Here it is! FREE Sample Chapter of the Sequel to "Psycho Save Us." Title: "A Psycho in Each of Us"

Book Cover for Book 2 in "The Psycho Series"

 

 

(Sample chapter below)

Chapter 1

Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia

 

Zakhar knew that he was being followed.  What he didn’t know was whether it was just another hunter trying to hunt game on his family’s land, or some lost homeless squatter.  The signs were all around him.  A bent sapling here, a pile of crushed leaves where someone had been lying there.  He circled the area several times as a matter of habit—this had long been his family’s land, he’d hunted it with his father, and his father had hunted it with his father, and so on for three more generations.  He knew the land well, and he knew when a stranger was on it.

            Presently, Zakhar remained well within the tree line, where the thick forest canopy had protected the forest floor from much of the snow, but not nearly all of it.  The snow-dappled ground was frozen solid, even the stubborn Siberian grass crackled beneath his feet as he walked, and it crackled again under his knees when he knelt to inspect the sign a bear had left, perhaps a day prior.  The droppings were frozen almost to rock.

            Whoever the man was following him, poacher or squatter, he likely hadn’t killed this bear.  I would’ve heard the gunshot.  Sound carried out here, though few were around to hear it.

            He looked up, pulled his balaclava up around his nose so that he could itch it.  Zakhar’s breath came out in a great fog, like that of a dragon.  He had ascended to a hilltop that put him just above some of that aforementioned forest canopy.  He looked westward for a moment of peace, out over the Ural Mountains away in the distance, and then pulled the wool mask back down over his face and descended the hill, following other sign.

            The forest got thicker through here.  There were great, climbing vines that threatened to strangle every tree in sight—stubborn, defiant vines of a strength only conceivable in Russian territories—and a host of angry briars and brambles.  He paused here and there to inspect a few recesses in the snow where the quiet and constant snowfall had filled in someone’s footprints.  They’re still out here, he thought.  Maybe more than one?  If that were so, it was probably poachers, and it would be the instance of poaching in almost four years, ever since he’d ran the last bunch off and then helped to pass stricter laws against trespassing and poaching, along with his friends at the Slaviansky Trophy Hunting Society.

He checked his watched.  It was almost four o’clock.

Zakhar knelt to study the latest sign.  It was a sweetgum bur, extremely rare in this part of the world due to climate change, but there were still a precious few left in the Siberian wilderness.

The prickly burs were about half the size of a golf ball, and fell from the trees whenever the harsh winters arrived.  Their usefulness in tracking was well documented by both indigenous peoples and more modern experts.  Zakhar had first learned of the importance of sweetgum burs in tracking from reading the works of the great Russian hunter Leonid Pavlovich Sabaneyev.  The burs remained on forest floors and did not naturally pierce any other leaves.  No, someone or something had to step on them in order to push them through the leaves.  If a hunter lifted a sweetgum bur and found one or more leaves stuck to it, it meant someone had been through the area recently.

Zakhar found just such evidence.  However, he saw no other visible sign of the bear he’d been after for two days, nor did he see sign of boar or deer.  They’ve all run off.  That’s not like them.  Had they sensed him?  Or, had they sensed the others that might be out here?  He put a hand on a knee and pushed himself to his feet.  He took a moment to take a few turns around the forest.  “Otkuda vy?” he hollered: Where are you from?

His words echoed through the lonely forest.  There was no answer.  Still, sullen silence.  The forest kept its secrets.

Overhead, a covey of dark-brown gannets suddenly took flight from the trees.  A few heartbeats later, there was total silence again.   Zakhar started walking, and then his eyes caught sight of a squirrel about ten meters ahead of him dashing across the snow-dappled earth, lunging for a tree, clinging to it, and climbing to the other side.  Here was another sign straight out of Leonid Sabaneyev’s hunting chronicles: a squirrel that leaps onto a tree and immediately moves to the other side is hiding from a predator.

The birds, the squirrel, these were all signs of what hunters and trackers called the “concentric rings of Nature.”  One thing alerted one group of animals, and their scattering alerted another group, and so on.  A savvy hunter knew to pay attention to these signs, and not just ignore them as random flutterings of the forest’s creatures.

Zakhar looked in the direction whence the squirrel came.  He removed his balaclava this time, and the cold cut to the marrow of his bones.  “Vy mestnyy?” he shouted, a bit sarcastically: Are you from around here?  Of course the poacher wasn’t from around here.  How could he be, when Zakhar Ogorodnikov and his family had owned the hundred square miles all around for hundreds of years?

Zakhar hollered again, this time informing the would-be hunter that he was poaching on private property, and that, because of the new laws passed four years ago, the penalty for that could be as much as a million rubles.

No answer.

After listening to his words finish echoing through the trees and across the white fields beyond, Zakhar pulled his balaclava back on, then lifted the strap of the Tigr-308 over his head to remove it, and checked it.  The rifle was self-loading, built to withstand all conditions, and he hadn’t even fired a shot today, but it never hurt to check and make sure everything was set and ready to go at a moment’s notice.  He’d seen violence while in the military, but in all his years living on this land, he’d never even heard of an incident happening between his family and poachers.

And who else besides poachers had any reason to come this far out into the Siberian wilderness?  There was no one and nothing else out here to see, not after leaving the main road, which took one far beyond the Ural Mountains.

Could be Tatars, Zakhar thought.  He recalled reading about Tatars moving farther this way, squatting on private property.  Though he had never seen any of those roving, gypsy-like groups around his land, Zakhar knew that they had recently become a problem in and around the Ural region, large clans of them pulling up stake and driving their busted up cars and pushing their load-bearing mules onto others’ private property.  The cities had all gotten fed up with their transient ways, complaining of the littering and escalating violent clan disputes, and as a result the Tatar nomads were moving deeper and deeper into outlying forested lands, hoping to become lost again in the great Siberian wastelands.

Hope to God that’s not it, he thought.  I’ll take anything over a gypsy.

Zakhar didn’t shoulder his rifle.  Rather, he kept it in a loose, low-ready position, exactly as he’d done in the military, and started forward.  About a hundred meters later, the forest abruptly ended, and he was back in the great expansive fields of his childhood.

He noticed no footprints on the way back to his house by the frozen lake, and heard no other sounds besides the lonely, lonely Siberian winds whickering through the forest behind him.  Halfway back, the snow suddenly picked up in intensity.

 

Atlanta, Georgia

Her alarm clock went off at exactly 7:00 AM.  The song it was playing was “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, a favorite of one of her mother’s old boyfriends.  Reflexively, her left arm shot out from the covers and snatched at the clock, her palm smashing against its top and sending it to the floor.  Only, that’s not how Kaley Dupré saw it happen.  Indeed, a great deal went on before she sent that clock smashing to the floor.

The dream had been a deep, ponderous one.  She was lost amid a city…a city that looks wholly unfamiliar to her and was ankle-deep in water.  Everywhere, there was water.  Not a flood or a rushing river moving through the streets, just standing water that everyone around her was walking through as calmly as you please.  Kaley herself stood in the water, and, after having learned her lesson many times before, she did not move.

The water she was in was foamy; at least it was around all of the people and the objects around her.  Wherever the people moved, wherever there was a stop sign or parking meter, there was also a thick froth in the water right around the object’s edges, almost as if the water was acid, and corroded everything it touched.  But nothing appeared to be in decay…nothing except for the buildings.

It was an otherwise normal city street, like Atlanta only different in all the unpronounceable and textured ways of dreams, yet from the tallest peaks of each building there came clumps of stone and masonry work, all of it plopping into the water and disappearing amid a swell of foam before that foam, too, fizzled and ceased to exist.

“This city is collapsing,” she said to the man beside her, quite calmly.  It was a man in a gray business suit…or maybe it was black.  Hard to say.  She knew it was a dream.  And so, it seemed, did everyone else around her.  In fact, they all moved about like they were mostly bored, and even occasionally looked at her with are-you-going-to-do-something-about-all-this-or-not sort of looks.

Kaley hadn’t moved.  She had learned it wasn’t smart to move when the world was flooded like this.  The scenery was sometimes different—sometimes a desert, sometimes a forest, sometimes a frozen tundra—but it was usually a city, and usually it was smart not to move.  It was as if the water sensed her, grew irritated with her.  Everyone else walking about could move freely and do as they pleased, but the second Kaley moved—

And then it happened.  The loud, screeching noise.  She knew at once what it was.  The alarm clock.  Knowing it made it no less offensive to her ears, and startled her no less.  “Sometimes I feel I’ve got to—bump-bump!—run away!” sang the majestic Soft Cell.  “I’ve got to—bump-bump!—get away from the pain you drive into the heart of me!”  She jumped, and when she did, the water all around her ankles felt it.  A swirling eddy that began around her.  Oh god, not again…

Now everyone on the street backed away from her.  The whirlpool gained power quickly, and the water churned and frothed all around her.  Everyone on the street now paused, a look of mild curiosity on their faces, and no one attempting to lend a hand.  “Help me!” she screamed.

