Night Watch [open to BPRD characters, or whoever]

[LUDMILA ILYUKHIN]

Date: 6th of December 2008

Dreams. Almost everyone has them. Fleeting dreamscapes of wonder and impossibility generated by the mind while the body rests. Sometimes, dreams are the psychic manifestation of passions, fears or lust. Dreams are also sometimes a way of reliving one's past experiences, no matter how terrible those were.

Ludmila's dreams were like that. Her nights were often haunted by her past, pleasant and terrible. Sometimes she just dreamed of walks in the park, or her times spent in her adoptive father's dacha outside Moscow. But more often than not, she dreamt about death and war. In those dreams she had a gun in her hand, and bullets whistled past her like deadly promises. Artillery rained down all around, shaking the ground, people screamed...sometimes in those dreams she died. A bullet would hit her, or the ground would erupt beneath her feet and she'd wake up, eyes wide and pale skin slick with sweat.

Tonight was such a night with such a dream. In that dream, the Rusalka was in Stalingrad. The skies were grey and heavy, the air was cold, snow coated the blasted ruins and rubble-filled streets. Machine-guns chattered nearby and elsewhere, and the occasional sharp crack of a rifle resonated in the cold air. Her face and hands were filthy, and she clutched a submachine-gun in her hands as she crawled through the rubble of a destroyed factory. Ludmila's blue eyes darted sharply left and right, looking for any possible ambush or sniper hiding in the ruins.

She then finally reached what she had been trying to reach: part of a collapsed brick chimney. She stood up, confident that she had reached satisfactory cover, and then the shot ran out...

...and Ludmila abruptly woke up, gasping. She looked around her with wide and horrified eyes, thinking she was still in that factory, slowly dying from the bullet wound in her lung, but she was just in bed, in her room at the BPRD. Anastasia was asleep on a mattress nearby, one bare leg thrown rebeliously out of the sheets while one of her arms clutched the pillow to the side of her head. A cheap, battery-powered alarm clock sat ticking away on her bedside next to an old black and white photograph of Ludmila and her adoptive father. A wooden drawer nearby was also loaded with old pictures whose date and setting extended over a several decades: one picture was black and white and showed Ludmila smiling at the camera. Another one was in slightly faded colour and showed Ludmila and some Soviet soldiers in a dry, rocky landscape...

Ludmila heaved a heavy sigh and briefly closed her eyes. She hated those dreams. Nothing seemed able to stop them from coming to her at night, not even magic. Quietly, she swung her legs over the side of her bed and got up. She felt thirsty.

There was a small kitchenette in her room, which she seldom used since she hated cooking. She padded softly over the floor, past Anastasia (who had started snoring), and into the kitchenette. She picked up a glass and filled it with water before gulping its contents down. What time was it? Probably 2 or 2:30 am.

Ludmila stood silently in front of the sink. As her thoughts went over the dream she'd had, the wall-mounted telephone in the kitchenette suddenly rang. The Rusalka's hand tiredly picked the white plastic phone and brought it to her ear.

"Hello?", she said, in her accented English. Who the hell would be calling at this time?

"Allo", said a male voice on the other end of the line before adding, in Russian: "Is this Ludmila Ilyukhin?"

Ludmila was somewhat surprised. She hadn't heard anyone speak her mother tongue in months.

"-Yes", she said. "What is it?"

"-This is Dmitri Makfeev, of the FSB. I'm sorry to call you at this time, but it's urgent."

"-Urgent?", said Ludmila. She had definitely not been expecting the FSB to call her any time soon.

"-Yes. Your services are required here, in Russia. Moscow, to be exact. There have been reports of supernatural activity in the sewers and the metro system..."

"-Send someone else", said Ludmila with a sigh. She didn't want to handle some fake ghost case or whatever it was her countrymen wanted her to take care of.

"-This is a serious matter, agent Neva", said Makfeev, his tone becoming severe. "We wouldn't call you if we had someone else who could handle the case...besides, this isn't a routine investigation. It's a military operation we're asking you to take part in."

Military? Moscow? Supernatural? Things began to fall into place.

"-How bad is the situation?", asked the Rusalka.

"-Several people have disappeared. Metropolitan employees, passengers, and some 'urban explorers'. We've shut down several stations. Hell, turn on your television and you'll see it on the news."

Ludmila put the phone down on the counter and headed towards the small television set she owned. She flicked it on and switched to the news channel.

