Читать книгу The Book of Dragons - Группа авторов - Страница 17

Daniel Abraham (danielabraham.com) is the author of the Long Price Quartet, the Dragon and the Coin series, and, as M. L. N. Hanover, the Black Sun’s Daughter series. As James S. A. Corey, he is co-author of the Expanse series with Ty Franck. His short fiction has been collected in Leviathan Wept and Other Stories. He has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, and won the International Horror Guild Award. He lives in New Mexico.

Forty-nine is too young to be raising a teenage grandson, but here he is. The boy spends most of his time downstairs—Yuli won’t call it the basement, because the shitty little house they’re in was built on a hill, so there’s a window down there. Basements don’t have windows. But the boy stays downstairs most of the time, either with his little friends or alone. Yuli sits in the kitchen, smoking his cigarettes and watching TV with the sound off, and he can hear them down there, like mice.

They’ve started playing pretend games, rolling strange-shaped dice and making up stories. Yuli preferred it when they were playing video games. Especially the battle ones where everyone fights against everyone, and the only point is you’re the one alive at the end. He’s never played those games, but at least he understands them. Every man for himself and God against all is a world he recognizes. There aren’t so many things Yuli recognizes these days.

He is living in the United States, which he never thought he would do. He was born in Stavropol, in the North Caucasus, but he doesn’t remember it. He was younger than the boys downstairs when he left his family to go fight. He spent more of his childhood in Afghanistan than at home, and that was before he started working private contracts. Since then he’s seen the world, if mostly the shit parts of it. But still, the world.

The house he lives in is narrow. The walls were the pale color that Wrona called “Realtor white” when he took the place seven years ago. The smoke from his cigarettes and the grease from his grilled meat have stained them. The kitchen floor is linoleum tile that’s curling up a little by the sink where it gets wet. The front room has a sofa that Yuli keeps covered in plastic so that it won’t get cigarette stink in the cloth. The backyard he paved over with concrete so he wouldn’t have to mow it all the goddamn time, and long fingers of grass still push up wherever there is a crack. His bed is good, though. King-sized, it is so broad that it hardly leaves space enough to walk around his bedroom. He’d had dreams about filling that bed with American girls and fucking his way to contentment, back when he’d first come here, and he’d had a couple girlfriends in the beginning.

Then, two years ago, he’d discovered that he had a son, and that his son had a son. The two had come to visit, and only one had left.

On the silent television news, a black woman and a white man shout over each other, square-mouthed with rage, until the image cuts to a bombed-out city. North Africa, to judge from the architecture. Not Egypt, though. Sudan, maybe. Yuli fought for a time in Sudan.

The boy’s friends laugh at something, and Yuli shifts his attention to them. To the boy and what he’s saying. It’s like listening to a radio with the volume turned down almost past the point of audibility. Almost, but not quite.

“The king presents you with his wise man, and this guy has to be older than dirt. Seriously, he looks like he was born before rocks were invented. He tells you that the first dragons weren’t just big, fire-breathing lizards. The first ones were the souls of great warriors who never died. They just became less and less human as they grew in power, until they became dragons. And the gold they guard is the treasure they amassed through their campaigns of violence and terror.”

“Fuck,” one of his little friends says. “You’re telling us Aufganir is one of the first dragons?”

There’s pride in the boy’s voice when he speaks. “Aufganir is the first dragon.”

Yuli chuckles and lights a fresh cigarette from the butt of the old one. Dragons and magic swords and the crystals with elf girls’ souls in them or some shit. Baby stuff. Yuli was just a year or two older than his grandson is now when he killed his first mujahideen. Shot the man in his mouth. He can still picture it. Can count the moles on the dead man’s cheek, that’s how clear the memory is.

It was another life. Now he is just a man living a quiet life in a quiet place, letting his days smear together until it’s hard to remember what part of the week it is unless the boy has to go to school. But still, it’s funny hearing the children down there, talking breathlessly about going out to find imaginary treasures. A hoard of gold.

If they knew what was buried down there, right below their cheap little card table, they’d shit themselves white.

