Afterglow. The Justification of Chaos

“Robert,” one of the group, a tall man with light hair and dark eyes, approached the man walking next to us and whispered something to him.

“Do everything you can,” said the man, whose name was Robert. I gathered that he was the group leader. The second soldier shook his head sadly.

“Too much blood,” he said curtly. Robert grunted and looked at us.

“Is there a pharmacy nearby?”

“Yes,” Sam nodded. “Right by the entrance. The first pavilion on the left.”

“Take Stan and get what you need,” Robert instructed his subordinate. “We'll be in the basement. And, Michael,” the commander held the man for a moment, “do everything you can under the circumstances.”

“Understood,” the man nodded, then turned back to the group. “Taren!”

Two soldiers moved ahead.

Robert continued to ask Sam and me short, monosyllabic questions, mostly regarding whether we had encountered the infected, what we had seen and heard, and where we had been when we faced the consequences of the infection's spread. When I responded that we were journalists here to gather material, the soldier suddenly smirked, studying our faces intently and with interest.

“Where did you come from?”

“Northeast of the Old Frontiers,” Sam said immediately, almost reflexively, and I quickly elbowed him hard in the ribs. Dort winced, either from pain or realization, and looked away. But it was already said. There was no taking it back.

“Frontiers?” Robert asked again, now looking directly into my eyes. “And how did you make it to the north of the Isthmus Region?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” I tried to respond firmly, although my heart did a somersault and dropped to my heels.

“No, quite straightforward. I'm curious how the customs officials granted you permission to cross the checkpoints and how the reapers let you through. The directives of the last days weren't favorable.”

“Apparently, due to the importance of our investigation, we were allowed to proceed,” I said evasively, holding the soldier's gaze, then turned away, silently praying to the heavens that Robert wouldn’t ask more questions. I wasn’t ready to come up with a lie. The man seemed to understand. He asked the question but not the expected one, and it was even somewhat surprising:

“Military correspondents?”

“No,” I answered quietly and weakly after a brief pause. “Civilian journalists.”

We moved quickly. The sensation was like a coma, an intoxicated daze. The situation itself felt no more real than a staged performance: the soldiers followed strangers into the unknown, while we blindly hoped they could help us. My mind was in chaos. I felt like nothing more than a puppet, with blind faith and a panicked horror. What had I hoped for? What was I afraid of? The uncertainty was grinding me down and exhausting me.

A shattered helicopter. A police car. The blacked-out windows of a store. Doors. Down the stairs. The bookstore. Soldiers moving, communicating with silent gestures. Flickering dots of their sights. The grave silence broken by the hum of flashing lights.

And I kept wondering why there hadn’t been any centralized or large-scale action from "above." If the entire North had descended into this waking nightmare, this chaos; if this plague – an infection, a virus, or madness – was spreading so rapidly and taking everything around it, why wasn’t anyone trying to stop it? Why silence the press? Why sacrifice the health and lives of people?

What kind of disaster was it if surviving a night in the city was considered an impossibly difficult feat?

Again, the eerie grocery store. Again, blood on the floor. Again, the bookstore.

Five days had passed since we left for °22-1-20-21-14. Five days ago, everything was so different. I couldn’t have imagined that I’d end up in such a predicament; that just two days earlier, sunlight had gently filtered through the colorful blinds into the trailer’s cabin as we drove past another checkpoint, celebrating our luck. I remember the euphoria we felt as we set out, the insane happiness of the initial departure – ahead lay a long road, but I was happy about it, thrilled that we had work ahead, looking forward to seeing new lands, and that I’d get a chance, even if briefly, to glimpse the mountain ranges.

I had a feeling this wouldn’t just be an investigation but something much more significant and important. No, it wasn’t just a feeling, I knew for certain – those in power knew the extent of the disaster and had hidden it from their loyal subjects. We were meant to bring light to this dark game, even if it meant we would have to ignite ourselves. They had trusted us. They had trusted me. And the bearer of the surname whose signature had authorized our travel documents had made us another tiny link in an enormous, significant chain.

But did any of it have meaning now?

