By Blood We Live

Foxtrot at High Noon by Sergei Lukyanenko

The town was lost between the mountains and the sea, like a man between the earth and heaven.

The train moved along the shore all night, and the rattle of the wheels merged with the sound of the surf in a single unending melody. In the freight car, Denis was barely able to sleep. He lay on boards that smelled of hay and horse dung, watching the infrequent flashes of stars through the holes in the slotted roof of the car. There were no horses here-the livestock pens were empty-but a little bit of hay remained, and he raked it under his head. Before going to sleep, Denis had undressed, and now wore only his undershorts. Boots stood beside his feet; jeans, a plaid shirt, and a velvet jacket hung off the side rail of the livestock pen. His left hand rested atop a heavy revolver in a frayed holster.

The wheels of the train knocked out their song. Denis began to stir, and whispered:

– then dozed off for a short time.

Denis awoke as the car was gripped by the morning chill. He stood, grabbed his weapon, and walked from the end of the car to the caboose platform. In one of the pens, a vagrant lay still and unmoving in the shadows. Denis averted his eyes.

Daybreak. The door to the train car was open; he had entered the train through it last night. Outside, on the platform, he unhurriedly relieved himself, then sat down, hanging his legs off the side of the car, an endless ladder spreading out beneath him, the rails like twin steel bow strings and the rungs of the cross-ties dark from creosote. If you lay your head back it seemed as if the train were gliding down from the sky itself.

“The wheels are knocking tra-ta-toot,” Denis repeated.

A quarter of an hour later, when the train had stopped in a small town, Denis stood in the open doors of the freight car finishing a cigarette. The train pulled onto track number one; on track two, a long freight train with tanks and storage containers began to sing and toot and started off in the opposite direction. Denis jumped down without waiting for the train to come to a full stop and teetered, but kept his balance.

“It’s a one-minute stop,” said the stationmaster, who was standing by the tracks with a red flag in his hand. He looked suspiciously at the empty car. He was alone on the platform, his uniform-like his face-old and crumpled, his eyes dull and dead.

“I’ve already arrived,” Denis said.

A gleam of curiosity appeared in the eyes of the stationmaster. He looked over Denis from head to toe, then asked: "Got a pistol?”

“Revolver.”

“Licensed?”

“No.”

The locomotive whistled and started to move. The stationmaster rolled up the signal flag and slid it into a tube. He glanced at the departing train.

“What about your traveling companion?” the stationmaster said, pointing. Denis saw that the vagrant’s foot was visible through the open door of the train car.

He’d asked as if by inertia, in exactly the same way that he had stepped out to meet the train, in exactly the way he had rolled up the flag. The man had observed this kind of behavior before. Too many times.

“He’s going farther,” Denis answered. "Is your town a big one?”

“Two hundred thirty people,” the stationmaster said. "And there’s an infant, too, the daughter of a schoolteacher. But she was born sickly.” He shrugged his shoulders. "I don’t know whether she counts.”

The knocking of the wheels grew silent in the distance and only the whisper of the sea remained. "My name is Denis.”

“Pyotr,” the stationmaster said. He extended his hand-mechanically, lifeless. Denis pressed his palm-firmly, steadily. "Oh, you’re completely frozen,” Pyotr said, some emotion, at least, appearing in his voice. "Let’s go inside. I’ll make you some tea.”

Denis nodded and followed him into the station-a small, one-story building made of red brick, the roof covered in tile.

They drank tea in the cold, dilapidated office. In the corner, old red banners with golden letters gathered dust-awards for victories in some kind of Socialist labor competitions from the previous century. On the desk was a black plastic telephone, out-of-place, incongruent-a relic of a time before everything turned to shit.

“Does that thing work?” Denis asked, and gulped down the hot tea.

“You’ve got to be joking.” Pyotr didn’t even smile. "But we’re supposed to have one. Nobody rescinded the rule.”

“Is there electricity in the town?”

