by Chad Huskins
The Cruiser fishtailed all the way to the bottom of the hill, forcing him to run a stoplight. The tail end of his new ride was smacked by a large van, which spun out after slamming its own brakes. The Cruiser spun out, too, and nearly came to a stop in the middle of the road.
Spencer clutched his arm with his left hand, squeezed to put pressure on it, and growled menace at the world as he floored it. The Cruiser didn’t pick up any traction at first, and even once it did, it was a slow start. He had just enough time to glance at his pursuer in the rearview mirror. A stocky, blonde-haired fucker in a black coat was moving through the snowfall, bathed in the Cruiser’s red taillights.
Spencer ducked, knowing more shots were coming, and steered without looking. Indeed, six more shots did pierce the rear windshield, and the Cruiser eventually picked up speed and was off. Spencer peeked over the dash, put himself on the right side of the road, and ran the next stoplight, turning a hard left away from Bolshaya Ulitsa.
Roman’s Mazda never quite stopped. Instead, he leaned over and opened the door, slowed down just enough for Shcherbakov to run alongside and dive in. They took off after the Cruiser, leaving Veniamin behind somewhere. Roman didn’t even ask if they should wait for him, he knew their priorities.
“He went around Yeltsin Uli—”
“I know, I saw.”
“Go, go, go!”
Spencer knew it was him. The man from the docks. In his bones, he knew it. The same way he knew Kaley wasn’t dead, the same way he knew the significance of pitbull, the same way he’d known the nature of the Nigerian connection. The man that had appeared briefly in his rearview mirror was the man from the docks, and he was a predator.
Spencer ran the next two stoplights, watching the headlights of one car gaining on him, running the stoplights just seconds behind him. He had no doubt it was the silver Mazda. They were on to him.
A pain in his arm suddenly seized him. The muscles tensed and the arm jerked the wheel to one side, nearly causing him to hit a van head on before he corrected it.
Spencer made another hard turn, and when he did, he slowed down to barely five kilometers and hour. Something smacked against the passenger side window. He looked, thinking he had hit a person, but it was a salivating wild dog, its teeth bared and biting at the glass, the beast’s eyes insanely fixed on his own. Not today, Fido. He floored it, and left the animal behind.
Another shot panged against the back of the Cruiser. He ducked, then peeked up over the wheel. In an instant, Spencer’s mind took a snapshot of his environment, absorbed the totality of his circumstances, and…
There!
He was moving south, coming to another four-way intersection. The light had just turned red. A line of cars were moving east and west in front of him. Spencer caught sight of a Cadillac which, in the field of his windshield, was just on the outskirts of his “screen.” He sped up to match its speed, knowing that as long as a car moving perpendicular to him stayed in the same place in his windshield’s view, he would collide with it (another fun fact courtesy of Hoyt Graeber, may God rest his crooked soul).
Anticipating the airbag’s explosion, Spencer put his hands on the wheel at nine o’clock and three o’clock—any other position might break his hands. He approached the intersection, moved around the line of cars waiting behind the stoplight, applied the brakes just a tad as a final adjustment, and…
He smashed into the back of the Cadillac at its rear, having aimed the raised V on his Cruiser’s hood at the spot on the Cadillac between the back door and the gas cap. Since the main weight of the Cadillac was in the front (the engine), it spun around, doing almost a complete 360-degree-turn on the ice, and causing cars coming from the other direction to slam on their breaks, lose control, and slide into one another, creating a little pile-up.
Having nailed the right spot at the Cadillac’s rear, Spencer’s Cruiser suffered only cosmetic damage, and continued forward losing almost no speed at all. The airbag, however, did go off. He’d relaxed his body a moment before impact to prevent injury, and shut his eyes to save them from the emitted white powder, but even so he was rocked and the world filled with white smoke and dust. His head smacked off the bag—like getting punched with a hard fist wrapped in a pillow—and then it whipped back against his seat.