Then, from the foam came long, tenebrous arms.  They were the same as before, black, burnt things missing flesh and bits of muscle, with sinew dangling from each.  They came up through that churning well and groped at her.  One snatched at her ankle, another at her hair.  “Go away!  Leave me alone!”

The alarm was still going off somewhere.  “The love we shared—bump-bump!—seems to go nowhere!”

Meanwhile, the hands all around her became hungrier.  It’s only a dream, she thought.  It’s just a dream.  She had an intuition what they were searching for, like the way you know something in a dream, but don’t know it when you’re awake.  And that’s all it is.  Just a dream.

And that’s what frightened her.  The first time she’d seen them had been in a dream, too, something she’d conjured up out of necessity, out of a need to survive that terrible night.  That was it, just a coping mechanism.  Or so she’d thought.  But an officer was dead, as were Dmitry and all the others, and at the hands of the terrible things she’d brought into this world.  A door had been opened, and she had opened it.

Now they want me, she thought, struggling with the indecision.  Should she stand still and hope they finally lost “sight” of her, or try to run and risk attracting even more of them?

“Once I ran to you,” sang Soft Cell.  “Now I’ll run from you…This tainted love you’ve given…I give you all a boy could give you!”

The whirlpool gained in speed and intensity.  Now, even the people in her head were running in fear, but now the power of the whirlpool and its angry foam pulled them in, as well.  The hands climbed higher on her, groping, searching for her lips, her eyes, her ears, her everything.  The hands were slimy, bloody from the missing flesh and dangly meat.  “It’s her,” whispered one of the familiar voices.  It was familiar only in her dreams, and whenever she woke up, she usually forgot about it again.  “It’s her, it’s her, it’s her, we need her.  Get her!  Get her!  She can bring us back!  Get herrrrrrrrrr!”

“Oh God,” she wept.  “Oh God, no!  No, no, no, please God, noooooo!  Nooooooooo!”

Kaley finally began to thrash, and when she did, she felt something swelling inside of her.  It was like a tight knot, something that yearned to get out.  Like vomit, or diarrhea, it would not be stopped.  But, also like those bodily projectiles, their direction and intensity could not be controlled.  A portion of it went up and down her spine, into her bowels, then up into her head and rested behind her eyes to create a splitting headache, brief but intense, before it traveled to her hands, her knees, her heart, her lungs, bouncing all around.

A sickness was rising, one she hadn’t felt since…

A trembling.  Something from all around.  The walls of the cityscape began to crumble even more now.  Enormous chunks of stone and even gargoyles plummeted down into the water, smashing into parked cars and sending them into the foaming fury.  The ground bucked, cracked, then raised, stone riven from stone.  Kaley felt herself take in one quick, panicked breath, and then, the thing that was inside her that was waiting to be vomited, was vomited.

There was a tear, something forcing its way out of here…

All at once, she was somewhere else.  Kaley had merely blinked, and felt propelled by the same force that was churning inside of her.  It was like the feeling you get on a rollercoaster, a tingling up the spine, your stomach rising high into your chest, a sense of being lurched.  It was over in an instant, the hands were all gone and she stood standing in her living room.  She could still hear her alarm clock going off, but farther down the hall in her bedroom.  “Take my tears and that’s not nearly alllllllll!  Tainted love…ooohhh, tainted love!”

Was this a dream, too?  Or was she sleepwalking?  The living room seemed perfectly fine.  Unpacked boxes still clung to the same walls as before, and the outdated Xbox was sitting in front of the equally outdated Sony big-screen, amid a rat nest-like tangle of wires and surge protectors.  There were shelves set up for books or homey ornaments, but so far left bare.  The single mounted picture of Jesus was beside one black-curtained window.  Mom thinks it’s a talisman, a ward against more evil.  Kaley shook her head.  She has no idea.

Kaley sighed…but it was strange, because there was no air to breathe.  S’funny.

Then, she heard something.  Whimpering, and close by.  She turned, and for a moment she didn’t know what she was looking at.  Huddled in the corner, garbed in nothing but her Powerpuff Girls shirt and underwear, a tiny girl had retreated, arms over her head as though she were trying to drown out noise and all the terrors of the world.  “Shan?”

“Kaley,” Shannon whimpered.  “Get back.  Get back inside before the monsters find you.”

“Inside where, Shan?”  She took a step towards her sister…and noticed that the carpet felt…slippery?  Kaley looked down.  It was all perfectly normal, the same puke-brown carpet of their new apartment.  Kaley had told her mother how very depressing that carpet was, but Jovita Dupré had said nothing.  Unless it was a rebuke, her mother didn’t say much of anything these days.  “Shannon, what are you talking—”

“Kaley,” Shannon whispered.  “Hurry back inside.  They’re coming.”

“What do you—”  Then, she remembered.  Oh no, it’s happening again.  The dream was always the first stage, and then came the next stage, what she called the “false awakening,” when she thought she was up and moving but she wasn’t.  The slippery carpet, the lack of oxygen all around her.  She tried to take a breath, but there was none to be had.  She didn’t need it in this state, though.

“Get her!  That’s it!  That’s it!  Don’t let her go!”  The hands.  They were back!  She felt them pawing at her, wrapping around her legs and ankles, arms and wrists, now her neck and hair, now her waist—

“Get her!  That’s it!  Almost got her!  Almost!”  The same voice as before, the same hungry, desperate voice that always commanded the others.

“Let me go!” she screamed.  “Let me go!”

“Don’t touuuuuch me, please!” shouted the alarm clock.  “I cannot stand the way you teeeeeeease!  I love ya, though ya hurt me so!  Now I’m gonna pack my things and go!  Tainted love!”

The trembling returned, this time far more sickening, and vastly more painful.  It gnawed at her insides, tore her intestines to shreds, swam through her guts and dove into her bladder.

Whatever it was, it came out from her fingertips, her eyes, her nostrils and lips, her toes and toenails, her privates and her ears.  Out of everything.  It was an immense expulsion of something grotesque that was rotting her insides, and when it happened, the hands tore away from her, almost painfully…

All at once, she was sitting straight up in her bed and her hand went flying towards the alarm clock.  And it went flying from her nightstand, smashing against the floor and skipping over to her small bookshelf, knocking off a low-lying copy of The Lightning Thief.  Soft Cell finally went silent.

Kaley sat upright, panting, the sweaty sheets falling from her chest as tears fell from her face.  She was sobbing uncontrollably.  She felt…warmth.  A warmth on her bottom and between her legs, like something slithering…

“Oh God!” she screamed, and reached down to rip the sheets off of her.  But this time it wasn’t bloody hands reaching up from an abyss.  It was urine.  She had peed herself, and was still peeing.

Kaley let the urine flow.  She let it flow and flow, and never tried to stop it.  It felt too good.  Like a person that had suffered through a night of food poisoning and survived, she didn’t care what else her body did, as long as the pain was gone, as long as she was safe and secure and there was no more pain.

With trembling hands, she reached up to wipe her face.  Kaley then looked around her room to survey it.  All was right, except…The nightstand.  Something about it was wrong.  It took Kaley a moment to realize what it was.  It’s so far away.  In her nocturnal thrashing, Kaley had somehow wriggled away from her side of the bed and was now on Shannon’s side.  The nightstand was on her side, out of arm’s reach.  Then, she looked at the alarm clock on the floor.  How did I reach that?

A mental fog had grown all around her.  All sorts of blockages, brought on by fear and disorientation, muddled her thinking.  And like tumbles in a lock, one by one, those mental blockages were lifted and another door of realization was opened.  Kaley realized that if she was on Shannon’s side…

“Shannon?” she hollered at once, trying to hop out of the bed and nearly falling on her face.  The sheets got tangled around her ankle, and for a terrifying moment her mind made it the hands from her dream.  But it hadn’t been a dream, had it?  At least, not all of it.

Kaley was up and searching for the light—at seven o’clock in the morning it was still dim inside their little apartment, especially with the black curtains that Shan insisted they needed.  “To keep the monsters from seeing inside,” she had said again and again.

Kaley never found the light, and instead stumbled out of her room and down the hall.  She made it into the living room, feeling that atrocious, old, flattened brown carpet beneath her feet.  The same as always, no longer slippery as slime.  The living room was exactly as she’d found it moments ago, the unpacked boxes stacked not quite neatly against the walls, the picture of Jesus beside the black-curtained window, the denuded shelves, the tangle of Xbox and TV wires on the floor.  And Shannon, squatting in the corner exactly as Kaley had seen her moments ago.  “Shan?” she said, on the verge of tears.  Urine was still streaking down her leg.  She’d clean it up in a minute, after she checked on her sister.  “Shan, can you hear me?  You all right?”