Okay, we set up camp at the edge of the trees. Not all the way out in the meadow where anyone could see us, and not in the forest, but like right at the edge.

All right.

And I’m going to set up a perimeter. Like trip wires all the way around.

Roll your traps skill.

Made it by two.

Okay, what else do you do? Start a fire? Cook dinner?

I’ll start a little fire, but I’m digging a hole for it so that the light doesn’t show. I don’t want anything in the woods getting attracted to us.

Nothing assaults you while you eat. There’s the usual forest noises, but nothing to raise an alarm. The moon comes up, with just a few thin clouds. The meadow is quiet and empty. Everything seems peaceful.

This is too easy. It’s making me nervous. We set up a watch.

Who goes first?

I do.

Okay, roll perception.

I knew it. I knew it was too fucking easy. All right. Perception? I made it by three.

As you sit there in the darkness, you notice a crow on one of the tree branches. I mean, it’s just a crow. There’s nothing particularly weird about it, except that it doesn’t change places. It’s always right in the same spot.

Can it see me?

Well, you can see it, so yeah.

My amulet has passive detect magic. I’m just going to reach in my shirt like I’m scratching an itch. Really casually. And I’m touching the amulet.

Yeah, that crow is not a crow. It’s some kind of shapeshifter. One of the dragon’s spies. And you don’t know how long it’s been watching you.

Can I reach my bow?

Roll for it.

Okay … ah … well, that sucked.

It’s not that bad. I’ll give you a bonus because you were on watch. I’m going to say that your bow is just out of reach, and your quiver is past it. You can get to them, but you’ll have to move.

I want to jump over, grab my bow and an arrow, and shoot at the shapeshifter. I still have one heroic action point left.

Spend it and roll dexterity.

Made it by two.

You would have hit, but the shapeshifter made its dodge. Before you can get another arrow, it’s gone. You see the dark wings disappearing into the forest.

Well, shit. Aufganir’s going to know we’re coming.

Yuli has been losing weight. He hasn’t changed his diet or started exercising, but in the last six months twenty pounds have melted away. When someone asks, he makes it a joke and says it’s because God loves him, but he thinks it’s probably cancer. Or maybe his thyroid. He knew a woman once with thyroid problems, and she lost a lot of weight. He knows he should go see a doctor, and he will. He just wants to drop a few more pounds first.

There are problems that come with his fat going away. There was a winter he was working private in Chechnya when there was snow on the ground for three months. When it thawed, the courtyard was full of bottles and cans and dogshit. All the things that didn’t get cleaned up when it was cold that had waited and been revealed. It turned out bodies were like that too. The acid he’d dropped and the weed he’d smoked, maybe some of the heroin he’d used for the pain when he hurt his back outside Kabul, it wound up stored with his fat. Now, with that going, the drugs are getting dumped back into his bloodstream. Dogshit blood.

Most of the time, it’s nothing. A little unexpected mellowness, a shift of mood that doesn’t relate to anything. Sometimes, though, there’s a little synesthesia. His fingertips tingle first, and then noise starts having colors to it. One time, when his hands were like that, he brushed against a wall, and the texture was a deep note, played on a viol. He didn’t like it. Another time, he scratched an itch on his elbow just where it got dry and scaly, and for a moment, he was certain that there was a new, different skin underneath. He’d scratched himself bloody trying to peel himself like a snake. At times like that, he tries not to drive, or if he does, he’s careful.

When he first came to the United States, he had a sports car. A Porsche. It was a sexy little car, but it leaked oil and there wasn’t any room for groceries. He sold it and got a hatchback. It isn’t as sexy, but it does what he wants better.

Maybe it’s a sign he’s getting old. It isn’t the money. He has all the money he wants, if he decides to dig it up and spend it, but he doesn’t. He keeps his where it stays safe. He’s been poor. Living in a shitty house and driving a housewife’s car isn’t so bad when you know you don’t have to do it. And there are reasons not to be so showy.

