Authors: Quincy J. Allen
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary Fiction, #Dystopian
I nodded and closed the door. I stepped over to a closet in the hallway, opened it, and pulled out one of my shimmering black coats.
“Planning on sneaking them?” Rachel asked.
I looked at her and smiled almost lovingly. “No. You are.”
“Me?”
“Yep. Kills two birds with one stone. Try it on.” I handed the jacket over. She slipped it on and mostly disappeared in front of me except for her head. It was way too big on her, but it would work for what I had in mind. I bent down and clasped the straps at her ankles. The fabric still sagged behind her and touched the ground, but not enough to trip her up. “Pull the hood up.”
Rachel reached behind her, grabbed the hood and pulled it over her head. I grabbed the small face cover and pulled it down over her face.
“Hey! I can still see,” she said surprised.
“Of course. Now go over to that mirror.” She walked over as I dimmed the lights with a dial on the wall behind me, making the illumination roughly what it would be in the dining room.
“That’s amazing,” she said. She stared into the mirror, looking as hard as she could to make out an outline. There were little lines and creases that faintly appeared and disappeared as she moved but, for the most part, she was invisible.
“Take your shoes off,” I instructed. “You’ll be more quiet.” She kicked them off and faced me. “Now you know they won’t see you, okay?”
“I got it. I still can’t believe this thing,” she said, still astounded.
“Oh … wait. I want to show you something. Stick your hand into an inside pocket.” She cocked her head to the side quizzically but moved her hand inside. “Once you feel the lip you’ll have to pry it open to get your hand in.” She did as instructed, and after a couple of attempts, slid her hand in. “What the hell?” she asked. I smiled. “I can feel a banana, some small balls, and a few other things I can’t identify. “This coat should weigh a ton.”
“Careful in that pocket. There’s something sharp in there,” I cautioned.
“The meat cleaver,” she said, nodding. Her eyes got wide as the physics of the thing danced away from her imagination. There couldn’t be that much stuff in the pocket.
“Now don’t move.” I slipped my hand it into the same inside pocket of my own jacket.
I brushed my hand up against hers inside the pocket.
She squealed in shock and yanked her hand out.
Laughing, I said, “Go ahead. Put it back in. Trust me.”
She slowly moved her hand back, pried open the pocket and slid her hand in. I grasped her hand and we interlocked fingers.
“It’s impossible,” she said, completely dumbfounded.
“It works just like the doors, only smaller.” We pulled out our hands. “The pockets in each jacket match up to one another, and every pocket in a jacket has distinct contents. Pretty cool, hunh?” I smiled like a big kid. “I still get a kick out of it, and it’s been a long time.”
“Pretty cool doesn’t even come close,” she said with amazement on her face.
“Oh, one more thing. Yvgenny’s seen the coat. I told him it was something I stole from the government. And Mag is a cougar when we’re around other people who know about her, okay?”
“Okay,” she said and nodded her head abruptly.
“So, you ready for this?”
“Yes,” she said, amazement still in her voice. “Aren’t we going to be late, though? You said less than thirty, and the drive will take a while on a Friday night.”
I smiled confidently. “Trust me.” I placed my hand on the panel behind me and, without looking, ran through a combination I hadn’t used in a while. I twisted the knob and kicked backward. The door swung open onto Yvgenny’s patio.
Rachel cocked her head to the side as she stepped up to the doorway. She could see the door to the stairs that went down into the dining area and the patio table where we’d had lunch only a few days before.
“Mag, let’s go.”
Magdelain slid silently past us.
I motioned with my head for Rachel to go through. She did, and I stepped through, closing the door behind me. The sounds and smells of L.A. washed over us.
“I’m never going to get used to that,” she said as she turned to me, lifted the facemask slightly and kissed me gently on the lips. “Thanks for trusting me enough to share this,” she whispered in my ear.
I smiled, hugged her, turned and knocked on Yvgenny’s door. Rachel faded back into the shadows. Thirty seconds later the door opened.
