There was the snap of a small-caliber pistol from behind him, and the man stumbled, glasses falling from his eyes, showing a shocked and surprised expression. Carrie’s .22 had hit him in the throat, cracking the cervical vertebrae.
“Gone wrong,” he said, voice expressionless, then fell backward, out of sight, just his boots visible.
There was a second of stillness, broken only by the roaring of the inferno that had virtually destroyed the building behind them.
“Any more?” said Kyle.
“Don’t know. Let’s go for that jeep.”
But it was only a roving patrol, not the major attack that Ted Abbey had been expecting.
Four men in two vehicles. There was a small pickup parked behind the blazing store, its roof showing above a rise in the ground.
Cautiously the three began to walk toward the jeep, guns ready, eyes scanning the empty wilderness that stretched out to the east.
It hadn’t occurred to than to question the deaths of the shot men. They’d gone down and lay still, so that was that.
But the first of the attackers, tucked away by Ted Abbey’s scattergun, was still alive. His machine pistol lay several yards away from his body, half buried in the sand.
But he rose from the ground, blood leaking from a number of wounds around the top of his right thigh and hip, looming at Carrie Princip like an avenging zombie, mouth open in a soundless scream of hatred.
She was taken by surprise and was knocked to the dirt without a chance to defend herself. Kyle started to turn, way too slow, the rifle dangling uselessly in his hand.
But Sly had been looking toward the jeep. The fire had frightened him, and he didn’t want to stare at it any longer. So he saw the man burst into life before any of them.
His initial reaction wasn’t quick enough to stop the attack on Carrie, but his mind worked sufficiently fast to swing a clumsy blow with his half-clenched right fist. Sly was very strong. The blow struck the wounded man on the side of the face, near the mouth, cracking his cheekbone and sending him staggering to his knees.
Kyle shot him through the side of the head before he could recover his senses.
Close to the fire, Sly finished telling the story, convinced deep in his heart that his father heard him.
“So me was a big help, Dad. Carrie and Kyle was real pleased. Now when it’s light we all get to got going to find Jim and Heather. She’s pretty, Heather. Likes me, as well.” He opened his eyes, his communication finished. “There,” he said, smiling at the two watchers. “Now me go sleep good.”
“Yeah, the sleep of the innocent,” said Carrie.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The sound drifted out over the snow-covered land.
God rest ye merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior,
Was born on Christmas Day.
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we had gone astray.
The voices of the rest of the survivors of the McGill family joined Mac on the chorus of the old, old song.
“Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
Yes, tidings of comfort and joy.”
“Bit early for carols, isn’t it, Dad?” said Paul, now the oldest of the children. “Yeah, I guess so. Nearly three weeks, isn’t it?”
Mac’s first wife, Jeanne, was clutching a pink plastic tumbler of whiskey, reaching up to brush a stray coil of errant brown hair from her dark eyes. “Think we might make it to Muir Woods before the others leave it?”
Angel McGill, hands still showing the pink scars of the bad burns she’d received trying to save the life of her youngest boy, Jack, smiled. “Maybe nobody’s there. This snow’s probably come down all across California and the West Coast. That’s what triggered off the carols and this sudden feeling for Christmas. Like being home in New England, all together.”
The Phantasm, the huge RV, occupied most of a turnoff on a narrow side road about sixty miles north of San Francisco. With five adults and two children, the camper was a little crowded.
The other two vehicles were hemmed in by the massive Phantasm, closer to a ring of dead aspens, so that nobody could steal them away in the night. Not that Mac figured there’d be many people around in such snowy and bleak weather.