In the morning, he drives the boy to school. They talk a little, but not about anything. Then Yuli does whatever. Groceries sometimes. Laundry sometimes. He takes himself to a movie if something good is on. He likes action films because they’re easier to follow, or at least if he doesn’t catch everything, it doesn’t matter as much. Lunch is back home if he doesn’t want to see people, or Café Gurman if he does.

Today, he does.

Café Gurman is in a strip mall between a musical instrument shop that sells violins to pretentious white parents on one side and a payday loan on the other. The windows have a thin film on them that no amount of cleaning will ever make clear. The booths are red leather, cracked some places and mended with red tape. The walls have pictures of famous people, as if they have eaten there. Maybe they have. It is the home of the expatriate community. Or one particular expatriate community, anyway.

His.

Doria is at the register, doing something on her cell phone. She is the owner’s daughter. She doesn’t make eye contact with anyone, even as she takes their money and talks to them in Russian. She’s a good kid. She’ll go away soon, hopefully to college, and then he won’t see her again. He orders his usual shawarma, nods to the familiar faces in the other booths. As soon as Wrona comes in, he knows something is wrong.

Yuli has known Wrona longer than anyone else in the United States. They were on the same detail the first time Yuli worked private. He’s a tall man with long hands and a face as craggy as tree bark. When he sees Yuli, he lifts his chin in greeting, steps over, and sits in the booth across from him. Yuli frowns. This isn’t how they are to each other. Not normally.

“You’re looking good,” Wrona says, and it is as close to an apology as Yuli will get. A little acknowledgment that Wrona has crossed a boundary, and that he’s about to cross others. “You’ve been going to the gym?”

“No. I don’t like those places.”

“Me neither,” Wrona says, scratching his neck with his long fingers. When he speaks next, it is in Polish. “There was something I needed to ask you. That thing. You know the one?”

Yuli’s frown deepens to a scowl. If there was any doubt what Wrona meant, his discomfort clears it away. There is only one subject that would make him this nervous, and it’s one that he shouldn’t bring up. Not even vaguely and in Polish.

“I know,” Yuli says.

“Do you still have it?”

“I know where it is.”

Wrona nods but won’t meet Yuli’s eyes. “Yes, I thought. I mean, I assumed. But I heard something about people coming into town who shouldn’t be here. People from Zehak.” Now he turns his eyes to Yuli. “You know what I’m saying.”

Yuli’s mouth is dry, but he doesn’t let anything show in his face. He takes a last bite of his shawarma, lifts a hand to get Doria’s attention, and signals her for coffee. They’re quiet until she brings it. He likes it black, roasted dark enough to hide evidence. That’s the joke.

“All right,” he says.

“If you have that much money,” Wrona says quietly, “someone’s going to be looking for it.”

“I know.”

“If you need a gun …” Wrona spreads his hands.

“No, it’s all right,” Yuli says. “I have guns.”

After a long journey, you reach the township of Tannis Low. It’s not a big place, but it’s seriously defended. A stone wall that goes up thirty feet and then bends backward into the town so that people can hide in the overhang. The gates are bronze, but they’ve been charred badly over the years so that they look almost totally black. The valley around it is all stone and dirt. There are no trees. Almost no plants.

You know what’s weird?

What?

Why does a dragon even have gold? I mean, I know why we want it. Pay off the assassin’s guild. But what does Aufganir want with it? It’s not like he’s heading off to market every weekend to buy lunch meat.

It’d be like a whole cow. Cheaper to just fly out and roast one yourself.

That’s my point, right? I mean why have a shit-ton of gold just to sit on?

Hemorrhoids. Definitely hemorrhoids.

Don’t be gross.

You laughed.

For serious, though. Is there some kind of magic about gold? Or does he eat it or something? Whatever he wants it for, it’s not the same as what we want it for, right?

People, people! Can we focus up here?

Sorry. It’s just something I was thinking about.

