The column's progress took them past blackened intervals of military vehicles that had been caught by enemy air strikes, by undamaged war machines that had run out of fuel and been abandoned, and past still more whose mechanisms had simply been overtaxed: the vehicular equivalents of starvation, stroke, or heart attack victims. Government vans and private cars, city buses and rusted motorbikes, farm tractors drawing carts, a carnival of wastage covered the dirt road cut through the steppes. Bodies lay here and there, dead of exposure, or hunger, perhaps of disease, or the victims of murderers who killed those who wandered too far from the mass in the darkness — looking for food, or money, or anything that might increase the killer's chance of survival, however slightly. A collection of ravaged tents marked the site where someone had attempted to establish an aid station. All pride was gone. The proud were dead. As Babryshkin's tanks grunted by, men and women simply continued to squat by the side of the road, emptying shriveled bowels, many of them obviously sick. Here and there, a husband jealously stood guard over his wife, but, overall, there was only a sense of collapse, of the absence of law or reason.
The cold air narrowed Babryshkin's eyes as he leaned out of the commander's hatch. The nursing mother reminded him of Valya, although his wife was not yet a mother and had told him frankly that she did not wish to become one. "Why saddle ourselves?" she had said. Babryshkin suspected that few men who really knew her would classify Valya as a genuinely good woman. She was selfish and dishonest. Yet, she was his wife. He loved her, and, now, he craved her. He felt that, if only he could speak to her now, he might share some of his newfound wisdom with her — how important it was to be satisfied with what one had, to be grateful for the chance to live in peace, to love each other. He had not found new words with which to reach her, yet, somehow, his fresh conviction would persuade her. How lucky they had been just to be able to lie down together in a warm bed, without the slightest thought of death. To lie down in each other's arms with the sure knowledge that morning would come with nothing more unpleasant than the need to rise a bit before the body was ready and to go work. He realized that, before witnessing the spectacle of all this helplessness, failure, and cheap mortality, he had never grasped the spectacular beauty of his life. Cares that once had seemed immense were nothing now. He had been surrounded by beauty, bathed in it, and he had been blind.
A desperate man tried to climb onto the tank ahead of Babryshkin's while the vehicle was still in motion. Unpracticed, the refugee immediately snared himself between the big roadwheels and the grinding track. The conscious watched helplessly as the machine devoured the man's legs below the knee, slamming him to the ground, then twisting him over and over before the vehicle could be halted.
The man lay openmouthed and openeyed in the gravel. He did not scream or cry, but propped himself up on his elbows, amazed. Two soldiers jumped from the vehicle, yanking off their belts to serve as tourniquets. The soldiers had seen plenty of wounds, and they were not shy. They felt quickly along the bloody rags of the man's trousers, searching for something firm amid the gore and riven bone. But the man simply eased back off his elbows, still silent and wide-eyed, utterly disbelieving. And he died. The soldiers dragged him a little way off the road, although it made no difference, then hurried back to their tank, wiping their hands on their coveralls, with Babryshkin screaming at them to hurry, since they were holding up the column.
Now and again, some of the refugees had to be forced off of the vehicles, usually because their pleas for food, when denied, turned aggressive. At other times, they were caught trying to steal — anything, from food or a protective mask to the nonsensical. One man even tried to choke a vehicle commander, without the least evident cause. He was a terribly strong man, perhaps a bit mad, and he had to be shot to prevent him from strangling the vehicle commander to death.
Once, a pair of Soviet gunships flew down over the endless kilometers of detritus, and Babryshkin waved excitedly, delighted at this sign that they were not completely alone, that they had not been entirely forgotten. He attempted to establish radio contact with the aircraft, but could not find the right frequency. The ugly machines circled twice around the march unit, then flew off at a dogleg, inscrutable.
The young mother had finished nursing, and Babryshkin felt it was allowable to look at her again. He wondered where her husband might be. Perhaps in some other military unit, fighting elsewhere along the front. Perhaps dead. But, if he was alive, Babryshkin sensed the intensity with which he must be worrying about his family now, wondering where they were, if they were safe.
Babryshkin leaned back toward the woman, who was clutching her infant in one arm, while simultaneously cradling her son and holding on to the gun housing with the other. He felt the need to say something to her, to reach out somehow, to reassure her.
He brought his face as close to hers as possible and could not tell whether he saw fear or simply emptiness in her eyes.
"Someday," he shouted above the roar of the engine, "someday all of this will seem like a bad dream, a story to tell your grandchildren."
The woman was slow to respond. Then Babryshkin imagined that he saw the ghost of a smile pass briefly over her lips.
He reached down into his hatch, to where his map case hung, and he drew out the tattered packet containing his last cigarettes. One of his sergeants had stripped them from the corpse of a rebel officer. He crouched to light one against the cold breeze, then held it out as though to insert it between the woman's lips.
Again, she seemed unable to respond at first. Finally, she shook her head, slightly, slowly, as though the machinery in her neck wanted oil. "No. Thank you."
The old man seated just behind her on the deck looked hungrily at the cigarette. Disappointed at the failure of his gesture, Babryshkin passed the smoke into the old man's quivering hand.
By the side of the road, a man and a woman struggled to drive along two sheep who had balked at the grumble from the armored vehicles. Babryshkin was amazed that the animals had not yet been butchered and eaten. Lucky sheep, he thought.
The dull, constant static in his headset sparked to life. "This is Angara." Babryshkin recognized the anxious voice of the air defense platoon leader. "We have aircraft approaching from the south."
"Enemy?"
"No identification reading. Assume hostiles.
"All stations, all stations," Babryshkin called. "Air alert. Disperse off the roadway. Air alert. "
At his command, his driver turned the steel monster on to the left, scattering the two sheep. Their owners ran after them, openmouthed. Soon, Babryshkin thought, they would have other, greater worries.
"Don protective masks," Babryshkin shouted into the headset mike. "Seal all vehicles." He tugged hastily at the carrier of his mask. The refugees mounted on the vehicle's deck looked at him with fear, their faces vividly alive. He imagined that they were accusing him, as he pulled the mask over his head, temporarily hiding from their sight. There was no alternative. There was no point in dying out of sheer sympathy.
The unclean mask stank in his nostrils. Looking around him, he could see his vehicles churning off into the steppe, spreading out to offer as difficult a target area as possible.
No more time. He could see the dark specks of the enemy planes, popping up before entering their attack profile. They were aiming straight for the column.
There was nothing else to be done. The surviving air defense gunners had no more missiles. All they could do was to open up with their last belts of automatic weapons ammunition, which was as useless as trying to shoot down the sky itself.