Ñèêâåë-ôàíôèê ïî ðàññêàçó Ðýÿ Áðýäáåðè "Ïðîíûðà".
...so it went on and on. Their mission was deepening inland. Their squad's moving trajectory was being put on the map all the time, and it looked like an arrow thrown by a huge bow: so straight it was, so sharp an end it had, so mad a speed.
What Johnny found was unbelievable admiration. Both Eddie and others watched him all the time – even when their sight was a cirle of the aim, curved on edges. In this tiny curved piece they always saw Johnny – such a fantastic figure, running in every place, bearing death, death, death...
The squad, expect one single person, felt as if a tremendous wave, washing away the front; at some point the soldiers allowed themselves to think as invulnerable, indestructable. Meanwhile, they had no reason for this, not a bit.
It was true they turned into some sort of a death-bore biting into the continent. Yet, not so many realized a considerable part of was due to the very end. Milling blood and flesh, it didn't see the milled parts. Johnny only saw a magnficent game: marvellous landscapes, realistic sounding, dust. Shouts.
Once upon a time they gave Johhny the grenades. “They explode like those fireworks, don't they?” - he then asked them. The soulders laughed approvingly: definitely, he meant he didn't even need these grenades in order to win the battle, the war, whatever. “What a great man. The picture of a man is him and nobody but” - they thought and repeated like a mantra during temporary silence, out of the battlefield. Johnny's shoulders were like Moon under an asteroid attack: so many times his friends clapped him with sincere love and awe.
Then something changed in squad's mood. This was the first time Johnny decided to play with fireworks. So he did. Machine-gun nests were bursting like earth-bubbles; the craters where the enemies lay, trembling with wild fear, deepened, booming again, throwing out the enemies' remains. Johnny took a delight in it, he was popping gladly and whistling every time he got the target – and he did frequently. That was the thing: the soldiers were somewhat taken aback. Within time they began exchanging with half-alarmed glances. It didn't affect their admiration. But they couldn't grasp such a brutality with such a shining laugh. They hated their enemies but they didn't mock them. Johnny, to their mind, did.
Eddie Smith was always there, sticking by Johnny, ironically being the protected rather than the protector. He desperately tried to follow Johnny everywhere, while the latter was a child driving a car, making incredible turns, revolving, jumping. Eddie didn't share his and Johnny's secret with anyone. He thought, as long as Johnny is a hero, let him be treated that way.
What Eddie Smith took as a new job was trying to lead Johnny along the 'clean' paths: Eddie couldn't even imagine Johnny facing blood and understanding what it is and why it is there, after the shot, the explosion all caused by Johnny.
Once, Johnny was a fireworker again. Elated by the jumps of ground after each exlosion, he was sending death here and there in arced lines. (Eddie shivered at trying to imagine the germans' position: there's nothing dangerous ahead, expect for some mad-man point running from side to side, yelling something stupid, and then there's a sound of a heavy object landing exactly in between you and your friend; on soft, friable ground of the crater or trench, it doesn't jump, it stays in one place. An instant, and there's a sound of thunder.) Another boom struck soldiers' eardrums, black-red pieces mixed with particles of soil fountained up and around. Johnny blew unexisting smoke from his finger and ran forward, when a smoldering brown parcel plummeted in front of him, spattering microscopic hot drops around on falling. Johnny's eye widened and glinted with a strong curiosity. He got closer to it, inclining his head right-left as if doing a morning exercise (this thought also came to his mind and, with capricous anger, he banished it: “I hate those early-morning things, it's freezing in the morning!”). Releasing smoke, a piece of warm flesh lay before him, a mini-puddle of red leaking around it. Different sized bubbles were popping and blowing on its surface: it was boiled by the explosion. Johnny's green brain was processing the sight of this red phenomenon for what seemed a while, but in no time Eddie appeared out of nowhere behind him and, shouting something (in the middle of the bullet-grenade mess the sound hardly rivaled a whisper), gripped him by shoulders and pushed ahead. Breathing dozens of litres of air with every inhale and exhale, Eddie somehow managed to sigh with relief, which then vapoured: that day the whole area was filling with human parts. At some moment, Johnny was dragged back into a trench, which he agreed to do with him only because he was slightly tired. He even asked for a glass of water and reported being hungry, pointing out that he missed his mother. Thankfully, the only person to hear that was Eddie.
