As he had hoped, his mini-explosive forced the sniper out of hiding. But her attention was still on the main window, and she didn’t notice John.
But before he could take aim at her, she had drawn back fully behind the tree. John had no angle and shooting her would be impossible. His plan had failed.
Then failure turned to sudden triumph as the woman came out from behind the tree and dropped to a crouch. John wondered what she was doing, until he realized she had a bead on someone.
Fran.
"No!" he screamed, and squeezed off a quick shot.
The impact of the bullet spun the black woman around, smashing her into the tree behind her. She lay still, but John had heard the simultaneous report of another bullet and knew she had gotten off a shot.
And in the same moment he heard a terrified scream.
Fran had been hit.
DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
8:56 PM MONDAY
John rushed back into the bedroom, gripping his rifle, and felt the look on his face change from terror to glee. "You're not hit," he said.
Fran shook her head. "The shot scared me. I figured out what you were doing and figured she’d be easier for you to hit if she was aiming at me." She motioned at the window frame, where a large chunk of wood was missing. "That was almost a bad idea."
John smiled widely, took her face in his hands, and kissed her warmly. It was a risky thing to do, he knew, to take even a second out of their escape. But he could not contain himself. She was braver than anyone he had ever met, quick thinking and smart to boot, and if he didn’t kiss her right then he figured their pursuers wouldn’t have to kill him after all, because he would simply explode.
The kiss was short, but sweet. She smiled when it was done, and she was beautiful.
"We have to go now," he said, and gestured at the window. "I think I got her, but I don’t know how bad."
Fran nodded. Without a word she shoved some large glass shards out of the window pane, then rolled through the open gap, moving as fast and as well as anyone John had ever seen while in the service.
He heard her fall with a thump onto the eve, rolling to a stop only inches from the edge. A moment later, John came through the window. He seemed to glide over the sill, landing on his stomach beside her.
"Do we go?" Fran whispered.
He shook his head, scanning the landscape around the house. "Two down. There’s one more. And we don’t know where she is."
***
Jenna heard the shots from her position in front of the house. She waited, though, until, they ceased, trying to breathe through her nose and not swallow too much of the blood that still streamed from her shattered gumline and the mangled remnants of her front teeth.
She waited.
Waited.
Waited.
Finally, she could stand it no longer. She entered through the front door, swinging her gun left and right, gripping it tightly in both hands with the elbows straightened. It was the stance of an expert marksman, which Jenna was. She was determined not to fail again, and knew that if she saw John or Fran again, they would not escape her.
Nothing. All was dark.
She moved to the stairwell, glancing up and seeing the body at the top of the stairs.
***
John continued scanning the environs. Fran joined him in his search, but neither of them could see a thing.
"Anything?" she whispered.
He shrugged, still looking.
"Then let’s go," she said.
"What? Why?"
This time it was her turn to grin at him, and he felt his spirits lift immediately.
"I guess I just feel lucky," she said, and rolled over the side of the eve, dropping to the ground and landing in a crouch.
He followed suit, landing near her.
"In a hurry?" he asked. He felt a laugh boiling inside him, trying to get out. Even in the middle of a nightmare, during one of the most horrifying and intense fights of his life, and this woman still could make him smile.
Now if only they could survive the night.
***
Malachi’s eyes fluttered and then opened. Every inch of him hurt, but he knew he wouldn’t die. He couldn’t die. Not until his work was done and the Lord called him home.
So he would not die, but there was no denying that he
could
be hurt. He looked at himself, and saw that his clothing hung in tatters, pink flesh showing through in many places. Still, he didn’t look or feel badly burned. More like a particularly bad sunburn. Inconvenient and painful, but hardly crippling. He felt his head, and his fingers came back sticky and red. Some piece of whatever John had thrown at him must have hit him in the head, knocking him out for a minute or two.
He noticed Jenna, then, staring down at him, on her hands and knees beside him and looking worried. Her mouth still bled copiously and she sucked at the blood, trying not to drool on him.
