Chapter One: Loading Dock C

Kolya had the last crate half into the boxcar when his phone buzzed once against his hip. He didn't check it. Whatever it was could wait until the shift actually ended.

That's when he saw the two of them come around the corner of Warehouse 2.

Civilian clothes. Nobody civilian walked out this far into the yard without a reason, and neither of them looked like they had one. He kept working. Not his business who wandered onto the property. That was a call for the gate guard. He didn’t need another reason for Volkov to write him up.

More came around the same corner behind them. Six, seven, he didn’t stop to count.

Yevgeni came out of Warehouse 2 with a box of manifests stacked chin-high, walking backward to get the door shut with his hip. He didn’t see them until they were already on him.

Kolya yelled his name. Yevgeni turned, box still in his arms, and went down under three of them at once. The box hit the gravel. Manifests scattered white across the dock.

The rest kept coming. Close enough now to see. Mouths dark and wet. Dripping down over chins, throats, collars. Eyes gone fully white. Hair matted flat, or standing stiff with something dried into it. Some wore clothes torn open at the shoulder or gut. Some wore clothes barely marked at all. One was missing a shoe. Another still had a wool scarf knotted at the throat, tied neat. A woman near the back had a handbag looped over one forearm. The strap pulled tight. Dark holes punched through some of the shirts and jackets. Bite marks on others — a chunk gone from a forearm, a shoulder, a throat.

He backed toward the boxcar. The nearest one reached him first. Kolya put his shoulder into it and shoved.

It went over backward onto the tracks. The leg that caught the rail bent sideways at the knee, past where a knee was built to bend. It didn’t scream. Didn’t flinch. It clawed at the gravel. At the rail. At nothing. The leg didn’t work, and it kept trying anyway.

More were closing the gap. Kolya grabbed the door handle and hauled himself up into the car. Already reaching back to drag the heavy door shut on its track.

One got a hand on his forearm before the gap closed. Yanked him back toward the doorway. Clamped down through the coverall sleeve — hard, but the canvas held. Kolya screamed. Drew his leg back. Drove a kick square into its chest. The teeth were still locked in the fabric when his leg moved. They tore through canvas, through lining, and into the skin underneath.

He got the door shut. Got the latch down.

Outside, hands started hitting the side of the car. One at first, then more. An uneven, scattered banging up and down the length of the boxcar. It went on longer than Kolya could make himself keep listening to it.

He sat down against the crates in the dark.

Chapter Two: The Wait

The lamp was still burning when Kolya got his back to the crates and stopped moving.

Someone from the day crew had left it hanging off a nail near the door — a battery lamp, bright enough to load by. Kolya’s hand found the dial before he’d even settled, turned it down without thinking. Same habit that made him shut off lights in empty rooms at home. His mother’s rule, worn into him long before tonight.

The car smelled like heavy oil. The kind that got into a man’s clothes and stayed there through two washes. Brass fittings, mostly, packed tight in wood crates. A manifest number stamped on the side he didn’t bother reading. Behind them, gears the size of manhole covers. Chained down. Too heavy to rock, even once the car started moving. He put his back against one of them anyway.

The banging started within the first minute and did not stop.

It came from all along the side of the car — a fist here, a shoulder there, uneven, no rhythm to it at all. Kolya sat with his knees drawn up and listened to it go on. Five minutes. Ten. He counted the individual strikes for a while. Lost count. Started again. Somewhere past the twenty-minute mark he put both hands over his ears. It didn’t help. He took them away again — better to hear it coming than not.

He thought about his mother, who would already be watching the clock. He thought about Alka, who would want to know why he hadn’t answered her last text. He did not let himself think, yet, about the two hands that had been on him — the one at his collar and the one that had gotten his forearm.

The banging was still going when he finally looked down at his arm.

The sleeve was torn through above the wrist — a clean split, not a tear. Underneath, the skin was broken. A shallow half-moon of punctures, gone dark at the edges. It had bled some, not much. He turned his arm under the lamp and adjusted the brightness. He wondered why the man had bitten him.

