Chapter 45:// Setting up

 

Leo ran outside the Sikh temple yelling “Aaah!” and wobbling awkwardly to balance himself. The cobra came out the door behind him and followed him, slithering along his path.

At a bend, she crashed on a parked car and made a big dent on the side door. Leo glanced behind him when he heard the rending metal, then closed his eyes and ran like hell to the alley.

“Now-now-now-now-now,” he screamed and slid past the concrete mixer.

Katerina threw the stinking clothes she had promised to burn earlier and threw them into the hole of the mixer, making sure plenty of aroma was left in the air around.

The clothes were the ones Leo had escaped with, filled with blood, sweat, pee.

His scent.

The cobra swayed around the corner and closed the gap.

Leo took out the flashlight he’d gotten from the prepper bag and shone it to her reptilian eyes.

It was like a pocket sun, burning retinas and making them all see stars and shapes. They would need whole minutes to regain vision after that. A sharp fear coursed over Leo at that point. Blinding them all was a double-edged knife. If it didn’t work, the cobra would promptly munch on him, and worse, on Katerina.

Katerina, who was a waitress, a stranger to him a few nights before, a lone soul in the vast ocean of the capital city, was now in danger because of him. Sure, he had tried to keep her out of it and sure, he had told her the risk, he kept nothing back, but still. It was his fault if she would get hurt.

In the dizzying sensation of the blinding light from the ridiculously bright flashlight, he realised he couldn’t even see if his plan had worked. He could hear some hissing, some movement, but his heart was pounding even harder than the Sikh’s war drum.

Oh well, he had a few more senses to use anyway. He gritted the flashlight in his teeth, always pointing it at the advancing cobra and then placed his hand on the concrete-mixing tank to feel the vibrations.

Then he waited. And prayed.