"So how does that thing work?" Peter said.
Eric laid his HK 93 on the ground. Then he unslung the crossbow and held it out for Peter to examine. "You ever own a BB gun?"
"Nah. My parents wouldn't let me. But Aaron Roth down the street used to let me use his sometimes. We'd shoot Coke cans in his back yard."
"Well, this bow cocks just like a lot of BB guns, only it takes a lot more strength, so you usually put it on the ground and lean into it. Like this." Eric pushed the nose of the bow against the ground, leaned his body into it, and the cocking mechanism slid back until the bowstring was pulled back into the trigger. He straightened up and handed the bow to Peter. The weight surprised Peter, for the bow dropped a few inches in his hands.
"Jeez, this sucker's heavy." He hefted it a few times, grinning.
Eric smiled at the boy's delight. It had been a long time since he'd played teacher. He could imagine his classroom now back at the university, the students laughing at something, or arguing with him about some point, or groaning as he explained their next assignment. It was a role that had suited him well. Much more than his previous one of commando or his present one of avenger. From the house, the single notes from the piano echoed crisply in the warm air. He would give Paige a few more minutes tinkering with the code. Then they would have to leave. He still had to hunt down Fallows and steal Tim. Steal him? Funny word to choose, as if he were taking something that belonged to someone else. But that was his fear, wasn't it? That Fallows, with all the time he'd had with Tim, had somehow brainwashed him. He'd done it before in less time. Almost had done it to Eric.
"Whoosh," Peter said, aiming down the length of the empty crossbow. "Thud. Got him."
"Just be sure you don't fire a bow without an arrow. Damages the bow." He looked at his watch. Twenty-three hours left to retrieve Tim and get back to the shuttle. Less than a day.
The piano notes had stopped coming from the house. Good, maybe she was done. He'd show Peter how to shoot the bow then they could be on their way.
A few kids drifted from around the back of the house, wandering toward Eric and Peter. Eric noticed that little Sarah was among them. Together they formed a little group of eight curious onlookers, silently watching. Most of them looked pretty.healthy and clean, but a couple of them looked a bit pale and sickly. Well, that was to be expected under the circumstances. No medical supplies up here. No doctor. They were lucky to have food and water and shelter.
"Can I try it with an arrow?" Peter asked.
"Let me show you how first," Eric said. He took the bow back, slid a bolt into the brass groove. "Like this, see? With the guide feather in the groove."
"Yeah."
Eric twisted away from Peter, thumbed the safety button, and swung around again with the bow against his shoulder. "That branch," he said, indicating a gnarled stick of wood the size of a baseball bat about fifty feet away. He squeezed the trigger. The bolt rocketed from the bow with a whiz and dove straight into the stick, chipping off a chunk of wood.
"Wow," Peter said, impressed.
The group of children behind them applauded. They started to walk closer.
Eric turned and smiled at them. "Hi, kids."
They smiled back but didn't answer.
Eric winked at Sarah. "Hi, Sarah."
She hugged her sock doll to her neck and giggled. "Hi, mister."
The children all walked closer.
"Careful now," Eric warned. "Don't get too close to that gun. It's dangerous."
The children smiled, but kept walking.
"I mean it now," Eric said sternly.
They stopped. One of the kids started coughing so violently his little baseball cap fell off. Beneath the cap he was almost bald. Eric noticed some hair loss among a couple of the other sickly kids.
"What's wrong with them?" Eric asked Peter.
Peter shrugged. "Cold or flu, I guess. They'll be OK."
"You don't cook indoors do you?"
"Nope. Wendy keeps a fire outside the back door for cooking. She read that burning some kinds of wood inside can be harmful. Sometimes we have a fire inside, but only with dry branches around here. We're pretty careful."
Eric nodded. The kids were pretty smart.
"Can I try it, Mr. Ravensmith?" Peter begged. "Shoot your bow?"
"Sure, Peter."
He handed Peter the bow and a sharp bolt.
Peter smiled. So did the rest of the children.
They sure are a happy bunch of kids, Eric thought as he watched Peter cock the bow and slide the bolt into place.
"Hurry up, children. Get the shoes first."
Wendy's voice broke through Paige's haze as if it were being carried through a heating duct from one apartment to another. She felt little hands tugging at her shoes. She tried to kick them away.