Okay. So like I said, after a long journey, you reach the township …

It had been back when Yuli was working private in western Afghanistan, his fifteen years for Mother Russia behind him. Mercenary work suited him, and the pay was good. He’d had more hair back then. And cheekbones. The contract had been all about suppressing the poppy trade. Opium, heroin. Burning out the farms, breaking the trucks, disrupting the flow of drugs and money whatever way they could. Probably the client had been a rival producer. That was fine. Yuli didn’t judge. One rule was very clear. The operation stopped at the border. They weren’t to cross over into Iran.

They had crossed over into Iran.

There were four of them. Yuli, Wrona, another Pole called Nowak, and a man of no particular nation who everyone called Pintador though it wasn’t his name. Yuli was driving. It was a Humvee with customized light armor. He liked it. It felt strong. It was dark, and he had night-vision goggles on that made the hills green and black. The target was a little compound in Sistan and Baluchestan Province that an upcoming warlord named Hakim Ali was using as a base. The target was soft, because the enemy knew that Yuli wasn’t permitted to cross the border. Being in Iran kept it safe.

Yuli parked just before the top of a rise, and they all got out, moving quickly and quietly. Pintador whistled under his breath as he took position with a sniper rifle. Yuli surveyed the site through binoculars. Everything matched the briefing except that there was an extra car. A black sedan. Someone had chosen the wrong night to visit.

They moved forward carefully,Yuli and Wrona and Nowak. They each carried a 9A-91 assault rifle with a suppressor. Pintador’s soft whistling in his earpiece meant the sniper hadn’t seen anything to raise an alarm. The compound was two small houses and a shed, chain-link fence. An American pickup truck that had been white once, an ancient Jeep with a Barrett 82A1 mounted on its frame, and now the sedan. Yuli didn’t see a guard, but two dogs were sleeping beside the shed. Yuli shot them first, then Nowak cut the chain on the fence, and they were in.

Three men were eating dinner, served by a woman in a burqa. One of the men wore a Western-style business suit, but except for that, they could have been brothers. Yuli didn’t know what alerted them. Maybe they’d made a sound. Maybe the light from their window had reflected off some piece of equipment. Whatever it was, the enemy caught sight of them as they were crossing the yard, and before they could find cover, the enemy was firing at them. Nowak died, but Yuli and Wrona made it to the side of the shed where the dogs lay motionless.

“This is not good,” Wrona had said as bullets cracked past them, but Yuli took the barrage of fire as a good sign. The enemy was undisciplined, and the undisciplined were weak. Even now, he can remember the calm of those moments. The focus that left no room for fear. They stayed low and held their fire as he murmured orders to Pintador. Yuli’s patience had always been a weapon.

The first came out, circling around to flank them. The urge to shoot back as soon as there was opportunity was hard to resist, but Yuli signaled Wrona to wait. The little pop of the sniper rifle was unmistakable. The woman screamed, and Yuli and Wrona both opened up on the flanking enemy who had been briefly surprised to realize how far out of safety he had drifted. Just like that, two of the men were dead. Killing the last one and the woman took longer.

Afterward, Pintador brought down the Humvee while Yuli and Wrona went through the houses, the shed, the truck, and the cars. The heroin was in the shed, where Yuli had expected it to be. Fifteen bricks wrapped first in plastic and then cloth. It was what they expected to find. The binders in the sedan were a surprise.

Yuli still remembers seeing them: five three-ring binders with blue plastic covers and spines as wide as his hand. They had reminded him of medical records. When he picked one up, it felt too heavy. He remembers his first thought: the paper had gotten waterlogged. When he opened it, each page was a cardboard backing with a grid of clear plastic pockets four across and four high. A gold coin rested in each pocket; some were krugerrands, some American gold eagles. Each was an ounce of gold. Each sheet, a pound. Each binder, between fifteen and twenty pages deep. At the time, it was a little more than half a million dollars. Gold has gone up since then. Now the coins are worth nearly two million.

Yuli had never heard of the target trading in coins. Everything was supposed to be American dollars, if it was anything. This was something new. Yuli had wondered who the man in the suit was and who he had worked for, but there was no identification in his pockets or in his car.

