The convoy came to a halt beneath a thick canopy of trees in the park. The head scanned the scene and pulled back into the hatch. A plane flew over.

“Check out the little bird,” Grumpy pointed upward. “Off for a bombing sortie at Saur-Mogila I’m guessing.”

Ukrainian pilots were nervous to fly low and dropped their bombs inaccurately. The machine guns and grenade launchers could no longer reach them. Helicopters dropping off troops for ambushes had not shown up for two weeks. Anti-aircraft guns and ATGMs brought in from Russia were now being deployed. Planes were being shot down almost every day now.

Two entire sections of a high-rise block in Snizhne had disintegrated like a deck of cards from a direct strike. One was reduced to a heap of slabs lying one on top of the other. A kitchen on the fourth floor was half intact: the radiator, a part of the window, and a picture on the wall remained. In the neighbouring section, right in the middle of the block, a hole no larger than a metre had been punched into the roof through to the bottom, where there was only emptiness, dust and bits of furniture and rubble. Eleven people had died. Eleven more souls into the abyss. Unreachable—they would be forever cold, no matter how much you held onto them.

People crowded around the ruins of the high-rise. Rescuers, soldiers, and neighbours climbed over broken concrete, furiously raking through the debris with shovels, pickaxes, and hands. Some just stood and stared. A weeping woman squatted and covered her face with her hands,

Suddenly, a scream.

One person put up their hand and everyone froze, holding their breath, as if playing a game. Then another scream, and everyone sprang back to life. A ring formed around the person with his hand up; several rescuers crouched by a wide concrete slab, peering underneath. One jumped up and rushed to the bulldozer, and then back to the ruins. The crowd passing down bits of debris redoubled their efforts, beating away with hammers and milling around the place where the slab lay. K. nudged the driver.

“Kolya, get ready. If they pull out somebody alive, you’ll need to drive like it’s your wife in labour back there.”

“Uh-huh,” the driver nodded. “No odds to me.”

“No, Kolya, you don’t get it. You need to visualise your foot flat on the accelerator, like it’s been glued into place. The foot you use for the brake? That one’s gone. Blown off. And you need to get to the hospital to have it seen to. Ok? Grumpy!” K. shouted into the radio. “Grumpy!”

“Stop yelling. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Found a live one? If you want them to stay alive, find me some ice and two wooden boards. Actually, you let me deal with the boards. You get the ice.”

“Ice?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck’s sake. Ice? Here? Now?”