Tires were screaming all around, horns were blasting, glass spilled across the road and fiberglass crunched and came away from a pair of trucks behind him. Spencer hit the gas. He had time to check his rearview mirror, saw the disorder he’d created and that the Mazda had had to slam on its brakes to keep from getting caught in it. The Mazda careened, and smashed into a fire hydrant, which was knocked over and burst no water like one might expect. The water was probably frozen solid.
Spencer chuckled, then winced, then chuckled again, then started coughing due to the smoke in the car. He could barely open his eyes to see. They watered and he fought to reach around the airbag to wrestle with what bits of the steering wheel he could manage. The airbag was rapidly deflating, allowing him some view of the outside world. However, the car was not responded to his foot on the gas.
The g-sensor. Shit. The g-sensor had tripped the fuel pump cut-out switch, in case of a bad accident and fire. The Cruiser was now virtually dead. Spencer pulled hard to the right side of the road, slammed on the brakes, and rode up onto the sidewalk a ways, knocking over a mailbox and sending pedestrians leaping in all directions. He finally slid to a stop and lightly bumped into the side of a closed bakery. He pushed the door open, staggered out hacking and coughing, wiping the dust from his eyes.
Sirens.
God damn it!
Spencer checked his arm. Bleeding pretty bad, potentially life-threatening. Something would need to be done about it soon or he would pass out.
Between the bakery and a neighboring automotive repair shop, Spencer found a narrow alley and dipped into it. With his good hand, he fished inside his pocket. Blinking back tears, still chuckling to himself, he checked the phone to see if it still had reception. One bar still. He looked up the zip code for Bolshaya Ulitsa, checked for clinics in the area. No clinics, but there was a hospital.
Shit. At all cost, he wanted to avoid hospitals.
While on the move, he used Map Quest to define a route. The nearest hospital was a few blocks from here, probably not accessible by foot, not out in this cold weather, not losing blood like he was.
He glanced over his shoulder, searching for his pursuer. He turned down another alley and was about to emerge on another street.
Spencer did a search for “treating gunshot wounds to the arm” and came up with a step-by-step process at WikiHow. He skipped the first couple of steps, which had to do with calling emergency hotlines and giving appropriate information, and went right to the treatment section. He winced as he pulled off his coat. Still on the move, he clumsily tied a sleeve tightly around his arm, between elbow and armpit. The website warned that shock would occur in most victims because of loss of body temperature.
Last he’d checked, the temperature out here was well below zero.
Spencer knew he couldn’t hail a cab or walk into a hospital wearing his jacket on his sleeve, and with his arm bleeding profusely, not without getting noticed. So, sirens closing in, he stepped out the other side of the alley onto a small street.
A sign identified it as Angliisky Prospekt. Angliisky Avenue. He searched it on his phone, found it, and then looked around at the street itself.
There were few people on Angliisky. A tall woman walking her two children was approaching him, and she had a long black coat with a tall collar. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out the Uzi. The woman gasped and froze for a mere instant, then put herself in front of her children. “Kurtka,” he said. He didn’t want to squeeze the trigger; that would only attract more attention, and put blood on his new coat.
A low, mournful howl on the wind.
Then, Spencer pointed the weapon at one of her children. “Kurtka. Seychas.” She gave him
her coat.
It all happened so fast, neither Shcherbakov nor Roman had any time to react. The Cruiser had smashed into the Cadillac, which set off a chain reaction and created a barricade at the intersection. Roman had tried to go around, but their speed was too great, and tire chains or no, the roads were just too slick. They smashed into the hydrant and overran it. Now, Roman threw the car in reverse and found it wouldn’t budge. Its undercarriage was hung.
“Come on!” Shcherbakov shouted, bailing out of the car. He was out way before the bigger man, bolting through the jammed traffic lanes and shoving over a man on his way to check on the safety of those in the pile-up. The wind pushed him to one side. Through the storm and darkness, he was starting to lose sight of the Cruiser. Though all around him things were moving in the blizzard, four-legged predators weaving through the crowd and knocking people over. A woman stepping out of her car had her legs taken out by a pair of them, darting into another alley. They’re after him, too, he thought, as insane as that sounded.
