“Another man! Then he ran away out the emergency exit. Couldn’t you say that?”
“I couldn’t. That’s not true.” A thud resounded in the adjacent room. “Who is in the bedroom? My teacher?”
She nodded and hid her face in her palms. Her shoulders started to shudder.
He jumped over the sofa, grasped Emily’s hand and pulled her after himself. She didn’t resist.
Reaching the bedroom door, he opened it. Andrew saw his teacher, Dan Mortimer, an elderly thin man with the sparse gray hair, dressed in a housecoat and barefooted, lying on the floor near the bed. His arms and feet were tied, his mouth secured with an adhesive tape, and his neck was strapped up with a belt wound around a bed leg.
Seeing Andrew and Emily, the teacher rounded his eyes. “Hm-m-m!”
He banged on the floor with his feet. There was fear in his eyes. Poor old man. He suffered because of me.
“I’ll set you free, don’t worry,” Andrew said and pushed Emily forward so that she couldn’t escape while he untied the teacher.
All of a sudden he felt that his whole body became heavier. The bar slipped from his hand and fell on the parquet floor with rattle. It didn’t bounce but stuck to the parquet as if drawn up by a magnet. For a couple of seconds Andrew tried to keep his balance. Then he released Emily’s hand and dropped down on his knees. How could even a small stress like avoiding her attack and tossing her cause such a shameful weakness in him?! That hadn’t ever been the case before. Am I good for nothing anymore?
Instead of running away, Emily, too, fell on her side clumsily on the floor. Looking at Barkov with her tear-stained and horror-struck eyes, she croaked, “What’s wrong with me? Help!”
Unable to keep a vertical position even on his knees, Andrew propped up on his arms. His limbs, trunk, head – everything became too heavy. Muscles trembled from tension. Seeing that resistance was useless, he fell on his stomach.
Emily kept lying nearby. She was groaning as she tried to raise her arms alternately and dropping them at once. At last, she rolled over on her back and started to breathe through her open mouth noisily.
“Give me air! Air!”
Obviously, it was not a sham. Andrew had a feeling of suffocation, too. An unknown force squeezed his ribs so that they could hardly move apart for breathing. My weakness from my exertion isn’t the problem. What is it then?
The teacher bellowed again. “Hm-m-m!” His face had turned white and Andrew worried the man was about to suffocate between the unseen pressure around them and the tape over his mouth.
Barkov tried to crawl forward on his stomach. Making incredible efforts, he moved forward his right leg and left arm one by one. Then he dragged himself for a distance of a few centimeters and felt totally exhausted. His body was getting even heavier – as if it was covered with a heap of sand that was increasing quickly.
“Our numbers… are up,” Emily forced herself to speak making pauses to take breath. “Asteroid… I did not believe in it… Father did.”
In the distance a deep and echoing explosion sounded. The glass of the only window in the bedroom vibrated. It was impossible to understand what exploded – Andrew could only see the blue sky in the window from the floor.
“What did you not believe in?” Andrew asked. He heard only one version of the asteroid’s approach in the news: a large space object would fly by the planet not causing any harm.
“He said that the asteroid… will increase gravitation… and brake the Earth’s spin. I don’t wanna… die!”
Andrew had never paid attention to predictions of various insane scientists, astrologers and clairvoyants. They had already predicted death of mankind a million times. However, it might well be true that gravitation increase was the cause of what was happening to him, Mortimer and this girl now. What if the same force was affecting the whole city or even the whole world?
Suddenly the heavy weight was gone – the invisible sand that had covered him vanished into thin air. All three of them gulped huge intakes of air simultaneously. Barkov raised his head. Then he lifted his body leaning on his elbows. At last, he squatted.
Emily started to rise, too, wiping tears with her palms.
Pushing the crowbar with his foot to a corner of the room, Andrew jumped up and ran to the window. From there, he could see the neighbor’s house. Behind it, approximately a kilometer away, a column of dense black smoke was rising to the sky.
“Hm-m-m!”
Turning round, Barkov hurried to the teacher to untie him.
Chapter 3
“She’s not a masseuse!” Dan Mortimer squealed as soon as Andrew took the tape off his mouth. “I did not call for her!”
Helping him to rise from the floor, Barkov looked at the girl. She was sitting on the floor looking at the window absent-mindedly.
“Why did you let her in then?” Andrew asked.
Dan set his housecoat straight and smoothed his thin hair with both hands. Then, casting his eyes down, he answered, “I even let her tie me up, old fool… She told me they had an advertising campaign – one hour of erotic massage for free. Liar!”
Emily didn’t react in any way to his words.
“Don’t worry, Dan,” Andrew said, keeping a smile from showing. “Now I’m going to take her to the police department. She won’t disturb you again. As for our lesson, we’ll schedule it for next week.”
Emily shifted her gaze to the men and said in a quiet but distinct voice, “There’s no point in scheduling. In a week you won’t exist anymore. Me either.”
“You’ll be behind bars,” Barkov promised. “Let’s go to the car. And don’t try to escape. You’ll fail!”
“I know. You’ve got outstanding responsiveness.” She looked at him, her eyes suspicious. “Were you born with it?”
“No. Many years of training.”
“Ahem! I don’t think so. I’ve heard something about the people like you… Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m sorry for trying to kill you.” She turned to Mortimer. “Forgive me for deceiving you and tying you up.”
Mortimer asked, looking at Andrew, “Why does she say that we won’t exist in a week?”
“Her father told her that the asteroid would slow down the Earth.”
The teacher smirked. “Rubbish!” Then he cocked his head to Andrew. “Isn’t it?”
“Absolutely.” Barkov looked at the girl. “Move!”
She stood up in a defeated silence and went to the exit. This time her walk was even, without swaying her hips, her head high.
Barkov made her sit on the back seat of the electromobile, lifted a transparent partition and snapped locks on her doors so the girl couldn’t jump out on the road. Starting the engine, he drove smoothly from the empty street to the avenue crossing it.
He had to brake there at once. The road was blocked by a truck that had rammed into a small electromobile. The passenger car was crippled so much that it was impossible to determine its model. A pool of blood spread from under the heap of metal. There was nobody in the cab of the truck that was damaged just a little bit. Probably the truck driver ran away.
“Oh my God!” Emily exclaimed.
He glanced at the rearview mirror. The girl was looking at the deformed car with wide-open eyes, her hands touching her cheeks.