“Maybe that would help,” he said. “Go on and take a bath, why don’t you? Nothing’s going to happen this soon after the fire.”
“There isn’t anything that will help,” she told him.
“The police car is out front again, and the man is downstairs with the phone again. We’re safe enough now. Go on.”
“I don’t even hate you anymore. That’s how tired I am.”
He had been smiling, and the smile froze on his face, and the little spirit he had left simply died just then. It was all he could do to go back across the hall and check on Sarah in their room. She was asleep. In a moment he heard the water start rumbling into the bathtub, and at least that was something. The best he could hope for at any rate.
By nine Claire was asleep next to Sarah, and he kept the house in darkness, wandering through it. He drank coffee with the detective on duty by the phone. He went back upstairs, couldn’t bear the smell of the smoke, and stood by the open window to clear his head and breathe.
It was raining, had been raining for an hour, a slow steady drizzle that came straight down whispering onto the grass and the pavement. He raised the screen and leaned his head out, letting the rain soak his hair and trickle coldly across his neck, breathing the fresh cool air. The streetlight was out again. Except for a few rain-misted lights in some houses at the end of the street, everything was dark and dripping wet.
The streetlight. He tried to convince himself that the busy anxious feeling in his stomach was just nerves, no reason for panic, but something was tugging at him from behind and something was pushing at him from in front and he panicked anyway, jerking his head back in through the window, cracking it as the explosions lit up the night like fireworks, like thunder and lightning that might have come with the rain. Five, eight, ten roaring flashes, he was never sure how many. A constant string of them from between the houses on the other side of the street, shotguns, downstairs windows shattering as he dove to the floor, and the window above him burst inward, glass crashing down on him, pellets whapping against the far wall.
Claire sat up, startled. Sarah screamed. He groped to his knees, heart racing, water from his wet hair running ice cold down his back. A blast hit another window, slashing glass over Claire and Sarah. Claire wailed, dragging Sarah out of the bed with her, huddling with her on the floor as another volley hit the house and more glass ripped across the room and Sarah was hysterical.
“Daddy! Daddy!”
The shotguns stopped. He heard car doors opening, men shouting in the night. He was on his feet, trembling, peering out one corner of the window. The police. They were out of the cruiser, separating, running splashing through the pools of water and the rain toward the cover of the two big fir trees in front of the house. Webster, he was thinking. He had to get Webster. The police would have radioed for help. That didn’t matter. He had to get Webster.
He swung around the bed to the phone, picking it up, trying to remember Webster’s number, and there was no dial tone. The line had been cut.
“Stay here,” he told Claire and Sarah. He headed out the door toward the hall. “No,” he told them. “Get in the bathroom. Get in the bathtub. Anything for cover.” He didn’t wait. He was already hurrying down the hall, Sarah crying in the room behind him as he stumbled down the stairs, nearly bumping into the detective who had left the phone and was standing in the dark by the front door.
“The phone’s been cut,” he told the detective.
“I know.”
He felt the detective’s handgun against his shoulder. Realizing this might be one of Kess’s men, he recoiled, falling back against the banister of the stairs.
“Easy. Don’t get in the way,” the detective told him thickly. “Go back upstairs.”
“I’ve got to help. Tell me what to do.”
“Get back upstairs.”
Someone outside shouted.
“Me. They’re calling me,” the detective said. He went into the living room, crouching beside the big shattered window, calling out, “Fine! Everything’s fine in here!”
The man outside shouted again.
He kept on, the words indistinct. The detective came back into the hallway, swearing.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A damned mess,” the thick voice came at him. “The shotguns opened up on the cruiser too. Our guys ran for those trees out there, but one of them was hit in the head, and now he’s got blood coming down over his eyes so he can’t see.”
The detective unlocked the front door and opened it a crack, the night a paler shade of black against the dark of the hallway. A slight wind came up with the rain, blowing coolly in.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going out there. I need to bring him in.”
He listened to the rain outside drizzling on the pavement. “No,” he said. “Stay here. Let the other guy bring him in.”
“Can’t. If those shotguns start again, we need somebody to shoot and cover us.”
“But you can do that yourself from here. Please. There’s no reason to go. Don’t leave us.”
“Have to. I don’t have a clean line of fire because of those trees. The only way to do this is for me to get him while the other man uses his better position to cover me.”
Breathing nervously, the detective opened the door wider.
“No. Please.”
“Don’t you think I want to stay here?” the detective told him. “Don’t you think I want nothing to do with going out there?”
24
And then he was gone.
He stood in the dark next to the open doorway, listening to the detective’s quick steps off the wooden porch onto the wet sidewalk, onto the soft wet grass, and then in the monotonous spatter of the rain he could not hear him anymore. His hand was still outstretched from where he had grabbed at the man’s arm. He imagined him, finger heavy on the trigger of his handgun, racing low toward one of the fir trees, diving flat onto the cold wet mud-spongy grass, seeing about the policeman hit in the head. Why wasn’t help here by now? Where were more police cars? He couldn’t even hear any sirens on the way.