Afterwards, at night, Johnny woke Eddie up and asked what it had been there. “It smelled strongly” - he said. - “I thought I recognized the smell. It was like iron or something”. Eddie, who was panicky inside his dream, then, in a state even worse, said an inanity first in the line: “It was... like, a wine, Johnny, friend. The wine it was: it's red and it boils if warmed too much. You cracked their wine-bottle.” Johnny gave a laugh, believing Eddie's every word. The latter at the moment was praying to God that no one else wake up on hearing this nightmarish madness.
So, the squad got mixed up in emotions. Now, the soulders were literally afraid of Johnny. To them, if it were possible to switch some tumbler in one's head so that one would become anti-one and do anti-things – if it were, they believed, Johnny would go genociding the US. Completely. Skyscrapers vapoured by extra-size grenades, showering the ground beneath with human anatomy; rivers of molten metal flowing from legions of cars and taxies and buses, with no a single difference between General Motors and the rest; Johnny, holding an enormous microphone and laughing, teeth snow-white, sending waves of happiness above the New-Hell City.
***
...Eddie disliked this day in advance, at the dawn, Something was wrong with the rising sun itself, he thought. Either was it with air. Not only was it unbearably hot, there was some mist. You could see miles ahead, and yet some milk-white haze was there. As it turned out, it was caused by tiny dust particles, as if some titan had blown the dust from his African shelf. So everybody caughed at times, murmuring irritatedly. The newly-dug trench wasn't helping the affairs: like no-size planes, the dust was diving in it, sending sneeze-bombs.
It was until several whistles touched their ears along with distant shot-claps. The squad ducked altogether, switching on the war-mode, aiming. Not ready to go offending yet, they were talking in Warish with the enemies; a loud squirrel was about to begin once again.
As the attackers slowed down a little, having got a reply, Eddie, who was of course shoulder to shoulder with Johnny, was quickly instructing him on what to do, once it's okay to initiave their own attack. He wasn't saying anything like 'instructing', 'initiate', though, he was saying: “When the baddies stop shooting, me and you, we get out and play loud, huh, Johnny?” Johnny was nodding, his now long hair dancing, eyes burning with anticipation. Despite the childish enthusiam Eddie filled his words with, he was in a constant state of fear; he struggled to stop his voice from trembling.
A couple of bullets stroke the ground right in frong of Eddie's gun, watching the field; they raised shapeless clouds of dust which surrounded Eddie's head immdiately. He hit his eyes with his palm, stepping backwards, exclaiming: “Darn it! Uh, shit!” and went rubbing his eyes fiercely. All of this hardly taking a second, Johnny flew out of the trench, shouting with rage: “Hey, you, that's not fair, you hear me! Dust in the eyes is cheating, you know that?” He rocketed forward with incomprehensible speed, going on blaming the german in the gun-nest who could barely hear anything and now was cutting the very air with bullets, grinding it. You could almost touch the satisfaction he was shooting with, since there popped up an easy victim.
But soon, in a matter of seconds which stretched into hours with dozens of minutes in them, the machine-gun felt like frightened: it intensified, leaving no place for any sound but its own. This is all because Johnny was getting closer and closer, 'doing that gradually' being a huge understatement. So there appeared several germans ahead, panicky hands holding unsure guns. It was all in vain.
Eddie, who has just been able to see something again, had a shock seeing Johnny almost two hundred meters ahead. Then he heard the others calling Johnny back, with no result, obviously. “No, God, please no, don't tare him off me, don't bathe him in real blood” - he thought, preparing...
...Johnny was making incredible zig-zags again and again, almost teleporting, saturating enemies' limbs with horror and despair. There soon was just one of them, still quite in a distance, but not sure if this distance mattered anything. The squad was watching Johnny, their faces flat, heads moving trying to 'catch' Johnny with the success of slow hand fly-capturing.