He spotted an elderly woman stepping out of her car to go and check on the injured, and was about to steal her car when he spotted the Cruiser veer over onto the sidewalk and smash into the bakery. When he saw Pelletier staggering out on foot, Shcherbakov smiled. He jumped over the hood of the car, slid and darted around a slow-moving van that was trying to get around the multiple wrecks.
Shcherbakov looked over his shoulder. Roman, overweight and awkward, was falling way behind.
Sirens were approaching. When he looked west, he spied three squad cars speeding angrily towards the wreckage. He hid his pistol by his side and jogged up behind the Cruiser. He peeked inside, saw no one and nothing besides a large spill of blood on the seat, and then moved along.
The Grey Wolf paused when he spotted the trail of blood in the snow. No easier trail in the universe to follow.
Rounding the alleyway he’d seen Pelletier run down, he brought his weapon back up. He moved slowly in a crouch, aiming his pistol at every corner, at each dumpster, at a mound of empty cardboard boxes, half crushed, forming the frozen roof of perhaps someone’s home. The trail of blood continued beyond this—
A howl. A loud one, and it was answered by at least a dozen others. They were all around, yet invisible, hidden within shadows or around the next corner. The howling grew in intensity, as close as the police sirens.
Then, Shcherbakov heard a scream.
Shcherbakov turned his gun in the direction of the woman’s cry, jogged to the end of the alley, and nearly fired when a woman came bolting from behind another dumpster, holding the hands of her two children. She spotted his gun, gasped, and leapt back, instinctively pushing her children behind her and up against the bakery’s walls.
Shcherbakov, gifted at assessing a situation, noticed something immediately wrong about her. It was freezing out tonight, yet she had no coat. “He took your coat?”
The woman nodded hesitantly.
“What did it look like? What kind of coat?” The woman stammered, muttering that it was long and black. She held up a beseeching hand. “Which way?” he asked. Quiveringly, the woman raised a hand and pointed left down the alley.
Shcherbakov dismissed the woman outright and covered the corner, slowly “slicing the pie” as he was taught to do in tactical approach, moving a few inches at a time around the corner, before he was sure the way was clear, then moved down the shorter alley and came out onto Angliisky Prospekt, which he knew pretty well. A few specks of blood, then a long tendril of it in the snow. He followed it along the sidewalk, then jogged in the middle of the the street, looking for a man in a tall black coat, but didn’t spot him. He looked at the ground, saw only a single speck of blood. Either Pelletier was done bleeding, which was not likely, considering how much blood Shcherbakov had spotted earlier, or he had staunched the flow somehow.
The wind chased snowflakes and leaves across the street. Shcherbakov searched the ground for footprints, but the salt trucks had been through this street and turned much of it into slush, and what snow there was had various vague footprints that were ruined by tire tracks.
He wanted the coat for a reason, and not just because he’s cold. He can’t walk around openly bleeding like that. Here was no casual fiend. Here was a predator at the acme of his skill and career. So where’s he going? Right now, right this instant, where could he—
Then, Shcherbakov had it. Hospital. He’ll hail a cab, or hop a bus. While pulling out his phone, he tried to recall the nearest bus stops to Angliisky Prospekt. Then, he realized that wouldn’t work. Why would he take a bus when another car will do just fine? He decided Pelletier would boost another vehicle within the next ten minutes.
He dialed up Roman. “Where are you?”
“I lost you down the alley. Where—”
“Angliisky Prospekt. Do you have a car?”
“A car? I…no…no, it’s stuck in—”
“Call the others, tell them he’s probably heading for the nearest hospital. That will be Chelyabinsk Emergency Medical Center. Tell them—” More howling, from up and down the street. People walking on the sidewalks all heard it, stopped, and looked around. “Tell them to send an anonymous tip to local police with this description: man with black hair, scar across his face, possible gunshot wound, wearing a long black coat.”
