‘Where’s all the ice?’
‘When they’re done downstairs,’ Jilly asked, ‘what’s next?’
‘They blast the second floor. Maybe come up on the porch roofs to do it.’
‘Maybe they come inside,’ she said.
‘Ice, ice, ice.’
‘We’ve got to get him off this ice,’ Jilly worried.
‘That’ll only happen with time and quiet.’
‘We’re screwed.’
‘We’re not screwed.’
‘Screwed.’
‘Not screwed.’
‘You got a plan?’ she demanded.
Dylan’s only plan, which Jilly in fact suggested, had been to get above the gunfire. Now he realized that the gunfire would come to them wherever they went, not to mention the gunmen.
The ferocious clatter-bang downstairs, the fear of a stray bullet finding its way up the stairwell or even through the ceiling of the lower hall and the floor of the upper hall: All this made concentrating on tactics and strategy no easier than lassoing snakes. Once again, circumstances thrust upon Dylan a deeper understanding of how his brother must feel when overwhelmed by life, which in Shep’s case was nearly all the time.
Okay, forget about the money he kept in a lockbox. The Beatles had been right: Money can’t buy you love. Or stop a bullet.
Forget about the 9-mm pistol that he’d bought after his mother’s murder. Against these assailants’ artillery, the handgun might as well have been a stick.
‘Ice, ice, ice.’
Jilly coaxed Shepherd to skate out of the ice and rejoin them, so he could fold them to someplace safe, but with his eyes closed and thought processes frozen, he remained resistant to sweet talk.
Time and quiet. Although they couldn’t buy much time, every minute gained might be the minute during which Shep would come back to them. Deep quiet was beyond attainment during this jihad, but any reduction in the bang and clangor would help the kid find a way out of that corner of ice.
Dylan crossed the hallway and threw open the door to the guest bedroom. ‘In here.’
Jilly seemed to be able to tug Shepherd along in a reasonably fast shuffle.
The impact of the fierce barrage sent shudders upward through the walls of the house. The second-floor windowpanes rattled in their frames.
Moving ahead of Jilly and Shep, Dylan hurried into the bedroom, to a walk-in closet. He switched on the light.
A cord dangled from a pull-down trapdoor in the closet ceiling. He yanked on the cord, lowering the trap.
Downstairs, the deafening volume of gunfire, which had sounded like the fiercest moment during the Nazi siege of Leningrad, as Dylan had once seen it portrayed on the History Channel, abruptly grew louder.
He wondered how many major splintering hits the wall studs could sustain before structural damage became critical and one or another corner of the house sagged.
‘Ice, ice, ice.’
Arriving at the closet door with Shep, referring to the ungodly racket on the lower floor, Jilly said, ‘We got a double scoop of Apocalypse now.’
‘With sprinkles.’ A ladder in three folded segments was mounted to the back of the trapdoor. Dylan lowered it.
‘Some of Proctor’s experimental subjects must’ve developed weird talents a lot scarier than ours.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘These guys don’t know what we can do, but they’re so wet-pants scared of what it might be, they want us seriously dead, faster than fast.’
Dylan hadn’t thought about that. He didn’t like thinking about it. Before them, Proctor’s nanobots had evidently produced monsters. Everyone expected him and Jilly and Shep to be monsters, too.
‘What?’ Jilly asked disbelievingly. ‘You want us to go up that freakin’ ladder?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s death.’
‘It’s the attic.’
‘The attic is death, a dead end.’
‘Everywhere we can go is a dead end. This is the only way we can buy some time for Shep.’
‘They’ll look in the attic.’
‘Not right away.’
‘I hate this,’ she declared.
‘You don’t see me dancing.’
‘Ice, ice, ice.’
Dylan said to Jilly, ‘You go first.’
‘Why me?’
‘You can coax Shep from the top while I push from below.’
The gunfire ceased, but the memory of it still rang in Dylan’s ears.
‘They’re coming.’
Jilly said, ‘Crap.’
‘Go.’
‘Crap.’
‘Up.’
‘Crap.’
‘Now, Jilly.’
40
The attic limited their options, put them in the position of trapped rats, offered them nothing but gloom and dust and spiders, but Jilly ascended the sloped ladder because the attic was the only place they could go.