refused to open no matter how hard he tried. “I can’t get it open!”

Andrei tried to help but no matter what they did, the door remained stuck. Both boys looked at each other with a growing sense of doom. Ilya blinked furiously as his mouth began to tremble.

“Let’s keep looking, there must be another way out of here or maybe we could find a key or something,” Andrei said.

Ilya was extremely frightened, but he said nothing and merely nodded as they both began to look around. The cupboard contained various wooden plates and utensils as well as assorted spices; it reminded Ilya of Babushka’s kitchen back in the orphanage, but this one seemed so primitive. Andrei opened a nearby drawer that seemed to contain nothing more than little wood figurines of assorted animals and people. Both boys noticed that there were wooden barrels along the sides of the room, but they couldn’t get them open.

After fifteen minutes of poking around, Ilya turned to his friend. “Did you find a key?”

“No,” Andrei said as he pointed to the flight of stairs leading below. “Let’s try down there.”

“If we go deeper then we’re farther away from the door.”

“Maybe the key is down there.”

Ilya sighed. His friend was so foolish. “Maybe something bad is down there.”

“If we don’t find a key or a way out we’ll be stuck here forever. Is that what you want?”

“No, of course not.”

“Okay then, follow me,” Andrei said as he slowly made his way to the edge of the stairs. He tried to listen for any kind of noise emanating from below. Not hearing any, he gestured at Ilya to follow him as he started making his way down.

As both boys climbed down the stairs they were now in the cellar of the hut. While this room wasn’t as large as the upper hall, there were two oil lanterns that hung alongside the wooden beams that illuminated the small mountains of gold coins and sparkling jewelry along the walls of the room. Ilya gasped while Andrei let out a yell of victory. They had found an old treasure trove.

“I told you we would find money!” Andrei exclaimed as he started scooping handfuls of gold coins into his jacket pockets. “Now we’re rich.”

But Ilya just stood there, not wishing to take any of it. “It belongs to the owner of this place. It’s stealing.”

Andrei stuck his tongue out at him as he kept stuffing the coins in his pockets. “You truly are a holy fool. Suit yourself, you will die a poor man.”

Ilya just crossed his arms in disgust. “Are you finished now, thief?”

Andrei’s jacket was bulging with coins and gemstones as he started to climb up the stairs. “You’ll regret not taking any of this.”

“I have a clear conscience,” Ilya said as he went up the stairs after him.

Andrei kept looking back at Ilya as both boys got up to the main room once again. “You will be a street sweeper while I will have a dacha and a big car and—” but he quickly stopped talking as Ilya pointed to the door with a shocked look. Andrei meekly faced forward.

Standing near the doorway was an old woman. Although dressed in rags, she seemed very tall. Her large hooked nose was plain to see, her reddish eyes were like slits, almost hidden beneath the mass of wrinkles that was her face. Her long white hair was unkempt as it cascaded down her back, all the way to the ground. The old woman’s bony arms were long, pale and sinewy.

“Well now, it seems that I have guests in my hut this evening,” she said. Her voice was both high-pitched yet ancient, as if the winds of time had channeled itself into a vocal message for all to hear.

Both boys just stood there.

The old woman cackled a bit. “Come, come, children. I’m sure my warm fire and my delicious cooking must have attracted you both here. Have you come of your own free will or were you sent?”

Neither Andrei nor Ilya said anything. Both were still in shock.

The old woman edged closer to them. It seemed as if she floated above the old wooden floorboards. “You must both answer. Have you come of your own free will or were you sent?”

Both boys almost answered at the same time.

“I-I came of my own free will,” Ilya said.

“No, we were sent!” Andrei exclaimed.

The old woman tilted her head up as if in thought. “Ah, this is a dilemma. Here we have two boys and each gave a different answer.”

“We were sent!” Andrei said again.

The old woman moved closer. “Sent by whom?”

Andrei held the small pocketknife out. “By the police!”

The old woman tilted her head up and laughed. “Why would the police send two little boys to me?”

Andrei stood his ground and waved the knife at her. “We’re part of a search party! To look for Gleb and Evgeny! We know you have them!”

The old woman smiled at him. Her long white teeth were crooked. “I am not familiar with those two that you mentioned. And I know you are lying for there are no police anymore, not in these lands, anyway. And you have stolen from my hoard.”

“Keep away from me!” Andrei said as he started slashing at her with the knife.

Ilya started to scream and cry as the old woman deftly dodged Andrei’s slash, picked him up by the throat and ripped his head off with her bare hands.

Baghdad

Ron Boland frowned at the half-eaten slice of apple pie on his plate. It was obvious that the cooks must have run out of apples in preparing this pastry, so they substituted other root vegetables like beets or radishes or something, and then tried to mask the flavor by just adding more sugar and cinnamon.
Just as well
, he thought as he pushed the plate back further into the table. Buffalo wings night was last night and everybody who wanted to eat them was rationed to no more than five wings each. Five! How can you get full from eating five pieces of chicken wings? The situation was getting worse by the hour and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.

