The kitchen door was closed, but I didn’t care. I ran at it full out and hit it with my shoulder. The hinges ripped right out of the doorframe, and the door flew gracefully out into the sunlight, end over end. I didn’t see it land because I was already racing across the yard.
I hurdled a low bush without breaking stride and without taking my eyes off of Jeff’s back. He was nearly there. On the other side of him, I could just see Anne’s head start to come up as she heard something, but she was still facing the wrong way.
I wasn’t going to make it in time. As fast as I am, I was going to be a heartbeat too late. Jeff had his knife raised and he was nearly on top of her.
I screamed, “Behind you!” Anne spun around, rising from her crouch, and whipped the shotgun across Jeff’s skull like a baseball bat. It sounded like somebody hitting a melon. Blood flew and he went sideways in a pinwheel and tumbled to the ground.
And then I was there, just in time to see him surge to his feet brandishing his long hunting knife like everything was still going according to plan. I heard Anne’s sudden intake of breath. Her blow had crushed his temple and shattered his left eye socket. That whole side of his face was a red ruin, and flaps of skin hung from the exposed fragments of bone and brain.
As grisly as that was, I don’t think it was the blood and gore that got to Anne. It was the mass of tiny worms that was hanging out of the side of his head, the wound dripping small wriggling clots onto the ground.
He slashed at me impossibly fast, because no matter how shitty bags are with guns, they take to knives like mother’s milk. A line of fire traced across my hastily raised forearm as he cut me to the bone. I was still registering that fact when the blade came blurring towards me again. Instead of trying a second block, I whipped the baton out and across his shoulder.
It cost me a nice deep cut across my chest before it impacted, but once it did Jeff went one way, and his knife went another. The heavy steel bar had shattered his shoulder and one collarbone and thrown him to the ground. I hit him again as he rose, this time crushing though the top of his skull, and it was over.
My legs gave out, and I dropped heavily to the soft grass, blood soaking into the front of my shirt and running freely down one arm.
Anne patched me up with more shirt strips, and I vowed to buy a first aid kit as soon as possible. After she was done, we turned back to Henry and Leon. Henry was kneeling down, strips of makeshift bandage wound around his shoulder. I breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like he was going to be fine. Leon, on the other hand, had gone gray, and he shivered in the warm sunlight. I knelt down beside him.
“How’s he doing?”
Henry shook his head. “Needs an ambulance.”
Anne jumped up and bolted for the house, “I got it.”
“I’m so sorry, Henry. I should have sent the two of you away as soon as I knew they were coming.”
“I wouldn’t have gone. It’s my fight, too. You and I, we deserve this. We should have finished it a lifetime ago in Warsaw, but we didn’t, we ran away. It’s my fault that Leon is hurt, not yours.” He wiped a smooth hand across his old, tired face. “I thought I was educating him, telling him about the real world. From the day he found out, he wanted to know more. In the last few years, he’s even been helping me with my research, if you can believe that.
“I thought I was opening his eyes and making him safe, but in the end I think I was just looking for someone to share my burden.” He fussed with Leon’s blanket. “I knew that if I told him those things were coming, he’d insist on being here. I knew it and I told him anyway. I wanted him to be here, because I was afraid. Now Carlos is dead, and Leon isn’t far from joining him.”
“How do you think Leon would have felt if you hadn’t told him, and you had been killed? He’s no different than you were at his age when you were putting yourself in harm’s way. Nobody could have stopped you then, any more than you can stop him now.”
“We shouldn’t have run.”
“I know.”
“We could have finished it, Abe. We could have ended it once and for all, but instead I’ve lived my life afraid, and you just plain stopped living.”
“If we had chased Piotr back into the switching station that day, we probably would have died. We were hollowed out, Henry. You know that. Shad was dead and I was delirious when you pulled me out of that pool. Everybody else was wounded. Hell, it was all Frank and Don could do to get us out of there.”
Henry smiled tightly and nodded. “Frank. Old Two Penny almost bled out by the time we got help. We didn’t even know he was shot.”
I remembered. “He was a tough son of a bitch.” Cancer had killed him at the age of seventy-four. His funeral was the last time I had gone out into the world before closing myself off.
I hoped Frank’s widow was still around. “You know where Georgia lives these days?”
“I’ve tried to keep touch. I’ve got her address in the house. You think they know where she is?”
“They knew where to find you and Patty. Besides, they aren’t going to give up on the last piece.” I heard Anne yell across the yard that the ambulance was on its way. I glanced back and saw that she was coming with more blankets and some clean towels from the house. “We should have gotten his piece at the funeral.”
“I told you that at the time.”
“Well, now I’m agreeing with you.”
Anne draped the new blankets over Leon, cocooning him from neck to toe. Then she began cleaning his face with a damp towel. None of that was really helping, but I figured she needed to feel like she was doing something. Long nights at Maggie’s side had made me familiar with the feeling.
Henry stood up slowly and sucked in his breath as his shoulder moved. “Let me get my address book so you can get moving. You two need to be gone when the authorities arrive.”
13
I watched Henry and Leon dwindle in the rearview mirror until the curve of the gravel drive took them away. Henry wanted me to keep going on this fool’s errand, despite the risk to both his and Leon’s life, so that he could have a chance at peace, at closure, before he died. We both knew how slim that chance was.
Anne’s eyes were red like she had been crying, but I never saw her shed a tear. When she spoke, her voice was strong and steady. “Where are we going?”
“Airport.” I handed her two wallets. One was brown leather and the other was silver fabric and Velcro. They were both well worn and looked like part of someone’s life. I had taken them from the baitbags who had attacked us. “Take a look and see what you can tell me.” She took them from me like they were live snakes.
“The airport isn’t a destination. What am I looking for?”
“Those things used to be people. They lived somewhere, and I’m betting that’s where they were … changed. And to answer your question, we’re going to DC to look up the widow of Frank Eaton.”
“Frank Eaton. That was Two Penny, right?”
“That’s right. Got his name because his family was really poor, even for folks during the depression. One day he found a penny in the barracks, and some wiseass congratulated him, saying that he could quit the army a rich man, now that he had two pennies to rub together.” I had to smile remembering it. Two Penny had laughed louder than any of us.
“You guys were assholes.”
“Damn straight. Wallets?”
“I’m doing it, shut up.” I drove while she went through them carefully, even flexing the empty pieces in her hands to feel for anything sewn inside. “It’s hard to match the things that tried to burn us alive with the owners of these wallets, you know? That big guy was named David Burgher. He’s got a library card in here, and pictures of his kids. Can you believe that? Look at this, he’s wearing some goofy Christmas sweater and everything.”
I glanced at the picture. He was smiling with his arms around two blonde children, a boy and a girl. Next to him was a pretty woman leaning on his shoulder. It was one of those studio portraits that people used to get at department stores for their Christmas cards. I guess they still do.