Jason Overstreet - Beneath the Darkest Sky

I stayed there straddling him for a moment while I caught my breath. Then I rushed to James. He was still out.

“Son!” I said, lifting and shaking him.

I shook him a few more times and he began to come to. There was no blood on him, but as I touched all over his face and head, I could feel a knot on his left temple under his hair. He had turned just enough to avoid a square shot to the face. I realized the predicament I was in, so I slid him toward the wall and sat him up.

“Rest here, son!” I said, looking over at the bloody guard.

I stood and approached him, searching for his keys. Finding them in his coat pocket, I also pulled out his identification card and read the name. Returning it to his pocket, I took off his hat and shoved it in my crotch, then grabbed my bloody hammer from the floor and slid it up my coat sleeve, holding it there. I stood and exited the chamber, walking down the hallway to the front door. I peeked out at the dark evening and across the now-invisible, snow-covered land situated between the isolator and the main camp. It was well below zero out.

I clutched his ring of keys, reentered the barracks, and headed for the guard’s room straight ahead at the end of the hallway. Using key after key, I found one that opened the door. Inside the closet-sized office were a toilet bucket, a small table, and a chair. On the table was a clipboard filled with papers, some stray bullets, a flashlight, a tin cup, and an almost-full bottle of whiskey. The top paper on the clipboard had “Punishment Isolator” typed along the top, and below it was a long list of names, some circled, as they were likely the current occupiers of the nine chambers. Typed under a line in the bottom left corner was “NKVD Guard,” and written above it was “Vladimir Divac.” It matched the name I’d seen on his ID card.

Grabbing the bottle of whiskey, I opened it and poured some all over the table. Closing it now, I reached inside my coat and placed it near my underarm, pressing it there so it wouldn’t fall. I lifted the back of my coat, picked up the clipboard, and shoved it in my pants at the back until it touched my rear. Sticking my finger in my mouth, I forced myself to vomit all over the table, which was easy. I grabbed the bucket, entered the hallway, closed the door, and headed for one of the big sewage holes near the western perimeter of the main camp.

I arrived there to find no one, luckily, and the only light was emanating from the bright, streaming camp lamps, as the day’s work continued throughout. I sat the barely full bucket down and scanned the area. No one.

Removing the bottle from under my coat, I opened it and then lifted the sewage lid enough to pour the whiskey out. I could tell the hole was almost full by how quickly the whiskey hit it. I slid the hammer out from my sleeve a bit and rinsed the blood off of the head with the remaining whiskey. Then I pulled Vladimir’s hat from my crotch and threw it in as well, hoping it would float. Closing it and removing the clipboard, I placed both it and the empty bottle near the western part of the lid’s hinge, as zeks would be approaching the hole from the east, and very few at night. I also kicked a little snow on the items to camouflage them a bit. Looking east, I couldn’t detect any guards looking this way, even though they might have been hidden from my view. I picked up the bucket, opened the big lid again, and threw it in.

Looking east once more at the single light above the door of the punishment isolator, I took a deep breath before turning and making my way back. Entering and returning to James, I found him still sitting there.

“You okay?” I said, and he nodded while I set my hammer on the floor.

I approached him and stood him up, steering him to the guard’s office. I sat him in the chair and went to retrieve the dead body. After returning the canteen to Vladimir’s pocket, I pulled his long coat up at the back and wrapped it over his pulpy head so there’d be no blood on the hallway floor as I dragged him to his office. I placed him behind James’s chair and returned to the chamber, taking the three slats we’d removed and returning them to their original position, even hammering the rusty nails back in. I then grabbed the rifle and our hammers and took them to the office. Touching James on the shoulder, I picked up the flashlight from the table and turned it on.

“I’m going to close this door now, son. And I’m going to turn the light off in here. Don’t turn around or move. He’s lying on the floor right behind you. Just sit right there and wait for me.”

He nodded and I closed the door behind me, flipping off the exterior switch for the office, then the one for the chamber we’d been working in. Even though the lights in the hallway remained on, all of the chambers were dark, as I could see the exterior switches pointed down. I found the hall light switch and turned it off, leaving me with only the flashlight to see. Approaching the chamber directly next to the one we’d worked in, I fiddled with the keys until I managed to open the door.

“Zek!” I said, pointing the flashlight at the curled-up prisoner, trying my best to sound like the dead guard.

“Da!” he slurred, his eyes closed, my light illuminating his filthy face in the dark. “Da!” he continued. “It’s me, Goran! Is that you, Officer Anosov, or is it Officer Divac?”

“It’s Divac,” I said. “Come, you can get some fresh air!”

He slowly stood and approached. Taking him by the arm, I led him down the dark hallway, then stopped, just before the front door.”

“Wait!” I said. “I must vomit. You can get air later.”

I turned him back around and steered him toward his chamber on the right, except I passed it and led him into the chamber we’d been working in. He couldn’t know the difference. Leaving him inside and closing the door, I grabbed James from the guard’s office before entering Goran’s chamber, the light switch inside now turned on. For the next hour we feverishly proceeded to remove enough slats of wood and joists to create a space large enough for us to dig a hole. It had to be wide and deep enough for us to dump the guard’s body in along with his rifle.

“The shovels and wheel barrels are out behind the punishment isolator, right?” I said to James, realizing how fortunate we were that Koskinen had suggested we remove the top dirt underneath the slats.

“Yeah,” said James.

At some point deep into the night, we had managed to bury him and replace the joists and slats. I then repeated my “fresh air” routine with Goran, this time effectively returning him to his proper chamber, the one with the guard now buried underneath him. If the NKVD ever suspected we’d buried him under our worksite, they’d be sadly mistaken. He’d be in the adjacent chamber, the one where their only plausible witness, Goran, resided. And he’d say he never left his chamber, save for one minute, when the guard walked him outside. He might also mention the guard’s vomit comment.

James and I returned all of our tools to the original work chamber and finished removing the slats, frantically yanking up the ones stained in Vladimir’s fresh blood. Once finished, we used our filthy, wool rags to wipe away any fresh splatterings of blood from the log walls, but it didn’t actually matter, because old bloodstains were all over the chamber walls. Still, we were now ready for our two coworkers to join us in the morning.

On our way back to Lagpunkt Seventy-Nine, I dropped the keys inside the sewage hole. Then we returned to our barracks, got into our bunks, and waited for dawn. When the sun rose we’d be ready to return and finish the job as originally planned. I already had my response prepared for when the morning shift’s guard asked me where Officer Divac was. I’d say nothing more than, “He approached us looking sick last night with a bottle of whiskey in his hand and said he was heading for the big hole to empty his bucket.”