The T-55 tank slammed into the ground and slid through it for a couple meters as a sand and gravel pile grew in size on the side that took the brunt of the force from the collision with the ground. Doc lost grip of his safety handle and tumbled around the tank until it finally came to a stop. Breathing out a tired groan, he flung up and massaged his shoulders and rubbed the parts that had taken a beating.

  “Did we just manage to spin with a 60 ton tank? How is that possible? How fast did we go?” Doc blurted out, trying to calm his mind and explain to himself what had just happened.

  “I paid for whole speedometer, I use whole speedometer!” Ivan commented quickly.

  Ivan slammed the dashboard proudly with his fist. Noticing something, he leaned forward and looked at it more closely.

  "Blyat, speedometer is pizdec.” Ivan paused for a second “Or is it?" Ivan tested his theory, he pulled the steering levers and once more put all of his weight down on the gas pedal.

  The tank’s engine roared as they quickly climbed back up, flew past the burning enemy tank. Brushing past, sparks sprayed across the left side of the T-55 tank as the two warmachines came into contact. The treads spun with incredible speed as the tank screeched past the obstacle.

  “Da. Is pizdec.” Ivan took the foot off the gas, pounded the dashboard once more. The arrow of the speedometer spun around and pointed downwards.

  “But, this crash landing, didn’t this damage the.. uh.. what was it? suspension... bogie?” Doc asked, trying to process the events that had transpired.

  "Bogie? Torsion bar! this no capitalist tank, is of strongest stalinium forged by Stalin himself while he fought barehanded against bears in north Siberia," Ivan spoke with a frown.

  "We haven't been communist for over 200 years-" Vodko added as he dropped down into the space below.

  "Idi nahuy, we've been secretly communist all along. That's why our economy remained stagnant-"

  “Da. da. We’ve got smoke near the observation facility” Vodko interrupted.

  “Ah.” Ivan broke out of his rant before asking “eh? color?”

  “Purple.” Vodko answered.

  “Ah? Ooooh.” Ivan nodded happily and used the nearly untouched break pedals to stop the vehicle.

  "Ey, do svidaniya muzhik." Ivan reached for a cord, tugged on it to reach and flip a switch that stopped the spiral of iron oxide powder from being sprayed outside.

  "Ladno, poka," Vodko replied to Ivan.

  Ivan opened the driver’s hatch, jumped out, closed it behind him and ran off.

  “Wait. What just happened? What just hap- Schisse! You know, I’m kind of getting used to this panic. Vodko, explain.” Doc asked, trying to control his confusion while looking at the monitors displaying Ivan running off into the distance towards a long rope that hung on the cliffside.

  “He got paid, so he’s done. He ran into the direction of his wife. We’re mere minutes away from the red zone.”

  Doc looked at Vodko for a short moment. Vodko blinked, Doc breathed out a deep breath.

  “He’s married?”

  “Da.”

  Doc was silent for a little while longer.

  “What did she see in him?”

  "I wondered that myself when they married," Vodko scratched the back of his head.

  Doc exhaled another deep breath and got into the driver’s seat. It was still warm from when Ivan had sat there. Muttering something to calm himself, he grabbed a hold of the steering levers and gently applied pressure to the gas pedal. Time slowly ticked away. Doc gazed around at his surroundings uneasily as Vodko asked a question.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Anyhow, Ivan's gone. Business as usual? Will that radio even work in the red zone?"

  "It’ll get the job done. It was designed 10 years ago for the research colony on Mars. It'll be able to get through most interference that other radio systems encounter. It has some functionality to broadcast, but the chances of others having the equipment to hear us from the heart of a red zone is unlikely.”

  The tank breezed past the mountain path out into a wide expansive space. This was the destination, the dried up riverbed of a lake that had withered down into this pale sandy landscape. Yet there was still life. Pale white crooked shrubs which would’ve reached up to Doc’s waist grew everywhere. It was a wonder how they survived in such an inhospitable environment. Behind these shrubs, the eerie green glow of the red zone greeted them. Vodko observed the desolate dry landscape that used to be a lake and muttered to himself.

