Siberian Red

bony trunks of birch appeared and disappeared like a mirage among the sheets of snow.
    ‘We’re all going to freeze to death if they don’t let us back on that train by nightfall,’ Savushkin had to shout to make himself heard.
    Pekkala knew the other prisoner was right. He also knew the guards didn’t seem to care how many people died en route to the camps. He stumbled forward, feeling the heat drain from the centre of his body. Already he’d lost sensation in his ears and nose and fingers.
    When they finally reached the trees, Pekkala and Savushkin began to dig a hole around the base of a pine tree, where the snow had drifted chest deep. Protected by its spread of lower branches, they would have a place completely sheltered from the wind.
    ‘I’ll find some fallen branches to lay out on the ground,’ Pekkala told Savushkin. ‘You keep digging.’
    Savushkin nodded and went back to work. With his hair and eyebrows rimed in frost, he looked as if he’d aged a hundred years since they left the train.
    For the next few minutes, Pekkala staggered through the drifts, gathering deadfall. The branches of the white birch, sheathed in ice, clattered above him like a wind chime made of bones. Arriving back at the hollow with nothing more than a handful of rotten twigs, Pekkala stopped to tear some boughs from a nearby pine tree. While he wrestled with the evergreen branches, he did not hear the person approaching from behind.
    ‘I remember you now,’ said a voice.
    Pekkala spun around.
    The knife-cut man stood right in front of him. ‘This is the last place on earth I expected to see you, Inspector Pekkala. That’s why I couldn’t place you at first.’
    Pekkala said nothing, but only watched and waited.
    ‘I doubt you remember me, but that is understandable,’ said the man, brushing his fingertips over his scars. ‘During my stay in the Butyrka prison, the guards left me with a souvenir I will never forget, just as I have never forgotten that you were the one who arrested me.’
    ‘I have arrested many people,’ replied Pekkala. ‘That is my job.’
    The man’s cold-reddened nostrils twitched as he breathed in and out. He did not appear to be carrying a weapon, but that did nothing to comfort Pekkala.
    ‘I don’t know why you are here,’ the man continued. ‘Believe me‚ it is a comfort to know that you and I are going to the same place, but comfort is not enough, not nearly enough to pay the debt you owe for what you’ve done to me.’
    Pekkala dropped the twigs he had been carrying. His frozen hands clenched into fists.
    ‘Do you have any friends, Inspector? Any still alive?’ The man was taunting him. ‘They’re all gone, aren’t they, Inspector? They left you here to wander in the wilderness; the last of your kind on this earth.’
    It flashed across Pekkala’s mind that his whole life had come down to this.
    Suddenly, the prisoner threw up his arms and fell backwards. His legs had been pulled out from under him. In the next instant, a creature emerged from the ground. Scuttling like a giant crab out of the earth, Savushkin set upon the man.
    With arms flailing, he rained down blows upon the convict, who fought back with equal ferocity, clawing at Savushkin and tearing the shirt from his back, but it did nothing to prevent the hammer strikes of Savushkin’s fists.
    ‘Enough!’ shouted Pekkala, sickened by the sound of breaking bones and teeth as the man’s face caved in.
    Savushkin did not seem to hear. In a frenzy, he continued his attack, smashing his torn knuckles against the prisoner’s battered face.
    ‘Stop!’ Pekkala set his hand upon Savushkin’s shoulder.
    Savushkin whirled around, teeth bared and his eyes gone wild. For an instant, he did not even seem to recognise Pekkala.
    ‘It’s done,’ whispered Pekkala.
    Savushkin blinked. In that moment, he returned to his senses. He stepped back, wiping the blood from his hands.
    The knife-cut man was barely recognisable. He coughed up a splatter of cherry-red blood, which poured down the sides of his mouth. Seeing the colour of that blood, Pekkala knew the sphenopalatine artery had been severed. There was nothing that could be done for him. His eyes rolled back into his head. A moment later, he shuddered and was gone.
    ‘I think it’s time I introduced myself,’ said Savushkin. ‘And as a friend,’ he added.
    ‘You have already proven that,’ replied Pekkala.
    ‘Not exactly, Inspector. I am Lieutenant Commissar