Voitch

by Keith Davies

conclusion

He telegraphed instructions to side all traffic immediately, and received acknowledgement. Could the control rodding be warped or frozen — too severely for the compensator to correct? It had been comparatively mild, only minus twenty, but if the switchgear had frozen half open, he would follow the well-established procedure: crunch through the snow, carrying his pack, rifle, fully-laden with the brass blowtorch and a cannister of kerosene strapped to his back; thaw the points and ground frame lever, then return to send the ‘Way Ahead Clear’ signal.

Voitch always felt like a deep-sea diver when he prepared to go outside: clumsily bulked and padded out by three layers of wool, felt and kapok. He rigged canvas slings for the kerosene cannister, blowtorch and rifle; unbolted the cabin door, and stepped into an intensity of white.

There had been a light snowfall overnight, and a grey haze to the southwest suggested more within the hour, but his progress was steady and methodical. He tried to match effort to exhaling to avoid moisture rapidly freezing on his heavily-muffled face and beard. He paused every few minutes to scan the treeline and to check the sky. Within half an hour he had reached the spur.

His first impression was that there had been some kind of localized, heavier snowfall or drifting at the junction, a shallow cutting which ran off into the forest. There were curious hummocks of snow, wind-scoured, tapering like fat teardrops, rippling the cutting’s banks.

One lay across the points.

He paused, unslung his pack, then he noticed a curious black, semi-circular shape sticking out from this snow-mound — it took some seconds to identify.

It was a boot heel.

Sweating under his reindeer furs, with panic scalding through him, Voitch scraped away the snow, working upwards and outwards — wincing as he uncovered something scarcely recognizable as human — waxy, blue-black; frozen in ice and agony. It was an adult male, stripped to fouled underwear, his face shattered and pulped by fists or rifle-butts, or both. Then he understood — and his senses reeling with horror, he rose slowly and looked beyond at the other snow-hummocks, stretching to the bend in the track and the forest’s edge:

Bozhe, pomiluy ikh dushi! Flung from Reform Camp ‘Specials.’ There must be hundreds of them.

He had to move the body clear from the points and work the switch gear; suppressing the rage to vomit, he took it by the ankles. It was paper-light, and as he gently pulled it to the track side, he sobbed.

A whispering skitter of snow at the forest’s edge — grey blurs flickering, weaving between the birch trunks — he glimpsed their breath; gaunt, slicked fur: wolves!

They slipped back into the shadows: ‘Become two men, one of you constantly watching the forest line.’ Voitch unslung his rifle, flipped off the safety catch, pulled off his heavy mittens suspended on a neck cord, and aimed at the treeline — turning quickly to cover both edges, the muzzle sight pin faltering between vertical slashes of barred shade and bright birch trunks: nothing.

He carefully placed his rifle, bolt upwards on the snow.

He knew he had seconds. Sluicing the points, track rails, switch gear and levers with kerosene until he had shaken the cannister empty, Voitch primed the blow torch, then thumbed the nozzle’s flint igniter spindle — a spurt of flame roared out of it. With no time to adjust the jet, he played it onto the track surface and points. Instantly a barrier of rippling flame — the heat blasting him backwards — leapt up between the cutting and the treeline.

He saw them, blurred by the heat: eight of the brutes, snarling, poised to dash at him. It was deep winter, and they would be desperate with hunger and maddened by the scent of heaped corpses.

Praying aloud, he shouldered the rifle and fired, four rapid, crashing shots, working the bolt; each ejected cartridge hissed at his feet. Bullets smashed into trees or sent up spurts of mixed snow and earth: one creature yelped, fell, and bit savagely at its flank. They paused. The flames, exposing bright, sizzling rails, subsided.

Voitch cradled the rifle in his arms clamped against his chest, abandoned the cannister and blow torch, and then ran, plunging back through his outward tracks.

