by Alma Boykin
“What? What’s going on?” a woman asked in Russian.
“Its me, Babushka. Come on.” Alexi backed up and his grandmother crawled toward him. She looked tired, a little thinner, and worn, but her eyes seemed bright and her cloud of white hair and her pink dress were just as he remembered. “This way. We have to hurry.” The storm noise grew louder.
“What? Oh, yes. Tell later. Run now.” She followed him down the rope ladder a little slowly. He remembered to grab the iron brush.
“Run, John Johnson,” Coyote called after them.
His grandmother gave Alexi a strange look. “What’s that?”
“Later. Your car is by the gate.” He looked to the west and saw the mortar and skull lights storming toward them. “Hurry!”
The gate screamed with rage as he opened it. His grandmother got into the driver’s seat and started the engine as he tossed his kit into the backseat and loaded a shotgun. “Where?”
“South. We’re east of Greeley, Babushka.”
His grandmother drove like, well, like a mad Russian taxi driver. Alexi spent half the time scared out of his mind and the rest praying to any saint or angel in the state of Colorado to get the other drivers out of her way. No wonder his father wanted her to give up her car and move to town! He could see Baba Yaga coming closer and heard her cursing them. What to do? Alexi looked down at the iron brush lying on the seat beside him. He rolled the window down and chucked the brush out.
A flash of light blinded him, and a forest appeared where open pastures had been. He heard curses, and the skull lights grew dimmer as the car pulled away.
“That will not stop her, Alexi Nikolai,” his grandmother said, not looking away from the road ahead.
“No but it will slow her.”
He stared out the windshield. Ten minutes later, the skull lights reappeared in the rear view mirror. Babushka swore in Russian, slowed just enough, and swung the big car into a screaming turn. The skull lights overshot the curve, but returned to the chase within moments. What next, and where was Sokolov? He heard panting, and a red glow appeared beside the car.
The mare, now billowing flames, and Coyote paced the car, running as fast as Babushka drove. “I owe you my freedom, John Johnson,” the mare called. “I’ll distract Baba Yaga.” She dropped back and began weaving across the road, throwing red sparks with each stride. Then she darted east and the skull lights followed. Coyote kept pace with the car, tongue lolling, silent.
They’d made it onto the Interstate before Baba Yaga resumed pursuit. Babushka and Coyote wove in and out of traffic, scaring years off Alexi. And they were about to run out of gas. “My turn, John Johnson,” Coyote panted. “Your gods be with you.” He spun around, howled, and ran against traffic toward Baba Yaga, scattering semis as he went.
Alexi covered his eyes. He didn’t want to see the wreck Coyote was about to have. Babushka took the next exit and slowed down, no longer going 120 in a 60. Alexi started breathing again. The car sputtered, wheezed, and Babushka guided it into the parking lot of a cemetery. “You bring gas can?”
“Um, no Babushka. I forgot.”
“You forgot?” She threw up her hands, then unfastened her seatbelt. “Should be one in trunk.”
“I’ll check,” he said. He rested the shotgun on the huge bumper and opened the trunk. You could hide half a cow in the cavernous space. He sighed and started moving blankets, sacks of cat litter, and the spare. A gas can, one of the illegal, good metal kind, appeared when he heaved the tire out of the way. As he reached for it, he heard tires squall behind him. Alexi threw himself backwards, out of the trunk and onto his rump on the still-hot pavement. He grabbed the shotgun as he fell. “Ow, damnit.”
“Mother defeated your friends, and I’ll stop you,” Ms. Sokolov said. He heard feet in high-heels walking toward the black car.
“Oh go play in the Siberian snow,” Babushka called from the car. “And stuff a pine tree up your …” Sergeant Alexander Zolnerovich blushed at his grandmother’s language. “And then you can …”
He wanted to put his hands over his ears. Instead he rocked onto his knees, shotgun at the ready. He peered around the rear driver’s side bumper and saw Sokolov with a huge knife in her right hand. Her left hand glowed the same way the skulls did, and she drew back to throw something at the car. It was a skull!
