‘Not far again,’ said Shep.
‘No. Just a short trip,’ Dylan agreed.
‘Shep can do far.’
‘Yeah, buddy, I know, but we need short.’
‘Shep can do very far.’
‘Just here to there, buddy.’
On the arm of her father, the bride appeared in the nave below.
‘Now, sweetie,’ Jilly urged. ‘We need to go now. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Shep.
They remained on the south-wall platform.
‘Sweetie?’ Jilly prodded.
‘Okay.’
‘Here Comes the Bride,’ the pipe organ boomed, but from their perspective, the bride had already passed. She proceeded toward the chancel railing where her groom waited.
‘Buddy, what’s wrong, why aren’t we out of here already?’
‘Okay.’
‘Buddy, are you listening to me, really listening?’
‘Thinking,’ said Shep.
‘Don’t think, for God’s sake, just do it.’
‘Thinking.’
‘Just fold us out of here!’
‘Okay.’
The groom, the best man, the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, the maid of honor, the ring bearer, the flower girl, the father of the bride, the bride: The entire wedding party had moved within the field of fire enjoyed by the killer on the west scaffold, and most likely had presented themselves, as well, to the third gunman, who had not yet been located.
‘Okay.’
Shep reached behind the world we see, behind what we detect with our five senses, and pinched the matrix of reality, which seemed to be the thinnest film, as simple as anything in creation, and yet was comprised of eleven dimensions. He tweaked that pinch, inducing time and space to conform to his will, and folded the three of them from the south-wall platform to the west-wall platform, or more accurately folded the south away from them and the west in to them, although the distinction was entirely technical and the effect identical.
As the west scaffold became their reality, Jilly saw Dylan raise the assault rifle over his head with the intention of using the butt as a club.
Prone on the platform, the second gunman was raised slightly on his left forearm, squinting across the church at the east wall, when they arrived. A tether ran from his belt to a piton that, like a mountain climber on a rock face, he had secured in the wall, most likely to counter the effects of recoil and provide stability if he decided to shoot from a standing position.
Sporting beard stubble instead of a full beard like the first man, wearing Dockers and a T-shirt emblazoned with that universal symbol of American patriotism – a Budweiser label – on the back, he would nevertheless have failed to be passed through the U.S. Customs Station east of Akela, New Mexico, where even poor shady Fred in his suspicious pot had been regarded warily.
The gunman had raised up on his left arm, the better to signal someone with his right hand.
The someone proved to be the third killer.
Directly opposite the Budweiser fan, the last gunman – a sharp-edged shadow among otherwise soft shapeless shadows – had risen to his feet. Probably tethered to the church wall, he held a compact weapon that in this poor light appeared to be an assault rifle, one of those compact killing machines with a collapsible stock.
Shepherd said, ‘Shep wants cake,’ as if he had just realized they were at a wedding, and Dylan hammered the butt of the assault rifle down at the second gunman’s head, and Jilly realized that they were in deep trouble, sure to be shot along with the wedding party and numerous guests.
The third killer, having witnessed their miraculous arrival, even now watching as his comrade was clubbed unconscious, would open fire on them in seconds, long before Shepherd could be persuaded that another short trip was required.
In fact, even as with satisfying force the rifle butt met the skull of the second gunman, the third began to raise his rifle toward the west scaffold.
‘Here, there,’ Jilly said. ‘Here, there.’
Desperately hoping that she remembered the eleven-dimension-matrix-round-and-round-of-all-that-is with the same certainty that she remembered 118 jokes about big butts, Jilly let her purse slide off her shoulder and drop to the platform at her feet. She pinched, tweaked, and folded away from the west wall, to the east platform, hoping that surprise would give her sufficient advantage to wrench the rifle out of the killer’s hands before he squeezed the trigger. She folded herself and only herself because at the last instant, as pinch turned to tweak, she thought of The Fly, and she didn’t want to be responsible for Dylan’s nose being displaced forever in Shepherd’s left armpit.