His departure from Norilsk was chaotic, but now there was nothing left to worry about regarding pursuers. No one was crazy enough to chase someone through a vast expanse of ice.
The trees and the wind were his best friends during the journey to the farm, the food he had would last about 2 days if rationed properly. The real problem would be getting wood to make fire without an axe. But of course... That was if he were an ordinary human.
With his own hands he knocked down a thin-trunk pine, his strength was great enough to split the pieces of wood in half, and he stored them in his backpack.
He walked toward the first hill he found and surrounded it with leaves and stones. He removed some gunpowder from his rifle ammunition and scraped a stone with the iron barrel of his weapon.
All it took was a spark and the fire was created, thanks to the protection he placed around it the fire did not go out. And right there he spent the night, with only a few pieces of cloth over his body.
That night was so cold that sometimes he put his hand into the flame even with a glove on, there was no way his skin could burn.
The next day he resumed his journey. He did not keep track of time, because time was useless when there was no one to reach somewhere for.
The snow accumulated in his hair and clothes, making him cruelly blend into that world he hated so much. The sky was white, and the ground was gray, even the leaves of the trees no longer had color.
There was no sound, there were no footsteps anywhere. There were no people, no animals, only the ashes of the world he remembered as a child. A time that would never return.
— Dear, did you eat today?
The sweet voice of his mother returned to knock on the doors of his conscience, but it no longer brought comfort, only sadness. He covered his ears so he would not hear, but it was useless.
— Son, you need to eat.
It did not matter, he wanted to reach the farm as fast as possible, eating was a waste of time. His body could endure longer without eating, it did not matter if he was burning many calories, if he was tired, or if his feet hurt, he needed to arrive soon.
Félix looked into the distance, far away beside a tree stood a hooded figure touching the trunk while staring him in the eyes. It had no skin or muscles on its hands, only bones, clean and white bones.
As soon as he blinked, that figure vanished, leaving a mystery circling his mind. Maybe it was real or maybe it was just a hallucination caused by hunger and fatigue.
Still on the same day, as night approached, he came across a house in the distance. There was no light inside it, it seemed abandoned. It would be a great place to spend the night.
There was a frozen lake beside the house, it was the only thing that made Félix think someone might live there. It looked very old, probably abandoned at the beginning of the cold.
The wood was already old, the windows were almost nonexistent and the roof was full of holes. The door was so worn that a small kick was enough to open it. The interior was as expected, full of old frozen furniture, in the fridge there was only ice and even the bed was hard as a rock.
It was that or "camping" outside again.
There were many old books on the shelves, all with pages completely stuck together because of the cold. Some family photos were beside the TV, since the bed in the house was a single bed, it was presumed that the owner must have been a grandfather.
A single young man or a divorced one would not stay alone in such an isolated place.
While Félix was drying the books to add them to the fireplace, he ended up discovering a letter inside one of them. There was a snowflake symbol with the letter B stamped on the front. As soon as he managed to open the book, the letter detached and gently fell to the ground.
The cold had heavily damaged the ink in the books, making them almost impossible to read, but the letter in the envelope was not stained, it seemed to have been written not long ago. Maybe it was another person who entered the house, because the ink on the letter was not blurred.
The letter was in English, it said:
"Here I write in the hope that one of my brothers reads this letter.I want you to inform our Bishop that I was not chosen by Borema.To us, who were not chosen.To us, who ate the apple.To us, who committed the original sin.Let us be grateful for letting the cold give us the comforting embrace of death, and take us out of this nightmare of flesh.I was not chosen, I accept my sin, I was not pleasing in the eyes of God and therefore I have to pay.But He gave me His mercy, inform them that He gave me the divine mercy! That I can die and serve as a statue, to praise God every day of my death.I do not want to be buried, I want my body to mix with the snow and for it to embrace me with all the tenderness it possesses.Long live our God, the one and savior Borema!!!
From your brother: Bonetti D. Smirnov."
— What a bunch of lunatics, this has to be a joke...
Without thinking twice he threw the letter into the fire.
The next day when he went to collect water from the lake he came across a strange shape buried in the snow. When he got closer he glimpsed frozen human fingers.
— This has to be a lie... It is not possible that this kind of lunatic can exist in the world...
Removing all the snow, there was an adult man frozen, his posture was on his knees with both arms raised upward. His neck was tilted to the right side as if he were waiting for someone to embrace him.
— Great, now this...
It was better to leave soon, it would be troublesome if several of them appeared.