Alexi fired as she launched the magical missile. Blam!
Sokolov staggered, collapsing, her back torn apart by the 12-gauge’s blast. Bright white light shone on her as she fell, knife still in hand. “Freeze!” a new voice called.
Alexi set the gun down, then froze.
“Keep your hands up and nobody move.”
A Highway Patrol officer approached sideways, service pistol and flashlight in hand. “What’s going on?”
Alexi heard Babushka start carrying on in Russian as exhaustion and fear overwhelmed her at last. Her calls to the Lord and saints for help gave Alexi an idea. “No, Grandmother,” he called in English, then Russian. “He’s not KGB! Not KGB!”
She wailed louder and the officer turned to him, pistol still at the ready. “What’s going on?”
“I think she’s having a flashback, Sir,” Alexi said, hands still in the air, trying not to squint at the light in his eyes. “Grandmother and Grandfather got out of Russia with my Dad and two more kids in 1963, just as another crack down started. The neighbor had disappeared that morning.”
“What’s her name?”
“Ekaterina Boroslovna, Sir. I’m Alexander Zolnerovich, her grandson. US Army Reserve.”
“Don’t move, but see if you can calm her down.”
As Alexi reassured Babushka in Russian that they were in the USA and nothing could hurt her, the Highway Patrolman got a look at Marsha Sokolov’s face. He backed up, called for assistance and an ID trace, and then ordered Alexi to put his arms down. “You and your grandmother are two lucky folks, I hope you know. This gal is wanted in connection with three missing persons.”
An hour later Officer Mitchell helped put five gallons of gas into the big car. “Damn, this has been a bad night and it’s not even the full moon any more. A wrong-way driver on the Interstate, a possible serial killer, and your grandmother having a nervous breakdown. Sergeant, between you and me, I’m going to need a beer when I get off duty.”
“I need one already, Sir, and I still have to get her home. Anyone hurt by the wrong-way?”
“No, but a bunch of cars damaged and drivers scared sober. Be careful, will you?”
“Yes, Sir.”
They got back to the house without further incident. Ivan the Purrable met them at the door, complaining mightily about how terribly Alexi had mistreated him. “Yeah, and why is there no more food in your dish, huh?”
“Oh you poor little thing,” Babushka crooned, picking up the cat and carrying him into the living room, then giving him an entire can of tuna.
“Right. Babushka, I’m going to bed.”
“Good night, dear.”
As he lay down, Alexi thought he heard a coyote calling from the back pasture. Well, he yawned, coyotes were common in the suburbs.
Rested, showered, and shaved, Alexi felt more like a human the next morning. Apparently Babushka’s powers of recovery equaled his, because he followed the smell of food to the kitchen and found a feast waiting. An enormous breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, blintzes with lingonberry preserves, and pickled fish finished restoring him to life.
“Babushka?”
His grandmother sipped her tea. “Yes?”
“What was Baba Yaga doing in the first place?”
Babushka held the cup with both hands. “She wanted house and property, I don’t know why. When I refused her permission to come onto land, her daughter tricked me into stepping outside house. I don’t remember much after that.”
Alexi was not pleased with the loose ends that left dangling. “That does explain how she ended up with the house keys. But why turn over the icons and cover the mir
rors?”
“The saints can’t protect what they don’t see.” Babushka gave him a patient look, as if he ought to know that. “Or so grandfather told me, back in Old Country. The mirrors?” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Alexi had a sudden idea, but kept it to himself.
Babushka wagged a knobby finger at him. “Now, tell me about girlfriend. You do have one, don’t you?”
Alexi cringed. And he still had a week before he could fly home. “Um, no, Babushka, I don’t have one right now. It’s complicated.”
She glared at him from under white eyebrows, pinning him to the chair. “Really.”
“Er, ah, well, it’s like this, Babushka …”