“We’re getting pretty far afield, and this is getting weirder. I want more firepower,” Red declares. He cranks up the Hilux’s radio and calls back to Ponika. The signal is attenuated and static-laden, but he’s eventually able to reach Alexei. The East German teenager whistles up Arkadi and Miko and heads north in the team’s OT-64. It’s about a three-hour trip. By the time the reinforcements link up, there’s maybe an hour remaining before sunset.
The team decides to make the best possible use of their remaining light. They shuffle vehicle assignments and push on, following the tracks, which are still more-or-less straight to the north-northwest. As the sun dips below the western horizon, Magda calls a halt. She pulls the precious set of night-vision goggles out of her pack and heads for high ground. After a few minutes of careful scanning, she trots back down the hill. “I’m not going to be able to track in this. I can’t see any campfires. There’s some sky-glow to the west, but that looks more like a larger community. And there’s fog coming in from the north.”
“The north?” Minka asks sharply. At Magda’s nod, she frowns. “The river is to the south.”
Red scratches his beard. “Supernatural fuckery aside, fog is usually caused by cold air. Or,” he looks at Minka, “it could be supernatural fuckery.”
“Or supernatural fuckery could be causing cold air,” Zenobia snarks.
“Farmhouse?” ventures Magda.
“Farmhouse,” Minka hisses emphatically.
“Farmhouse,” Red concurs.
The drive back is treacherous. The fog rolls in swiftly. Soon, visibility is down to less than fifty meters. It’s a minor miracle of navigation that the team even finds the farmhouse again. Leks takes watch, covering the rest of the group as they unload, bring in firewood, and set up camp for the night. Once Magda starts dishing out dinner, Red spells Leks so the Estonian can get something to eat.
It’s been a long day. Leks resumes watch along with Alexei. Everyone else unrolls blankets and sleeping bags and crashes out.
[ I’ll note a slight alteration from the actual sequence of play here. This story arc spanned three sessions with variable player availability. The players behind Arkadi and Miko weren’t here for the first two sessions, but for the sake of continuity, I’ve retconned in those PCs’ presence. ]
Sometime around midnight, Minka awakens to a tug on her hair. She sits upright. From atop a shelf in the kitchen, glowing eyes blink at her, then vanish.
Beside her is a glass pint jar. She picks it up, shutters a flashlight’s lens with her fingers, peeks at its contents.
Salt.
“Oh shit.” Minka pulls on her boots, stands, begins sprinkling lines of salt across the windowsills.
Zenobia awakens, grumbling. “Minka, what the hell?”
“Something left me this.” Minka holds up the jar, turning it for Zenobia’s inspection.
“Oh shit. Give me some of that. Alexei! Here!”
Leks, still sitting on the front stoop with the door cracked behind him, ignores the commotion. He stands, loops his MG3’s sling over his head, and steps out into the yard. Under the cold damp of the fog, he can smell the same aromas he caught back at the North Farms boundary cairn, where the riders seemingly abandoned their pursuit. Blood – old blood, not fresh. And sickness, that unclean undertone of chronic illness turning to rot. It’s faint, washed out by the humidity, but it’s there.
Red checks his carbine, then sees that Minka and company are almost done with their task. “Leks! Get in here!”
Leks brings the MG3 to his shoulder and backs carefully between the vehicles, scanning the fog for targets. “I smell them,” he mutters. As he backs into the house, Minka draws a line of salt across the threshold and feels her ears tighten from a sudden air pressure sensation of solidity. Leks looks at the number of people in the front room, shrugs, and moves to the kitchen to cover the back door.
Alexei has an audiophile’s ear. He can’t see anything out in the fog… but he hears the creak of leather on leather, and a scuff of something hard on stone. It’s hard to pin down direction or distance. The noise is just on the edge of hearing, so his best guess is fifty to a hundred meters away, maybe. Just outside visual range. Carefully, he grasps Mister Morgenstern and posts up beside the front door.
Leks sniffs the air again. “Disease,” he hisses. “I don’t know what’s out there, but it’s not good.”
Minka’s head comes up sharply as she hears a horse snort somewhere outside. She restrains herself from immediately charging out the front door.
On the opposite side of the house, someone coughs wetly. More horse snorts, hoof scuffs, and creaks of leather filter through the fog.
“Fuck this,” Leks snarls, slotting into his role as Red’s tactical deputy. “Minka, Zenobia, with me. Red, Alexei, front door. Magda, north windows. Arkadi, south. Miko, you’re our reserve.” There’s a rapid shuffle as everyone readies weapons and takes their assigned fields of fire. “Call off what you see,” he orders. A soft ripple of negatives runs around the farmhouse.
