Page 1 of Vasily the Hammer

Chapter 1

Everything is painful.And loud. And bright. It’s deafening, and it’s blinding. And every inch of my existence, inside and out, from my fingertips to my very soul, aches.

It hurts so much I can’t hold back my moan the second something happens in the world beyond me. The pain explodes. Even my moan hurts.

“Hey, hey, hey!” says a nearby voice. It is deep and raspy. Masculine and rough in that gravelly way of a decade of chain-smoking and hard living but otherwise healthy. Just winded. Adrenaline infused. It’s something I understand unquestionably. I don’t need to see the man to know how his voice got that way. And every barely-vocalized syllable flares a red-hot sear along my brain. “Are you back?”

I don’t know what that means. I don’t know where I am or if I’ve been here before. I try to speak, but it’s another moan. I try to open my eyes, but the brightness I saw before wasn’t real. The light I actually get now is enough to make everything blip for a second.

A minute?

An eternity?

And then the Marlboro Man yells, “Hey, what’s her name?”

I don’t know who he’s talking to. There are other people talking near us. Someone’s crying. A few people, I think. There are wails, but there are also sniffles.

There are empty voices. Haunted voices. Voices of death.

I think I’m dead.

And no one answers the Marlboro Man.

“Shit, did they keep you from talking to each other?” he grits out.

One of the dead voices says, “We just never seen her before. They was nabbing her when... when...” Her voice falters, a glitch, a spark of life, before falling silent.

“Right, yeah.” His voice softens to a thoughtful, almost intimate level. A voice meant for me. “You must have been the one they were picking up. Are you from here?”

Once more, I attempt to open my eyes, but the light blinds again. “I can’t,” I whimper. “I—oh god.” I start to heave, whatever was in my gut evacuating however it can, and the Marlboro Man rolls me onto my side before I choke to death on my own vomit.

The bile eats away at what little of my body wasn’t already hurting. I retch so hard I suffocate, but the air I attempt to breathe ends up in my stomach, starting the process over again.

I think I’m going to die. I’m going to aspirate on nothing but a malfunctioning windpipe.

The Marlboro Man rubs my back, and I’m wishing he would whack it between the shoulder blades, like you would a baby who’s choking. I know exactly how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on an infant. I don’t know where I am, but if I survive and a baby swallows a button, I’m ready.

Finally, I take a breath. With my head down, I can open my eyes, even if it is to the sight of the mess I made. I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know what I ate last, but hopefully, it looked better last time I saw it.

“I think you got a concussion,” says the Marlboro Man, still rubbing my back. One hand stays there the entire time, even as he passes me a damp towel to wash my face with and directs someone to come clean up. He doesn’t move a hand until he wraps a blanket around me. “Do you think I can get you upright?”

I lift my head up enough to look around. The floor is diamond plate. Next to me is a bench seat running the entire length of the twenty-foot galvanized steel wall. The bench is filled with women wrapped in blankets. Most of them are disheveled; a few are injured. Then there are the men, all dressed in black tactical gear and moving around with the finesse of high-end line cooks wordlessly plowing through a Valentine’s Night dinner service.

I know how well-trained line cooks operate. I know baby Heimlich maneuver. I know voices gravelly from decades of cigarettes.

And I know I’m right in the middle of a vehicle. A tractor trailer, maybe? Or some sort of military transport? So I nod, figuring that if I can do that, the rest of my body is okay enough.

“Alright, on the count of three. One . . . two . . . three.”

He’s gentle. I know he is. I canseethat he is. But I can’t keep in my wail of pain. He nearly sets me back down, but I fight him,needing to get into that seated position. Maybe I can curl up in a ball against the wall and cease to exist.

The man is big. Even in his head-to-toe black, I see bulk on him everywhere. But he squats down low so that I can see him without lifting my head up. Scary-looking. Rough shave, scars. Mid-thirties, I’d say, but battered. Got a cut on his jaw and a yellowing circle around his eye that’s sure to blacken. But I know better than to assume from a scary-looking face that a man is truly dangerous.

I know that. I know that big, rough, scary dudes can be teddy bears and men dressed head to toe in Tom Ford can be murderers.

I know how to tell if a suit is a Tom Ford. Or a Ralph Lauren or a Brioni or a Men’s Warehouse.

I know these things.

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