“There’s a generator in the hospital. They’ve been bringing in a little bit of oil,” the stationmaster said cautiously. "The fishermen have a wind turbine. An old one.”

“How do you get by?”

“Like everybody else,” Pyotr said, with no trace of resentment. "We do whatever we need to. We poke around in the soil, but there’s very little good soil around here. We catch fish. During the day the freight train will come by; we will send ten barrels of fish to the city.”

“Salted?”

“Fresh. We interlay them with wet grass-seaweed. They’ll last a day.”

“What else?”

The stationmaster hemmed and hawed. "Well, in general, nothing. There’s no work. There was no point for you to get off the train here.”

“I always find work,” Denis said. He poured himself more tea from a fat nickel teapot. It was the only clean and well-conditioned object in the office. And the tea brew was the real thing, as though from a past life.

“Unfortunately, there’s no sugar left,” Pyotr said. "There’s never enough sugar.”

“I don’t drink it sweet.”

The stationmaster raised his tired and pleading eyes: "You should go. The freight train will set off in the afternoon-I’ll put you on it. I can talk to the engineer, he’ll let you in the cabin, you can go as-”

He failed to explain the word "as"-as right then there was a knock at the door, and someone entered the office.

“Well, now,” Pyotr whispered as he stood.

Denis finished drinking his tea, then turned around.

A young man was standing at the door-thin, black-haired, with brash, lively eyes, and bright-red lips, as though they had been painted with lipstick. He was wearing a black leather coat with shining silver braid-studs and black leather pants that fit tightly over wiry legs. In his left hand, he held an automatic pistol by his side-carelessly, with boyish defiance.

“Who’s he?” the young man asked.

“He’s just passing through,” the stationmaster said. "He got off the morning train. He was riding in the freight car; he was completely frozen. He’s leaving in mid-afternoon.”

The young man remained silent and bit his lip.

“Who’s this?” Denis asked the stationmaster. "Some kind of pretty boy?”

Pyotr choked on his tea and shook his head.

The young man’s eyes became big and round from the insult. He didn’t say a thing-for which Denis mentally complimented him-but he immediately began to raise his weapon. The stationmaster dove under the desk.

The revolver in Denis’s hand shot just once. A hole appeared in the young man’s black leather jacket, and the air smelled tartly of gunpowder. The youth glanced at Denis-hurt, like a child forbidden to play a game-and fell heavily to the floor.

“You go,” Denis said to Pyotr. "I’ll clean up here.”

“What have you done?” the stationmaster began, as he crawled out from under the desk. "What have you done? You should have just peacefully left in the afternoon…”

“You’re not sick of living this way?”

“Everybody’s living this way, it’s bad for everyone now.”

“No, not everyone’s living

this way,” Denis said resolutely. "Go.”

The stationmaster set off for the door in an arc, but the young man’s boots-heavy, laced-up army boots-were lying right on the doorstep, and he was forced to step over the body.

“Is this one a newcomer, or one of yours?” Denis asked.

The stationmaster stopped, awkwardly leaning over the body. He licked his lips, took off his service cap with raspberry-colored piping and crumpled it in his hand.

“One of ours. The doctor’s son.”

“Where can I find him?”

“The doctor? Take this street,” the stationmaster said, and flicked his hand so that it was clear right away there was only one street in the town and it goes from the station to the sea. "There’s a little hospital, halfway down the street. A clinic, of course, not a hospital. We just call it that.”

“You go home,” Denis suggested. "Go, go. I’ll clean up everything.”

The hospital was very small, but even so, it was a little bigger than the train station. It was two stories tall, but on the second story, parts of broken window panes were awkwardly patched with clear plastic. Denis walked back and forth on the porch, finishing his cigarette. Finally he made up his mind, gave a short knock on the door and, without waiting for an answer, entered.

The doctor must have lived in the hospital-otherwise why would he be in his office so early? Fairly old and heavy, he was sitting at his desk. A stethoscope, the symbol of his profession, was in the corner. He was eating a watermelon.

