Babayaga

ballistic missiles, from Washington, Moscow, 10 Downing, or out from the bowels of one of the new nuclear submarines, it did not matter; the preemptive solution to every global conflict had landed, and all the wars being waged on the planet, every battle, every argument over justice or injustice, from the greatest of moral struggles to the most petty kitchen debates, conflagrations over the borders of oil nations to ornery grandmothers haggling over the price of thimbles, none of it mattered now, like the sun-scorched scorpions on the shores of some distant Bikini atoll, which had all been irradiated into an iridescent nothingness, it was over. Talk about the meek inheriting the earth, this once proud species, who had risen out of the jungle mud to overcome the mythical dragons of fire, serpent, fang, and talon, who had built spired cities, cleared continents, and were poised to conquer space itself, had been defeated, ultimately, by the fractional split of the tiny atom. All this flashed across Will’s tumbling mind as he spun deep into the shrill, screaming abyss. An inexorable vacuum pulled at him, swallowing and sucking him down toward a nodal nothingness. And then it was over.
    VII

    Witches’ Song Nine

    Yes, feel this atomic weight bearing down on your dreams,
    threatening like some swollen pink organ,
    cystic, fevered, prime to burst
    whenever a flashbulb pops.
    Look how you have forged
    your own haunting.
    Lyda and I, we had a lover,
    the naked professor, who, wrapped up in our blankets,
    drew his hieroglyph riddles
    across the whitewashed walls
    and out onto the broad planked floors,
    his nervous enthusiasm cracking his chalk,
    and we would stare, wondering,
    Where is this going?
    Yes, yes, truth is vitality,
    knowledge is power,
    and we have our own lexicon, seared to mind,
    of root and sinew, berry and boil.
    Our cause is clear and yet our impact slight,
    but you, well, where are you going?
    Your scientists dig for answers.
    The way pigtails play with matryoshka dolls,
    one riddle tucked inside the last,
    following it down, winding deeper
    into endless, spiraling mysteries
    while behind you, the hot winds blow
    and the desert sands slip in
    under sunny doorsills.
    Enough of this, it makes me anxious,
    let us instead set our eyes back
    to the city of the fool and the crone.
    Now there is a pair too, so very like you,
    who never doubt their path.
    VIII

    “Hullo,” said Oliver.
    Will blinked and looked around. He was back in the pharmacy lab.
    Oliver was beaming proud. “Surprised to be here? Well, yes, I always say, never underestimate the possibilities of pure adrenaline,” he said, holding up an empty syringe. “Had to dig through the cabinets to find it. I thought it was worth a shot, so to speak. Wonderful stuff. Simply wonderful.”
    Behind Oliver stood two of the jazzmen, Kelly and Red, wearing their matching blue suits. Both the men were mud-stained and sweaty and both were breathing hard. They each held a smoking Thompson submachine gun pointed down at two giants, who each lay stretched out on the floor, pistols still in their hands and sizable chunks missing from their heads. Blood covered the walls and oozed out from their bodies, pooling across the concrete floor. Flats stood by the closed door, watching out the window with a Johnson rifle in his hands. Bendix himself was nowhere to be seen.
    Then Will saw her, she had been standing in the shadows by the staircase, watching the scene shyly with her arms crossed. She stepped forward with a small smile and a look of relief on her face. Moving slowly, depleted of strength, he pushed himself up out of the chair and took her in his arms. He held her for a long time without saying a word.
    Twenty minutes later, he watched as the jazzmen stowed the guns and stuffed the shovels into the back of their impossibly small car.
    “You have quite a woman there,” Red told him, nodding to Zoya, who stayed on Will’s arm.
    “If you’ve got any issue coming up with the cash you owe us, I know some Berbers who will take those Thompsons off our hands, along with the rest of the stuff,” Flats told Oliver.
    Oliver nodded. “No need to bring in the Berbers, Flats, I’m good for the cash. Hold on to the guns till you hear from me.”
    “Okay, just trying to be accommodating.” With that, the jazz boys rumbled off in their car and were gone.
    Now Will was riding shotgun with Oliver behind the wheel. Zoya rested in the back. They were driving fast