Catnip (28 page)

“This way,” she urged, and they ran into the
cover of the trees. The sun had almost gone down and a slight chill
hung in the air. The trees branches and bushes crashed against
their legs and faces, and they didn’t bother attempting to keep the
noise down. This was a flight for their lives. The duo kept running
and soon found themselves surrounded by pines and poplars.

Harry stopped to catch his breath and
breathed heavily in and out while his girlfriend sniffed the air.
“He’ll be coming soon,” she said. “He’s got our scent. What do we
do now?”

He scanned the area, and suddenly an idea
popped into his head, something he’d read in a book. “We need to
find a pit.”

Anastasia raised her eyebrows. “Why?”

“Trust me.”

Harry outlined his plan, and although
Anastasia seemed initially dubious, she told him to wait and ran
off to find what they were looking for. A few seconds later, she
came back and grabbed his hand. “Did you find it?” he asked.

“Yeah, follow me.”

Twilight had fallen and he couldn’t see much
of anything while Anastasia’s night vision seemed perfect. He
stumbled and fell a couple of times before she halted and pointed
off to their right. “Over there,” she said.

Their target turned out to be a pit around
six feet deep, and her nose wrinkled at the stench. Harry also held
his nose, peered in, and spotted some toilet paper and pink
balloons. Oh wait, they must have been…

“Never mind,” he said. “This is it.”

His girlfriend appeared confused. “So what
are we supposed to do? Wait until he falls in?”

“Yep, that’s the idea,” he answered, and he
set to work finding poles long enough to traverse the span and
handfuls of leaves which he used to cover it. Anastasia seemed
doubtful, but helped him anyway. Harry’s reasoning was simple.
Neither of them could match Ivan’s power, but they could lure him
into the trap and then beat him silly. At least, that was the
plan.

She kept muttering the scheme was silly, and
shook her head when he asked her to find some thick sticks. “Do you
want to tell me why,” she asked.

“Weapons manufacturing 101,” he answered.
“Get some thick sticks and sharpen them.”

They went on the hunt and managed to gather
ten sticks. Anastasia used her claws to slice the ends into wicked
points. Harry took the sticks-turned-mini-spears, made his way down
to the bottom of the pit, and dipped them into the feces. “These
will be our
Punji
sticks,” he said.

“What’s a Punji stick?”

“It’s a stick with crap smeared on the end,”
he explained patiently while stabbing them into the ground. “I read
about it in a book. Enemy soldiers used them in wars. They put
poison on the ends or frogs or crap. If you didn’t watch where you
were walking, the stake would go right into your leg or right
through you. Even if you survived, you got an infection. It might
work on Ivan, it might not.”

He hoped one of the stakes would go through
the monster’s neck. That seemed to be the only weak spot he had.
Anastasia’s eyes had a tinge of fear in them, but she said nothing.
After covering the opening with branches and leaves, she crept
across the poles and stood in the center. “What are you doing?” he
asked.

“He needs bait,” she answered simply. “I’m
the bait.”

Harry suddenly had a bad feeling about all
this. He cared for his girlfriend too much to see anything terrible
happen to her, but she was the obvious choice. They waited, and
soon they heard the sound of heavy feet stomping their way through
the brush. It had to Ivan. For someone so large, he moved
quickly.

“Ivan,” she called out. “I’m over here.”

A second passed, two more, and Harry heard a
noise, something low and hoarse which rose into a shriek of rage
and pain. Ivan came their way and he blundered his way clumsily
through the bushes. He held one paw over his damaged eye while the
other felt the air as if to gauge the way ahead.

Good, Harry thought, his depth perception is
off
.

The huge bear-man charged out of the darkness
in his direction. Harry stood in front of the trap and trusted
Anastasia to move when the time was right. She did. Just before the
monster hit him he threw himself to the side and out of the corner
of his eye saw his girlfriend leap away as Ivan went right past him
and into the pit.

An unearthly scream filled the night.
Anastasia came over to him, and in the darkness he made out the
immense figure of his would-be assassin impaled on no less than
three sharp stakes, one of them through his shoulder, the second
through his stomach, and the last one through his heart.

