12. Mikhail #2
I shove Veronica toward the pantry, the only cover left. “Crawl!” I shout, and she does, teeth gritted, hair in her eyes. I pop up over the counter, empty my clip into the doorframe. One of the men drops; the other returns fire and the edge of the counter explodes in a cloud of laminate.
My shoulder is on fire. When I look down, I see the blood, a black stripe soaking through my jacket. I don’t have time to care.
In the distance, something catches—a whoosh, then a billow of smoke.
The sharpness of accelerant hits my nostrils.
They’re burning us out.
I grab Veronica’s wrist, pull her up. She doesn’t make a sound, but her eyes are wide and terrified.
We make for the back, the only exit left. The smoke is thick, choking, and the gunfire is closer, echoing off the drywall as the last man pushes inside.
We’re almost to the door when another round hits me. This one’s high in the shoulder, and it spins me half around. I slam into the frame, gun hand numb, but I hold on and force the Glock back up. I squeeze the trigger until it clicks dry.
The man in the hall comes at us, a meat slab in body armor.
I reach for the knife at my belt, but Veronica moves first. She grabs a glass ashtray from the shelf and hammers it into his temple.
The blow staggers him, just enough for me to lunge forward and bury the blade in the seam between helmet and jaw. He goes down hard, taking me with him.
Veronica hauls me up. There’s blood on her face, her hair, her hands. She doesn’t hesitate. We limp through the back door into the yard.
Outside, the fire is licking up the side of the house, painting the windows orange. The front of the house is crawling with shapes—more men, more guns. I shove Veronica toward the tree line and tell her to run.
She turns back, eyes wild. “Where’s Sergey?”
I look over my shoulder, smoke and pain fuzzing the edges of my vision. “Go!” I bark, and push her again.
I don’t wait to see if she obeys. I turn back toward the burning house, dragging my dead arm behind me, and go in after my brother.
Smoke is the first thing I feel when I push back through the door.
The kind of smoke that chews at your windpipe and gets down into the blood.
The heat is worse—my skin crawls with it, like a thousand insects burrowing under my jacket.
My left arm is numb and the world tilts every time I take a step, but I keep the Glock up and ready.
Sergey is somewhere inside. I can hear the chaos at the front—the crash of bodies, the bark of Russian swearing, the thunder of gunshots—but the rooms are a maze now, walls breathing in and out with the pressure of the blaze.
I skirt the perimeter, using what’s left of the walls for cover.
My boots slip on something slick. I look down and see that the kitchen floor is a sea of broken glass and blood.
I keep moving. At the end of the hall, one of the tactical guys is face-down, blood running from a hole at the base of his skull.
I don’t waste time checking if he’s dead.
In the living room, the heat is so bad it peels the paint in strips, makes the skin on my face go tight.
Through the rippling air, I see Sergey at the far side of the room, crouched behind the ruined shell of a love seat.
He’s out of ammo—his pistol is gone, replaced with a knife in his left hand and a chunk of busted chair leg in the other.
There’s three men in the room with him, all in black, moving in a half-circle.
They’re shouting at him to get down, but Sergey just grins, blood in his teeth.
One of them lunges. Sergey jams the chair leg up under the guy’s chin and then plunges the knife into his thigh, twisting hard.
The man screams and drops, but the other two open fire, but Sergey drops out of sight.
But only for a second as they pause to re-load.
Then he’s up again, stumbling, swinging the bloody knife in a wide arc, catching one of the men in the forearm before they both tackle him to the ground.
I fire twice, catching one in the kidney and the other in the thigh.
Both go down, but they drag Sergey with them.
I limp across the floor, every step an argument with my own body, and drag Sergey free by the collar. Somehow he’s unharmed—I don’t know who shoved good luck charms up his ass when he was a kid, but he’s covered in blood and only a little of it is his. His eyes are open and wild.
“Misha,” he says, the word a raw scrape. “You’re hit?—”
“Come on,” I say. “We’re leaving.”
I get him up under the armpits and half-carry, half-drag him down the hall toward the rear. More gunfire pops outside and I remember in a flash of panic that I left Veronica alone. Running. I hope she’s made it.
But when we reach the back door, she’s nowhere to be seen.
Through the window, I catch a flicker of movement—two men in black drag her through the mud. She lets out a strangled shriek and her hair is a tangled halo around her perfect face—a face streaked with blood. She’s fighting them, hands clawing at their arms, but they’re too strong.
She screams Sergey’s name. It cuts through the fire, through the pain. Sergey lunged forward, but I have to hold him back.
I shove the Glock into his hand, and force his fingers around it. “We’re not done here,” I say.
He nods, and posts up by the frame.
I step outside. The air here is a thousand times better, even with the smoke.
I draw my backup piece and limp after the men hauling Veronica.
They’re moving toward a black SUV, engine running, lights on.
She’s screaming now, but it’s a different sound—raw and desperate, like she’s being pulled apart.
I raise the pistol, aim for the head of the man nearest her, and squeeze the trigger. The slide jams. I rack it, blood from my fingers smearing the grip, and fire again. This time the round goes home, and the man drops, but the second shoves Veronica into the SUV and slams the door.
I limp forward, but my legs betray me. I fall hard and catch myself on the raw edge of the porch.
The SUV peels out and mud and gravel spray into the air. The taillights burn red against the night.
The burning house behind me is a living thing, moaning and cracking as it eats itself alive. I hear Sergey fire one last shot from the doorway, then nothing.
The SUV disappears down the road, Veronica’s pale face is pressed to the rear window, her hands splayed against the glass. The fire reflects in her eyes, orange and bright, and then she’s gone.
I want to get up, to chase, to do anything but bleed out on this ruined lawn. But I can’t do anything but roll off the porch and onto the grass. I stare up into the night, listening to the house creak and screech as it's devoured by the fire.
I’ve failed.
If this is what dying feels like, I hope it ends quick.