trigger. The band had discovered a cache of them in a concrete bunker seven
months before, and Uchitel had insisted that every member take one. Before that
they’d had a variety of Stechkins, TT-33s, Radoms and Walther PPKs. Uchitel saw
the value of them all carrying the same handgun, though each still carried his
own favorite rifle or machine pistol or carbine.
The boy’s eyes opened wider and he began to snivel. Some of the villagers had
guns, but the weapons were old and battered, mended with baling wire. He’d never
seen anything like this glittering, polished pistol. The slim man tossed it
upward so that the dim sun was reflected in the silver stars on each side of the
crosshatched butt.
Several of the horsemen drew their guns, laughing as the lad fell to his knees.
The front of his breeches was now marked with urine; he’d completely lost
control.
Out in the open, among the low scrub of the tundra, the cracks of the handguns
sounded surprisingly flat and unmenacing. The first bullet hit the kneeling boy
through the right shoulder, knocking him over. Blood gushed from his ragged
clothes, staining the snow. A second shot tore through his left thigh, exiting
and taking with it a chunk of muscle the size of a man’s fist. Blood poured from
this gaping wound and the boy screamed, a thin and feeble sound in the
wind-washed wasteland.
“He is still poor, Uchitel,” yelled Krisa, the Rat, a tiny man with eyes as red
as glowing coals. Krisa took careful aim, steadying his right hand with his
left, then squeezed the trigger twice.
The first bullet tore into the boy’s chest, snapping ribs, exploding the lungs
into tatters of torn tissue, sending bright arterial crimson spurting from the
gaping mouth. The boy’s yelping ceased, and he made a desperate attempt to
escape. But the wound in his leg unbalanced him and he fell.
By falling, he put the diminutive Kris off his aim. He had intended to shoot the
dying boy again through the center of the chest. But the 9 mm round smashed into
the lad’s face, breaking his lower jaw and tearing it away on the left so that
it hung, hideously lopsided, the row of jagged and broken teeth spilling out
with the impact. Continuing, the lead sliced through the boy’s tongue and the
roof of his mouth, digging deep into the dark caverns of his brain.
The boy kicked in the snow like a rabbit with a broken spine. Watching, the
horsemen cheered and laughed; a couple of them made wagers on how long the poor
rabbit would last. After fifteen or twenty seconds the corpse lay still, looking
oddly shrunken, its blood staining the snow.
Uchitel stood in the stirrups, waved a gloved fist and shouted above the eternal
wind, “He is poor no more, my brothers and sisters. Let us go now to his filthy
hamlet of Ozhbarchik and help them all to escape from poverty.”
As he heeled his black stallion forward, he heard the group laughing. Uchitel
smiled, relishing their happiness. In a harsh world, it was good to give
pleasure.
The boy’s corpse soon stopped bleeding and the wind began to cover it with snow.
But not enough to hide it from the scavengers who came creeping from secret
places to rend the flesh from the bone.
UCHITEL KNEW that somewhere far to the west of them was a range of mountains,
including several volcanoes, and beyond that the ruins of what had been a fine
city that he had once visited. Called Yakutsk, it was near the left bank of the
Lena River and had been home to over one hundred thousand people.
Intercontinental ballistic missile bases near it had sealed its fate in 2001,
and the Americans had used “clean” missiles against it, which slaughtered human
beings but left buildings more or less intact. But the change in the climate
over the next four generations had made a ruins of the city. Uchitel had been
there three times, once when he was only fourteen, then twice in his twenties.
There he had found old books and had taught himself the skills that allowed him