“Kaley?” she said, sniffling.  Timidly, Shannon glanced over her shoulder, almost too afraid to find the truth.  “Is it…is it you?  Did you make it back?”

Now with sleep in full retreat, Kaley had her wits about her again and knew what Shannon had meant.  “Yeah, baby.  Yeah, I made it back.”  Shannon stood at once and rushed into her arms.  They clung to one another like they were sinking, and each of them was the last piece of driftwood that would help them stay afloat.

“They gonna keep comin’,” Shannon lamented, sniffling.  “The Others are gonna comin’ in your sleep, ain’t they?”

“I don’t know, girl.  And that’s the truth.”

“I don’t want you to go!  I don’t want them to take you!”

“Shhh, I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

“What do they want with you?”

Kaley kissed the top of her head.  “I don’t know, baby.”  But that wasn’t true.  Kaley had a suspicion, one that she didn’t want to voice, lest she give power to the notion.

“I wish they would go away,” Shannon cried.

“Me too, girl.  Me too.”

For several weeks now, it had been like this.  First came the dream of some unknown place, the things and the people inside of them were obviously conjured up by her own imagination.  This seemed to be the way the Others found their way in (she and Shan had resorted to calling them the Others, for what else would you call them?).  With her mind relaxed and at play, they poked and prodded ever so gently, and when they were right upon her, she felt the explosion of…of…some force that took her away.  In those moments, she wasn’t exactly her.  She was both in her bed and yet somewhere else, too, in a kind of state where she could be seen, yet she couldn’t interact with the world around her.  When Kaley was in that state, everything was slippery.

Sometimes at night, Kaley found herself adrift in the halls of their new apartment, trying to touch the walls and yet watching her fingers slide right off.  There was no air, and none necessary.  Actually…that was wrong, wasn’t it?  There was air, she even felt it on her face sometimes, like when the air-conditioning cut on, it was just that she had no lungs.

“A spirit ain’t got no use for breathin’,” her Nan had told her once.  Kaley had asked some question about angels, asked how they could die.  She had asked about chopping off their heads or drowning them.  That’s when Nan had told her.  “Spirits ain’t got no use for breathin’, chil’.  You find that out one day, too.”  Kaley had assumed Nan had meant someday when she died, when she too became a spirit ascending to heaven.  But had Nan meant something else entirely?  Did she have first-hand experience?  Or had she known how far the charm could carry Kaley?

There had been a few times when Kaley found herself walking through the house alone, touching things experimentally, feeling the slick, soft surface of things.  It was almost as if she could pass through them if she wanted.  One night, while asleep and fleeing the arms of the Others, Kaley had suddenly appeared in the kitchen—it was a reflex, it seemed, a way of escaping the Others.  Her mother had been up getting a late-night snack, her back to the dinner table, hunched over the sink, weeping.

When Kaley had softly said, “Mom?”, Jovita Dupré had nearly leapt out of her skin.  “What the hell are you doin’ there?  Ain’t you s’pposed to be in bed?  Get’cho black ass in there—”  She’d cut herself off when she saw Kaley staring at the thing in her hand.  “Don’t’choo judge me, now,” she said.  “I’m livin’ under pressure you don’t understand!  I’m tryin’ to survive!  Keepin’ this family together ain’t easy!  Gawn now, get in the damn bed.”  But Jovita had stormed off, leaving her daughter’s spirit standing dumbfounded where she had found her.

“The laughing man brought them, didn’t he?” said Shan presently.

Kaley looked down at her sister.  Pity poured to and from Shannon in an endless cycle, one sister assuaging the other.  The laughing man, she thought.  She still can’t even say his name.  She’ll call him anything else.  The monster.  The mean man.  The laughing man.  Anything but his name, even though she knows it full-well by now.  She’s seen all the news stories about him that came after, and she still won’t say his name.  As if it somehow gives him power, like saying Bloody Mary in front of a mirror.

In fact, that’s exactly what it was for Shannon, and Kaley knew it, because she could feel the emotions and surface thoughts of others, sometimes their whole mind, and none more so than her sister’s.

Kaley pulled away from her sister and touched her face, wiping the warm tears away from her cheeks with her thumbs.  “Listen, this is something you and I have to deal with on our own.  We can’t tell Mom, ’kay?  She won’t believe us.  Nobody will.  Just like they didn’t believe us when we told them about…about all that other stuff.”

“He ain’t comin’ back, is he?”  Shannon said fearfully.  Her face contorted, her eyes shut automatically and her lips curled into great rolls as tears began to pour again.

“Shhhh-sh-sh-sh,” she said, pulling her sister’s face to her chest again.  “Nobody’s gonna hurt you.  Not anymore.  And the laughing man’s gone, you hear?  He’s gone and he’s not ever coming back.  Ya hear me, chil’?  He ain’t never comin’ back.”  It would be a little while later that Kaley realized she had sounded exactly like her Nan.  “What were you doing up in the first place?”

“I was itching again,” she said.  Shannon had an infection, something the doctors called vaginitis.  An inflammation of her private parts, with terrible itching and the occasional discharge.  Shannon was the victim of rape, and she wasn’t just dealing with the emotional stresses of it—as a matter of fact, she had buried much of that pain, likely thanks to the “charm” she and Kaley shared—she was also dealing with the infection her rapist had given her.

They had given her another sickness, too, one that removed her innocence, took away that playful youth, that sanguine outlook she’d long had on life.  They had amputated a part of her, opened up another door in her mind, one that let all the pain and hurt of the world flood in, left her in fear of what total strangers might do to her.  For Shannon, the world was no longer wide open and full of wonder, it was cold and deceitful and evil and crowded with terrors.  She wanted nothing more than to keep it out.  Hence, all the black curtains.

“I woke up itchin’ all over,” Shannon said, “and saw you jumping and jerking in your sleep again.  I shook you, tried to wake you, but you told me to run.”

“I did?”

Shannon nodded meekly.  “You said, ‘Run away, Shan.  They gonna get you too.  Run!’  I stayed and kept shaking you, but then I felt the hands…or…or I felt the hands around you.”  This was due to the empathic connection of their charm.  Almost always, when either of them was under terrible stress, the other one detected it, just like they always seemed to detect the surface emotions and occasional thoughts of others, like a spider detecting movement in its web.  The web stretched out from them, and as far as Kaley could tell, the web had no limit.  But the closer someone was, the stronger she felt about it.

Or, in some cases, the more powerful the pain, the more it seemed to ripple through the web, along various avenues and arms, and finally resting inside her head and guts.  Inside my everything.

“I knew you was about to jump out again, that you would be safe enough for a second,” said Shannon.  By jump out, she meant exit her body.  Kaley didn’t like to think of it like this.  It made her feel like her soul was actually leaving her body, and that meant death.  And if she died while those things were pulling her down, down, down…

Shannon started weeping again.  An alarm bleated obnoxiously somewhere in the apartment for a full two seconds before it stopped.  A light suddenly switched on down the hallway.  Mom’s up.  Jovita Dupré would be around and about in a moment, and then there would be inevitable arguments, possibly even shouting matches if Kaley elected to retort.

“Hush now, we’re okay.  Hush it, I said,” she told her sister sweetly, quietly.  “Now come on, help your big sister clean up this mess,” she said, pointing to the wet spots she’d left on the floor, droplets of urine that made a trail all the way to her room.  “And let’s put those sheets in the washing machine.  Before Mom gets up and has a fit.”

 

The hunting lodge that his family once rented out twice a year to members of the Slaviansky Trophy Hunting Society was now empty.  The lodge was forty meters away from the main house, it was two stories and fully powered by gas year-round, with air-conditioning and water that was kept from freezing by its own independent gas tank and generator.  There was a snow-capped shed with a Subaru Forester parked inside, flanked by two ATVs, all with chains for their tires, and plenty of petrol cans and spare tires.

Zakhar kicked the snow off his boots on the doorstep, pulled his right glove off with his teeth and fished in his pocket for the key—even after all these years of living alone in the middle of nowhere, he still locked it behind him whenever he left.  And why not?  He had other reasons for keeping people out, and not just poachers.

When he stepped inside, Zakhar closed the door behind him at once in order to preserve the precious warm air.  Then he paused, looked around, and listened.  The lodge was dark and appeared exactly as it always had: quaint, old, well kept and with lots of character.  Two large bearskins were dangling from the rafters, a third one splayed on the wall, and a forth one, the largest one, growling angrily in front of the fireplace.  Over that fireplace was an oak mantelpiece, and above that hung a large rectangular mirror, which made the living room appear more spacious than it actually was.  A moose was mounted on the far wall and looked straight ahead dutifully, never eyeing him.  The place still smelled freshly of the pinewood it was made of.  A gun rack over the door was still full, nothing missing there.  The wicker couches and chairs still had their plush pillows and cushions, all soft and new from his latest additions.

