“Jesus!” the man hissed.
* * *
The man stood in the open doorway with the wind swirling, and the snow like a thick veil. It was bitterly cold. He stared down at the bottom step and saw the trail of the boy’s footprints, doubling back, milling for a moment of hesitation, and then heading away into the darkening afternoon towards a far away fringe of trees.
The tour guide stood close behind him. The man turned back grim-faced. “I need my jacket, my bag, and my gun,” he said.
The guide paused for just an instant. “The boy can’t have gone far,” he offered, “not in this weather without warm clothing or supplies. He might come back when you’re gone.”
The man shook his head. “No,” he said. “He’ll keep going until he runs into trouble.”
It took several minutes for the guide to return. He carried the canvas bag, hanging heavy from one hand, and the man’s old leather jacket slung over his arm.
“The gun?”
“In the bag,” the tour guide nodded.
In just a few minutes the footprints at the bottom of the steps had already begun to blur, filling with fresh snow so that the outline had lost clear definition.
“He can’t have more than fifteen minutes head start,” the tour guide said.
“That’s enough to get yourself killed,” the man pointed out.
He shrugged on the jacket, zipped it up until he felt it cinch tight around his neck, and then turned the collar up. He tucked the gun inside the waistband of his jeans and waved a grim farewell to the tour guide, but at the last instant the man snatched at him, holding him back for one final second.
“Find the boy and bring him back here to the museum,” the tour guide said. “There’s another exhibition here you both need to see. It’s important.”
“I don’t know how long that might take.”
“It doesn’t matter. The museum will stay open.”
The man said nothing. He went down the stairs, out into the smudged light of the afternoon, and disappeared behind a swirling wall of snow.
* * *
Part 2:
The boy ran into the fading afternoon light as the snow storm swirled and misted the air, and the wind moaned through the ruined factories. He ran with his feet driven by frustration and smoldering hatred; he ran until the freezing air made his lungs ache and stung his eyes until they watered.
He ran until he could see nothing but snow and farm fences and a grove of gnarled brown trees. And then he stopped suddenly, bent over at the waist, with his hands on his trembling knees and his breath sawing painfully across his throat.
The stand of trees was ahead of him, across several lanes of road that were now buried and made indistinct by drifts of snow. He turned right at a sagging street sign and walked with his head bowed, the gusting wind like a fist in his back. He was freezing, the biting cold turning his forearms mottled blue and stinging his cheeks. Up ahead he could see the dark shapes of more buildings – a dilapidated strip of old single story shop fronts and a burned out building set apart on a distant corner.
The snow was knee-high in places, thick around the low shrubs that bordered the sidewalk and clumped around the steel roadside guard rails. As he got closer to the corner, the trees thickened and he realized there was a gentle fold in the ground where a creek had cut its path. The contours of the icy ground were rimmed with more trees and he trudged down the embankment, across the frozen ribbon of water, and threw himself down into the snow, concealed by the reverse rising lip of the ground.
Through the thin veil of the tree line, the boy could see the long flat roof of an old gas station mounded with drifts of snow, green and gold signage, and several gas pumps. Beyond was a brick building; a roofless rectangle of four burned walls, the windows smashed, the glass entry door hanging ajar and the brickwork blackened by soot. Snow was drifting in through the dark openings and piling up along the walls of the building. There were peeling paper signs along one of the side walls, advertising car batteries and soft drinks, and beneath them, a closed door.
The boy lay in the snow with his teeth chattering and a seeping numbing pain stiffening his fingers and hands. His breath misted into clouds of fog as he studied the abandoned building. He could see no movement through the darkened holes of the windows. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the sickly grey sun through a drift of snow. Long soft shadows were creeping across the land and night was coming on quickly.
The boy hunched his shoulders, clawed his fingers into the snow and coiled his body like a sprinter, ready to spring forward from the riverbank – when suddenly his legs failed him and he slumped back into the ice as if a heavy club had struck him down, gasping and panting in ragged gulps.
