Page 123 of Red Rooster

She’d known that he was, butenthusiastwas too delicate a word for all ofthis. The shed, secured with a heavy padlock, held rack after rack, trunk after trunk, all of it loaded with weapons of every type. Long guns, handguns, great cases of ammo. Knives, and emergency flares, and MREs, and tactical vests and pants. Targets, and scopes, and safety glasses, and headgear.

Trina stared agape at her uncle.

He shrugged. “We all knew the stories. We thought an arsenal might come in handy someday.”

Lanny whistled. “That issomearsenal.”

Nikita stepped into the building without hesitation, going straight for the wall-mounted case of handguns.

Trina made to follow, but felt a tap at her shoulder. She turned to find her grandfather standing behind her, in his usual uniform of jeans and flannel. She’d always thought he’d looked so much like her dad, and now she knew that he looked like his own father, too.

He motioned over his shoulder back toward the house. “I’ve got something in my closet I think you ought to take with you.”

~*~

He laid it out on the patchwork quilt that covered the bed, and it gleamed in the sunlight: faint and diffused on the wood, bright and sharp on the blue of the barrel.

Katya’s Mosin-Nagant.

Trina held her breath until she felt light-headed, and then let it out slow, hand shaking as she reached to touch – to almost touch. She stopped at the last moment, pulled her hand back.

“Go on,” Kolya said.

“Is it…?”

“Hers? Yeah.” When Trina glanced at his face, he was smiling fondly down at the rifle.

Slowly, carefully, she set her fingertips to the stock, felt the smooth cool wood and marveled at the knowledge that her great-grandmother had touched the same place. Had snugged the butt tight into her shoulder and looked with one eye down the barrel; had taken a Nazi commander in the head, right through the swastika on his cap.

“She kept it in working order right up until the arthritis got too bad, and then I took over,” Kolya explained. “When we were children, she would clean it at the kitchen table, at night, after the dinner dishes were cleared. Father – Pyotr,” he stumbled over the name. He’d always known about Nikita, but Pyotr was the man who’d raised him. “Would sit and keep her company sometimes. They would pass a cigarette back and forth, and talk too low for us to hear. I remember standing in the doorway, thinking they couldn’t see me.” His voice grew distant as he remembered. “But then Papa would turn and see me, and I’d squeal and run, and he’d chase me.”

He shook himself and cleared his throat. “It was normal at the time. Mama and the target practice. Keeping it clean. But now, I think – well, I think she was waiting for another war. She had ghosts in her eyes. I don’t think she ever could have exorcised them. And maybe she didn’t want to.”

He looked up and met Trina’s gaze. “You’re so like her, Trina. You carry too much on your shoulders.”

“Gramps–”

“You do. You’re a warrior, like she was. Warriors need wars. And warriors need weapons.” He gestured to the gun. “You should take hers with you.”

“But…but it’s an heirloom,” she said, feeling dizzy, helplessly knocked off her guard. “What if something happens to it? What if I break it?”

“Weapons need wars, too,” he said, patiently. “Take it, Trina.”

“Shouldn’t Nikita have it instead?”

He shook his head, smiling. “Nikita never needed a sniper rifle. He needed asniper.”

~*~

She’d fired shotguns and rifles before, but the Mosin-Nagant was heavier than she’d anticipated. It belonged to an age when everything from cars to household appliances were made of solid, clunky metal. A weighted age.

She took a deep breath and snugged the butt into her shoulder, willed her arms to support the rest of it. Pressed her cheek to the stock and closed her left eye. Ignored the strange echoing rush of her pulse against the ear protectors; let the fields and the people around her fade away. Until it was only her, and the rifle, and the target: a water-filled coffee can set on a tree stump at an alarming distance.

Inhale. Hold–

Katya had saved her men, saved her country, savedherself.

Slow pull of the trigger.