Bone Snow
Page 23
He feinted with his left and then pushed a straight right into Ookami’s face. It hit him on the forehead. Not a great shot. Ookami thrust the knife forward but Leo was too quick for that, already moving back to the left and throwing a flurry of jabs into his exposed ribs. They were good shots but not powerful enough to damage him.
He felt something solid hit him on the right side of his temple. It knocked him backward. Ookami laughed, his foot hovering in mid-air.
“You’re old and slow,” he said.
Leo shook his head. He hadn’t been expecting the kick. It caught him off guard but he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
“Maybe,” he replied. “But I’m still going to kill you.”
He got back into his stance and advanced again. He’d never been a counter-puncher, or pretty on the eye. His style had been pure brawler, trusting his speed and power to get the better of his opponents. It had worked for a while. That was until he came against guys who were a step up on the ladder. They had been faster, stronger. Although his heart had always been in the fight, his legs, arms and chin had finally got the better of him. Ookami wasn’t fit to lace the gloves of those guys.
“Leo! Stop!” Kim shouted. He heard the slide on her gun. Would she shoot him? He didn’t think so.
Ookami flashed the knife, jumping about, throwing ineffective kicks and laughing. He couldn’t get close enough to use his fists, staying out of range from Ookami’s feet. They moved around the room, Leo advancing, Ookami staying just out of range. He was trying to tire him out, he knew that. A chance would come though. They always did, he just had to be ready.
Ookami thought he was playing with him, laughing and being smart, but Leo was maneuvering him around the room, pushing him toward the congealed blood on the floor.
He didn’t wait for him to slip but as soon as he stood in the pool, Leo dodged forward, stepping from side to side to put Ookami off balance. It worked. Ookami tried to follow his steps, covering any of the angles Leo was working with. He lifted a foot to flick it out but his bracing leg slid in the blood. He didn’t fall but staggered slightly. It was enough.
Leo hit him with a combination of blows that flowed from his hand, arm, shoulder and chest as it had done twenty years before. The punches were slower, no doubt, but they flowed with ease, snapping Ookami’s head first one way and then the other. He grunted as he threw the punches, putting all of his anger in to them.
Ookami stayed on his feet, staggering backward, three cuts above his eye leaking blood down his cheek and obscuring his vision. Leo walked forward again. He was starting to enjoy this.
The plaster to the left of his head exploded. He ducked down instinctively.
“I said, stop!” Kim called. “Hasn’t there been enough killing?” She sounded as if she were crying.
Leo, still hunched over, turned to her. As soon as he saw her, saw Sam sitting up on the couch rubbing his head, he knew she was right. Sam was staring at him, watching him take Ookami apart. The kid had already seen enough. He didn’t need…
A searing pain wobbled his legs. He felt something sharp and hot in his ribs. He tried to breathe, but something was preventing him. He turned around. Ookami held the knife. Blood dripped down from the blade onto the handle. His blood.
He laughed. “Like I said, you’re too slow.”
Leo tried to punch him but his arm weighed a ton and the movement took an age. Ookami drew back the knife.
He pulled his fists into a guard and smiled back at Ookami. “I’m still going to kill you,” he said, lurching forward on rubbery legs. He swung a wild haymaker that was too slow and too telegraphed to be effective. Ookami moved out of the way easily and laughed.
Leo felt a blow to his calf. All the strength had gone from his legs, the speed gone from his fists. He crumpled to the floor under Ookami’s kick. He tried to right himself as he fell, reaching for the ring ropes that weren’t there. Stay on your feet, always stay on your feet. But he couldn’t. He felt blood running from the wound in his ribs. He felt his life spilling out onto the floorboards.
Ookami stood above him, twirling the knife theatrically. He nodded at Kim. “She won’t kill me, she needs me,” he said and winked. He turned back to Leo. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
The bullet hit Ookami in the middle of his forehead. Blood, dark and thick, welled in the hole. The man’s eyes widened and then he fell forward, the great knife falling from his dead fingers, landing point-down in the wood. Leo rolled onto his side away from him.
“I should have done that hours ago.” He heard Kim’s voice but it seemed a long way away. He closed his eyes as the blood pooled around him.
7
The power company finally fixed the outage at 4am. Leo tripped in and out of consciousness, but Kim kept him alive with Sam’s help.
When she was finally able to get word to the emergency services, their beacons reflected off the snow outside and filled the apartment with a light show that was as welcome as it was vivid.
They found Michelle’s body in the basement. Of Sota, Kenta or Chris there was no sign. Michael’s body rotted into the wooden floorboards, becoming part of the apartment. The authorities had no record of him, only of Alison.
Without him, without his body, the existence of the mysterious boss mentioned in Ookami’s accounts was dismissed as an attempt to cover the depth of his own involvement in the trafficking. Kim testified that she had been forced to shoot Ookami as he killed Alison and attempted to kill Leo. Sam backed up her account.
How could they explain the existence of the snow-woman? How could they tell anyone that Sota, Kenta, Chris and Michael had all been consumed by her? It sounded too fantastical. Besides, they were all still trying to explain it to themselves.
Kim was offered a promotion but turned it down. It would have meant taking her off the streets, taking her away from men like Ookami, and she wasn’t ready for that yet.
Leo spent six weeks in the hospital and never returned to the store, or even the apartment. He sold it to a developer who leveled the building and turned it into a parking lot. Despite the warmer weather they experienced in the spring, the snow in the basement, stairwell and apartment did not melt. Nobody wanted to touch it; they said it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t cold but they shivered when their fingers brushed it. The snow was buried beneath the rubble of the wrecked building.
Leo moved to Florida and spent his days sipping cold beer and fishing on the quays. He let the sun warm the skin on his back and heal the scar that constantly itched. He loved the heat of the sun and would sit out on his porch and listen to the birds, writing postcards to Kim and Sam. He was happy.
As far as he knew, it had never snowed in Florida, and for that he was grateful.
*
High in the mountains of Japan, there are places where people are warned not to hike. It is not through fear of the elements or the weather, or even the gradient that they are warned to stay away.
Something far worse is waiting for them in the clouds. Something that is forever hungry.
“My baby. Help us!”
The End
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