Nadya's Nights: Road to Vengeance (4 page)

Tossing it to the side, she quickly stood and grabbed the shotgun from the dead man with the hole in his throat, pumping it to eject the spent shell.  She heard something clamoring down the stairs and turned, raising the shotgun, readying herself for the remaining guards.

Instead, her eyes widened as she saw a grenade bouncing down the steps.  It reached the bottom, bounced off the front door and rolled in her direction.

Thinking fast, she saw a door to her left and opened it, diving into a small broom closet.  She didn’t know if it would be enough protection, but she didn’t have time to find anything better.

The grenade blew.

Chapter Four: The Killing Continues

The first floor of the building was in shambles.

The grenade had scorched and demolished most of the wooden interior and had shredded the corpses of the guards strewn about.  It was difficult to tell one body from another.  The three remaining guards from the second floor came down the stairs slowly, weapons held ready.  They surveyed the extensive damage on the first floor.  Of all the bodies, they didn’t see the girl who’d attacked them.  They proceeded further into the first floor, spreading out a bit as they did.

One of the guards noticed a broom closet.  The door looked as if it had been blown clean off by the blast.  The interior of the closet was dark and silent, no motion coming from it.  He stepped closer, raised his rifle to his shoulder, ready to squeeze the trigger at the first sign of movement.

Seeing nothing, the man leaned into the small nook to examine it further.  He caught the briefest glimpse of blonde hair in the murky shadows before the muzzle flash of the shotgun first filled his vision and then obliterated it.

The man’s body arched back.  Bloody gore sprayed upwards and splattered the ceiling.  The top half of the man’s head was gone, leaving nothing more than a gory wound.  The bottom half of his jaw hung downwards, his tongue flopping limply.  The top of his mouth and everything above was just missing.  The body fell over one of the other corpses, twitching sporadically.

Nadya arose from the floor and pumped the shotgun, sending another spent shell flying through the air.  She swung the weapon up to her shoulder and twisted around out of the closet, taking aim at the first living thing she spotted.  Firing another round into his chest, she watched him fly back, bounce off the wall, clutch his bleeding chest then fall to the ground.  She pumped again and took aim another time at the final guard.

Pulling the trigger, she let out a groan as the weapon clicked empty.  She dove to the side as the final guard fired his rifle at her.  Nadya’s ears filled with the sound of automatic fire as she ran to keep ahead of the spray.  Even though the man was larger than her, he had the same problem she had with the fully automatic weapon.

Ducking low, she stopped, letting the rising line of bullets go over her head.  Turning back to the guard, she hurled the empty shotgun at him, watching it smash into his knees and trip him up.  His rifle dropped and he scrambled to get hold of it again, but Nadya was already charging him.  A foot away, she leapt up into the air and came down hard, slamming the heel of her boot into the back of the man’s neck.  He was forced into the ground hard and the bones in his spine popped.  Stepping off the dead man, she listened to make sure no other guards were coming then bent down to loot useful weaponry.

Picking up the AK-47 she’d discarded earlier, she slammed a fresh magazine into it and racked a bullet into the chamber.

Without a moment to spare.

The front door burst open and two more guards dashed in, already alarmed but unsure as to what all the commotion was about.  Nadya showed them exactly what it was about as she leveled the rifle on them and sent two short bursts into them.  The bullets tore up their midsections and sent them falling to the ground.  The first man she must’ve hit in the lungs or some other equally precious region, because he died quickly.  The second burst mostly hit the man in the gut.  He screamed and held his bleeding stomach.  Nadya raised the rifle to her shoulder and took more careful aim, firing a single round through the man’s head and silencing him.

She heard panicked calls from the rear of the building and her mind went to the two backdoor guards that she’d conned.  Nadya moved over to the open doorway that the two would have to come through and waited.  She heard their hurried footsteps approaching.

As the first man came through the doorway, she slammed the butt of the rifle into the side of his face.  He fell sideways, spewing blood from his mouth.  She reached through the doorway and grabbed hold of the second man, yanking him into the room with her.  He stumbled over the legs of his comrade and fell to the floor.  He turned around and his eyes went wide with stunned shock as he recognized the homeless girl he’d helped a few minutes earlier.  His mouth gaped open, trying to utter some sort of words.