A couple of days ago, I was contemplating how I would conduct the investigation, talk to doctors and patients; I analyzed the best way to present the material so that the reapers wouldn’t come for our souls right away… Andrew was singing along loudly with the radio, in a cheerful mood. Sam was constantly joking, brushing off work – it was more important for him to look out the window, noticing every change in the landscape, in the architecture, especially as we passed the border of the Frontiers area and a section of the Central Lands, entering the territory of the Isthmus Region, where tall pines reached up to the skies and juniper thickets intertwined with the roads.

Just a few days ago, the trailer was swiftly carrying us from home into the unknown. What were we warming in our hearts? Excitement? Yes, that was overflowing! We wanted to show who we were, what we were capable of. We wanted to bring back material that no one could obtain, material that no one dared to voice or publish. Did we think it was dangerous? Yes, absolutely. But in a different sense. And the fear was muted by the knowledge of the responsibility placed on us, of what was expected from our trip.

And then everything turned into a feverish delirium.

I barely remember the minutes of that night and morning when the world turned upside down. When I tried to return to those moments, I couldn’t summon specific images into my memory – everything blended into a stream of sensations, feelings, chaotic emotions – and maybe that was for the best. My brain blurred out the tiniest details so I wouldn’t go mad from constantly returning to those horrifying scenes – at least this time, it played on my side, for there was already too much stored in my mind, begging to be forgotten, even if I had to break my hands to forget it.

I clearly remember that I closed the door to the bookstore when the last two soldiers returned from the pharmacy. I looked again at the dark hall through the glass and shuddered. Terrifyingly quiet and empty. I went to Sam, who was sitting at a distance, hiding among the shelves; I sank down on the floor next to him while the soldiers tried to save the dying girl.

About ten minutes later, it was over. The girl had died. Robert spoke something over her body, closed her eyes. He cut a strand of her hair for some reason. Took the dog tag off her neck. The rest dispersed in silence, trying not to show how deeply affected they were. The second girl in the group, a short blonde with a pixie cut, embraced the man with a mop of dark curls on his head. And Sam and I… As terrifying as it was to admit, the girl’s death stirred no emotions in me. Inside, there was only emptiness. Detachment. A comatose state. I had seen too many deaths and blood in these past twenty-four hours.

Then Robert came over to us. He squatted on his toes in front of us, clasping his hands together and exhaling heavily.

“Well, I have a little time to talk,” the man said tiredly, looking directly at my face, while my gaze froze on the patch that appeared under his unbuttoned jacket. Silver snakes were woven into the fabric on his T-shirt in the area of his chest… My eyes widened, and I opened my mouth, gasping. “My name is Robert Sbort, and I’m the leader of the group…”

“The Gorgon,” I whispered, raising my eyes to Robert. “You’re the Gorgons, aren’t you?”

***

The lamps buzzed ominously above our heads. I listened intently, trying to catch any sound. My vision was blurred. It felt like if someone spoke half a tone louder now, I would scream out of fear and horror. The girl's body lay on the cash register table. Her hand hung over the edge of the counter. Blood dripped from her fingers onto the floor.

This can’t be happening to me. This isn’t real.

I looked at Robert, who was explaining how his group had ended up in this city, but my gaze kept drifting to the small embroidered head of a Gorgon on his T-shirt.

You might not have cared about politics, the military, or listened to the news and read the newspaper summaries, but you couldn’t not know about The Gorgon.

"The Gorgon." A symbol group. A ghostly, almost mythically legendary group, whose predecessor three hundred and six years ago helped the First Three rise to power. A small, elite organization, directly subordinate to the Three and only the Commander-in-Chief. The names of the participants were always kept in the background; they didn’t exist as individuals – there was only "The Gorgon" and the Gorgons. They devoted their lives to military service, to this group, giving up their past and future. The most difficult operations, the hottest battle zones – the name "Gorgon" was always there. And no one knew whether there was more truth or rumor surrounding these fighters, whose professionalism and faith in their ideology were spoken of almost with reverence.

“…this plague started spreading rapidly in the northern part of the region a couple of weeks ago. The authorities tried to convince everyone that everything was under control. Maybe it was at first, but you can't seal off entire cities and borders, “Robert paused for a moment.” I was working with my team in the "Cold Calm" area; now fighting has flared up again there.”

