Wasteland in Red Square: Book Two of the Hell Gate Saga is set to be released 21 October. For those who can't wait, below is the first chapter.
Red Square, Moscow, nine days after the opening of the Russian portal
Ten plot’ yedokov broke through the line and
swarmed General Budenny. They were even more frightening up close, like the
zombies from American horror films, emaciated corpses with gray leathery skin
and dull, milky white eyes. They also had a taste for human flesh. These were
the tortured souls condemned to eternal damnation that now walked the Earth because
of the vrata ada, the gate to Hell. Unlike
their movie counterparts, a bite from one of these things would not turn the
victim into a plot’ yedokov, although
that didn’t mean enough of these creatures couldn’t strip a man down to his
bones if given a chance. Budenny raised
his 9mm Makarov pistol at the plot’
yedokov
rushing toward him and fired three rounds into its face. A blue eddy of light,
the creature’s life force, separated from its body and drifted skyward. The carcass
went limp, forward momentum carrying it a few feet until it collapsed and
tumbled onto the pavement. The other plot’ yedokov maneuvered around the
body and swarmed the general. He shifted his aim to the next closest and fired
three more rounds. The bullets punched into its chest and head, freeing its life
force and dropping the corporeal shell. Budenny continued his attack, taking
down two more plot’ yedokov before the breach of his Makarov locked in the
open position.
Major
Rozhenko stepped in front of Budenny, his AK-47 automatic rifle raised. The
major fired into the heads of the last six onrushing plot’ yedokov, bringing each down. The last fell in front of the
major and rolled. Rozhenko stepped back so the carcass wouldn’t knock him over,
ejected the weapon’s empty magazine, and loaded a fresh one.
Rozhenko’s eyes
pleaded with his commanding officer to end this carnage. “You have to order a
retreat.”
“No,”
barked the general.
“But….”
“We can do this.”
Budenny added under his breath, “We have to.”
“We”
referred to the five thousand soldiers of the Russian Ground Forces surging
across Red Square to close the vrata that
had opened in front of the State Historical Museum in the wake of the
scientific accident at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino,
seventy miles south of Moscow. The portal measured seventy feet in diameter. The
bottom five feet lay buried beneath ground level, melting the surrounding
stones and forming a trough. Its circumference shimmered, creating a distorted
boundary between the two realms. An endless column of plot’ yedokov stumbled through, their numbers stretching back into Hell
as far as the eye could see. They had been pouring into Red Square and
spreading out across Moscow since the portal first opened. The electromagnetic
pulse generated during its formation had burnt out all electronic circuitry for
thousands of miles, rendering most of the military equipment useless. Not that
it mattered. Budenny had scoured armories throughout the Urals to find “old
school” weapons to arm his troops—AK-47 Kalashnikov automatic rifles, Makarov
semi-automatic pistols, and a dozen TPO-70 heavy infantry flamethrowers left
over from the Cold War. He also possessed four ten-man squads, each armed with
a Special Atomic Demolition Munition, more commonly known as a “suitcase bomb,”
a portable low-yield nuclear weapon they would use to blast shut the vrata. The general had thought his
command would be able to deal with this threat.
To
paraphrase von Moltke, no battle plan ever survived first contact with the
enemy.
The plot’ yedokov threatened Budenny’s force
by their sheer numbers. As his troops advanced up Red Square, they ran into a
seemingly impenetrable wall of the creatures which slowed their pace. For every
plot’ yedokov brought down, twice as
many took its place. It had taken nearly an hour to move only a few hundred feet.
Their left flank was anchored by Lenin’s Mausoleum in front of the Kremlin,
with the line of advance stretching across Red Square before swerving north in
front of Gum Department Store where the right flank pushed three hundred feet ahead.
Two of the nuclear squads had fallen in behind this surge to get nearer to the
portal. Budenny had used his left flank to distract the bulk of the plot’ yedokov and give his right flank a
chance. As a hedge, he had ordered the remaining two nuclear squads to maneuver
toward the mausoleum to make an end run if the opportunity arose. Budenny hoped
this would work because his men had already expended more than half their
ammunition. Once they were empty, the plot’
yedokov would overwhelm them.
A commotion
came from the troops off to his left. Budenny focused his attention beyond the vrata toward the northeast corner of the
Kremlin, expecting to see more plot’
yedokov bearing down on them. Rozhenko expressed the disbelief both men
felt when he muttered, “Vy popali v trakhat'sya
shutok.”