“Bear down,” she said, and spit on the
creature.

Ivan didn’t stir and Harry took his
girlfriend’s arm. “Just one more scumbag to take care of,” he told
her.

As quickly and quietly as possible, they made
their way back to Nurmelev’s cabin. Near the structure, she halted,
tested the air with her nose, and whispered they could enter. They
made their way inside, through the faux living room, and at the top
of the stairs they heard the sound of tapping keys. The scientist
had to be in his lab, probably satisfied his protégé had taken care
of the intruders.

Noiselessly, they moved one step at a time,
and at the bottom, Anastasia opened the door and they found
Nurmelev inside, seated at his computer. He looked up in shock.
“What…where is Ivan?”

“He’s stuck in the woods,” Harry replied and
wondered why he couldn’t have thought of a better cliché. “It’s
over, Nurmelev. You’ve got the equations for reversing the process,
at least the preliminary ones. Give them to me and I promise that
my girlfriend won’t slash your throat.”

The scientist’s eyes shone, and Harry
realized the man had finally snapped. No, check that, he’d snapped
a long time ago. Nurmelev hastily tapped a few keys on the computer
and stabbed his finger on a button with an air of triumph. Behind
them, the door swung shut and the sound of the lock closing came
through.

“You will get nothing, Goldman,” he stated,
and his voice began to shake with rage. “I have managed to find the
information you so cleverly hid. This place will explode in less
than five minutes and you cannot get out of this room. If you give
yourselves up to me, I will stop the timer. If you don’t, then we
either die here or we flee in order to continue our lives
elsewhere. It is your choice.”

Harry ran walked over and shoved Nurmelev
away. A picture of a stopwatch had appeared on the screen and it
showed less than five minutes remaining. At the bottom of the
screen he saw the animated picture of a bomb with a fuse slowly
burning its way to the explosive. With trembling fingers, he
started typing. “What are you doing?” Anastasia asked.

“I’m trying to find the equation for you. I
just need a couple of minutes.”

Nurmelev tried to intervene, but she grabbed
him and sank her claws into both of his shoulders. Blood spurted
out of the wounds. He screamed in agony and tried to twist away,
but she held him fast and hissed out, “You did this to me. You
won’t do it to anyone else, so if we blow up then you’re coming
with us,
comrade
.”

Harry frantically kept typing, tried to
bypass the firewalls, and suddenly realized the truth was right in
front of his eyes. Nurmelev had files…and he found them. “Just
thirty more seconds…”

A roar from outside interrupted his thoughts.
He whirled around as the door blew off its hinges. Ivan stood in
the doorway, swaying unsteadily. Blood covered his face and upper
torso, and he spit out more blood onto the floor before staggering
inside and toward Anastasia with a snarl on his lips.

She hurled the doctor into the far corner. He
hit the wall, clutched his skull and screamed, “Kill them!”

“Keep working!” Anastasia cried, and leapt at
the bear creature.

Wounded or not, Ivan was still strong enough
to grab her in mid-air and he tossed her with ease into the
opposite corner. She twisted, landed on her feet, and let out a
hiss of rage. Harry kept at it, sweated buckets, and…there, he
found it!

After quickly tapping a few more keys, he hit
the
Enter
button and quickly retreated as Ivan, bleeding
profusely from his wounds, charged in his direction, blood and
murder in his eyes.

No more backing off, Harry thought, and he
grabbed the only weapon at arm’s reach—the computer—and slammed it
across Ivan’s face over and over. The monster roared and lashed out
with a massive paw. The blow caught him right in the left side of
his face, ripping it open. A wave of sickening pain flowed through
him and he dropped the ruined machine, clutching at his cheek.

Ivan grinned in triumph, blood running down
the sides of his mouth and he leaned down to stare the smaller
teenager in the face. “You…die… now,” he uttered in a guttural
voice.

Harry lifted his head. “Not yet,” he ground
out.

