Katja from the Punk Band (11 page)

This is what it comes down to.

He just wants to go home.

Breathes once.

In.

Out.

Aiming, squinting past the blur of the tears in his eyes.

Fires.

The gun jumps more than he expects, but he hears the bullet impacting in one brief, high-pitched explosion. The recoil sends him stumbling to one side but he recovers quickly, snaps the gun up to eye level once more, ready for whatever might come.

One of the car doors opens but he’s still too dazed to properly tell which, and his finger is squeezing on the trigger, but then something happens and everything goes insanely bright as if the arcade’s lights have suddenly come to life. The side of his head is stirring with a strange heat and he’s on his knees without any idea of how he got there.

There’s a sound, a siren, but it’s just in one ear, a screaming pain.

He turns and sees someone: it’s Katja, Katja looming over him, swinging something in her hands.

He holds out a hand and shouts, “Wait!” but the word is faint and gurgling and so he tries to say it again.

His head swims, his movements slow and dragging as if he is underwater.

“I . . . uhhh . . .”

His tongue is fat and thick in his mouth.

His vision pulses, throbs, and he’s aware of a small trail of saliva spilling out of the corner of his mouth.

“Nikolai?”

He’s still holding his hand out to her, waving it at her blindly.

“Stop,” he manages.

And then she’s beside him and it’s her guitar she had been wielding, now placed on the ground beside her.

“Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing? Fucking
shooting
at me?”

“I . . . uuhhh . . .” Another pulse, another. “I thought it was a trap. . . . I thought they were waiting for me.”

“Shit, are you okay? Your head . . .”

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “My throbs are just templing a little. I mean . . . am I bleeding?”

“Uhhhhh . . . yeah.”

There is a gash across the side of his head from his brow line to his ear and it’s glistening in the low light amidst the dark swathes of his hair. When he looks at Katja he isn’t focusing properly on her.

“The man who took you . . . where . . . ?”

He tries to get to his feet, has to lean on Katja but he’s scrawny enough that she can take his weight.

“He went inside the arcade.”

“Arcade . . . ?”

The word doesn’t make sense to him at first and he has to fight to understand it, but before he can manage it, there is a shout from somewhere nearby.

“It’s him,” Katja hisses and her grip on Nikolai softens. He collapses again onto one knee.

“Get up!” she shouts, pulling him to his feet with one arm and grabbing her guitar with the other. It’s a reflex action, one she’s learned from dozens of hastily abandoned gigs, and she looks across at the entrance to the arcade as Aleksakhina comes out.

“Hey!” the man shouts, and he reaches into his jacket. Pulls out a weapon.

“Run!” Katja cries and she’s pulling Nikolai along behind her, slings the guitar around her neck as she drags him toward the alleys that line the streets.

A shot is fired and it ricochets off a trash can, sending it spinning across the sidewalk in front of the two fugitives, almost taking Nikolai out. He stumbles across it and they vanish into the tiny gap between two stained, crumbling buildings.

Another shot rings out and they keep going, squeezing through the gap awkwardly, Nikolai unable to remain in a straight line for any length of time. Katja ducks into a doorway, pulls him in after her. Twists her guitar neck around and uses the same string she used to undo her cuffs to poke into the keyhole, and there’s another clunk and she opens the door, steps to one side, pushes Nikolai through and he falls to the ground inside. She takes one last glance along the alley, thinks she sees a figure at the far end, follows Nikolai in, closes the door and leans against it.

Her throat is tight and burning from the exertion and she has to fight the urge to cough and clear out the trach tube. Nikolai is sprawled out beside her on the bare floor like a chemical party leftover.

Through the heavy metal of the door, Katja listens for the sounds of Aleksakhina coming for them, but hears nothing. She coughs, unable to hold it back any longer, and for a few moments afterward is ready for the door to be kicked in behind her, but everything stays calm.

Calm.

“You okay?” she asks Nikolai finally because he’s hardly moved.

“I can’t,” he says blearily. “Not right now.”

“What? Are you okay?”