“Fighting? In the southwest?” I asked, incredulous. “But they said all military operations there had ended. After all the peaceful and pacifist demonstrations?”

“People never get enough blood,” Sam scoffed suddenly, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down at the floor. I shot him a warning glance, which, of course, he didn't see. Robert, however, reacted with extreme calm to Dort's barb.

“I’m not the one who ends the fighting, and neither are my people. Just as we’re not the ones who start it.”

“How did you get here?” I asked immediately, not allowing Sam to start a debate.

“This Tuesday, we were urgently called back. We were supposed to land five hundred kilometers north of here, but the landing site was declared lost. And not just that. The red zone,” the man coughed. “In the end, we were dropped off at the central area airport and transferred into our own vehicles, with the expectation that we would leave the cordoned-off zone by land. But… The final directive from "command" brought us here. The Monarchs had to admit that attempting to reclaim lost territories was unfeasible. We were ordered to ensure that everything here remained under control; the town is small, but it’s one of the main junctions for the roads. Like every town in the Isthmus Region, really…” Robert scoffed, looking down at the floor with some disappointment. “But the Three miscalculated. Nothing here was under control anymore.”

“How bad?” the question slipped out before I could think. But it seemed like Sbort was waiting for the question.

“We arrived when the police were already cordoning off the eastern residential neighborhoods. They were trying to evacuate as many healthy people as possible. Rumors spread through the city that the infected couldn’t be killed; the law enforcement refused to respond to calls or enter other people's homes. The Reapers were hastily abandoning their service quarters,” Robert paused briefly. He spoke with calm and focus, as if recounting a boring lecture, as though nothing extraordinary had happened; as if just minutes ago, one of his team members hadn’t died. I almost lost myself in it. The man's composure and calm were so intoxicating and contagious that, for a moment, all the nightmares of the past few hours flew out of my mind. “I’ll skip the details of the bureaucratic nightmare and the insanity of some untouchable officials, who issue reckless decrees and give orders devoid of any reason,” he smiled grimly with the corner of his mouth. "The Gorgon was sent to the home of the local mayor, whose daughter had contracted the plague. They confined her to the second floor, hoping to cover up the whole situation: they didn’t want to send their daughter to the hospital and tarnish the family’s white name. And when they realized they’d made a foolish mistake, it was too late. We were ordered to take the mayor and his wife out of the house and transport them to a safe location. Honestly, I didn’t expect things to be so bad and dangerously serious. I left some of the Gorgon team to assist the police, and took the others to carry out the order,” another brief pause. “When we arrived, we found the house in such a bloody state it looked like a slaughterhouse had been set up there. Out of the seven residents, four were torn apart and their bodies literally chewed up. And two were…” the soldier hesitated, tilting his head to the side, “I’d say alive, but that contradicts what we saw. The injuries weren’t fatal: one had a minor bite on the neck, the other had chewed hands. But alive, those… creatures were definitely not. First of all, you can tell a living person from a dead one; the basic smell is unmistakable. Secondly, when you empty an entire magazine into someone…” the man sighed heavily, not finishing the sentence.

Time seemed to stop.

I replayed what I had just heard over and over in my head, but it felt more like the ramblings of a madman than anything resembling the truth. Glancing at Sam, I shook my head as if to push away the dark thought or sticky memory. Dort looked completely lost. He stared at a spot somewhere beneath the soldier’s feet, nervously fidgeting his fingers.

“And… what happened next? Were you able to deal with those two?” I asked cautiously, hesitantly lifting my eyes to Robert.

“We were able to. Cracked open their skulls,” Robert said dryly. Sam’s head shot up, and a look of disgust and horror played across his face. “With the mayor, besides me, three other men arrived. Three fighters who would have walked through all the circles of hell unscathed. And one of them was grabbed by the creature – it jumped and tore a chunk of flesh from his collarbone. Again: a minor wound. Our Gorgon’s medic patched him up, but the guy started to deteriorate; we took him to the hospital, where an entire wing was already filled to capacity with the bitten. Another department had been completely taken over by the utterly deranged. My man lost consciousness as soon as he crossed the threshold of the medical room. He passed out from the most harmless wound he had received. I left him at the hospital. And on Wednesday morning, I got a call to say that he had burned up overnight from a high fever. But when they were moving him to the morgue, he woke up. Only, like many, many others, he woke up wild. Woke up after being declared dead.”

