They looked human
. Two men of normal stature.
Even elegantly dressed.
Gray jackets, white shirts, and thin black ties.
"Run!" the woman screamed in terror, and she flew somewhere to the right, avoiding cinder blocks and slabs.
I wanted to run, but before I could do anything, one of them was almost upon me, and the other followed Rebecca.
The alien reached me and delivered a powerful blow to my stomach.
I felt like he was about to vomit his own insides.
I choked and grimaced as he grabbed me hard and threw me somewhere in front of him.
As I fell, I was still clutching my stomach, my body sliding across the floor, stopping only against the wall.
Rebecca was right, he was damn strong.
He came at me.
His eyes were so empty. It was as if he didn't have any. Two black sockets—I could barely make out his pupils.
He lifted my body, which was now nothing but a bag of bones.
I swung my hand at him. He got a punch in the face, but it didn't seem to affect him at all. In fact, I don't think even a child would cry after that clumsy, unforced, and unsure blow.
He threw me again, and this time I fell into a large room and hit my back against a table.
I had to do something, or he'd be done with me.
Meanwhile, I realized he was in a room on the first floor, which I'd entered through a small window opening.
I grabbed the hammer lying next to me.
As he leaned over me to lift it again, I tensed my muscles and slammed it into his head with all my might.
The hammer seemed to recoil in my hands.
I didn't crack his head, but he felt the blow nonetheless, stumbling back a meter and a half.
He made a strange sound
. He was furious, it hurt.
He lunged at me with his whole body.
I slammed it into him again, and again, and again.
I was hitting him with the hammer like a fucking psycho, but at one point he grabbed my forearm, nearly breaking it, and delivered a punch to the face. I stopped only after hitting two tall gas canisters.
I wobbled my head and looked up with bleary eyes; he was holding his head.
The blows with the metal hammer worked, but to finish him off, I needed at least a shotgun and a dozen rounds.
I had to get up, or I'd die. I put my hand on the cold gas canister, trying to get up.
Gas! This is it. With a quick movement of my hand, I pulled a metal lighter from my back pocket. The golden dragon emblem gleamed on it, giving me strength. I turned the cylinder taps all the way on and grabbed the several-foot-long hoses that were leaking gas.
The barbarian recovered from the blows and immediately charged towards me.
He was like an angry bull in a Madrid arena.
Without waiting for him to catch me, I placed the lighter on the pipes, and a powerful gust of flame erupted
. The stranger's clothing caught fire. I stepped forward and directed the full force of my fire directly at the barbarian. He thrashed and arched, roaring now deep, now shrill.
He sizzled.
Through the prism of the blazing fire illuminating the entire room, I noticed its posture changing.
The burning clothes were tearing, and it was growing, transforming into its natural form.
A moment later, it was roaring in the flames, a roasting, nearly two-meter-tall, rotten-green monster with shoulders larger than the wardrobe in my bedroom.
Suddenly, Rebecca ran into the room.
She looked in shock at this unusual sight.
"Where's the other one!!!!!!" I shouted, trying my best to direct the blasts of flame at the terrifying beast.
"I managed to lose him on the floors of the building!" she replied, eyeing the burned barbarian.
"We have to escape quickly, everything's going to explode!" she suddenly perked up.
I threw the pipes to the ground. The monster was already lying on the concrete, its unnatural body sizzling.
He was dead.
"Explosive?" I asked, surprised, tucking the lighter into my worn jeans.
"I told you I came at night to deal with them – I planted explosives under the building, and in a few minutes everything will collapse!"
She surprised me. Pleasantly surprised me. The building will collapse, and no one will be able to rebuild it.
"We have to escape!" she repeated in panic, urging me on with her eyes. I looked around the room.
"This way!" I shouted after a moment at the woman, spotting a small opening in the window.
I was moving the table with tools to reach the exit. Rebecca helped me.
She climbed clumsily onto the table and tried to get through the opening.
"High!" she shouted when she was already headfirst on the other side.
"Jump and try to roll on the ground."
I didn't have to repeat myself twice. A moment later, I heard it hit the ground.
Now it was my turn
. I climbed onto the table and looked back. The monster's body lay burned on the raw, pale concrete.
I climbed through the opening and jumped down.
All this time, adrenaline had blinded me to the full force and intensity of the pain that was actually piercing every cell in my body.
One thing was certain:
at least a few of my ribs were shattered, and my swollen face would probably never be the same again.
We ran toward the fence. One more obstacle and we'd be saved.
It was morning. The sun was rising, slowly waking the city to life.
I instinctively glanced back.
At that moment, the armored door flew off its hinges, and in the doorway stood a rotten-green monster.
The other one.
He looked around and after a moment, his black eyes caught our attention.
I hoped that if I managed to crawl to the car, I'd have a fair chance against him on the street.
Rebecca kicked off the post and leaped over it like a nimble deer.
My situation was worse.
I didn't even have the strength to pull myself up.
I turned to see where the monster was.
At that moment, a powerful explosion occurred. Rebeca grabbed my arms and pulled me to the other side of the fence.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the structure, along with its massive scaffolding, collapse like a house of cards.
I fell again.
On top of Rebeca.
The enormous structure collapsed, creating a ton of dust, dirt, and a roar. Wires flew from side to side, and large concrete sections clashed against each other, imitating the sounds of almighty thunder.
The left leg, almost complete, collapsed, shattering the fence nearby. The barbarian was crushed by tons of iron and concrete blocks.
Rebeca dragged me to the waiting Mustang.
The pale redhead's blows were nothing compared to the force the barbarian threw at me.
I felt he wouldn't be able to put me back together.
16.
Every newspaper was trumpeting the tragedy that had befallen the Reck Company construction site.
All the managers and half the renovation crew were dead, buried under the rubble of their coveted, futuristic office building.
This city had never seen such a story.
The editor was furious with me because, although I had said on leaving the office that fateful day that I was going to investigate the Reck Company case again, I hadn't provided any material, and my newspaper was one of the last to publish an article about the company's tragedy.
Almost a month had passed, and I was still recovering in the hospital.
I told everyone I was near the building when it collapsed headlong.
The doctors said I was very lucky.
I believed them. For the first few weeks, I was up to my ears in a cast.
After about two weeks, I persuaded a little boy who had just been released from the hospital with a broken arm to count the steps for me from the post office to the police station every three days.
He probably thought I was crazy, but as long as I paid him a decent amount, he did his job.
The little one always brought me the same number of steps, and I smiled to myself.
A few days ago, Rebecca contacted me.
I was watching a game on the hospital TV when, out of nowhere, she started pouring thoughts and images directly into my head.
I started thrashing in bed, and the orderlies thought I was dying or suffering from epilepsy or heart failure.
She said I was the first Earthling the entire universe had heard of.
She told the council I had dealt with two barbarians alone.
It was partially true.
The union of united races finally declared war on the barbarian species, and the first to go was the planet, with the apparatus that was shrinking my planet.
We were the survivors.
I was lying on a small bed in a hospital building, and somewhere far away in distant galaxies, a great war was raging.
"The world is changing," said the short old man lying next to me on the bed.
I turned sharply toward him .
"What?" I asked, a slight twinge of anxiety welling up in my mind.
"The Lakers have lost their last three games in a row," the old man replied
. "Oh yes." I breathed a sigh of relief after a moment, understanding what he meant
. "The world is changing, I tell you." "They never lose.
" "You're right, the world has changed," I replied
. "But at least I'll be closer to work," I added with a faint smile, and the old man looked at me as if I were crazy.
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