The gaunt man’s name was Kirill Aronov and while he would never admit it, those that knew him were well aware that he was a monster. The big bastard’s name was Miras Usenov and while he was a born sadist, his penchant for atrocity never exhibited any true signs of genius. They had little in common.

There were seven of them, when human civilization collapsed sixteen years ago: there were Arsem and Irat and Sanjar with them, God keep their tar-black souls. Temir was a greenhorn then, fresh out of training, assigned commander according to his top-notch performance in a dozen mock exercises which turned out to be useless, when the world kicked the bucket. Nurzan seemed to have had no trouble putting the situation together. The end of the world as they knew it suited him like a glove.

The Kazakhs found themselves stuck in the heart of Uzbekistan in the middle of a NATO exercise, on the day of the Big Choke, Sputter and Bang. There were a dozen Delta commandos with them, desperately trying to reach HQ with their HAM radios, screaming into the mic, droning coordinates against the wall of white noise. The Americans kept trying for two days before finally giving up, shouldering their equipment, divvying up their supplies and deciding to attempt the trek to the nearest NATO base, forty kliks northeast.

The Kazakhs followed but had absolutely no intention to stick with NATO. Kirill wanted to go home, back to Karagandy. Miras wanted to visit his family in Balgash, make sure they were alright. Arsem and Irat were going to go to Kentau and settle there or so they claimed. Sanjar had known they wouldn’t make it. Not on foot, not under the circumstances. He had read the look on Nurzan’s face, the minute they realized that HQ had gone silent. Temir insisted they ought to report to the nearest Kazakh outpost. He theorized this was the result of nuclear attack. North Korea perhaps, or Iran. Perhaps even the Jews, provided they had the guts to try going up against all of Caucasus.

“Command will mass the men soon as they can get communications going. They’re going to march them down to Israel and water the desert with Jew blood. You’ll see, brothers. Some good will come out of this,” Temir would say.

They’d walk for days behind Delta team, never exchanging more than a half-dozen words at a time with the Americans.

“Got food?” they would ask.

“Who’s on first watch?”

“Try the HAM radio, maybe they fixed communications.”

“Wait till we get home, comrades…”

A week later, forty kliks from Zarahstan, Temir would outline to his Arystani comrades the basis of his theory on the eventuality of nuclear warfare:

“They can’t have used EMP bombs, they don’t have the resources. And even if they did, the Americans would never let them.” Temir whispered conspiratorially. After careful deliberation, he had excluded the North Koreans whom, he theorized, didn’t have the guts to pull off World War 3 and had carefully outlined how the Middle East couldn’t manage a coordinated attack of such magnitude. The Jews, he believed, had the power, the influence and the capital to achieve this.

“They obviously used high-yield bombs, in excess of 10 megatons. Before that, of course, they must have leveled Fallujah with a big one and leveled Kermansah. I think they must have done it with ICBMs, maybe from a British nuclear submarine, just to be on the safe side. They launched the bigger ones, about 20 megatons, in Saudi Arabia. What happened, when we got stranded, was that one of them perhaps got intercepted and detonated near Asgabat. The EMP must have knocked out HQ communications. Everything southwest of here must have got irradiated, when that big storm blew in. The entire Middle East must be a black hole by now,” Temir paused, waiting on the awed responses of his comrades, their sub-par attempts to refute him. Mistaking their indifference for awe, he continued:

“My guess is they are going to try and use American media to pin it on the Afghans. Maybe make up another Bin Laden. Then they will try to move up the Caucasus and kill us all. But when we get to HQ, we’re going to inform the brass. We’re going to get the men together and we-”

“Shut the hell up, Temir,” Nurzan grumbled. The younger man looked at him dumbfounded, mumbled something and then fell silent. The Delta Team had gone quiet as well, jittery. Uzbekistan was an unbroken line of mountains all around them, the A379 a distant eventuality, itself so many miles away from home. “There will be nothing in Zarafstan. The brass - whomever’s not already back home to their families - won’t gather the troops. No-one’s going to take up arms against the Jews, or the Arabs or the Russians.

“What is going to happen, is we are going to cross those bloody godforsaken mountains, we’re going to try and do our best so we won’t starve to death and we are going to go home. As long as there is anything left for us to go back to.”

Temir didn’t say a word for the rest of the day. The food rations were gone by Tuesday next week. Arsem, who knew a little bit about hunting and two of the Deltas would go out into the wild and come back with little more than perhaps four hares to go around. When the Americans realized they were running out of water, they pooled their own with the Kazakhs, but Nurzan and Sanjar had made sure they had kept most of it out of their reach.

