The Library at Mount Char (29 page)

“What the hell was that?” Erwin asked.

Steve shook his head.
David, maybe?

There was more gunfire, more flashes. Another woman screamed. More broken windows. Glass rained down on Mrs. McGillicutty's neatly trimmed lawn, flashing in the sun. Holes appeared in the wall, sending splinters of aluminum siding flying.
They're all shooting now
. Steve heard screams, men's and women's voices mingled, rising.
It must be hell in there
.

“Hmm,” Erwin said.

One of the black-clad commandos dove out a small window in the back of the house. His face was covered with blood. His helmet was gone. He didn't have his gun anymore. Probably he hoped to tuck and roll before he hit the ground, but he only made it about halfway out the window before something caught him. His torso crashed against the side of the house. Screaming, arms flailing, he was yanked back inside. Steve saw a flash of gold metal, a spray of arterial scarlet. All this happened in less than a second.

Now the screams overlapped, building, rising to a crescendo.

Steve nodded at Erwin's walkie-talkie sitting in the console. “Can you hear what they're saying?”

“Nope,” Erwin said. “They use encryption. I couldn't get it even if I
knew what frequency they were on.” He paused. “It don't look real good, though.”

One of Carolyn's people, a woman in gray-green robes, fell through the French doors onto the back patio. She lay where she landed, not moving. Her chest was covered in blood.

“Hey,” Steve said. “I recognize that one. I think her name is Jennifer?”

The helicopters, still trailing their long ropes, moved a bit closer. A moment later they backed off again. The two Bradleys in front of the neighborhood started rolling. Once in front of the house, they each disgorged a small horde of men in green carrying automatic weapons.

The Army guys moved toward the front door. Only a couple made it. Automatic weapons fire from the house cut the rest down in the front yard—head shots mostly, mercifully blurry at that distance. The soldiers fell in the grass, boneless. All but one lay still, but that one, a black guy, writhed and screamed. His legs didn't seem to be working.

“Holy fucking shit,” Steve said. He looked over. Erwin's face was twisted with fury. His gray hair stood out wildly against his flushed red face.

“I told them,” Erwin said. “I told them this was different. I fucking
told them
.”

Three of the men from the Bradleys made it as far as the house. As the men from the helicopter had done, they stood on either side of the door and made hand gestures at one another. Steve thought,
They're going to do it. They're really going to go in there. On
purpose. “Daaaaaaaaaaaamn.”

But they didn't. Something punched through the wall. Again Steve caught a flash of bright-yellow—brass and blood in the afternoon sunlight as a soldier's throat exploded. A moment later the other two dropped as well, one after the other in rapid succession.
He's stabbing them through the wall
. It reminded him of a sewing machine needle.

Steve heard a whirring sound. The barrel of a Bradley's main gun began to turn on the house.
They're going to blow up the house
, he thought.
They're going to blow it up, even with their own people inside
.

But they didn't. The rear doors of both Bradleys were still open, so when David streaked out the front door there was nothing to stop him.
My God
, Steve thought.
He's so fast
. David disappeared inside the vehicle. A second later the hatch on the gun turret flipped up and a single hand, bloody, rose up. Fingers clawed at the air, helpless, then the hand slipped back inside.

The driver of the second Bradley began closing his back door. It was the right idea, but he wasn't quite quick enough. David dove over the back gate, smooth and graceful.

A minute or so later the back hatch opened again. Now the Bradley was red inside. David stood alone in the back, carrying his spear and
—is that somebody's head?
—something tucked under his arm. For just a moment he seemed to lock eyes with Steve, half a mile away. The hair on the back of Steve's neck went all prickly. David grinned, then turned and darted back inside the house.

The helicopters moved in close again. Their guns started up and began to whir, chewing away the roof of the house, the siding, the windows, the chimney.

Then Steve saw a man silhouetted against the blasted window of the house. He was holding a rifle. Steve hoped for a moment that it was one of the Army guys, but the fluff at his waist could only have been a tutu. David fired, just once, and sparks flew from the helicopter's tail rotor. It jerked, then spun around, level but moving backward. Its tail section crashed into the spinning rotors of the other chopper in a shower of sparks.