With the last of his strength, he launched a
punch, the one punch he’d been saving all his life. His uppercut
connected with monster’s jaw, snapped his head back, and it gave
Anastasia all the time she needed. She leaped unbelievably high and
somersaulted onto Ivan’s back, her claws fully extended. With a
primal scream she reached around his bull-like neck and tore his
throat open. Blood sprayed out in every direction, his eyes opened
wide with disbelief, and he fell over, stone cold dead.

“You are both insane!” Nurmelev screamed. He
staggered to his feet and ran over to Harry, his eyes mad with rage
and fear. “You do all this for
her
? She is nothing but a
freak!”

Harry belted the madman right in the mouth
and knocked him on his butt. He ripped off his shirt, dragged the
dazed scientist over to the computer and bound him to the chair.
His face hurt like hell, but he shunted the pain to a distant part
of his mind. “Your experiment is over,” he said. “Enjoy the final
countdown.”

With a quick movement, he grabbed Anastasia’s
hand and pulled her in the direction of the door. “We have to go
now!” he yelled.

Together, they reached the door and made it
outside just before the first bomb went off at the top of the
stairs. The explosion hurled them back inside the room, and he
realized there was nowhere else to go. Nurmelev cackled, “I am out
of time, but so are you!”

Harry looked around wildly. Yes, there
was
one place left! He yanked the door to the charnel room
open and threw Anastasia inside, and then remembered to grab the
bag that held his computer just before the second bomb went off. It
did one second later, and the power and energy of the exploding gas
filled the air with a bright light that almost seared his eyes
out…

Harry thought he heard the sound of a car
pulling up, but he’d been so engrossed in the figures on the
computer screen he didn’t really pay much attention. It had been
almost a week since the ordeal at the rebel doctor’s lab, and he
considered himself pretty lucky he’d survived. A badly slashed
face, some bumps and bruises from the assassin—it had been worth
it.

Anastasia had taken the brunt of the
explosion in her chest and shoulders. After he’d tossed her inside
the room with all the corpses of the previous experiments, she’d
grabbed him and pulled him behind her. The door didn’t close in
time, he heard the gas tanks blow, felt the concussion, a
tremendous blast of heat, and then…nothing.

When he woke up, she lay at his feet. She was
bleeding badly, but still alive although barely conscious. “Why’d
you push me out of the way?” he asked and tried very hard not to
cry at the sight of his girlfriend’s torn up body.

“You did for me,” she gasped out. “I can do
for you.” Then she whimpered in pain, “I wish I couldn’t remember
what it was like to feel pain. This
hurts!
”

Her head lolled. He gently carried her up the
stairs and outside, found the late professor’s car with the keys
still in the ignition, and drove down the quiet road. Anastasia
moaned in her sleep, slashed the air with her claws, and then
passed out again. Fortune favored them as he found an unused cabin
just three miles up the road.

He kicked open the door, laid his
girlfriend’s body on the floor, dressed her wounds, and let her
sleep. After he’d dressed his own wounds with a torn up towel and
some bandages he found in a medicine cabinet, the fatigue due to
the events of the past few days hit and hit hard, and he slept
beside her, slept deeply, and didn’t wake up until a day later…

Now a knock came at the door, and it would
have to disturb his daydream. The knock came again, this time more
insistently, and then he figured it had to either be the owners or
someone from the state department. Any assassin would have simply
kicked the door open so he felt safe for the moment.

Harry slowly walked over to the door. His
injuries were still healing, but pain or no, he felt determined to
finish what he’d started and the interruption annoyed him. “Who is
it?” he asked. Just in case, he grabbed the crowbar he’d stashed
beside the entrance.

“It’s Miles Farrell.”

He opened up and saw the tall and gaunt form
of Agent Farrell standing there in his usual black suit, his right
arm in a sling. Twenty feet behind him, the agent’s beaten up old
Buick sat alone and unloved. “How’s the arm?”

The older man shrugged and then grimaced.
“I’ve had worse.” He cast his gaze around the plain cottage, noted
the sparseness of the décor, just a simple wooden table with the
laptop on it, the couch, and a small refrigerator in the corner.
“Can I come in?”

Silently, Harry waved him inside and they sat
down. He placed the crowbar on the floor and shifted his body
around to find a more comfortable position.