Chapter 37 - Masha
I had no idea how long I was unconscious, maybe only a few minutes, maybe well into the night.
I didn’t really know if it was day or night.
Rolling over on the dirty wood floor brought all my pain back to life, and I pried open my eyes to see I was in the shack, so it hadn’t been a particularly realistic nightmare.
The chair legs wavered into my vision, and I realized that at some point, my hands had been untied, but beyond getting repeatedly smacked, I didn’t remember too much.
I imagined myself standing and trying the door, raising the metal bar, and opening it to step outside into freedom.
For a second, I even thought I was doing it, but only my arm reached feebly toward the front of the small shack.
It took several minutes to roll onto my hands and knees, and by then I was sucking air through my busted lip, my cracked ribs shrieking for me to lay back down.
I spit out a mouthful of blood and began to lower myself back to my curled-up position.
But I couldn’t give up like that. Baldy and Greasy would be back again, maybe even with their boss, who wanted to watch my demise himself. I had to ignore the pain because I didn’t have much longer to attempt an escape.
A heavy footstep fell outside the door. I didn’t have any more time at all.
The burst of fear was intense but brief, and I rocked back on my heels to give them my most defiant stare.
Baldy came in first, looking annoyed, then amused.
He gripped me under my armpits and dumped me back on the chair.
Greasy clamped his paw around my shoulder to keep me from slumping to the side or sliding back to the floor.
It felt like I was on a boat in heavy seas, and I figured that was from so many blows to the side of the head. A big, blurry hand rushed toward my face, but I hardly felt it if he hit me at all.
“Ready to start over?” one of them asked. Their voices were remarkably similar, gravelly and mean.
“Not really,” I rasped through my sore throat. Had they choked me, or was it raw from swallowing so much of my own blood? I shook my head to clear it, but it didn’t work.
I felt what came next, a solid punch to my already battered ribs. A scream tore from my mouth, ripping up my vocal chords. Oh, right, the screaming, I almost forgot about that. It was impossible not to make a sound after a while, and when they were such experts at inflicting pain.
Just like I was. And they’d feel ten times worse when I was free.
When Anatoli found me. That hope was still keeping me upright, but it was getting harder and harder to cling to, especially when I could barely cling to consciousness.
Their angry questions echoed as if they were far away, though their fists were definitely close.
I continued to ignore them, drifting off into a daze.
Something jolted me out of my torpor. Greasy had whipped out a knife, and the gleam of metal from the dim lightbulb had me jerking my head up as he waved it under my nose.
“This is the last time I’m going to ask,” he said. “And you’re going to answer or die.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to answer. Didn’t he get it? I wasn’t going to say a word against my family, myself, or Anatoli. These freaks might kill me, but they’d have to skulk back to their boss and admit their failure.
He slashed the big blade right under my chin as Baldy grabbed my hair to wrench my head back.
They were just showboating; they weren’t going to slice my neck open.
No matter how I tried to convince myself of that, my heart was faster than a drumroll in my aching chest. I didn’t want my last view on this earth to be the side of Baldy’s shiny head or that dusty, dim lightbulb.
Cold metal pressed against my skin, and I heaved backwards with all my remaining strength, letting out a shrill, piercing scream of pure terror and desperation.
The chair toppled backward, and I hit the ground hard, knocking the air out of my lungs and ending the scream with a grunt.
Baldy’s hand gripped my shirt and pulled me up, but just as quickly dropped me to flop back against the hard chair.
My head thumped against the floor, and for a brief, wonderful moment, neither of them was hitting me or grabbing me or trying to cut my head off with a hunting knife.
I lifted my head, causing a bolt of pain that made my vision wink in and out.
Were there three people in the shack now, or was my vision going off again?
Then I heard a voice so sweet and familiar that it gave me the strength to push up onto my elbow.
“Masha,” Anatoli bellowed, cracking his forearm into Baldy’s face. Grabbing the back of Baldy’s head, he immediately whirled and smashed him into Greasy, who had started swinging at him from the opposite side. “Masha,” he said again, finally seeing me through the fray of flying fists.
