A rock. On the ground, just to the left of the path; the fence was to his right. Joshua picked it up, and it was just hand size. His fist closed halfway around it, fingers splayed over the cool and fairly smooth rounded surface. It felt good in the hand, it felt good swinging at the end of his arm as he walked. Comforting; his pet rock.
He was a good twenty minutes from the road, maybe a third of the way around the outer boundary of the plant, when he saw, just ahead, partway up a clear slope, seated on the trunk of a fallen tree, a single guardsman; a young guy, maybe twenty-two, pale pimply skin and pale scraggly moustache tucked away beneath the helmet. Joshua veered away from the fence toward this person, who continued to sit there, watching him approach. Joshua noticed the guardsman’s eyes take in the flapping laminated ID.
When he got close enough, Joshua grinned and said, “Hi. How you doin?”
“Fine,” said the guardsman.
“I thought you guys were supposed to work in pairs,” Joshua said. “Where’s your partner?”
Gesturing over his shoulder, the guardsman said, “Way down by that stream back there, taking a crap. He’s one of your self-conscious dudes.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Joshua said, and smashed the kid in the face with the rock.
The kid went backward off the tree trunk and Joshua went after him, raising the rock high, bringing it down twice more before the kid stopped moving. Then it was the work of a moment to yank the rifle off the limp body, roll it over, peel off its wool jacket.
Leaving the rock behind, carrying the rifle and the jacket, Joshua moved quickly but without undue haste toward the fence. He tossed the rifle over, then swarmed up the chain-link, fingers and toes sure and fast. At the top were three spirals of razor wire. Joshua flipped the guardsman’s uniform jacket over these, then scrambled rapidly upward — the sharp razor wire sliced right through the wool cloth and into his knees and forearms, but he hardly noticed — and launched himself over the top and into the air. His stomach dropped first, and then he did, landing on all fours, jolted but unhurt.
(There were also electronic sensors in the fence, that would now tell the security people back at the command post — and whoever might be looking at the right instrument panel in the plant’s control section as well — that it had been breached, but Joshua hardly cared. He was in; it was already done.)
Hands and knees smarted from the fall, and the razor cuts on his limbs stung, but he ignored all that. Leaping lightly to his feet, he picked up the rifle, held it at a loose port arms angled across his chest, and started to walk.
The land inside the fence was manicured, but cleverly, to give the illusion of unspoiled woodland glade. Joshua strode as though through a park, quickly out of sight of the fence, moving steadily up the gradual slope.
(Deep down inside, repressed, hardly noticeable, Joshua felt absolute terror. What am I doing? What have I done? What’s happening to me? But these adrenaline flutters of fear were almost completely overpowered, like a weak radio signal buried beneath a more powerful one, overpowered by glorious feelings of pride and pleasure in his own quick sure competence, the skill and swiftness and determination with which he moved. But why? What am I doing? Why? Ah, but the why didn’t matter; the dexterity, the adroitness, was all.)
His red-rimmed eyes surveyed the scene with satisfaction. What a beautiful world. Where else in the universe are there such greens? He strode up the gradual hill, feeling the young strength in his body, delighting in it, but before he reached the crest, from where he would surely be able to see the plant’s buildings, a man stepped out from behind a quince bush ahead of him and said, “That’s as far as you go.”
“I don’t think so,” Joshua said, and swung the rifle down to fire from the hip, quickly, effortlessly, as though with the deftness of long practice, only to hear the click of emptiness.
The damn guardsmen! They patrol with unloaded weapons? What kind of stupidity is this? The Boy Scouts are better prepared!
(Who is that man? Why do I hate him so? Why am I so afraid? Why am I not afraid? How can I stop these arms, these legs, this brain? Oh, please, please, please, how can I stop?)
The man in Joshua’s path was large and burly, with heavy shoulders and a narrow waist. He wore lace-up woodsman’s boots, thick dark corduroy trousers, a dark flannel shirt. He seemed to be unarmed.
(How did he get in here, inside the fence? Is he one of the terrorists? What’s happening? Why do I hate him? Oh, please, please, let me drop to my knees in front of him and beg for mercy. Heal me. Cure me. Save me.)
Joshua stepped quickly forward, reversing the rifle, grabbing it two-handed by the barrel, swinging it back and then around, fast and hard and vicious, aimed at the man’s head. But the man ducked below the swing, his left hand coming up, fingers snapping like a bear trap onto the rifle butt, yanking it away as he crouched low, knees bent, and pivoted all the way around in a tight low circle, like a stunt dancer on ice.
The rifle was torn from Joshua’s grip, the front sight gouging flesh from both palms, and now the man had it and was straightening, his jaw set, expression grim. Without a second’s hesitation, Joshua spun to his right and ran, leaping over rocks and roots like a deer, ducking below tree branches, swiveling this way and that through the shrubbery like the finest running back in football history.
Was the creature following? Joshua didn’t waste time looking back. He ran and ran, angling to his left, uphill, toward the plant.
A clearer section, the grass longer than the groundsmen normally kept it, the crest of the ridge just ahead. Joshua dashed toward that height, and a sudden blow in the middle of his back, a hard powerful hit as though from a battering ram, drove him forward and down, to skid painfully on the grassy ground, and lie there for an instant, breathless, stunned.
Many aches and pains crowded his body, demanding attention, but he had no time. Not for the racked wheezing of his lungs, not for the cuts and bruises, not for the grinding ache in his back as though bones had been broken, not for the sting of tears in his red-rimmed eyes. He rolled over, struggling upward, and saw it, the man, loping this way up the grade.
(What did he hit me with? What is he doing? What am I doing? Oh, let me out of this!)
“You won’t stop me!” Joshua cried, his voice harsh and hoarse and rasping in his strained throat. “You can stop this thing, but you won’t stop me!”
“A thousand times I’ll stop you,” the man said, coming to a stop, standing over Joshua, staring down at him with hate and contempt. “And a thousand times I’ll give you a little lesson.”
The worst pain of his life seared through Joshua, burning him, cauterizing him, arching his back, twisting his fingers into claws. He tried to scream, but something was scrambling up his esophagus, through his throat, across his trembling tongue, out past his stretched and grimacing lips. And out his straining ears, out his flaring nostrils, out his staring eyes.
Joshua dropped back onto the ground like a rag doll abandoned in mid-play. He was waking from a nightmare; or into a nightmare. His head lolled to the right, his bleary unfocused eyes saw the rabbit bounding away through the grass, saw it leap high and suddenly burst into flame, saw it fall to earth a charred lump, a smoking coal.