Nadya didn’t give him a chance to plead.  She lowered the rifle – the barrel a few inches in front of his face – and squeezed the trigger.  The guard’s face disintegrated under the short blast of gunfire.  Then she shifted her aim to the man with the bloody mouth and fired a single round through his right eye.

She didn’t hear any more approaching guards, so she went back to looting some weaponry.  She tore a strip of cloth from one of the dead guards’ shirts and used it to bandage the graze that had scraped along her arm.  She took a combat knife and slid it into her boot then found a bandolier of grenades on one of the second floor guards.  She took that as well, slinging it over her shoulder.  Placing a fresh magazine in the AK-47, Nadya turned towards the semi-destroyed stairs leading upwards.  She expected her target was on the second floor. 
Probably at the end of that hallway.

Softly stepping up the stairs, Nadya paused just before the hall, listening.

No sound.

She swung around, raising the rifle.  The hall was empty aside from the dead guards she’d left there.  She started down the hallway, kicking open doors as she came to them.  The rooms were all empty.

Finally, she came to the last door on the left.  No L-shaped hall on the second floor.  Nadya figured this final door would lead into a much larger room.  She listened carefully and couldn’t hear anything.  Taking a step to the side, she raised a hand and gave a couple brief knocks before ducking away.

Almost as soon as she knocked, a series of shots punctured the wood of the door.  Judging by the shots, Nadya figured there were at least three more guards inside.  Deciding to use their own tricks against them, she unclipped one of the hand grenades and pulled the pin.  She yanked the door open just enough to toss the explosive through then shut the door again.  More shots came through the door before she heard yelling come from the other side.

They’d seen the grenade, but it was too late.

The building shook again as the grenade went off.  The door to the room burst off the hinges and flew across the hall, slamming into the wall on the other side before collapsing.  Smoke poured out of the room and Nadya used it to her advantage, ducking inside with her rifle held ready.

Through the smoke, she spotted one dark figure and approached.  A dead guard, the front of him almost completely destroyed.  His face was scorched and his hair had been burnt away.  A piece of shrapnel had caught him in the gut and his intestines were spilling out of him.

Nadya moved on.

She heard a pained groan and went for it, spotting a moving figure further in the room.  She crouched beside the wounded man.  A deep gash went from the lower part of his jaw up into his hairline, coming dangerously close to his left eye.  That eye was stained with blood, but the right eye was still clear and saw the Russian girl.  He tried to raise his pistol towards her, but Nadya grabbed hold of it and yanked it away from him.  Turning the gun on its owner, she pressed the barrel into his clear eye and pulled the trigger.  The body jerked and went still and Nadya tossed the handgun down beside the body.

The smoke cleared and Nadya saw no sign of any more guards or her target. 
If the bitch bugged out and I’ve gone on a kill crazy rampage for nothing, I’m going to hunt Lonestar down and cause him a good deal of pain.

She saw a couple more doors leading out of the room.  One looked like a closet and the other, she assumed, was a bathroom.  Looking between the two doors, she settled on the one she guessed was the closet and started towards it.

Catching brief movement out of the corner of her eye, Nadya turned her head in time to see a third guard emerging from behind a desk.  She scolded herself for not properly clearing the room, but the mental disciplining was cut short as the guard fired and Nadya cried out as the bullet tore through the leather of her jacket and ripped across her shoulder blade.

Blood sprayed against the door in front of her.  Cringing and forcing herself to think past the pain, Nadya spun around and lifted the AK-47 in her right arm only, aiming in the general direction of the final guard.  Letting out a pained cry of rage, she squeezed the trigger and sent a barrage of bullets screaming towards the man.  He tried to move out of the way, but the sporadic spray of ammunition pinned him in and tore him apart, sending him stumbling backwards, hitting the edge of the desk he’d been hiding under and then falling down on top of it.

The rifle clicked empty and Nadya dropped it.

The final guard spat up a wad of blood and fell still.