Pintador had loaded Nowak into the Humvee, wrapped in plastic film they’d brought for the purpose. No evidence left behind was the rule, and a dead mercenary was evidence. Wrona went back to the shed and returned with three bricks of heroin. He had tossed one to Yuli.

“Spoils of war,” Wrona said.

Yuli tossed it back. “You take it. I’m keeping these.”

“You sure?” Wrona said. “The shit will vanish. Show up with those, someone will notice.”

Yuli had taken one of the coins out, enjoying its luster in the faint light of the coming dawn. The weight of it on his fingertips. Some part of him had known even then that he wouldn’t sell them.

“I’m keeping these,” he’d said again, and Wrona had shrugged. Then it had been time to finish up.

Wrona and Pintador took cans of gasoline from the Humvee and soaked the compound. Yuli got the flamethrower and, standing outside the fence line, he turned it on everything. The dead men, the woman, houses, truck, Jeep, sedan. The dogs. The earth.

The flames roared, and he had roared back until his breath and the fire were one thing.

The tunnel narrows down. The roots and soil you were going through at the mouth are thinning out, and you can see the carved stone. This is a worked passage. Not just something natural.

Goblin warren. I’m telling you this is a goblin warren. This is bad.

Better than going in the front door.

The tunnel turns to the right. About twenty feet farther down, you can see an opening. Like it comes to a bigger chamber and ends there. No door, it just opens out. There’s light.

Okay, I’m dousing the torch.

Don’t kill the fucking torch! We need to see!

We don’t need to announce ourselves. Anyway, I’m carrying it, so I douse it.

It gets dark.

We wait until our eyes adjust.

Everyone roll perception, and let me know if you miss.

Ah. I’m down by one.

Anyone else miss? No? Okay, you were looking at the torch before it went out, and so you’re taking longer to get your dark vision. Everyone else, you see that the light at the end of the passage is reddish and flickering. Like there’s a fire nearby. And because of the way the light hits the stone, you can catch the shadows where something’s carved into the walls.

Like runes? Something’s written there?

More like there were places for something to be set into the rock. Braces maybe. But they’re gone now.

I use my amulet for detect magic.

You don’t find anything particular to the marks.

I don’t like that. I roll for traps, and … make it by two.

Yeah, that’s the kind of thing you’d see if someone had put in a winch or something. If you had to bet, you’d say one of those stones is a pressure plate, but you can’t tell what the mechanism is that it triggers.

Well, folks, you don’t make something like that unless you’ve got something worth guarding. I’d have to say we’re getting close.

Yuli stands naked in front of his full-length mirror and wonders how he let it get this far. His arms are thin, pale, and grayish. His belly doesn’t pouch out much, but the skin is slack. He has tits like a twelve-year-old girl. He keeps slouching. He’s getting a little bald, a little gray, but that’s just time. His teeth are yellow from cigarettes and coffee, because that’s how it goes. But he’s weak and slow, and that is his fault. Complaisant is another word for stupid, and he is finished with being stupid.

The cigarettes go first. He breaks each one over the toilet, dusting the piss water with tobacco so that he can’t go back and fish one last cigarette out of the trash. Next is the alcohol. Then the sugar. He can’t believe how much shit he’s been eating: frozen pizzas and chocolate candies and bread so white it looks like slices of snow. Now that he sees it all clearly, it’s amazing that he isn’t in worse condition.

Next is the guns. Those, anyway, are still in good condition. Three pistols—two matching Glock 17s and a Sig Sauer P220 that had been given to him as a present by an old girlfriend. He also has a Bushmaster M4 semi-automatic carbine that he has carried for almost a decade. There are people who think more guns are better. Yuli thinks that’s wrong. Someone who has used ten thousand guns once is an amateur. Someone who has used one gun ten thousand times is an expert.

He puts a clean towel over the kitchen table to keep the oil off it, then cleans them, assembling and disassembling them until all the parts find their familiar places in his fingers. He spends hours dry firing them, aiming at the microwave, the kitchen faucet, the people passing by on the street. Click click click, training his hand not to anticipate the kick, practicing like a pianist playing scales.

