The corpse of a woman lay abandoned on her bedroom floor. Her name was unknown. A Ukrainian man, a feral-looking survivor with an attack dog, had guided Dave Young through the shell-churned landscape, hoping the Englishman would remove her body. He said only that the dead woman had a son but that he was dead too.
“The son died of sickness,” the man said casually, thumbing backwards down the empty stairwell as the sound of shelling reverberated through the building and small arms fire crackled from the slopes nearby. He looked through the buckled door of the woman’s apartment. “She’s been lying here two weeks.”
