“What was that?” Frank asked.

“Nothing.” Andy reconnected himself to the drop line. “Grabbing some samples and coming up.”

Chapter 2

Kirov, Russia

Viktor smoked the pungent cigarette slowly. He managed to tune out the sound of his five young children and screaming wife, Alina, as he read the morning paper. It’d be another long day driving the bus from the airport to the city and back. It was a twelve-hour shift now; it had been eleven hours only two years back, but the manager had cut staff with the remaining drivers working longer, or risking being cut themselves. The biggest joke on the drivers was that though the hours increased, the pay stayed the same. Big, big joke, he thought and blew more thick smoke into the tiny apartment.

His wife’s voice went up a few decibels and he raised his eyes over the paper to look at her – he smiled and winked – still beautiful after five children. Alina had managed to turn her face beet-red from screaming at the young ones. Only Maria, their oldest at seven, ever listened to her. Alina straightened, blew hair from her forehead and grinned and shrugged.

He nodded in return. He’d work a hundred hours a week if it meant keeping food on this woman’s table. She made it all worthwhile. He looked up at the stained walls and the roaches moving along the peeling picture rails. She deserves better, he thought glumly.

He sipped at a metallic-tasting coffee and winced – extra flavor thanks to the old copper pipes, he knew. He lowered the cup just as the table jumped.

“What is – ?” The table jumped again. Alina stopped moving, and the house quieted as the children ceased their mad dashing about. They all stood in silence. Alina and the five little ones turned big eyes towards him.

Something struck the window, making Viktor jump and little Rakael squeal. Viktor looked to the pane as another wet thump sounded against the glass – it was a bird, momentarily stuck on the sill, its beak shattered and bloody, its eyes round and mad. It fell away, leaving a streak of blood as it plummeted towards the earth.

Viktor started to rise to his feet. Earthquake? he wondered. Kirov had minor tremors all the time, but these buildings, most twice as old as his babushka, were little more than cheap, crumbling brick and powdery mortar – a good breeze, and they’d collapse like a deck of cards.

He felt a juddering vibration beneath his feet, and then a waft of hot, stinking air. Birds started to crash into the building as though being fired from a cannon. That’s it, no more waiting, he thought. Better to be safe in the street, than crushed to muck in an old building.

“We go quick. Out, out.” Alina took control, snatching up the two youngest and yelling instructions. Maria grabbed Rakael, and he took his eldest son by the hand. They went down the old steps two at a time, their feet squashing roaches on every riser, as the building started to grind. On the way down, doors opened and old gray heads poked out, but then were pulled back in as though on a leash.