“Have a seat,” the doctor said, pushing a plate at Denis. "Eat. We have sandy soil, the watermelons are really good. They help your kidneys.”

“I’m not worried about my kidneys,” Denis said. "Your son-”

“I know,” the doctor didn’t raise his eyes to look at him. "Pyotr stopped by earlier.”

Denis remained silent.

“What do you expect?” The doctor asked. "I can’t say ‘thank you’ to you. But I’m not going to begin to accuse you of anything. Yes, certainly, it’s good that this torment has ended. To watch your son being turned into a monster-it… burns up the soul.”

“I can imagine,” Denis said.

The doctor set aside the green rind and started on the next piece of melon. "Just what have you achieved?” he mumbled. "Now they’ll kill you. And punish us for the fact that we didn’t kill you ourselves.”

“How many of them are there?” Denis asked.

“Twenty or so.”

“Can you be more precise?”

“Eighteen,” he said, red juice trickling from his lips. "Not counting my son.”

“We don’t have to count him,” Denis confirmed. "There are about a hundred men in the city, couldn’t you handle this yourself?”

“It’s not a hundred,” the doctor shook his head. "If we count just the adults, it’s about seventy.”

“Well? There are only eighteen of them.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” the doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Eighteen. Fifteen of them are our children.”

“Initially there was just three?”

“Yes. They settled in. Everything began little by little. They promised to protect us and for a while they really did protect us. Then one our boys went over to them, then another, then a third…”

“You should’ve done something about it before the first went over to them,” Denis said firmly. "How many men, how many women?”

“They have about two women,” the doctor winced. "But that’s not a problem for them. If they get bored, they come take our women.”

“What is the name of this gang?” Denis asked.

“They call themselves the ‘High Noon Vampires.’ They come to harass us every day at noon, like clockwork.”

“And the leader?”

“His name is Anton Pavlovich.”

Denis stood and went to the door. "I could never understand this. A handful of bloodsuckers puts the entire town on its knees…and everyone sits in the corner like sheep,” he said. He was quiet for a moment, then said: "Where can I get something to eat?”

“There’s a café across the street.” He already had finished another slice of watermelon and was now gnawing on the rind unconsciously. "We have just one café.”

The owner of the café was the first person with living eyes Denis had met in the town. When he entered, there were three people sitting in the dining room, but they immediately got up and left, as though a nasty odor were hovering around Denis.

A woman, not yet old, but with hair streaked with gray, came up to him, peered into his eyes for a second, and then nodded her head: "Kill as many as you can,” she said. "I’m begging you.”

“I’ll kill them all,” Denis answered simply. "What can I have to drink?”

“Just something to drink or ‘have a drink’?”

“Just drink. I can’t stand alcohol.”

“Coffee?”

Denis just smiled, as if she were making a joke.

But the woman went behind the bar, jingled some keys and opened a drawer. She took out a small bag, generously poured coffee beans into a hand grinder and started solemnly rotating the lever as if she were performing a sacred ritual. To a certain degree, it was just that.

Denis waited, looking as if he were enchanted.

The coffee that the woman brought to him in a big red mug was boiling hot. But the most important thing was the fact that it smelled like coffee.

“Where did this luxury come from?” Denis asked, after taking a sip.

“From past life. There is always something left from the past life.”

Denis nodded silently.

“Do you want to have a bite to eat?” The woman asked. "I’m not offering you a banquet-you can’t fight on a full stomach. But they’ll come to the city at noon; you’ll have time for a snack.”

“Okay,” Denis said, although he was full. "What can you recommend?”

“I hate fish,” the woman said. "But I have good steaks. Honestly.”

“Give me one-well-done and not too big.” A young girl peeked into the dining hall from the kitchen. She had a pale face and tightly pursed lips. "Is she afraid of me?”

“She’s afraid of everyone,” the woman answered without turning. "Ever since she was dragged away last year. They kept her for three days.”