Both helicopters dropped the hundred feet or so to the ground. One of them landed on a neighboring house, the other landed half in and half out of the swimming pool behind it. The house exploded with an enormous gout of yellow flame and black smoke.

Then the day was silent again.

“Holy fucking shit,” Steve said. He turned to Erwin, hoping he might confirm this diagnosis, perhaps weigh in with insights of his own. But Erwin was otherwise occupied. His eyes were fixed on Carolyn. She was standing a couple of feet outside the driver's-side window, pointing a pistol at Erwin's head.

“Hi,” she said.

“H
i yourself,” Steve managed. From this angle he saw yellow hair next to her at about waist height. His first thought was that she was standing next to a blond three-year-old. But when he stretched his neck up to see better, he met yellow eyes. “Hey! Is that Naga?”

He knew as soon as it was out of his mouth that it was a dumb thing to ask—how many lions
are
there in a typical suburb? It was her. She stood on her own power, strong and alert.

“Yeah, I tracked the two of you to the vet,” Carolyn said. “I figured you might want me to patch her up for you.”

Steve, still cuffed, scrambled out of the car and went around to the driver's side. He was heading for Naga, but Carolyn put a hand on his shoulder and nodded at his cuffs. It took Steve a moment to recognize the thing in her hand as a stone knife. “I don't think that'll be sharp enough to—”

She cut through the tough plastic in a single swipe.

“Thanks.”

Steve knelt down beside Naga, hugged her neck. Her wound was mostly healed—her fur hadn't grown back, but where only an hour ago there had been a bloody, gaping hole he now saw pink skin. She licked his cheek.

“I'm guessing you're Carolyn,” Erwin said.

“Good guess,” she said. “How you doing, Erwin?”

“You know me.”

She didn't answer. Steve noticed that her index finger was trembling, just a little.

“You gonna shoot me with that thing?” Erwin asked.

“Don't hurt him, Carolyn,” Steve said, still kneeling. “This guy's OK.” Then, to Naga, who was still licking him, “C'mon, OK, that's enough.”

“I wouldn't dream of it,” she said. She opened the back door of the Ford and flopped down onto the backseat.

Erwin, sitting in the front seat, gave Steve a little nod.

Steve waved it away. He stood by the open back door, looking down at Carolyn. She sat leaning against the rear headrest, eyes closed. The gun lay on the seat beside her. Steve looked at the smoking ruin of Mrs. McGillicutty's house. “Were you caught up in that mess?”

Carolyn shook her head. “No. I got out about an hour before the shooting started. I was looking for you at the house.” She opened her eyes and gave him a stern look. “You were supposed to wait for me there. It's not safe out here.”

“Out
here
?” Steve said, incredulous. “Out here's friggin' Disneyland compared to that place. Anyway, I thought the whole point was that you couldn't go into—”

Erwin was studying her in the rearview mirror. “You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?”

She nodded again. “This or something like it. The president is a prideful man. When I rattled his cage yesterday he needed to do something to show what a scary fellow he is.”

They both looked at her. “Yeah,” Erwin said, all trace of the amiable hick gone from his voice, “I'd say you pretty much nailed that one. I'm curious, though—how did you get the codes to get through the switchboard?”

She fluttered a hand in the air. “I'm tricky.”

“She is,” Steve agreed.

“Yeah,” Erwin said. “I'm starting to get that.”

“What happened to the rest of them?” Steve asked. “Your, um, ‘brothers and sisters'?”

Carolyn opened her eyes. “I was going to ask you,” she said. “Did anyone get out? Maybe someone with an animal?”

“No one that I saw,” Erwin said. “I don't think so.”

Carolyn's expression was impossible to read. “Then they're almost certainly dead. That was the most likely outcome.”