Yvgenny stood in the doorway and looked at me. He had a peculiar look on his face, sizing me up in a way he never had before. He wore black sweatpants, a big, baggy, black sweatshirt and a black turtleneck underneath. He had a toothpick in the side of his mouth, and he held a combat shotgun in his hands with a laser sight under the barrel.
“We made good time through town,” I said and smiled. Yvgenny kept staring at me for a few seconds. I’d expected him to ask how we got on the roof, and I was prepared with a story about Xen driving my van, but he just looked at me.
“Of course you did,” he finally said and clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s good to seeing you, my friend. Again, I am in your debt.”
“This doesn’t even come close to evening the score, and you know you never need to worry about that.”
“You know I always will, Justin.” The old man grabbed me in a massive bear hug. “You’re one of a kind, young …
man
.” Yvgenny let me go, and we looked at each other. I gave him a look of curiosity, but he didn’t offer anything.
“So what’s the layout downstairs?” I finally asked.
“I’ll show you. Rachel, could you stay out here please?”
I stepped inside, raising an eyebrow at how he knew she was there.
“Sure,” she said automatically. A few seconds later it occurred to her that he couldn’t have seen her. “Hey!” she whispered. “How’d you know I was here?”
Yvgenny smiled out into the night, scanning the darkness for her, and closed the door.
“I was wondering that, too,” I said as I walked into the living room.
“Come with me.” The old man walked past me up a flight of dark wooden stairs. I followed, and we went into Yvgenny’s bedroom. Yvgenny stepped up to his computer and pointed at the screen showing the displays of his security cameras. Cameras I didn’t know he had. The first image showed the dining room, but the fourth image displayed the patio. Yvgenny had seen us arrive. He looked at me with a knowing smile. “We will talking later about patio, yes?”
“Yes,” I assured him quietly.
He nodded. “As I said before, there are being six men. The big one is being back near kitchen and appears to be eating something. Cretin. The only two having shotguns keep those pretty much pointed at my granddaughters. With proper motivation, however, I believe we can convincing them to point them elsewhere. The one beneath top of stairs presumably has pistol, and he just sits there looking bored. That man sitting near bottom of steps has not moved, and Bennie is across on far side also eating something, the fat pig. He was doing something with his cell phone when I last looked.”
“Okay.” I examined the layout and quickly. Letting the old killer in me loose a bit, I worked out the final touches to my plan. “You got a pistol in here?”
Yvgenny reached under the pillow, pulled out a Beretta and handed it to me.
I pushed the slide back enough to see a chambered round. “Let’s go.”
“Da.”
We walked downstairs, out the door to the patio, and looked around. Rachel stepped out of a dark corner with Mag behind her. I nodded at her and motioned for her to come over. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”
***
The Lion and the Bull
“So, has everyone got it?” I asked. “When I say ‘I guess that’s it, then’ you both hit it hard, and the rest will take care of itself.”
There were two nods, and I assumed the third.
I held the Beretta out and Rachel grabbed it. Stepping to the side of patio open to the parking lot, I hopped up onto the wall and jumped over the flowerbed. Looking below, I didn’t see anyone close by, so I dropped the twenty-five feet to the ground. I landed lightly without making much sound and walked up to the corner of the building. The streets were clear, so I stepped around the corner of the building, walked up to the door, and used the key Yvgenny had given me to unlock it.
Whistling the theme to
Jeopardy
, I opened the door noisily, stepped in, and let it slowly close on its own behind me. I kept whistling as I walked up the middle of the room with my hands in my pockets. I heard some movement behind the curtain and kept going. Pulling the curtain aside, I stepped into the room and took it all in with a glance. Everything looked like it had looked on the camera, except Bennie had moved to the far side of the table to my left, and the man behind the two with shotguns had shifted a little bit farther away from the stairs. A dirty plate, empty glass, and a cell phone sat on the table where Bennie had been sitting.
