Casemate 7C

This story is a sequel to “These Tired Sides.” Reading one is not necessary to enjoy the other, but they achieve a much more profound (and chilling) effect together:

~~~

It had been years since anyone walked this hallway. As Alexsei approached the metal door, he wondered had been the last to stand here in the before times.

Back when the lights had worked, the walls had been free of mold, and the floor had been dry. Back when millions of rubles had been poured into this facility to keep it operating to the highest standards of productivity.

The Rebirth Lab had been a shining testament to how much could be accomplished in the Soviet system when the best minds paired with almost unlimited resources. Despite all the Westerners laughing at their stumbling central economy—or so they called it—here the U.S.S.R. had shown the sort of prowess that had carried its cosmonauts into the outer reaches of Earth first.

An accomplishment that felt more distant every day in the new Russia.

But, if the Soviet system’s pitfall wasn’t its complete vice grip on the market, it was that all its promise had been expended on military advancement in its paranoid standoff with the West. Even the vaunted space program had its roots in intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In most other instances, the elite class of scientific and military minds that sprouted from this massive investment were not allowed to share their technological innovations.

That secrecy spawned the central contradiction of the Soviet state: cosmonauts could orbit the Earth fifteen times a day aboard Mir, while below another man could not be certain the shop would have bread that evening. And if it did, he could expect to wait hours and spend all his wages for that day.

Eventually, the sacrifice demanded had been too great, and the masses shook off the revolution that had always claimed to be for their benefit.

If only they could have known what would replace it, Alexsei thought with a shake of his head.

The wealth that had previously been routed to the political and intellectual elite still remained as far away from the new Russians as ever. Instead, opportunists and criminals had seized state-controlled resources and created a new class of economic elite. Meanwhile, currency inflated at mind-boggling levels, and now the man in Moscow could be sure there would be bread and plenty of other foodstuffs waiting at the store.

But he couldn’t be sure he could pay for it.

Meanwhile, the cosmonaut in Star City wondered if there would be enough money to launch the rocket to take him to Mir.

Yeltsin had thrown open the doors, deciding it was better to break the ice and dive in. But that, of course, assumed the swimmer would not be so overwhelmed by the freezing water now that they went into shock and never came up for air.

Russia, it seemed to Alexsei, was sinking into the frozen lake.

While his country ate itself from the inside, the memory of its former empire was quickly morphing from nostalgic to threatening. Just last year it came to light that Soviet officials had dumped sixteen nuclear reactors into the Kara Sea.

What other horrific secrets could be hiding, waiting for some act of fate to unleash them?

Frustratingly, the secrecy of the U.S.S.R. remained as pervasive as ever.

Now, it was less a result of deliberate conspiracy and more a consequence of the new Russia. Military spending had been gutted and almost every research program canceled. The scientists who had staffed Rebirth Lab had scattered to the winds, forced to find whatever menial work there was to feed their families…

…or perhaps spirited away by other nations eager to harness their knowledge for their own nefarious goals.

The officers that had overseen this operation had likewise vanished. Much like the Aral Sea that continued to dry around the island that Rebirth Lab stood on. The newly formed Ground Forces of the Russian Federation had no room for them.

Others, Alexsei theorized, perhaps fled to avoid answering for what they did here.

Alexsei’s team belonged to one of many commissions formed by Yeltsin’s government to finally peel back the veil on Soviet secrets.

So far, all Alexsei and his men had been able to prove was that Rebirth Lab indeed existed, and that it could have been a biological weapons facility. They had pored over the site, documenting every inch of the abandoned buildings, animal pens, and aerosol dispersal chambers.

But they had not found any evidence of actual biologics production, only a deserted facility that appeared to have been designed to mass-manufacture death.

Everywhere they turned for proof, they hit dead ends. Not a single culture or sample remained in the lab’s many storage units. No documents could be found, either within the site or the vast government archives. Without personnel records, there was no one to interview.

All Alexsei had was an abandoned lab—and rumors.

Rumors of pathogens so virulent, so lethal that a scientist whose respirator had malfunctioned had died in less than sixty seconds.

Now, Alexsei stood outside of the final part of the facility they had not explored. Unlike every other storage area, the room, labeled Casemate 7C, had been firmly sealed behind a steel door. Only a specialized key would open it.

Alexsei’s superior had suggested dynamiting it, but Alexsei had refused to the point of nearly resigning.

If we blow that room open and it turns out this is where they’ve hidden the specimens, we risk rupturing the containers and unleashing whatever horrors these bastards have cooked up, he had all but shouted at the moron.

Yet, when Alexsei had requested hazmat suits for his team, his superior had laughed him out of the room. In the new Russia, PPE cost more than explosives.

And in the new Russia, if it can’t be done cheaply, it won’t be done at all.

Alexsei had requested this extra layer of precaution because he now stood outside of Casemate 7C, key in hand.

At last, your secrets will be revealed.

A former state official had died last year, and among his effects was a silver key. On it, a simple number and letter designation that most would have dismissed. But Alexsei, with friends throughout the bureaucracy that he had asked to dig for more information on Rebirth, had caught wind of the find.

That number and letter designation? 7C.

Naturally, the dead man had nothing else related to Rebirth in his possession. Which left Alexsei with only one avenue to the truth.

He raised the key and stared at it. It appeared to be the correct size and shape for the lock, but what if he tried it now and it didn’t fit after all?

What if all this was for nothing?

“Come on, Alexsei,” his teammate Yuri said beside him with a grin. “Don’t tell me you’ve lost your nerve now.”

Alexsei shook his head and inserted the key.

It fit.

He turned it until it clicked.

Ignoring his increasing heart rate, Alexsei grabbed the handle and levered it up. The deadbolts screeched as they slid back for the first time in years.

And then, the great steel door opened the slightest of centimeters.

No one spoke as Alexsei pushed it the rest of the way open.

Alexsei stepped over the threshold, his boots splashing into an inch of standing water. He raised his flashlight from the brackish pool to the wall beside him, noting the mildewed paint. But the degradation was not so great that he could not read CAUTION in bright red letters now brown with decay.

The thrill of discovery, of vindication after chasing a ghost for so long, started to morph to a prickling sensation at the back of his neck as he panned his light across the rest of the space.

In the far-right corner stood a drum, throwing a shadow against the wall behind it.

Alexsei approached, first noting the orange rust crawling up its formerly white sides.

Then he read the label, its faded lettering doing nothing to lessen the alarm growing within him.

Plague.

Only now did Alexsei’s eyes fall to the hole the rust had eaten in the drum’s base.

“It’s…” he breathed to himself, speaking the horrific reality into being. “It’s escaped.”

“What did you say, Alexsei?” Yuri called behind him. Alexsei’s skin recoiled as he heard Yuri swing the door open wider.

“Don’t,” Alexsei shouted. “It’s in—”

Something peculiar happened. His throat constricted on the last syllable.

He tried again, managing a strained “here” in a voice alien to his own ears.

Even as a wave of nausea nearly swept him off his feet, Alexsei attempted to order his team to run. But he could not manage the words around all the gagging.

Less than sixty seconds, the rumors had said.

Alexsei beat their prediction by twenty.