He’d thought it was over, but now he realized they hadn’t known all.
“Oh, Christ,” he breathed, understanding now the old woman’s runic comments about not allowing them to take her pupils away from her.
The attic had been turned into a classroom, complete with seven mummified little corpses leaning crookedly in three rows of tiny desks, facing a blackboard. On it, in the same old-fashioned and elegant hand, was chalked a single sentence.
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
Jim closed the door very quietly and went back down the stairs to tell the others.
Chapter Thirty- Three
Nanci Simms had found the ideal position for her ambush on a bank overlooking the blacktop, behind a fringe of dead huckleberries, with a forest of sturdy redwoods at her back. She could take out the driver and anyone in the cab of the lumbering Phantasm RV as they drew level with her. There were metal guards on both sides of the highway, so it wouldn’t topple over the cliff. By the time the driver of the jeep towing the fuel tank realized what was happening, she’d have killed him with a second burst of fire from the stubby machine pistol.
The leading vehicle was less than two hundred yards away, moving little faster than walking speed. The sunlight reflected off the shield made it impossible to see who was driving. But that wasn’t a problem for Nanci Simms.
It wasn’t likely to be anyone she knew.
As she crouched and waited, it crossed Nanci’s mind that most people that she’d ever known well had died… and most of them she’d killed herself.
The noise of the RV was deafening. For a moment she thought that she caught the sound of movement behind her, among the sun-dappled shadows beneath the sweeping branches. She turned and stared but couldn’t spot anything moving.
The Phantasm was around a hundred yards away, then fifty, moving even more slowly as it neared the crest of the rise. Then the range was down to thirty yards. She brought the gun up to her shoulder, ready to open fire as the woods seemed to be trembling with the roaring of the engine.
One of Nanci’s many attributes was peripheral vision over twenty percent better than what used to be the national average. Out of the corner of her right eye she caught the faintest flicker of movement and started to spin around.
The trio of dogs were less than twenty feet away, charging at her, bellies down, hunting in a menacing silence. There was a moment to place them as some mix of German shepherd and rottweiler, then she pulled the trigger.
The burst of lead from the Port Royale ripped the animals apart, slaughtering all three of them instantly. But the center dog was already in midair, committed to its leap for the woman’s throat, fangs bared.
It struck Nanci on the chest, knocking the gun from her hands and sending her staggering backward. Tripping over an exposed root of one of the redwoods, she slithered through the brittle fronds of the huckleberries, rolling down the slope, pushing away the snarling corpse, dust blinding her.
The rotting stump of a dead aspen brought Nanci to a sudden, jolting stop, hitting her under the ribs, driving all the breath from her body.
She was aware through the breathless pain that the Phantasm had stopped and that one of the doors had opened. Boots stopped close to her, and there was a mutter of voices, but the idling engine was way too loud for her to hear the words. Farther off came the faint echo of someone running.
Then the click of a gun’s hammer being cocked.
So, she thought. This is how it ends. A sunlit road in the country.
Could be worse ways to go.
JEFF HAD BEGUN running back down the narrow, twisting road as soon as he heard the sound of the Port Royale spitting out its full-auto load of death. His own .38 was ready in his hand, though his time with Nanci Simms made him certain that his own contribution wasn’t likely to be needed.
When he sprinted over the crown of the next steep hill, he found himself staring down onto a bizarre and totally inexplicable tableau.