by Arthur Slade
Which left a clear path for the others to shoot me. They brought up their guns.
I leapt up and smashed through the tiled roof. I was pleased to discover there was at least a foot of clearance. I scrambled left, then right, zipping along above the tiles, climbing upside down by clinging to the wooden ceiling. My enemies were shooting holes in the suspended tiles on either side of me. Dust and smoke filled my lungs, but I kept barrelling along, working my way through the suspension wires and electrical wires and dust bunnies. Soon the shooting was farther behind me.
I paused to listen. I’d lost track of where I was. They had stopped shooting. Hallgerdur barked something in Russian and I tried to slow my heart so I could hear their heartbeats or footsteps. But my ticker was racing madly.
I couldn’t help picturing Dermot being blown to pieces. Stop it! Stop it! Focus! I told myself.
Then the tile behind me exploded in a spray of bullets, light shining through the newly-formed holes.
The tile right in front of me that I’d been thinking about crossing became perforated. It was a game of tic-tac-toe die. They were going to keep shooting until one of the tiles turned red. But did they want to flush me out? Or did they know exactly where I was?
And were they still concerned about keeping my insides intact?
The tile behind me erupted with holes. The smell of dust and gun smoke was enough to choke me now.
They knew I was here. I inched ahead to peer through a bullet hole. Hallgerdur was below me, standing on the pine floor of the bowling lane. She was eyeing the tile over to my left. There was a short burst of gunfire farther away. So maybe they didn’t know where I was.
I sucked in a breath, tightened all my muscles, then shoved hard off the ceiling. I smashed through the tile, turning like a cat in mid-air so I was directly facing my enemy. She began to raise her gun, but I knocked it from her hand and slipped my other arm around her neck. It was, I must say, the perfect move. A ten from the Russian judge!
Perfect, that is, until my feet hit the polished floor of the lane. Both of my traitorous clodhoppers shot up and I thumped down hard on my derriere. Luckily, I brought Hallgerdur down with me. She tried to bash me with her head in order to get me to loosen my hold, but I used the gutter to push off, and, in a moment of grace, I was standing again with her head in a headlock. Bulldozer and two others were several feet away pointing their pistols at me.
“Don’t move or I’ll break her neck,” I shouted. Some spittle came out at the same time, which was a sign of me being a little frantic.
Hallgerdur had stopped struggling, but turned her head enough to glare at me. She was either playing possum or had nowhere near my strength. Why would she need it? She was a sharpshooter. Extra muscle would be a waste.
One of the men said something in a guttural language, and Hallgerdur hissed, “No.”
I took a step behind me, dragging her along. And then another step so we were now in the next lane and nearing the fire exit. I hoped the door wasn’t blocked.
The mathematical part of my brain noted that there were only three men in front of me. The fourth was out of sight. That made me nervous. Maybe he was in the washroom updating his Facebook status.
“I am going to enjoy when Anthony cuts into you to remove those vital parts,” Hallgerdur said, her voice perfectly calm. “I will be there in the operating room. He listens to me. I will be certain you have no anaesthetic. And I will, during every moment of your horrible pain, remind you of this moment.” Her words were raspy in part because I was squeezing her throat so tightly
“That won’t be happening,” I said. “I’ll die before you can cut me open.”
“That can also be arranged,” she said.
“If you want to live, you’ll just move back with me, ever so slowly. I imagine those men are good shots. But I’m fast enough to use your head as a shield.”
“I’ll make a belt of your entrails,” she said.
Ouch! She was getting primitive. What had Dermot ever seen in her? “No. For killing Dermot, if he is dead, then I’ll be wearing your entrails as a belt and your heart as a flower decoration thingy.”
Damn! I was sinking to her level. But without any eloquence. Why did Shakespearian insults flee my mind in moments like this?
“He was not the same anymore,” she said. She almost sounded wistful. “He was tougher once. More interesting. The boring should die.”
I kept squeezing her harder and her breath grew ragged. “Don’t say that! He was good. Good! He wasn’t boring!”