After a few moments of checking the other doors and giving the windows a jiggle, Zakhar decided the poachers hadn’t been this brave.  He unshouldered his Tigr-308 and replaced it in its own gun cabinet, which he also had a key for.  He kept the pistol strapped to his side, though.  When spending long holidays out here alone, he never went anywhere without it.  He even slept with the Colt Woodsman .22 on the nightstand, within arm’s reach.  Home invasion was highly unlikely out here, which was why he sold his property in the city years ago and moved back home.  But there’s was a first time for everything, he supposed.

The rest of his family in Derbent had found that out the hard way.  They lived in the boring part of a boring town, and yet look what happened to them.  Some nobody, a drifter some said, had come out of nowhere and shown them how the outside world could intrude on such tranquility.

The lodge was warm, despite there being no fire in the fireplace.  He never liked to leave a fire going while he was away from the cabin, but he liked for it to be heated when he returned.  Let’s turn that heat off, get a fire started.  He made a brief stop in the kitchen to flip on the tiny radio, and turned it to the weather station so that he could start monitoring this storm.

The logs were outside, chopped during the spring when the Siberian territories were only slightly cold.  Zakhar poured some water into a kettle, put it on an eye of the stove and got it going, then stepped outside.  The snow was coming down even harder, if that could be believed, so hard that he could no longer see the forests of Siberian Pine where he’d conducted his day’s hunt.  The cold ignored his gloves and penetrated his bones, and the wind forced those snowflakes into his face, like little needles of ice.

He gathered up the logs covered in hoarfrost, counting out six good ones, then stepped back onto the front porch and paused at the front door.  The footprints he’d left coming back from the woods were already getting filled in, and he was struck by their shape.  Some of them looked wider, and a little longer than the others.  The wind must have had some effect on that, he figured.

Balancing the chopped logs between his chest and left arm, Zakhar used his right hand to open the door, and halfway through, he paused again.  He bent to drop the logs on the rug inside, then turned back to the footprints leading up to his doorstep.  Zakhar stood there for a moment, examining, his breath coming out in great clouds, his eyes attempting to penetrate the white curtain that nature had covered the world in.  He looked east, towards the frozen lake and its single, dilapidated dock.  It was also mostly ensconced by the downpour.

When he stepped back inside, he shut the door and locked it.  He waited, listening to the house, the lonesome creaks and groans.  The wind was pushing against the windows, causing them to make little snapping sounds.  He reached for the Colt at his side, checked it again to reassure himself, then he went about searching the house.

 

When Jovita stepped out of her bedroom, folding the front of her robe around her waist, she was already shivering.  Cold as a witch’s titty, she thought briefly, but her mind was already working on what she had to get done today.  She had to restock the house with some groceries—they were almost sittin’ on empty—and she had to talk with her sister Tabitha about that job down at the church she’d been talking about.  Jovita’s only concern was that it was another ambush, a trap set up to look like a job interview, but once she got there they would tell her that she needed to stay clean and go through regular drug tests in order to get her measly paycheck.  Tabitha had done this to her once before with another church, an arrangement that was more intervention than interview, and that had turned out…

“What’cha’ll doin’?” Jovita asked, stopping short in the living room.  Her two girls were bent over on the floor beside the couch, working the carpet back and forth assiduously with a pair of towels.

Shannon looked up sharply, looking guilty and caught, and, as always, she looked to her Big Sister, her Eternal Protector, who said, “I got up early to get somethin’ to drink, and I spilled it.”

“What’choo drinkin’ this early fo’?  I ain’t even made you any breakfast.  You tryin’ to take that away from me now, too?”  The words were out of her mouth before she could check them.  She hadn’t meant to say anything like it, but there it was, hanging in the air.  For months now she had become frustrated with their little conspiracy of two.  Late at night, they walked around in their room after the lights were out, whispering their secrets to one another.  Jovita had heard them, and often barged in on them a few times and demanded that they go to bed.  It gave her a degree of dark maternal pleasure to interfere with their secrets.

They were up to something, she just knew it.  They were still their little conspiracy of two, just like they had been before all that evil had happened to them.  Jovita had tried in those first two months, she had really, really tried.  But the cravings had started, and it hadn’t helped that Jerome Denney, one of her old dealers, had moved out this way three years ago and had been calling her up, asking to catch up on old times.  Kaley already suspected, already knew. And Shannon, well…She won’t even look at me.

Shan had been through a lot, and Jovita felt for her, went to hug her repeatedly, cried with her and tried to tell her everything was going to be all right.  But always Shannon would go limp in her arms, like she was dead.  When she was in her sister’s arms, though, some ember of life was kindled, and she would grip and hug, even laugh on occasion.

And now they hate me again.  It was mostly Kaley’s doing.  God damn her, she knows what was done to me.  She knows I suffered the same as them!  When a mother’s daughter was raped, the mother felt violated herself.  Powerless and crippled by her shame, Jovita had retreated further and further into her soft, safe world with Jerome Denney.

Jovita hated herself for not being there for her girls when they had needed her most.  Rather, some other lunatic had had some say in their rescuing.  And here I was, laid up an’ high as a kite.  And she knew that, come later tonight, she was likely to be in the same state.  The same demons as before were calling to her; with each passing year, their song grew more sonorous, and the events in Atlanta had put Jovita in a state where she was willing to listen even more.

No, uh-uh, she told herself.  No, you are not doing that again, Jovita Dupré!

But Jovita knew better.  She was strong right now, right in this instant, but eventually…

Presently, her girls weren’t answering her.  She jerked her head towards the hallway.  “Get in there an’ get dressed.  You both were late for the bus the last time, I ain’t explainin’ that again.  That Principal Manning already look at me like he know somethin’ ’bout me, a secret he ain’t tellin’.  I ain’t got time fuh his ass today, so don’t you get him on my case again.”  She did another jerk with her head, and the two girls walked by her in silent procession.

As Kaley went by, though, her eyes raked across her mother, assessing her in a moment.  Jovita almost said something.  Oh, you think you know somethin’ about me, too?  But she swallowed the challenge before it could ignite a war.  After all, Kaley did know something about her, didn’t she?  She knew Jovita Dupré hadn’t changed much in the last five months.  New clothes, a new apartment, and a new school hadn’t had any real effect on her, or any of them for that matter.  Family and friends in their old neighborhood had heard about what happened, had donated food and clothing, and offered so many tears and support.  For a time, Jovita had believed she could change, and perhaps Kaley and Shannon had allowed themselves to believe it for  time, too.  But now…

I know you, those eyes said to Jovita as they slipped on by.  What do you know? she wanted to reply right back.  But it wasn’t just the eyes.  It was the…the…watchacallit?  The “aura” as her mother used to say.  It was an outpouring of something that went further than just a penetrating gaze.

Mama said it skips a generation.  Jovita’s mother had had that same knowing look, like she could tell when somebody was lying.  And not just her children, anyone.

But Kaley didn’t need to have any kind of intuition to know her mother.  A month ago, she’d walked in the kitchen a month ago while Jovita was hunched over the sink, lighting up another crumbled bit of white rock in her spoon.  Jovita had been nearly scared to death, nearly dropped the spoon, lighter and all.

But maybe I only hallucinated a little of that, she thought.  After she had stormed out of the kitchen, Jovita had gone to the room her two daughters shared, to check on Shannon…only to find both of her daughters in bed.  When she’d gone back to check the kitchen, Kaley was gone.  The crack rock, the meth…the horrors that her daughters had faced…her guilt over having done nothing about it…I’m losin’ it.

“The girl,” someone whispered.  Jovita jumped, turned, looked all about her.  “Her?” asked someone else.  At once, her hands started shaking.  Then, there came a reply.  “No, the other one.  This one’s the mother, she is no use.”

“Okay, who the fuck is that?” she hissed.  No answer.  Nothing at all.  Jovita moved around the living room, listening for the slightest noise.  Losin’ it.  Yeah.  Fuh sho’.  Oh…God…

 

The attic was clear, as was the entire upstairs.  Zakhar double-checked the downstairs, every bedroom, bathroom, and closet, flicking lights off as he left each room.  He checked behind every curtain and under every table, around every corner and inside every shower and tub.  The only thing left to check was the basement.

            Part of him felt silly, and a bit annoyed with himself for being so on edge.  This was supposed to be a place of respite, a retreat from the rest of the world, where he could be alone to do what he needed to do.  No poachers had ever been so bold as to…

            But Ivan and the others, he thought.  Maybe they thought the same thing.  Considering what had happened to the rest of his family, anyone would forgive him his paranoia.

