6
Dmitry
“Cocksucker,” I yelled, crouching behind the stone wall that I had been forced to crash my car into. These fucking Americans and their need to build everywhere had made it impossible for me to lead him into the park. The smoke still poured thickly out of my crumpled hood and into the sky as another round of bullets ricocheted off the wall in front of me and into the grass before it.
He had an apparently never-ending supply of ammunition.The fucking pig.He’d chased me halfway across the city, ramming into my bumper at every opportunity until I had finally taken to driving down the backroads. Once there, he’d only delighted in shooting at my fucking car.
I’d been too quick to jump the gun, turning off where I thought I remembered it leading to another series of backroads . . . and instead ending up in this nature park or whatever the fuck it was. The trees around us stretched to the fucking heavens. There was the occasional trail, but these were so poorly taken care of that they guaranteed the absence of any company.
Who the fuck put a half-wall in the middle of fucking nowhere?
I had been hoping to pull up to the trees for cover, taking him out before he even got close enough to start this shit again.But here we were. And I was sorely unprepared, my own ammunition stores regrettably low due to my change in station.I had told my father taking me off from being a torpedo was a bad fucking idea.
The sound of his reloading reminded me to check my own clip, and I all but threw my gun in frustration. Somewhere along the way I had miscounted. There wasn’t a single fucking bullet left inside that clip, and it was the last one I had.
“Give it up, Koalitsia,” the ragged voice called from the other side of the wall. “Come out and die like a man, if you think you’re deserving of even that!”
“You kiss your whore mother with that mouth?” I tossed back, closing my eyes and breathing heavily as he opened fire on the wall again. I was counting the bullets now—counting how many he had left until he was forced to reload. Each bullet against the stone proved he was coming closer, with each shot sounding more and more likely to break through. . . . “Idi na hui, big man with your big guns. . . . Is that why you were part of a snitch ring? And not a very good one at that.
I could hear the frustration in his grunt, the sound of his clip hitting the ground only heard at all because of his break in shooting.
The hitch in my breath was much quieter, as was my sudden springing into action. I wasn’t waiting for him to run out of bullets or praying that he would before he reached me. I wasn’t relying on luck. I ran out from behind where I had been crouched, spotting the recognition flash in his eyes the moment before he scrambled to load the next clip into his gun.
Stupid bastard. He would have been better saving his fumbling and dropping the gun completely. It was of no use to him unloaded with me suddenly so close.
I sprang at him, my shoulder cocking back so that I could unleash my fist into the juncture of his shoulder and torso. His fingers closed more stubbornly around the weapon, but I repeated the motion—a shorter jab with more force behind it.
“You fucki—” he started, but I didn’t let him finish the insult.
My rage had been simmering thickly beneath the surface the whole time. When I lifted my fist, it was to knock the gun clean out of his hand. He then sought to remedy his mistake of relying on it in the first place. He squared up, preparing to hit me, but I moved faster. My fist slammed into his throat. I heard a spluttering sound even as he finally landed a punch into my side, aiming for my spleen.
It was a quick pain, sharp and sudden, but I absorbed the hit with a grunt.
Somehow, he had managed to get his leg behind mine, pulling at it with his weight until I felt us shifting, our bodies falling forward, and the ground jarring my back instead of his, as he rolled us.
With an arrogant grin he got over my body, lifted his hand and punched me in the face, his knuckles cracking against the bone of my cheek. His other hand disappeared behind him and I wanted to grab it, but found my hand was trapped beneath me.
“Your time is over, suka,” he hissed, drawing out a knife and holding it over my face victoriously. “Your bloodline will die, your family will crumble, and then your whore wife will—”
I spat.
The liquid ran down his face, his sneer turning to disgust as he went to ram the knife down into my face, just as I had been counting on. With a quick jerk I lifted my arm from behind me where I had been working it free, and the blade slammed into my forearm. It rendered the flesh, and I felt a searing pain so immediate I didn’t even try to withhold the agonized groan that came with it. It was a pain one never got used to.
The knife was too deep for him to pull it back out of the muscle easily though, and again, that was what I had been counting on. My eyes narrowed as his widened, my lips parting in a savage grin. Another mistake. He made a lot of those. He’d assumed that I wouldn’t allow myself to be hurt in order to win. It was a mistake many made, so focused on not getting any injury that they sacrificed the whole battle in order to avoid it.
It was what made them weak. What made them fail.
I rolled us, ignoring the knife in me completely to use both of my hands instead to grab his head. My palms over his ears, I jerked it up towards me and back down against the compact earth beneath us, to jar him. It wasn’t pavement or asphalt. It wasn’t even wood. No amount of slamming his head into it was going to kill him.
Even as packed and hard as the dirt was.
As his legs kicked up, writhing and wriggling to dislodge me, I repositioned my hands.
The desperation in his movements grew as he sensed my intention, his whole torso coming up off the ground. But I didn’t budge. My knees dug deeper into the earth, sweat beading along my brow with the effort it took to both keep him down and keep moving my hands. My thumbs brushed against the outsides of his eyes, catching the fluttering lashes there as he tried whipping his face back and forth to stop me.
“Die like a man, you said,” I grunted. “Stupid suka, did you think you had me?” Venom laced my words as I finally got my thumbs over his eyelids, even with him slamming them shut. “You want to talk about my wife, da? How about we talk about yours? Illyena, da? The woman you whored out to get information. Did you think that we didn’t know? Is that why you’re so upset—because I fucked her better than you ever could? Or is it because, after we made her squeal like a stuck pig, my father’s byki killed her?”
He screamed a wordless cry of grief and rage.