"Oh fudge!" Wendy said. "She's alive."
Paige struggled to lift her aching head from the floor as her eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness of the small room. All she could make out was a cluster of little faces hovering around her and, above them, Wendy, looking flustered.
"Darn," Wendy said. "I was sure she was dead. Billy, hand me that knife there. No, not that one. The long one with the teeth."
"What are you doing?" Paige asked, lifting herself to her elbows, despite the throbbing at the back of her head. Tiny hands reached out and started pushing her back to the floor. She brushed a few aside, but there were so many of them. And now Wendy was leaning over her with that long, saw-toothed knife.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," Wendy said. "Really sorry. We thought you were already dead."
"Dead?" Paige repeated numbly. Then she remembered the thump on her head. "Sarah."
Wendy nodded. "Yes, usually Sarah's much more reliable. She clobbers someone they're usually down for good. I guess her aim was a little off this time."
"I don't understand. Where am I?"
Wendy smiled slightly. "Used to be the pantry."
Paige's eyes focused slowly on the surroundings. In the dark she hadn't recognized it. Sure, the pantry. How many times had she hid in this room nibbling Fig Newtons until she was sick? But it wasn't as she remembered it. There were objects of all sizes hanging from the ceiling. Beneath each thing was a pan or a bucket. A couple objects were still dripping into their pans. The smell of the room was different too. Heavy. Sickly rich.
Wendy's apron was dark, smeared with something.
Paige swung her arms, knocking three children backwards into a couple hunks of whatever was hanging. One kicked a pan and the dark liquid slapped over the edge and spilled across the wooden floor.
Paige scrambled to her feet, reeling slightly from the pain in her head. A rush of dizziness spun her awkwardly around. She started to swoon, her eyes fluttering shut as she fell, but she caught herself on the edge of a large, metal garbage can. The same battered one that she'd used the lid from as a shield when she and her father had used broom handles to swordfight twenty years ago.
"God," Paige said, trying to catch her breath and balance so she could fight back. She still didn't know what these kids were up to, only that they had tried to kill her. And were going to try again. She felt their little hands grabbing at her arms and she fought the nausea, forcing her eyes wide. As she did, she found herself staring into the gaping mouth of the trash can.
And saw the pile of human bones filling the can. Mixed with the bones were chunks of flesh, strips of human skin.
"Oh no! Oh my God, please!" she gasped, barely able to get enough air to say even that.
"Hold her down!" Wendy ordered and the children began shoving at Paige, trying to tackle her to the ground.
Paige flung the one clinging to her right arm against the trash can. He slammed into it, knocking it over. The contents spilled onto the floor in a clatter of dry bones. But rolling out across the bones came a severed head, hair matted with blood. One eye gouged out, the other wide with terror.
Steve Connors.
As Paige stared at the head, she hardly felt the fists pummeling her stomach and back. Hardly felt herself being dragged to the floor. Hardly felt the children sitting on her arms and legs. Barely noticed Wendy's apologetic shrug as she came toward her with the knife saying, "Sorry, ma'am, but we got a lot of mouths to feed around here."
Eric studied the children as Peter struggled to cock the bow. These kids had something to be proud of. They'd formed a family and survived when a lot of other kids their age had died of starvation or been murdered by scavengers. Too bad about the sick ones, though. The little kid in the baseball cap coughed again, wiped some mucus from his nose with his sleeve.
"Not as easy as it looks, huh?" Eric said to Peter.
"I'll get it," Peter said defiantly.
Eric smiled, looked at his watch. Paige had stopped playing the piano almost five minutes ago, but she still hadn't left the house. Maybe she was chatting with the children, or helping them with something. They certainly were an endearing bunch.
"Got it," Peter announced, finally cocking the bow. He laid the arrow into the brass groove just as Eric had shown him.
"Good," Eric said. "Now aim it at your target, sight right through there, and gently squeeze the trigger. Don't jerk it."
Peter swung the crossbow up and pointed it at Eric's chest. The children applauded. Peter squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Peter looked startled, then panicky. He squeezed the trigger again, pulling hard. Still, the bow wouldn't fire. "Shoot, damn it, shoot!"
