Necromancer: Undead Lives Matter

CHAPTER 2

“Kirich!”

My friend had one hand on the door.

“What?”

“You should change that shirt.”

He looked down at himself.

“Otherwise, you'll end up at the first police checkpoint.”

I pointed at the lettering.

“Propaganda. Rehabilitation of Nazism. All that fun stuff.”

A little spark of understanding appeared in Kirich's eyes.

“Oh.”

He nodded slowly.

“Right.”

Then his face twisted with indignation.

“What a bastard! ‘Roman-Roman, take-take!’”

Whatever that meant, apparently it was an adequate summary of the salesman who had sold him the shirt. Kirich started changing.

I turned back to my resume. Where was I?

Ah. More useless garbage.

Achievements.

Irrelevant.

Nobody at a clothing store was going to care about my academic achievements.

Successes at previous employment.

Also irrelevant.

The heroic exploits of an emergency medical technician weren't exactly going to impress a guy hiring someone to sell shoes.

Phone number.

Got it.

Email.

Got it.

And somehow I also needed to figure out how to pay my phone bill before the fifteenth.

Perfect.

The resume was done.

My face smiled cheerfully from the upper-right corner of the document.

It was an old photograph.

I'd aged a little since then. Whatever. Good enough.

I leaned back and stared at the screen.

The project was theoretically falling apart.

My part was finished. Vitka's wasn't. And he still wasn't answering.

What the hell? Could someone really just disappear like that? So, who was this Vitka's group monitor?

I opened my contacts and started digging through the list.

Let's see…

Viktor Aleksandrov.

Organization: TSMU.

Position: Student, Group 502.

I'd added his number ages ago, back in the semester before last. Logically, he should've moved to Group 602 this year. Then again, that's what happened when you only talked to people when there was business to discuss.

I scrolled down.

Valentina — Group Monitor, 602.

That sounded promising.

I called.

“Hello, Valentina?”

“Hello, Tolik.”

Her voice was pleasant enough.

“What did you need?”

“Viktor Aleksandrov. Is he in your group?”

“No. He's in Group 605.”

Instant answer.

“Then my deepest apologies for disturbing you.”

“Oh, come on,” Valentina giggled.

“How are things, anyway?” I asked, mostly out of politeness.

“Fine. Listen, I have to run…”

“Then I won't keep you.”

“Bye, Tolik.”

“Bye.”

I hung up.

Okay.

Next.

Karina — Group Monitor, 605.

There we go.

I called.

“Hello?”

A man's voice answered.

Hoarse. Irritated.

“Hello,” I said, putting every ounce of politeness I possessed into the word. “Could I speak to Karina?”

“Who are you?”

The tone immediately rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't particularly like people who answered the phone as though they'd been appointed guardian of the state secrets.

“A classmate. Is Karina there?”

“Don't get smart with me, classmate.”

Oh, lovely.

Then he added:

“Tolya 407? What's that supposed to mean?”

He'd obviously looked at the contact name I'd been calling from.

“It's the group number. Four-oh-seven.”

A lie, obviously.

But why complicate things?

“So, is Karina there?”

A woman's voice suddenly came from somewhere nearby.

“And why the hell did someone like Anzor answer the phone?”

Anzor immediately began mumbling excuses. His voice became considerably less intimidating.

Then Karina took the phone.

“Hello. What do you want, Dushny?”

In the background, Anzor laughed.

Yeah, yeah. Fuck off.

“Have you seen Viktor Alexandrov lately?”

“Vitka?”

“Yeah.”

“He's already had his bachelor's degree for two days.”

I frowned.

Karina continued.

“I already complained to the dean's office. They should contact his parents.”

His parents. Wonderful.

I had a sudden thought.

If I ever get so drunk that someone needs to call my parents, who the hell are they going to call?

“Anything else?” Karina asked.

Anzor repeated my name in the background and started laughing again.

Go ahead, laugh, you walrus-faced moron.

“No. That's everything.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.”

“Bye, Dushny.”

She hung up.

I stared at the phone.

So. Either Vityok was spectacularly drunk somewhere… Or he'd actually disappeared.