“We won’t make it to Zarafstan at this pace. Hell, I don’t think we are even going to make it past the next ridge, if I am honest,” Irat said one night, as the Kazakhs sat huddled by the fire. They had made sure they’d camp a ways from the Americans, who had started getting wise to their water scam.

“There’s going to be a stream a little ways from here. We’re not going to die of thirst,” Arsem said, matter-of-factly.

“You said that two days ago. Before that, you promised us lakefulls of fresh waters. Enough to bathe in,” Kirill hissed.

“We’re going to be down to drinking our piss before the week is through” Sanjar grumbled.

“I’m not drinking your piss, you dirty bastard,” Miras roared.

“Your loss,” Kirill responded and the Kazakhs laughed a hoarse dry laughter.

Temir shushed them. The Americans were looking their way now. A few of them had their hands on their guns. They had trouble keeping it together, Nurzan noticed. There was a glint in their eyes, a haunted expression that he had seen before, in the field.

I’m not going to make it, it seemed to say, accusingly. Not when you’re hogging the goods. I know you’ve got them stashed, I know you’re hiding them. And I’m going to kill you to get them.

“I say we kill the Americans,” Temir whispered the other day, after returning from a hunting trip with Arsem empty-handed. His eyes were like great black holes, sucking out all emotion as he stared at the starving Delta Commando ahead.

They were a ways away from camp, with the setting sun dyeing the rocky ground around them dust-red. They had been trekking the barren, dry landscape for hours in search of food. When they finally spotted a pair of hares, Terim had unloaded an entire clip at them without getting a single hit. There was a fire in the Kazakh’s bellies, there was bile congealing on their tongues.

The Delta Marine had been on them before Arsem could even shout a hoarse “Temir, no!”. Both men tumbled down the rocks, raising dust as they kicked and snarled at each other. Terim screamed as the Delta broke his nose with an open-handed blow. Arsem lunged at him with his combat knife but the American blocked him and got him in a stranglehold before he could even react. The blade clattered down on the ground. Temir was screaming bloody murder.

“Assholes! Fucking traitor hoggers!” the American screamed against Arsem’s ear and then suddenly fell silent. There was the distinct sound of metal tearing against flesh. The American leaned down on Arsem pinning him as Temir fell upon him, the combat knife in his hands thrusting madly in-out in-out of the Delta commando’s sides.

It took a while for Arsem to get out of the pile. Temir had kept stabbing the American long after life had fled from his body. They left the body to the carrion-eaters, knowing that any chance at a surprise attack had been lost. The Kazakhs had struck the first blow. The Americans would know something was wrong the second they would see them coming. Arsem checked his ammunition: two clips left for his AK-74. Temir only had one left. If they were lucky, perhaps they’d get two from a distance before the Americans mowed them down with their M-16s.

They made their way back to camp, reaching the ridge by nightfall. They were going to strike under cover of darkness and take as many of them as they could, hoping that their comrades would catch up. Arsem cocked his gun, Temir held his breath and the men came out of cover screaming…

Only to discover the dead Americans, laid out by the campfire, with Kirill slitting the throats of the wounded.

“What's this?” Temir managed.

“Extraordinary measures. We had to attack them the moment we knew their guard was down. We got lucky,” by firelight, the Kazakhs could make out the gash running down Kirill’s face. “Didn’t work out so great. They got Irat. Where’s your American?”

“We took care of him. We thought…” Arsem said.

“We couldn’t risk it. You better go see Irat. I don’t think he’s got long.”

Irat had got a round in his gut. He was bleeding profusely, his blood a foul shade of brown-black. The Kazakhs had known what this meant. The bullet had bore through his intestines. His body was being poisoned by its own waste. Irat was crying even as his body convulsed in unimaginable pain.

“All in all, we did well,” Nurzan said “we got the bastards.”

“What are we going to do?” Temir said, holding Irat’s hand.

“What can we do? Leave him to the vultures?” Sanjar responded.

“We can’t just leave this man here! And we can’t let him die either! This is not the way we do things!” Temir shouted “we don’t leave our own behind!”

There was a long moment of tense silence, interrupted by the soft moans of agony that escaped Irat’s lips. The wounded man groaned:

“Kill…me…please…”

Sanjar raised his rifle, leveling it to his comrade’s head. Nurzan laid his hand on the barrel and pointed it the other way.