He was terrified.
Fear was something he was accustomed to – an old acquaintance that had been his shadow since he was old enough to understand the horrors of survival in the refugee camps, but this sudden monstrous black crush of terror was something else, something more sinister and insidious. The realization left him profoundly shaken and he glanced with wild-eyed alarm about him as though death must be just a moment away.
He held his hands up to his face and saw they were trembling, and he clenched his jaw tight and frowned, trying to will them to stillness. Then the biting cold came soaking once more through the thin clothing and his whole body broke down into a paroxysm of shivering.
“I’m scared,” his mind fluttered into a state of rising panic. He was alone and unarmed in a hostile world and suddenly now he regretted the impulsive resentment that had driven him from the museum and from the safety of companionship.
He closed his eyes, inhaled a deep breath, then opened his eyes again and felt the clammy tentacles of his panic loosen their grip a little. He cupped his hands together and blew warm breath on them, kneading each knuckle to urge them into movement, ignoring the tremors that lingered in the tips of his fingers – busying his mind as a bulwark against the seeping danger of terror.
“You can’t stay here,” he told himself grimly. “And you can’t go back. You can’t. The only way is forward.”
The boy steeled his resolve and rose to his feet in a cautious crouch, blundering over the crest of the shallow embankment and clinging to the thin cover of the trees until there was no more shelter between him and the gas station. When all that remained was a white mantle of open snowy ground, the boy broke into a sprint for the closed door set into the side wall of the distant building.
He ran like his legs were mired in molasses, each stumbling stride seeming to carry him no closer. He clenched his jaw, felt himself trying to shrink from sight, vulnerable and exposed as a dark shape against the stark white of the snow. He ran with his face wrenched by the strain, and the soft snow sucking at his feet, he ran with his arms pumping and his breath straining.
He reached the wall at last and slammed his back against it, gasping hard for air and trembling again. His face was flushed. Despite the freezing cold he could feel sweat trickling down his spine. He sucked in three long deep breaths and then turned his attention to the door. It was not locked – the freezing steel of the knob turned easily in his fist – but the bottom of the door remained buried under a foot of snow and ice. The boy kicked at the ground with the toe of his boot and the sound was a horrendous grinding in the eerie silence.
“Damned fool!” he berated himself for the careless error. He edged forward to the front of the building and stole a glance around the corner.
The gas pumps were standing like ghostly soldiers, covered in cobwebs and grime, and there was rubble on the concrete slab where parts of the long wide awning had collapsed. Keeping his back against the coarse abrasion of the brick wall, he shuffled towards the nearest broken window and peered past the jagged shards of glass into the gloomy interior of the building.
There was no roof, but still the space was cloaked in near darkness. He could make out looted steel shelves, and an old serving counter against the far wall. A broken cash r
egister lay on the ground amidst a pile of litter and broken boxes. The interior smelled of rotting trash and paper and the mustiness of vermin.
Snow blanketed dark humped shapes in the corners and disguised the blackened roof beams that sagged and sprinkled every surface with a peppering of charcoal dust. The boy edged past the window and pulled the glass door open. It was covered with an opaque film of grime and dirt. It groaned on stiff hinges and the boy felt his body cringe. When it hung open just enough for him to squeeze through the gap, he lunged inside, grateful to be concealed, and sighing with sudden relief.
Suddenly, from below the level of the broken window, a dark hulking figure sprang to its feet and crashed into the boy with a tackle that drove the air painfully from his lungs and flung him hard against the corner of a steel shelf. He felt a sharp stab of pain in his side and then he went crashing to the rubble-covered ground with the figure still on top of him. The attacker wore a long dark coat, he was snarling and hissing. The boy tried to scramble away but a hand like a steel claw seized his leg and he went stumbling into the serving counter with a rending crash of broken glass and wood.
The boy rolled over, scrambled away until his back was pressed against the counter and tried to push himself to his feet. The dark shape of the attacker emerged, rising to his feet and towering over the boy like some evil demon from the depths of a nightmare. His face remained hooded, his shape broad-shouldered. He laughed, and the sound of it was cruel and vicious.
