Outside, the sky was black. Every square in the quilt. No moon tonight.
Thunder rumbled, rattling the windows.
Quincey put the bowie to his neck. Lightning flashed, and white spiderwebs of brightness danced on Lucy's flesh. The shadows receded for the briefest moment, then flooded the parlor once more, and Quincey was lost in them. Lost in shadows he'd brought home from Whitby.
One moment's courage…
He sliced his neck, praying that there was some red left in him. A thin line of blood welled from the wound, overflowing the spot where Lucy had branded him with eager kisses.
He sagged against the box. Pressed his neck to her lips.
He dropped the bowie. His hand closed around the stake.
One moment's courage…
He tore the wooden shaft from her heart, and waited.
Minutes passed. He closed his eyes. Buried his face in her dark hair. His hands were scorpions, scurrying everywhere, dancing to the music of her tender thighs.
Her breast did not rise, did not fall. She did not breathe.
She would never breathe again.
But her lips parted. Her fangs gleamed. And she drank.
Together, they welcomed the night.
FOXTROT AT HIGH NOON by Sergei Lukyanenko
Translated from Russian by Michael M. Naydan and Slava I. Yastremski
Russian writer Sergei Lukyanenko is the author of the international bestselling vampire novels Night Watch and Day Watch, which were adapted to film by Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov. The third book in the series, Twilight Watch, is currently in production. The fourth and final book in the series, Last Watch, was published in January. He is among the most popular Russian science fiction/fantasy writers, and is the author of several other novels as well, but to date only the Watch books have been translated into English.
Lukyanenko's short work has appeared in English only once so far, in James and Kathryn Morrow's SFWA European Hall of Fame anthology. That story, like this one, was translated by Michael M. Naydan and Slava I. Yastremski.
This story appears here for the first time. It tells the story of a lone stranger, in a post-apocalyptic future, coming to a town overrun by lawlessness.
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:
'The train is rushing-what a beaut,
The wheels are knocking-tra ta toot toot!'
– 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-