Eric reached out and grabbed the crossbow away from Peter, shoving the boy to the ground as he did. "The one thing I didn't show you or tell you, was how to release the safety. I never do that with someone I don't know until I'm sure of his target. Now, you want to explain to me what's going on?"
"Go to hell!" Peter said, still prone on the ground.
Eric heard the footsteps pattering behind him and turned in time to catch Sarah's wrist and shake the wrench free from her hand. He pushed her away. "What's the matter with you kids? We don't want to harm you."
Then the kid in the baseball cap began to cough and the truth flashed on Eric. He spun, saw Peter groping for his machete, and fired the arrow into Peter's right thigh. The 175 pounds of tension hammered the bolt through the leg and partially into the ground, pinning Peter there. He howled with pain.
Eric slung the bow over his shoulder and grabbed the HK 93 from the ground. He ran toward the house, the gun set for semiautomatic bursts.
"Hear that?" Fallows said.
"What?" Bedlow asked.
"That yelling. Someone yelling."
Bedlow listened. The rest of the men listened. They all shook their heads. Bedlow said, "I don't hear anything, Colonel."
Fallows looked at Tim. "What about you, kid? You hear anything?"
Tim listened. He didn't so much hear anything as felt it, like a slight vibration, a tremor in the wind that didn't belong. "There's something."
"He's just saying that," Phelps said. "He don't hear shit."
Fallows smiled at Tim. "See what I'm up against?"
There it was again, Tim thought, that look from Fallows. That tone in his voice that cut all the others out and made him feel special. He could feel the others staring at him with envy and even a little fear. It made him feel powerful.
Fallows pointed ahead. "Whatever it is, it's about a mile straight through there. We run it at double-time, we should be there in six minutes. Let's go. Move your lazy asses."
There was no hesitation. The men started running full-speed along the dirt road. Fallows waited until they were all moving before he started. Within seconds he and Tim had passed them all and were leading the pack toward the house.
Paige bucked against the weight of the children, trying desperately to throw them off her arms and legs. But they merely giggled at the disturbance, as if they were riding a particularly fun mechanical ride outside the grocery store.
Wendy gripped both hands around the long knife's handle and lifted the serrated blade over head, ready to plunge it down into Paige's heart.
Paige twisted her body to the side, wiggling with such ferocity that her right foot slipped free from under Max, twelve, and Gail, nine. As they grabbed for the snaking foot, she coiled her leg back and snapped it straight into Max's face. He groaned as he flew back into Gail, both of them tumbling into another half-full bucket.
"Hold her, kids!" Wendy said, distracted just long enough for Paige to kick her free foot into Wendy's chest. The blow staggered Wendy a few steps, but she recovered quickly enough to stab at the foot. The blade sawed through Paige's pant leg and sliced the ankle bone. The ankle pulsed with pain, but Paige kept kicking. Finally Max and Gail wrestled the leg to the ground, flopping their little bodies across it.
"Goodness," Wendy sighed, brushing a stray hair back into place and tugging her apron straight. She kneeled next to Paige and lifted the knife again.
The door to the pantry exploded open with such a violent force that it caught two of the children who'd been watching on the shoulders and hurled them into the wall. Eric stood in the doorway with his HK 93 held at waist level.
"Get away from her," he growled. "Move!"
Wendy dropped the knife and backed away, gathering her frightened children around her. She held her arms out, pushing them behind her, protecting them with her body as she imagined Ingrid Bergman might, or Katherine Hepburn. "Don't harm the children," she pleaded.
Eric ignored her. He gestured to Paige as she slowly pulled herself to her feet. "You OK?"
"Headache." That was all she seemed to be able to say for a moment. Then it burst out at once in rapid disbelief. "Eric, they were going to kill me and, Jesus…" She looked around the small room, her old secret hiding place. With the door open, the extra light revealed the hanging things more clearly. Legs, arms, torsos. Like a butcher shop. And there on the floor, spilled blood, scattered bones, and her former husband's severed head. "Cannibals. They're goddamn cannibals. Children." She shook her head, unable to continue. Then, in a sudden violent outburst, she snatched Wendy's knife from the floor and ran at the girl.
Wendy stuck out her chest and closed her eyes, offering herself up as sacrifice for the children's sake.
"Don't," Eric said.
