Dusk in Kalevia: Chapter 6

Thump…thump…

Demyan woke in darkness. Unable to move or speak, his senses absent, it was as if he had found himself trapped in the center of a stone. Everything was cold and very, very still, save for a small drumbeat far off in the black. As he struggled fruitlessly against his claustrophobic prison, he felt the drum grow stronger and realized that it was only his heart, remembering how to beat again.

He was both horrified and relieved to discover that he was still inside his human body. He’d been shot–he remembered that now–and it had been bad. Though he’d been wounded in the line of duty before, those injuries had been nothing compared to this state of dead-not dead, his heart struggling to repair itself enough to reanimate his flesh. Awake but walled-off from the rest of the world, all he could do was relax into the darkness and wait.

Sensation returned first, burrowing into the searing hollows of his gunshot wounds. He felt muscles contract, a twitch in his hand, nerve fibers reaching for each other across the void in his palm. Cold wind blew on his face, and he gradually noticed the fragments of sound drifting into his brain. When he concentrated, the noises resolved into a conversation of urgent voices, smeared together by his malfunctioning ears.

“…called the ambulance, but…”

“…just leave him there for a minute, just…”

“…backup…”

“…all over. Damn, this is…”

With monumental effort, Demyan opened one eye. Animated blurs hovered outside the open car door; before he could parse them, a flash of light assaulted his retina. He cringed, but as the afterimage cleared away he saw that he was surrounded by a number of policemen.

“H…” Demyan said, and burst into an agonizing coughing fit that caused every officer to leap back in shock. He spat out his mouthful of blood and began again. “Hei.”

It had a very gratifying effect. One policeman dropped his camera to the pavement. Brown spools of film burst from its back.

“We thought you were dead!” he squeaked, his voice made comically high by terror.

“Obviously not.” Demyan wiped the blood from his lips on his coat sleeve.

“I took your vitals myself!”

Demyan began to stretch his limbs, investigating their stability. It seemed that for the most part he was no longer paralyzed, but damn, if everything didn’t hurt like hell. With feigned serenity, he rolled his head around his stiff neck and looked up at the young officer.

“Looks like you were wrong.”

Using his good hand, Demyan eased himself upright to see if his legs would take his weight. They held him, but just barely.

“Anyway–what happened to Vesa?” Demyan looked from face to face; they all gawked at him, the blood-covered Lazarus in the ruined car. “What happened to the Chairman’s son?”

“W-we don’t know yet, sir. It seems he’s been kidnapped.”

Fat lot of help these fools were. Not only was Vesa at the mercy of a band of armed criminals, but it was only a matter of time before everyone started asking questions. If he stuck around, he was liable to be dragged off to the hospital, and there would be a good deal of explaining to do.

He looked down at his chest wounds, waging a campaign against every nerve in their vicinity. Once the orderlies started examining this body of his, he doubted even he could make up a plausible explanation for his survival.

But how to get away…?

He heard a caw, and his injured heart quickened. On top of a nearby telephone pole perched a few ravens.

“I could really use some help right now,” he said to the sky.

One of the birds swooped elegantly down to the pavement, where it began to hop cagily around the legs of the police.

“The ambulance is going to be here soon,” a policeman assured him.

“I need to get out of here, comrades.” Demyan stared down at the raven, and it cocked its head at him.

You’re such a clever bird, he thought. If you do this for me, biscuits all around. All you can eat, I swear. He dragged himself from his bloodstained seat and took one shaking step away from the car.

“You’re in shock, you need to lie back…” one of the policeman said with impending hysteria in his voice. He reached to restrain Demyan, then screamed as an inky streak launched itself from a nearby sign post and flew at his face.

It was magnificent how quickly they multiplied, almost appearing out of thin air. The sea of birds was upon them in minutes, blotting out the sky with wings. Demyan heard avian voices laugh above, calling their fellows to the fight.

As the birds dove and weaved, harrying the terrified policemen around the street, Demyan murmured a quick thank you and made his escape.

He was lucky. Across the street was a narrow passage–the covered walkway to the courtyard of an old apartment building. Enclosed by walls on all sides, it would provide perfect cover from the eyes of the bystanders, distracted as they were by the avian onslaught. He walked slowly toward the entrance, forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other, his body protesting every step. He wanted nothing more than to lay down and sleep, but he struggled on, knowing that he had to get somewhere safe before he could give into the temptation.

He found a door recessed into the wall of the walkway, and rejoiced when it opened with a breath of dank cellar air. He leaned against it, listening to the cacophony of the ravens in the street.

He was glad he had planned for such a contingency. The State Security building was riddled with his doors, binding all sorts of random, unnoticeable places into his own private transportation network. He had a reputation for turning up suddenly in the oddest places; he’d step out of a broom cupboard or a stairwell, surprising his colleagues with his punctuality. There was always one vital location left unpaired, however, ready to be opened in the event of an emergency. If this didn’t qualify, he didn’t know what would.

He pressed his hand to the door and pictured the closet in his office.

When he opened the portal and stumbled inside, he expected to be soothed by the familiar protection of his room. And for a brief moment, he was–he saw the modern rug, the little bust of Lenin, his heavy wooden desk with its orderly arrangement of papers as he’d left them. All was at it should be, save one thing.

Behind the desk stood Toivo Valonen.

To be continued in Chapter 7.

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