A second. Two.

“You’re saying,” I whispered, feeling my fingers turn cold and a chill run down my spine, “that he… came back to life?”

Robert did not answer right away.

“It’s hard to find another name for it,” he said cautiously. “I wouldn’t have believed such a statement myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Believe me, it’s hard to explain how a person, riddled with bullets, continues to move. And when they’re clearly dead, suddenly they get up and start attacking. But last night made me doubt many things I thought were impossible.”

“But not to this extent?!” Sam's voice trembled, half nervous laugh, half question. “The dead coming back to life? Those are images from the archaic beliefs of the Departed Gods, fairy tales and myths. It’s impossible. The dead don’t come back to life. It’s unnatural. It… There’s no logical explanation for this.”

“We have just as many questions as you do,” the soldier replied briefly. “Right now, I’m only sure of a few things. First, the past night was really difficult to survive. These creatures, whatever they were, attacked indiscriminately, ruthlessly tearing apart and killing; and there were only a limited number of ways to neutralize them. Universal panic and confusion, the frenzied actions of the special services created chaos and multiplied the casualties,” Robert exhaled loudly. “Thank the Heavens and the Mother Goddess for salvation. Second, we need to leave °22-1-20-21-14 as soon as possible. It’s better to think about our next steps and look for answers in a safer place. Now, if you'll excuse me,” Sbort, who had stood up, pulled out his radio and was about to step aside when I immediately jumped to my feet, raising my hand.

“One last question, please!” the Gorgon’s soldier nodded permissively. “Robert, can you take us with you? At least help us get to the hospital? Our trailer is there, and…” I choked on my own words. My breath caught, and my chest burned with anxiety. “We won’t be in your debt. Sam is a great tech specialist; he knows how to program, adjust things; he fixes everything he can…”

“Yes,” Sam chimed in. “On your way, when you were talking to…” Dort hesitated, nodding towards the Gorgon with dark, curly hair; it was only then that I noticed the man’s right eyebrow was deeply split, a scar running perpendicularly across it.

“Norman,” Robert supplied.

“Yes, him,” Sam nodded, a bit off-topic, “you said your radios were malfunctioning, and the receiver was buzzing and cutting out… I think I could do something about that.”

The commander of The Gorgons thought for a moment.

“We need to get to the northeast edge of the city, where we left our cars and belongings,” finally came the dry response.

“There’s a bypass route that goes right past the hospital.”

“Robert, I beg you,” I echoed Sam, my voice quivering. “We’re willing to accept any help and any decision you make. Trying to do anything for ourselves right now is beyond possible. Besides… You need to return with some kind of information, don’t you? I can share everything I have, maybe something will interest you,” Robert scratched his dusty, unkempt cheek. For a few more seconds, he looked thoughtfully into my eyes.

“Well… Fine. Let it be so,” I nearly cried from relief, my heart doing a flip and sinking; meanwhile, Robert continued. “I ask that you refer to me in a less formal manner. We’re not in the Directorate, nor do we fill out protocols, and comfortable communication is important. And also,” he glanced at me. “We’ll be traveling on foot. Most of the city… Is no longer suitable for vehicles. On foot, we’ll be much faster and more maneuverable; but jeans and high heels are absolutely not made for this. Change your clothes. Amanda has no use for her gear anymore; she would be glad if it served a noble purpose,” and before I could process what Robert had said and protest, he nodded to the second girl in their squad, “Sara, help her. Norman, you stay here. Everyone else – in the hall; John found a communication point near the stairs,” after these words, the man finally brought the radio to his face and hurried out of the book section.

