Chapter Five - Nikolai

Nikolai had no idea who these two were, why they were dressed... like that, or what had happened.

So, like any proper man would, he lit a Laika with a hotel matchbook, then flicked the still-burning match away before taking a pull. The burn in his lungs and the smooth feeling of nicotine in his blood helped put things in order.

He breathed out, then pointed to the older of the two girls.

Not much older. She looked like a teenager still. A pretty one, just on the cusp of adulthood. Tanned skin, almond eyes, a tall thin figure. She wasn't from around here, that much he knew. Beauties like that only showed up as ballerinas on television.

The girl next to her was just as unlikely to be a local, but it wasn't as glaring. Shorter, bright blonde hair and blue eyes, but a chubby-cheeked face that was more darling sister than daring temptress.

Both of them were dressed outlandishly. The tall one in a deep blue horse rider's outfit, the shorter in a frumpy dress. Nikolai had no sense for such things. He wore plain pants and a shirt that was sometimes clean. His sweater was knit by his babushka.

He looked around. The highway was... a mess. Cars broken down and left to rot, the road all cracked up. No dust in the air. He frowned. That last one might not have been all that bad, actually. The air smelled better than he remembered.

He took another pull from his cigarette.

Nikolai was a simple man, but he wasn't a stupid one. "This hell?" he asked.

"No," the tall one said. "I've been there. This isn't it."

"Hmm," he replied. "Then... this the future?"

The blonde one giggled. "No, it's the present! But I guess for you it might as well be. We, uh, aren't from around here either."

He took another pull. "Figured. Where are you from?"

The two glanced at each other, and spoke without words the way lovers and siblings did. Finally, the taller one elected herself to speak. "We're from another world," she said. "We came to this one looking for a friend. Our world is very similar, but things are different. We found you locked in a time-loop."

She pointed back, to the strange thing made of pillars he'd crashed through. Nikolai hadn't been looking at it too much. It made him feel weird to stare. It was wrong.

"What's the year?" he asked.

"You're the first living person we've met," the blonde said. "We have no idea."

"Blyat." Nikolai finished his cigarette, then flicked it across the roof of his piece of shit car. "So, you pulled me here to starve?" He had a lunchbox in the trunk. That wouldn't last him.

"We think there's people in Pripyat," tall one said. She pointed down the road, as if he didn't know where the damned city he lived in was. "There's traffic that passes, signs of life. It's not inhospitable here."

"We've only been on this world for like, half a day," blonde said. "I'm sure you'll find lots of people. Maybe some family that'll be surprised to see you alive!"

He nodded. He had two kids. A boy and a girl. His wife took care of them while he worked. He started to worry. "I'm going home," he decided.

"Nice! Can we ride along? We have a lot of questions!" Blonde said.

"Sure," he replied. "Give me your names first."

"I'm Crystal, and that--"

"Rending."

"That's right!" Crystal said. She was too damned cheerful.

"Nikolai Afanasief," he grumbled.

Nikolai got into his car, then frowned as tall... Rending, got into the passenger seat. The blonde went in the back, sitting in the middle with a bounce and rather rudely shoving aside some files and papers from his work.

Not that those files were worth their weight in shit anymore. If there was one bright side to the world ending, it was not having to file anything anymore.

"So, what do you do?" Rending asked as he started his car up. It rumbled to life, and he was thankful. He'd never been a mechanical sort, and the bumper was messed up. He was worried it wouldn't start at all.

"I'm a foreman," he said. "Mostly shuffle papers around, sign things off for the government."

"And which government is that?" Rending asked.

He frowned. "The Soviet Union, obviously," he said.

"What year were you aware of last?" Rending asked. She didn't put on a belt or anything, he noticed. Not that he cared, or could drive fast. He cursed under his breath as he struck a pothole, then slowed down a little. His suspension could only take so much.

"It was... 2009," he said.

Rending turned to look his way. "Really? And this area was still part of the USSR?"

"Yes? Obviously."

"Interesting," Rending said. "What about the cold war?"

"The what?" he asked. "How can a war be cold?"

"Alright, so we have some obvious historical differences here," Rending said. "Let's go back a bit. Second World War? Did you have one? You know, Nazis in Germany, the Allies?"

"Yes, of course," he grumbled. "My grandfather survived it."

"Okay, so we can establish that as a baseline... when did the first world war end?"

"Nineteen Eighteen," he replied. What was this, history lessons all over again? Maybe they'd lied about this not being hell.

"And the second world war ended in forty-five, right?" she asked.

"What? No, it ended in fifty-two." He could feel Rending's gaze on him. "I'm not wrong," he snapped. "That's when we finished taking all of western europe from those filthy freaks."

"I feel like we're going to need a map," Crystal said from the back. "And maybe a history book."

"We'll have to see if there's a library somewhere," Rending muttered.

Nikolai focused on the road. He had no choice. It was covered in potholes and bumps, the lanes to either side had the backs of cars pushed out of the way in them. Then, some two minutes later, he slowed down even more as he caught sight of something unusual.

A large truck carrying cows was in the act of exploding off the highway. The middle of it was bent, and there were bovines being tossed every which way. The entire thing was frozen in the act of exploding, as if caught in time, or as if it was some grand, too-realistic statue in the centre of the road.

"Poor cows," Crystal said. She sounded sad. What she didn't sound was confused, or horrified. This, to her, was normal, and somehow that was the most horrific thing that Nikolai could hear coming from her.

This wasn't his home. The rules had changed in a way that he couldn't quite understand.

Then Rending turned on his radio and started to surf through channels. The only channel that came in was one playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake on a loop. That was never a good sign.

The city started to appear ahead. He recognized it, of course. The suburbs, and the little twenty-home towns that branched off from the highway on the way into Pripyat.

"Slow down a little," Crystal said as she leaned forwards between the seats. "Look, the homes. They're abandoned."

She was right. The houses here weren't the nicest places to live in. Old farmhouses and new developments springing up around the city. But now they were wrecks. Overgrown lawns, trees that had fallen onto homes, cars rotting in driveways.

Nikolai slowed to a stop. The road here split, one side riding out into the suburbs, the other continuing into the city itself. Both had been cleared of cars. He did note one good sign. "The cars here were stripped for scrap," he said.

The cars had their doors and hoods and wheels removed. Some even looked like they had their insides gutted, only leaving the frames behind. He also noted that it was only the cars left. No pickups, no utility vehicles. Those had either been dragged off, or taken apart completely.

No one wanted a Lada on these kinds of roads, but a big old truck? He wouldn't mind one of those if the number of potholes he had to deal with stayed the same.

"Nice catch," Rending complimented. "And there's life ahead. Look."

She pointed, and he bent forwards to see the skyline of Pripyat out ahead. The city had been expanding for years, and he could see its gleaming towers striving into the horizon as large grey blocks. There was smoke, coming from the towers and from all around them. The industrial sector had more smoke pouring from its chimanies.

The city lived.

"Let's head in," Rending said. "The roads look better here, I think there's more traffic."

"There's someone coming up behind us," Crystal said.

Nikolai glanced in his mirror. The girl was right, a convoy of trucks were coming up the road, kicking up dust as they went. Military trucks.

"Pull over, we'll let them cross, then follow them into the city," Rending said. "If we can."

"And if they don't want us?" Nikolai asked.

"Then we'll not want them either, and our dislike is a lot more potent," Rending replied.

There was finality there. She reminded him of some old government dog for a moment, in the body of a beautiful young woman.

He had no idea what he'd gotten himself embroiled in, but he knew that he didn't like it.

***