The boy kicked his heels into the rubble and rolled away. There was another steel shelf before him. He pulled it crashing down as a barrier between himself and the attacker, and then came shakily up onto his toes. The attacker shut down the space, hunching his shoulders as he closed on the boy. He kicked the shelf aside and it skittered against the brick wall with a sound like a thousand crashing cymbals.
The boy held out his hand, palm up. “I don’t want to fight you,” his voice cracked with his fear. “I was just looking for shelter.”
The attacker snatched back the hood of his cloak and sneered. His face was swollen with cruel fury. “Well you came to the wrong fuckin’ place.”
He was a full-grown man with cruel black eyes and a scruffy beard. His nose was long and beaked, the mouth twisted into a snarl. On one of his cheeks was a swirling tattoo pattern. The stranger twitched aside the tail of his coat and suddenly the wicked blade of a knife glinted dully in his hand. He went into a crouch, thrusting out the hand holding the weapon, stirring the blade – and the boy watched, mesmerized with gruesome fascination.
The stranger cut through the air, forehand and then backhand, and the glimmering blade of steel blurred into a deadly silver smudge. He took a small step to the side, cutting off the boy’s direct line of escape to the open door, and then flexed the spring in his knees, warming stiff muscles, coming up onto his toes like a boxer at the sound of the bell. The boy let out an involuntary exclamation of fright and the attacker’s snarling expression corrupted into a menacing grin. His tongue flicked wolfishly from his mouth.
The boy edged away until he felt the corner of the walls hard against his back, debris and wisps of grey dust scuffing under his feet. He could feel himself trembling with adrenalin and pure fear. The dark attacker pared back his lips revealing the yellowed broken stumps of his teeth. He dipped the blade of the knife down low, holding the weapon underhanded in his fist, and then slashed the air again with a wicked cutting motion that blurred the steel and sent it singing in a low glinting arc.
“Please,” the boy’s hand was shaking. “I’ll go. Just let me leave.”
The dark attacker crunched closer across the broken rubble, his black eyes narrowing to demonic slits. He took a long sudden stride with his right leg, like a fencer in the lunge, planting his foot down and following through with the knife arm extended, all of his weight and momentum behind the thrust. The boy saw the movement with a split second to spare and as the attacker came forward like a black-winged vulture swooping to land, the boy blundered aside, throwing up his arms and clenching tight the muscles of his stomach so that the knife swished into empty air and the attacker stumbled, over-extended and off balance. The boy made to run for the door but the attacker’s free arm lashed out, catching the boy across the chest. It felt like a steel pole had struck him. The wind went from him and he staggered for a moment. The attacker’s arm slid up until it was bulging sinuous around the boy’s throat and he pulled him backwards, at the same time trying to bring the wicked blade of the knife around in a wide swinging arc to plunge it into the boy’s chest.
The boy felt the man’s forearm crushing the cartilage of his larynx and in frantic desperation he drove the point of his elbow backwards, into the attacker’s open and exposed ribs. He heard a guttural grunt of winded pain, and he cocked his elbow and drove it again, harder, into the same soft spot. The attacker’s grip relaxed for an instant, and the boy turned within the encircling arm so the two figures were locked together chest-to-chest in a macabre flailing parody of an embrace. The attacker brought the blade up high over his head and swung down. The boy caught the man’s wrist in his open hand and for a long moment they struggled, swaying as they wrestled. But the boy was no match for the man’s sinewy strength. He felt the attacker’s shoulder muscles bunch and writhe, and then slowly the point of the blade began to descend inexorably towards the boy’s face. The boy’s eyes grew wide with debilitating fear. He shifted his feet and managed to hook his boot around the back of the assailant’s leg. The man countered by spreading his weight to brace himself, but one of his feet snagged on the corner of a broken piece of steel shelving – and they went crashing to the hard ground, still locked together in a confused tangle of arms and thrashing legs.
