in an ankle holster, and the other at the small of his back. He doesn’t like the ankle holster. It means he has to wear pants wide enough that they feel like bell-bottoms. It doesn’t look stupid, but it feels like it does.
He walks in, stopping at the store’s mouth to look back. Two young black men walking together. A blond woman with a pink scarf and yellow skirt. An old woman struggling with an ugly oversized purse. He thinks how he would kill each of them, but only as practice. None of them takes notice of him. He turns back. The fingers of his left hand tingle, and he shakes and makes fists until the feeling comes back.
Inside, the air is cool and scentless. Generic air, the same now as it will be at the height of summer or on Christmas Day. Nothing is different in here. Yuli takes a cart and heads in among the other shoppers. He has a list in his head. Chicken breasts and frozen vegetables to make dinner with. Some Muscle Milk to drink after he works out. And he needs socks. He’s thinking about throwing out all the ones he has and buying a dozen identical pairs at the same time he’s noticing all the exits.
Someone coughs, and the sound is wrong. Someone coughs the way you cough when you’re used to speaking Farsi. Yuli turns, and it’s the blond girl with the scarf. Their eyes meet for a fraction of a second. Her eyes widen a millimeter, and he knows.
He takes his hands off the cart, turns, and walks back toward the entrance. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t draw down, not yet. She won’t be alone. There are others. He needs to find them first, and then react. His heart is racing. Yuli thinks the strange feeling in his head is just adrenaline until a cashier closes her drawer as he passes. The sound is vibrant green.
This is not the time for the dogshit in his blood to be kicking in.
This is the only time he has.
The sun is warm against his face as he steps out into the parking lot. He feels the breeze against his cheek, cool and caressing. For a moment, he is aware of everything. The high, thin clouds almost obscured by the city haze. The faint smell of gasoline. The traffic sound of tires against asphalt on the street. If he can just get to his car and out to the street—
He swings around slowly, and he sees them. Two in a pickup truck by the main entrance. Another pair on the far side beside a white Honda with the engine already running, prepared to intercept him if he goes for one of the cutouts on that side. The blond girl behind him. There should be two more, probably at the back in case he went out the loading dock. They will be coming forward now. Yuli considers the civilians. A father and teenage daughter coming out of the store, bickering. A harried old woman pulling into a parking space. They don’t see any of what is unfolding around them.
Yuli walks to his car, watching the hunters as he goes. The back of his neck itches, and he glances back to see the blonde at the entrance of the store. She hasn’t drawn a weapon. She isn’t walking toward him. They’re waiting to see what he does.
If Wrona were here, one could drive while the other put down cover fire. Yuli can’t manage both at the same time. A team of seven against just one man, and one altered by ancient drugs at that. He would give himself one chance in six of reaching the street alive. Or less. Probably less.
He wishes now that he’d told the boy about all of it. He doesn’t want his grandson coming back home and finding the blond woman and her friends there. The boy won’t be able to tell them what they want to know, but they won’t believe that. Not at first. Hopefully, they’ll find what they want and go while the boy is still in his classes.
Yuli reaches his car. The two in the truck have come to their senses. They drive toward him. He opens the hatchback. If he can get his car started, he won’t try to reach the cutout. Straight out over the curb is his best choice. Then, if he doesn’t get into a collision, maybe he makes it home. Or away. Or back around behind them to put bullets in their skulls.
One of the pair from the Honda is running toward him hunched over. Making a break for cover. The blond woman sprints toward him, pulling a pistol from a holster under her skirt. The harried civilian gets out of her car, still oblivious to the kill zone she is in.
Yuli hoists his carbine. His hands are both tingling. The blond woman shoots twice. The second shot shatters the hatch window, and Yuli feels a stab of outrage. That’s his fucking car. And then there is only pleasure. A sense of overwhelming power flows through him, lifting him up like vast wings. The civilian woman screams and dives under her car. The father is pulling his daughter down as she tries to get out her cell phone to film this.
Yuli turns back toward the blond woman. When she sees the Bushmaster in his hands, she tries to change direction. To find some cover.
His gun roars. The sound is like fire: a brightness of yellow and red.
Ken Liu (kenliu.name) is an author of speculative fiction, as well as a translator, lawyer, and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. His debut novel, The Grace of Kings, is the first volume in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, the Dandelion Dynasty. It won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and was a Nebula Award finalist. He subsequently published the second volume in the series, The Wall of Storms; two collections of short stories, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories; and a Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker. Forthcoming is the conclusion to the Dandelion Dynasty. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.
APRIL
Text on screen: Town of Mannaport, Commonwealth of Maine and Massachusetts, population 28,528 (human)
[Montage of a bedroom community on the shore of Massachusetts Bay. Thick cables pulling a train into a commuter-rail station; families in an ice-cream parlor next to an ammo shop; a block of public housing surrounded by single-family homes; a high school football game; a Fourth of July parade; neighbors browsing a yard sale. The scenes are shot on phones, showing the artless application of filters and framing, as well as the unsteady camerawork of amateurs.
Scenes of frozen seas and muddy snowfields. And then, the spring. The sunlight, after the long winter, is timid and soft, but there’s no mistaking the raucous joy of the children as they test out the playground equipment; the blooming forsythias and azaleas—vibrant, living fireworks splashed onto the canvas after a winter in shades of gray; the chitter-chatter of birds, squirrels, baby skunks luxuriating on green lawns in the warm breeze.]
INGRID (71, hair so white it shines)
It started a few weeks ago … Look at me, can’t remember anything anymore—no, it’s