Johnny saw the german stop shooting and hurriedly throw out the clip and getting a new one, his fingers as clumsy as dancing hooks. It took him a lot – several seconds at the very least - but Johnny knew he wasn't the one who had offended Eddie: that 'cheating man' had already been killed. So Johnny waited till the german was ready again, this picture looking so bewildering. The shooting began again, and Johnny was cutting the distance in unrealistic jumps. At some moment, he decided he'd had enough and pushed the trigger. There was a silent click, no fire.
“What?! How is that possible?” - a thought Johnny had was.
He ducked and started rolling to the right side. German's bullets were following his body, striking the ground millimeters of him. Not all of them were so close, though, so Johnny got up on one knee, inserted a new clip with a ringing sound, got the closure right and sew a line of clouds forward. The line zig-zagged rapidly to the german, reached him and zig-zagged across his legs, then bellies, the german twisting like a doll, red liquid flying out of his mouth. He fell dead.
“What a good one that was!” - Johnny yelled with delight. He pushed with his kneed leg and ran towards the enemy. “You're the best player I've ever met! Get up now, let's be friends, a team!” Once he got close to the german, he stopped in surprise. The man was lying on belly on the ground, stretching his left hand forward, right hand hidden under his body. He was gurgling badly. His eyes made a quick movement and gripped Johnny. Then they grew red, the hatred injected every capilar of them, He started murmuring something angrily in German. His talk was so evil that Johnny didn't have to know German to uderstand that the man was saying swearwords, cursing on Johnny helplessly. “Come on, friend, we're done now. Get up and let's make a team!” - Johnny said with less confidence. The german growled, tonns of pain in this sound, and went on swearing.
Then he thrust his right hand from under his belly, gun in it, and shot. Johnny expected to see the bullet for some reason, but instead he felt something in his leg, beneath the knee. A hot knife cut through it, making the skin and flesh feel like melting, every single cell crying of pain. In a super-short instance, Johnny could feel his bone cracking and falling into needle-sharp pieces, like there was shapnel inside the flesh. He gave a short wild cry and fell on his left, holding his leg tightly. His face was grimacing horribly, getting ready to release an eruption of pain. For now his eyes were staring into nowhere, still trying to realize what'd happened.
...At the same moment Eddie came and there was one more shot. Without Johnny seeing it, the german's head, who had been hoarsing with solemn rage all these seconds, exploded with a sound that you get when you pour dirty water out of the window.
“No, Johnny, no... Please” - Eddie was saying with a different voice. He wrapped his elbows around Johnny's shoulders, under armpits, and started dragging him back to the trench. An eternity had passed before Eddie heard the voices of the squad, whereas Johnny was regaining counsciousness and started making strange sounds and sniffling...
They got him in the trench, finally. This is where Johnny realized all the pain, as if a light bulb had been switched.
A terrible scream tore Johnny's throat. He went tumbling, rolling, twisting, waving, shaking, continuing crying wildly. “Johnny!!! Johnny, look at me!!!” - Eddie was trying to hold Johnny's face in his palms, but the latter slipped fiercely.
The squad watched it shockingly. The guns in their hands gained tonns of weight so that they let them down, their fingers slipping down from the triggers like failed hooks slip from the wall edge. They were being pressed down by Johnny's cry, they couldn't believe their sight.
Eddie was jumping around Johnny as if trying to catch a huge mouse, the others tried to join him, but soon stopped, helpless.
Tears were flowing out of Eddies eyes. What he understood with terrible clearness was that a child shouldn't have gone through such a pain. “There're just not enough nerves in his body to produce so much pain! It is far beyond it! It mustn't be happening, it shouldn't be happening...”. He thought this whole horror to be wrong, immoral, dirty.