He flailed up to the top of a short rise, then looked over his shoulder at the wolves behind the fast-dispersing black smoke — four were tearing at the nearest mound, pulling something foul and glistening from it. Three others watched him.

He jolted, slithered and plunged on until he reached Box 2257, tore open the door, flung it shut and made all secure. They had not pursued him. He staggered towards his bunk, pulling at his scarves, dropping the rifle with clatter.

Broken by horror and revulsion, Voitch fainted.

* * *

It was late summer: he and his brother Misha were laughing and splashing in a stream, holding each other’s wrists and twirling round, sending up blooms of mud: the light filtered through the tree canopy. He could smell cut hay.

When the room beneath the lever gantry swam back into focus, all was calm and still; lamplight and fire glow played on the timber panels. The rifle was back up on its wall clips. A mug of black tea steamed on the locker at his bedside.

But I have not lit the lamps, re-stacked the fire or brewed tea.

It sat on the edge of the bed, indistinct, almost shimmering. His fourteen-year old self.

The telegraph bell pinged the warning patterns; a dozen sectors were already sending over and over:

Is all well? Verify line clear. Privet tam vnizu! Hello down there!

It wouldn’t stay still long enough for Voitch to discern more than the thing wore the shirt and britches his mother made for him; it was barefoot, agitated — and, yet, laughing, though soundlessly — he could even see the strings of saliva between its teeth as the mouth opened, soft and pink. Mocking? Scornful? He couldn’t tell.

‘You are my distress and shock and solitude. Vanish!’ he urged aloud.

Snow pattered against the windows. Suddenly, it moved with terrific agility, scampering upstairs to the gantry, and he knew — he knew — it was intent on havoc.

Voitch, reeling, slapping his face to wrench himself out of the intensity of the illusion — scrambled after the apparition, up into the control room. It tore between the levers, wrapping its frail body around them, pushing or pulling; clanging them shut or open in a murderous, deliberate frenzy. Each one, slammed home or opened in the gate, meant a collision or derailing — colliding flesh and metal, appalling carnage; hundreds killed or maimed — by him.

There was but one way to stop it — and he tore down the gantry steps to recover the rifle, sliding home the bolt as he tore back upstairs — the telegraph warning pattern bells already clamouring frantic confusion and alarm as terror surged along the line.

* * *

Five days later, the requisitioned train stood, its exhaust panting in the great silence, braked outside the signal box at Kasovo-Novy. Unit 2257 scarcely resembled anything man-made; more a formidable ice-grove: entirely encased in thick, pillared, ice from the chimney cowling to the base bricks. Guttering, roof tiles, galvanized sheeting had all been torn loose by the cumulative weight of icicles, shattering onto the frozen snow. The sergeant waited on the footplate as the District Engineer, accompanied by two Imperial Guard conscripts, rifles unslung, approached the cabin door.

They used their rifle butts and entrenching tools to hack though the encrusted ice, ready to blast the door loose with a powder charge — but found it wrenched half open — as if brutally forced from the inside. The conscripts entered warily, knocking loose the icicles with their bayonets, yelling: ‘We are your relief! Show yourself!’

It was the District Engineer who half-hacked, half-slithered to the top of the gantry stairs and saw that all twenty-seven frost-rimed levers were locked shut and secured with taut, lashed ropes.

In the centre of the lever frame, where the ropes met, was a figure couched in ice.

But it was the colour of ice star-patterned on the walls above the frozen shape which caused him to cry out: Gospodi pomiluy!

It was a slick of crimson ice, flecked with congealed streaks of pale grey.

Cursing and sobbing, the Engineer gently cleared the snow from the crouched figure with his fur mittens.

Voitch had secured the ropes around his waist — and the rifle was jammed, muzzle upwards, between his knees, both frost-blackened hands clasping the trigger.

The sergeant on the locomotive footplate was shading his eyes against the low winter sun when the first of the conscripts ran outside into the white light, yelling the news of their grim discovery.

Snow sidled down and began to settle.