Page 6 of 10 Days to Surrender

I stare at the jagged, red groove carved across my palm. As I watch, blood pearls along the seam, brighter than the June sun bleaching the sky as it rises.

“At it again?” Kosti calls from the porch. Steam rises from his chipped mug as he sips his morning coffee. “You’ll reopen the gut wounds if you go too hard.”

I toe the block toward the firepit. Kosti’s safehouse in Vermont is as well-equipped as they come: thirteen crates of Soviet AKMs buried beneath behind the toolshed. Six kilos of C-4 molded into hollowed-out encyclopedias in the root cellar.

But not a single fucking barbell. I’m left to lug around rocks like a fucking caveman for exercise.

“Better infection than weakness,” I mutter, stripping off my sweat-soaked t-shirt. The barbed wire scar around my neck twinges as I haul the cinderblock back up, rest it on my shoulder, and start to squat.

Every inch of motion is fucking agony. My thigh screams; my torso screams. Most of all, my head screams. Two syllables on endless repeat.

Ssyklo.

Ssyklo.

Ssyklo.

I keep my mouth clamped shut, though. Even though there’s only me and Kosti out here in the Adirondacks, with no one else for dozens of miles in any direction, I’ll be damned if I let so much as a single grunt of acknowledged pain slip past my lips.

Only cowards show pain.

Six months of isolation and this place still hasn’t grown on me. I despised it in those first few weeks in the dead of January, when I couldn’t even sit up in bed without assistance. Pine boughs would scratch at my window all night long like feral cats. Snow rose and fell and rose again.

The whole time, I laid flat on my back and buried my agonized moans.

Doctors came and went. Secret doctors, discreet doctors, the kind who accept cash in unmarked envelopes and know to keep their mouths shut if anyone asks where they’ve been. Down to a man, they told me the same thing:

Your femur is broken and your femoral artery was nearly shattered. Your A/C joint and the tendons attaching your pectoral muscle to the bone are both in ruins. Most likely, you’ll never walk again.

The doctors were wrong. Even when every inch of me bellowed in pain, I found a way to struggle upright. That turned into standing, and standing turned into timid steps to my door and back.

All day and all night, I’d do that same ten-foot walk. My socked feet sliding across the thick carpets of the safehouse bedroom. I’d be woozy and sweating bullets by the time I got back to my bed—then I’d turn around and do it again.

And again.

Andagain.

The winter eventually petered out. Spring came in, but the robins pecking at the window glass were just as annoying as the pines. Eventually, I conquered the stairs the same way I conquered the stretch from my bed to my door.

Fuck knows how many bloody bandages I went through. Kosti shuffled in daily to empty the trash cans and leave food for me to eat. He never said much in those first few months. Didn’t explain why he’d damned me by showing Ariel proof of Jasmine’s survival, only to save me from Dragan. He’d just look at me, nod, and say, “Hm. He lives another day.” Then shuffle right back out.

It’s summer now. The sun is a bitch, viciously hot. I’m sweating bullets and the cinderblock is numbing my wounded shoulder. But I keep going.

I squat.

I stand.

I squat.

I stand.

Somewhere along the way, I lose count of how many repetitions I’ve done. Kosti’s chair creaks protest as he rises and saunters over to me. Grass whispers under his Italian loafers—still polished daily, even in this backwoods shithole.

He pauses in front of me and watches for a while.

I lie down and start to bench press the stone. My pecs hate it, but since when the fuck did I give a damn what my body cares for?

Three sets of thirty. Burn through the pain.

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