grew more astonished that he had not been hit. He was pressed to the
floor, as tight as a carpet, and he tried to imagine that his body was
only a quarter of an inch thick, a target with an incredibly low
profile, but he still expected to get his ass shot off.
He had not anticipated the need for a gun; it wasn’t that kind of case.
At least it hadn’t seemed to be that kind of case.
A.38 revolver was in the van glove box, well beyond his reach which did
not cause him a lot of frustration, actually, because a single handgun
against a pair of automatic weapons was not much use.
The gunfire stopped.
After that cacophony of destruction, the silence was so profound, Bobby
felt as if he had gone deaf.
The air reeked of hot metal, overheated electronic components, scorched
insulation-and gasoline. Evidently the van’s tank had been punctured.
The engine was still chugging, a few sparks spat out of the shattered
equipment surrounding Bobby, and his chances of escaping a flash fire
were a lot worse than his chances of winning fifty million bucks in the
state lottery.
He wanted to get the hell out of there, but if he burst out of the van,
they might be waiting with machine guns to gun him down. On the other
hand, if he continued to hug the floor in the darkness, counting on them
to give him up for dead without checking on him, the Dodge might flare
like a fire primed with starter fluid, toasting him as crisp as a
marshmallow.
He had no difficulty imagining himself stepping out of the van and being
hit immediately by a score of bullets, jerking and twitching in a
spasmodic death dance across the black street, like a broken marionette
jerked around on tangled strings. But he found it even easier to
imagine his skin peel off in the fire, flesh bubbling and smoking, hair
whooshing like a torch, eyes melting, teeth turning coal-black as flames
seared his tongue and followed his breath down his throat into his
lungs.
Sometimes a vivid imagination was definitely a curse.
Suddenly the gasoline fumes became so heavy that he had trouble drawing
breath, so he started to get up.
Outside, a car horn began to blare. He heard a racing engine drawing
rapidly nearer.
Someone shouted, and a machine gun opened fire again. Bobby hit the
floor, wondering what the hell was going on, but as the car with the
blaring horn drew nearer, he realized what must be happening: Julie.
Julie was happening. some times she was like a natural force; she
happened the way a storm happened, the way lightning happened, abruptly
crackling down a dark sky. He had told her to get out of there, to save
herself, but she had not listened to him; he wanted to kick her butt for
being so bullheaded, but he loved her for it too.
Sidling AWAY from the broken window, Frank tried to time his steps to
those of the man in the court yard below, with the hope that any noise
he made, trotting on gravel would be covered by his unseen enemy’s
advance. He figured that he was in the living room of the apartment,
that it was pretty much empty except for whatever debris that had been
left behind by the last tenants or had blown through the missing
windows, and indeed he made it across that chamber and a hallway in
relative silence, without colliding with anything. He hurriedly felt
his way along the hall, which was as dark as a predator’s lair. It
smelled of mold and mildew and urine. He passed the entrance to a room,
kept going, turned right through the next doorway, and shuffled to
another broken window. This one had no splinters of glass left in the
frame, it did not face the courtyard but looked onto a lamplit and empty
street.
Something rustled behind him.
He turned, blinking blindly at the gloom, and almost passed out.
But the sound must have been made by a rat scurrying over the floor,
close to the wall, across dry leaves or bits of debris Just a rat.