There were shadowy figures running backward and forward. A body lay slumped against a low wall, black blood leaking from the lower abdomen. Someone noticed him on the second floor, and a rifle was pointed. Mac ducked back just in time, the bullet smashing through the window and burying itself in the ceiling with a snowy burst of plaster.
Sukie started to cry.
“Let ’em have it, Dad!” shouted Jack. “Go on, kill them.”
Henderson McGill closed his eyes. The ragged figures outside were from a nightmare. He wasn’t really standing there, holding an unfired shotgun, with four of his children behind him.
Of course he wasn’t.
“Kill ’em, Daddy!” squeaked Sukie, giggling at her own nerve.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I’ll do just that, sweetheart.”
Pushing the barrel of the Brazzi through the shattered glass, he took hasty aim at the nearest of the daring silhouettes.
The gun kicked against his shoulder with a satisfying jolt. He peered out, disappointed to see that there was still only one corpse down in the trampled white of the garden.
“You get one, Daddy?” asked Jocelyn.
“Sure did,” he said. “Plugged the critter plumb between his mean, ornery eyes.”
DESPITE THE dead bolts and security devices, the raiders managed to break in the kitchen door. Jeanne and Angel kept them at bay for five or six minutes with steady fire from their handguns, but the mob outside had several sawed-down shotguns and used them to drive the defenders up off the first floor.
An overhanging porch ran the length of the back of the house, and Preacher Casey had encouraged his screaming followers to use it for cover from the defenders’ shots.
Mac joined his wives, daughter and two sons on the first landing, opening fire on anyone stupid enough to show themselves.
John and Paul were both furious.
“Bastards will raid our food supplies once they get into the cellar,” said the older boy. “Could finish us. Must be twenty still alive and unwounded.”
“Can’t have that.” Mac glanced at them. “We stay up here and they steal everything. Might as well get killed quick as face that. Think of the little ones starving slowly to death.”
“Should we risk attacking them?” asked Paul. “Lot of them.”
“Sure. Rabble. Six of us, well armed. Six McGills against a raggedy mob. Let’s go get the bastards! Check ammo.”
“If we go down the stairs, they’ll…” began John McGill.
“I’m going out on the roof. And you’re coming with me. Shotgun each. Won’t expect us attacking them through the broken kitchen door. Moment you hear us open fire, then Paul and Pamela come down to help. You two—” Mac pointed at Angel and Jeanne, “—stay up here and guard the little ones. No matter what happens, you both stay put.”
“I’d forgotten how forceful Mac could be,” Jeanne said with a grin, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “Go get them.”
IT WAS BITINGLY COLD and the shingles on the sloping roof were treacherous with ice. Mac and his son were both barefoot, picking their cautious way down. There was still bedlam from inside the first floor, with someone singing out an obscene parody of the good old hymn, “Shall We Gather at the River?”
There was deep snow piled at the eastern end of the porch, and Mac went first, gasping as he landed clumsily, twisting his ankle on rutted ice. But he was able to stand, wincing as he put weight on the right leg. John was quickly down at his side.
“You all right, Dad?”
“Sure. Can’t run far, but I’m not figuring on doing any bastard running. Sure a squid like you can keep up?”
“At your shoulder, Dad.”
McGill nodded, feeling a surge of pride and love for his boy.
He gripped the Brazzi tight, and John followed suit with the Winchester. He had a handful of shells in his pocket.
The door had been completely destroyed, the wood ripped apart by dozens of hacking ax blows.
“Need to layer it with steel next time,” muttered John.
“Get the house back first.”
His son clapped him on the shoulder.
Mac braced the shotgun at his hip, carefully stepping in over the splinters of painted wood, picking his way between the shards of broken glass.