station wagon seemed to hang in the air an impossibly long time,
virtually floating across the porch, wheels spinning. It appeared
almost to dissolve through the wall into the cabin, vanishing as if it
had never been. The destruction was accompanied by a great deal of
noise, yet somehow it was not cacophonous enough, not half as loud as it
would have been if the crash had taken place in a movie.
Immediately in the wake of it, the comparative quiet of the storm
reclaimed the day, with only the moaning of the wind, snow fell in a
soundless deluge.
The kids.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the wall bursting in on them, the hurtling
Jeep right behind it.
She was running again before she realized it. Straight toward the
cabin.
She held the shotgun with both hands–left hand on the fore end slide
handle, right hand around the grip and finger on the trigger guard.
All she would have to do was halt, swing the bore toward the target,
slip her finger to the trigger, and fire. Earlier, loading the
Mossberg, she had pumped a round into the breech, so she could fit an
extra shell into the magazine tube.
As she sprinted out of the woods and into the driveway, when she was no
more than thirty feet from the porch steps, gunfire erupted in the
house. Five rounds in quick succession. Instead of giving her pause,
the shots spurred her across the driveway and shallow front yard as fast
as she could move.
She slipped in the snow and fell to one knee just as she reached the
foot of the porch steps. The pain wrung a soft, involuntary curse from
her.
If she hadn’t stumbled, however, she would have been on the porch or all
the way into the living room when Charlotte rounded the corner of the
cabin. Marty and Emily appeared close behind Charlotte, running hand in
hand.
He fires three times into the door on the left side of the pass-through,
kicks it open, scuttles across the threshold fast and low, and finds
another deserted bedroom.
Outside, a car door slams.
Marty left the driver’s door open while he got in behind the steering
wheel, fumbling under the seat with one hand in search of the keys, and
he didn’t even think to warn Charlotte and Emily not to slam their door
until the act was done and the echo of it reverberated through the
surrounding trees.
Paige hadn’t gotten into the BMW yet. She was standing at her open
door, watching the house, the Mossberg raised and ready.
Where were the damn keys?
He leaned forward, crunching down, trying to feel farther back under the
seat.
As Marty’s fingers closed over the keys, the Mossberg boomed.
He snapped his head up as an answering shot missed Paige, passed through
the open car door, and smashed into the dashboard inches from his face.
A gauge shattered, showering him with shards of plas
“Down!” he shouted
to the girls in the back seat.
Paige fired the shotgun and again drew return fire.
The Other stood in the gaping hole where the front door of the cabin had
been, framed by jagged ruins, his right arm extended as he squeezed off
the shot. Then he ducked back into the living room, perhaps to reload.
Though the shotgun would keep him from coming any closer, he was too far
away to be greatly hurt by it, especially considering his unusual
recuperative abilities. His handgun, however, packed a solid punch at
that distance.
Marty jammed the key in the ignition. The engine turned over without a
protest. He released the hand brake, put the BMW in gear.
Paige got in the car, pulled her door shut.
He looked over his shoulder through the rear window, reversed past the
front of the cabin, and then turned into the tire tracks left by the
Jeep on its kamikaze run.
“Here he comes!” Paige cried.
Still backing up, Marty glanced through the windshield and saw The Other
bounding off the porch, down the steps, across the yard, a wine bottle
in each hand, rag wicks in the necks, flames leaping off both.