Greg Rucka - Walking dead

It didn't take long, cautious footfalls passing my door by within a handful of seconds, then a voice calling out, "Murab? Zafar?"

I took my hand off the front grip long enough to open the bathroom door, kicked it clear, and stepped out, facing the way I'd come. There were two of them, Western dress, each with an AK, each showing me their backs. They heard me coming. I fired, jacked, fired again, and the birdshot and the close range guaranteed I didn't need to do it a third time. Both of them fell, one hit in the back before he'd managed to turn, the other in the side, as he'd been coming to bear.

There was more screaming, and I realized some of it was coming from the room opposite me.

I dropped the shotgun, took one of the AKs. It, too, had a gold finish, and showed pride of ownership, complete with a hand-tooled leather carry strap. I slung the weapon, took out the Beretta, checked the chamber-loaded indicator, and verified there was a round waiting, then dropped the magazine into my hand. It was full. I replaced the mag.

The screams had stopped.

I could hear the whine of an air conditioner above me, but no more movement. With the Beretta ready, I moved to the first door in the hall that I'd passed, tried the knob slowly. It gave without resistance, and I went low, pushed it gently open. No one shot at me in response. I peered in, discovered it was a small kitchen, as filthy and potentially unsanitary as the bathroom had been.

I moved to the room from which I'd heard screaming, repeated the procedure, taking the soft entry, slow on the knob, gentle with the door. There was no noise from inside as it swung open. A mattress was on the floor, thin and naked with an old bloodstain at its center, no other furniture, not even a pillow.

There was a girl inside, Pakistani perhaps, not older than thirteen. She huddled in the corner opposite the mattress, in a T-shirt and panties, and when she saw me she wrapped her head in her arms, buried her face against her knees, attempting to disappear.

"It's okay," I whispered. "It's okay."

And because I was a liar and it absolutely wasn't, I moved on. There was another "bedroom" on the ground floor, this one occupied by two girls. As in the previous room, they were huddled together in fear, the arms of the elder around the shoulders of the younger. The younger appeared about the same age as the Pakistani girl I'd seen, though this one I thought was from India. The older girl looked CIS, maybe Russian or Ukrainian.

She was also visibly pregnant.

"Tiasa," I said. "Tiasa Lagidze."

Nothing in response. Their fear was palpable, it was something I could smell, something I could taste in the stuffy air. I checked the hallway again, looking toward the stairs, straining to hear the sound of any movement from above, then glanced back at the two girls. They were too afraid to even look at me.

"How many?" I asked, then repeated it in Russian. "How many men here? How many keeping you here?"

The pregnant girl raised her eyes. They were big and brown and maybe just a little bit hopeful. She held up her right hand, five fingers splayed.

One left, I thought.

"You're going to hear more shooting." I kept my voice soft, sticking with Russian. "Stay still. I'll come back when it's over."

I shut the door silently, checked the hall again. Above me, a floorboard creaked. The close air and the heat had me perspiring heavily, and I could feel sweat running down my neck, making my glasses slip on my nose. The stairs loomed at the end of the hall, narrow and dangerous and offering me no other choice. Stairs were a trap, one of the few tactical situations where nothing was on your side. They offered no mobility, no scope, no eyelines. The last man was on the floor above me, and he knew, like I knew, that the only way to reach him was the stairs, straight up the mother of all fatal funnels and into a blind turn.

I backed down the hall the direction I had come, watching the stairs until the corner. I turned, stepped over the bodies blocking the door to the front room, entered low. The man in the dishdasha was where I'd left him. I sidestepped over to the sheesha, lifted it in one hand and dumped the contents of the water pipe on him. He spluttered, gagging.

I put the Beretta to his neck and forced him to his feet. He nearly fell when he tried to put weight on his broken knee, his face creasing with pain.

"Stay silent, you might live through this," I told him.

He bit down on his suffering, nostrils flaring as he fought to control his breathing, jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscles working. As much fear as the girls carried, he doubled it in hatred, and every ounce of that hatred was directed at me.

"We're going upstairs," I whispered to him. "You first."

Carefully, keeping the Beretta on him, we moved back into the inner hall. At the corner, I pulled him around, put him in front of me. He needed a hand on the wall to steady himself.

"Go," I told him. "Keep it slow. Not a word, not a sound."

He looked back at me with my gun, decided that was enough persuasion to do as I said, and began hobbling slowly toward the stairs. I followed a few feet before stopping, keeping distance, letting him lead me.

The stairs were hard for him, and his progress slowed even further. One step at a time, careful, painful, measured. It wasn't that different from how I'd have climbed the stairs, knowing what was waiting for me at the top.

Whoever was up there thought so, too.

The shots came at an angle, blowing through the drywall on the right-hand side, angled down, a long chatter from another assault rifle. Only a few hit the man in the dishdasha, and he slammed against the left wall, then tumbled back down the stairs in a heap, head over heels until he was sprawled on the floor, broken and dead.

I brought up the Beretta and waited. I didn't have to wait more than a minute, but it felt longer. Sweat slipped down my back and into my eyes, making them sting. Then I heard the floorboards creaking again, the rustle of movement, and I saw the feet on the stairs, black sneakers. Then the legs, the barrel of an AK, and that was enough for me. I put one from the Beretta into the left sneaker, heard the scream, watched the last man fall face-first down the stairs, onto the body of the man in the dishdasha. He'd managed to keep hold of the AK when he fell.

I shot him twice more, and made sure he'd never be able to use it again.

Sixteen There were eight girls in all. The eldest of them was around seventeen. The youngest, I think, was eleven. I don't know. I didn't have the heart to ask.

Tiasa wasn't among them.

I went room to room, telling them to get dressed as quickly as they could, trying to get them mobilized. Aside from the pregnant girl, there was another who understood my Russian, and a third girl who could manage in pidgin English. I asked if any of them knew how to drive, and the pregnant girl did.

"Where are you from?" I asked her.

"Volgograd."

I gave her the keys to the Toyota SUV that I'd found on the man in the dishdasha.

"Go to the Al Maidan Tower on Al-Maktoum Road," I told her. "It's easy to find, just follow the signs. Go straight there, straight to the Russian Federation Consulate, it's on the third floor. Take all of the girls with you. Tell them where you were, what they did to you. Leave me out of it."

"I understand."

Together, we hustled the girls out of the building, to the Toyota. The camp had begun to stir, and a couple of the men there watched us pass without expression or comment or apparent interest. The girls shuffled, some of them crying. Mostly, they seemed numb, very much in shock.

Before they were all loaded, I stopped one of the girls, the other one who'd understood my Russian. I'd seen her before, on Vladek's BlackBerry, the picture of her smiling as she believed his lies. It hadn't been more than ten days since he'd shipped her to Turkey, but all the same, I had to check the smartphone to be sure.