A dragon had emerged
from behind the Kremlin wall and centered itself between the citadel and the
State Historical Museum. It did not resemble the mythical creatures from the
childhood fairy tales his grandmother had told him about dragons protecting the
Motherland from foreign invaders. This monster had the shape of a lizard, albeit
one that stretched two hundred feet from nose to tail, and did not have wings. Its
colorization was a deep red streaked with tints of orange. The scales were as thick
as armored plates, especially around the head where the chin, nose, and brows
extended outward in bony structures, and along the chest and spine where the
skin peeked into thick ridges that glowed crimson. The beast crouched as if to
lunge, yet remained still and observed the battle through a pair of glossy, pitch
black eyes.
Rozhenko moved beside
Budenny. “General, we have to fall back now while we still have a chance.”
Before Budenny
could respond, two soldiers, each carrying a flamethrower, raced up on the
dragon’s flanks and doused it in flames, the one on the right aiming for its
head, the other focusing on its massive chest. The behemoth reared up on its
hind legs and screeched in agony. When the attack ceased, the dragon had not
even been singed. It dropped onto all four legs, lowered the front part of its
torso, and leaned its head forward. The glowing ridges along its chest and
spine shone in intensity. Budenny sensed the panic that raced through his men.
Rather than
fire, the dragon exhaled a cloud of lime green smoke tinted with thousands of
crystals. The behemoth swung its head from side to side, producing a cloud that
stretched for five hundred feet and expanded above Red Square, forming above
the heads of plot’ yedokov and humans.
It floated for several seconds before settling onto the troops. When the first crystal
touched a hard surface, it ignited a flame no larger than the head of a lit
match, yet it kindled the lime green gas around it. The cloud became a raging
inferno that burned itself out within seconds, incinerating plot’ yedokov and Budenny’s men, leaving
thousands of charred corpses sprawled across the square. A few remaining green
crystals smoldered on the blackened skeletons and scorched pavement.
The
left flank of Budenny’s front panicked and broke into a horde of terrified men,
including one of the nuclear squads, all of whom dropped their weapons and ran
for the Moskva River. Colonel Yurchenko, who led the other nuclear squad,
headed for shelter behind Lenin’s Mausoleum. Budenny, Rozhenko, and a dozen
soldiers followed, stopping only when they reached the relative safety of the tomb’s
southern wall.
Several of his
men stood their ground inside the square, many aiming for the ridges along the
dragon’s chest and spine. The behemoth glared at them. A guttural growl
emanated from deep within its throat. One of the flamethrowers circled to its
right and released a stream of fire that engulfed its head. The growl became an
agonized screech. Budenny braced himself for another gas attack. Instead, the
dragon lifted its left leg and smashed its foot on top of the flamethrower. The
fuel tank exploded, splashing liquid fire on the nearby troops. Those not burnt
alive were crushed, as the behemoth lowered its head to the pavement and swung
it sideways, flinging a score of Budenny’s men into the air to be smashed
against the Kremlin walls. One brave comrade rushed forward and emptied his
AK-47 into the dragon’s face, only to be scooped up in its mouth. As the man
screamed in pain and terror, the dragon lifted its head and swallowed. The
final shreds of discipline among Budenny’s left flank collapsed, and a panicked
escape ensued. Surging ahead, the dragon rampaged through the fleeing men,
crushing them under its weight or hurling them aside.
The right flank
remained intact and took advantage of the confusion. Moving toward the center
of Red Square where the dragon’s fire cloud had cleared away the plot’ yedokov, the other two nuclear
squads, protected by one hundred troops, raced for the vrata. A handful of new plot’
yedokov had passed through the portal to replace those wiped out, more than
enough for the Russians to handle. They had closed to within fifty feet when a
roar came from Nikolskaya Street, which ran alongside Gum Department Store and
entered Red Square near Kazan Cathedral. A second dragon thundered into the
square. The ridges along its chest and spine glowed crimson. Upon seeing the
humans, it exhaled a lime green cloud over the advancing troops. The two
nuclear squads rushed ahead, trying to plant their devices in the few remaining
moments left to them. The crystals struck a hard surface and ignited. In seconds,
the cloud became an inferno that incinerated another two hundred troops and plot’ yedokov. An explosion erupted from
the fire cloud as one of the nuclear devices detonated with the equivalent of between
ten and fifteen tons of high explosives.
Budenny and the
others ducked behind the wall moments before the shock wave slammed into the
mausoleum. The entire structure shook. Chunks of red marble broke loose and
fell on them. Budenny felt his internal organs compress, fearing for a moment
that they might rupture. The mausoleum took the brunt of the force, and the
general suffered nothing more severe than a ringing in his ears. Leaning with
his back against the wall, he shouted, “Is everyone okay?”
“Yes,” Rozhenko responded.
Budenny didn’t hear the words but instead read his aide’s lips.