“No reason to waste bullets,” he said, the combat knife already in his hands and across Irat’s neck the next instant. His hand clamped over his comrade’s neck, who died a long, choking death. When it was all over, Nurzan got on his feet a leader of this pack of the damned, his allegiances and enemies already determined.

“Take what you can from the Americans and leave the rest for the vultures. We continue tomorrow.”

They met the crowd of fleeing refugees two days from Zarafshan. The men were gaunt and starved half to death. The women were like thrifty store mannequins, their limbs as spindly as twigs. It was there that the Kazakhs learned of the disaster that had overtaken the world. Fuel’s ran out, the announcers said. No more power, no more light, no more heating, no more trucks to carry food or medicine. No more tractors, to plow the fields.

Zarafshan starved, rioted, sickened and finally sank into red-faced anarchy in three months. Sides were picked, lines were drawn. Looters looted, soldiers and policemen became thugs, honest working men and women were reduced to scavenging and there was massacre in the streets. Most of the children didn’t make into the fourth month of the apocalypse.

The refugees were the desperate, hopeful few that had massed their belongings, what food and fuel and water had left and were heading south and West. Where to? The Kazakhs would ask. To Turkey, I have family there. For me, Tajikistan. My brother lives there. We are heading for Saudi Arabia. Qatar. Iran. Anywhere but here.

They had twenty liters of fuel between them and some food, perhaps enough to get them halfway through the country. They had no guns to speak of, little to no military training.

Easy pickings.

Temir didn’t say a word as he waded through the dead, picking off the screaming wounded. The Arystani had made short work of them, got themselves a good haul. If he was going to make his move, it wasn’t going to be now, when they had got it good.

Instead, he waited as they made their way into Zarafshan, picking off the barbarians and the looters, establishing a sort of fiefdom. Nurzan took command like some sort of barbarian warlord you would see in movies or read about in books. The end of the world suited him, the men could see that. No word was spoken about a return trip to Kazakhstan. Instead, they dwelt in this place of terror and gunfire and blood, living off what the toil of others.

When Temir finally mustered the strength to shoot at Nurzan, he missed. The bullet grazed across the side of his head, missing the brain by inches. It took part of his skull however and made Nurzan blind in one eye. He screamed, the warlord, writhing on the ground, uselessly pressing his palm against the gory track that had blossomed across the side of his face. Miras had shot Temir’s fingers off before he could take the next shot.

“Noooo! I want him alliiiveee!” screamed Nurzan through the pain and the blood. Temir was spared for the amusement of Nurzan. Nurzan survived by virtue of pure malice.

It was in those days, when Nurzan lay in the looted hospital bed, writhing and screaming obscenities at the world around them, the infected gash at the side of his head rotting away his brain that Zarafshan fell apart. The stragglers and the bandits, the victims and the bastards rose up against the Arystani commandos and took up arms before finally kicking them out. Even the chosen few, who had reigned in Hell beside the Kazakhs, turned tail and ran the second they knew that city was lost.

The Kazakhs found themselves running from their ill-gotten city, once again exiled to the wilderness of Uzbekistan, with Nurzan at the head. It did not occur to them until much later, how they looked like a procession of the damned, with the Devil at the head, mad-eyed and frothing at the mouth, his mind broken after his long fall from heaven. But the Kazakhs knew they had never been angels or men of virtue. In a way, they had accepted Nurzan’s command, because he was the only one among them that was most deserving of damnation. And they despised the lame Temir, denying him death so they could torment him because he had the audacity to attempt to rise above them, to remind them of the depths to which they had sunk.

Twice, Temir managed to escape the restraints that bound him to the wheelchair the Kazakhs had taken with them from the hospital in Zarafsan: the first time was because of absent-mindedness. Temir had slowly slipped his bonds, an inch at a time, releasing his good hand and slowly undoing the knots he could reach, maintaining the impression that he was still bound. When he escaped, he tip-toed his way across the campfire and wrapped his good arm over Nurzan, resting his forearm against his mouth. He bit, the lord of the damned, into Temir’s flesh, tasting his blood even as he was choking, but his thrashing woke the others who released him. Once again, Temir was bound to the wheelchair, this time with nylon straps taken from a ruined Zarafsan police-precint. They were strips of plastic that strapped tight against the wrists and bit into the flesh wickedly, the more you struggled.

The second time Temir escaped, his limbs had slipped from the blood. This time, he took the combat knife from Arsem’s hands who, as it later turned out, did not put up much of a fight and sank it, hilt-deep, into Nurzan’s thigh and twisted. And even though Temir lost an eye in the awful beating that followed, Nurzan only lost the use of one leg and sank deeper into madness.

