Zone Yellow

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I decided to walk home from the big affair at the Richtofen palace; it was a mild evening for Stockholm in September, and I needed the exercise. When I turned off Strandvagen to take a shortcut via Styrmansgatan, I heard something behind me. I looked back, not feeling alarm, just mild curiosity. I caught only a glimpse of a tall, oddly narrow-shouldered figure wrapped to the ankles in a drab overcoat, just as he ducked into a side alley. That made me more curious. I went back as if casually, and as I reached the doorway, he literally fell on me. I threw him back and got a glimpse of an ugly, buck-toothed, chinless face just as he fell over sideways, and lay on the cobbles, moving feebly. I realized he really had fallen on me. He was wounded, or sick. I went to one knee to feel for a pulse. What I felt was a wiry wrist with a pelt like a terrier. I rolled him on his back; he had a rank rats-in-the-barn smell to him, plus a stink like rotten oranges. His clothes under the coat consisted of a closely-fitted coverall made of a woolly material. His long, deformed feet were in high-top shoes or low boots of a soft, wrinkled reddish leather. There was short fur on his shins.

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