Black Flagged Redux

Chapter 30





9:22 PM

Filitov Prospect

Monchegorsk, Russian Federation





Valeria Cherkasov's eyes fluttered open. She could hear some kind of knocking, but couldn't make any sense of the sound. For a brief moment, she had no idea where she was. The sensory details started to return, beginning with her vision. She was in her apartment, or what remained of it. A fading light crept through the shattered window in her living room, exposing the unbelievable amount of damage done to the apartment. A broken chair from her small kitchen table set lay on the floor under the window.

She smelled the smoky remains of a fire and wasn't surprised when further visual inspection of her surroundings revealed that the kitchen table had collapsed on itself, apparently due to a fire. The flames had cracked the bulb and melted part of the light fixture attached to the ceiling, leaving a massive charred area above the destroyed table. Just beyond the smell of fire was something else. It almost smelled like barbeque.

She now noticed that the room was freezing and that she was shivering. The thin wool blanket covering her on the small couch did little to deter the arctic air that freely poured into the room. Why wasn't she on her bed, under her thick down comforter? She heaved her legs over the side of the couch and stood up. All she could think about was getting under that comforter. She glanced at her hands and saw that they were bruised and scratched, dried blood coagulated in several places around the worst cuts. Walking toward the bedroom, she saw several blood smears on the cinderblock walls. Did I punch the walls? None of this made any sense to her.

When she reached the bedroom doorway, she realized why she was on the couch. The deeply charred wooden bed frame formed a shell around a large burned mass of mattress springs, feathers, pillows and dark unrecognized material. She didn't like the smell in this room. Some kind of combination of charcoal lighter fluid and meat. Disgusting. She stepped back into the first room and her senses homed in on the sound of knocking at her door. How long had that been going on? Shit. That was what woke me in the first place.

She walked over to the door and stared through the peephole, immediately recognizing one of the clinic doctors. She couldn't remember his name, but he was certainly familiar to her. They had dated off and on, until he settled down with a nurse from the hospital. She strained to remember if she knew what had happened to the nurse. She couldn't recall anything. Something was wrong with her detailed memory. She opened the door and registered the look of shock on his face.

"Are you all right, Valeria? I heard that you got out of the hospital. You're lucky you left. Army units showed up and nobody has heard any news from that part of town. What happened to you? You look like you've been attacked."

"I think I need to sit down," she said, straining to remember his name. Nothing.

"That's a good idea," he said, escorting her to the couch.

She wondered what he was doing here. It seemed odd to her that he would show up out of nowhere to check on her. Didn't he have a wife? Or did they ever get married?

She sat down on the far right side and felt a sharp pain in her right thigh. She didn't react to the pain, beyond slowly rising up to see what had happened. The man had turned his back on her, muttering something she couldn't hear. He glanced at the table and walls, furtively looking back at her. She caught this, but pretended to stare out of the window at the fading light. She turned her attention to the couch and her thigh, seeing fresh blood pour out of a shallow cut in her leg. The gleaming blade of a large butcher knife protruded between the cushion and the armrest of the couch. Now, where did that come from? Oh, yeah. Now I remember.

She glanced up at her friend, who was slowly approaching the bedroom door. Without thinking, she pulled the knife out of the couch by the flat side of the blade and stared at it. A crusted layer of dark red blood covered at least half of the blade. She hid it along the side of her bleeding leg and stood up slowly.

"Valeria, what in hell happened here?" he said, transfixed by the scene in the bedroom.

"Same thing that's gonna happen to you," she hissed into his ear.

Ten minutes later, after using the rest of the charcoal lighter fluid and most of the wood in the apartment to burn the man's body beyond recognition, she opened a small painted trunk next to the door and took out a warm fur hat and thick, fur-lined leather gloves. She took a moment to adjust everything before taking her favorite gray wool overcoat off one of the coat hooks next to the front door.

She pulled the coat over her bloodied hospital scrubs, wondering why she hadn't changed these yet. It didn't matter. She just needed to get out of her apartment and find a more secure place to stay. She knew the streets weren't safe, but neither was staying in her apartment. Since arriving from the hospital, her windows had been smashed in, and someone had thrown a small firebomb into her bedroom. It was only a matter of time before something more dangerous occurred. She was on the second floor and someone could easily climb in one of the broken windows. Maybe she could find a vacant apartment on an upper floor in her building. Even better, she might find someone that would take her in. She hated being alone.

A gunshot echoed through the open window, startling her. She turned toward the kitchen and walked over to the knife holder, searching for her favorite cutting knife. If she was going out into the darkness, she'd better arm herself. Failing to find the large butcher knife, she settled for the smaller one, which would be easier to hide in the spacious pockets on her jacket. She didn't want to walk around holding a knife. Someone might mistake her for one of the lunatics walking the streets.