The next blast of pig bullets shook the green house on its foundations, blew a hole the size of a fist in the back of Sancho Clemenza's skull, and ripped away two of James Xavier Toombs's fingers. Mary heard Lord Jack shouting: "No surrender! No surrender!" One of the Storm Fronters threw a stick of dynamite with a sparking fuse, and the house next door exploded in a geyser of fire, wood, and glass. A vehicle of some kind was coming along the street: an armored car, Mary saw with a jolt of horror. The snout of a machine gun spat tracer bullets, and the slugs tore through the punctured walls like meteors. Two of those bullets hit Akitta Washington in the remains of the kitchen, and sprayed his blood across the refrigerator. Another stick of dynamite was thrown, destroying the Steinfeld house in a thunderclap. Flames leapt high, waves of black smoke rolling across the neighborhood. The armored car stopped, hunched on the street like a black beetle, fiery tracers spitting from its machine gun. Mary heard Janette sob, "The bastards! The bastards!" and Janette rose up in the flickering red light and yanked the pin from a second grenade. She threw her arm back to toss the grenade through the window, tears running down her face, and suddenly the room was full of flying wood splinters and ricocheting tracers and Janette Snowden was knocked backward. The grenade fell from her fingers, and Mary watched as if locked in a fever dream as the live grenade rolled across the blood-spattered floorboards.
Mary had a second or two in which her brain was seized up. Reach for the grenade, or get the fuck out? Janette's body was jittering on the floor. The grenade was still rolling.
Out.
The thought screamed. Mary stood up, crouched low, and ran for the door with cold sweat bursting from the pores of her flesh.
She heard the grenade thunk against the baseboard. In that instant she lifted her hands to shield her face, and she realized she should have shielded her unborn baby instead.
Surprisingly, she did not hear the grenade explode. She was aware only of a great heat lapping against her midsection, like the sun on a particularly fierce day. There was a feeling of lightness, of stepping outside her body and soaring upward. And then the sensation of gravity caught her again and wrenched her back to earth, and she opened her eyes in the upstairs hallway of the burning house, a hole in the bedroom's flaming wall and much of the ceiling collapsed and on fire. Somebody was trying to help her up. She saw a gaunt, bearded face and a ponytail. Edward. "… Up, get up!" he was saying, blood streaking his forehead and cheeks like war paint. She could barely hear him for the buzz in her ears. "Can you get up?"
"God," she said, and three seconds after that God answered by filling her body with pain. She began to cry, blood drooling from her mouth. She pressed her hands against the swell of her baby, and her fingers sank into a crimson swamp.
It was hatred that got her to her feet. Nothing but hatred that could make her grit her teeth and haul herself up as blood streamed down her thighs and dripped to the floor. "Hurt bad," she told Edward, but he was pulling her through the flames and she went with him, docile in her agony. Bullets were still ripping through the Swiss-cheese walls, smoke thick in the air. Mary had lost her gun. "Gun," she said. "Gun." Edward scooped up a revolver from the floor, near Gary Leister's outstretched hand, and she closed her fist on its warm grip. She stepped on something: the body of CinCin Omara, the cameo face unrecognizable as anything that had once been human. James Xavier Toombs lay on the floor, crouched and clutching at a stomach wound with his eight fingers. He looked at them with glazed eyes, and Mary thought she heard him gasp, "No surrender."
"Jack! Where's Jack?" she asked Edward, clinging to him.
He shook his head. "Gotta get out!" He picked up James Xavier Toombs's automatic. "Back door! You ready?"
She made a noise that meant yes, her mouth full of blood. Upstairs, some of the ammunition in the arsenal was starting to explode, the noise like Independence Day firecrackers. The back door was already hanging open. A dead pig lay on his back at the bottom of the steps. Jack had passed this way, Mary knew. Where was Didi? Still in the house? She had no time to think about anyone else. Smoke was billowing from the burning houses, cutting visibility to within a few yards. Mary could see the white tongues of flashlights licking at the smoke. "You with me?" Edward asked her, and she nodded.
They started across the back lawn, through the low-lying smoke. Gunshots were still popping, tracers flying through the haze. Edward scrabbled over a fence into the alley, and pulled Mary over. The pain made her think she was about to leave her guts behind, but she had no choice; she kept going, fighting back the darkness that tried to drag her down. Together they staggered along the alley. Blue lights were flashing, sirens awail. They went over another fence and crashed into garbage cans. Then they pressed up against the wall of a house, Mary shivering with pain and about to pass out. "Don't move. I'll be back," Edward promised, and he ran ahead to find a way through the pig blockade.
Mary sat with her legs outstretched. She released a moan, but she clenched her teeth against a scream. Where was Jack? Alive or dead? If he was dead, so was she. She leaned over and threw up, getting rid of blood and pizza.
And then she heard a scraping noise, and she looked to her right at a pair of shined black shoes.
"Mary Terrell," the man said.
She looked up at him. He wore a dark suit and a blue striped tie, his chiseled face all but obscured by the smoke. There was a gleaming silver badge on his lapel. He held a snub-nosed.38 in his right hand, pointed somewhere between them.
"On your feet," the pig commanded.
"Fuck you," she said.
He reached for her arm, her hand sunken in the bloody mess of her belly.
She let him grasp her with his slimy pig hand. And as she allowed him to haul her up, incredible pain bringing tears to her eyes, she lifted the revolver that had been hidden beside her and she shot him in the face.
Mary saw his jaw explode. It was a wonderful sight. His gun went off right in her ear, and the bullet whined about three inches from her own face. His arm was out of control, the gun whipping around. More bullets fired, one into the ground and two into the air. Mary shot him again, this time in the throat. She saw the animal fear in his eyes, and she heard him whine. Air and blood bubbled from his wound. He staggered back, desperately trying to aim at her, but his fingers twitched and lost the gun. The pig went down on his knees, and Mary Terror stood over him and jammed the revolver's barrel against his forehead. She pulled the trigger and saw him shudder as if stuck with an electric prod. The gun clicked: no more bullets.
The pig's torn face wore a crooked, bleeding leer, one side of his jaw hanging by tough red strands of muscle. She started to pick up his gun, but the pain stopped her. She was too weak to even smash him in the nose. She gathered bloody saliva in her mouth, and she spewed it across his cheeks.
"Mary? I think I've found a -" Edward stopped. "Jesus!" he said, looking at the man's ruined face. He lifted his gun and started to squeeze the trigger.