“Wait here.” The
general made his way to the corner of the mausoleum and checked on the
situation in Red Square. The blast had devastated everything within a two
hundred foot radius. Those soldiers on the right flank not killed outright had
been crushed or maimed from the concussion. Every plot’ yedokov in the square had been ripped apart, the blue light of
their life forces mixing with black smoke as both drifted skyward. Even the
dragon had not come through unscathed. The blast had thrown it against the
front façade of Gum where it lay amongst a pile of debris. A gaping wound in
its abdomen oozed blood and the torn remnants of internal organs. It tried to
raise its legs and swing its tail, an effort that ended in a pathetic mewl
before the behemoth went limp. For all the destruction it caused, the blast had
one positive effect. It had cleared away all obstacles between them and the
portal.
“Yurchenko,”
Budenny ordered. “Move while you have the chance.”
The colonel did
not waste time responding. He circled Budenny and rushed into Red Square,
knowing the others would follow. The general watched as the squad raced toward
the vrata, confident they would make
it.
As Yurchenko’s squad approached the portal, half a
dozen plot’ yedokov wandered through
onto their side, only to be taken down by a barrage of automatic weapons fire.
The squad stopped twenty feet from the opening, most providing suppressing fire
against the plot’ yedokov that came
through. Yurchenko slid off his backpack, lowered it onto the pavement, and
unzipped it to reveal a
cylindrical-shaped device eighteen inches in length by four inches in diameter.
An LED display and keypad was built into one side. He would set the timer for two
minutes, place it against the vrata,
and then get as far away as possible before the one kiloton explosion detonated
and, in theory, blasted shut the portal. Yurchenko unlocked the keypad. The six
spaces on the LED device lit up in a series of 0s. Once he typed in 120, he
would—
A distorted roar shot across Red Square.
The way his squad backed away from the portal told Yurchenko in which direction
the sound came. A third dragon raced toward them from inside Hell. It rushed
the opening, though still a thousand feet distant, crushing or pushing aside
the plot’
yedokov heading in the same direction. Another roar came from behind
him near St. Basil’s. The first dragon had reversed direction, abandoning its
pursuit of the fleeing humans to defend the portal. It had already approached
to within one hundred feet, the ridges along its chest and spine a radiant
crimson. The behemoth stopped, crouched low to the ground, and exhaled a cloud
of lime green gas.
Yurchenko had a few seconds at most to close
the vrata. He set the timer on the
LED display to 1. Picking up the device, Yurchenko stepped up to the portal and
initiated the countdown.
The first crystal touched one of
Yurchenko’s men, erupting into a spark that ignited the expanding cloud.
The LED counter switched to 0.
Budenny shut his eyes and ducked behind Lenin’s
Mausoleum as blinding light flashed across Red Square. Rozhenko scrambled over
and threw himself on top of his commanding officer.
The dragon
reared back, screeching as wisps of smoke formed on the skin and scales exposed
to the fireball. A moment later, the shock wave slammed into the behemoth, tearing
it apart and flinging the shattered carcass across the square to land in a
bloody heap in front of St. Basils.
The same shock
wave slammed into the mausoleum, shearing off the top layers of marble and the
reviewing stand, and dropping the fragments onto those hidden along the
southern facade. Rozhenko groaned when a chunk fell on him. Budenny did not
hear the major, being only vaguely cognizant of his surroundings for the next minute,
sliding in and out of consciousness. When he regained his senses, he heard a
low rumbling, and immediately knew what caused the sound.
“Rozhenko, get
up. It’s over.”
The major did
not respond. Budenny reached up to shake his shoulder. A warm liquid covered
his palm. Rozhenko’s body slid down the general’s back and onto the marble debris
surrounding them. Blood flowed from the torn skin around his crushed skull. His
blank eyes stared up. Budenny placed two fingers over the major’s lids and closed
them. When the general stood, he could not see out of his right eye, and the skin
on that side of his face felt warm and numb. He would worry about his wounds
later. Right now he needed to confirm that Yurchenko had closed the vrata. Placing his left hand against the
mausoleum’s wall, Budenny stumbled through the debris until he reached the
corner of structure.
Smoke and dust
shrouded most of Red Square. The rumbling came from a cloud that billowed
skyward, the top forming into its familiar mushroom shape. Budenny could not
see the section of Red Square where the portal once stood. He leaned against
the wall and waited as the dust around its base settled. His heart sank when he
saw something shimmer on the other side of the smoke. The blast had not
affected the gate. The explosion had penetrated the opening because the dragon
and the closest plot’ yedokov on the
other side had been cut down. The vrata,
however, remained intact. He had committed almost five thousand men to seal off
this portal into Hell and had been unsuccessful.
Budenny slid
down the wall and sat on the rubble from the mausoleum. He laid his head back
and closed his eyes, wishing he had died along with the rest of his men. His
failure meant that nothing would stop the underworld demons from flooding into
Moscow.