Everything was doubling on him, building in circles. He was back to when he had first waited for the ambulance and the police after Ethan was poisoned, standing almost in the same spot, pacing, worrying why help wasn’t there. The poison and the cat. Ethan. Sarah and the house. The calls. Why weren’t any sirens coming?
Because Webster would leave them quiet, not to warn Kess’s men. And then with the chill breeze from the rain creeping steadily in on him, he suddenly shivered as he realized the police in the cruiser outside might not have been able to radio for help. They might have been in such a hurry to get out of the car that they didn’t have the time. He held his breath, trembling, counting one, two, three, straining to hear the detective struggling back with the wounded policeman over the wet grass through the rain toward the house. Where were they? What was taking them so long? He had a vision of Kess’s men rushing the house and he wanted desperately to close the door on them, but he couldn’t, he needed to leave it open for the detective and the wounded policeman coming through.
But what if it’s Kess’s men who come running through?
The shots had caused lights to come on here and there in houses across the street, more lights coming on all the time. Maybe Kess’s men would go away now. Maybe they’d already gone. Maybe nothing. He saw the flash of the shotgun across the street, heard the simultaneous blast, the scream, he didn’t know whose, and that was the end, he had the door shut, locking it, and one of the gunmen across the street must have been using a solid high-velocity slug for deer instead of the standard shotgun pellet load because pellets never would have ruptured through the two inches of the door, deafening him, reeling him back blind in the dark as something slammed his shoulder, numbing powerfully, and spun him.
The screaming outside wouldn’t stop. But it wasn’t out there now. It came from him, and he was braced
somehow on his feet against the archway to the living room, clutching his senseless shoulder, screaming. There wasn’t any blood. He couldn’t understand why there wasn’t any blood, and then he realized that the slug had not been what hit him, just a bursting fragment from the door, but that didn’t make a difference. He just went on screaming as the second slug came walloping through the door, chunks and splinters flying, and then the shotguns started up again, all of them at once, sporadic cracks of handguns in return, then no handguns, only shotguns, and his mind went out of control, they’ve finished the police, they’re going to come for me, for all of us, and he was charging up the stairs.
He stumbled, clutching his shoulder, reached the top of the stairs, and rushed to where his guns were in the closet. He couldn’t find them in the dark. He had to turn on the hall light. He still couldn’t find them. Claire. She must have moved them, afraid of Sarah touching them. He heard Sarah crying hysterically in their room. Why hadn’t they gone into the bathroom as he’d told them?
“Where are the guns? Where did you put the guns?”
And then he found them. On the top shelf. Under some blankets. The rifle was too awkward in close quarters. He shoved the revolver into the knapsack that contained the money. He stuck the pistol under his belt.
At once he noticed the blood on his hands, staring in surprise. It was sticky, leaving traces on the knapsack. He checked his shoulder again. Just handprint smears of blood on his shirt. It wasn’t his shoulder, it was his hands. From the glass that had fallen on him in the bedroom. He hadn’t even known that he was cut.
The shooting outside was stopped now. They finished the police. They’ll come for us.
“Claire,” he said and rushed into the bedroom. “Get up. We’re leaving.”
But she made no move to stand. She made no sign she even heard him. The scream outside was beginning again, a constant high-pitched strident shriek that raised his skin and sent it prickling, and she was cradling Sarah, rocking her in the dim light from the hall, kissing her hair.
“Oh my God I am heartily sorry,” she was saying. “For having offended Thee. And I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all—”
And Sarah was crying, and he told them both, “Shut up. Get on your feet.”
“Because I have offended Thee, oh my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace—”
“No,” he said. “We’re leaving.” He dragged Claire up. “Do you hear? We’re leaving.”
The broken glass littered the room like shards of ice. The slap across his face was so sharp that for an instant he saw double, his eyes watering. He blinked repeatedly. He staggered back and shook his head to clear it.
“Don’t tell me to shut up,” Claire said. “We’re going to die because of you.”
“That’s right. If we stay here, we’re going to die.”
He lifted Sarah awkwardly, her tears warm and wet through his shirtsleeve onto his arm as he carried her out of the room, down the hall and the stairs, away from the light up there, darting past the front door in case of another slug, into the dark living room, toward the kitchen and the back door.
How much did she weigh? She was so heavy that after struggling to carry her down the stairs he could barely walk a straight line with her. In the dark of the kitchen, he jolted against the sharp corner of the stove and had to set her down, holding himself and wincing, and Claire wasn’t with him. She must have stayed upstairs. He had thought when she slapped him that she would be okay now, but he was wrong.
No, he wasn’t wrong. She was a shadow coming in the dark.
“What if more of them are outside in the back?” she asked.
But he had thought of that, and there was only one way to find out. He had to go out first himself. He tightened the knapsack on his back. He unlocked the door and gripped the doorknob. The pistol was awkward and heavy in his hand.