The girl was about fourteen or fifteen. "Don’t you worry,” Denis said, although he knew that the woman would not believe him, "I

will kill all of them.”

“There are eighteen of them,” the woman answered. He liked her precision.

“I know. That’s not too many.”

Her look changed ever so slightly, as if she had begun to believe him.

“Take this.” The woman’s hand dove into the neck of her dress and pulled out a chain. "This is an icon of the Mother of God. I believe it was what saved my daughter.”

“No,” Denis said, and gently but firmly stopped her hand. "I can’t take it. But you’ll help me immensely if in a half-hour you bring me another cup of coffee.”

“If you kill them all, I’ll make you a cappuccino,” the café owner said. "With foam.”

They drove into town from the sea side, the side of the pier where, in a leisurely manner, they set a couple of old barns on fire. The fishermen had long ago gone off to sea in their little boats, taking their wives, children, and more or less all of their valuable household possessions.

Five of the gang rode horses, the rest huddled on two horse-drawn carts. In one of the carts a machine gun was set on a turret, and behind the machine gun, sitting on an old office chair, a young woman was stooped over-all decked out in black leather with silver buttons glistening in the sun. Denis watched her with amusement. Vampires, of course, aren’t afraid of either the sun or silver. They can be killed just like people-it’s just…more difficult.

The town had become deserted. The residents did not dare look at what was happening even out of the corners of their eyes. However-in one of the windows of the café the drape was moving slightly. Denis smiled in that direction then returned his attention to the two carts and five riders.

When they saw Denis standing in the middle of the street, they slowed down slightly and began to move more cautiously, looking from side to side, cocking their rifles, and switching off the safeties on their revolvers and automatic weapons. Denis waited patiently until they completely surrounded him. The girl with the machine gun was chewing gum and gave him a look of scorn, but without animosity.

“What is this, some kind of fucking cowboy…” the leader-Anton Pavlovich, Denis remembered-said. He was middle-aged but not old-strong, with keen, intelligent eyes. He wore a gun in an open holster and rode the best horse. Since it wasn’t a question, Denis preferred to remain silent. "It was you who killed Andrei,” Pavlovich said.

“Me,” Denis said.

Pavlovich nodded, thinking. "Well,” he said, "if that was your way of asking to join our gang, I’ll take you. I was tired of that

soplyak anyway.”

“Are you the Master?” Denis asked.

“What?”

“Are-you-the Master? That’s what the leader of a vampire pack is called. Or don’t you even know that much?”

A fat man riding beside Pavlovich laughed. The girl with the machine gun smiled.

Pavlovich sighed: "Kill him!”

The first bullet struck the girl with the machine gun right between the eyes.

Denis side-stepped right, pulling Pavlovich’s second-in-command down from his horse and throwing him onto the cart, knocking down the other gang members as if they were bowling pins. At the end of the cart, he lay still, his neck broken.

The second bullet tore through the heart of a man holding an automatic rifle.

The third targeted the face of a girl holding a shotgun. At the very last moment she jerked and the bullet tore off part of her ear, and so Denis had to shoot a fourth time.

The fifth and sixth bullets felled two guys with revolvers who were the spitting image of each other (brothers? twins?).

The last one, the seventh, entered the stomach of a man who’d tried to jump Denis-an Asian with shortly cropped hair and cold, merciless eyes.

Someone shot and missed.

Someone screamed.

The horses neighed and reared.

Denis danced between and among his remaining adversaries, breaking the necks of two of them and, with a single strike of his hand, tearing out the heart of a third. A teenager on the cart saw this, put his lips around the muzzle of his revolver, and shot himself.

The girl with the shotgun was hanging limply off the side of the cart, the weapon falling out of her dead fingers. Denis grabbed it and discharged one barrel into the head of a man on a horse; his head exploded into red mist.

“Tra-ta-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta-ta,” Denis hummed like the rhythm of a foxtrot, counting the dead enemies. He decided not to count the young one who shot himself. The leader did not fit into the rhythm either; another end awaited him.

