Astronomy(38)

The machine gun crews looked up from their work. Susan went, Uh oh. She could see things going south in a hurry.

She showed them the Thompson. Maybe, she thought, they’ll remember what’s waiting for them just beyond the firelight. She knew what Malmagden would say to that: People love to hate. Give them a choice of saving the human race, or crowding around to watch one of their own beat up some German whose name they don’t even know, and the human race is doomed, of course.

Malmagden didn’t help things when he explained how his ghouls would rape every virgin in Russia. Illyenov found enough breath to describe how he would tie Malmagden’s entrails to the bumper of a truck and drag him back to Berlin.

Susan sighed. This was not proving productive. She pressed her pistol to the back of Illyenov’s head. “That pleasure may have to await another occasion,” she suggested.

Illyenov froze. “Do you know who you are protecting? Do you know what Krzysztof Malmagden’s ghouls have done throughout the Balkans?”

“Don’t think I’m not embarrassed about this.”

“Do you know what his ghouls did to the Russian agents they captured in Berlin?”

“Shut up now,” Susan suggested quietly.

She pulled him off Malmagden with the muzzle of her Walther under his chin. She had no idea what to do next. That was bad. When combined with foresight and planning, a gun is an asset to any heated conversation. When one has no plan, a gun merely draws unwanted attention and hostility.

She looked up to see every kid around them with his gun aimed right at her head.

“You shoot me, he dies too,” she called out in Russian.

Illyenov could barely contain his amusement.

“My soldiers despise me. You use me for a hostage, you are a dead woman.” He raised his chin just enough to clear her gun barrel.

“Fire at will,” he called.

Rocks and earth tumbled down the slope far above. The sound was not so loud as the ragged breathing in Susan’s ear, but it was sufficient. A strained quiet descended on the glassified plain. Eyes met eyes as the silence stretched.

A snap—closer this time, a whisking crash as a tree flew over the top of the crater and slid down the slope above, roots dragging boulders as it went.

Not far from the tree, a kid setting up one of the machine guns waved this way, to the left. He raised his hands to call something out—and then he was gone. His screams filled the darkness where he had stood, and then they too disappeared.

Illyenov’s Young Communist League ran forward to pour fire up the slope. Something waited for them in the darkness. At first, Susan saw only muzzle flashes from their Masin-Nagant rifles. Then she saw this reflection from the campfire just above their heads. Did they see it too? One of the gunners raised his rifle and turned, as if at a sound, then disappeared.

One heartbeat of silence followed. His mates stared around themselves in stunned realization. Whatever was out here, it was among them.

They started toward the hydroelectric station on the cliff. A sensible move. Collapsed iron and concrete had to be a better hiding place than out here in the open. Susan thought about joining them.

Illyenov roared at them to hold this position. They stood bewildered. This uncertainty lasted till the first wave of smoke arrived from the campfire.

A shape appeared in the smokestream, so close Susan might have walked into it just pacing around. And Christ, the thing was as large as a PT boat. It just stood there. If a human face really did ride atop that giant carapace, it might have been grinning.

No one moved. No one breathed.

The shape in the smoke seemed to gather itself up before their eyes. For no particularly reason, Susan found herself watching this one kid. He had his back turned. He knew what was happening; she could see him sneaking little looks over his shoulder. He simply couldn’t face it. For one moment, she was in his skin. She knew his terror as if it were her own—with his back turned, the thing in the smoke was a dream. The world’s many terrors remained mortal, comprehensible.

Then it came on.

Glass crunched, cracks spider-webbed out to the horizon, chips flew like small-caliber rounds. The machine-gun crews broke for the hydroelectric station. The kid she was watching took a glass shard through his thigh. He grabbed it and went down. Susan’s last sight of him, he was staring up at something only he could see. His eyes were white balls. His lips were split back from teeth clenched in terror. And then he too was gone.

His comrades never looked back. They were half-way to the cliffs before his cries had died away. Something large and smooth and silent furrowed the smoke close behind them. Whatever it was, it was fast. But not so fast as a pack of terrified teenage boys. For a moment, Susan thought they had beaten it.