A huge silhouette emerged swerving between the trees. The tank treads briefly spun in place as dry leaves shot out behind it when the vehicle began climbing a hill. This place was once a dense forest but now a blanket of fog covered the area as a concrete road cut through the landscape. Ivan backed up the tank behind a resilient bush that hadn’t decayed and turned off the engine. Now all you could hear was the Geiger counter ticking and the low volume static coming from the radio that Doc was focusing his attention on.

  “Oy Ivan.” A man replied through the comms “Doktor’s present is ready”

  “Ah, good.. comrade.”

  “Present?” Doc asked with a perplexed expression.

  Ivan covered the comms and leaned over to Doc.

  “Remember when we asked about safety measures for potentially jumping headfirst into lightning?”

  “No?”

  “You told us that if we couldn’t get an immensely powerful magnet, we should gather copious amounts of fine powdered rust and throw it above ourselves to avoid lightning. Then you went back to welding.”

  Ivan leaned back and spoke into the comms again.

  “And now here we go. Comrades, let him know how much we got.”

  “Da, Da. We got a whole trailer’s worth... Hmm, what? No we can’t shoot the hostages!”

  “Because we’re merely robbing them. Boss, tell them to not shoot the hostages.”

  The other party seemed to have a minor discussion on the other end.

  “Err, what’s going on?” Doc asked, even more confused than earlier.

  “Not to worry, gopnik business transaction,” Ivan replied.

  “Well done everyone, except for Igor, Igor’s a urod. Drop goods off at drop off point.”

  “Da. ETA in 15 minutes boss. There’s a fire at the steel mill, someone sabotaged the coolant system.. because of the fire-” the rest of the message was abruptly cut off by static. Ivan hooked up the comms.

  “Did you- Did we? Did we do that?”

  “We done a lot of things we're not proud of,” Ivan said as he began counting off on his fingers. “Robbing graves, eh, plundering tombs, double parking. But, nobody got hurt. Well, maybe somebody got hurt, but nobody we knew.”

  Vodko nodded approvingly as he looked out of the tank through the periscope, scanning the outside for threats. Looking out in the distance, he was greeted by a vast expanse of green tinted thunder strikes. The winds whipped the low-lying thunder clouds, driving the red zone clouds closer to them.

  “Hmm. The comms stopped working.” Ivan noted.

  “Well, the effect of the Ion storm over the red zone seems to be growing in strength, it is not just scrambling local communication, it also disrupts electronic guidance systems. My hardline array system seems largely unaffected though.” Doc explained.

  “We got movement” Vodko announced as a 68-ton, enemy tank drove down the road.

  The enemy tank was swaddled in sharp obsidian colored edged angular contours of the non-explosive reactive armor plating. Linked modern state of the art treads, with armor panels hanging over them. It rumbled down the narrow, winding street. Its threads shredding the road that was already badly pockmarked by numerous asphalt-less sections. It was more patch than road. The enemy tank accelerated and turned a corner, down into the small mountain paths. They were big enough to fit a tank through, but comparatively, they were a tight passage littered with autocannons.

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  “The enemy tank seems to be heading for the Fubar Pass.” Vodko noted.

  Ivan recognized the tank. Modern, blue zone class tanks. Armed with two 130mm cannons as its main weapons, and while they too had a coaxial .50 caliber machine gun mounted to their roof, the enemy tank also had a 20mm autocannon turret mounted on its main turret that didn’t require a human gunner to work at optimal efficiency. All of its weapons were gyroscopic stabilized, giving them the ability to fire with accuracy that was approaching that of a laser, even while on the move.

  In contrast, the T-55 tank and the configuration the railgun worked with allowed only accurate firing if they were standing still. That probably wouldn’t stop Ivan from an attempt to fire it on the move, but with the rapidly deplenishing tank shells, the thought made Doc uneasy. Ivan knew that his tank was basically junk on tracks in comparison, but he still wanted to challenge it.