He was sitting in front of a long, empty white table at the palatial dining room of the US Embassy compound in Baghdad, a walled cluster of buildings larger than Vatican City. After Saddam Hussein’s fall, the US government spared no expense in creating the most secure embassy in the entire region and to provide the most comfort for its staff, all at taxpayer’s expense, of course. With an independent power plant, its own water and sewage treatment centers enabled the embassy to pretty much function independently, regardless of what would occur outside of the almost twenty-foot-high concrete blast walls that surrounded it. Inside the walls was a totally different world compared to the chaos in the region. The Embassy dining room itself was a Las Vegas style buffet that served different ethnic cuisines from a dozen different countries at all times. There was also a six-lane, Olympic-sized swimming pool, a massive gym, tennis courts, even a regulation-sized soccer field for those inclined to get a little exercise. A multi-story shopping mall near the heavily fortified apartments with bulletproof glass windows pretty much made the whole place seem like a slice of Americana, but one that was smack dab in the Middle East. The rumors were that it cost American taxpayers over a billion dollars just to put the whole thing up, but its true price tag would probably never be known.

It was the one break he had in the past few days since the whole situation went to hell, and so the fake comfort food pissed him off even more. Boland was the CIA section chief of the region and the reports that were coming in was beginning to instill a sense of panic all over the embassy. There was still no sign of what happened to all US forces north of the city as the now gargantuan sandstorm coming in continued to intensify and would soon engulf Baghdad as well. The Iraqi government had already been evacuated southwards to Najaf; at least that was the official version. In fact, most of the government ministers and their families were already in Saudi Arabia and some even fleeing as far as Oman or the United Arab Emirates. The southern regions of Turkey were already lost and they had requested formally to NATO for help, but there would be none forthcoming. Most of Syria was already gone, while Jordan and Israel were entering into some sort of alliance to try to stem the tide of refugees fleeing towards them. Iran was publicly saying they were winning against the unknown enemy, but latest intel reports proved that they were in fact, on the verge of collapse. While Saudi Arabia outwardly stressed for calm, private communications to Washington already indicated that the Saudis were in full panic mode over what was happening and were begging to seek refuge in the US.

But the news back home was just as bad. Yesterday’s cables indicated that Air Force One had crashed somewhere over northern Utah. It was attacked by some monstrous bird that could fly at supersonic speeds. The few emergency crews that remained active were still trying to reach the wreckage but due to the floods caused by broken dams, it could be days before anyone could even get into the area. Members of Congress had already been dispersed to secret locations since Washington DC was no longer considered safe. The latest cables reported that the vice-president was already sworn in as the new head of state for the country. The Navy lost an aircraft carrier when it was capsized by a freak mile-high tidal wave in the North Atlantic.

Boland looked around the dining hall as he finished the last of his coffee. Only a few people were eating since most of the embassy staff had already been evacuated. The United States was effectively pulling out not just from Iraq, but from the entire Middle East as well. Just before the president boarded Air Force One, he decreed that all US military forces were needed at home for protection against the still unknown menace, but everyone knew it would take a long time, if ever, to bring the troops overseas back to America. This was the most frustrating aspect of the whole thing. The entire world was now in acute danger, but nobody knew exactly what or who the enemy was. There had been contingency plans made for just about every possible threat known to man except for what was happening right now. Heck, at one point, the US State Department even had had plans distributed to all embassies in case of a possible zombie infestation but nobody, not even in their wildest dreams, had ever thought that this would happen. Boland instinctively shook his head, still trying to get his mind over the whole thing. He was not a religious man, but there was a gnawing realization that the earth was now turning into some sort of strange, mythical Dark Ages. Boland was a believer in science and the natural order to things, but it now seemed that all of mankind’s accumulated knowledge and power were useless.

A Marine MP in full battle gear ran into the hall, spotted Boland and moved quickly over to him as he got up. “Sir, you’re needed at the Consular Entrance at once. We tried to contact you through your phone, but there was no answer so your office told us you may be here,” the soldier said as he barely caught his breath.

Boland got up, then he started to walk briskly with the soldier at his side towards the room exit. “Sorry, my phone was off because I just wanted to have dinner with some peace and quiet.”

Both men ran out of the hall and then ducked into several underground corridors as they made their way towards the outer perimeter of the compound. Embassy staffers and military personnel alike were moving back and forth, some carrying bags because they were to be evacuated, while others had hard drives or stacks of classified documents that were needed to be either saved or destroyed. As Boland ran past a few civilians that were on their way to the landing strip within the Green Zone, he could see the fear in their eyes.

It took awhile and both men were somewhat exhausted as they finally trotted out from the underground tunnel, then ducked into a small command post just behind the blast walls near the entrance of the compound. Boland could see massive crowds of Iraqis and other people who somehow made it past the outer fortifications of the Green Zone. These desperate people were now trying to cajole, bribe or complain their way into the embassy itself. The outer iron-barred gate was closed and only a trickle of frantic civilians were being let through one at a time as they were carefully screened by American soldiers with weapons on the ready. He saw one woman that he recognized, a formerly well to do wife of an Iraqi politician, who screamed in desperation as she held up her crying baby above the pushing crowd and begged to be let in.