Leks takes a deep breath. “Going loud,” he announces as he unlatches the kitchen door. He shoves it open with the MG3’s muzzle, then rips a 15-round burst into the night. One tracer sparks skyward as it ricochets off something.
The snap of a bowstring fractionally precedes an arrow as it comes out of the fog and slams through Leks’ armor into his right pectoral. He grunts and staggers back, more from surprise than the actual impact. There’s no sign of the arrow’s origin. He snaps off the shaft and steps back to his firing position.
On the opposite side of the house, Red hears another hoof scuff against stone. He levels his Glock 18 and sends a burst out the front door. Another arrow flicks off his helmet to embed itself in the wall behind him.
Alexei jumps up, dashes to the kitchen, and begins rummaging under the sink for cleaning chemicals. He pulls out two bottles, shakes them, nods, and moves to the pantry.
The team shuffles positions. Red crawls into the kitchen. “They’re shooting at our muzzle flashes,” he surmises. “Can you tell where they’re shooting from?”
Leks shakes his head. “Not yet. But if I’m watching when they shoot…”
“I can give you light!” Alexei announces, brandishing two improvised sticky Molotovs. “Shit. Does anyone have matches? A lighter? Something?”
Leks rests the MG3’s bipod on the kitchen table and fumbles in a pocket. “Here.” He tosses something silvery to Alexei.
“Aww yeah,” Alexei breathes.
“Ready?” Red asks. Two affirmatives come back. He points the Glock around the doorframe and holds down the trigger for a second. Two arrows smack the doorframe. From his new position at a window, Leks launches another long burst on a reciprocal trajectory. Screams of human and equine pain pierce the night.
Alexei flicks the lighter and touches the flame to a wick. He steps up to the kitchen door, but flinches as hot brass from the machine gun fountains down his shirt. The Molotov falls short, igniting the farm’s empty chicken coop.
The firelight diffuses through the fog, but it’s enough to draw long shadows pointing toward two riders, about forty meters out, just beyond the paddock fence.
Leks adjusts his aim and walks another burst into the riders. Red empties his happy stick at them. The rider on the left topples, bounces hard, and doesn’t move. Both horses wheel and disappear into the fog. Around the house, the rest of the team can hear the sounds of other horses withdrawing.
Leks clears his throat. “Mister Red. I have something sticking in me.”
Red extracts the arrowhead from Leks’ chest. It looks hand-forged. The rest of the arrow, as well as the others the team can recover, match that assessment.
There’s brief discussion of sending someone out to check the body, but the chicken coop is fully involved. Anyone moving in that direction would be both blind and backlit.
The adrenaline gradually wears off. Red and Zenobia take the next watch while the rest of the team tries to rest.
An hour later, the creak of leather filters through the fog.
Red calls everyone to battle stations again. The team rolls out of bed, stomps feet into boots, grabs weapons.
The occasional sounds of movement come from out of the night. Nothing else happens. No targets appear.
“They’re going to keep this up all night,” Alexei says.
Leks nods. “This is the same thing they did to the Russian.”
“I want the vehicles tucked in close,” Red decides. “This is why we brought belt-fed heavy weapons.”
Leks grins savagely. “Alexei? Molotov?”
More flaming bottles arc out the front door, to the sound of retreating hooves. The riders are clearly avoiding any illumination. There’s a quick scramble to back the Hilux and the OT-64 until their bumpers are almost against the house.
The intermittent harassment continues until dawn. No one gets more than the faintest shreds of sleep. As the fog begins burning off, so too does the riders’ presence.
[ This was one of the few times I’ve been able to inflict sleep deprivation or other exhaustion factors on the PCs. Normally, they have enough personnel to cover watch rotations without too much difficulty. They actually ended the session sleep deprived, so Unit Morale is down to a B for the first time in ages. ]
Leks escorts Red, Zenobia, and Minka out to check the body and any other evidence.
The corpse is a young man clad in the rags of Soviet infantry uniform, on which an 89th Cavalry Division insignia is no real surprise. He’s badly emaciated and his skin has a greyish pallor. His dying grimace of pain reveals receding gums, protruding teeth. His eyes are bulbous, noticeably moreso than normal variance inf human facial features could account for. Red probes at one. “Dark-adapted?” he asks himself aloud.
“Don’t know if touching him is safe,” Leks grunts. “Smells like disease. Rot.”
“Bad saddle sores,” Zenobia points out with malicious understatement. The man’s inner thighs and calves are beyond open sores – they’re raw meat, necrotic and parasite-ridden.
Minka turns her head at that and walks over from where she was inspecting the ground. “That’s like he was literally living in the saddle.”
“You’re not using ‘literally’ figuratively,” Zenobia observes.