When the boy sees the guns, his eyes get wide. Yuli doesn’t talk about them, and the boy doesn’t either. When the boy is at school, Yuli runs up and down the stairs, pushing himself. The first time, he only manages four trips down and up and down again before his heart is tapping on his eardrums and he’s shaking. He has to sit on the bottom step and put his head against the wall, a long, slow trickle of Russian profanity dribbling out from his lips. Weak old man. When he gets his breath back, he runs up and down two more times, pushing until he is literally incapable of doing it again. The next day he hurts like someone has beaten him, and he does it again. The third day is worse. The fourth, he does ten rounds before he has to stop. He wants a cigarette. He wants a drink. He feels sick from the pain and the craving, and he revels in his suffering. It is his strength coming back.

He would like to find a boxing club. Someplace he can hit someone and be hit. A way to remind his body what violence is. He should have been doing this all along, and the impulse to do it now is as bad as the nicotine withdrawal. Tactically, going out to a gym is a mistake. He doesn’t know where the enemy is, and every trip out of the house is an exposure. Instead, he strips his bedroom bare and works there. Push-ups, sit-ups, lunges. He finds a couple of old cinder blocks half buried in the alley, and brings them in for weights. He starts getting biceps again. He starts seeing gains, and the gains come faster.

He was a predator for many years, and his body remembers what it was like. Wants to return to that way of being. Is hungry for it. He keeps his suffering constant, and his body rewards him. He loses more weight. His dogshit blood gets worse. The synesthesia and the flashbacks come every few days now, though they are brief. There are a few times he gets dizzy and faints in the morning. He decides to get down to zero percent body fat if he can. Clean away all the drugs. Purge himself of all his old sins.

He leaves the house rarely. When he does, he shifts away from his old habits. He goes to groceries he doesn’t like and has never gone to before. He gets gasoline in his car on corners he has to travel to find. Even taking the boy to school, he varies the routes. Drops the boy off behind the gym one day, a half block away the next. Always, part of his attention is on the street around him. Who is where, what they are looking at, who they are talking to. Where the lines of sight are. Where there is cover, and where there is only concealment. He thinks how to flank the fat customer-service man at the bank, if he should need to. He knows what sidewalks he could drive over, what parks he could cross if he were escaping pursuit. Or if he were pursuing. He is aware of the space around him as if it were part of his body. His hypervigilance is almost paranoia.

At night, when the boy is asleep, he stands naked before the full-length mirror, and he sees the alteration in his flesh. He has bulk in his shoulders. He doesn’t slouch. His skin has color again. His face is sharp.

Part of him knows that the wise move is to vanish. Pack up his things in the back of the car, take the boy, and drive away to a new city, a new name, and a new life. It wouldn’t be his first time, or his second either. He doesn’t do it.

He tells himself that it is better to hold to familiar territory and keep his home-court advantage. They will follow him anyway. The truth is that he wants them to come. He is waiting for them.

He feels better now than he has in years.

Everyone roll your stealth.

I wish I’d kept that heroic action point.

Did you blow it?

No, I’m okay. Made it exactly.

Everyone else good? Okay, you manage to slip past the stone barrier. The hall you’ve stepped into is huge. The cave is bigger than a cathedral. A river of lava is running through it, and the air is really hot. Hurts to breathe kind of hot. And the whole floor, where it’s not lava, is covered in gold. Coins and goblin bars and jewelry. It’s everywhere. And sitting in the middle of all of it is Aufganir. He’s huge. His body’s forty feet long, easy. Green scales and black wings.

Is he awake?

He is. He hasn’t seen you yet, but he’s sniffing at the air like he can tell something’s wrong.

This is it, then. We attack.

Roll initiative.

Yuli is at the Walmart when it happens. The day is warm and pleasant. He drives over after dropping the boy at school and circles the parking lot twice looking for anything suspicious before he parks. He prefers shopping at Target, but at Walmart, he can carry his guns. He has one of the Glocks in an ankle holster, and the other at the small of his back. He doesn’t like the ankle holster. It means he has to wear pants wide enough that they feel like bell-bottoms. It doesn’t look stupid, but it feels like it does.