I couldn’t make out her next sentence. I dragged her back, nearly to the exit door. I stepped onto the final lane.
A pair of hands shot out of the bowling pit, knocking aside the pins and grabbing my legs. The hands pulled hard enough to make me fall.
8
Bowling a Strike
As I fell, I twisted my arms. It was a move my sifu in Mexico City had taught me. It was not wushu, but a deadly tactic he’d learned on the streets.
Hallgerdur’s neck made a cracking sound.
I hit the floor, let her roll away from me, and tried to grab onto the gutter. The assassin who had a hold of my legs was pulling me inside the pit with one hand while the other was holding a rather large eviscerating-type knife. He stabbed at me and I jerked to the side. The blade stuck in the wood. I broke a bowling pin across his head but it didn’t slow him; his skull seemed to be made of stone. He stabbed again. This time hitting the meaty part of my left thigh. Pain shot through my leg. I gritted my teeth and desperately grabbed beside me. His stabbing motion had brought him forward, and I’d found a bowling ball with my other hand, slipped my fingers into the finger holes, and swung it like a wrecking ball at his head.
It connected. Full force.
Can you say rotten grapefruit?
It was the grossest thing I’d seen since I’d accidentally kicked the head off of a mobster. I nearly threw up, but instead shoved his body away and glanced back.
Hallgerdur was laying still. Her neck was at such a sharp angle that she was clearly dead.
I’d killed Dermot’s ex-girlfriend. He was going to be so mad at me.
Then I remembered. He was likely dead. Or at least I couldn’t be certain what the explosion had done to him.
Part of me didn’t believe that someone as tough as Hallgerdur could be dead. But her heart had stopped beating—I couldn’t hear it. And her chest wasn’t rising. I was tempted to grab her feet and pull her over to be sure. Mom had always said it was permissible to kill in self-defense. So I wasn’t feeling too much guilt.
Plus she had shot Dermot. Twice.
The blood coming out of my leg was slowing. Partly because pressure from the tactical suit was squeezing off the wound. But when I tried to move, it did squirt a bit and the pain was nearly unbearable.
A noise drew my attention. Bulldozer was charging like a locomotive through the alleyway in the pit area. I knew if he got a hold of me, I’d be the train wreck.
I grabbed at the bowling-pin resetting machine to help me stand, slipped in the blood and gore, then got up again and stumbled toward the exit. Flight was the better side of valor and there was no point in dying here.
Bulldozer was faster than it seemed possible for someone so bulky. He must have launched himself the last few feet, because he struck me right in the back and we plowed into the exit door and skidded onto the street. The bright light blinded us both, but he recovered first and grabbed the manacle swinging from my arm and clamped it onto the bar of the door handle. Then he swung a fist at my head, intending to pulverize it.
I ducked and he punched a hole in the door. I hated to think what would have happened to my skull if he’d connected.
He punched again and I ducked again and another fist-sized hole in the door duly appeared. I’m not sure I can do this dance all day. Not with my leg the way it was. Besides, the other two agents would be here any moment, so this time I did something stupid.
But also brilliant.
I deflected his next punch, nearly breaking my right arm in the process. But his blow snapped the bar on the exit door. My manacle came free.
Then I set my good leg, grabbed the bar, and snapped the rest of it off in one smooth move and jabbed it into Bulldozer, knocking him over.
I fled.
In my best shape I could have easily outdistanced him, but not today. I didn’t dare look down at my leg. Despite the pain, I was able to find a bit of speed. Soon there were bullets flying, spraying bits of pavement at me. I stumble-raced past the building where Dermot and I had rented the apartment. The second floor—our floor—was a great big gaping hole that still belched smoke and flames. Dermot had been inside that mess. And there would have been no time for him to escape. Several Swedes were out on the street, still waiting for the authorities to arrive.
Adrenaline helped me push through the pain. Bulldozer was after me, even with the broken door handle sticking out of his side and his arm bloody from where Hallgerdur had shot him. He would put the Terminator to shame. The Swedes saw him and scattered like chickens. I didn’t blame them.
