Rifles cracked. A submachine gun chattered. A grenade popped, another, another. Shouts ripped raw. She couldn’t make out words. The sounds were un human. Her own rifle was off her shoulder and she inside the shell of a building as die first echoes died.
Boots thudded. They hit without rhythm, and too often a shard rattled from them. Whoever drew near stumbled and staggered more than he ran. Katya risked a peek around the door jamb. From behind a ruin some twenty meters south, a man lurched into the intersection of this street and the one down which he fled. He wore a Red Army uniform and helmet, but carried no weapon. Blood smeared his right hand and dripped down that leg. He stopped. She saw how he panted. He swung his head to and fro. Almost, she called to him, but checked herself. After a few seconds he continued his weaving way in the same direction, out of her view.
She brought her rifle up.
Two more men appeared, at a lope that should soon overtake him. Squarish helmets and gray-green garb proclaimed mem Germans. Either could easily have lifted his own firearm and shot the fugitive. So their officer must have told mem to bring him back for interrogation. That looked safe, a short run through an area believed to be free of life.
It had stabbed through Katya: Let the thing happen. I mustn’t compromise my mission. But she knew too well what awaited that fellow. Also, what he could tell might prove as valuable as anything she would observe.
Decision was nearly instant. Sometimes she weighed a matter for years before she settled on what to do. Sometimes she could simply wait several decades and let time wear the problem away. Yet she had not stayed alive this long by being always hesitant. At need, she leaped with the unheeding energy of youth.
She fired. A German spun on his heel and flopped bonelessly down. His companion yelled and threw himself prone. His rifle barked. He probably hadn’t seen her, but knew at once, more or less, whence that shot had come. Quick-witted. Not for the first time, the thought stirred in Katya that maybe among the invaders was one of her kind, as full of centuries and solitude as she was.
She barely noticed the thought, afar at the back of her skull. She had pulled inside straightway after shooting. A windowframe beckoned. She closed her eyes for three breaths while she considered the geometry of what she had seen. The enemy must be there. Quick, before he moves elsewhere. She stepped to the hole and squeezed trigger even as she aimed.
The butt gave her a stiff, friendly nudge. The soldier screamed. He let go his rifle and lifted his torso on hands that spread white, helpless, upon asphalt. She had gotten him in the back. Best silence him. Those yells would call his mates. She drew a bead. His face exploded.
Extraordinary marksmanship. By far the most shots in battle went wild. Comrade Zaitsev would be proud of her. She wished the German would lie still like the first, not writhe and kick and gush blood. Well, he was quiet now.
She. hadn’t time to cringe. Surety the rest understood something had gone wrong. No matter how cautious, they would find this place within minutes.
Katya dashed forth, over the rabble, up the street, past her prey. Horrible, when it was human. Of course, then it hunted you likewise. She turned left down the cross street.
The Soviet soldier had not gone far. Her ambush had been quick, while he slowed still more. In fact, he was shuffling by a wrecked tram, leaning on it. Katya wondered if he would prove such a burden that she must abandon him. She sped in pursuit. “Stop!” she cried. “I’m your help!” Her voice sounded small and hollow among the ruins, beneath die leaden sky.
He obeyed, turned around, braced himself against the metal, slumped. She drew close and halted. He was quite young, she saw, not shaven lately but with just a dark fuzz over the skin. Otherwise his face was old, pinched, white as the snowflakes that drifted about and powdered his shoulders. His eyes stared and his jaw hung slack. Shock, she realized. That hand of his was pretty badly mangled. A grenade, no doubt.