Nadya’s Nights: Knight of the Living Dead
Night Five: Virus
Chapter Two: Assassins & Thieves
by Indy McDaniel
Copyright © 2010 Indy McDaniel
Nadya leapt over the still smoldering bones of the vampiress as she exited the building. She landed firmly and took off fast. Off to the side, she heard the sound of another door bursting open and glanced over, her hand dropping down to her waistband to touch against the Glock resting there.
Whoever else was leaving the building didn’t seem all that interested in her. His brown hair was cut short and he had a fair amount of stubble on his face. He glanced towards Nadya and the two locked eyes for a moment before he looked away and continued to run. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she noticed a slight smirk on his face.
Deciding he wasn’t a threat, Nadya moved her hand away from her gun and continued to run. Heading for her car – a yellow Mini Cooper S – she reached into her pocket and snagged the key, unlocking the doors from about thirty feet away. Crossing around to the right side, she opened the door and jumped in, pulling the door shut behind her.
As her door slammed shut, she heard a second door shut just after. Confused, she looked beside her to see the man who’d exited the building alongside her. She narrowed her eyes at him and dropped her hand down to her waistband, going for her gun.
“Hey! I saw this car first, get your own!” he yelled at her, his American accent evident.
Nadya’s hand once again stopped moving. “You’re a car thief?” she asked in Russian.
“German… lovely language, really… but I don’t got time for small talk, honey,” he shot back. “Get the hell outta here.”
Anger flared in Nadya. “I’m Russian, asshole,” she told him in heavily accented English. “And this is my goddamn car! You get out!”
“Russian? Wonderful. Much sexier,” he said. “And it is – really is – a lovely car. But y’see, who gets to drive it rests solely on who’s behind the steering wheel. And as you can see…” He turned to where the steering wheel should have been and saw nothing but dashboard. “Fuck!”
Nadya smirked coldly. “Forget which country you’re in, genius?”
“Shut up!” he yelled. “They drive the proper way in the Netherlands! C’mon, switch seats.”
“True, but my car’s from London. Speaking of which, get the fuck out of my car!” Nadya screamed at him. She pulled her gun free and aimed it at him. He managed to yank out his own battered revolver and take aim at her. They sat there with guns aimed at each other for nearly a minute before Nadya spoke again. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Jimmy Knight. Master thief and all around nice guy,” he said with a smirk that made Nadya want to blow his face off even more. “And you?”
“Nadya Valentina.” Her eyes narrowed into deadly slits. “I mostly just kill people.”
The dangerous tone of her voice didn’t seem to bother him any. “Well, that’s good to know. I just hope your driving ability is as good as mine is.” He motioned out the window on Nadya’s side of the car. “Cuz those guys don’t look too happy.”
She heard yelling and running and knew what she’d see if she turned to look. Whatever goons she hadn’t killed on her way out of the building were now giving chase. Sighing, she lowered her gun and the asshole sitting beside her did the same.
“Fine!” she said, jamming the key into the ignition and turning it, firing up the small car’s engine. She turned to look out the window to see the group of men heading for the car stop to get their guns out. Nadya flipped them off and slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, sending the car shooting forward as the men started to fire. She managed to dodge the barrage of bullets, leaving the clothing shop she’d been parked in front of to take the damage.
The men continued to fire as the car drove away but a sharp turn and it was no longer on the same street. Nadya kept her foot on the accelerator, swerving in and out of traffic. “Now, like I said… get the fuck out of my car!”
Knight looked around outside the car. “What, now?!”
“Yes!” she yelled, taking one hand off the steering wheel to punch him across the face.
“Hey!” Knight yelled back, punching her in return and causing her to swerve the Mini to the right and scrape against another car.
“Asshole!” she screamed, swerving her car back. “Never ever hit a driver!” Glancing in the rearview mirror, she could see a number of other cars that were driving recklessly. “Great, now we’ve got company…” Spotting a turn up ahead, Nadya took it sharply. “Ah, shit…” she muttered as she saw the line of cars stuck in traffic ahead.
Knight looked over at her with a smirk. “What’s the matter? Forget which country you’re in?”
Shooting him a glare, Nadya pushed down harder on the accelerator sending them speeding towards the blockade of cars. That wiped the smirk off the asshole’s face. “Hey… what the fuck are you doing?”
Jerking the wheel to the side, Nadya spun the little car. Dizziness flowed through her as they turned and a moment later they were facing back the way they came. The pursuing cars had just turned down the street as well, effectively blocking the road at both ends. Nadya revved the engine a couple times then floored it.
“You’re fucking nuts…” Knight muttered.
The pursuers stood their ground as Nadya’s car loomed closer. At the last moment, she jerked the wheel again, swerving the Mini to the side. There was a hard bump as she hit the curb and they bounced up onto the sidewalk.
Pedestrians that hadn’t already fled now dove out of the way as the Mini crashed through a patio table. Someone’s fruity margarita shattered against the windshield. Nadya hit the wipers to sweep the pink liquid away. They passed the pursuers and Nadya spun back out onto the main road, going back the way they’d come.
“Now what’re you doing?” Knight asked.
“Shut the fuck up and let me drive!” Nadya replied focusing on not getting creamed by a bus.
“You don’t want to go back this way,” he said.
Nadya ignored him.
“No, really, you don’t.”
His constant critique of her evasion abilities was annoying her. “What the hell fo-“
Up ahead, the building they’d both just come out of was engulfed with explosions. Nadya hit the breaks, sending the car skidding to a halt before it went speeding into the collapsing debris. She stared at the crumbling building for a moment, mouth agape, then turned to Knight. “You blew up the fucking building?!”