He had a handkerchief in his back pocket — the same one his mother pressed and folded for him every week without being asked. He wound it twice around the wrist, tied it off with his teeth and his free hand. It held. He flexed his hand. The wrap pulled tight, but nothing about it felt urgent.

"Barely nothing," he said out loud, to no one.

The banging went on for what felt like an hour before the train jolted under him.

It started slow — a shudder through the floor. Then a lurch. The lamp knocked against its nail. Every crate in the car creaked against its chains. Outside, the banging changed character all at once. Something screamed. High and short. Cut off hard. Metal shrieked against metal — a long grinding note. It didn’t stop when the scream did.

Kolya got to his knees and put his eye to the gap where the door didn’t quite meet the frame.

He saw enough. A shape went down between the wheels of the car ahead. It didn’t come back up. Further back, along the platform, two more were caught at the coupling between cars. Dragged. Then gone.

The banging against his own door stopped less than a minute after the wheels started turning in earnest.

Kolya sat back against the gear housing and listened to the new sound instead. The steady, mechanical rhythm of the train, picking up speed. Carrying him away from the yard. Out past the lights of Strelka, into the dark beyond it.

Chapter Three: Dead Air

The first thing Kolya did once the shaking in his hands settled enough to manage it was check the phone.

One notification. Alka, timestamped before the swarm had even rounded the corner.

Alka: things are strange. people are running in the street. mama won't answer the door. are you okay?

He read it twice. He typed back with a hand that wouldn't quite hold steady: I'm okay. Where are you. Answer me. Sent. Delivered, the checkmark said, same as always.

No reply came.

He called his mother next.

Full bars. He watched them sit there while the call rang once, twice. Then it cut to a fast, stuttering tone. One he'd never heard the network make before. He hung up and tried again. The same tone came back faster this time.

He tried Alka next. Same result. He tried his mother a third time. A fourth attempt had worked once before — months ago, during a storm that knocked out half of Strelka's grid for an afternoon.

It didn't work now. He sat with the phone in both hands. His father had a way of looking at a stuck bolt before he touched it again — Kolya did that now. Full signal. Failed calls. The tower was still standing — he could see its bars, feel it telling him it was there. The line itself couldn't hold.

He was calling everyone he knew. So was everyone else. That was a lot of calls. Probably too many.

He tried one more time. The same tone answered him, and he stopped after that.

The battery sat at sixty-one percent. Three failed calls had cost him more than three minutes of standing charge would have. The towers would probably stay jammed. Not after what he'd just watched happen on the platform. Calling wasn't getting him anything.

He put the phone in his lap, screen dark. Sat with that a while. Then picked it back up to record instead. He pressed record and said his sister's name.

"Alka."

He said her name. Didn't know where to go from there. Sat with the phone held out in front of him — the only light in the car besides the lamp. Let the silence run a few seconds before he tried again.

"Alka, if you're the one watching this — I don't know how you would be one watching this, but if you are — I want you know I'm okay. I got into the car. I got the door shut. Whatever happening out there, is not happening to me. Not yet."

He turned the phone slightly. Checked the battery number, out of habit. Made himself stop checking it.

"I tried calling Mama first. Couldn't get through. Tried you too. I think everybody in Strelka trying call everybody else in Strelka right now, and none of it going anywhere. So I'm doing this instead. If the call won't go, maybe the file will, eventually. Somebody find the phone if they don't find me first."

He heard himself say it and moved on before it could sit there too long.

"Listen. The money I sent last month — don't let Mama put toward the roof. I know she will try. Tell her is yours. Tell her I said so, and if she want argue about it she can argue with me when I'm home, not with you." A short breath, close to a laugh, not quite one. "Get the boots you wanted. The ones from the catalog, the ones with the — you know the ones. Get those. Don't let her talk you into the cheap ones because they 'just as good.' They're not just as good. I've seen the cheap ones fall apart on guys twice your size."

Outside, faint now, something struck the boxcar's wall once and didn't repeat.

Kolya went still. Waited three full seconds. Kept talking when nothing followed.

"I don't know what's out there. I saw enough of it to not want describe it to you, so I'm not going to. I want you remember me talking about boots, not — " He stopped himself there and started the sentence over somewhere else. "I want you remember the boots part."

