As she climbed, her shoulder-slung purse banged against her hip and briefly got hooked on the long scissoring hinges from which the ladder was hung. She had lost the Coupe DeVille, all her luggage, her laptop, her career as a comedian, even her significant other – dear adorable green Fred – but she was damned if she’d give up her purse under any circumstances. It contained only a few dollars, breath mints, Kleenex, lipstick, compact, a hairbrush, nothing that would change her life if kept or destroy it if lost, but supposing that she miraculously survived this visit to Casa O’Conner, she looked forward to freshening her lipstick and brushing her hair because at this dire moment, anyway, having the leisure to primp a little appealed to her as a delicious luxury on a par with limousines, presidential suites in five-star hotels, and Beluga caviar.
Besides, if she had to die far too young with a brain full of nanomachines, because of a brain full of nanomachines, she wanted to leave as pretty a corpse as possible – assuming that she didn’t take a head shot that left her face as distorted as a portrait by Picasso.
Negative Jackson, vortex of pessimism, reached the top of the ladder and discovered that the attic was high enough to allow her to stand. Through a few screened vents in the eaves, filtered sunlight penetrated this high redoubt, but with insufficient power to banish many shadows. Raw rafters, board walls, and a plywood floor enclosed a double score of cardboard boxes, three old trunks, assorted junk, and considerable empty space.
The hot, dry air smelled faintly of ancient roofing tar and strongly of uncountable varieties of dust. Here and there, a few cocoons were fixed to the sloped planks of the ceiling, little sacs of insect industry vaguely phosphorescent in the murk. Nearer, just above her head, an elaborate spider web spanned the junction of two rafters; though its architect had either perished or gone traveling, the web was grimly festooned with four moths, their gray wings spread in the memory of flight, their body shells sucked empty by the absent arachnid.
‘We’re doomed,’ she murmured as she turned to the open trapdoor, dropped to her knees, and peered down the ladder.
Shep stood on the bottom rung. He gripped a higher rung with both hands. Head bowed as if this were some kind of prayer ladder, he appeared reluctant to climb farther.
Behind Shep, Dylan glanced through the open closet door, into the guest bedroom, no doubt expecting to see men on the porch roof beyond the windows.
‘Ice,’ said Shep.
To Jilly, Dylan said, ‘Coax him up.’
‘What if there’s a fire?’
‘That’s damn poor coaxing.’
‘Ice.’
‘It’s a tinderbox up here. What if there’s a fire?’
‘What if Earth’s magnetic pole shifts?’ he asked sarcastically.
‘That I’ve got plans for. Can’t you push him?’
‘I can sort of encourage him, but it’s pretty much impossible to push someone up a ladder.’
‘It’s not against the laws of physics.’
‘What’re you, an engineer?’
‘Ice.’
‘I’ve got bags and bags of ice up here, sweetie,’ she lied. ‘Push him, Dylan.’
‘I’m trying.’
‘Ice.’
‘Plenty of ice up here, Shep. Come on up here with me.’
Shep wouldn’t move his hands. He clung stubbornly to his perch.
Jilly couldn’t see Shepherd’s face, only the top of his bowed head.
From below, Dylan lifted his brother’s right foot and moved it to the next rung.
‘Ice.’
Unable to get the image of the dead moths out of her head, and growing desperate, Jilly gave up on the idea of coaxing Shep to the attic, and instead hoped to break through to him by transforming his monologue on ice into a dialogue.
‘Ice,’ he said.
She said, ‘Frozen water.’
Dylan lifted Shepherd’s left foot onto the higher rung to which he’d already transferred the right, but still Shepherd wouldn’t move his hands.
‘Ice.’
‘Sleet,’ Jilly said.
Far down in the house, on the ground floor, someone kicked in a door. Considering that the volleys of gunfire must have reduced the outer doors to dust or to lacy curtains of splinters, the only doors requiring a solid kick would probably be inside the house. A search had begun.