“Whuh?”

“Nikolai?”

She leaves the guitar leaning up against the door, moves across to him.

The flow of blood seems to have stopped and is clotting in his hair now. She checks the wound but there isn’t much light in the place. A bruise is quickly forming next to his eye socket.

“Sit up,” she tells him and he does so, with her help.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“How many whuh?” he asks.

“Fingers. Look at me. How many fingers? Can you see?”

“Three,” he says without focusing properly.

“Look at them first.”

“I am.”

“Nikolai, I’m over here.”

“Whuh? Oh.”

“Shit.”

She decides they’ll need to stay for a short while at least; there is no way he’ll properly keep up with her if they have to split now.

She looks around for the first time, and it’s like some sort of workshop, but one that’s not been used for some time. Metal shelving is pinned to most of the walls and the only window has been blacked out either deliberately or with the natural build-up of grease and dirt. Old machinery is mounted on racks, blades blunted and chains rusted.

There’s a sink in one corner and she tries the taps but isn’t surprised when nothing comes out. Finds a pile of old rags on a worktop and takes one, uses it to dab away some of the blood from Nikolai’s face.

He watches her while she does it and his pupils seem more direct, more alive now.

“Feeling any better?”

“A little. At least there’s only one of you now.”

“Yeah, that’s always a bonus.” She dabs more blood away. “Look, I’m sorry for hitting you but you fucking shot at me, you know? What the fuck were you doing?”

“I thought they would be waiting for me. Using you to lure me out.”

“They?”

“The chemical gang, the people that kidnapped you.”

A faint, brief smile emerges on her face and he likes how it changes her into something softer.

“Chemical gang? Shit, no. That was no chemical gang.”

“Oh.” And he catches himself, as if something has become clear to him all of a sudden. “Uhhh . . . another boyfriend?”

“Jesus, no. My parole officer. Aleksakhina.” And she can’t help but notice relief on his face.

“Oh. I . . . So what’s he doing going into one of Szerynski’s arcades at this time of night?”

“Who the fuck knows . . . wait . . . how do you know the place is Szerynski’s?”

She’s staring right at him, the trach tube wavering slightly, distractingly.

“I . . .”

A beat.

“I play. A little. Used to compete.”

“You know the man?”

“Only by reputation. I mean, I’ve heard his name mentioned.”

She takes these answers, considers them, stores them for later use.

“Whatever. He might be involved in this, then.”

“Does it matter? We should just go, get out of here.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Aleksakhina. He took the vial.”

A weight drops in Nikolai’s chest. “You don’t have it?”

She shakes her head.

“What did he take it for?”

“He’s up to something. His type always are.”

“So . . . what now?”

And he’s intimately aware of how it’s just the two of them, huddled in the middle of the old workshop. The sound of the rain is like a distant war that doesn’t matter.

Katja drops the blood-stained cloth and gets up. Brushes aside some of the dirt from the window but it’s still impossible to make anything out.

“Wait there.”

And she opens the door slowly, carefully, leans her head out and steps through.

Checks the alley in both directions and goes back inside.

“Can you walk?” she asks Nikolai.

She reaches out, helps him to his feet and he staggers somewhat, steadies himself.

“I’m okay.”

“Do you still have that gun?”

He has to think about it, then realizes he doesn’t.

“I must have dunked it . . . dropped it . . . back at the cash. The car. I mean the car.”

She gives him a pained look. “You sure you’re okay?”

He nods, and instantly grimaces as pain shoots across his temples.

“I don’t see anyone,” Katja says, slinging her guitar across her back and around so that she wields the neck like a crowbar. “But be careful, okay?”

He nods and winces again.

Together they edge out into the alley, squinting through a light drizzle and the blurred streetlights. Nikolai has to use the sides of the buildings as support but manages to keep up with her. The pain is subsiding now.

Or maybe he’s losing consciousness.

Katja holds him back as they reach the opening that leads back out toward the arcade.

“Shit.”

“What is it?”

“The car’s gone. Aleksakhina’s gone.”

