Nobody's House
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“Gleb, you go to the right, I’ll go to the left. We’ll meet near those bricks.”
Moving carefully through the dry weeds I was proceeding forward. A bridge like a bridge, weed like weed. Ruins like ruins. Nothing special.
At some distance, from behind the third girder there appeared Gleb with his gun, gazing around. I stood on my tiptoes and waved over at him. Gleb raised his hand rather clumsily, and the weed near me blazed up, stinking and crackling. I jump behind a wide steel beam and roll over to the side. Above me there blazes a ball of fire, molten metal crawls down the beam.
“Idiot, stop it, it’s me!..”
The weeds are burning. A third blast blows away the side supports of the girder. I’m lying in a puddle, reminding all of Gleb’s relatives to the seventh generation. His head can be perfectly seen from here, and also a part of his shoulder in a worn coat. Perfectly seen. In the sight of my pistol, my handy pistol, with the long muzzle and the panel above the ribbed...
Stick my darned mug into the puddle! The dumb, bloodthirsty mug into the cold, stinking, god damned puddle! Until the very sight of the trigger makes me feel sick! It’s Gleb! I’ve been drinking vodka with him! I’ve...
I’m crawling the roundabout way. I’ll have to throw away my coat and my slacks after all that, my hands are covered all over with dirty, sticky crust, the shoelace on my left sneaker is trying to get loose all the time. The damned neurotic, I am.
I look out cautiously from behind one of beams. There he is, the bastard, stands half-facing me. I put down the weapon on the beam, not to lead myself into temptation, and stand up quietly. Gleb doesn’t see me. I come to him from behind, one step, another – and then some piece of metal clanks joyfully beneath my feet. In my fright I manage to act ahead of Gleb, who is turning around to face me; his sex-blaster flies away into the weed and we fall down dashingly. The next moment I hear hoarse hissing, I turn over on my back and discover above us, at a height of about five metres, an unattractive bare-teethed maw full of slime, with awe inspiring fangs.
Actually, I don’t complain about... What god damned reaction can you talk about when all the words I had wanted to shout out to Gleb stuck in my throat? I choked and covered my face with my hands. Gleb half-risen, and a thin, straight ray shot out from his small, clutched fist. The maw blew up with a wild roar, thick, swampy slime poured from above, and I finally fainted...
“Redhead, are you ok?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled without opening my eyes. “Yeah, just a minute... you burnt it, Gleb dear, burnt it, you piece of... hell of a guy you are. Burnt it, after all.”
“Burnt it, burnt it, you jerk. Let’s go, it’s a long way to Tipperary. And where’s your gun?”
“There, lies on the beam.”
“Why did you leave it there?”
“So that I won’t burn you by mistake.”
The expression of Gleb’s face showed such sincere childish puzzlement and offense that everything else I’d wanted to say faded away on its own. I lowered my eyes to look at Gleb’s fist, still clutched. Gleb followed my glance and loosened his fingers slowly. In his hand there was an old gas lighter, the one well known to me. So... once in century, even lighters can shoot. Gas ones.
“You know what, let’s get back, maybe we’ll make it.”
We arrived surprisingly quietly. Apparently our limit was used up. In the second storey window there loomed evil-looking Andrei, with a giant automatic rifle on his shoulder. “They armed themselves,” I thought. “Playing Schwarzeneggers...”
“They’ve been shooting here,” noted Gleb, who was up until then depressed and silent. “Here’s a burnt mark over there. And a new break in the wall. Even two of them.”
Andrei in the window clanked dashingly with the lock of his rifle.
“Hold, who goes there?”
“Fix your eyeglasses, it’s Gleb and I.”
“Stay where you are.”
“What are you, nuts?! Maybe you’ll shoot us in addition?!”
“If you get any closer, I will. Sure thing I will.”
“!..”
“And why the hell have you started shooting at us yourselves?!”
“Us? When?..”
“About ten minutes ago.”
We stared dumbly at the ragged holes with twisted, charred edges that had a place in the house’s faсade.
“Doppelgangers,” said Gleb quietly. “Marionettes.”
From one of the holes there appeared Oleg, tousled. “Let them go in,” he told Andrei, and disappeared again.
Andrei lifted his weapon and aimed it at us. Quite accurately, I might assure. Having tucked our weapons in our belts and raised our hands like idiots, we headed towards the house. The girls were awaiting us at the door.
“It’s ok!” they screamed happily. “It’s Redhead and Gleb, they’re quiet, they aren’t shooting anymore...”
Oleg got down to us. Behind his back, jutting out about a metre above his head, there was a long Samurai sword in a lacquered sheathe covered in hieroglyphs. Set a wolf to keep the sheep... He was obsessed with all these Oriental exotic stuff even before.
“You’d better produced a tank,” I muttered. “What the hell do you need a sword for?”
“I’ll put it on my wall. When we come back.” answered the newly discovered Samurai coldly. “Speak out.”
Gleb could recall next to nothing, so I had to be the one to speak. About the shooting and about the monster. And about the shooting lighter. When we came to the end of my confused story, Oleg, who had been until then walking up and down the room and biting his nails, stopped in a sudden.
“Hush, bandits! There’s a version. How do you like the idea of a test? A test for aggression. Or something of that kind...”
“Can’t you put it more simply?” begged Christine.
“Surely I can. You see, each of us has got some fear inside. And each of us has a different fear. I, for instance, can’t stand worms. And Bronya, suppose, adores worms, but is afraid of vampires.” (“I’m not afraid of vampires!” Bronya attempted to protest, but she was given a new apple, and the protest has thus been annulled.) “Redhead adores vampires, looks like one himself, but he can be frightened by a street fight. And will go ahead to fight out of fear. These are personal fears, all of them. And when we’re together, there appears a collective fear. A ‘crowd syndrome’, so to speak. And it can dictate a lot...