Meanwhile, although Eddie didn't notice, new bullets cut the air above their heads. Johnny never stopped yelling. He now slowed down, so Eddie saw his face and a cold showered his body: Johnny's head turned red, it seemed blood was on its way to break through the skin like water does through a poorly built dam; his eyes seemed to be making whole turnovers in the eye-sockets, running wildly, not seeing anything, without a single white spot in them; Johnny's face swelled as if he had dived into a hive with his head, it was also glistening with a terrifying mixture of tears and blood – both produced by Johnny's eyes. Johnny was sobering, now in a hoarse voice, a non-human image striking Eddie's mind like a hammer.
The squad realized the whole danger of not doing anything about new enemies, so they now went yelling: “Shut him! Shut him up, now!” Some of them got their guns up and aimed again, still desoriented, though, while the others were trying to help Eddie, which of course they were failing to do, since both the helper and the helped were out of the state in which you perceived any sense in the words, let alone shouts. So one of them roared: “I'll kill him if he doesn't stop, he's making a fucking mess!!!”. His gun hole, though shaking, raised its look at Johnny. “We are to die because of him!!!” another soldier barked and pointed his gun at the same target.
...Eddie turned around like a compass reacting on a sudden change of poles. He towered above the soldiers, his shadow seeming to have gone enormous and pitch-black. His eyes were releasing a withering fire from under his brows; the tears on his face seemed to have been vapoured by his rage. His arms shot to sides from his shoulders like jack-knives, capable of covering a planet under protection.
“Don't you dare. You hear me you bastards?!” - he wasn't yelling, he didn't raise his voice, but it was like the frequency of the soundwaves he was making changed so that you were almost made to vibrate. “Don't you dare, you beasts. If anyone touches a heir on his head, I swear to God I'll fill your rotten bellies with grenades!” The two with the guns stepped back and touched the wall of the trench with their backs, their faces white, and swallowed.
“Retreating!!! RETREATING!!!” - and soon the squad did.
***
Johnny was lying on his bed at home in an embryo-posture, on his right. Time drew several lines on his face, around his eyes, and dyed several hundred heirs into grey. He was skinny, for his appetite had been poor for years. His mind was like an empty basement with the dust of fear and sadness hung in the air. This is what he had now long been breathing with.
The door creaked very silently. An old woman's face, like an image of the sorrow ifself, though smiling with love, peered into the room. “Johnny, son, we've got some guests today. Your old friend. Your Eddie. He has come to visit you, son”.
Johnny turned his face to her, it looked a little frightened. “Eddie, mum? W-why would he come? To play again? Please, mom, tell'im I don't want to play. Ever...” his voice gave away his readiness to release tears.
Not a single muscle moved in his mother's body, and yet she winced and felt like inside an ice-cave for a moment. “By no means, son, no. He just wants to see you so very much”. Johnny calmed down immediately.
Several seconds later Eddie Smith entered Johnny's room, carefully closing the door behind.
“Johnny, dear friend, how are doing, huh?” - he asked, making huge effort simply to not let his voice shake badly. He believed his eyes, though didn't want to. Johnny made himself more comfortable on the bed instead of replying, as if too shy in front of an adult. Eddie stood on one knee right in front of Johnny's alarmed face and smiled as sincerely as he could. “Hey, are you even here, a fantasy-citizen of mine?”
Finally, Johnny gave Eddie a conscious, attentive look. He was surprised at how old Eddie's face was, how pale and deep his eyes had become. “You look almost like my father now” - he said.
Eddie's eyes felt like burning, his mouth's edges jumped up and down, but he managed to handle the sobbing. “Well, it is not the best compliment possible, because I'm aging, Johnny. But thank you, still...” he said with laughter.
“Eddie, please, tell me honestly, because I don't know... Tell me you haven't come to call me to play again. I don't want to go there, Eddie, I didn't like the game at all. You're not here to play, are you?..” - Johnny's talk speeded, his nose sniffed.
Eddie gripped Johnny's pillow with his left hand, now the only one. He closed his eyes for a while, his jaw stiffened, teeth cutting into his lower lip. The memories flashed in his mind, burning his neurons and heart painfully. One tear came down his cheek. Then Eddie gave a wide smile, his eyes shining. “The game is now over, Johnny. It's over. We ain't gonna play again. Never”.
He hugged Johnny.