"...Russian authorities are on high alert in Moscow as several terrorist attacks have hit certain stations of the city's metro system. Apparently, several stations and lines have been entirely closed to the public while special forces such as the Vityaz are being sent in..."

Silently, Ludmila went back to the phone.

"-What the hell is happening?", she asked, more concerned than before.

"-We don't know. We've lost a few people already to God knows what is lurking down in those tunnels. The Committee had nobody qualified enough to handle the situation...they're all just bookworms and bureaucrats now. So they told us to phone the Americans and their Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence and ask for you. You're the only person we have that can handle this kind of operation."

"-Right", said Ludmila, briefly massaging her forehead. "If I help you, will I be going in alone?"

"-No. We've got a lot of soldiers on the case. They're blocking the tunnels and patrolling the stations."

"-Good. I want people who can use the guns they have."

"-Well, the Spetsnaz certainly know how to do that", said Makfeev with a chuckle.

"-I'll do it", said the Rusalka. "I just have to get ready and book a flight to Moscow."

"-Don't worry about that, we've already booked one."

"-Ah, good. Well I'll be back in Russia as soon as possible."

"-See you there, then, agent Neva...oh, by the way, we sent you some files you might want to read before going", said Makfeev before hanging up. Ludmila put the phone back in place, thoughts racing in her mind.


Fifteen minutes later, Ludmila was sitting in the cafeteria, which was completely deserted. A cup of coffee and a bagel sat on the table next to some files stamped with the FSB's symbol. The file had everything a file should have: reports, pictures, descriptions...by the looks of it, this was going to be a dangerous mission.

The Rusalka sighed and sipped her coffee. Maybe after this operation she'd give up on the dangerous stuff and handle only standard investigations. That way, she might get Carl as a partner and tackle cases like the Loveland Frogmen and the Ghost of Drury Row. Boring and often fake stuff, but safe and "peinard" as the French said.

[LUDMILA ILYUKHIN]

After shuffling through the files, she set them down on the table and finished her cup of coffee. It was 3:30 am, and the cafeteria was still completely empty save for her. Quietly, she went over the new case in her mind.

So far, the threat had remained unidentified and had stayed within the reaches of Moscow's subterranean world. The attacks were savage in nature as demonstrated by the photographic evidence in the files, almost as if a wild beast of some kind had attacked these people. The death count was pretty high: three milicia officers, eleven homeless people, six passengers and twelve soldiers. The miliciamen and the soldiers had gone into one of the metro's tunnels to investigate and had not come back, while the passengers had been attacked late at night while waiting for their train to arrive. The CCTV cameras had been out of service, and had thus not caught the culprit (or culprits) in the act.

It couldn't possibly be a human. Some supernatural creature, maybe? No. The reports said that bloody footprints and handprints had been found on the crime scenes, human handprints and footprints. The bodies, or rather what was left of them, also bore the mark of human teeth.

What could have caused such carnage? Ludmila went through all the possible culprits. The Fae world came to mind at first, but the savagery and violence just didn't fit. Many other creatures were also subjected to scrutiny.

Zombies.

It seemed obvious now. The cannibalistic appearance of attacks, the bloody footprints, the human teeth...evidently, it could also be some other kind of humanoid beast, maybe even a possessed individual, but Ludmila's intuition was now pretty sure that zombies were roaming Moscow's underground. And why not? Like the Parisian and Roman catacombs, Moscow's underground was deemed to be a level 3 hazardous supernatural area. Who knew what horrors lay buried in the sewers, catacombs and dark metro tunnels of Russia's biggest city? With the weight of ages came terrible curses.

"Bah. Zombies are easy", said Ludmila to herself. "Just hunt them down, put a bullet in their head and they'll drop like flies."

Zombies were incredibly easy foes to tackle despite what literature and films said. They were slow, stupid and vulnerable. Ludmila had handled a couple of zombie cases back in Soviet days: one outbreak in Rumania, and the other in Poland. Both outbreaks had been crushed by the locals when she actually got there. Maybe she could just phone Makfeev back, give him directives and let the Russian special forces handle the rest? That way she could go see Manning and ask to be let off the bat for special operations.

But then again...

