Posted by Annika Reizeger
on 11/7/2007, 6:25 am
81.179.82.12
THE CITY OF SYKTYVKAR;
KOMI AUTONOMOUS SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC;
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
FEBRUARY 12TH [YEAR UNKNOWN]
The land was a frozen tundra for as far as the eye could see in the permanent twilight of the chilling winter. Black, splintered rock thrust outwards from drifts of snow higher than a man and seemed to ring the small encampment at the base of a towering outcrop of stone.
Annika wiped the condensation from the inside of the truck's windscreen. Vibrating all around, the spluttering engine provided just enough heat to stave off shivering but the young Major of the Red Army knew they'd have to conserve fuel eventually.
"Just another couple of minutes ma'am!" The Russian enlistee begged. His eyes were fixed on the row of camouflaged-white survival tents pitched around the vehicle.
Annika silenced the engine with a quick turn of the ignition key. Almost immediately the precious warmth evaporated. The subordinate grumbled.
"Problem?" She asked in heavily clipped English. She was a Georgian, he a Russian - their communications officer in the back a Ukrainian. English was probably the only language they had i common.
He shook his head; "No Major."
Annika nodded, pulling the ear flaps of her Ushanka down and tying them beneath her chin. "Collect the Lieutenant from the back of the truck in which he has obviously fallen asleep."
The Major crawled into the cramped confines of the fabric tent, quickly buttoning up the flaps which served as an entry against the bitter sub-Arctic cold. Falling back on the stiffened mattress Annika sighed, fingering the hammer and sickle emblem of the CCCP; the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and her de-facto badge of officer.
It was all falling apart. The state news bureau had done its usually precise job in maintaining the propaganda - that the food shortages were temporary disruptions; that the increasing dissident voices on the streets were just subversive elements. But the truth was impossible to hide to the majority of the higher echelons of government, and to the Soviet military.
The USSR was fragmenting. Soon enough the vultures of capitalism would circle and pick her bones clean. Instead of providing resistance to American imperialism, Major Annika Reizeger was stuck in the deep east, waiting for fuel so she could move onwards to occupy another pointless Red Army outpost in the middle of nowhere.
She had signed up to be strong. To show the world that there was another way, beyond America. To show the herself that she could be as strong as the great leaders of old. This was not how it was supposed to be.
Annika had been saving money. Easier than it would first appear because of the preferential treatment the military received in food rations. The Major knew if she didn't leave this place before the collapse that was coming, her savings would be useless and her future lost. All had seen this happen before, in Chechnya.
She would have to leave her beloved land, and for all the years of her life spent in revulsion for it she would have to travel to the great eagle of the west.
Major Annika Reizeger would go to America.
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