“My car?”

“You came in your car? Where?”

“I left it farther up the street there, next to a dumpster.”

“I can’t see from here.”

“But Aleksakhina’s car is gone? He’s gone?”

“Looks like it.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

She turns, fixes him with a look that is one step away from a dirty uppercut.

“That means the vial is gone.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

And she says, “Shouldn’t have run. Goddamn. Should have just stood our ground, we could have had him. We had the gun.”

The gun.

And she’s running out toward the arcade now. Nikolai takes a few moments to comprehend this, then follows her. She’s scanning the ground for the gun, pushing aside torn newspapers and pieces of trash, can’t find it. Aleksakhina must have found it.

She looks around the neighbourhood as if for inspiration but none comes.

“What do we do now?” Nikolai asks. “Try and find him?”

“I guess,” she answers, unconvincingly.

Without the gun,
she thinks. Tightens her grip on the guitar for reassurance. Turns and takes another few paces toward the dead arcade. There is a concrete area out front, pieces of broken glass from vodka bottles, and lots of little shot glasses like the cogs of some translucent machine scattered around.

“Where are you going?”

But she doesn’t listen to him, striding carefully between the debris so as to not make any noise, watching for signs of movement coming from within the darkness of the building. It seems somehow wrong, perverted, for a place of such energy and brightness to be so still.

Unnatural.

Her fingers absently squeeze the cold bulk of the guitar.

Nikolai is lurking somewhere behind her, half crouching as if trying to hide amidst nothing more than the acid atmosphere.

“We have to go inside,” she tells him. “He was up to something in there. I want to know what.”

The shutters are down across the entrance and there are no visible windows. She creeps around the side of the building, stops, motions at Nikolai.

“Are you coming or what?”

And he’s about to answer when they both freeze — voices coming from inside.

Nikolai is still standing before the entrance when a gunshot rings out from inside. Katja ducks around the corner instinctively, drops to her knees. Another shot. Another.

There’s a commotion, then a metallic tremble. The shutters are being opened.

Katja calls to him but Nikolai, he seems stuck there. It’s a fifty yard sprint to get back to the safety of the alleys they just came out of, more than that in any other direction.

“Get over here!” she shout-whispers.

There’s a hand at the bottom of the shutters lifting them up and it sounds as if the pneumatics that operate the door aren’t being used. The door is being forced open.

“Nikolai!”

He thinks of his machines back in the apartment, the electronic solace they offer, the pixel-heavy haven that’s rescued him so many times. He thinks of pills and powders, spoons and straws.

“Nikolai!”

The shutters are open to knee-height now and the person opening them, they’re scooting down to slide under.

And then something snaps inside Nikolai and he’s moving, sprinting toward the side of the building where Katja waits in the shadows for him, an ice-white arm reaching out.

As he pushes himself in beside her, they hear footsteps crunching on broken glass, heavy breathing.

“Is that Szerynski?” she asks.

Nikolai peers around her cautiously.

The figure stumbles across the kerbing outside the arcade. Stops. Turns, perhaps to see if anyone is following, perhaps because he heard them in the alley.

Moonlight swirls around the fly-like glasses he wears.

The pair duck back into the shadows and Nikolai pins Katja to the wall.

“Well?” she asks.

“It’s not Szerynski,” he tells her.

“So who the fuck is it?”

Swallows. “His name is Kohl. Vladimir Kohl.”

Who the hell is Vladimir Kohl?”

Snap-whispered as the man moves farther away, toward the glittering streetlights across the junction.

“He works for Szerynski,” Nikolai says.

And he tenses, staring straight ahead, deliberately not meeting her eyes just in case she sees something there he’s not ready for her to see.

How do you know him? Did he send you? You’re after the vial, aren’t you?

Swallows.

But she doesn’t ask those questions — instead, another:

“What is he doing?”

They both watch as Kohl stops dead. Backtracks several paces, hesitates, then begins forward again. Looks down at his feet, stops. Waits for several moments then restarts his journey, this time without pause, all the way across the empty junction.