Nadya twisted her head around in an attempt to get a look at the nasty wound she’d received.  She didn’t think it would be fatal if she got medical attention soon. 
First thing’s first, though; I have to finish the job.
  She turned back to the closet door, her eyes going cold.  She kicked the door open.

On the other side, the woman she was after waited.  She stepped forward out of the closet, a whiff of strange aroma flowing off of her.  Almost like incense.  Long brown hair flowed out behind her, resting against the shoulders of her dress.  It was a very pretty dress.

Too bad it’s about to get some nasty stains…

“Insolent cunt!” the woman said in a crisp British accent.

“Well, at least you don’t waste time with casual introductions,” Nadya shot back.

“Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with?” she demanded.

Nadya reached down and slid the combat knife free from her boot.  “Nope.  And apparently, neither do you.”  Without hesitation, she jammed the point of the knife into the side of the woman’s throat.  Her eyes went wide and she opened her mouth to cry or beg or sling another insult out but could only manage a gurgle as blood trickled past her lips.

Nadya pulled the bloody knife free and stood, watching as the woman stumbled back, a look of surprise on her face.  As if she hadn’t expected to die.

“No one ever does,” Nadya muttered in Russian as she watched her target fall back into the corner of the closet and finish bleeding out.  She wiped the blade clean on one of the articles of clothing in the closet, wondering if any of the guards had a car she could steal to get to one of Vladimir’s doctors.

She never saw the thin tendril snaking up from behind her until it struck, wrapping tightly around her slender throat and yanking her backwards out of the closet.

Chapter Five: Victory

At first, Nadya thought she’d neglected to kill all of the guards after all.  Her windpipe was choked closed and her mouth gaped, trying to suck in air.  Her feet lifted from the floor and a moment later she was pulled through the air.  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the monster she’d encountered earlier in the alley.

Only this time it was much larger.

The center mass looked like a kind of dark grey blob with no real features.  A few other tentacles swirled about it, in what Nadya could only assume was some sort of distress.  The tentacle around her neck released and her momentum carried her further into the room.  Her body slammed into the far wall and pain screamed from her wounded side as it struck the hard surface.  She slid to the floor, breathing heavily from her semi-asphyxiation and the blinding pain running through her.  She cringed her teeth and shoved herself to her feet, swaying a bit before steadying completely and turned to the creature.  Surprise filled her face when she heard it start to speak.

“Yyyyyyyou killllllled mmmmoooommmmyyyyy…” the slurred, deep voice bellowed, almost child-like in the way it spoke.  Sadness tinged the words.

“Mommy?” was all Nadya could reply.  The shock of hearing the thing speak was still overwhelming her.  She broke her gaze from the creature to look back to the closet where the dead woman was propped into the corner.  It had to be whom the monster was referring to.  It would definitely explain the half-smirk frozen on the woman’s dead face.

But the thought of the woman spawning this creature just didn’t make any sense.  “She birthed you?  What the fuck
are
you?”

“Mommmyyyy mmmaade meeee… summmonnned mmmeeee…” the thing slurred.  “Tooo prrrootect mmmoommmmyyy…”  It grew silent for a few moments.  “Faaiillled…”

Nadya smirked.  “I guess you did.”

“YYYYOUUU KILLLLLLED MOMMMMYYYYY!” the creature bellowed again.  This time anger flooded through the words.

Nadya’s attention was drawn back to it just as it lashed out at her with one of its tendrils.  Ducking low, wind brushed through her hair as the tentacle just missed her head, swinging past her.  Nadya spotted one of the dead guards laying not too far away, a rifle at his side.  She ran for the weapon, bending down to scoop it up in her unwounded arm.

Spinning to face the creature, she saw it attempt to swipe her feet out from under her.  Nadya leapt into the air, lifting her feet over the tentacle as it passed under her.  Dropping back to the ground, she raised the rifle, situating the butt of the weapon into the crook of her arm and aimed it at the mass, pulling the trigger.  She released several short bursts of rounds into it and heard the thing emit a cry of sorts.  The mass swirled and seemed to grow larger from the impact of the rounds.  It lashed out at her again, attempting to crush her under another tentacle.

