"End of the World Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grimwood Jon Courtenay)

CHAPTER 10 — Saturday, 9 June

Kit wore a jacket over his yukata, though he’d forgotten to put on shoes. The baseball bat in his hand came from a stall in Asakusa and was so old it had a facsimile of Babe Ruth’s signature, the words 1948 Memorial Edition and Produced in Occupied Japan stamped into the handle.

Flicking on the overhead lights, Kit said, “I know you’re in here.”

Halogen strips stuttered into life overhead, revealing three microwaves, a Zanussi deep fat fryer, an industrial-size dishwasher, and a butcher’s block that had been there when he and Yoshi bought the building.

Other than this his kitchen was empty.

Bat in hand, Kit returned to the bar, realising too late that he’d just provided a perfect target for anybody now hidden behind the door.

“I’m armed,” he added.

Kit recognised the snort before he saw the girl. She was over by a window, wrapped in the folds of her cloak. It would have made more sense to Kit to discard the thing before she broke in, but then he wasn’t fifteen or a cos-play-zoku and who knew what rules they worked to?

“Found it,” she said, holding up her knife. “That’s all I wanted.” Neku did something clever with her fingers and the blade disappeared, only to pop back into being when she reversed the movement.

“See,” she said. “Not hard.”

Another twist of the wrist and it was gone again.

“I’m leaving now.”

Kit nodded.

“I won’t be back.”

“That works for me,” he said.

“Okay, I’m off…” Neku hesitated on the edge of leaving. “Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask…”

“How did you know I was down here?”

“That bin lid,” Kit said. “You shouldn’t have knocked it over.”

Neku looked puzzled. “I haven’t been near the bins,” she said, before shifting to her next question. “And why did you buy me coffee?”

“You looked cold,” said Kit.

She sighed. “You know,” said Neku, “I’m not sure I’m ever going to understand this world.”

“I’ll see you out,” he said.

Stepping onto cinder block, Neku flicked open her cloak and twisted one hand, summoning the knife she’d taken from the bar. A flick of her other wrist and she had the second knife. With a twirl, she cut one blade through the air and then cut again with the other, folding them out of sight with a simple twist of her fingers.

And then—and this is where it became impossible—Neku forced her fingers into the cut in the air and began to prise it apart, the tips of her fingers vanishing from sight.

“Wait,” Kit demanded.

Neku shook her head.

“Please,” said Kit.

“You’re drunk,” she told him. “And the drugs are eating what little you have left inside. Go to bed, get some sleep…I’m going home.” Neku didn’t sound very happy about this.

“No,” he said, “not yet…”

Kit shouldn’t have touched her. That was his first mistake. He reached out and tried to grab her arm, his fingers closing on her wrist, and then Neku was behind him, beside him, and in front, a blur of movement that ended with Kit sitting in the dirt holding Neku’s broken bracelet, a wicked knife gash disfiguring the palm of his left hand.

…Incredible heat.

Bone splintering as a child flipped backwards, his ancient Lee-Enfield tracing a parabola before it hit desert behind him, Kit’s cross-hairs already hunting their next target…

…Silver night and no stars. A wedding dress in the dirt, the body within it also discarded. A web of ropes holding the sky in place.

A girl on her bed, knees pulled up to her chin and her arms wrapped tight around her legs, in tears and naked…

“Shit,” said Neku, shaking her head. “I so didn’t need to know that.”

As the air around her began to shimmer, Neku rammed her hands into the haze and began to drag it apart, one arm disappearing as she began to squeeze through the gap.

“Come back,” Kit demanded. “I need…”

And then what he needed stopped mattering. Because glass exploded from the upper windows behind them and the front of Pirate Mary’s peeled away, fragments of broken boards splintering across the street. The broken ceiling of the bar, now open to view, curled billows of smoke into a downward roll.

Made almost entirely of wood, the old building did what wooden buildings do best, it began to burn. Dark and oily from seven decades of paint, the smoke billowed above the fire. Kit didn’t remember climbing to his feet or charging towards the stairs. And he barely registered the flames that forced his retreat into the grip of Mr. Ito.

“Who has the keys?”

Kit looked blank.

“That van,” said Mr. Ito. “It will block the fire engine. We must move it.” He shook Kit’s shoulder. “Come on, who has the keys?”

“I don’t know.” Pulling free, Kit screamed, “Yoshi.”

A wall of flames roared back.

“My wife,” said Kit.

Hands dragged him away and when Kit looked again there was no doorway from which to be dragged. The fury had swallowed every detail within its flames.

A fire officer was demanding answers. Try as he might, Kit couldn’t remember having been asked a question. After a second, he understood.

“Hai,” he said. The two Iwatani burners in the kitchen used butane. Yes, there were spare bottles stacked near the grill. Four, maybe five. But what he really needed to do was find…

“Yoshi,” he yelled.

The next time he tried to break free, a girl in a white coat appeared at a nod from the officer and snapped open her leather bag. The jab took less than five seconds to disconnect Kit from the chaos around him.