“Don’t fucking move, and put your hands where I can see them,” Bennie said excitedly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door at the top of the stairs open slowly.
I cleared my throat loudly and looked at Bennie with a condescending smile. I spoke a little more loudly than normal to cover any sounds from the top of the stairs. “Bennie, that’s kind of a catch-22, isn’t it?” I didn’t move.
“A what?” Bennie asked, confused. “And I said put your hands up!”
“But you told me to not fucking move,” I corrected, pointing out the obvious.
“That’s true, boss,” Tommy spoke up from the back corner, his mouth full of baklava. “You did say don’t fucking move.”
The other goombahs all nodded their heads. It was all I could do not crack up.
“Everybody shut the fuck up! I know what I said,” Bennie shouted.
I got an even bigger smile on my face as I watched the two goombahs pointing shotguns at the girls heads look at each other and try not to laugh.
“Put your hands where I can see them and
then
don’t fucking move,” Bennie ordered.
I looked thoughtful as I pondered if there were any flaws with the directive. I nodded to myself. “Okay, Bennie. That makes more sense.” I pulled my hands out.
“Real slow,” Bennie said, aiming his gold .45 at me. I kept smiling and slowed the motion of my hands skyward to a crawl.
Benny’s face went beet red, and the goombahs were grinning openly now, one of them shuddering slightly as he forced himself not to laugh out loud. Even Antonio smiled, albeit barely. He picked up his teacup and covered his face so as to not piss off Bennie any more than he already had.
“Faster, God damn it!” Bennie yelled.
I shot my hands into the air so they were straight up.
“That’s better!” Bennie looked victorious, although for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. What a dumb fuck. He stepped around the table and got in my face. “So, look what the good Lord brought me … It’s not Christmas, is it?”
“No, boss,” Tommy said with another mouthful. “That ain’t till December,” he added seriously.
Bennie looked back at Tommy and shook his head.
“Shut up, Tommy,” Antonio yelled across the room.
I spotted Yvgenny in the shadows at the top of the stairs with the shotgun pointed at the ceiling. Mag crouched in front of him, her nose barely visible behind the railing, her tail twitching violently. I’d have to trust that Rachel was in position.
“Thanks, Antonio,” Bennie said. “So, Case, here we were planning on using Yvgenny to get you down here, and you come all by yourself.”
I was a picture of friendliness. “Yeah, well, he called me,” I replied, grinning. “Probably not long after you called him. He said you guys were being impolite and asked if I would come down here to talk to you. See if we could work things out.”
“Oh, he did, did he?”
I nodded with a friendly smile.
“I think you’ll find you’re gonna be disappointed,” Bennie said evilly.
“Really?” I asked, acting confused.
Bennie nodded.
“Well, I guess that’s it then.”
I watched Yvgenny’s shotgun barrel lower. His finger touched the trigger, and the laser sight came on. The red dot traced its way down the wall behind Bennie and then appeared on the ear of the left-hand goombah. All someone had to do now was see it, and the room would get very noisy very quickly. Yvgenny drifted the dot across the corner of the guy’s eye to catch his attention just as the right-hand goombah noticed it.
“Hey!” the two goombahs shouted together and reflexively, swiveling their guns towards the top of the stairs.
The moment the barrels were no longer pointed at the girls, a massive shotgun blast filled the room. Yvgenny’s double-loaded slug literally took the top of the guy’s head off. The corpse reflexively squeezed the trigger, but the blast went off into the wood paneling of the stairs.
I slapped Bennie’s .45 so it wasn’t pointed at me, causing it to go off, and the round buried itself in the wood behind me.
Then everything happened at once.
Yvgenny’s shotgun went off again, killing the other goombah holding a shotgun. Rachel opened fire on the guy at the bottom of the stairs who was yanking a pistol from inside his coat and turning towards the new threat.
POP! POP! POP!
Rachel’s Beretta barked, and three rounds made their way into the man’s chest.