The food was gone, all that remained was to try to hunt any animal that appeared. But how to find it in the middle of a white vastness?
The answer was simple, he would not look for it, because there was already someone who could fulfill that purpose. Preserved by the snow like meat left in a fridge, that might be disgusting or repulsive.
But Félix stopped considering himself human a long time ago, so there was no point pretending to be one. He simply broke the pieces of that frozen man and wrapped them in pieces of cloth.
— I have no idea who this Borema is, but if you find him wherever you are, tell him I said 'thank you'.
With food secured, at least for a few days, Félix resumed his journey. The farm was relatively close, if there were no detours or surprises, a full day of walking would be enough to reach the destination. The problem was that, in that world, surprises were the rule.
Then something caught his attention.
A rusty iron sign emerged from the snow like a crooked gravestone. The edges were corroded, and the post that supported it had been forced with wire, as if someone had tried to keep it standing by force.
The original text was in Russian, painted in faded white, with two arrows: one pointing to the right, the other to the left.
The lower part, however, had been violently scratched, deep cuts, made with a knife or some sharp object. In its place, someone had written in English, with irregular black ink, almost shaky:
— The Witch's House. Please, kill her.
The arrow that accompanied the message indicated the path to the left.
Old wooden fences delimited this trail, guiding the gaze toward a dense conifer forest, so closed that light could barely penetrate between the branches.
Félix frowned. He had survived too long in that frozen world to believe in superstition, but he had never seen anything that even resembled a witch. No creature, no altered human, nothing he knew fit that archaic concept.
In fact, he had never heard anyone use that word seriously.
— I guess a lot can change in six years...— he murmured, more to himself than to the wind.
He looked to the right. There was a trail there, or at least there should be. But it was completely buried under snow, erased as if it had never existed. There was nothing to confirm that anyone had passed through there.
Félix tightened his fist around the strap of the backpack.
— My duty is to kill Carl. Not a witch.
He chose the path to the right.
As expected, it did not take long to find human footprints emerging from the snow, deep marks of heavy boots, indicative of hurried steps or too exhausted to hide tracks.
In the distance, it was already possible to see the farm.
A colossal installation stretched across the horizon. Dozens of silhouettes moved between wooden fences, barns and corrals, working continuously, mechanically, like organic gears of a machine that never slept.
The concept was strong. Virtuous, even. In another world, that could be called civilized.If not for one detail.
They were not guiding cattle by ropes.
They were guiding human beings, tied by the neck.Mostly women.
The ropes were thick, made of synthetic fibers and reused leather. It was possible to see a marking made with hot iron on the side of their necks, each mark seemed to belong to a different work group.
The "drivers" walked in front, pulling them like cattle, without looking back. When someone stumbled, there was no insult, no hurry, just a rough pull, sometimes a blow with the butt of a gun.
— "It is not an ordinary farm" I already imagined something like this, but I did not think it would be this big. Agnis, you put me in every situation...
The name "farm" was not entirely figurative. There were, in fact, animals. Cattle occupied a barn heated by gas.
However, the humans who took care of them had empty, apathetic expressions, almost indistinguishable from the animals they fed.
Beside these workers, men armed with machine guns patrolled slowly, like shepherds of a different species.
Human trafficking. Slavery. A closed system.
If Carl is there, hidden among the commanders or integrated into the hierarchy, taking him down would be extremely difficult.
In addition, the installation had a gigantic rectangular warehouse, larger than the barns. The walls were reinforced with corrugated steel plates, probably had an internal mechanism to regulate temperature.
Félix released the air through his teeth and opened the backpack.
A box of .22 LR ammunition, twenty-seven cartridges left. That was all he had found in the city house while looking for Axionil. Besides the cartridges that were still in the rifle magazine.
With that, he could win if he were a superhuman with perfect aim, capable of hitting every shot without waste.
He was not, his aim was never the best.
That was why he preferred shotguns and close-range weapons. The recoil, the spread, those things compensated for his imperfect accuracy. Rifles almost always required patience, breath control, technique. Qualities he never bothered to develop.
Unfortunately.
Guards patrolled the barns and stables in regular shifts. Some walked alone, others in pairs.
And that was only what was outside. There was no way to estimate how many people were inside the facilities.
Félix was no hero. He never tried to be.
But maybe those slaves could help.
Félix clenched his fist so hard that blood ran through his hand.
— Bunch of sons of bitches.
A mountain symbol with a rising sun behind it was printed on the guards' uniforms.
Kholm is here.