No. Missing? Probably not.

Still, four days without answering his phone wasn't exactly normal.

My stomach chose that moment to remind me that I had more immediate problems.

The Chinese biscuit pack I'd eaten earlier apparently hadn't done me any favors. The pressure building inside me had reached critical levels. I pushed myself out of my battered office chair.

There was almost no toilet paper left, so I grabbed the nearly empty roll from the nightstand and headed for the restroom.

The dormitory corridor was the sort of place that could make even the most cheerful person reconsider their life choices. Worn Soviet-era linoleum stretched outside every door. The walls were painted gray.

A narrow window with ancient glass let in just enough daylight to remind you that the sun still existed somewhere beyond the building.

Apparently, the architects had been concerned that too much natural light might make students dangerously accustomed to happiness. Yeah. Depressing.

I stepped into the restroom and opened the nearest stall.

“Ugh. Damn it.”

Someone hadn't flushed. Again.

I stared at the mess for a second.

“Forget it.”

I moved to the next stall.

Much better. I settled in.

And as I did, another thought occurred to me.

I really needed to buy toilet paper. Soon. Very soon. Otherwise, before long, I'd be wiping my ass with my lecture notes. And considering how much those notes had cost me in suffering, that seemed almost disrespectful.

***

“Oh, hey!”

I waved at Elizaveta.

Elizaveta Mashko—Emashko to pretty much everyone—was my classmate. She lived four doors down from my room, the one I shared with Kirich.

“Hi…”

Her reply was flat and miserable.

Okay. Definitely not in the mood for conversation.

I gave her a quick nod and kept walking.

Emashko was probably the last real Goth left in town. The whole Goth thing had died out years ago, along with the rest of that palm-reading, dark-aesthetic, teenage-doom nonsense. Seven or eight years, at least.

But Emashko was a true believer. She had scars on her arms and had spent six months in a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt.

I'd never asked about it. I wasn't interested in the details, and some things were better left alone. What was I supposed to say?

Hey, Emashko. So, why exactly did you decide to kill yourself?

Yeah. Exactly.

I got back to the room and started getting ready for my long expedition. Technically, I could've bought toilet paper at the little shop twenty meters from the dorm. But it cost thirty rubles more. And, as you may have gathered, money wasn't exactly flowing freely around here.

So I was heading to Fix Price, where eighty-nine rubles could get me eight rolls of two-ply toilet paper.

Eight.

Meanwhile, the dorm shop wanted twenty rubles for one roll of sandpaper disguised as toilet paper.

Ah, capitalism. Nothing says free market quite like squeezing desperate students for toilet paper.

I pulled on my good shoes—Dotterpiler Intruders. I'd bought them two years ago with my first paycheck for four and a half thousand rubles. And I hadn't regretted a single ruble. Those things were practically indestructible.

Besides, I'd learned a long time ago—back in the orphanage, actually—to take care of clothes and shoes. If something was still usable, you didn't replace it just because you were bored with it. Money was too hard to come by for that.

Now I needed a clean T-shirt.

It was May already, and the temperature outside was pushing twenty degrees. No jacket necessary.

I opened the closet and rummaged around for a couple of minutes before finding my favorite. Dark gray. Black Sabbath logo across the front.

Perfect. I loved that band.

Honestly, I was a rock guy in general.

Not modern Russian pseudo-punk-pop-whatever-the-hell-it-was. Real rock. Real metal. Metallica. Black Sabbath. Led Zeppelin. Deep Purple. AC/DC. Judas Priest. Kipelov. Early Aria.

You get the idea.

My jeans were still decent, and I wasn't exactly dressing for a formal dinner, so I buckled on my belt with the metal studs, grabbed my backpack, and headed for the door.

Then stopped.

Damn.

The pendant.

I went back for it.

It was a cheap little piece of black amber—or jet, anyway. The only thing I had left that connected me to my parents.

Well. My father, mostly.

I'd been seven when he'd given it to me. He'd told me it was a valuable artifact he'd discovered in an ancient pagan temple. According to him, the little black sphere had once been the pommel of a sacrificial knife.

Which meant my father had apparently stolen an archaeological artifact.