Yvgenny’s granddaughters both screamed, and in a flash, Mag slithered down three steps and leapt over the railing, dropping on the man below her as he took aim at me. The pistol fired wide as eighty pounds of dratar landed on his back, and long canines sank into the back of his neck. He screamed, dropping to the floor as his pistol sailed across the room.
I dropped and rolled once towards Antonio.
Antonio opened fire, aiming where I had been, while Bennie swung his gun back towards where the shotgun blast had come from at the top of the stairs. Bullets hit the wall behind me as I rolled under the table and came up holding the edge of it.
Bennie’s gun went off three times. I heard a grunt from the top of the stairs and the sound of a shotgun bouncing off the wall. Bennie ran towards the curtain.
Using the table to block Antonio’s vision, I came up with all my strength as a round came through the table, barely missing me. Rachel fired at Bennie’s retreating back.
I shoved the table towards the wall, pinning Antonio to it. The gun in Antonio’s hand clattered to the floor, and then a shot went off behind me hitting the table under my arm and passing through it, followed by another round above my head. Bennie ran out of the room behind me. I let go of the table and let it drop, surprised to see Antonio fall with it. There was a neat, red splotch in the center of his chest where Bennie’s round had passed first through the table and then Antonio.
Tommy stood at the back of the room, a dumbfounded look on his face as he took in the carnage that had taken all of about four seconds from start to finish.
“Rachel, cover Tommy! Mag! Track Bennie, but don’t touch him!”
Mag leapt off of the dead man under her, his throat torn out, and raced through the curtain, hot on Bennie’s trail.
“Yvgenny, you okay up there?”
There was an irritated groan from the old man, not unlike a perturbed bear. “Da. I’m fine. I’m being down in second.” I heard him starting to get up, albeit slowly.
Tommy took a few steps away from the kitchen when Rachel took off the hood and opened the coat. His eyes got wide as he saw her appear out of thin air, still holding a gun on him and walking toward the bottom of the stairs.
“Hey, Tommy,” I said in as cocky a tone as I could. “No gun?” Tommy turned his gaze to Antonio’s dead body and then to me, glaring with a face that slowly contorted into fury. “So, um … out of curiosity, were you the one who messed up the girls?”
Tommy nodded deliberately, and a satisfied smile crossed his face.
“Am I late for party?” Yvgenny said walking down the stairs. The toothpick was still in his mouth, and it shifted back and forth like a tiger’s tail as he spoke. When he got to the bottom, he finally got a look at his granddaughters. The camera hadn’t been too clear. Their mouths were taped closed, and both of them had bruises on their faces. Alisa’s right eye was swollen closed, and a long bruise and laceration marred the left side of her face. Both of their blouses were spotted with blood. Yvgenny turned to Tommy with death in his eyes.
“Not at all, Yvgenny,” I said as he stared at the big Italian. “Tommy and I were just getting reacquainted.”
“Are you the one who hurting my granddaughters?” Yvgenny asked as he stepped around Rachel and strode forward.
“That would indeed be Tommy,” I confirmed.
“Mister Tommy. I am hearing of you. They say you are liking to break things. Apparently, this includes little girls.” Yvgenny pulled off his sweatshirt and turtleneck. I noticed a bullet hole in them as he revealed a bulletproof vest. He dropped the garments on the floor. “They also say I was
unbreakable
.” He released the velcro at shoulder and waist and pulled off the vest, dropping that on the floor as well. “An interesting coincidence, yes?”
Yvgenny stood in the middle of the room in his sweats and a dingy gray tank top, cracking the knuckles first of his left hand and then the right. “Come, Tommy. Let’s see if you can break poor, old Russian violin player.” He turned to me. “Go Justin. I am handling this.”
Tommy took off his jacket and loosened his tie.
“You sure you can take him?” I asked. “I could help. Or Rachel could just shoot him.”
“It would be my pleasure,” she offered enthusiastically. “I don’t have too much compassion for men who hit girls.” Rachel had released the straps at her ankles and taken the coat off, draping it over a chair.