Zakhar went to check the basement door in the hall.  The three locks on it were untouched, as was the small wedge of wood he never forgot to jam between the middle hinge and the doorframe; a telltale sign someone had disturbed it, if it had fallen.  He went to his bedroom, opened the middle drawer, rummaged around until he found the key ring tucked behind his thickest winter bedclothes, and returned to the hall to go through the locks, one by one.

When he opened it, the usual darkness awaited him, as did the usual odors.  Cleaning solutions, and pine-scented air fresheners.  Zakhar flipped the switch beside the door, and fluorescent lights cast a pallid, funereal glow about the staircase.  He kept the gun in a kind of loose low-ready position, and started down.  The wooden steps creaked in protest beneath his considerable weight.  At the foot of the steps, Zakhar flipped another switch, this one with a brighter, more familial glow.  To his left was the food pantry for his guest.  To his right was the guest room, also triple-locked.  Three different keys opened the locks.

Before he stepped inside, Zakhar knocked twice, then once, then twice again.  This would signal his young guest to go to the far side of the room, as he’d been trained.  Gun at the ready, he stepped through.

The room was exactly as he’d left it, and his young guest had kept it clean, as he’d been trained to do.  Hard, smooth concrete floors, with two couches covered in plastic sheeting and a television mounted on the wall, high enough so that it was out of reach, and behind Plexiglas.  The TV happened to be on, and was playing a SpongeBob SquarePants DVD that Zakhar permitted him.  There was a single coffee table, oak, spotless, and with a glimmering top.  The room smelled of Pine-Sol.  That was good.  The boy had cleaned recently.

Zakhar took three steps inside, and paused.  His guest was huddled on the far couch, sitting there obediently in his underwear, thumb in his mouth.  Zakhar looked at the TV, then at his young guest.  “Are you all right?” he said.  The boy spoke English.  Zakhar had had to brush up on his own.  The boy looked at him, all doe-eyed, nodded slowly, and looked back at the television.  Zakhar also looked at the TV.  Squidward was wroth with SpongeBob, it seemed.  “Have you heard anything?  Any knocking?  Anyone moving upstairs?”  The boy continued sucking his thumb.  “I’m talking to you!”  The boy jolted, and shook his head, trembling.  “You heard nothing?  Heard no one?”  The boy shook his head.  Zakhar nodded.  “Dinner will be ready in a little while.  Make sure you bathe.  I’ll also bring down your shots.”  He backed away towards the door.  “And don’t watch so much TV.  It will rot your mind.”

Back out the door, locking all three locks, then back up the stairs, switching off the lights as he went.  He shut the door in the hall, locked every lock, and replaced the keys in his drawer.  Zakhar was about to return to the fireplace, but paused halfway through the living room and thought for a moment.  Something told him to check one last time.  Perhaps it was paranoia left over from his days in the service.

The radio was still going in the kitchen, but the weather report was finished for the nonce.  It had gone to commercials now for some kind of aftershave.  The water in the kettle still hadn’t warmed enough to start squealing yet.

Zakhar swept the attic one more time, the upstairs, then the downstairs again.  The wind blew harder outside, pressed against the windows.

Satisfied, he holstered the Colt, and finally returned to the logs.  He stacked them neatly in the fireplace and then set up some twigs and kindling.  He still liked doing things the old way, using bow-drill kits the way the old wilderness survivalists taught.  Zakhar had taken numerous courses on primitive survival skills—living way out here, one never knew when the gas tanks might suddenly shut off, without warning, in the dead of winter.  No man could survive the blunt force of a Siberian winter.  No man.

It took a while for the punk to ignite, but once he had a workable ember, Zakhar set the nest of burning kindling lovingly into the pile of smaller sticks of wood, where it quickly caught flame and began to spread.  He stood up, and saw his stalker in the mirror over the mantelpiece a second too late.  Zakhar spun, his hand going reflexively for his pistol, but he saw what his stalker had in his hands, and froze.  Military experience had also taught him when he was too slow on the pickup.

“Arrogance before the gods,” his enemy said, seated comfortably on the couch, directly below the two hanging bearskin rugs.

Zakhar’s heart jumped a beat, but he steeled himself, sighed.  “What?”

 

“I said, get’cho black behind out that do’, befo’ you miss the damn bus!  What’s the matter?  You got wax in yo ears, girl?”

Kaley helped Shannon with her coat.  It was a hand-me-down from Kaley, but Shan was small, even for her age, and it was just too big.  It was almost comical.  She looks like a turtle uncomfortable with her shell, Kaley thought, grinning.  But she swallowed her smile quickly when she felt the animosity pouring off her mother.  Mixed with guilt and fear of the future, it was a disgusting mélange on Kaley’s tongue and on her mind.

It was a difficult time for all of them.  Kaley and Shannon were victims of something horrid, Shan especially, and their mother felt the burden of guilt of not having protected them.  In fact, it had been her that sent them out that night, all alone, for groceries she herself ought to have gotten the day before.  Now Jovita Dupré emanated such self hate that Kaley couldn’t help but absorb it, and the more she absorbed it, the more she showed her hatred for the insufferable woman.  And, the more Jovita Dupré saw the hatred in her daughter’s eyes, the more she hated herself.

It’s a vicious cycle, she thought.  And it’s never going to end.  Never.

The door was hanging open.  A new winter’s breeze came sweeping in, and it seemed to penetrate their clothes, finding the tiniest of gaps, slipping up around them like icy tendrils.  For a moment, Kaley felt swept away.  She smelled…pine?  And Pine-Sol?  Mom doesn’t use Pine-Sol was the last thing she thought before stepping over the threshold.  She shouldered her book bag and handed Shannon hers.  “Here,” she said, and they stepped outside.

And for a moment, Kaley saw something else.  Trees.  And snow.  But it hadn’t snowed during the night and she knew it.  She blinked.  It was gone, and all that was left was Bentley Drive, in Cartersville, Georgia.  Bentley Drive was a short stretch of forgettable road that was a forgettable offshoot of Tennessee Street, and covered by dying oaks and forlorn willows.  Of the nine houses on Bentley, there were only two that were actually owned by real homeowners, the rest of the houses were all rented out by the same landlord as the one Kaley’s mother had found through one of the officers at the Atlanta Police Department.  The nice detective, Leon Hulsey, the big man who never stopped looking for them that night, had suggested it to them before he was swallowed by controversy—apparently, he’d been turning a blind eye to his brother-in-law’s chop shop.

The trees blew in a sourceless wind, a wind that felt colder by the second.  It blew in hard and fast, pushing against both Kaley and her sister.  It had another strange odor to it.  It didn’t…well, as strange as it seemed, it didn’t smell like the wind was from around here.  More of that pine smell, she thought.  There were no pines around Bentley Drive.

“Hurry on, now!” said Jovita Dupré, safely in the doorway, hugging her robe more tightly to herself.  “Gawn, I got a job interview to get to!  Don’t be late to the bus!”  She waved them away, almost like pests, and shut the door.

Kaley reached for her sister’s hand, gripped it, and gave it a reassuring squeeze.  They walked fifty feet to the bus stop, where two other kids were waiting for the bus, as well.  They were older kids, though, a couple of ninth graders, white boys who never did more than glance at Kaley and her sister with an exquisite blend of pity and disgust.

“Did you get the sheets in the washin’ machine before Mama saw?” asked Shan.

Always looking out for me.  “Yeah, I got it,” Kaley said.  At least, that’s what she meant to say.  Only when her lips moved, these words came out.  “Arrogance before the gods.”

“Huh?” Shannon said.

 

The man on the sofa lounged for a moment, then stood.  In his hand was a Glock.  His grip showed it was nothing casual; he knew how to use it.  He wore black jeans and a black jacket, unzipped, and the shirt underneath had a message written in English: YEAH, I’M INTO THAT SHIT.  The man’s complexion was pale, his hair black and wild like overgrowth in the forest, his face…there was an illusion on his face.  A shadow, brought on by the dark stubble.  But something else was wrong.  The hairs weren’t growing right.  There was some sort of distortion, like a scar that—

“Hubris,” said Zakhar’s enemy.  “That’s arrogance before the gods.  And there’s a spirit of vengeance, set against those who succumb to hubris.  That’s what the Greeks believed, anyway.  Guess they’re good for somethin’ besides makin’ a mean eggplant.”  He smiled, and Zakhar noted that the smile was slightly off, too.  “Do you know what they called this spirit of vengeance?”  The man stepped around the coffee table, his boots were wet and his jeans were soaked almost to the knees.  He took a seat at the edge of the table.  “Nemesis.  That’s where the word comes from.”

