CITY OF THE DEAD ✓

III. NIGHTMARE

I took the rifle from its place on the floor to mend the sling as best I could. Alexey sat in the corner near the door, watching one side of the building. His withered green eyes scanned the endless black and grey ruins and ash as if he had watched them a million times before.

"It's a miracle your building still stands, considering it's a vast wasteland comparable to hell out there. Some men are in trenches, hidden by rubble barriers. There may be one team of Soviets in the basement, a pack of fascists above them. The holes in the floor are a perfect way to shoot at some of them."

His voice was calm, and he rose from his corner, slipping past the window with caution. The rays of a calming dawn slid over the red city, reflecting off the dusting of snow that came from the night.

"I know."

Wood snapped, and a wall crumbled every so often. He was coated in clouds of ash once stone fell onto it. It blanketed his khaki uniform, making him one of the many ghosts in the city.

Smoke, stone remnants and decomposing bodies filled the maze in front of us as far as the grey air let us see. The fragments of the smashed door were not a gateway to the city, rather to a hell which had swallowed it.

Panfilov looked to the spires of structure and the sides of the remaining buildings. He swept the field of the rubble with his eyes before emerging, weaving through the landscape, and covering himself from whatever the city had to throw our way.

I trailed behind him, trying to visualize the city before its destruction. He moved without effort through it; lowering his head as he crossed open spaces where buildings towered above due to his fear of being shot. He stared at outcroppings and holes in the structures, ducked behind stone pillars and wove towards a slope in the earth.

He must have been in the mind of his enemies.

There were casings littered on every meter of the ground. Some were buried in the dirt. Others had been coated in the ash blanket that lay on top the city.

Panfilov slid into a trench abandoned or captured by each side so many times it was impossible to declare who it last belonged to.

A torn red banner was hooked on top of a metal rod and dangled in the stillness. Alexey was digging with his bayonet in the side of the dirt slope, glaring out at the vast landscape in front of him.

Our progress had been slow as we took our pace with caution. With the late autumn days, the sun was low, and the moon was high. Darkness was unpredictable and we didn't know when it would come.

Panfilov rested his rifle against the section of the trench dug near a building foundation. A piece of it jutted out over his head, providing another layer of darkness for the night. He was covered by the stone and left me facing the next path cleared in the piles of rubble.

Alexey turned his head out into the open where the shadows crawled from buildings in the setting sun.

Clouds hovered in the sky and swallowed the light from the horizon. I stared at him as they brought shadow blankets to us. They slipped into the dents of his cheek. He checked behind, paranoid by the surroundings.