Paige stood in front of the girl, her hand clutching the knife, her body shaking with rage. Finally she flung the knife to the floor. "Let's get out of here." Her voice was hollow, almost an echo.
Sound filtered in from outside. Men approaching.
"Drop it, kid!" a man shouted.
Another man laughed harshly. "What the fuck is this? Disneyland?"
Eric ducked out of the pantry, peeked out the kitchen door, saw nothing, slid along the side of the house and glanced around the corner.
Col. Dirk Fallows and his men were marching across the lawn. Next to Fallows, Tim. Eric noticed the Walther, his Walther, tucked in Tim's waistband.
Peter had managed to work the arrow free from his leg and was standing now, leaning on a couple of the children with one hand, holding his machete in his other.
"What do you want?" Peter demanded.
"Want?" Fallows repeated with a smile. "We're just weary travellers looking for a couple friends of ours."
"Damn," Eric whispered to himself, spun and ran back to the kitchen door.
Paige was waiting there, silently threatening the children with the knife to keep them quiet. "What is it? What's going on?"
"No time," Eric said. "Let's go."
"OK, I'll grab my gun and the tapes."
Eric gripped her arm and yanked her out the door. "No time. They're coming in. Now."
"But the tapes-"
His fingers dug into her arm. "Forget them."
They ran full-speed across the back yard, Paige's ankle screaming from the deep cut Wendy Had given her. They were into the woods just as some of Fallows's men burst into the house and herded Wendy and the children out into the yard with the others. One of them carried Paige's HK 93 with the laser scope.
"Hey, Colonel, looky here."
Fallows examined it, then glanced around, staring for a few seconds right through the trees where Eric and Paige were hiding. Eric knew he couldn't actually see him, but it was a chilling feeling anyway.
Fallows tossed the gun back to his soldier. "Looks like we got them while they were on the toilet. Took off with their pants still around their ankles." His eyes swept the grounds again.
"You want us to go after them?" one of the men asked.
Eric and Paige listened from their prone positions, exchanging looks.
"Not yet. Not until we see if they found what they were looking for. We'll tear this place apart first."
"Colonel!" a soldier shouted, stumbling out of the kitchen door, holding his stomach. "Jesus, Colonel." He doubled over and retched onto the ground.
"Christ, Bedlow," Fallows said with disgust.
Bedlow spat out what was left of his lunch and wiped the mess from his lips. "Cannibals, Colonel. These little bastards are cannibals. They got a fucking butcher shop in there. Arms, legs, everything. They eat people, for Chrissake."
"Really?" Fallows smiled with amusement as he looked the children over. "So you kids been chewing the fat, huh? Been biting the hand that feeds you?"
"What are you going to do?" Peter asked.
"Whatever we want," Fallows said. "So you and your brats just keep your mouths shut until we're done."
Peter stormed a few steps toward Fallows. "This is our home. You have no right to-"
Fallows tugged his Walther from its holster and shot Peter in the face. The bullet removed Peter's left cheek and a quarter of the back of his skull. Some of the younger children screamed and cried. Most followed Wendy's example and just watched quietly.
"Shouldn't we do something?" Paige whispered.
"What?"
Paige thought about it, sighed. "Yeah."
But Eric wasn't concerned with what was going on as much as he was with Tim's reactions to it. He watched his son's face as Fallows blasted away Peter's face. There was the shock of the noise, but otherwise nothing. No reaction. Of all the dangers and life-threatening situations Eric had faced in his life, this frightened him the most. Come on, son, he begged silently, show me something.
Fallows left a man to guard the children and lead the others into the house. The loud sounds of the house being savaged, furniture being smashed, cupboards torn apart, drummed through the woods.
Eric nudged Paige. "Come on."
"Where?"
"Away from here."
"But the tapes. My father's tapes."
Eric shook his head. "Fallows has them now. It won't take him long to figure it out."
"Then what?"
Eric considered that for a moment. "If he found us here he must have gotten the info from Steve. That means he knows when the shuttle takes off again. He'll have to decide whether he's got enough time to come after us and still get to the shuttle in time." Eric pulled Paige to her feet and handed her the HK 93. He unslung the crossbow, cocked it, and fixed a bolt in the groove.
"What about them?" Paige asked, hooking a thumb over her shoulder. "What do you think those kids will do now that Peter's dead?"
"Eat him," Eric said.