Zakhar started to speak, felt something catch in his throat, and swallowed.  After he cleared his throat, he said, “What do you want?  I have money—”

“You know, I never much believed in god or gods, still not sure that I do, but it’s interesting how they supply a kind of, uh…what’s the word…underpinning?”  The gunman nodded.  “Yeah.  Yeah, an underpinning for how we describe what takes place around us.  A basis, a foundation for the things we don’t understand.”

“If you want money—”

“If I wanted money, Vladimir Putin, why the fuck would I come way out here to planet Earth’s frozen asshole?”  Vladimir Putin?  That was a little strange.  Either the man was insane and really believed Zakhar to be the former Prime Minister, or else he was using the sarcasm that the English were known for.  Zakhar didn’t know the language well enough to place the regional accent.

“You can have anything in the house that you want,” he told the man.

“Oh, I’ve got all I want.  Right here, right now.”

“I’m…not sure I understand you.”

The man smiled, and his smile…didn’t quite happen the right way.  The left side, it twitched a little, and kind of frowned as the rest of the face smiled.  Something had happened there, something terrible.  Zakhar reminded himself of the Colt Woodsman .22 at his side, ready to be drawn, ready to be fired.  And his eyes constantly flitted to the Glock in the intruder’s hand.

The gunman suddenly changed topics.  “There’s this, uh, this bigass crater in America.  Maybe you’ve heard of it?  It’s called the Barringer Crater.”  The gunman raised his eyebrows.  “It’s outside o’ Flagstaff, in Arizona.  It’s a meteor impact crater.  You guys have one like it here in Siberia.  I think ya call it Popi-guy?  Poppy-gay, somethin’?”  He waved his gun hand dismissively.  “In any case, the Barringer Crater, it’s like four thousand feet wide, and like six hundred feet deep.  You could fit about five major aircraft carriers inside.  You could also fill that crater with how much shit I know that you don’t know.  So when you say, ‘I don’t understand,’ believe me when I say, I know.  Only in this instance, I think you do know.”

“Know what?  What the hell are you talking about?”

The gunman tittered.  It was a disturbing little titter, almost girlish, and it made Zakhar think of the boy downstairs.  “You’re really gonna make me say this, aren’t you?”  He shook his head in wonderment, stood up, sighed.  “You fuckers, you don’t even have the guts to own up to what you’ve done.  An’ they call me the freak.”

Zakhar raised his left hand slowly.  “Tell me what you want,” he said reasonably, “and then maybe we can work out an arrangement of some kind.”

“An arrangement.  Like what you’ve got here?”  He looked around at the living room, giving an appraising look at the moose on the wall, the considerable fireplace, and mantelpiece.  “Quite the arrangement.”  He took a step closer to Zakhar, and Zakhar took a step back, bumped against the mantelpiece and then walked slowly to his left, to the far side of the fireplace.  “I’m no vengeful spirit, but I am here because of your little arrangement here.  Fascinating how you stayed off the grid with your work.  A smart plan.  Much smarter than the rest of your ilk, the ones in Germany, and Ukraine.”  He smiled knowingly.  “And Derbent?  Mm?”

For a fraction of a second, Zakhar’s eyes widened, but he controlled his surprise and remained calm.  “You?”

“Good brandy in Derbent.  Good scenery, too.  Nice, sleepy little city.  Lots of ancient structures.  A mixed and cultured people.  Peaceful.  Not the kind o’ town you would associate with people who have your kind of arrangement.”  The gunman let that sit in the air between them.  He glanced at the windows.  The wind was getting even harsher, and great chunks of snow were smacking up against the side of the lodge.  “I saw you got chains on the front tires o’ that SUV outside.  Do ya have any more chains for the rear tires?”

Zakhar nodded slowly, calmly.  “Yes, of course.  I could show you where—”

“Don’t you fuckin’ move,” said the gunman evenly.  Zakhar froze.  He had just started to turn for the door, aiming the right side of his body away from the gunman, so that he couldn’t see his hand moving to the holster.  Now, the gunman sighed, looked him up and down appraisingly.  “Just tell me where they are.”

The logs were being consumed by flame in the fireplace, and the fire was now crackling at his side.  Zakhar was close to the flames, and felt his palms growing sweaty, though not just because of the heat.  All at once, he was becoming increasingly aware of his isolation.  The isolation that had once brought such sweet solitude and respite was now a trap.  Even on a clear day, without wind or rain, a man could fire a gun outside and not be heard by anyone for many kilometers around.  “The chains?” he said.  “You…you want to know about the—”

“Yeah, Vladimir, I want the goddam chains.  I parked my rental car a good ways away from here, hiked in on foot.  How d’ya think I got way out here without leaving any tire tracks in the snow?”  He snorted out a laugh.  “I don’t wanna chance hiking back to it, not in this weather.”

Zakhar thought that that little fact might spring hope.  Maybe he’s just on the run.  A desperate man, just needs a vehicle to get clear of here.  But that was a false hope.  Hadn’t he just said he had been to Derbent?  And he obviously knew things.  Things about the others.  “The chains are behind a pegboard in the shed.  I can show you.”

“Just tell me.  An’ the gas, too.”

He swallowed, eyes darting towards the Glock, back at his intruder’s eyes.  “The pegboard is in a hidden closet in the shed.  Where…”  He swallowed again.  “Where the poster with the big bear is hanging.  The petrol is in there, too.”

“Petrol?” he said.

“Da.  Er, yes.  Fuel.”

“Oh, right,” said the gunman, glancing out one of the windows.  “We say gasoline back in the States.”  He looked back at Zakhar.  “That’s where I’m from, ya know?  The States.  You ever been to Georgia?”  Zakhar shook his head.  “No?  Ya know anybody from Atlanta?”  Zakhar shook his head.  The gunman gave a teasing smile.  “Awwww, c’mon now, Zakhar.  Don’t lie to me.  You can do this.  You’re a big boy.”

“I don’t follow y—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sakes, man!  You really can’t say it, can you?  Huh?  Can you?”  He chuckled, glanced out the window, and Zakhar’s fingers touched the sandalwood grip of his Colt just as the gunman looked back at him.  “Ya sit out here in the middle o’ nowhere, you’ve got a basement door with three locks on it, and you’ve gotta believe I haven’t missed those locks, and you’re still tight-lipped.  I’ve told you that I’ve been to Derbent an’ that I came from Atlana, but you’re still not letting yourself put the pieces together, are ya?”

Zakhar said nothing, took a slow, deep breath, and let it out quietly, calming his nerves.  Thought about the Colt, going for it, watching the Glock trained on him, decided against it.

The intruder was still smiling that not-right smile of his.  “What’ve ya got down there, Zakhar?”  Zakhar, he says.  He knows my name.  “Or, maybe I should ask, who have ya got down there.  Lemme guess, a sweet little piece o’ action?  Small girl, blonde-haired and blue-eyed?  Your people in Derbent were partial to those types.  Izzat what you got, Zakhar?  Hm?  Izzat what you got on the last shipment?”

Trembling with barely controlled rage—rage at the insolence, the indignity, and his impotence in the moment—Zakhar said nothing, tried to remain still.  His fingertips were still just touching the Colt’s grip.

The intruder laughed again.  Zakhar’s blood was boiling.  He was getting tired of being mocked in his own house by a trespasser, and someone who knew his secret.  “Cut this, Jack,” said the intruder.  “I know all about you.  I know what you like doin’.  I know you’re a part of somethin’ bigger, a family of sorts that started out this gig, but now you’re more like a customer.  You help a little here an’ there with the shipping and the details, you still have a little bit o’ stock in your family’s old shipping business.  Northeast Siberian Shippin’, right?”

Steady now.  Steady.  “I’m still not sure I follow you, my friend.”

That smile never wavered.  “Well, let’s see if you can follow me around the world,” he said.  “Seven months ago I’m in Atlanta, ran into a little bit o’ trouble with some Russians.  A group of vory that fractioned off of the main group of vory v zakone, right here in the Motherland, and who started workin’ for some groups of human traffickers.  One of their clients was a group of child pornographers called The Rainbow Room.  The vory were at first only interested in the usual stuff—forced prostitution, maybe moving the girls across borders, through shipping containers.  But they still used some old business ties over here in the Motherland; financing, moving some money into some trustworthy family members over here, family members who were holding on to it, like a retirement plan for the whole fucked up family.

“I got into a tussle with some of your pals—that’s how I got so pretty,” he added, turning his face over and stepping a bit more into the firelight.  Zakhar could see the grotesque scar running the length of his face, like a canyon that someone had tried to fill in, and failed.  “I dipped outta the A-T-L with the sirens still screamin’ for me.  I found a doctor who did passable work on sewing me up, an’ then I got to looking.  The guy that did this to me, his name was Dmitry.  I believe ya know ’im?”

Zakhar tensed.  He shook his head.  “I’m afraid not.”