He walks in, stopping at the store’s mouth to look back. Two young black men walking together. A blond woman with a pink scarf and yellow skirt. An old woman struggling with an ugly oversized purse. He thinks how he would kill each of them, but only as practice. None of them takes notice of him. He turns back. The fingers of his left hand tingle, and he shakes and makes fists until the feeling comes back.

Inside, the air is cool and scentless. Generic air, the same now as it will be at the height of summer or on Christmas Day. Nothing is different in here. Yuli takes a cart and heads in among the other shoppers. He has a list in his head. Chicken breasts and frozen vegetables to make dinner with. Some Muscle Milk to drink after he works out. And he needs socks. He’s thinking about throwing out all the ones he has and buying a dozen identical pairs at the same time he’s noticing all the exits.

Someone coughs, and the sound is wrong. Someone coughs the way you cough when you’re used to speaking Farsi. Yuli turns, and it’s the blond girl with the scarf. Their eyes meet for a fraction of a second. Her eyes widen a millimeter, and he knows.

He takes his hands off the cart, turns, and walks back toward the entrance. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t draw down, not yet. She won’t be alone. There are others. He needs to find them first, and then react. His heart is racing. Yuli thinks the strange feeling in his head is just adrenaline until a cashier closes her drawer as he passes. The sound is vibrant green.

This is not the time for the dogshit in his blood to be kicking in.

This is the only time he has.

The sun is warm against his face as he steps out into the parking lot. He feels the breeze against his cheek, cool and caressing. For a moment, he is aware of everything. The high, thin clouds almost obscured by the city haze. The faint smell of gasoline. The traffic sound of tires against asphalt on the street. If he can just get to his car and out to the street—

He swings around slowly, and he sees them. Two in a pickup truck by the main entrance. Another pair on the far side beside a white Honda with the engine already running, prepared to intercept him if he goes for one of the cutouts on that side. The blond girl behind him. There should be two more, probably at the back in case he went out the loading dock. They will be coming forward now. Yuli considers the civilians. A father and teenage daughter coming out of the store, bickering. A harried old woman pulling into a parking space. They don’t see any of what is unfolding around them.

Yuli walks to his car, watching the hunters as he goes. The back of his neck itches, and he glances back to see the blonde at the entrance of the store. She hasn’t drawn a weapon. She isn’t walking toward him. They’re waiting to see what he does.

If Wrona were here, one could drive while the other put down cover fire. Yuli can’t manage both at the same time. A team of seven against just one man, and one altered by ancient drugs at that. He would give himself one chance in six of reaching the street alive. Or less. Probably less.

He wishes now that he’d told the boy about all of it. He doesn’t want his grandson coming back home and finding the blond woman and her friends there. The boy won’t be able to tell them what they want to know, but they won’t believe that. Not at first. Hopefully, they’ll find what they want and go while the boy is still in his classes.

Yuli reaches his car. The two in the truck have come to their senses. They drive toward him. He opens the hatchback. If he can get his car started, he won’t try to reach the cutout. Straight out over the curb is his best choice. Then, if he doesn’t get into a collision, maybe he makes it home. Or away. Or back around behind them to put bullets in their skulls.

One of the pair from the Honda is running toward him hunched over. Making a break for cover. The blond woman sprints toward him, pulling a pistol from a holster under her skirt. The harried civilian gets out of her car, still oblivious to the kill zone she is in.

Yuli hoists his carbine. His hands are both tingling. The blond woman shoots twice. The second shot shatters the hatch window, and Yuli feels a stab of outrage. That’s his fucking car. And then there is only pleasure. A sense of overwhelming power flows through him, lifting him up like vast wings. The civilian woman screams and dives under her car. The father is pulling his daughter down as she tries to get out her cell phone to film this.

Yuli turns back toward the blond woman. When she sees the Bushmaster in his hands, she tries to change direction. To find some cover.

His gun roars. The sound is like fire: a brightness of yellow and red.