He looked at the lamp, dialed down low against the far wall, and then back at the phone.

"I'm going try sleep some. Save the phone. I'll check in again when I can." A pause, longer than the others. "Tell Mama I was doing my job."

He ended the recording there. Sat a while longer in the light of the dialed-down lamp. Listening for anything else to come from the dark outside the car.

Chapter Four: Someone Answers

By the second full day, Kolya had stopped trying his mother’s number.

He still checked the bars out of habit — full, always full, the tower lying to him the same steady way it had since the first night — but he’d learned not to spend the battery finding that out twice. He rationed the phone now the way he rationed everything else. The lamp, dead since some hour he hadn’t been awake for. The water bottle from his lunch bag, down to a third. Himself, mostly — sitting still, breathing shallow, doing the math on how long a body could go on adrenaline and fear before it needed something else instead.

The wrap on his arm had gone from tight to loose to tight again, twice, without his help. He noticed that somewhere in the second day and decided not to think about what it meant.

It was the boredom that got him to the phone the third time, more than any real hope. Boredom, and the particular kind of quiet that came from being alone in the dark for two days with nothing to do but listen to a train.

He scrolled past his mother’s number. Past Alka’s. He’d tried both enough times that his thumb knew the shape of the failure before the tone even started.

Tima’s number sat further down the list, under a name Kolya still had saved with the old joke attached — TIMA (DON’T CALL HIM AN ARTIST TO HIS FACE). He hadn’t called it in longer than he wanted to admit to himself. Tima was Bekershtrit. Different town, different coast, different tower entirely, and Kolya wasn’t sure why that hadn’t occurred to him until just now.

He dialed before he could talk himself out of it.

It rang.

Kolya sat up straighter than the ceiling of the car allowed, forgot to duck, hit his head on a strut, and didn’t care.

It rang a second time. A third.

“Da?” Tima’s voice, thick with sleep, or something close to it. “Who is this, is — what time even is.”

Kolya didn’t say anything for a second. He hadn’t planned past the ringing.

“Tima. Is me.”

A pause on the other end, then something shifting — a bed, a chair, Kolya couldn’t tell. “Kolya? You never call this early. You never call, honestly.” A short laugh, easy, no idea yet that anything was wrong. “Mama put you up to this? Tell her commission is coming, I just not ship it yet.”

“No. Nothing like that.” Kolya’s throat did something he didn’t expect, and he had to stop and let it settle before he kept going. “I try call home. Nobody pick up. I thought I try you instead.”

“Home. You mean Mama?” Tima’s tone shifted, slow, the way it did when he was actually paying attention instead of performing being awake. “What is going on, Kolya.”

Kolya looked at the crates around him, the dark shapes of things he could no longer see clearly, and didn’t know how to start.

“Was trouble at the yard. Two night ago.” He kept it flat, the way he’d report a broken pallet to a supervisor. “I am fine. I am somewhere safe. I just cannot get through to Strelka. Phones not working there.”

“Trouble like what?” A pause, then, quieter: “Is this the thing on news? They say something happen near the lab out there. Nobody saying what.”

Kolya hadn’t known there was a version of this on the news yet. That fact sat in him for a second, heavier than he expected.

“I don’t know what they say,” he said. “I know what I saw. I rather not — I don’t want get into it on phone.”

“Kolya.” Tima’s voice had gone all the way serious now, the joking gone out of it entirely. “You hurt?”

Kolya looked at his arm without meaning to.

“I am okay,” he said, and made himself believe it while he said it, the same way he’d told himself the wound was nothing on the first night. “I am on train. Heading your way, actually. Bekershtrit.”

“You coming here?” Something in Tima’s voice brightened despite everything, an old habit of being glad to hear his brother was coming, even now. “I come meet you. Whatever is going on, you come stay with me, we sort it out.”

“I don’t know exactly when I get in.”

“Doesn’t matter. Call me second you close. I mean it.” A beat. “Kolya — Mama. You try neighbors? Someone on that street always answer, even if she out.”

“I try everyone I can think of.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Kolya listened to his brother breathing on the other end, three days and an entire country between them, and it was the first sound since Loading Dock C that hadn’t scared him.

