The Witness

The Witness (Part 1)

It was long ago when I worked at station 13 in the deep Siberian wastes. Station 13 was a soviet outpost and the Cold War was still brewing. What we did there, I will not elaborate on, as the expedition I want to tell you about is disturbing enough as it is.

On a day in late autumn, six days after some shooting stars had lit up the dark night, one of our supply planes brought news of a village some day's walk away. The little settlement had seemingly been attacked, as there was white smoke rising from the wooden houses and no people were to be seen anymore.

Therefore, some of us decided to get to the village and look for survivors and the cause of the catastrophe.

The Siberian landscape is not easily passable in many parts, so we had to use horses instead of cars for traversing the rocky, wild areas. Our small group had started the journey in the early morning hours, slowly fighting its way through a thicket of coniferous trees. Despite the green all around us, the surroundings had felt bleak and barren. All the tree trunks lying around halfway rotten reminded us of the mysterious explosion from half a century ago, a graveyard of once mighty plants.

It had already become noon when the forest was finally behind us and we managed to move on a bit quicker. The village got close when the sun had already started to set, sending down its cold light. Passing by a clear creek, we made for the hillsides were plants grew rampant and my gaze wandered across the many trees in the distance, looking for survivors of the happenings we had set out to investigate.

Russian summer days are comfortably warm and therefore we were not forced to wear thick clothes or traverse frozen lakes or snowy hills. A smell of fresh and healthy nature was in the air and I almost started dreaming whilst my horse carried me onwards. It slowly got cooler and the terrain got rougher and rougher. I still searched the horizon, looking for hollows or caves where some poor people in need might have hid themselves. The predatory animals around those hills were nothing to underestimate and they smelled blood over long distances, making a wound all the more dangerous for possible survivors – if there were any to begin with.

People from around here would normally know how to deal with the wilderness, but in shock and terror knowledge is easily forgotten.

When we had almost reached the village, I spotted five bears, charging towards our little group. The horses had been restless for a while already, but the view of those big predators made them panic and we had a hard time not to be thrown off. One of us – a man from the KGB like me – had taken a shotgun for emergency situations and pointed it at the charging animals, ready to pull the trigger. I wondered whether agitating them with a shot was a good idea, but I also trusted in my colleague to not do anything rash. Indeed, I was right. The man waited patiently as the others tried to get their horses back under control. The bears had almost reached us, darting towards us at terrifying speeds. My heart was beating heavily. I tightened my grip around my pistol, ready to aid my colleague.

"Stop!" one of the others suddenly screamed.

His voice was trembling, confused.

When the bears had come even closer, I noticed that something was wrong with them. The moment I realized what it was, I wished that I had never joined the expedition in the first place. I looked at the animals, disturbed by what I saw. The bears ran right past us, not even giving off a sign of having noticed us. Their eyes and their motions were radiating a bottomless terror.

They... were fleeing?

Soon, I spotted smaller groups of animals nearby, also running across the ridges and hills, squeaking and screaming like a frightened swarm. The horses suddenly started to lose it as well. They rose up and I only narrowly managed to hold onto my saddle. The others reacted quickly enough as well and all of us barely stayed on top of our animals. There were flocks of birds, flying past and towards a horizon far behind us.