The order was carried out quickly. Sam, not wanting to watch the grim scene, followed the departing Gorgons. Norman, the soldier with the split eyebrow, moved away to give me space to change, standing by the entrance with his rifle. I, meanwhile, hugged myself with trembling hands, watching in quiet horror as Sara pulled pants off the corpse. My legs were shaking, and cold sweat formed on my skin. The worst part was that I needed to put those clothes on. Luckily, I still had my top – a tank top and leather jacket – but it was little comfort; I felt as if I were in a terrible nightmare where reality and fiction had blended into a dark picture.

“Maybe,” I said with a strained voice, my words breaking, “is there any way we could avoid this…?”

“If Robert said so, then it’s necessary,” the girl replied; looking at me, she added softly, “just don’t think about it. Try to distract yourself.”

I responded briefly and nonsensically: nodded aimlessly and, tilting my head a few times, looked out the window. Could this really be happening? Is this really happening to me?

But it was happening. Moments later, Sara handed me a pair of plain, faded gray-green uniform pants. I looked at her pleadingly, uncomfortably thinking that she had a very pretty appearance – expressive, almond-shaped gray eyes and plump, pink-peach lips – and a perceptive, empathetic gaze. Then, helplessly and cautiously, I took the pants from her hands and was horrified to realize they were still warm. Shuddering and almost dropping them, I clenched my teeth, suppressing the urge to scream.

A mix of disgust, fear, and despair.

“Get dressed,” Sara’s voice, quiet and filled with sympathy, slipped into my ears. “There’s no other way. I’ll take off the boots now.”

I nodded almost imperceptibly. Thank the heavens that I wasn’t forced to strip the clothes off the corpse myself.

Shaking, I unbuttoned my jeans, kicked off my shoes, pushing them carelessly away from me. My legs quivered. Weakness washed over me, making me stagger and nearly fall, only managing to catch myself against the wall. It felt like I was choking; swallowing was unbelievably difficult and painful. When I started pulling off my jeans, my cold fingers refused to obey.

A persistent voice in my head kept telling me not to do it. To stay in my own clothes, to put on my shoes, and to grab a cup of strong coffee from my favorite café, bursting into the sunny, warm autumn day, wrapped in multicolored leaves and untainted by reality. The voice soothed me, whispered that none of this was real, that I just needed to close my eyes – and then I would wake up in my own bed, the scent of fresh chocolate cake filling my home. I’d open my eyes, and all the difficult years past would be just a dream, and today would be nothing more than the end of a nightmare before waking. I would stand up, hug the person who meant more to me than my own life, and sigh, choked but happy; because I hadn’t lost that person, and it was only a bad dream… The voice was so convincing, and the image so vivid, that I slid down the wall, tears choking me.

I desperately wanted to run away. To hide, to shut myself off. My mind replayed every detail of what was happening, torturing me…

No, today I wouldn’t give up. I had promised that I would never give up. And if that means putting on the clothes of a corpse to go with the Gorgons, then I will do it.

Whining and wiping my tears away, I finally tossed my jeans aside. For a split second, I froze, staring at the pants. Breathe in. Breathe out. I started putting them on, trying to think of something else.

The fabric was still warm from the body of its previous owner. A shiver of disgust and horror slithered down my spine. Her body hadn’t even had time to cool down yet.

The buttons were hard to fasten; I was sure the uniform was new. Unable to hold back, I covered my mouth with the back of my hand and bit down on my skin to stifle a scream.

At that moment, Sara approached.

“It’s almost over,” she said as gently as she could, placing a pair of high boots with heavy soles in front of me.” So… You work as a journalist, right?” The girl asked, crouching down. ”And your name is…?” The soldier was trying to distract me, to break through the oncoming hysteria with casual conversation. I swallowed, sitting down on the floor and pulling the boots closer

“Yes, I’m a journalist…” I replied haltingly, trying to put on the boots quickly to shorten the torment, but my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. I couldn’t manage to tie the laces. In frustration, I let the laces fall, embracing myself at the shoulders. “Stephanie,” I breathed out the name. “My name is Stephanie Shayer.”

The girl nodded heavily and, unexpectedly, knelt down, leaning forward and deftly tightening the laces on my now boots. Stunned, I couldn’t force out a single word.