Ripheus23

The Number of the Dead

[Intended plot: a Soviet officer who witnesses both German and Russian atrocities during the war is later sent to administer an isolated gulag site, where he eventually meets a prolific executioner and discovers the Lovecraftian outcome of Stalin's immense terror. The title is a reference to the wide range of estimates for victims of Stalin-era cruelty and injustice, the explanation for a true high number being that the enormous number of corpses, after littering the frozen landscape for years, were disposed of by being incinerated during Soviet nuclear testing---the testing itself actually meant in part to fight a Cthulhu-like monster that had been rearranging the corpses in eerie geometrical patterns.]