13 Horses and Guns (2/2)

Suddenly, shots crackled in the street outside Li Yang's apartment.

He was up in a flash. He glanced at the gun lying on the bed, and decided against it. It wasn't wise to show himself carrying a gun when there was shooting being done. Come to think of it, it wasn't wise to show himself at all.

But his curiosity got the better of him, and he sidled up to the window.

Nothing was moving on the street. The immobile cars lined the sidewalks. A small bird - a sparrow? - swooped down onto the road, picked up something, flew away.

The sun was shining with a force he'd never seen before. He could actually feel it: a warm hand on his face. The sun, the only thing that really mattered. There was no life without a sun. Without a sun, all life died.

There was a sharp crack of a shot and the window pane inches away from Li Yang's face exploded into pieces. A couple of shards hit his face, one just below his left eye.

Before he pulled his head back from the window he saw the shooter: a dark figure on the roof of the brownstone block across the street. He was crouching and his outstretched hands were clasped around something that could only be a gun.

He raised it up and pointed it at the sky and fired three more shots. CRACK-CRACK-CRACK. Then he threw his head back as if he was laughing.

He was having a good time. He was standing on a rooftop with a gun and taking potshots at people and there was fuck all anyone could do about it. Life was good.

Li Yang moved away from the window and crouched and pulled the burning stove into the corner of the room. He squatted down there, out of sight of the window, and pulled the glass shards out of his face. There were a couple of more shots outside when he was turning the steak over in the pan. They weren't aimed in his direction, he could tell by the sound.

He looked at the gun he'd stolen from the pawnshop and decided he'd have to get himself something better than that. With plenty of cartridges, so that he could get in some shooting practice.

Maybe it also wasn't a bad idea to have another look at that scroll. Maybe the metal cones with the shining blue dot were warheads of some kind.

That glowing cube, the cones, the glowing scroll - all that represented a lot of time and effort on someone's part. It all must have cost a lot of money, too. No one would do something like that just to fuck around. It had to be something important.

I'll eat first, thought Li Yang. Then it's time to do some serious reading.

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