For a long ungodly moment the world was eerily silent; the only sound was the boy’s ragged broken breathing. He rolled off the attacker – scrambled away across the floor – and then realized suddenly that there was a spreading slick stain of blood, spilling across the concrete floor and soaking into the dust. He raised his trembling hands and held them up to his face. There was blood on his fingers, and more on the concrete where his boots had kicked across the ground.
Then the boy lifted his eyes to where the attacker lay and saw the ugly dark handle of the knife protruding from the man’s chest. The weapon was buried all the way to the cross piece of the hilt, driven through the flap of his dark coat and then between two of his ribs. The attacker lay very still on his back, his eyes closed, one arm flung wide, the fingers of his hand curled and stilled into a claw.
The boy got to his feet and stood over the body, wavering and teetering, his eyes wide with enormity and shock.
“I’ve killed a man,” the words echoed in his mind swirling and enormous, incomprehensible.
He said it out loud, “I’ve killed a man,” and the sound of it tolled savagely, overwhelming him with a euphoric rapture. He stared down at his bloodied hands, seeing them now with new eyes – seeing them as weapons, and a violent primal instinct gripped him so fiercely that his senses were overwhelmed and his breath burned in his chest.
He stood over the prone body for a long time, clenching and unclenching his fists, riding the tide of his emotions and drenching himself in the ferocious thrill.
When at last the red mist cleared from his eyes, the boy crouched over the body and slowly drew out the blade of the knife. It came free reluctantly, a soft sucking pressure around a fresh gush of blood. He left the weapon on the ground and peeled off the man’s heavy coat. He was shivering with the cold and aftershock, and he wrapped himself in the warmth, then brushed his palm over the sticky stain of blood.
Then suddenly the figure lying on the floor grunted, then groaned in a pitiful shattered whisper, “God, I’m dying –”
The boy froze. The blood drained away from his horrified face.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, the pain!” the man at his feet cried out in a cawing gust of panic, and then lapsed into dry wrenching sobs. The hand that had been clawed
slowly swung from the elbow and clamped itself over the terrible gaping lips of the wound, and through the trembling fingers pulsed fresh blood. The man opened his eyes, unfocused and sightless. “My God, I’m bleeding to death. I don’t want to die.”
The boy staggered backwards, his eyes not large enough to hold all his horror. The man lifted his bloodied hand, reached out to the boy beseeching him for help. “Please,” his voice broke into more wet feeble sobs of despair. “Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to die.”
The boy backed away as though seeing a ghost. The terrible anguish in the dying man’s voice plucked at the fibers of his mind, each word, each sob tearing small fissures until at last he felt himself beginning to cry oily tears of devastation and guilt, and he dropped to his knees and crawled to where the dying man lay.
“I’m so sorry!” the boy broke apart with grief. He wrenched the coat back off his shoulders and wadded it into a ball under the man’s head. He was breathing uncertainly, each exhalation like a last wheezing gasp. The boy gently lifted the man’s hand away from the gaping wound. The skin was cold as marble, clammy to his touch. He stared down at the wide livid lips of pale flesh, puckered and ragged as though torn apart. He pressed his palm down over the knife wound trying to staunch the flow of blood, and his whole body began to shake.
“You’ve killed me,” the man’s eyes drifted back into focus and he was glaring into the boy’s face, his eyes suddenly accusing and filled with hatred. “You’ve stabbed me.”
The boy shook his head. He was blubbering, his face streaked with tears, his lips trembling. He felt utterly bereft, overwhelmed by the glaring accusation in the man’s eyes and the profound enormity of taking a life.
The man’s face had turned waxen grey, his features seeming to melt before the boy’s eyes. His eyes rolled up into his head and then came slowly back into focus. There was a sheen of perspiration across his brow and blistered above his lip. The man’s lips were dry now, flaky. He tried to lift his head, tried to pluck at the boy’s arm but his fingers were slick with his own blood and the strength was melting away from him.
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