Birds and a Stone. Anastasia Novykh

worry that much! Maybe, the granny has misheard. Or a young company parties, launching petards. I was young myself, and I know how it can be.”

      “I see,.. look at this “old man”,..” Major uttered with short breath.

      Rebrov fell somewhat behind. He tried to run as fast as he could. His body was falling apart from terrible pain, and each shake-up was felt in a burning liver colic. His feet turned numb. There was a hum in his ears and a mist in his head. But Rebrov still continued this race so arduous for him as if he was surmounting not the two city blocks, but a distance equaling to his lifetime.

      Chmil turned around. Looking how much effort Rebrov was making in order to cover the given distance, he felt his heart clench. The senior lieutenant dropped speed and aligned with Major.

      “Listen, why are we running like hell?! Let’s walk a little. The old woman might have had a nightmare, and we are hurrying for a date with her at 3:30 a.m. like idiots!” and then he added wittily, “Are you and I some gerontophiles, or something of that sort? As for me, I have a strictly traditional sexual orientation.”

      “Run forward!” Rebrov croaked.

      “Forward is forward... I don’t mind really,” and Chmil went on ironically, “Eh, so it be! After all, as the saying goes, one should experience everything in life... Hey, what if I visit that granny myself? I would find everything out, and you’ll wait in the department till we sort out our relationship...”

      “Life isn’t all beer and skittles...” Rebrov tried to respond likewise with a joke, choking with rapid running.

      A block of nine-storey apartment buildings remained behind at once. There began labyrinths of small private houses.

      “Where are you, Chmil?” Rebrov called to senior lieutenant.

      “Why? The street is on that side!” he pointed.

      “No... there,” Major waved and started to run in the front, showing the way.

      Awaken by the patter of their feet, dogs set up restless barking all through the neighbourhood. Finally, there appeared the needed street, and the necessary last house at the corner, located on the crossroad. Rebrov ran up to the wicket and stopped, drooping over it and trying to recover his breath. Chmil also bent, leaning his hands against his knees and catching his breath.

      “It’s truly hard… to keep pace with you,” he said, puffing.

      Chmil raised his eyes at Major who got fishily quiet. Rebrov stopped dead, holding his breath and staring at something inside the yard. And, should he not lifted his hand showing “Attention!”, Chmil would really think he passed away. There was light in the side and front windows of the house, probably in one and the same room. People’s shadows showed up behind the curtain.

      Rebrov opened the wicket silently and entered the yard together with Chmil. A dead dog was lying in a small dark puddle. Chmil squatted down and touched the sticky liquid with his finger. “Blood”, he nodded assent.

      “Approach from the left,” Major whispered, pointing at the side window.

      Chmil nodded again. Bending down and making short dashes along desolate outhouses, he reached a low fence separating the yard from a little flower bed near the house, faced by the side window. Despite his impressive figure, the senior lieutenant jumped over the fence almost noiselessly and disappeared in the dark.

      Rebrov wiped sweat from his forehead, pulled his gun out of the holster, released the trigger lock and approached the door. His heart was throbbing inside his chest, resounding in the whole body. His breath was quickened. His hands were trembling of the fast running and extreme overstrain. His throat was parched. He seized the handle and slightly pulled the door. The latter yielded easily because it appeared to be open. Rebrov opened the door a little as accurately as he could and entered the house inaudibly. Moving ahead in the dark almost by touch, he stumbled on something soft and carefully squatted. In a faint beam of light coming from under the next room door he discerned an old woman’s hand. He felt the pulse. It was default, however the body was still warm. “Apparently, the lady’s taken on the first attack,” flashed through Rebrov’s mind. “And it’s happened very recently...” Major overstepped the corpse, holding the grip of his gun tighter, and started noiselessly moving towards the ribbon of light.

      Having reached the next door, he again slowly pulled it. This room was a communicating one. The light was switched on in a neighbouring premise on the left. There was exactly from where the child’s cry was being heard. Male voices were brutally demanding money. Muted knocks and groaning wafted. Rebrov squatted near the doorway and peeped out carefully. Two armed gangsters in black masks were beating the house owner who was lying on the floor, fastened down, and were demanding to show them a place where the money was kept. One of them had an automatic gun hanging over his shoulder, the other one held a pistol in his hand. A third bandit was standing on the left, holding an axe and watching the action of his pals. There was a boy behind him who was tied to a radiator next to the window. He was plaintively crying, screwing up his eyes with fear. A woman was lying on a couch to the right, bound with a linen rope and gagged.

      Rebrov frantically tried to think out what to do next. But, all of a sudden, the gangster with the automatic gun grasped the man’s hair and, pointing to the child, yelled: “Watch, you rubbish!” He beckoned to his pal, and the latter lifted the axe against the child’s fragile body. The boy let out a deafening squeal...

      Rebrov as if got discharged. Not taking a single instant to ponder, he made a dart, shouting out some standard phrases and not even hearing his own voice. The only thought frantically pulsating in his mind was to rescue the child at any cost. At that moment he felt as if a bright sizzling ray pierced him from behind in the back of his head. It seemed to have exploded inside his body, generating multiple shivers like after a mighty discharge of electric current. From that very moment, Rebrov’s perception pattern completely changed. Thoughts disappeared. Lucidity and absolute peace set in. Time seemed to slow down.

      He saw a gunpoint aimed at him, but felt no fear. There was only lucidity of mind and cold intention. His eyesight was concentrating unusually and clearly fixed how the bullet was flying out of the gangster’s gun barrel. Rebrov mechanically deflected his head from the bullet flight path. And only afterwards he saw the fire bursting from the round black outlet.

      He glanced at the right shoulder of his adversary. Strangely, Rebrov neither his clothes nor even his skin, but just a shoulder joint being torn by a bullet. He pulled the trigger mechanically. And, in an instant, the bullet pierced his adversary precisely in the target point set by his eyes. Acting almost automatically, Rebrov took a jump incredible for his age towards the gangster with the axe and stroke the gangster’s chest with his left foot as if he practiced Oriental fighting techniques during his entire life. His adversary heavily knocked against the wall, then bounced back off it like a ball and fell to the floor, having dropped the axe.

      Rebrov slightly turned his head to the right. The third bandit, having let go the man’s hair, was already raising himself and aiming the automatic gun at Major. Rebrov acted rapidly, easily and coherently as if he had been practicing these movements for years up to automatism. He kicked off the gun aside and then held it down with his right foot. Carrying on with the movement, halfsquatted, he turned his entire torso and struck a mighty blow from behind the gangster’s ear with his left elbow. The bandit collapsed unconscious, having fallen straight on the house owner. Rebrov shifted the gun into his left hand and started to pick up the automatic gun with the right one. At that moment, he fixed something strange with his side vision.

      Major turned his head. In the Further in the communicating room, near the doorway where he had stood a second ago, he saw a transparent shining silhouette. Its features were further becoming clearer and more distinct, and finally an image of a beautiful face appeared. The creature’s gaze was penetrating deep into the soul with any hindrance, illuming its most secret stratums with its light. Rebrov felt he could neither endure the power of this gaze, nor he was able to turn away from its delightfully pleasant and kind gravity rejoicing his heart.

      However, in a second, to Rebrov’s ineffable amazement, his side vision worked in such a way as if he looked straight at what was happening