  Doc exhaled a deep breath upon realizing Ivan’s intention and extended the crank to Vodko, who pressed it into the appropriate notch and started winding it up as Ivan once more turned the key and gave new life to the engine. The exhaust started shaking as the thrumming of the engine built up power and black smoke shot out. The treads once more began spinning. Vodko dropped the crank which landed with a metallic clank below as he focused his attention on aiming the gun. The T-55 turret began to swivel into the direction of the enemy tank’s engine block. Doc pushed a tank shell into the breech. Leaning to the side, Doc desperately looked into the second emergency health box in the tank for something to dampen the noise, only to find a box of cigarettes and a canteen of vodka. Doc blew out a frustrated puff of air, bent the two cigarettes and drilled them into his ears before pushing the breech block in place and screaming.

  “Ready!”

  Just as the enemy tank was beginning to turn a corner, Vodko pulled the trigger. The edge of the cannon once more glowed red hot and a molten slug lanced out from the gun, splitting the air and leaving an intense white trail of superheated water vapor. The molten slug cut into the enemy tank halfway before being deflected into an abandoned truck on the edge of the road, and blew it quite literally to pieces. A roiling orange firecloud blossomed from the impact point, and flaming chunks of metal bounced and tumbled everywhere. The heat from the blast caused the enemy tank's engine to combust as its built in fire suppression system contained the fire from spreading.

  Vodko pushed himself up to the periscope and watched the towering mass of smoke blowing into the air from the back. Army personnel pushed themselves out of the tank and were dashing across the field in a flat-out, adrenaline-fueled run, carrying communication equipment while two men dressed in military grade ATLAS suits provided cover fire until they disappeared behind a corner. The kinetic energy of the uranium slugs hammered the side armor in a scattered spray, disintegrating in the dents, each hit generating a visible reaction from the geiger counter. Ivan pulled the steering levers and swerved around. The side armor clanked onto the pavement as Ivan pushed down the gas pedal. The T-55 lightly bounced as moved from the hill and came in contact with the pavement. As Ivan pushed down the gas pedal, the side armor which has partly loosened from scattered firing scraped a groove into the pavement. The T-55 Tank careened down the road, away from the Fubar Pass route. Vodko raised both hands up into the air and blew out air before sliding down to Doc and Ivan’s level.

  “Enemy tank neutralized. The crew seems to have escaped into the Fubar Pass” Vodko said. “Two of the men had ATLAS suits.”

  “They should having same communication issues as us right now, right? By the way, how come those suits use an english acronym? Didn’t our country invent those?” Ivan said while resting his head in his palm.

  “Forget about that, did we just drop something?” Doc asked with a worried expression and turned on a few of the cameras he fitted to the sides of the tank.

  “Njet, still there.” Ivan said as the tank bounced over a speed bump and shook off the depleted uranium slug fragments which had lodged deep in the seams when it dug the side armor into the road once more upon landing.

  The T-55 Tank accelerated with the occasional burst of sparks spraying from the side armor colliding into the cement after scraping against the bottom of the potholes they drove past. The doctor sank down into his seat, eventually bending his knees and laying down with his hands continually massaging his temples. He knew he was the one that had to fix that side armor. The tank swerved into the garage door of an abandoned car dealership while a banged up pickup truck arrived shortly thereafter with a generator and a fridge squeezed in with on the truck bed along with three men in ski masks.

  “Ayoo boss!” One of the men jumped off the back of the truck, folded down the tailgate, pulled out the pin that connected the trailer to the truck and gestured to the other two men.

  “Davai, Davai,” he said and clapped his hands twice before pushing the trailer with the iron oxide powder to the side, ready to receive the end of the generator that the other two were carrying off the truck.

  Ivan opened up the driver’s hatch and stuck his head out.

  “Ah.. hm.. Comrades! Well done.” Ivan said as Doc opened his hatch. “Set that thing up inside the garage, we had a run-in with a tank patrol just now. Let the Doktor do his thing after that.”

  “Da. We can see.” The men replied and looked at the damage of the tank.

  “Friendly reminder, if Ivan calls you comrade, he don’t remember your name.” Vodko spoke in a hushed tone as he sat down.