The remaining High Noon Vampires ran in all directions.

But the dance wasn’t over yet.

The second shotgun shell hit the guy with the hunting rifle in the back. He fell, writhing in the road’s dust. Denis then drove the butt of the gun into the forehead of a scrawny man with crazed eyes who’d been running backwards, deftly shuffling his feet and giggling madly as if he had seen something amazingly funny.

“Tra-ta…” Denis said.

Three horses rushed along the road toward the sea. Denis switched the revolver to his other hand, emptied out the shells, and snapped three bullets in.

“Tra-ta…” Denis finished humming and shot. Two of the horses started galloping faster, dislodging their deceased riders. One of the riders’ feet got caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged for a few meters, then lost his boot and remained on the road, motionless.

Only the leader remained. With a little regret in his heart, Denis planted a bullet into the leg of the man’s horse. With surprising deftness, Pavlovich leapt down, but did not even try to get up-he just turned on his back and glared at Denis as he approached.

Denis slowly walked toward him.

Pavlovich pulled out a gun and fired off a single shot, but Denis kicked the weapon out of his hand, and grabbed Pavlovich’s jacket and pulled it tightly around him. "You missed,” he said.

Denis shackled Pavlovich’s hands with his own belt, gagged his mouth with a handkerchief, and started dragging him toward the rail station.

The woman came out of the café when they were passing by, holding a coffee cup somewhat shakily in her hands.

Denis looked into it. A cappuccino.

“You are quick,” he said.

“You are even quicker,” the woman said. Her daughter stood behind her, smiling.

“We must finish the horse off,” Denis said. "Will you be able to do it? There are a lot of weapons back there.”

“No more deaths,” the woman said. "Even a lame horse is a living horse.”

Denis drank his cappuccino. Pavlovich wheezed something unintelligible into his gag.

“Please, go away. Go away for God’s sake!” The woman shouted; her nerves couldn’t stand it any more.

“It will be better for you not to tell anyone exactly what you saw here,” Denis said. He returned the unfinished cup to her and walked away, dragging the leader to the train station.

Barrels of fish stood on the platform, but there was no one around. Denis signaled to the approaching train himself and loaded the barrels onto a cargo car at the end of the train. He then threw the leader into the car and climbed aboard.

The train whistled and started off.

Denis stood for a while by the open door, looking at the town receding into the distance. Without looking, he caught Pavlovich as he made an attempt to jump off the train, and tossed him back into the car. Denis closed the door, approached the man, and pulled the gag out of his mouth.

“You god damned

pridurok!” Pavlovich shouted. He was so terrified that he no longer was afraid of anything. "You pridurok! We’re not vampires! We just called ourselves ‘High Noon Vampires’! We’re an ordinary gang, understand? An ordinary gang!”

“I understand,” Denis nodded.

“And this is our town!”

“Was your town,” Denis said.

Pavlovich fell silent. He looked at Denis’s face for a moment, then stared at his chest. "I didn’t miss,” he muttered. "I couldn’t have missed!”

Denis took off his jacket, revealing a hole from which slowly oozed a dark, dark liquid…that quite recently, just that morning, had been flowing in the veins of the doctor’s son. The cold, gray flesh surrounding the wound was already starting to heal.

“You didn’t miss,” Denis said. "But it’s really difficult to kill us. Those who have died already don’t like to die again.”

He was silent for a moment, looking at Pavlovich’s neck, then continued: "My Master doesn’t like it when a gang of con men call themselves vampires. We don’t like to kill very much. But we have to, sometimes; that’s what we are. But if we have a choice, we always choose to kill those who are even worse than we are.”

The train’s wheels tapped out-tra-ta-ta-ta, tra-ta-ta-ta-and the rhythmical crash of the surf could be heard off in the distance.

The fish, layered with moist seaweed, stirred listlessly in the barrels.

Unlike Pavlovich, they lived all the way to the city.