WebNovels

Chapter 17 - Veksel

 ... in which Anton and Oleg Aleksandrovich are relaxing in the forest, combining barbecue and physical labor outdoors

Dawn was breaking. A burgundy "nine" stopped at the edge of the forest and turned off its headlights. A short, thin young man climbed out from behind the wheel, wearing a sports jacket, skinny jeans, and bulky, poisonous-green sneakers. Following him appeared a sturdy man in a leather jacket and with a buzz cut, yet still sporting round glasses in a delicate gold frame. Clearly deliberately grown-out stubble, with noticeable ash-gray streaks of silver, revealed that he was well past fifty but still carried himself very upright and energetically. While his younger companion rummaged through the trunk, the man slung a small vinyl bag over his shoulder, retrieved two car tires from the passenger seats, carefully closed the door, and walked firmly toward the pines shrouded in a gray pre-dawn haze. Finally pulling a shovel and a canister from under a bulky bundle, the young man slammed the trunk shut and hurried after him.

"If I didn't know your father, Antosha," said the man, cautiously making his way between the thin trunks bristling with bare branches, "I'd never help you."

"Yeah, I get it..."

"And about your gun. Even when you said it wouldn't lead to anything good. You could have at least filed down the sight right after you bought it..."

"Why?" the young man didn't understand.

"Because it would stop getting in the way when they shove it up your ass."

"Oh, come on, Veksel, seriously... It's safer with a rifle."

The man stopped and looked intently at his young companion.

"You're talking big here, kid? You've never even been inside. Those who called me Veksel are long gone. May God rest their sinful souls. But I'm Oleg Aleksandrovich for you."

"Sorry..." the young man stammered, averting his eyes from Veksel's disapproving gaze.

"You're still a fool, young one," the man sighed sadly, relenting. "Alright, Antoshka, let's go... dig some potatoes."

After walking for a while longer, they came to a small clearing. Oleg Aleksandrovich gestured for Anton to find a suitable spot, then leaned against a tree with one tire, sat down on it, and began watching as the young man started digging a hole.

The cold morning forest air was filled with the scent of pine needles. And there was something else in it that spoke of winter's imminent arrival. "It's nice out here in nature... especially without people," Veksel thought. "All they can do is litter everything, burn all sorts of poisonous chemicals, and ruin the environment." He took another deep breath of the fresh, cool air and suddenly asked the young man:

"So tell me, why did you shoot him?"

"I just fired blindly and hit him," replied Anton, continuing to laboriously dig up the soil clumped with turf using the shovel. "I'll never see freedom again."

Veksel coughed meaningfully and, pausing briefly, once again gave his companion a scornful look.

"Well, honestly, Oleg Aleksandrovich," the young man stuck the shovel into the ground and stood up straight. "He didn't like how we split the money. And I divided everything fairly—equally. He was already drunk. Then he became aggressive. He pulled out a knife and charged. He's twice my size anyway... I got scared."

"I'm not interested in your childish squabbles," the man waved his hand sadly. "Why did you stop? Keep digging. I'm not going to sit here with you all day."

Anton spat on his hands, which had already begun to ache from lack of practice, and continued digging.

"Why don't you dissolve him in acid?" he asked, turning over another clod of earth.

"You've been watching too many foreign movies, haven't you?" Veksel snorted. "Do you even realize how much acid you'd need to dissolve a body? At least 100 liters, no less. You'd have to get it without attracting attention, and then deal with all this somewhere else... Just dig. Don't dig too wide. We're not burying a coffin."

Tired of watching the young man clumsily handle the shovel, the man stood up and began collecting dry branches scattered around the clearing. Quickly gathering a large bundle, he threw it onto the ground near the hole that was slowly deepening. Then he made a couple more trips through the forest, lost in thought, dumped the last load into the pile, and ordered the young man:

"Alright, enough now... Get out."

"What's this for?" asked Anton, climbing out of the hole, which was now significantly higher than his knee. "There's gasoline..."

"We're not going to pour dirt over them. It will burn faster this way. And the draft will be better under the branches," Veksel replied, kicking the brushwood down with his foot. "You bring the other tires over, and we'll take a break for a bit."

The guy nodded and reluctantly shuffled back toward the car. When he returned, he found Veksel still sitting on a tire wedged against a tree. The man opened his bag, took out a thermos, and with an unusually relaxed expression, poured its hot contents into a lid-cup. The sky, visible between the needle-like trunks of the trees, was beginning to brighten. The fog creeping beneath the trees, lying over the dry fallen needles, now appeared yellowish.

"Kind of a pity, Oleg Alexandrovich..." Anton said, looking at the tires he had brought. "Almost new rubber. Not bald."

"You deprived a man of life, yet you feel sorry for tires..." Veksel remarked. "What kind of generation are you?"

"But won't it burn up from gasoline?"

"Gasoline in open air will reach a maximum of 900 degrees. But tires can withstand as much as fifteen hundred. As they say, until complete carbonization," the man replied, setting the thermos aside and taking a sip from the cup with undisguised pleasure. "Throw three down evenly onto the branches. We'll add the fourth on top later."

"You're smart, Oleg Alexandrovich..." the young man said respectfully, climbing back into the pit again and carefully arranging the tires. "Even though you're not a professor."

"That's not intelligence, Anton, but education. Unlike you, I went to school in the Soviet era. And my dad was a herpetologist—a real professor. He really was smart."

"So he was a doctor who treats diarrhea?"

"Well, you certainly fell victim to the Unified State Exam. You didn't pass it, did you?" Veksel shook his head sadly. "He was a scientist who studied snakes."