“There's someone on the back porch,” Steve said quietly. “A woman. Blond hair, kinda short and spiky? You can borrow my scope if you—”

Carolyn shook her head and closed her eyes again. “I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you. It's Jennifer.” Then, speaking to herself, “At least she went out stoned. She would have wanted it that way.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am,” Erwin said.

“Thanks, Erwin. That's good of you to say. Now it's just David and Margaret and me.”

“Margaret?” Erwin asked.

“The one who smells bad,” Steve said.

“Ah,” Erwin said. “How do you know she's not dead too?”

Carolyn smiled, still holding her eyes closed. “David would never let anyone else hurt Margaret.”

Steve looked through the scope. The house was quiet now. Thin trickles of smoke leaked from the windows. As he watched, Mrs. McGillicutty staggered outside. She was bloody and dazed, but very much alive. “Hey, there's the old lady! What's that she's holding!”

Carolyn took the scope and looked for herself, then handed it back. “Muffins. She's got muffins.” She shook her head, smiled a little. “David must have saved her as well. Just when you think you know a person…”

“What do we do now?” Steve asked.

“Now we wait, for a little while.”

“For what?” Steve asked.

“For David to come back.”

“Back?” Erwin asked. “Where'd he go?”

“He's off to Washington.”

“What for?”

“He's going to kill the president, and everyone involved in what just happened. He'll use the broadest possible definitions of ‘everyone' and ‘involved.' ”

Steve boggled at her. “That's imposs—can he do that?”

“David? Yes. They might as well start digging the graves right now. The president's a dead man.”

Steve stared at her, aghast.

“Oh, for gosh sakes. It was
his
idea to start killing people, remember? Before his Army guys showed up, everyone was just sitting around and eating brownies. Anyway, I doubt most people will even notice. They'll have bigger things to worry about.”

Erwin's eyes narrowed. “What's that mean?”

“What time is it?”

“Uh,” he glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “Around four fifteen?”

“Any second now.” She gave a thin, feral smile.

Steve felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “Carolyn, what did you do?”

She didn't answer with words, just pointed at the sky.

It was just after four in the afternoon. The sun was still well above the tree line. The sky was clear. There was no eclipse. All of these things were true, but after a few seconds Steve was forced to accept what his eyes were telling him.

The sun was going out.

F
or the next minute and a half or so the sun faded from the blazing yellow that was normal for this time of day to a mellower sunset orange, then red. Steve, watching this, thought,
It's like someone's turning the switch on one of those dimmer bulbs reeeeeally slow
.

At first Erwin hung his head out the driver's-side window to watch, but then—evidently forgetting that he was kinda-sorta in custody—he fumbled the Taurus's door open and stood in the parking lot next to Steve. “Eclipse?” Steve said softly, knowing it wasn't.

Erwin shook his head. “Nah. Can't be. Maybe it's…is it shrinking, too?”

“I can't tell…well…yeah. Maybe.” Steve held his thumbnail up for comparison. He could do this without even squinting. The sun had faded to a dirty and unenthusiastic brown. As it went finally to black he saw that it
did
visibly shrink, at least a little.

Then it was gone.

Steve felt the afternoon warmth fall away from his skin. The October breeze, its slight chill suddenly ominous, rustled dry leaves.
How cold can it get?
he wondered.
How cold does it get on Pluto? Oxygen is a liquid there, isn't it?
He shivered more than the breeze really warranted.

“Are you seeing this?” Erwin asked softly.

“I think so,” Steve said. “Are you sure about the time?” Ignoring the evidence before his eyes, he was clinging to the notion that maybe this was just a normal sunset.

Erwin checked his watch. “Four eighteen, give or take.”

“You're
sure
?” Steve said. His heart pounded in his chest. The stars were out. They burned down on him like the eyes of distant monsters, huge and merciless. A streetlamp flickered on, coating the parking lot in phlegmy yellow light. Naga looked up at the sky and rumbled, uneasy.

“Right on schedule,” Carolyn said from behind him. She sounded pleased with herself.

Steve spun around. “
You
did this? That's impossible. It's got to be…” He fluttered his hands, helpless. “Why would you do this?”