The gunman tilted his head to one side curiously, in a kind of look that said, How long are we going to do this?  He continued with his story.  “Before he died—if you can call it dying—Dmitry told me that he had family in Derbent.  Now, I promised this son of a bitch that I’d kill his entire family.  It was the least I could do after all he put me through.  An’ I like to keep my promises.  Call me old-fashioned.”  He snorted a laugh.  “I read all the follow-ups in the news concerning the story—you probably remember it?  A bunch o’ human traffickers an’ child pornographers operating in and around Atlanta?  They finally pinned a last name on ol’ Dmitry.  Him, his brother Mikhael and their sister Olga were part of the Ankundinov family.  Well now, as you can imagine I was happier’n a pig in shit when I found this out, because this narrowed my search down considerably.

“But first, I had to get outta the country.  This wasn’t easy, ya know?  I mean, every cop and his dog knew that I was in Atlanta, and they for some reason associated me with The Rainbow Room, and so I became a prime suspect.  I’m still on Interpol’s list, last I checked their website.  I never became very famous, because I was just one of a dozen others that eluded police agencies around the world durin’ this operation.”  Bragging, Zakhar thought.  He’s actually taking the time to brag.  As much as it angered him, it might also be his salvation.  Keep talking.  Just keep talking.  “Feds cracked down on anybody who knew me.  Lotta colleagues o’ mine ain’t too happy with me.”  He sighed.  “In any case, after I got sewed up, I hopped from one ride to the next until I got into Canada.  Found an old pal that owed me a favor, got a couple fake IDs, and finally, I made it here, to the Motherland.

“In a way, it was like…comin’ home, almost.  I’m no Russian, but I have a certain, ah, aptitude, an ability to integrate easily into various socio-economic classes.  I’m also good at pickin’ up on the vibe of a city.  Ya know, I tend to read the people well.  I also take an interest in the customs an’ behaviors of my host city—it’s important in my line o’ work—so I bought a few language CDs, learned how to say ‘where’s the shitter’ and ‘fuck you’ in Russian—you know, the important stuff—an’ then started to check the listings on the Internet.  Such a handy tool, the Internet.

“Long story short—I know, I know, too late, right?—I found a few more members of the Ankundinov family, followed a few for the first couple o’ months, figured out which ones hung out in the skeevy part o’ Derbent, and then offered my services.  I’m a thief, specializing in boosting cars, and people always need cars, especially vory, am I right?  Am I right, Zakhar?”  Zakhar didn’t know what else to do but nod, so he did.  “So, I engendered myself to a few of them, learned a bit about jackin’ local cars—you fuckin’ Europeans and your reversed ignition switches,” he chuckled.  “And then I made myself the go-to guy for disposable cars.”

Zakhar’s eyes wandered about the room, searching for some way out, any way.  The front door was five steps away, but it was locked.  He’d locked it as soon as he returned from gathering the wood.  There wouldn’t be enough room or time to lay down a few suppressing shots and dive for the door.

“That’s where I found out about the Ankundinov family’s connections to the Northeast Siberian Shipping Company.  Lots o’ boats moving in and out of port, and all year round.  The company was initially founded and run by an Anatoly Ogorodnikov—your grandfather.  More an’ more shares have been sold down through the decades, leaving you with very little stake in it, but stake in it you still have, at least enough so that you get a few benefits.”

Zakhar shook his head.  “I have nothing more to do with Northeast Siberian Shipping.  Nothing besides a little bookkeeping.”

The smile never wavered, and neither did his knowing look.  “Ya know, it’s an interesting fact: every year about nine million shippin’ containers enter U.S. ports, and about as many leave.  Only about five percent of those are inspected before they are unloaded, even after 9/11 and all the fears of smuggled uranium started up.  But it’s easier to detect enriched uranium hidden inside a container—a good Geiger counter can do that—but finding small children stuffed inside them…”  He let the sentence drop.

“I’ve never hurt any children—”

“Liar liar," he teased.  "Pants on fire.”

“I swear to you, I’ve never—”

The gunman put a finger to his lips.  “Shhhh.  I’m not here for the child, Comrade Ogorodnikov.”  A moment of indulged relief, which helped to calm him, gave him hope.  His fingertips were still on the gun’s grip.  “I don’t care about any o’ the people you’ve hurt, or the children you choose to diddle.  Honestly, that’s none o’ my beeswax.”  He sniffed.  “But I made a promise to Dmitry Ankundinov.  I told him I’d kill his daughters.  Only, they weren’t in Derbent like he said.  They’ve moved somewhere else, with some other family.  I learned this after a very considerable, and, uh…bloody interrogation.”

“It was you?”  Zakhar still couldn’t believe it.  He had received warnings, from his people in Moscow and his relatives in Chelyabinsk.  They’d told him about a revenge killing, something they believed was associated with “bad blood” between their families and some other foreign families.  It’s not, though.  It’s just him.  “You burned them?”

The gunman elected not to answer this directly.  “It seems the Ankundinovs in Derbent heard about Dmitry’s downfall in the States, and they had a hunch to hide much of his close family—mainly from Interpol and other agencies, not from me.  Still, the results are the same.  They’re gone.  All I wanna know is, where did the vory move his family?”

“You…want to kill his daughters?” he said, astonished.

“Don’t sound so appalled.  What the fuck do you care?  You’ve got someone’s son or daughter locked up in your goddam basement.  Now, I can kill you where you stand, an’ this’ll be the last time you ever visit this lodge.  Or, you could give me Dmitry’s daughters, an’ you get to stay here with whomever you’ve got locked up down below.”  He shrugged.  “Whattaya say, comrade?  A child for a child?”

Was it really that simple?  Just give over Dmitry Ankundinov’s family and that would be the end of it?  Zakhar wasn’t truly conflicted on the decision—after all, he didn’t know Dmitry at all, and had only ever met the Ankundinovs during a few shareholder meetings here and there throughout the years—but would giving the family up really save him now?  “What if I told you that I don’t know where they are—”

“Then I’d say you’re about as useless as an asshole on my face,” he said, raising the gun.

Zakhar held up his left hand, still keeping his right hand close to his Colt, inching more over the grip.  Has he noticed yet? he wondered.  “Wait, hold on!  Please!  Prastite!  I’m…I’m sorry.  I’m sorry, but I don’t know where they are, but I can tell you about the others!”

“What others?”  There was a trick of the light in that moment.  Something from the fire, deepening shadows that carved hard lines in the gunman’s face.

“Th-the others…” he said, beginning to stutter.  “They m-might know where to find the rest of Ankundinov’s family.  They’re the ones…the ones that the vory worked with first, when the vory first came to my family with the business proposition.  That’s how my father always told it—”

“All right, shut up.  I’m going to ask again, and slowly.  Who—are—the—others?  Names.  I function on names.”

“N-ni znaju…that is, I don’t know their names—”

“Then how does this help me—”

“—b-because I kn-know their faction!  Eh, how you say, their affiliation?”

“What, like a club or group name?  A gang?”

“Da, da,” he said hurriedly.  “A gang.”

“What’s the name?”

Zakhar swallowed once more.  “At-ta Biral.”

The gunman reached into his left pocket, but never took his gun or his eyes off of Zakhar.  He produced an iPhone, one that looked familiar to Zakhar.  It took a second for him to realize it was his.  “What’s your code for gettin’ into this thing?”

“Eh…eh…one-four-four-two.”

The gunman punched it in, then tapped a few keys on the touch-screen.  “What was that word?  Atta…?”

“At-ta Biral.”

“Spell it.”  And so Zakhar did.  The gunman punched in those letters.  Zakhar’s right hand was now just about fully wrapped around the grip.  He was ready to pull the Colt when the intruder looked up at him.  “Eight cats?  It says here at-ta biral translates in one o’ the Bangladeshi dialects as ‘eight cats’.  You pullin’ my leg, Zak?”  He gave Zakhar an austere look, glanced down at his gun, clearly saw his hand on the gun, but said nothing.

Unable to admit to raping children, it seemed Zakhar also could not acknowledge going for his gun, even when he was caught red-handed.  “N-no.  They are, eh, they are the At-ta Biral, the ‘Eight Cats’ of Bangladesh.”

“Bangladesh, huh?”  He looked back at the iPhone’s screen, then lowered it and tossed it onto the couch.  “You don’t wanna go for that gun, big fella.”  Zakhar froze, becoming the very quintessence of a mannequin.  “Tell me about these Bangladeshi boys.  The Eight Cats, ya say?  What are they, human traffickers like yourselves?  Heroin?  Prostitution?  A bit o’ all three, be my guess.  That’s how it works, right?  Steal them, get them doped up, turn them out on the streets, and keep shuffling them around, place to place, an’ before long they don’t even know where they are, where they came from, or what their names are?”  He jerked his head towards the hallway.  “Is that where ya got your new stock?  That how the Eight Cats keep ya satisfied?  They send you a new toy every so often to appease you?  You know what, don’t answer that, just take your goddam hand off that gun.  Slowly, like molasses in a Siberian Christmas.”