But I had gained a bit of speed now and I turned a corner, ran a few feet, and quickly climbed a fire escape, grunting each time I used my left leg. I was out of sight on the rooftop before they could catch up.
I lay there, catching my breath, taking a tally of what parts of my body were still working. I could move my arm. Good. I could think. Good. My internal organs seemed to be functioning properly. The wounds were not superficial, but not so horrible that I’d die. They’d just slow me down. I tore off a piece of my tactical outfit and tied it around my thigh, effectively slowing the bleeding. With a few days’ rest, I’d be good as new.
There was a whirring in my ears that I assumed was the rushing of my blood. Or just the adrenaline pounding through my system.
Then I squinted. A dark, dreadful shape appeared above me in the sky. A drone—a small one with four propellers and a camera. If it’d been armed, I’d be dead. But it was watching me.
I. Really. Hated. Drones.
Someone was coming up the ladder and, judging by the grunts and the shaking, it was Bulldozer. Likely whoever was piloting the drone was telling him exactly where I was.
I stood. Looked at the other rooftops. The farthest one, if I was in perfect shape, would be a long jump. But I didn’t have much choice, so I ran toward it.
It dawned on me that the other assassins were likely climbing the fire escape in front of me, following the information the drone gave them. About the time I had that thought, a bullet whizzed by. I turned in mid-stride to present a smaller target. One of the assassins was at the top of the ladder ahead of me, his pistol flared with each shot. I jumped, kicking the gun from his hand and smacking his head next, sending him down the fire escape.
I landed on the next roof, surprising myself. I was better than I thought!
The drone followed me as I dashed along the tiles. I’d never escape with those electronic eyes watching. I skidded to a stop, found a loose brick, and threw it at the buzzing bundle of electronics. The drone zipped out of the way.
“Just my luck,” I shouted. The person controlling it was an expert—I gave him the finger, and thought I heard laughter come from the machine.
“Run, run as fast as you can gingerbread Amber,” it said. And I recognized Hector’s annoying voice. “Don’t trust the fox to help your plan, that’ll be the end of the gingerbread woman!”
Great, not only was he trying to kill me, but he was also wrecking childhood songs.
There was more clanging on the fire escape behind me. One of the ZARC mercenaries took another shot, so I ducked behind a chimney, then ran bent over and leapt to the next building.
I almost made it. I banged into the wall, caught the very top bricks. Luckily, I could dig my nails in and I still had enough arm strength to pull myself up or I would have been a pancake.
This roof was slanted at a sharp angle, and with my bum leg, it only took a few steps before I tripped and started on a slide that would end with a three-story fall. I grabbed an antenna, probably wrecking some Swede’s thousandth viewing of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I crawled up to the chimney, using it to shield myself from the pistol fire of the mercenaries.
The drone hovered like an aggravating giant insect. “Best to surrender now, Buttercup,” Hector said.
This time I grabbed three bricks. I popped up and aimed at the drone, throwing to the left and to the right. I aimed the third brick just below it.
I missed with the first. And the second. But the drone darted down to avoid both of them, and my third brick hit with a satisfying smack.
“I’ll get you my toothy friend! And your little mom, too,” Hector shouted as the drone spiralled down to crash into the concrete below.
I’d taken out their eyes. And punched Hector in the electronic nose.
But I’d also exposed myself to do that, and one of them caught the edge of the chimney with a shot.
The bullet didn’t hit me, but the shards of brick did, temporarily causing blindness. I slipped and rolled down the roof, knowing all along that I was about to take a very hard hit.
My eyesight cleared just as I reached the edge of the roof. I grabbed at the eavestrough and missed.
Then, I fell.
9
The Gravity of the Situation
Thank the city of Uppsala for food recycling bins. It was a wheeled bin and fortuitously, a rare lazy Swede had left the lid up. I landed feet first in sludge and half-rotted foodstuff. The bin was deep enough to slow my fall and stop me from breaking my ankles. The left over lefsa and Swedish meatballs squirted and squished their way up the pantlegs of my tactical outfit. The force of my impact made the bin roll down the street, and I became grimly aware that this whole scene likely looked comical from a distance.
