Sarah opened her eyes.
'Shoot him, Ward,' the man on the floor said. 'Just shoot him.'
'You're beginning to piss me off, John,' Nokkon said, kicking him again. 'You too, Ward. It's time to move on. My work on this mountain is done. It's time to fly.'
Sarah was confused. The man she'd thought might be her father wasn't, and he was lying on the floor. The other man… she didn't know who he was. A mirror man.
Nokkon talked to the mirror man, who wasn't moving. 'Come on, man, let's get this done. Whack the fuck. You know you want to. You've killed before. That's not an accident.'
Nokkon pointed his gun at the head of the man on the floor. He was going to kill him and fly. He'd said as much. And if the man on the floor wasn't her father, then her father might be at home with her mother and sister. But the thing was, their home had a roof. And if the house had a roof then Nokkon could fly through it, and if he'd do all this to her then there was no telling what he'd do to them.
Sarah slid her hands off her ears. They weren't blocking anything anyway.
'It's in your blood,' Nokkon was saying. 'I know you read the Manifesto. You've read it, and you'll know it's true.'
'It's bullshit,' the man called John said. Nokkon's foot lashed out immediately, stomping down on his hand.
'Ward, I'm rescinding my offer,' the devil said, his voice for the first time less than steady. 'You want
to kill anyone, it's going to have to be her. This guy's been mine for a long while.'
He lined the gun straight at Zandt's face.
But then his head jerked upright. As if hearing something outside the house.
Sarah didn't even think. She leaped out of the corner.
I saw the girl shoot up from nowhere. Her Body wasn't up to it, and the forward thrust was compromised before she was even fully on her feet. But the momentum drove her over Zandt's feet and barrelling straight into The Upright Man. He toppled over backwards, swatting at the girl's bony head, at teeth that were trying to fasten on his face.
One good crack across the eyes and she was falling backward, but the spell on me had been broken.
I fired once, missing him, but then Zandt was on top of him and I couldn't shoot again.
The two men rolled across the floor, kicking, punching. I stood ready to one side, waiting for a clear shot I believed I would take, which I knew I must take at any cost. Then I heard the noise from outside, the sound of a thrashed motor, of a horn being hit again and again. Bobby, thank Christ.
I saw the girl, lying still on the floor, blood flowing out of her nose. I ran to her, knowing this would have been Zandt's choice of priority. I pulled her upright with an arm round her stomach, stumbled toward the front door.
Yanked it open to be bathed in light. I couldn't work out what the fuck and then realized it was the headlights of the car I'd rented from the airport the day before.
I pulled the girl down the steps beside me, wondering what the hell Bobby was playing at but blessing his very soul. Then I realized there was only one person in the car and it wasn't him but the FBI agent and that she looked like death.
I ran round to her window. 'Where's Bobby?'
'Get in,' was all she said. 'Is that her?'
'Yes. Where's Bobby?'
'Where's Zandt?'
'He's inside. Will you tell me where the fuck Bobby is?'
'Bobby's dead,' she screamed. 'Davids killed him. I'm sorry, Ward, but get John, please, we've got to
go. The whole compound is wired and we have to go.'
Cables. All over the place.
I yanked open the back door and pushed the girl in as gently as I could. Left the door open and
sprinted back to the front of the house, shouting out Zandt's name.
Thinking: Bobby's dead.
In the front room there was no one. Zandt's gun wasn't lying on the floor any more. I ran through the house, still shouting, gun out in front, enough of my head still stuck in the world of two minutes ago to be running hot with shame. I hadn't done it, hadn't shot my brother. But I could do it now. I knew I could. I could do it now.
I heard the sound of running from behind and to the side and swerved to pelt into the back reception area. Zandt came hurtling across the room at me. I remembered at the last minute and shouted, 'It's me, John, it's not him, it's me.'
Zandt's face was running with blood. He stopped, gun an inch from my head, trigger already half-pulled.
'Look at the clothes, John, look at my fucking clothes.'
A beat, and then Zandt shoved me aside and tried to run past. I grabbed him round the neck.
'Nina's outside. Bobby's dead. We've got to go.'
Zandt elbowed me in the stomach, knocking me backward. I grabbed him again, yanked his head in tight, screamed at him.
'The whole place is wired. We don't go, he's going to get us all. He's going to get Sarah.'
Zandt's rigidity flexed for a split second, and I hauled him into the front room. Pulled him backward across it to the front door, back into the light flooding through it.
Outside Nina was revving the engine, but still Zandt tried to resist, fighting like a bear against the arm looped round his neck. For a second I thought I might have seen a shadow flit across one of the doorways back inside the house, but it was soon gone.
When we were outside Zandt seemed to realize there were other people in the world, seemed for a moment to see a window through which there was something other than the man he had to kill. I shoved him at the car, stooping to pick something up off the ground.
Zandt climbed unwilling into the back, shouting and swearing, banging the back of the seat in front of him with his fists. Nina had slumped sideways, half into the passenger seat. I got in the driver's door and pushed her across, strapped her in.
I found the gas pedal, jammed my foot down as if trying to stand up. The car fishtailed backward on the wet grass and I pulled it round. Nina was banged into her door, and started moaning, rhythmically but quietly.
'Brace Sarah,' I yelled back to Zandt, pulling my seatbelt on, and then we were hurtling back down through The Halls, flashing past all the quiet houses with their treasures.
I thought I could hear bones crunching under the tyres, but that must have been in my mind and I hoped Zandt did not hear it, too. I hoped also that I did not see what I thought I saw, for an instant: the silhouettes of a small group of people standing up on the ridge of the hill surrounding the pasture, looking down on us.
We were going too fast. I couldn't really have seen it. When I glanced back, they were gone.
I aimed at the hole Nina had made on the way in, and almost made it. Boards flew past the windshield. Worse was a bad tearing noise from where the chassis took a hit from one of the posts on the other side, but the car kept on going. It nearly rolled in the left turn out of the lot and I thought everything had been in vain, but I got the wheels down again and took off down the drive, under the gate, and then right into the road out of the mountains. I nearly totalled the vehicle again immediately just around the turn, where Harold Davids had stashed his car, but managed to skid around it. A series of hairpins, picking up speed, until a final long straight run down toward the stand of trees that shielded the road. I didn't even try to make this turn, knew in advance it wasn't going to happen, and steered instead through the trees, finding gaps large enough to get the car through, aiming us bumping and shuddering out the other side onto the grass. Somewhere between there and the road a flint took out one of the back tyres, and all I could do was try to stop the car rolling as it bounced and skidded down the final slope to smash through the low barricade with a scream of shearing metal.
The car skated across the icy road and clear off the other side into the Gallatin River, running shallow and fast and cold. There was a moment of stillness, in which we realized we were still alive, and then the entire world seemed to explode.