Our eyes met, and I tried to smile. It felt awful, like my face wasn’t my own.
I’d taken hits before, but never so many in such a short period of time.
A look of utter fury froze Anatoli’s face, and his whole body seemed to be consumed by it as he smashed the two together again, kicking Greasy aside so he could break Baldy’s jaw with a jackhammer of uppercuts.
He seemed to be moving in double time while I was stuck in slow motion, trying to get out of the way of any falling bodies.
Where was the knife? I looked around on the floor, about to warn Anatoli to watch out for it, but a muffled explosion left a huge blood stain on the wall, and Greasy was out of the game by a close shot to the chest. As he slumped to the floor, the light fading from his mean eyes, the knife clattered onto the wood floor.
Baldy got a swing on Anatoli, disabling him long enough for him to dive for the knife and then scuttle toward me.
No way was I going to let that asshole use me as a shield.
I kicked him in the face just as there was a much louder explosion, and then Baldy’s head was no longer a shiny white dome, but a red, cratered mess.
“I knew it,” I said, letting myself fall back to the floor, no more strength to be found anywhere.
Anatoli kicked Baldy’s corpse out of the way and knelt beside me, running his hands carefully over my arms. I knew he would find me. I knew he would save me again. And this time, I wasn’t mad at myself for being grateful and found the energy to pull myself closer to him and hang on tight.
He kissed me gently on the brow, his eyes searching my face, cataloguing the damage while trying not to show me how bad it was by the reflected pain I saw in them. I must have looked like raw hamburger meat.
“There’s no time,” he said, a flicker of something I couldn’t read passing over his eyes. “Others are coming.”
I nodded, relaxing against him as he carefully gathered me close to pick me up. I could feel him tense as I coughed and had to spit out another mouthful of blood, but he kept moving, out the door and into the chill evening air.
“How long?” I rasped.
“About six hours,” he said, then his arms tightened around me. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
I blinked, certain I was fading in and out of consciousness, slipping into a dream.
Anatoli was apologizing to me, and for something that wasn’t even his fault, of all things?
It would have made me laugh, except it would have hurt too much.
I only had enough strength to hold on, so that was what I did.
He carried me down a narrow path lined with boulders and scrubby desert plants until he came to the same car we’d started out in, hidden behind some of the big rocks. It struck me as funny.
“All that and you didn’t even switch cars,” I murmured against his warm, sturdy chest.
“Had a few other things on my mind,” he said.
The punchy mirth ended in a short sob. “Svet’s dead,” I said. “They shot him.”
He nodded, his chin touching the top of my head. “You’re all right,” he said. “That’s what matters.”
Once I was tucked carefully in the backseat, I let my eyes close, feeling safe at last. He drove fast, the hum of the engine and movement of the car lulling me to sleep, where things didn’t hurt so much.
By the time we stopped, I felt like I could sit up and was even able to scoot myself out of the backseat when Anatoli swung open the car door at our destination.
We were parked in front of a long, low hotel with a flickering neon sign in the shape of a sombrero, which could have been anywhere in Southern California, but according to the signs on the doors as he helped me get closer, we had finally crossed the border into Mexico.
Taking out an old-fashioned key, he unlocked door number eight and helped me inside.
It was musty and warm, but there was an air conditioning unit against the window that rattled out cool air when Anatoli punched a few buttons. He helped me sit on the bed, and I leaned forward in a fit of dizziness.
“That wasn’t great,” I admitted, surprisingly not concerned about him seeing me so weak and vulnerable.
“I can imagine,” he said, and not at all sarcastically.
I tilted my head to look at him, but if he was recalling everything I did to him when he was my captive, it wasn’t simmering in his eyes.
There was only compassion there now as he stroked the back of my head.
“Get in bed. I’m going to ditch the car and find you a doctor. ”
“I don’t need one,” I said, groaning as I swung my legs up.
He snorted, helping me get under the covers and fluffing the flat, lumpy pillows behind my head. The musty smell was subsiding as the air conditioner continued to grind out a low, comforting noise.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, smiling as he used his old threatening tone.