“I can do that.”
Shcherbakov hung up and walked to the center of the street, where a Ford Escort was moving slowly through the storm. He stood in front of it and held up his hand. The driver honked, but stopped nevertheless. He rounded the car, aimed his pistol at the driver’s head, and said, “Get out.”
Spencer opted out of the bus. He happened upon the bus stop quite by accident, and for two reasons immediately discounted it. First, there was no telling when the next bus would be coming, and it may never come on a night like tonight. And second, because the man hunting him was obviously very tenacious and likely knew this town very well, and therefore might guess this mode of escape.
A lone wolf howled somewhere behind him, almost lost in the wind, but not quite.
A few people were on this new street, but none gave him any odd looks. The coat fit him near perfectly, and he forced himself to walk upright, exuding normalcy. His arm screamed at him, and he barely noticed. Years ago, Dr. McCulloch had told him that psychopaths were first and foremost survivors, and that most were capable of putting basic needs and concerns on the backburner until they were free and safe. Like the night that Dmitry had cut into his face. Injuries usually filled Spencer with a fire deep inside, an anticipation for the reprisal to come. Getting shot was almost foreplay.
His first instincts were to turn back around and fight, but he knew that if he did he might bleed out. Even if he killed his enemy, someone would find him and, if he survived, it would be back to prison. I ain’t goin’ back, he thought. First the hospital, then Zverev, then this little blonde-haired fucker at my heels. He’ll follow me. I know it.
And he was never wrong about people.
Another mournful howl arose from somewhere. Much closer now. Three or four others answered in kind.
And I may even kill those fucking dogs, too.
What the hell were they, anyway? Wild dogs and wolf-mutts, no doubt, but why did they have such a hard-on for him? Spencer had a working theory on that, too, but it might only have been his addled brain trying to make sense out of an otherwise senseless evening.
The wolves of Siberia had been pushed around, some said driven even wilder since they had begun to multiply. A massive super pack wandering around, unchecked, unchallenged, killing at will. An answer to man’s push to hunt them down. They were pushing back, driven mad by the sheer size of their forces. Gaining in confidence. Gaining in intelligence. Turning the streets into a wilderness of their own—perhaps a massive wolf den was somewhere within the city?—and laying out clear lines of new hunting grounds.
But they’re not right in the head, Spencer thought, searching around for any further sign of them. It’s
like rabies, only what’s got them all twisted ain’t of this world. That might explain the ridiculous size of the pack leader (at least, Spencer assumed the dire wolf was the pack leader, because if he wasn’t, he’d hate to see the animal that was). Whatever wound Kaley had opened in the quantum foam, in that barrier between worlds, it was poisoning this reality. It had absorbed Officer David Emerson without care, it had apparently consumed an unassuming school teacher, so who said it couldn’t mutate a demented pack of wolves?
A convergence, he thought. Everything’s drawn to Chelyabinsk tonight. It’s the happenin’ place to be.
Another howl, much closer now.
They, too, were drawn to the strangeness of Kaley Dupré, just as Spencer was. God help him, she was a fascinating case. He could forget about her when she wasn’t around, but on the two nights their lives had crossed paths…She holds a glamour for the wolves, he thought. They smell something strange on her, and on anyone close to her.
The parking deck Spencer stepped into was mostly deserted. It belonged to some ten-storey office building, which had almost every window darkened. The only vehicle left in the whole lot was a Honda Accord, a 2013 model. Probably has an alarm, but it’ll have to do.
With a swift backwards elbow, he smashed open the window. The alarm started blaring at once. He slipped inside, disabled it (which took a bit longer than it should have because he had only one good hand), and then hotwired it (also taking more precious time).
Spencer was determined to reach The Heights on Fermilov Prospekt before the night was out. If he didn’t, Vitaly Zverev, or whichever vor was staying there and communicating with this Felix Azu person, might be gone as soon as they suspected Spencer was near. He had a very narrow window of time here, and it was closing fast.