Babayaga

thinking, Will ducked and flipped the table up. Jake fired the gun into the ceiling as he tumbled backward with the remaining eggs, butter, bacon, and scalding coffee spilling, yellow and black, all over him. Jake aimed the gun again as Will dashed out the hallway. A shot hit and splintered the doorframe behind him as he dove out to the porch.
    Leaping over the rickety stairs, Will took off down the walkway and ran across the street. Running past a pair of grazing goats, he heard another gunshot as the wig shop window shattered out in front of him. Not waiting for a second shot, he dove in through the revolving doors of the Penobscot Building, scrambled across the lobby with his head low, then ducked into the stairwell by the elevators, slamming the door shut tightly behind him.
    Running up the stairs, Will thought through the weirdness and tried to form a plan. He realized that Jake was already an expert in this field, he had probably been hunting in this hallucinogenic terrain for some time. Jake also had a sizable advantage in that he had figured out how to actually get his hands on a weapon, he had a gun, while Will had only his wits, which at the moment were not nearly as focused as they needed to be.
    Will reached the third floor and flung open the stairwell door only to find himself facing a rolling green pasture with a picturesque cardinal red barn standing on a knoll off in the distance. There was a creek, and a few yards beyond that a stand of ash trees. With no real notion except an instinct to keep moving, Will ran toward the grove, but the soil was boggy and his shoes quickly got stuck in the mud. Panicked and fumbling, he tried to correct his footing, but he stumbled and fell, slipping sideways on the ground. He started to right himself, but before he could get up, he felt the hard pressure of steel being pressed against his head. Slowly, he sank back down onto his knees.
    “Well, pal,” smirked Jake, “you can’t say we didn’t give you a nice last meal.”
    “Okay. But give me one minute more, just one minute, please.” Will shut his eyes and tried to prepare himself for what was coming next. He quickly thought of all the beautiful things he had known in his life: his parents, his mother’s two cats sleeping in the sun, Doris Day singing “Shanghai,” a glass of whiskey on a winter’s night, and the taste of the warm crêpe he had eaten the first day he was in France. Then, finally, Zoya, her eyes, her cheekbones, the nape of her neck, and the way her breasts and bare torso looked as she lay half uncovered on the bed, breathing heavily, exhausted from his kisses.
    Will heard the click of the pistol. He opened his eyes and noticed that one of the Paris metro’s Art Nouveau entrances had risen out of the meadow. “At least I get to see some of Paris before I go.”
    “What?”
    Will pointed at the metro entrance.
    “Oh damn—” Jake started to speak but his words were interrupted by a big, strange crashing and small yelping sound, as if an oak tree had fallen over a dog. Then there was silence. Will stayed on his knees, uncertain of what he should do next. Finally he looked up over his shoulder and found a stranger standing above him, awkwardly wielding a heavy branch in his hands. At the man’s feet lay Jake, crumpled up on the wet field, his suit splattered with mud, his skull neatly caved in.
    “Is he dead?”
    The man nodded, with a shrug.
    “Gee, thanks,” said Will, slowly picking himself up off the ground. He put out his hand. “My name’s Will. Are you French or American? Français ou américain?”
    The man shook his hand and seemed about to answer when an enormous blinding white light flashed out and exploded across the landscape, engulfing all their surroundings. The man, the broad field, the distant trees, the whole world, completely vanished. Will tried shutting his eyes to block out the blinding, burning glare, but he had no way to stop the fierce light; his nerves felt scalded and raw as his panicked consciousness was shocked to a bright expansion point from which he was sure he would never return. The only bleak reassurance he had was that he absolutely knew what this was, the moment he had feared for years now, the great A-bomb annihilation. Someone had done it, the button had been pushed, an arrogant prime minister, a prideful president, a crazed stupid admiral or a lethally offended premier, it did not matter, some arrogant son of a bitch had launched the