“Not on purpose!” he shot back.
Nadya’s expression told him that she wasn’t buying it.
“They’ve got really good security…”
Hitting the gas and spinning the wheel once more, Nadya started back the way they’d just come from, swerving between the two pursuing cars and causing them to slam on their breaks once more in an attempt to keep track of their target. “For a thief, you’re not very inconspicuous.”
“For an assassin, you’re not very good at killing people,” Knight said, jerking a thumb back behind them. “You planning on taking these guys through a high speed tour of the city or what?”
Nadya shot him a glare. “You’ll get an up close look at just how good I am at killing people if you don’t shut up!”
“Fine!” he yelled back, reaching up and hitting the button to open the sunroof. Turning in his seat, he stood up and stuck the upper half of his body out of the roof, pulling his revolver out. Nadya heard the loud bangs of the gun and glanced into the rearview mirror at the cars chasing after them. She saw spider webs of cracked glass appear in the windshield of the lead car, which swerved to the left.
Another loud blast of gunfire and the car’s front right tire exploded, tilting it forward awkwardly and causing sparks to fire upwards. The car skidded off and creamed into a parked BMW, resulting in a very nasty crunching noise and the driver of the pursuing car to go smashing through the cracked windshield.
Putting her eyes back on the road, Nadya spotted a low overpass and gave Knight a punch in the thigh. “Get down, you idiot!”
Knight dropped back down into his seat and began to reload his revolver. “That’s one down.”
As they passed under the overpass, Nadya chewed her bottom lip, reluctant to speak but eventually she turned her head to Knight and gave him a brief nod. “Good shooting.”
Knight’s eyes widened with surprise but it only lasted a moment before he was back to his usual smugness. “Well, thank you, fair Russian mistress.”
Her upper lip curled with annoyance. “Shut the fuck up and take out the other one, asshole.”
Using his revolver to give her a mock salute, Knight flashed her a smirk. “As the Russian mistress wishes, m’lady.” Nadya was beginning to wish she’d just let his head get taken off by the overpass.
As he rose up out of his seat again, the remaining car behind them decided to fight fire with fire. An armed goon shoved himself halfway out of the passenger window and began firing. A pair of shots nicked the top of the Mini and Knight dropped back into his seat. “Fuck that shit,” he muttered. “Too dicey up there to get a good shot.”
Sighing, Nadya went back to what she knew best given her current situation. Driving fast and hard. She took several turns at speeds that would have flipped a lesser vehicle and accelerated as quickly as she could. Easy to spot, sure, but the car was damn useful during a chase. Unfortunately, the assholes behind them were tenacious. “I’m really starting to hate these motherfuckers…” she muttered.
“You and me both, baby,” Knight replied and Nadya felt like slugging him again. Instead, she jerked the wheel and went down a narrow side street.
Her cell rang. Cursing, Nadya flipped it open and put it on speaker. “What?”
“You blew up the goddamn building?” was Vladimir Belikov’s opening statement.
“I did not!” Nadya shot back, giving Knight a glare. “Some other asshole did that.”
“Hey!” Knight interjected.
“Who the fuck is that?” Vlad asked.
“I’m the other asshole, asshole,” Knight said to the phone then gave Nadya a glare of his own. “And for the record, I am not the asshole who blew up the goddamn building. The assholes who owned the goddamn building blew it up themselves.”
“Too many assholes in the fucking car,” Nadya snarled, pointing a finger at Knight. “Shut the fuck up.” Then she addressed the phone again. “The building blew up. Don’t worry about it. I took out the target before it happened.”
“I knew you would,” Vlad responded. “It’s not what I’m worried about. You’ve got a lot of attention on you. You need to disappear fast.”
Nadya jerked the wheel and swerved around a corner. “Working on it!”
“And get rid of that asshole in the car with you,” Vlad added. “The last thing we need are more witnesses.” The phone went dead.
Smirking, Nadya looked over at the thief. “You heard the boss. Nice meeting you and all…”
“Wait a minute, Goddammit!” Knight shot back. “You need to lay low; I’m your best shot at that.”
“I’m listening…”
Knight smirked. “Alright, then. Let’s just get rid of these cocksuckers first…”
As if to emphasize that the cocksuckers were still behind them, a bullet smashed through Nadya’s left side mirror. “Fucking assholes! Yes, let’s!”
Checking the rearview mirror to see just where the pursuing car was at, Nadya reached a hand over to the center console, hit the switch to lower her window then jerked the steering wheel hard causing the Mini to spin around, shifting into reverse and keeping her foot pressed firmly down on the gas pedal. Pulling her gun free, she shoved it out the open window and started to fire.
Taking the hint and shaking off the dizziness of the sudden reversal of direction, Knight lowered his window and followed suit, firing at the enemy car as well. One of the bullets hit something in the engine that caused a massive plume of smoke to come spilling out and flow over the windshield. Pulling her gun back in through the window, Nadya jerked the wheel and spun the car back around the proper way, shifting back into drive and taking off.
Behind them, the pursuing vehicle swerved recklessly as the driver tried to somehow get a clear line of sight. The smoke cleared just in time for him to spot the lamppost as he smashed into it.
Taking several more sharp turns and keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, Nadya watched for any more bad guys. After a couple of minutes of nothing, she allowed herself to relax slightly and slow to a more socially acceptable speed. “So… about you helping me to lay low for a while…”
