"I wasn't on this stick," Leonard said, "I'd go over and kick that fucker till he came back to life."
"Go straight for your car," I said.
We did. The car was parked at the side of the house, near the front porch, where it had been left when brought out by the Ice Birds, as Leonard called them.
Leonard worked the keys out of his pants pocket and Trudy opened the car door and Leonard slid in and tried to start it. Nothing. It didn't even click.
I went around and opened the hood. Doing it made me feel as if my intestines were falling out of me, but when I looked inside, I knew our problem wasn't the weather, and I understood Soldier's and Angel's delay in pursuing us even better.
They had taken the distributor cap. I limped over to the mini-van and looked under its hood. Same thing. And the Lincoln. And the Volvo. I thought about checking the Volkswagen in the barn, but I couldn't believe they'd leave it undone, not after taking time for the others. Besides, I didn't feel as if I could make it to the barn.
"The rifle," Leonard said.
I got his keys and limped around there with Trudy, and was about to unlock the trunk when there was a crack and the back glass of Leonard's car exploded into jagged stars. I saw Soldier and Angel coming up over the bank. They were covered in mud from the feet to the knees. Their faces were red and limb-whipped. Not happy campers. They were still a good distance away and not moving at top speed due to the cold blasting rain, but those guns gave them a lot of reach.
I whirled to run and there was another shot, and Trudy, who was slightly in front of me, threw out her hands and went face down. I grabbed her by the coat collar and started yelling for Leonard and there was another shot, smaller caliber, the .38. Then I was dragging Trudy toward the front porch of the house, my wound making my insides jump hard against my bones, and Leonard was limping behind. I heard him let out a grunt and I glanced back and saw him go down on one knee and saw blood flowing out of him to be washed across the cold ground in a dark wave; saw too that Soldier and Angel were coming on hard and fast.
Leonard scrambled for his stick and screamed himself up and yelled something at me that the pounding rain took away, and then I had Trudy pulled up on the porch and my shoulder took a bullet and I grunted and opened the door and hauled her halfway inside and staggered back for Leonard.
He almost ran over me before I could get off the porch. He let out a yell and I felt a punch in my chest and I grabbed him and swung him through the door and he and his stick went sliding across the floor. I fast-limped in, got hold of Trudy and pulled her all the way inside and slammed the door and locked it and Soldier hit it with his body and yelled. I thought Angel would hit it next, take it off its hinges, but that didn't happen. There was silence. And that was more frightening than the noise. I made my way across the room and into the kitchen, to the back door. I locked it just before the knob began to rattle and Soldier began to cuss. He fired two shots, quick succession, through the door about head high. I was just enough out of the way and the slugs slammed into the wall and picked a crock pot off a shelf and sent pieces of it all over.
I stumbled toward the living room, and as I passed the kitchen window, two more shots punched at the glass and threw up the curtains and slammed into the wall, but I was out of there and into the living room.
I avoided the window in the living room by getting low. I went over to Leonard. He was on the floor. Blood was running out of his leg and just below his ribs. That would be the shot that hit him on the porch and went through and got me too, but not bad. Leonard had taken most of that one. The ones in my right side and shoulder, those were the sonofabitches. The one in my lower right chest was just picking at me.
Leonard had taken off his jacket and pulled off his shirt and was tying it around his leg, trying to stop the blood from pumping out. He had never lost his stick, and he took hold of it again, tight.
Soldier was at the side of the house yelling. "Come on out, it's all over. Bam. A bullet in the head. You don't come out, I'm going to take some time with you."
I crawled around in front of the couch where poor dead Howard lay, and got a look at Trudy. The front of her jacket was a dark wet explosion where the bullet had come out.
Viscera poked through the hole in the jacket. My face explained things to Leonard.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Not a thing you can do."
I tried using my hand to close her eyes but I couldn't get her lids to go down. It seemed very important that her eyes close so I wouldn't have to look at them, but the lids just wouldn't do it.
Two shots whizzed through the living room window and struck the fireplace mantel and ricocheted into something I couldn't identify. Arctic rain came through and hit my face and mixed with the tears on my cheeks. I found it almost pleasant.
"You with me, Hap?" Leonard said.
"Yeah," I said, but I wasn't so sure. It was as if my center of gravity had shifted.
"One time," Soldier yelled, "I caught me this nigger trying to do me on a drug deal. I took him out and nailed his balls to a stump and left him there. With a sharp knife. Hear me in there, nigger?"
"Just a couple of licks on him with this," Leonard said, shaking the stick. "That's all I ask."
"The target pistol?" I said.
"In the nightstand by the bed. Not loaded. Shells are there in a box ... Hell, Hap. I got it bad."
"Hang on, buddy."
Soldier was quiet out there. Not a good sign.
"Look here, now," I said. "I'm going to get the pistol. You been worse, right?"
"Oh yeah."
To keep away from stray bullets, I crawled behind the couch and through the open door to the bedroom. I went like that until I was almost to the nightstand, but I never made it. I stopped crawling when I reached a pair of jogging shoes. With Angel's feet in them.
Chapter 29
I looked up and there was her snubnose .38 and above it her impassive face with the right side and top of her forehead swollen all out of proportion from my shovel blows. One eye was almost closed. She looked like a Neanderthal. Behind her the bedroom window was up and the curtains flapped in the freezing wind above the bed and there were muddy footprints on the sheets.
She pulled the trigger on the .38.
It was empty.
She knew that.
Bitch.
She whipped her hand around and whacked me on the side of the head with the gun, tossed it away, grabbed me by the coat and pulled me up. A network of pain went through my wounds and some new connections were found.
She kneed me in the nuts, tossed me backwards with a yell.
I hurtled through the open door and fell on my side in the living room behind the couch. Outside, I heard Soldier yell. "Angel? Angel?"
I rolled and tried to get up, but she got me by the collar and picked me up and tossed me over the couch. I rolled on my back and she leaned over the couch and grabbed Howard by his coat and crotch, and more shoved than threw him at me. He landed on his stomach across my legs.
She started around the couch making deep strides and I kicked out from under Howard and got unsteadily to my feet.
"Watch her, watch her," Leonard yelled, as if I might decide to go take in a little TV. When she came around the couch, she kicked at Leonard, who was doing his damnedest to get up, caught him a glancing blow on the head. But he wasn't her main target. He seemed for the most part incapacitated. And she hadn't forgotten me and that shovel.
She reached for me and I shot out a left jab and her head went back and her nose broke open and spouted blood. I hit her again, and again. Good jabs.
She stepped in and grabbed me and whipped me up and around and I fell back on the couch. She came down on top of me and I squirmed out from under her, caught her under the arm and twisted her on her back, straddled her and hit her with a hard left-right combination. Her face was nothing but blood now.