“Leave him alone,” Pullman said, almost whispering, and dropped his outstretched hand like he’d used up the last of his energy.
Georgie squirmed, and he pulled him in tighter. “Tell me where the boy went, and I won’t hurt a one of them. Promise.”
The man said nothing.
“But if you don’t,” he said, “you’ll pray for me to butcher them both, just to quit their screaming.” He flicked the tip of the knife enough to get Georgie’s attention, and the boy squealed.
Blood oozed from Pullman’s hip, but not enough, not much more than bled from Dave’s own wound. He raised his hand again, but only about a foot before letting it flop back onto the ground. “Let him go. I—”
“Which,” Dave said, and Georgie squealed again. “Way.”
Pullman twisted his wrist to point. “Neighbors,” he said. “I sent him to the neighbors, you son of a bitch.”
Dave smiled and loosened the knife a little. “Liar.”
At this word, Georgie tightened. It was funny the way they did that, got all tight when they thought they were going to take a knife to the throat. Funny ha ha. As if Dave would actually kill him, as if he hadn’t gone through so much to save him in the first place, and as if flexing his muscles would do anything to protect him from a well-honed knife if Dave did start slicing.
Pullman shook his head, or tried to. “No. I sent him over to—”
“No you didn’t. There aren’t neighbors that way for five miles. If you sent him anywhere, it woulda been the little girl’s house.” Dave shook his own head, looking ashamed. “But I reckon he’s still here, hiding, and you just killed yourself two little boys.”
What he did with the knife, he did too quickly for anyone but himself to see: he drew the blade across Georgie’s throat from ear to ear and then lifted the knife high into the air, the way a magician will do with his wand after he’s just completed a magic trick. The boy fell away from him, and the man pulled himself to his feet and charged, just how Dave had thought he might, moving low to the ground like a tackling football player.
Dave shot a well-aimed foot at Pullman’s face and caught him right on the chin. A loud clicking of teeth and a woof of air followed, like the man was really just a man-shaped balloon and Dave had popped him. He fell to the floor and didn’t move. Stunned, or maybe unconscious, but out of action either way.
On the floor, Georgie grabbed at his throat, wheezing and flailing and making such a spectacle of himself that Dave had to chuckle.
“Come on,” Dave said and prodded him a little with the same foot he’d used on the Pullman man’s face. “You’re not cut.”
Georgie’s flailing continued. He either hadn’t heard, or hadn’t understood.
“You’re not cut,” Dave repeated. “I only got you with the dull side.” To prove it, he held out the knife for Georgie’s inspection. Except maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea. Georgie saw the knife and screamed. Dave looked at it himself, confused about what he was seeing until he remembered the blood dripping from the weapon had come from Pullman’s hip.
Dave shook his head and pocketed the blade. He didn’t bother saying anything else, just reached down, scooped up the uninjured (or at least not recently injured) boy, and flung him over his shoulder. Below, Pullman might as well have been one of the floorboards. Dave walked across him and carried Georgie through the open window.
Dave moved along Pullman’s supernova of a porch, Georgie beating on his back with his fists. The blows almost felt nice, the way Dave imagined a massage might feel. Personally, he’d never gotten so much as a foot rub except from himself and Mr. Boots, who’d sometimes rubbed more than that.
No, Dave told himself, don’t think about that. His breathing had become suddenly heavy, and he realized he was squeezing Georgie much more tightly than was probably safe. Just forget it.
He trudged to the corner of the porch and stared through the darkness at the disconnected garage.
Yes. Of course.
On the other side of the house, the dog barked up a storm. Dave wondered if dogs ever got sore throats, if they made doggy throat lozenges or cough syrup. Surely not, but you never knew. People got a little crazy sometimes about their animals—he’d once watched a woman slather sunscreen on a thin-haired cat. He’d been fifteen at the time, and had giggled so loud he thought the woman almost noticed him in his hiding spot. Later, he’d caught the cat and slow roasted it over a campfire before bringing it back in a paper sack and leaving it on the woman’s front steps with a note reading: must not have used enough sunscreen.
The cat had died hard, yowling until long after the point at which it should have quieted, but Dave hadn’t felt especially bad about it. He’d never been much of a cat person.
Georgie had gone into another one of his periods of silent motionlessness. Dave removed him from his shoulder, lowered him into the grass on the other side of the porch railing, and then hopped over the barrier himself, the stab wound burning with every move he made, every breath he took. Once beside Georgie, Dave pressed his hand between the boy’s shoulder blades and steered him toward the property’s smaller structure. Their shoes slapped against the dewy grass, and they both shivered, Georgie a little more so than Dave.
Manny barked again, a series of three yelps followed by another pair, and Dave could only assume the boy had tied him up somewhere. They didn’t sound like the barks of a happy dog. To Dave, those barks said, Let me loose, let me go, I wanna play, too.
Dave reached up and touched his chest, pressed in on it but didn’t rub. Rubbing only would have worsened the pain, torn the hole bigger and maybe loosened whatever thin membrane held in the rest of his blood. He’d killed the kid’s old mother for much less, but that had been different. She was an adult, and a woman, and should have known better. Georgie had just done what any kid would do. He couldn’t kill Georgie. He wouldn’t. If he did, everything else would be pointless, and he’d never have another chance. Today was the day. His most important birthday ever.
He pushed the boy to the large rolling door and reached down to grab the handle.
Locked.
He yanked at it harder, trying to pop it open. Considering the flimsiness of their locks, some of these garage doors might as well have been held shut with scotch tape, but this one held tight, didn’t even rattle. If there had been windows, Dave would have pressed his face against them and peered inside, but the door’s series of solid panels completely concealed the interior.
Dave told Georgie to lead him around the side of the garage, and the boy obeyed.
If the new Davy was hiding inside, he’d hear them out here, would probably be scared, but that was okay. By the end of the night, little Davy would be safer than he’d been in a long, long time.
Georgie led him past two small windows, both covered from the inside. They circled around the back of the garage and found the regular-sized door on the other side. Dave eased Georgie aside and tried the knob. Locked. Without stopping to think, he swiveled and kicked the door just beside the knob. The wood cracked, but nothing else broke. Dave kicked again, and this time two cracks followed: first the door exploding inward and then it rebounding off a desk or shelf halfway through its swing. Dave could have seen the splintered doorjamb by only the light of the moon, but with the added illumination from the porch, it might as well have been the main attraction in a jeweler’s display case. He grinned at it and walked by.
Georgie didn’t follow him, which was good. In his state of confusion, the boy might have thought about grabbing something and using it against him. Dave didn’t want to consider what he might do if that happened. Anyway, the boy wasn’t exactly a cheetah; if he ran, Dave would hear him in plenty of time to catch up.