Ludmila picked up the files again and quickly went through them again. Something just didn't fit with the zombie theory. Not that the theory was completely invalid: everything seemed to fit a zombie attack. It's just that something was amiss. Maybe some other kind of undead...vampires? No, no. Not violent enough, and too many victims in such a short period of time. To kill that many people, there had to be several creatures, and they would have to be quick. A single zombie would never have been able to kill so many people, and several would have been mowed down by the milicians or the soldiers.

Ludmila sighed.

"Why do I always end up handling shit like this?"

It seemed like she would be going back to Russia after all.

[LUDMILA ILYUKHIN]

Smoking was technically not allowed in the cafeteria, but it was almost four in the morning. Who was there to care? Ludmila took her cigarette holder out of her pocket and lit one up. The doctor had told her many times to cut down on the smoking, and with good reason: Ludmila couldn't even run the same distances as before since she'd end up gasping for air after a few metres. This could prove to a real hindrance in a job that involved running away from monsters every now and then, but Mila preferred not to think about that.

Maybe it was time for her to retire. She wouldn't just ask Manning to be muted to something quieter, but she'd actively ask to be retired from special operations. Special ops revolved around dangerous and dodgy missions, and wars went with them hand in hand. War and death had always followed Ludmila, and the Rusalka had always ended up with a gun in her hands at some point or other.

And what was the end result of so many years spent doing such work? Recognition? Fortune? Some kind of fame? Apart from the awe she inspired in the Bureau's rookies, nothing. She was just another burned out war veteran like those she'd seen after World War 2 or the war in Afghanistan. Nightmares every night, and every time someone fiddled with a lock or banged on a table Ludmila would believe she was back in the fight for a few seconds. There were some things medication and therapy just couldn't cure, and the memories, the sensations brought about by decades spent getting thrown into almost every war imaginable or chasing some of the worst things ever to walk the world were such things.

As for recognition for her work, she'd never got any. For her new American employers, she was just another picture on a file, and for the Russians, she was an unwanted relic from a dead regime. She was called whenever something too dangerous for any of the other agents came up. After that particularly disastrous stint in the Congo, Ludmila was starting to have serious doubts regarding her current career.

Yes. Once this zombie job was over, she'd ask to retire from special operations. She'd be muted to more standard field work, investigating ghost cases and cold spots in old houses. That way, she'd be able to relax and enjoy life a bit more (she had a lot of it left, after all). She'd also be able to spend more time with Anastasia, and get the girl back on the right track.

But first, Moscow's zombie problem. Ludmila stubbed her cigarette out on the side of the table and got up. She'd packed a bag a few minutes ago, so she headed straight for the garages. She'd grab her Harley and drive to the airport to get the first flight back to Russia and Moscow. The job would be an easy one, one that would be over in a few hours, a couple of days at most. Once that was done, she'd retire from special ops and either move to her father's dacha, or move to the USA permanently.

Things would change.

[LUDMILA ILYUKHIN]

The next day, Mayakovskaya station, Moscow.

"So then. Where's the victim?"

Ludmila stood at the bottom of the incredibly long escalators that lead from the station's vestibule into the station itself. Mayakovskaya was 33 metres beneath the ground, and had even been used for a Party meeting in 1941 while the Germans were bombing Moscow. Now the station was on temporary lockdown (much to the annoyance of the commuters).

"-She's down on the platform. Looks like she tried to run from something...didn't run fast enough though."

Ludmila followed her guide, a young agent from the Committee, to the platform. As she arrived on the platform, she immediately noticed the bloody mess there.

"-Ah. I see", she said, moving in closer to get a better look at what was left of the body.

"-Same as the others. Looks like some animal ate it, but bears human toothmarks...also, the handprints on the walls and floor."

Ludmila looked around the corpse and saw bloody handmarks on the floor and walls. There were also footprints that lead away from the corpse and off the edge of the platform.

"-I'm pretty sure we're facing zombies, here", said Ludmila. "All we'd have to do is send a few extermination teams into the tunnels and wipe them all out."

"-That's what we're thinking, but first, we're sending scout teams into the tunnels to try and locate the threat."

"-I suppose I'm going with the Mayakovskaya team?", asked Ludmila, looking at the dark mouth of the tunnel at the end of the platform.

"-Yep."



About an hour later, Ludmila was in full combat gear, complete with gas mask, grenades and assault rifle. Alongside her was a Spetsnaz team, all veterans of the war in Chechnya and not enclined to screwing around.

"God...zombies, man", said one of the soldiers as he loaded a fresh magazine into his AN-94. "Never thought I'd get to shoot zombies. You sure it's not a bunch of crazed homeless people or something, Ma'am?"