Nadya darted to the side, strafing around the creature.  She unloaded bullets from the rifle into it.  The only effect she saw was the continued swirling of the mass and further bellowing.  She might have been hurting it in some way but she wasn’t slowing it down.  It seemed to be growing ever angrier.  The rifle clicked empty so she hurled the useless item at the monster.

She watched as the weapon hit the center mass and stuck, slowly sucked inwards until she could no longer see it.  Her attention distracted, she almost had her head pummeled by another tentacle, which she ducked under at the last moment.  She neglected to notice the second tentacle coming right behind the first.  It successfully knocked her feet out from under her.

Nadya hit the ground on her wounded side and let out a pained yelp.  She looked up and saw another thick tendril attempt to slam down onto her body.  She rolled to the side, feeling the hard impact just to the side of her.  The wooden floorboards splintered and broke from the force.  Rolling onto her back and flipping to her feet, Nadya looked frantically for some other weapon to use.

She spotted the dead guard that had shot her lying on the table on the other side of the room, his pistol still in his dead hand.  She charged forward, ducking and leaping over the monster’s attacks until she reached the desk, rolling over it and ducking down behind it.  She pried the pistol free and took cover momentarily.

Another tentacle slammed down into the desk, shattering the wooden furniture in half.  It also cleaved the guard’s corpse in half.  Blood sprayed Nadya and she rose, taking a step back and firing even more rounds into the creature at a rapid pace, strafing it again.  Attempting to jump clear of another tentacle coming in at her low, she was caught off guard when it changed course in mid-attack and snagged her ankle.

Nadya was yanked upwards by the tendril, hanging from her single leg.  Blood rushed to her head and she saw she was being pulled over the creature.  For the second time that night, she saw the thing’s maw protrude from the mass of the rest of it.  Again she got a good look at the ivory teeth gnashing together, desperate for its squirming Russian meal.

Nadya pulled the knife out and carved through the thick tentacle.  A few feet from being directly over the monster’s hungry mouth, she sliced through the tendril and fell to the floor, managing to spin herself in mid-air and land more or less on her feet.

Spinning around, she faced the creature just in time to see a tentacle thrust forward, slamming into her gut and sending her flying backwards.  Her ass hit the floor and she rolled backwards before landing face downward.  She lay still for a moment, trying to regain her breath.  A swipe of another tentacle along the floor sent her skidding to the side and slamming into the wall.

Fighting past the increasing aches and pains, Nadya pushed herself up.  She saw the thing moving towards her, extending even more tentacles to pummel her with.  To her right was the second, unopened door, so she twisted the handle and dove inside.

As she suspected, it was the bathroom.  She shoved the door shut behind her and tried to think of something to do.  She went over to the medicine cabinet and started to go through the contents, trying to find anything that would be useful.  Behind her, the bathroom door shattered to pieces and tentacles came barreling in towards her.  Nadya gripped the sink in front of her with her single workable hand as the tentacles wrapped around her ankles and yanked her out through the doorway.  Her muscles strained painfully as she was stretched.  Her fingers slipped on the smooth ceramic of the sink.

Nadya’s eyes happened to fall on a can of hairspray sitting on the sink.  Releasing her hold, she reached out for it and just managed to snag the can before she was pulled out of the bathroom.

Nadya flew through the air again, dragged by the tentacles.  More pain struck her as she was battered into another wall then dropped to the ground.  Somehow, she managed to keep a hold on the hairspray.  She set it on the floor in front of her and pulled the knife out, smashing the handle of it into the spray tip.  The tip smashed off and aerosol shot out of the top of the can.  Pulling her lighter out, she lit it and let the aerosol catch fire then turned and hurled it at the creature.

Nadya smirked as she saw the makeshift Molotov cocktail catch in its mass.  Diving down and covering her head again, she heard and felt the hairspray can explode.  The creature made an even louder cry of pain and she pushed herself back up and turned to it.  A good chunk of its blob-like center mass had been destroyed, splattered across the room and melting into something that looked like muddy water.

“Hey, there, Billy Blob,” Nadya quipped.  “Pull yourself together, huh?”

