David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

Montassini did his best. He twisted the rifle butt so it wedged in the general vicinity of Oleg’s solar plexus, but it wasn’t close enough. He shifted to one side, then the other, and then tried to use the momentum to flip Oleg over, but Oleg was doing his own shifting and rolling and it was no good. He finally grabbed Oleg’s ear and twisted it, but Oleg didn’t seem to mind that as much as another guy might and Montassini was just left twisting the guy’s earlobe while Oleg looked at him all “you getting off on this buddy?” and then grabbed Montassini by the hair and hit his head against the ground which hurt like a sonofabitch. Montassini’s vision got blurry before he could try anything else.

“You want to take the children.” Holden Gibson looked at his hands — back up at the Koldun. “You want to kill the fuckin’ children.”

“I don’t want to,” said Borovich. “No. No one but a monster wants to kill children. But these ones—”

They were standing outside a large metal door at the back of the greenhouse, behind Holden Gibson’s little bedroom. Vasili Borovich the Koldun was working a latch on the door. Holden Gibson was clutching his nuts with one hand and the knife the Koldun had given him with the other and trying to put it all together.

“What the fuck about these ones?” said Gibson. “They’re not anything but little kids — little kids with the power, yeah. But what the fuck do they have to do with this fuckin’ Lena?”

The Koldun sighed. He stepped back from the door. “These kids,” he said, “are different than you and I. They are more than just dream-walkers. When Babushka gets into their heads — she can use their abilities to extend her reach beyond just the sleepers here that we have made. And that little one—” he pointed at a baby “—he is a key to them all. Because he — his mind — is made up from all of them .”

Holden Gibson was still putting it together. He thought about that. He thought about his time — John Kaye’s time — his time back in that City 512 place. Something clicked as he did.

“Those kids,” said Gibson. “That little one. They’re my fuckin’ grandchildren, aren’t they?”

The Koldun looked at him appraisingly. “You’ve been thinking,” he said.

“My grandchildren .” Gibson shook his head. “It’s just starting to make sense now.”

“Not necessarily,” said the Koldun. “But maybe. What do you remember?”

Gibson ran a hand across the stubble of his chin. “I remember — the sex was good.”

Gibson remembered a lot of other things. He remembered the rooms he lived in — a comfortable bed, a sofa, and a hi-fi unit in the corner of a room panelled in wood like a basement recreation room. Although the room had no doors that he could see, he had plenty of visitors: young women, for the most part. Almost all of them spoke Russian — although there were other languages there too. Only three or four ever spoke English to him. They’d bring him meals and spend the night and he would fuck them and they would disappear when he woke, never to return. He didn’t miss any one of them — they all seemed to be about as drugged up as him.

“So are they my grandchildren?”

The Koldun shrugged. “Hard to say,” he said. “I was not there for most of your stay. I know there were many that… contributed.”

“You want me to kill my grandchildren?”

The Koldun sighed and looked at him sadly. “ Da ,” he said. “I would have my sleepers do so… But they are vulnerable. You must do it.”

“Then why—” Gibson glared at him. “Why the fuck did you tell me this?”

“I did not,” said the Koldun, “tell you anything. You came to this place yourself, Holden.”

Gibson half-smiled. “You’re callin’ me Holden all of a sudden.”

“That is what you prefer to be called, is it not?”

Gibson didn’t answer that. The Koldun shrugged, and turned back to the door.

“I have to kill my grandchildren?” said Gibson. It was a question and a statement all at once.

There was a click, and the door swung open. Dim light — like Christmas lights, or the glow from a dozen nightlights spilled out. The Koldun put a finger to his lips and stepped through.

Gibson followed. He had been near this room during his entire stay here — literally just a few steps away — but he’d never caught more than a glimpse of what was inside, a tantalizing view of pine board, stacks of linen and that low, diffuse light. He stepped through and looked around.

The room was long and low — with a carpeted floor and walls and ceilings made out of slats of stained pine. There was nothing adorning the walls — but along them were lined bunk beds — not dissimilar to the bunks that Gibson kept on his yacht, in the hidden room. Except these were larger — an adult could comfortably sleep in them and they were sealed.

On the side of each bed, there was bolted a sheet of what looked like glass, reinforced with a grid of black wire. The light in this room, Gibson saw, came from inside the bunks, one in each, no brighter than a few watts. Each illuminated a sleeping child. Gibson moved quietly to one and then another. The children looked innocent — like tiny angels — or premature babies who’d been kept a year or ten too long in the incubator.

“Fuck,” he murmured as he stepped back.

“The glass,” whispered the Koldun, “is a two-way mirror. The room itself is soundproofed, and the bunks are soundproofed too. They are not, however, entirely bulletproof.” The Koldun lifted his machine pistol.

“Fuck.” Gibson’s gut was churning at the thought of this thing. He looked at the gun in his hand. He looked at the Koldun, who looked back at him and said levelly, “Come on now, John. They were only ever tools to you. Do you want them to be tools to the Babushka now?”

Gibson looked at the gun in his hand — and back at the Koldun — and then, as a dark blur flew in through the doorway and spun behind the Koldun, his mind was made up for him.

He fired, even as Alexei Kilodovich’s asp came screaming down at the back of the Koldun’s skull.

Bullets tore white pine scars through the ceilings and walls as the machine pistol bucked in Gibson’s grip. It made a half-dozen stars in the soundproofed glass. A light shattered on the far side of the room and a child screamed. Gibson gasped and let go of the trigger. He dropped the gun. The room was still around him — the only sound now the ringing in his ears, and the panicked wail of children.

“Oh fuck I’m sorry,” said Holden Gibson as he stumbled up to the glass nearest him — glass that had three snowflake-shaped bullet holes in it. A child, black-haired and not more than five years old, huddled in the far corner, eyes wide and knees drawn to her chin — staring not at him but at her reflection in the glass. “I’m sorry,” said Gibson as he moved to the next — a bunk where an older child lay still, maybe dead, beneath sheets. The kid wasn’t dead — when Gibson tapped on the glass with a trembling knuckle the kid twitched, and started shaking himself. Just playing possum, thought Gibson. Smart fuckin’ kid.

He made the rounds with similarly cheering results. There were six bunks he’d hit — and none of them had done worse than break glass. It looked as though the worst he’d done to the children was wake them up and scare the living shit out of them. “Thank fuckin’ God,” said Gibson. “Thank fuckin’ God.”

He turned to the centre of the room — to the doorway — and saw that he had something else to be thankful for. The Koldun was gone. The only thing that was left was his machine pistol, which he must have dropped fleeing for cover. The gun, and Alexei Kilodovich, the fucking traitor Russian, who lay now in a tangle. Blood stained the carpet underneath his right shoulder like a spill of cheap wine. Gibson worked his face into a smile.