"Oh, I see," Anton said, embarrassed, then added, "I passed..."

"You finished, did you? Don't you want to warm up?" the man offered kindly, slightly extending a steaming cup.

"What's in there? Coffee?"

"I like coffee, but I can't have it. My heart's acting up. Cocoa. Here, take this."

"Thanks," the young man took the cup from Veksel's hands and slowly sipped the hot drink. "It's good. But it doesn't taste like Nesquik."

"I don't even drink that soluble crap. This is 'Golden Label.'"

"The one you have to boil?"

"Yes, just as it should be."

"I could use a cigarette... But damn it, I forgot to buy cigarettes."

"Well, I can't help you with that. I quit smoking ten years ago. You should quit too. You'll live longer. I remember once saying exactly that to a prosecutor's investigator in my office," Veksel replied, pausing for a moment. "It was the nineties, everything was falling apart. Back then, we organized a small cooperative at the base of a research institute and imported equipment from abroad—various computers and tools. Well, some clever guys found out about it and through their connections wanted to seize our business..."

"And what happened next?" Anton asked, because the man suddenly fell silent, lost in his memories.

"What?"

"You buried that investigator, didn't you?"

"Are you completely stupid? No," Veksel frowned. "He turned out to be a decent guy. We even stayed in touch afterward. He died last year from coronavirus. He was five years older than me; according to age, he was in the risk group. And he smoked all his lungs away... He smoked a pack a day. I'm telling you about smoking..."

"I get it..." the young man nodded. "But who did you bury?"

"Whoever needed to be buried," Oleg Alexandrovich replied irritably, taking the cup from Anton and screwing the thermos shut. "And if you want to outlive that investigator, ask fewer questions. And quit smoking. Come on... Let's bring your friend."

Opening the trunk of the car, Veksel and Anton laboriously pulled out a heavy bundle wrapped carelessly in tape made of coarse burlap and, grabbing it from different sides, dragged it onto the clearing.

"You should have wrapped it more carefully," the man sighed heavily as the edges of the old cloth tore with a crack under the weight of the dead body, and a whitened hand fell out of the gap.

"I miscalculated. And I was in a hurry."

"Yeah... A healthy boar."

Anton, not particularly physically strong, stumbled slightly and staggered, twice knocking the corpse against closely planted pine trees. Finally, they dragged the body to the clearing and dumped it into the pit. The young man, with a focused expression, carefully poured gasoline along the entire length of the body. For a moment, he paused, considering whether to throw an empty container into the pit, but Veksel, who had again sat down beneath the tree, stopped him:

"Leave the canister. It's a good thing. You never know when you might need it again," he said, smiling at his own wit. "Want a match?"

"Yeah, I've got some," replied the young man, leaning over the pit. "Just let me straighten him up a bit."

At that moment, something strange happened. Anton, kneeling on the edge of the pit, suddenly collapsed onto his stomach, then began to shake and twitch as if resisting some force.

"What's wrong with you?" Veksel realized only after a moment.

"It's Oleg Aleksandrovich!" the young man screamed. "He grabbed me!"

The man was about to reprimand the young man again for being overly sensitive, but the boy had already slid into the pit, hanging over the edge, leaving only his defiantly green sneakers sticking out. Below, muffled groans could be heard.

Still not taking what was happening seriously, Veksel approached closer. Before him appeared an astonishing sight. Anton's shot friend had somehow come back to life and climbed out of the bag. A healthy fellow nearly two meters tall, with a broad face, wearing tracksuit pants and a white T-shirt with the inscription "For Rus'," grabbed the young man with his deathly pale hands and was now squeezing him tightly. Gathering his strength, Anton jerked free for a second, freeing himself from the dead man's grip, and clung desperately to the edge of the pit. But the corpse immediately caught up and fell upon him from behind, pressing him firmly to the ground and preventing him from climbing out. His large, massive fingers tightly gripped Anton's head and slowly and steadily twisted it counterclockwise. The young man screamed in pain and terror, but could do nothing. Soon, the sound of cracking vertebrae echoed. Anton's head, turned 180 degrees, hung limply on his broken neck.

The corpse pushed the limp body aside and suddenly raised its glassy eyes toward Oleg Aleksandrovich, who stood frozen a couple of meters away. Pushing off the ground with its bluish hands, it began confidently crawling out of the pit, keeping its empty gaze fixed on the new victim. Fearing to move, Veksel stared intently at the corpse emerging from the pit.

Suddenly, he realized that he was still clutching the box of matches Anton had offered him. The man pulled it out and, striking a match, tossed it toward the moving corpse. He seemed to have done it clumsily, because the match quickly went out in mid-air and bounced off its target. With trembling hands, Veksel lit a second match and this time, setting the entire box alight, hurled it directly at the attacker. The gasoline soaked into the clothes of the revived corpse burst into bright flames, instantly turning him into a moving torch. Staggering and immediately losing strength, the corpse fell backward into its makeshift grave. A second flash followed. Gasoline on the tires and branches caught fire. Flames soared upward from the pit. Heat waves spread outward, causing the yellowish fog to melt and disperse.

Still not understanding what had happened, Oleg Aleksandrovich returned to his tree and sat down again on the tire. A sharp prickling sensation began in the left side of his chest. The man sighed deeply, took a silver blister pack gleaming faintly in the fire from his inner pocket, and popped a white pill onto his palm. Then he unscrewed the lid of the thermos, refilled his cup, and swallowed the medicine. He sat there for a long time, staring at the fire, silently thinking about something and slowly sipping his cocoa.

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