  “This place… feels familiar. I’ve seen this place or some place that looks like it.”

  Vodko retrieved a newspaper clipping from his inner pocket as thunder flashed outside.

  “Da, da. Vel-” he turned the torn page around. “Nyet... Christofer.”

  Doc paused for a moment, realizing that the iron oxide scattering had stopped. He flipped the switch and the red spiral of iron oxide dust started spinning again.

  “Who?” Doc asked uneasily.

  “First recent disappearance. According to reports he was at lake a couple minutes walk from his house when he disappeared, along with lake.” Vodko continued.

  “Schis-” Doc leaned in with the steering levers “That’s relevant to this moment how?”

  Doc spoke as he narrowly avoided a rock that revealed itself as the dry sand flowed down the edge of the road, down to the bottom of the dried up lake.

  “That lake supposedly combusted, leaving a similar landscape to this. Dried up overnight. Looking like this dry wasteland. Although there were no ion storms there. They did quarantine the area due to a supposed radiation leak though.”

  “Eh? Let’s try and focus on the mission.”

  “About that, what is the mission?”

  “What? You-”

  “My mission is to shoot threats, and shoot them again if they survive. But what is yours?”

  “It’s a long story,” Doc sighed with a tired expression, his gaze focused on the road.

  “I have time,” Vodko replied.

  “Have you heard of the number stations?” Doc asked.

  “Da... UVB-76.. or ‘The buzzer’; The first reports were made of a station on this frequency in 1973. Why people don’t really know. Some suspect communication-” Vodko shrugged.

  “Actually, according to the notes of The Conet Project, numbers stations have been reported since World War 1. The first to be remembered by name was a buzzer station dubbed the ‘Swedish Rhapsody’ Buzzer that was discovered in the 1960’s, but it is possible it had been actively transmitting since the late 1950’s. It featured a music box version of ‘Swedish Rhapsody No. 1’. The transmission was what sounded like a female child’s voice reciting a list of numbers in German, ending with the word ‘Achtung!’ or at least, that’s how the story goes,” Doc said.

  “While attempts at triangulating the source of the broadcast had for a long time been unsuccessful, just like with the raid of the UVB-76 number station, inside there were log-books with hand-written notes of several voice messages that had been transmitted in the recent years. The logbook also indicated that there were facilities that at the time belonged to the Russian military. People flocked to the locations, but no one ever found anything.”

  “Soon after the buzzer started broadcasting again, as it turned out, it had merely been moved, not abandoned or shut down. Attempts to triangulate this new signal were also made throughout the years. It turned out a new broadcast was sent from several different locations simultaneously. That’s how it was for a number of decades.“

  “One day however, I received a phone call. An electronic voice informed me that I had been provided an algorithm that sensed and discovered patterns in various number stations. Not in the numbers voiced, but hidden within the constant buzzing static. Despite there being hundreds of number stations, according to the data provided to me, only three number stations with that code were active at any given time. But the code was always fragmented, scattered, incomplete. I was ordered to complete it. Refusing led to... negative consequences.”

  “It went silent, for months. Before finally calling me up again. It had successfully triangulated the general area of the source. It had lit up briefly, at three unrelated instances. But since the red zone scatters almost all radio activity, it was hard to nail down. I was ordered to infiltrate a local hospital with resources and IDs provided for me. I was told to locate each one of the three frequencies, record it and follow it to its source.”

  As the tank came close to a stone with a strange symbol on it, a light turned on and the screech of the static noticeably increased in intensity. Doc stepped on the gas and stumbled back to the equipment. Doc put on a pair of headphones. While they wouldn’t nullify the sound of the engine, it would allow him to focus on the sound. He carefully turned the wheel, with a scratchy tick for each position. The wheel finally clicked just short of the number 105. Crackling noise reverberated throughout the radio and for a brief moment, a blue light lit up the area from an undetermined location before disappearing just as suddenly.

  “Hm.” Doc grunted. as he turned the wheel back to 98. The static lessened and was replaced by a mechanical hum echoing in the background with a clear rhythmic beeping.

  “That’s weird, I’m picking up morse code.” Doc commented and raised an eyebrow.