“No.” Minka points at the ground a few meters away. “Lots of blood. Leks… you definitely hit them.” What she can’t quite bring herself to voice is that the horses weren’t running panicked, and they weren’t lamed. The marks show a deliberate withdrawal and a healthy gait.
“Minka.” Zenobia stands, turns to face the taller woman. “Last night. The salt. How? Why?”
Minka shifts awkwardly. “The house… has a guardian. The guardian woke me. The salt was next to me when I woke.”
Red cocks his head and chews on a question with which he’s not wholly comfortable. “Did that… guardian… help the Russian, too?”
Minka shrugs. “Maybe? If he left offerings and was respectful. But what Leks said yesterday… the riders could have forced their way in if they wanted to. They had some other reason keeping them out.”
As the group walks back to the farmhouse, Leks sniffs the air. “Fresh… bread?”
Minka pushes into the kitchen. “Magda! Are you baking?”
“Noooo…?” Magda steps back into the front room from where she’s been helping load gear into the Toyota. “Why?”
Minka points to the steaming loaf on the counter next to the stove. “In that case…” she turns to the hearth, “thank you again.”
By midmorning, the team is growing increasingly frustrated with the trail they’re following – and the failure of its creators to obligingly appear. Magda is about twenty meters ahead of the Hilux, checking a stream crossing, when the distant sound of high-revving engines snaps her head up.
The team advances carefully. On the other side of a rise, a double rail line curves into a small rural station on the outskirts of a ruined village. Beyond the station, two motorcycles pop into view. Magda brings up her binoculars. Both riders are male, wearing patched but well-mended Polish fatigues with red-and-white armbands. As they see the team’s vehicles, they slew their bikes to a halt. One raises binoculars of his own.
Magda reaches into a cargo pocket and pulls out her own Polish Home Army armband. She tugs it on and turns to present the white eagle on her bicep. The distant rider lowers his binoculars, says something to his partner, turns around, and roars out of sight. The remaining biker dismounts and moves into cover. A couple of minutes later, more engines become audible. Five motorcycles crest the distant hill, followed by a Star 266 6×6 with obvious gun truck conversion work.
Both sides approach with the abundance of caution that’s customary in this day and age, but no one makes a sudden move. The gun truck’s front-seat passenger swings down and walks forward. He’s in his late fifties, bald, and weathered. His own fatigues have subdued captain’s rank insignia. He initially fixes on Magda for a report, as she’s the only one in similar uniform, but shifts his focus to Red and Leks once the group dynamics become evident.
The newcomers are a militia detachment from Rawa Mazowiecka, a town a short distance to the west of the team’s current location. Natan Majewski, the captain, is the local militia commander. He’s trying to track down a three-man mounted patrol that’s two days overdue from a sweep of the area.
“Your horses. Were they shod?” Minka asks.
Majewski narrows his eyes at her. “Yes. We take care of our horses.”
Minka nods, satisfied. “The ones we’re following aren’t. That will help.”
The team briefly compares notes with Majewski and his troops. They’re showing some signs of the brain-fog – among other things, they’re navigating by landmarks rather than a map. But they seem competent enough for local militia, their gear is well-maintained, they’re not hostile (and, flying Home Army colors, nominally aligned with NATO), and there seems to be a possible common purpose. Red works his diplomacy. The two groups form up, with the Hilux on point, the bikers echeloned out on both flanks, and the heavier vehicles in the center of the formation.
Zenobia curses and slams on the Hilux’s brakes. Minka spits an obscenity back at her as she slams forward against the AGS-17. “What the hell?”
“We’ve been here before.” Zenobia points to a gnarled tree at the intersection of two muddy farm roads. “That tree. That house. That hill. Those wrecked trucks, Miko has begged to search those trucks three times.” She lifts her hands from the steering wheel and rubs her eyes.
Magda shoves her door open and steps out. She walks forward, toward the tracks she’s been pointing out to Zenobia. She glances over at the indicated trucks. When she looks back at the ground, the hoof prints are gone. There’s plenty of churned-up ground, but what seemed like recognizable patterns a moment ago are now just random erosion. Her vision blurs and she sways with momentary dizziness and chills.
She turns to look at the convoy. Everyone is halted in place, staring blankly at nothing. The bikers are slumped dully over their handlebars. Red is propped up in the OT-64’s air guard hatch, chin on fists, watching rain clouds crawl across the sky to the south.
Magda walks back to the Hilux. “We’re not lost, but we’re not where we want to be,” she tells Zenobia.
The older woman shakes her head hard. “Map. Where’s the map?” She answers her own question by leaning down to the floorboard and rescuing the sheaf of precious photocopies from Magda’s boots. “Shit. We’ve been here. We’ve been here. We haven’t been here. We’re… we’re just circling here.”