"You all right?" she asked.
He snapped completely awake then, sudden adrenaline pumping through him as the implications of her presence coursed through his being. "What are you doing in here?" he snapped.
"I heard the shots and I thought they might have –"
He cut her off with a hard right cross. She screamed and he felt the nubs of her teeth rasp across his knuckles, cutting them. His fist ached with the impact, but he knew her mouth felt far worse, and that thought made him smile inwardly, though no trace of mirth or happiness could be seen in his expression, which was utterly devoid of humanity.
"Stupid whore!" he screamed. "I told you to wait outside!"
He rolled to his stomach, grabbed his gun from the floor, then stood in spite of the myriad aches and pains that caused his bones to ache and his skin to crawl. He ran to the back bedroom, hoping that he would find John and Fran dead in the room, blown away by Deirdre.
In the bedroom, he saw that the window was destroyed, but there were no bodies. No John. No Fran. He raced to the window and looked through the shattered remains of the frame. Outside he saw no trace of his quarry. No John. No Fran.
Just fire and Deirdre, laying in a crumpled heap at the base of a tree. He couldn’t see if she was dead or not, but thought it likely she was. Though he knew John would have regrets about killing her, there would be nothing to stop him from carrying out the job if he was put in a position where her death became necessary to prevent his or Fran’s demise. Malachi was protected: his holy nature would prevent John from taking deadly action against him. But Deirdre had no such heavenly protection, and so he mentally adjusted his plans in case she should prove to be dead.
At the same time, anger welled within him, that same, incalculable rage that he felt more and more with every passing day. It boiled up like steam through a pipe, seeking egress before terminal pressure built up and caused an explosion. The requisite escape mechanism was triggered as Jenna entered the room, and Malachi felt himself bringing up the muzzle of his gun. "You let them get away! I should kill you and cut your body into pieces."
Jenna tried to smile through the bloody mess of her mouth, looking eerily like a clown, her blood-rimmed mouth standing out harshly from her pasty complexion. Her thoughts were clear: death was the ultimate release for those on a mission such as this. The dead were guaranteed a martyr’s eternal bliss, cradled in the arms of God and forever knowing joy.
But Malachi cocked his weapon. "Don’t go thinking that. You’d go straight to hell, my dear. I’d make sure of it."
Jenna’s smile disappeared. Malachi knew she was aware of his holiness, and so she must also be aware of his exalted standing before God. Even a martyr would not find heavenly peace should he testify before her at the gates of Heaven. For such as found his displeasure, their souls would be freely passed to Hell, for Satan to sift and grind them into dust.
A siren sounded in the distance. The sound presented an eerie, ululating melody to the threat that hung between them. It sang of death, and Malachi let Jenna think about that song for a moment.
Then he lowered his gun. "You’re lucky I need you right now."
CONTROL HQ - RUSHM
AD 3999/AE 1999
Adam looked over sheet after sheet of readouts. Jason and Sheila stood at his side, reading over the same information as he had.
"Two more bits down," he said.
"And John and Fran are apparently staying away from the streets, out of sight," said Sheila.
"So we can’t see them until someone else does," added Jason, finishing his wife’s sentence for her.
Adam’s shoulders slumped. The situation was quickly spiraling into ever worse scenarios. Things were getting out of hand. If they ever had been
in
hand to begin with.
"All right," he said. "Activate her tracker."
Sheila paled. "That’ll put the whole place into second stage alert mode. They’ll all go after John."
"I know!" said Adam. He paused and took a deep breath, then said the words they all knew were coming but none of them wanted to hear: "We need to get her back. And he’s expendable."
With that, he pushed the button that would mean John’s death. But perhaps it would also mean Fran’s continued life, and so it was an action he had to take. The good of the future and the continued existence of the human race might depend on it.
DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
9:10 PM, MONDAY
***ALERT MODE***
John and Fran darted from bush to bush, trying to keep out of sight as much as possible. He knew he was moving fast, pressing her to keep up, but noted that she was doing well. In fact, she was doing better than a lot of the guys with whom he’d been through basic training. She was a survivor, a rare mixture of strength and beauty and intelligence. He wished he could kiss her again, but time did not allow for that. Besides, surrendering to the pleasures of her embrace would mean a withdrawal from the vigilance he knew would be required to keep them both alive. Still, the memory of her lips against his was a sweet one, and one not easily thrust out of mind.
"Why couldn’t we take my car? Or Gabe’s?" asked Fran during one of the short moments when they rested in the shelter of a larger bush behind yet another darkened house.
"Because they probably know what they look like," said John.
"Who’s ‘they’?"
"Damn good question," he replied, and took off again, trusting her to follow his movements. He had no answer for her, but somehow knew that he was right. It was not only important for them to stay away from the cars, it was imperative that they remain completely hidden. He had no plan beyond that, though. He was merely moving to keep putting distance between them and Gabe’s house.
Gabe. Tears welled up behind his eyes as he thought about his friend. He was dead. One more person gone from his life. John blinked rapidly, pushing back the tears. Like love, grief was an emotion he could ill-afford to indulge in right now. There would be time for weeping later, if he managed to survive this night.
A few minutes later they stopped again, kneeling in the shadow of a tree some twenty or thirty feet from the back porch of yet another dark house. They had passed several dozen such edifices, and with each one John grew more convinced that, whatever mysteries this night held, they were more all-encompassing than he had first supposed. It seemed as though the whole town was involved in some way. He could not understand how that could be, how it could be that the people he had known all his life were involved in a grand conspiracy without him so much as suspecting such a threat existed. But each darkened house proved his ignorance anew; demonstrated that, though all the houses had extinguished their lights and the whole of Loston sat in shadows, only John and Fran were truly in the dark.
What’s going on? he thought. What is happening to us? What mystery have we stumbled into, and why is it worth killing us?
Suddenly, the old scar on his shoulder twinged, and a strange thought flew through his mind with sparrow quickness.
Daddy, why you walkin’?
He grasped mentally at the thought, but it flew too quickly to be halted, and was gone as suddenly as it had come, leaving only new questions in its wake.
"Where are we going?" asked Fran, pulling John out of his thoughts.
"We’ve got to hole up for a while until I can figure out what’s going on," he answered.
"Your house?"
He shook his head. "If they know our cars, they’ll know where we live, too."
Fran opened her mouth to speak, but before she could utter a syllable, another voice pierced the night.
"John! Fran!"
John heard the voice and paled. He knew the voice, knew who it belonged to, and somehow knew instinctively what was about to happen.
If he had had the time, he would have started crying.
He spun around and saw Mertyl Breckman coming at him. Not to help him with filing or to find out why a student had been absent from his class, though. No, she ran at him to attack, sprinting off her nearby porch with a large kitchen knife clutched in her old fingers. Her spindly legs pumped back and forth under the folds of the nightgown she wore, and John had a split-second to notice how fast - impossibly fast - she ran before she was upon him.
"Mertyl," he managed before she lunged at him with the knife. She moved quickly. Too quickly for a woman her age. The old woman slashed at John like a blood-maddened cougar. He held her off with his rifle, using the barrel to blunt her attacks. He didn’t want to kill her. And the way she was moving, he didn’t know if he had the skill to do so, even if he had the desire. She moved so quickly that he almost did not have time in to block her manic slashes with his rifle.
"Mertyl, please," he gasped as she cut at him again. He knew it would be no use; that she would be deaf to him as everyone else but Fran had been this night. Still, he had to try. He was getting tired, and a large part of that was the emotional toll that came with every act of violence he committed. He wasn’t a hateful man or an angry one, not the kind of person who found destruction therapeutic. Rather, violence saddened and weakened him, so he was feeling more and more strained as the night continued.