“Alka with her,” Tima said, more to himself than to Kolya. “She with her. They together, at least. That is something.”

“That’s something,” Kolya agreed, and didn’t say what he was actually thinking, which was that it hadn’t occurred to him until right now to wonder whether that was good or bad.

“Get here,” Tima said. “Whatever this is. Get here, we figure out rest.”

“I will.”

“I mean it, Kolya.”

“I know you do.”

The call held a moment longer than either of them had anything left to say, neither one wanting to be the one who ended it. Kolya broke first.

“I have to save battery.”

“Call me,” Tima said. “Second you close.”

“I will.”

Chapter Five: Blurred Vision

IMG_0058.MOV

Source: Personal device — Android smartphone

Date: October 13, 2014 · Time: 21:40 Local

[VIDEO START — 21:40]

The frame is dim, then less dim. A line of grey light cuts across it at an angle — the boxcar door, cracked open a hand’s width against the moving dark outside, wedged with something Kolya isn’t showing.

He leans into the light.

“I open door little bit,” he says. “Not all way. Just enough to see.”

The wind through the gap moves his hair.

He holds the phone out, steadies it against his knee.

“Okay. I record now, because I want this on something, in case.”

He blinks hard, several times in a row.

“Something wrong with my eyes.” He doesn’t touch them this time — just holds still, letting the light sit on his face. “I want say this clear, in case somebody watch after. Is not dark. Just — edges gone.”

“Like fog,” he says. “Like the mirror after long shower, before you wipe it. I see shape of things. Movement. Not what they are. Not up close, not far. Same either way.”

Somewhere off-frame, something shifts — a crate, or his own weight against one. Kolya turns toward it, but not at the waist — small, unsteady steps instead, feet shuffling him around like his balance won't allow anything faster.

“I can still see it move,” he says, more to himself than the camera now. “That is strange part. If something come at me right now, I would see it coming. Just would not know what it is. Not until it already here.”

He turns the phone around, slow, to record himself instead of the dark.

The light from the door gap catches him at an angle, and what it shows isn’t much like the boy who got on this train two nights ago. His brow is covered in beads of sweat. His hair is matted, and almost appears oily. Both eyes have gone pale at the center, the color bleeding out from the outside in, a cloud of milk-white covering each where the dark of the pupil should sit. The skin along his jaw and temples has taken on a grey cast, flat and dull, nothing like the color it was in the last video. His lips have split at the corners, a thin dark line he doesn’t seem to notice. And he is drooling, a long trail of thick, dark mucous hanging from his chin.

He doesn’t react to any of it. He just holds the shot there, studying himself the way he’d studied the bite on the first night — cataloguing, not feeling.

“This is what it look like,” he says. “In case that matter to somebody.”

He turns the phone back around, toward the strip of grey light, and says nothing else for a while. The recording keeps running — the sound of wind through the gap, the sound of the train, and underneath both, his breathing, faster and shallower than it should be.

“I don’t want Alka see this part,” he says eventually. “I make this one just for — “ He doesn’t finish it.

The frame drifts as his hand lowers. The last several seconds show only the strip of light along the door, narrowing slightly as the wedge shifts, before the recording cuts.

[VIDEO END]

Chapter Six: Party Phone, Part One

IMG_0091.MOV

Source: Personal device, unidentified Zavodsk National Rail employee — Bekershtrit railyard

Date: October 14, 2014 · Time: 13:41 Local

[VIDEO START — 13:41]

The phone comes up already laughing, frame swinging wide before it settles — a half-circle of yard workers gathered around an upturned crate, a sheet cake with a corner already caved in, six unlit candles stuck crooked in the icing.

"Nastya! Nastya, look here — smile, is for memory!"

A woman in coveralls turns, startled, hand flying up to cover her face too late. Laughter behind her. Someone starts singing, off-key, dragging the others in a beat behind — "S dnem rozhdeniya tebya" — the tune wandering flat on the high notes, nobody caring.

Someone claps in rhythm. Someone else pours something clear into paper cups, passes them hand to hand down the circle.

"Where is candle lighter — Grigor, you have it?"