For a moment, Zakhar didn’t believe he had the strength to just remove it.  The gun seemed clamped to his hand, and his hand to it.  It was his lifeline, his last chance out of this.  He couldn’t…he wouldn’t…

But he did.  Slowly, and like molasses in a Siberian Christmas.

“Turn around,” the gunman said.  Zakhar obeyed as though in a dream.  And could it be a dream?  Could it?  He’d always assumed that if he was found out, it would be police and sirens and the media snapping pictures of him.  Not this.  Never this.  What was this?  “Kneel.”  Zakhar obeyed, as a robot might do, the commands registering with a programming deeply embedded while everything else—the firewalls keeping others out, the stubborn administrator guarding all the entrances—was rebooted.  “Put your hands behind your head.”  Zakhar obeyed.  “Cross your feet.”  Zakhar obeyed.

For a few moments, the lodge was engulfed in silence.  It seemed the wind had even died down a bit.  The radio had gone all staticky, and mostly silent.  Zakhar listened as, behind him, the gunman just hummed to himself.  He caught a few words being sung.  “This tainted love you’ve given…I’ve given all a boy could give you…”  He hummed a few more bars and moved around behind Zakhar.  Perhaps checking windows?  “Song’s been stuck in my fucking head all day.  Like it’s on a loop.  Don’t you hate that, getting a song stuck in your head?”

Zakhar said nothing.  What was the right answer?  Was there a right answer?  So much was racing through his mind in that moment.  The signs he’d ignored.  His own elongated footprints in the snow leading up to his cabin—He followed in my footsteps.  But when had the man come inside?  How long had he been stalking Zakhar?  Had he waited for him to put down the rifle?  How much had been calculated?

He heard the gunman approaching from behind, slowly, slowly.  Then, all at once, the Colt was snatched from Zakhar’s holster and the gunman took a step back.  “Stand up.”  Zakhar obeyed.  At least, he tried.  His legs had turned to water.

He started weeping.

“Oh, fuck, you’re gonna cry now?”  The gunman sighed.  “Look, I gotta be outta here in like ten minutes.  So could you just not…?”

“P-p-please…please, I have money!  Lots of it!  You see what I can afford!  I can pay you!  I can pay you enough to…to…to fix your face!” he rushed to say.  “T-to run away from these people at Interpol!  Enough m-m-money to find these men from Bangladesh!  I can gi—”

“Money to find them,” said the gunmen.  “Meaning you don’t actually have anymore info about where they are, and you don’t know how to find them?”

“I-I-I didn’t mean—”

“I’m just tryin’ to be specific here.  Do you know where these men are, right now, right this very instant, or not?”

“N-not right this—”

“So you’re tryin’ to buy yourself some time.”

“N-n-n-no—”

“No?  You’re not trying to buy time?  You don’t wanna live?”

“I-I mean da!  Da!  Yes!  I mean…I can help you.  I can…I can help you.”  Remember your training, Zakhar told himself.  Breathe.  Just breathe, and stay calm.  Remember your training.  You were a soldier.  Zakhar’s tears stopped at once, he dammed them up and bit his tongue to reinstate control.  He listened to the gunman take a few footsteps around to his right side, then around to his left.  “Th-there’s money.  Thousands of rubles in my drawer, as well as other currencies.  U.S. dollars, too!”

“Which drawer?  Where?”

“My armoire,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief.  I have him thinking rationally.  “Top drawer.  It’s in a large steel suitcase.

“In case you ever had to hit the road fast, huh?”

“Yes…yes, it’s true.  Everything you’ve said.  It’s all true.  But you said you don’t care about the merchandise, so you can take the money.  It’s all yours.”  No more stuttering now.  Zakhar was back in control, and he believed the gunman was on track, too.  His tone sounded more equitable now.

“Steel suitcase.  Top drawer.”

“Da.”

More pacing from behind.  Then, the gunman started speaking again.  “Ya know, in Derbent, I got a hold of this one fucker named Andrei.  Andrei Ankundinov,” he laughed.  “He wasn’t a brother to Dmitry or anything, not even blood, but he was family through marriage some kinda way.  Anyhow, Andrei was into boostin’ cars, like me.  He’s the one I approached first when I started to peg which Ankundinovs were which—they’re not quite like Johnsons or Joneses over there in Derbent, but the last name is popular enough.  I hooked up with Andrei, found out he was an alcoholic, an’ I know the quickest way to an alcoholic’s heart is to buy the rounds, drive him home an’ don’t tell the rest of his family.

“So I did just that, an’ enough times that he introduced me to some o’ his pals.  In less than two months, I’d already met everyone involved in Northeast Siberian Shipping, even if I hadn’t shaken their hands.  Got invited to a poker game—that was the first time I heard your name bein’ tossed around, and I took note, kept playin’ my cards.  Later that night, though, Andrei was all set to head to a neighborhood outside o’ town, to do a dead-drop and a pickup for some cats owed him and his family money.  That night, as he was hopping in his Jag, Andrei said, ‘You come with me, Yank.’  That’s what they called me for the three months I was in Derbent: The Yank.

“I rode with him outside o’ town, and this is when I made my move.  See, it’s not always about rushing the moment, or trying to force a moment to happen.  Nah, see, sometimes it’s about waiting for that right moment.  This was that night.  This was that moment.  Andrei was shitfaced drunk, I mean just fuckin’ hammered, and so I took the wheel for most o’ the drive.  I pulled over under the pretense that I needed to take a piss, an’ I knew he wouldn’t argue.”  Behind Zakhar, the gunman continued to pace.  “So we get out, we both take a piss, and then I smash the back of his head with the butt of my Beretta.  He was so drunk he went down like a daisy.

“An hour later, Andrei wakes up upside-down, tied up by his ankles by some cords in his trunk, hanging from a tree.  He was confused as well, o’ course, and I just kept beating him with my pistol.  Like a fuckin’ piñata, get it?  I’m just hammering away.  I took a few shots at him from ten feet away, an’ I intentionally missed.  An’ he’s screamin’ an’ screamin’,” said the gunman, laughing.  “He pissed himself!  You ever see a man hanging upside-down and pissin’ down on his own face?  Comical don’t begin to describe it!”

More pacing, more silence, a touch of wind from outside.  The gunman chuckled, cleared his throat, continued.  “I wanted to know about Dmitry’s people.  His family, where they’d gone, all that.  I was getting a little, ah, impatient with not finding Dmitry’s daughters.  I shot at Andrei a few more times, he blubbered and prayed to God, all o’ that.  He dropped a few names, most of them were nobodies, people I knew from my time in Derbent, ones that had no connection to Dmitry Ankundinov or his brother Mikhael or sister Olga.  He was coverin’ for somebody.  But then he mentioned your name again, and so I was intrigued.

“It seems that you, Zakhar Ogorodnikov, are a bit of a connoisseur.  You never order the same piece of merchandise twice.  That really, really frustrated Andrei and his peeps, because it meant they needed to keep a variety of merch in stock—blondes, brunettes, red-heads.  And younger and younger, too, eh?  ‘Insatiable.’  That’s a good word to describe you, innit?”

Zakhar swallowed, still trembling, still shivering like he was naked in the cold.  And how he did feel exposed.  “I’ve already confessed to you.”

“Shit, Zak, I ain’t your goddam priest.  I’m not lookin’ for a confession.  I just wanted to let you know that after all of Andrei’s begging and pleading, his bargaining and more begging, I cut him down and told him to start running.  I told him he was free to go, that he only needed to promise not to tell anybody.  I let him get about twenty feet before I took aim and blew his goddam brains out.”

“I-I don’t…I don’t understand…”

“Like a said, Zak,” he said, and pressed the cold steel against the back of Zakhar’s head.  “There’s a hole in Arizona that I could fill with shit I know that you don’t.”  Zakhar finally started to react, his old military instincts kicking in all at last.  Here came his defiance, his rage at the insolence of the intruder, the indignity of it all, but just as he started to turn the bullet snapped through his skull and pitched him forward.  His head hit the side of a stand that served no other purpose but to hold up pictures.  A tiny family portrait fell beside him, in the pool of blood that began spreading outward from his cranium.

Paralyzed, dying, and blind.  Yet by some anomaly, he was still able to hear words floating all around him, floating down from the gunman.  It was a song, nice and even lovely.  “The love we share…seems to go nowhere…and I’ve lost my light…for I toss an’ turn, I can’t sleep at night…”

He also heard the kettle on the stove starting to squeal.  Tea’s ready, was Zakhar Ogorodnikov’s very last thought on this earth.

Find the first book here: http://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Save-Us-ebook/dp/B009DL5WEQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

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