Nadya’s feeling of triumph was short lived as the monster responded with a snarl of rage and sent more tentacles charging towards her.  She ran, sidestepping the creature again, moving around the room.  They came at her so fast that she had no time to form a new plan of attack.  It was simply evade until she caught a break or got killed.

Confusion filled Nadya’s face when the tentacles stopped and she paused to see what the monster was doing.  Realization hit her when she saw it had herded her around behind it and was now stretching what remained of its form across the length of the room, trapping her inside and severely limiting the amount of space she had to dodge its attacks.

“Fuck your mother…” Nadya muttered in exasperation.  She glanced behind her and saw a set of three windows in the wall leading out onto the street.  They were big enough to jump through but she wasn’t looking forward to a two-story fall.  She turned back to the monster and absently felt along her body, trying to find any neglected weapons.  She’d dropped the knife after smashing the hairspray tip.  Her hand fell across a string of roundish items and she looked down.

The bandolier of grenades.

She’d forgotten all about them.

A wide grin crossed her face and she pulled the bandolier off. 
It looks as if I’ll be making that jump after all. 
She just hoped there was something relatively softer than a brick road to break her fall.

The creature slowly came towards her, apparently deciding to trap her as much as possible and then either pummel her to death or maybe just chomp through her.

Like hell
, Nadya thought, lifting the bandolier of grenades up.  “Hey, Billy!  Know what these are?”

She brought one of the grenades to her mouth and clenched its pin between her teeth.  She yanked the pin clear and spit it to the side.

“Fuck you, Jelly Boy!” she yelled before hurling the bandolier at the creature.  Like everything else, it struck, stuck, and sunk in.

Knowing that once the first grenade went it would trigger the others and probably bring the whole building down, Nadya had little time.  Pushing all fear of heights and worry of smashing her skull on the road out of her, she turned and ran towards the center window.

Leaping into the air, she brought her knees up to her chest and covered her face with her arms.  She hit the glass and smashed through, some shards cutting into her.

Then she was out of the building.

Behind her, the creature let out a final bellow of rage before the first grenade blew.  The building shuddered and another large chunk of the creature splattered against the wall.  Moments later, the other grenades went.  A fireball burst from the windows just behind Nadya.  The force of the explosion sent her flying even further from the building.                Her body spun in the air and as she came down she landed flat on her back on the hood of a parked car on the other side of the street.

Pain shot up her back and her breath was knocked away.  Then she bounced up off the hood and the next thing she knew she was doing a face plant onto the sidewalk.  She lay there, groaning and listening to the collapsing building on the other side of the street.

Finally, after Nadya decided she wasn’t dead yet, she pushed herself up.  She leaned against the car for stability.  Once she’d recovered a bit more, she found a decent sized rock and smashed the driver side window in.  She unlocked the door and slid into the seat.  In a minute or two, the car roared to life and she put it into gear and pulled out onto the road.

Driving away from the burning building, Nadya took a look in the rear view mirror to make sure no pissed off amorphous blobs were chasing after her.  When none did, she glanced at herself in the mirror.  She had a cut along her forehead, shallow though.  It probably wouldn’t leave much of a scar.  The worrying thing was her complexion.

Deathly pale.

She looked down at her gunshot wound and saw that her shirt and jacket were soaked in blood.  Her blood.

Using her knee to steer, Nadya fished her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed a number she knew by heart.  She held it to her ear and listened to the ringing.

Once it answered, she spoke.  “Mission accomplished.  Target eliminated.”  After a pause, she added, “Medical attention required.”

On the other end of the line, Vladimir Belikov’s concerned voice replied.  “Serious?”

Nadya took another look at her wound.  She was starting to feel light headed.  A side effect from the blood loss.  Looking back to the road, she gave a half shrug.  “More or less.”

Vlad told her where to go and she was thankful that it wasn’t far.  She hung up and focused on her driving, not wanting to get in any fender benders along the way.  When she reached the place she was heading, she didn’t even bother trying to parallel park.  She pulled the car halfway up onto the sidewalk and shut it off.  Reaching across herself, past her wounded arm, she opened the door and slid out.