"I have it, I have it, wait—"

A lighter sparks twice before it catches. Six small flames lean sideways in the wind coming off the water.

In the background, out of focus, a heavyset man in a supervisor's coat stands a little apart from the group, arms crossed, watching without joining. He checks his watch. Says something to no one in particular — the mic catches only fragments, half-swallowed by the singing.

"...not paid to..." — something — "...company time, this..."

Nobody in the circle turns toward him. Nastya leans over the cake, cheeks puffed, and blows out all six candles in one breath. Applause, a ragged cheer, someone already reaching for the first slice with bare fingers.

The heavyset man turns and walks off, muttering, clipboard tucked under one arm, heading down the row of parked boxcars without looking back.

"Pavel! Pavel, cake first, inspection after—"

He doesn't answer. Doesn't stop. Just waves off the invitation without looking back.

"He never take cake," someone says, laughing, already moving on to something else. "One time, birthday for his own self, wife bring cake to yard. He eat inspection form instead, I think."

More laughter. The circle closes back in around Nastya, the cake, the paper cups, and the man in the supervisor's coat shrinks smaller in the frame with each step, walking alone down the row toward Boxcar 402.

[VIDEO continues]

Chapter Seven: Propped

IMG_0059.MOV

Source: Personal device — Android smartphone, propped against a crate, Boxcar 402

Date: October 14, 2014 · Time: 14:03 Local

[VIDEO START — 14:03]

Static frame. Low battery icon in the corner, unmoving. Daylight through the gap in the door, weak, overcast.

Kolya stands at the far end of the car, past the brass fitting crates, swaying slightly, weight shifting foot to foot without pattern. His head tilts, drops, rises again. His mouth hangs open. A thick line of dark mucous runs from the lower lip and down over his chin, glistening in the grey light.

He does not sit. He does not stop swaying.

Several minutes pass this way. The train is not moving. Somewhere outside, faint, singing — off-key, several voices, too far to make out words.

At 14:03, there is a heavy bang, and then the boxcar’s heavy door begins to slide open.

Kolya’s head turns toward the sound before the gap is a hand’s width wide.

The door opens further. A man’s shape fills it — heavyset, a supervisor’s coat, a clipboard under one arm. He steps up into the car, waving a hand in front of his face against something in the air.

“Fucking air quality,” the man says, and spits.

He moves past the frame’s edge, out of the phone’s narrow view, toward the crates on the far side. A long pause. Papers turning. A low mutter, half to himself, something about ventilation.

Kolya has not moved from the far end of the car.

The man returns into frame, notices him now for the first time. Stops.

“Stand up,” he says, sharp, official. “You are on corporate time. This behavior is unauthorized.”

Kolya’s head snaps toward him.

He does not speak. He crosses the distance in three uneven steps and drives forward. The man staggers back against a crate. Both go out of frame for a moment — sounds only, cloth tearing, a short grunt of pain.

They come back into frame. The man has a hand pressed to his own forearm. Kolya lunges for him again, jaw distended, drool swinging loose from his chin and down onto his collar — dark, wet, spreading through the fabric of his overalls. The man raises the clipboard and brings it down, hard, across the side of Kolya’s head. Kolya loses balance and disappears off frame. The man reaches out, grabs his collar, and hauls him back into view.

“Come on. Out. Get out.”

Kolya goes through the gap and out of frame entirely. A heavy sound follows — something hitting gravel, low and flat.

The man stands in the doorway a moment, looking out and down. He says something the microphone doesn’t catch. Then he steps back inside, takes hold of the door, and slides it shut.

The frame goes fully dark.

From outside, muffled through the metal, a fist strikes the door. Once. Again. An uneven rhythm that does not stop.

[VIDEO ends — no further picture]

Chapter Eight: Party Phone, Part Two

IMG_0091.MOV (continued)

Source: Personal device, unidentified Zavodsk National Rail employee — Bekershtrit railyard

Date: October 14, 2014 · Time: 14:05 Local

[VIDEO continues]

The circle around the cake has thinned a little, a few workers drifting back toward the boxcars, paper plates in hand. Nastya is laughing at something off-camera, icing on her nose and cheek.