I couldn’t get out of the gunk. “Shit. Shit. Shit,” I hissed. Any moment one of my pursuers could race around the corner, and I’d be shot to death in a pile of rotted food. Human food! An ignoble death for a vampire if there ever was one. The stuff was sucking me down like quicksand.
Then a sane, clear thought popped into my head. My struggling was making me sink. So instead of trying to kick and fight my way out, I just reached forward and grabbed the side of the bin and pulled, yanking myself out with a thwurrrping burping sound. I threw my gunk-caked body over the edge, landed, and tried to run. My feet slid and I was looking very Charlie Chaplinesque for a few seconds before enough of the crud and slime came off that I found traction.
I ran like a smelly wind, turning down a back alley. I cut left, then right, certain my friends wouldn’t be far behind. After a block or so I stopped leaving footprints. I couldn’t hear another drone. But the shot to my shoulder, the stab wound, and general exhaustion were catching up with me.
Dermot and I hadn’t cooked up an escape plan. We were walking on a wire with this operation, and there were no European safehouses for us to retreat to. I couldn’t draw on whatever was left of the League—which might just be a few support staff. I didn’t even have my passport.
All I had was a small, glowing sense of satisfaction.
I’d killed Hallgerdur. She’d seemed unstoppable last time I met her. But she was dead.
This satisfaction didn’t help my leg bleed any slower. Nor did it make me feel any better about Dermot. But the world was a shinier place without her in it.
I kept to the alleys, trying not to attract attention. I was not your typical tourist and, thankfully, the few Swedes who did see me didn’t get in my way. Maybe a bleeding, smelly assassin was just normal for them. Or they were too polite to point out my appearance.
At one point I stumbled and lost my footing, smacking into a row of recycling and garbage stations. I’d read somewhere that the Swedes used their garbage for energy. I’d almost become a part of their system.
I saw three connected buildings across the street with flags flying out front. The first section
was a light reddish stucco, followed by a mostly glass structure, and finished off with a taller slate-gray building. There were at least a hundred bicycles out front. A big sign in the shape of a badge said Polis, and there was also a collection of white and blue cars with police lights on the top.
I could just duck inside the station, shout, “I’m an assassin from America,” and I’d be safe. Well, safe depending on how well-armed the local police were—I assumed they didn’t just round up criminals with hockey sticks and ski poles. But I would arrive with several suspicious wounds and no passport, so I’d be locked up in a cell in no time. And entered into their computer system.
I was pretty certain ZARC could crack their little Swedish codes and find me. So I limped past the police station, moving with as much speed as I could muster. I crossed a bike lane and four car lanes—what passed for a major thoroughfare in this city. There were a few trees kitty-corner from the police station that had grown up next to a small river. I leaned on each tree as I moved along, choosing not to take the bridge across the water. There were brick apartments on my left. I darted down an alley to avoid several joggers—they were certainly fit in this country. Everything was so damn clean—I wanted to apologize to each citizen I came across for all the blood and gunk and other stuff leaking off of me.
But instead I bled a bit more here and there and stumbled along. I was glad this wasn’t the middle of rush hour. Even their downtown seemed extremely inactive. I did come close to passing out once or twice.
I stumbled around a corner and saw a word that made my heart glow.
Bibliotek.
The sign was at the top of a brick building with several rectangular windows. It was like seeing an oasis in the desert. In fact, I was so enthralled by the sight that I stepped out onto the street and a small car narrowly missed me. Jeez, that’d be just my luck! Killed a few steps from safety. I bumbled along to the sidewalk, failed to stop properly, and knocked over three bikes, which caught the consternation of several bystanders. They began to yell at me, but I didn’t know the language and it all started to sound like swearing. I threw my teetering body toward the side of the building, leaning on a green art installation for a moment. Then I climbed up the steps and made my way into a short passageway.