And again Webster’s voice returned to him. This isn’t like in your books. It’s for real. If you go out on your own after these guys, you’ll find that writing about shooting a man is a hell of a lot different from having the guts to line up those sights and pull that trigger.
He couldn’t turn the doorknob.
Have to.
Can’t.
25
The scream outside in front settled everything. It unmistakably died. In the expanding silence, he imagined his attackers rushing toward the front door. His stomach on fire, hands trembling, he wrenched open the back door, told Claire, “Lock it behind me,” threw open the screen door and dove off the back porch into the bushes by the side.
They slashed his face. He landed, twisting his hurt shoulder wet in the mud, the rain drenching him, and he thought too late that somebody might be hiding in these bushes. The idea sent him rolling against the wall of the house, straining to see in the rain and the dark if anybody was there.
No one that he could make out.
He searched, crawling through the mud under the bushes. Webster had been right. He didn’t know what he was doing. He had written about things like this and imagined himself in situations like this often enough, and here he was making too much noise, breathing too heavily, too loudly. He was snapping branches, scratching them together, slipping awkwardly in the mud, and anybody around could tell easily where he was.
That finally gave him confidence. He was so bad at this that he should have been dead by now.
Unless they were here and waiting for Claire and Sarah to come out as well.
Can’t think about that.
He dimly saw the long stretch of his backyard, good cover for them everywhere, the trees, the bushes, the swing set for Sarah, and beyond everything the white back fence and the gloom of the neighbor’s yard behind it. The shotguns ought to have wakened the people in the house back there. Lights should have been on. He could see the reflection from lights in the houses on both sides of his, glistening off the rain-misted grass in their backyards. But none over there, and he thought maybe the people were away.
Or maybe Kess’s men were in there holding them. Because of me.
Can’t think about that either. Get moving.
He crept out of the bushes and crossed in the rain to the bushes on the other side of the back steps. His shoulder was in unmanageable pain now, and he had to shift the pistol to his left hand. It wasn’t important that he was a poor shot with his left hand. If he came upon somebody in these bushes, he would never have a chance to get a shot off anyhow. The idea of him stalking anybody was a joke—he didn’t know the first thing about it, whether to slip into these bushes or work along their edge or what. He’d only been fooling himself.
He decided to try the edge, and his only reason for going on was simply now to make himself a target, to make sure the yard was safe for Claire and Sarah. Again something tugged at his mind, and he turned, seeing no one. The rain increased, rushing hard, drenching him, his clothes clinging coldly to him while he trembled. He turned back to the bushes and crouched, wiping the rain from his eyes to peer in among them, and reached the side of the house and there was no one.
He breathed, trembling so much that he couldn’t continue.
Move, he told himself. Just a little more. Do it. Go on. It’s almost over.
He still didn’t move.
Come on. Hurry. Check that back fence, get Claire and Sarah and get tout of here.
It was only the prospect of them clearing that fence into safety that managed to start him going again. Halfway across the yard toward the fence he saw a shadow move. On his right. Behind the maple tree. Its dark trunk grew double; a figure dislodged from it.
“Damn it, stop!” somebody yelled, and as he bolted insanely back toward the house, his feet slipped from under him on the slick wet grass. He fell face downward onto the sodden earth, sliding to try to stand. He fell again and heard “Damn it, stop!” again behind him and the shots sent him worming quickly on his stomach to
ward the shelter of the bushes.
Three bullets ripped through the air over his head, whacking into the wood of the house.
He heard Claire screaming in the house.
“Shut up!” he was thinking.
And then he was into the bushes, pivoting low to aim and fire, one two three four quick patterned shots, and then the shadow was gone and he didn’t know where to shoot anymore and the night was silent except for the patter of the rain and the shouts of people in the front yard and the sirens coming. Far away. Faint. But at least they were coming.
Claire screamed again.
“Don’t open the door,” he thought. But he couldn’t shout it because it might attract more gunfire to him, and then he heard the moan on his right, although he couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from so that he could shoot at it. That surprised him. That he had actually fired in the first place and was ready to do it again. Webster had been wrong after all. The sirens were closer, louder, and the moan kept on, strained, hoarse, and there was something else about it, something almost liquid as if the man had been hit in the throat.
These bushes were a joke, he realized. They only made him feel secure without giving him any real cover. Anybody out there must have seen him crawl behind them. Why didn’t somebody riddle the bushes and kill him?
Because nobody was out there anymore.
The moan came again, coughing something bubbly, and he started crawling on his stomach toward the maple tree as the door behind him was opened, and he shouted, “Close that door!” He waited. “Close the damn door!” he shouted again, and whoever had it open closed it.
Then he was crouching beside the maple tree, and he saw the man stretched out, groaning in the flower bed by the fence. The lights from the house next door showed that the man was face up, blinking, drooling something dark. His hand was stuck out toward where his gun had fallen in the grass. Then he wasn’t blinking anymore.
The rain came gusting at him, lashing. The sirens were louder. The next thing he was running, slipping in the grass, back to the house, up the stairs and opening the door.
Testament Page 7