“I am having boots older than him, Justin,” Yvgenny pointed out.
Tommy unbuttoned his dress shirt and pulled it off, revealing a clean, white t-shirt. He had a tattoo of a bull on each forearm.
“That’s what worries me,” I said quietly.
“You insult me. No one touches my family and lives.
You
know this. I will make example of him. The world needs a reminder. Go. You have other things to attend to.”
“Okay,” I said, scratching my cheek a tad bit doubtfully but respecting the old lion’s wishes. “Good luck … and watch the left.”
“Luck is not factor. Rachel, will you please take my granddaughters out of here?” Yvgenny pulled a lock-blade out of his pocket and threw it on a table.
As Rachel grabbed the knife, I took off the tan coat, put on the black one and stepped out through the curtain, sealing up the coat as I went. Approaching the front door, I reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a small device that looked very much like an ultra-thin cell phone.
O O O
Yvgenny looked at the girls as I left the room. “Girls, take the guns with you when you go.” He turned back to Tommy, and the two big men stood there eyeing each other as Rachel cut the girls out of the tape. Yvgenny and Tommy were loosening their shoulders and necks as they waited.
The girls were free in a minute, and Alisa grabbed the shotguns while Galina went for a nearby pistol. Galina picked up the pistol, looking at it closely. She turned, pointed it at Tommy and pulled the hammer back.
“Galina, no,” Yvgenny said quietly.
She froze but kept the gun pointed at Tommy who stared back at her without fear. She looked at her grandfather.
“You are too young and do not needing blood on your hands.
Please
,” he said fondly. “Go. Go with Miss Rachel. And lock door on way out.”
Galina looked back at Tommy for a few more seconds and then, using both hands, gently let the hammer go down quietly.
“You should have begged them to let me shoot you, you son of a bitch,” Galina said with pure venom in her voice. “My grandfather is going to fuck you up.”
Tommy snorted confidently but said nothing.
“Go on, Galina,” Yvgenny said. “I’ll see you shortly. Rachel, can you please drive them to their mother’s? Use my car. The keys are under counter up front.”
“Of course,” Rachel said quietly. They finished picking up the guns, and the three of them walked towards the curtain.
“Tell your mother to calling that weirdo Stanley for the cleanup.” Yvgenny looked Tommy dead in the eye. “These men deserve to be eaten by pigs.”
“Yes,
dedushka
,” Alisa said, as the three walked out.
“What is it you dagos are always saying?” Yvgenny said derisively. “No women, no kids?”
“Yeah, well, I just do what I’m told.” Tommy said. “Besides, who gives a shit about you uppity Ruskies, anyway?”
In answer, Yvgenny stepped up to Tommy and spat the toothpick in his face.
Tommy’s eyes lit up with rage, and he swung a fast left-right combo at Yvgenny’s face.
Good
, Yvgenny thought as he leaned back to avoid the left.
The man can be baited and is young enough to let passion rule him
. He stepped back for the right. Yvgenny saw a brief opening for a boot into the mid-section, but it disappeared quickly, and he was still sizing the Italian up.
He threw a fast right jab to see how well Tommy responded, but didn’t follow up. Tommy blocked the jab and came in low with a body blow to the mid-section that landed partially as Yvgenny stepped back again. Tommy smiled. The Russian drifted to his left, shortening up Tommy’s right hand swing and opening up the left. Heeding the warning about the left, Yvgenny wanted to know exactly what he was dealing with.
As Yvgenny opened up, he raised his right elbow slightly, giving Tommy a clear path to exposed ribs. He saw Tommy tense, and the left came in hard, but Tommy opened up with his right just enough, so the wily Russian sacrificed his side for a headshot. Yvgenny twisted with Tommy’s left to the ribs, but it still hit hard enough to hurt. However, the Russian’s left was already in flight and connected just behind Tommy’s upraised arm, landing squarely on the side of his face. Yvgenny pivoted and followed with a right hook that Tommy danced away from.