"-It's zombies", said Ludmila, taking a quick look at her own AN-94. It was a relatively new addition to the Russian army's arsenal, and was based (in appearance) on the honourable AK-74. The weapon, however, seemed to boast more advanced design than the old Avtomat Kalachnikova 1974. "Shoot them in the head and they won't get back up. They're slow, stupid and should be easy to handle if we don't rush into any tight spots. Anyway. Let's go."

The group headed off the platform and onto the metro tracks. The tunnel entrance up ahead had been illuminated thanks to the installation of some projectors, and it also boasted a few sentries. The Spetsnaz entered the tunnel in silence, their steps echoing slightly off the walls of the tunnel as they got deeper.

"This is Agent Neva, we're in the tunnel and following the tracks, do you read me? Over", said Ludmila to see if the radio was working properly.

"-This is Mayakovskaya Station, we read you. Tell us if you see anything unusual."

As the light from the projectors faded entirely, Ludmila lowered her NV goggles and switched them on. The tunnel appeared bathed in varying hues of pale green, but visibility was good.

The group walked for a while through the tunnel and didn't encounter anything. None of them spoke save for Ludmila when she reported back to base. As they rounded a bend, they came across a small maintenance platform in the side of the tunnel wall. Something on the platform caught the Rusalka's eye.

"There's something on that platform", she said. "I'll go check it out. Maximov? With me."

Ludmila and the man named Maximov made their way to the platform, and as they got closer it became quickly apparent what the thing was.

"We have a torso here", said Ludmila, looking down at the mutilated corpse. There was blood everywhere, on the floor, the tracks and the walls.

"-Fucking hell...", muttered one of the Spetsnaz as he lay eyes on the corpse.

"-Mostly eaten...looks fresh", said Ludmila, as she examined the bloody remains. "Maybe an employee that got jumped?"

"-There's some tracks through that door, Ma'am", said Maximov. There was an open door in the wall, and Ludmila quickly saw the bloody footprints going through it and into the room beyond. From the looks of it, there had been several creatures.

"-We're going in", said Mila. "Stay quiet and stay alert."

The team went through the door and into a long concrete corridor, the floor of which seemed littered with old tools and accumulated grime. The corridor ended in a large, circular maintenance room that also contained some ancient, rusting generators and other equipment left there by metro employees over the years.

As the team went into the room, Ludmila suddenly heard something: the sound of a metal object falling over and hitting the floor. The team instantly froze, and guns were raised. The room became as quiet as the grave save for their breathing.

"Do you hear that?" whispered Maximov. Ludmila listened carefully for a few seconds before she heard it: the sound of footsteps coming from a corridor that lead off to the right.

"-We have company", she said, before moving towards the corridor's opening. A quick glance was enough for her to see the undead shambling towards them, and there were a lot of them. Twenty maybe?

"All right, take up position, take aim and...HOLY SHIT!"

The lead zombies suddenly put on a burst of speed that no zombie should ever have been capable of. Ludmila raised her Abakan and fired a burst at the two closest creatures, the bullets cleanly hitting them in the chest and face. They fell, but others kept on coming with frightening speed.

"FIRE! FIRE!", shouted Ludmila, and the other Spetsnaz joined her in hosing the undead fiends with lead. But no matter how many of the damn things dropped dead, there always seemed to be more following behind them. It soon became clear that if they maintained their position, the Spetsnaz would be overrun, so Ludmila gave the order to fall back.

"Retreat and barricade the door!", she shouted before giving covering fire. Several Spetsnaz bolted for the door, but one of them was not so lucky. As Ludmila and a couple of soldiers stayed behind to hold the zombies, one of the Spetsnaz was grabbed and dragged to the floor. Before Ludmila or any of the others could help him, he was already getting savaged by the undead horde.

Ludmila and the remaining Spetsnaz then left the room and slammed the door behind them. Immediately, the Spetsnaz who had retreated first blocked the door with some metal piping that lay on the floor nearby. Unseen hands immediately began to pound and scrabble at the door from the other side.

"This is Neva, we've made visual contact with the enemy. Zombies confirmed, but there's a lot of them. We lost Vasiliev during the retreat."

"-Return to the station immediately, Neva, we have received reports from the other scout teams, and there are more zombies heading up your tunnel. Retreat now before you get cut off!"