Behind her, small in the frame, out of focus: a shape comes through the gap of the side door of box car 402 and lands hard on the gravel, flat on their back. It doesn’t move for a second. Then does — rolling, getting an arm under itself, then the other.

Nobody in the foreground turns.

“—tell you, is not even real recipe, my mother make it different—”

The distant shape gets to its feet in a jerky unsteady motion. It sways. Turns back toward the boxcar it came from and puts both fists against the metal, once, twice. The sound doesn’t carry far enough to compete with the singing that’s started up again, someone humming the birthday tune a second time.

“Grigor, you get any on camera? Nastya’s face—”

“I got it, I got it, hold on—”

The banging behind them continues, arrhythmic, distant. Nobody looks.

At 14:07, the shape stops hitting the door.

It stands still for several seconds. Then it turns, in that same, jerky unnatural cadence.

“—one more piece, who wants—”

The shape starts moving. Shambling at first, then faster. It staggers and stumbles but stays upright. Jaw distended, arms outstretched.

It’s covering ground fast, faster than the uneven gravel of the yard should allow, and it’s most of the way across before anyone in frame reacts at all. Nastya turns first, cake still in hand, and whatever she says is lost — the phone swings hard, the frame tilts sideways, gravel and sky trading places.

Someone screams a name that isn’t caught clearly enough to transcribe.

The picture goes dark. Muffled cloth, most likely — a pocket, or a fall.

The audio continues for several more minutes; people screaming, panicked footsteps on gravel and other sounds too difficult to make out. No further images are captured.

[VIDEO END — recording terminates]

[Curator’s Note — R. Patel, 2025]

The remainder of this file’s storage — four minutes, eleven seconds — is audio only. I have listened to it once. I will not describe it, and I will not include it. Some things are recovered, and some things are simply found, and I don’t believe every found thing is owed an audience.

What follows is the incident report filed by the man who opened that boxcar. It was written the same day.

— R. Patel

Chapter Nine: The Report

ZAVODSK NATIONAL RAIL — INCIDENT REPORT Form 14-B (Personnel / Property)

DATE FILED: October 14, 2014

REPORTING EMPLOYEE: P. Bortnik, Shift Supervisor

EMPLOYEE ID: 4471-C

LOCATION: Bekershtrit Railyard, Sector 4, Boxcar 402

INCIDENT TIME: 14:03

INCIDENT TYPE: Unauthorized personnel on company property / Physical altercation

DESCRIPTION OF INCIDENT:

At approximately 14:03, I proceeded to Boxcar 402 to conduct scheduled cargo inspection per standard procedure. Upon opening the car, I discovered an individual inside, approximately 20-25 years of age, wearing rail company coveralls matching current Strelka personnel uniform. Individual did not respond to verbal instruction to identify himself or vacate the premises.

Individual exhibited erratic behavior consistent with intoxication or narcotic influence. Speech was not coherent. Individual initiated physical contact without provocation, resulting in a bite injury to my left forearm. Injury did not require medical attention beyond field dressing.

I subdued the individual using a company-issued clipboard and removed him from the car. Individual was left outside Boxcar 402. Car was resecured at 14:07.

CORRECTIVE ACTION TAKEN:

Unauthorized individual removed from company property. Recommend increased security presence at Bekershtrit and Strelka yards given recent regional unrest. Recommend HR flag for pattern — this is the third incident this month involving unaffiliated youth attempting to access rail property, believed related to ongoing unrest in and near Strelka.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

Boxcar 402 cargo (brass fittings, machine components, Strelka manifest #2291) inspected, found intact, no damage or tampering noted. Recommend this report be filed alongside standard inspection paperwork for the date.

I am the one who does the writing here. There is nothing further to add.

— P. Bortnik

[Curator’s Note — R. Patel, 2025]

This report was filed the same day, roughly forty minutes after the timestamp on the party recording ends. Bortnik does not name the individual he encountered. I have not been able to either — no missing-persons record from Strelka matches the description closely enough to be certain, and the personnel and payroll fragments recovered from the Zavodsk National Rail archive give me a first name and nothing else.