Temir was once again bound and beaten and mocked. By the time the Kazakhs had left empty, burning Uzbekistan, his mouth was a gaping red wound and the bones in his legs were broken messes of splintered bone and muscle. Mirat had criss-crossed Temir’s flesh with wicked scars. And yet, the damned men knew that Temir was not broken.

His one good eye was trained at Nurzan, whose head wound was now the color of freshly-dug earth. He scoffed when he tripped or when his lame leg gave under him. When Nurzan would run a fever, no amount of abuse would ever shut Temir up. He would laugh his hoarse, blood-flecked laughter. He would smile his axe-wound smile. And the Kazakhs would be reminded, once again, that they were damned.

The border guard posts to Kazkhstan were deserted, the soldiers having given up on their posts the minute the world fell apart, perhaps favoring their families over their country. Or perhaps there were others like the Kazakhs, who had headed perhaps South, in search of fuel and easy pickings.

They were two hundred kilometers to Turkestan, when the Kazakhs found themselves caught in the midst of winter. Cold winds blew down from the Caucasus, howling as they descended from the snow-capped peaks, to freeze the Syr Darya River, to dress the sky above in mourning grey and the earth deathly white. The Kazakhs froze in the open plains, starved inside caves and wept at the sight of distant tractor lights as they struggled across the plains.

Their watch batteries ran out of juice two months later. Arsem’s clock hands stopped at 21:45, two days before Christmas. He was on guard duty that night, with Temir at his side, his eyes pointlessly scanning the snowstorm-ravaged landscape. The bound man cackled softly, as he always did when he knew they suffered. Arsem, who had thought himself immune to it, was suddenly very much exposed to the grating sound.

“What…do you want?” he said, but Temir offered no response. He only paused for a moment, smiled his crooked smile, then went right back at it.

“Shut up,” Arsem growled, as the wind blew from the east, whistling wickedly as it entered the mouth of the cave. Even above the hissing cacophony, he could still make out the sound.

“Shut up,” Arsem said. The AK-47 was in his hands, locked and loaded, before he knew it. Temir met his mad-eyed gaze with his own.

“What the hell do you want?” Arsem screamed over the howling wind, tugging Temir’s head back by his hair, snarling, “why won’t you stop, you bastard? What the hell do you want?”

The AK-47’s muzzle was pressed against Temir’s temple now, Arsem’s hand on the trigger. All it would take would be a tiny bit of pressure and Temir would be quiet, once and for all. Nurzan would scream and would probably beat him, but Arsem knew it would be worth it.

“Do it…” Temir mouthed, the words drowning out the howling, “kill me…” he whispered.

Arsem’s eyes went wide. A wicked grin spread from ear to ear. He had finally caught on to Temir’s little plan, his escape measure. Even if he killed Temir, he knew, he would never truly silence him. The cackling would be there. The screaming, the blood and the thought of Zarafsan, its train of refugees, the wailing of its women. Arsem pulled his gun away from Temir’s temple and pressed it against the soft flesh behind his own jaw.

“No. You live through this. I’m done.”

The report of the AK-47 thundered inside the cave. The Kazakhs ran to the entrance and found Temir weeping beside their dead comrade. Even though half of Arsem’s face was gone, they was enough of his mouth left for them to know he had been smiling.

They reached Turkestan in the final days of winter. They found armed men, starved and wild-eyed, maintaining a crude fiefdom with a host of peasants toiling for them. The Arystani once again killed the leaders and took what they could, along with a few dozen slaves.

With their bellies full and their retinue trained halfway into a company, they took Kentau. When Kentau was bled dry, they went to Kumkent. By the following winter, they had taken Akkol. In summer, they put the city to the sword and marched a battalion’s worth of armed madmen into Uyuk.

When they reached Saryozek at the end of a tqo-year trail of destruction, the Arystani knew that they were done walking.

“See this?” Nurzan said, as he pushed Temir through the town’s borders, beneath the shadow of the 747 that had crashed in the middle of it, so many years ago. “This, Temir, is where we’ll build our little kingdom of the damned. We’ll build walls here and we’ll keep its men and its women. We’ll bleed the land slow and bind it with chains. We’ll make this place a Hell that not even God himself could imagine. And I’ll make sure you don’t miss a thing.”

Leaning down on Temir’s ear, the sound of screaming suddenly lost to the two men, the fires that were consuming Saryozek waning and distant, Nurzan whispered:

“You shouldn’t have missed.”