"-Fuck!", said Ludmila. How could there be so many? "Come on, move, everyone! We have to get back to the station!"

[LUDMILA ILYUKHIN]

Ludmila and the surviving Spetsnaz were now sprinting back whence they came, their combat boots pounding the concrete floor of the tunnel in synch with Ludmila's beating heart. Her disaster sense was tingling. The station would be swamped by the zombie horde and they would get out onto the surface, which meant that the Committee and the FSB would be left to mop up the mess for years after this...and that was if Moscow survived.

If Moscow was overrun by this supernatural threat, its inhabitants would probably be evacuated and the city would receive a massive dose of antibiotics. Enough antibiotics to kill the germs AND the patient. The antibiotics would be thermobarics and napalm, and the patient would be Moscow. It was a plan that had been in place since Soviet days, hell, Ludmila had helped conceive it.

But for now, she had to reach the end of the goddamn tunnel. Her breath was whistling and huffing through her gas mask, and the world around her was bathed in nightmarish green light as the NV goggles kept on working.

"Aw fuck, the things are right behind us!", gasped one of the Spetsnaz.

"-Don't...stop! Keep running!", rasped Ludmila. Breathing was getting hard, and her head was starting to spin...if she survived this, she would quit smoking.

And then, just as Ludmila had been giving up hope, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel appeared. The Rusalka was momentarily blinded by the harsh lights of the projectors, but she had enough presence of mind to shout:

"Don't shoot! We're alive!"

This bought the small team enough time to get to the newly erected barricade before the men defending the station entrance opened fire on the pursuing zombies. The long, whirring sound of a gatling gun was audible in the din of small arms fire. Someone had brought the big guns in.

"Keep on shooting!", gasped Ludmila after tearing her gas mask off. The danger here was that the zombies would somehow manage to overrun the barricade and get into the station. The Rusalka took her Abakan and took up position next to an FSB officer who was shooting at the undead attackers with his pistol. Ludmila opened fire on the enemy, emptying a magazine into the horde. Bullet casings flew from guns and landed on the floor, and the machine-guns began to overheat, yet still the zombies kept on coming.

"Oh you fucking bastards!", snarled Ludmila. "How many do you have down there??"

By now, zombies had reached the barricade and were being repelled in close combat by its defenders. Ludmila kicked an approaching zombie in the face, sending it tumbling over backwards. Where had they all come from? Not all of the zombies seemed "fresh". Hell, some of them were little more than skeletons with some rotten flesh hanging on their bones. It had to be witchcraft, or some kind of demonic influence, that was bringing back Moscow's forgotten dead from its catacombs.

Ludmila readied herself to repell another zombie when she saw another one of the creatures attack the officer next to her. The officer tried to beat the creature away with his pistol, but was overwhelmed, and the undead creature ended up sinking its yellow, cracked teeth into his arm.

"Get off him!", said Ludmila dragging the living corpse of its victim. She threw it to the ground and brought her boot down on its head, crushing its skull into fragments. A few insects crawled away from the mess.

"You all right...?", said Ludmila, turning back to the officer. The man had risen again, and seemed to have survived the attack...until Ludmila saw his eyes.

His eyes were glowing with an ugly green colour, the same that seemed to burn in the orbits of the undead that were now trying to storm the barricade.

Possession, flashed in Ludmila's mind before her hands tried to raise her Abakan in self-defence. Despite reflexes tuned by decades spent in war or conducting dangerous missions, she did not act fast enough, and was unable to stop the possessed officer from raising his pistol and pulling the trigger.

Ludmila felt one bullet hit her squarely in the chest. Her breath was knocked out of her lungs, and all her muscles were shaken as if she'd been hit full on by a speeding truck. Before she was even able to recover, the possessed officer fired again, and again, and again. Three more bullets hit the Rusalka, tearing through her flesh and passing out of her body. Clear blood soaked her clothes and appeared on her lips. Every breath she took was torture as blood and air seeped into her punctured lungs.

"Ooh...oh...", she moaned, collapsing. "No..."

The world was fading, noises becoming more and more distant. Machine-gun fire, shouts...someone running around her...Ludmila drew a long, gurgling breath that only resulted in blood pooling up in her throat. She'd seen soldiers dying from punctured lungs, coughing up their blood as they slowly choked to death. Now it was her turn...

She felt hands grasp her before everything finally faded into complete darkness.

(OoC: no, she ain't dead)