“What are we going to do?”
The sound of her own voice frightened her even more than she already was: it trembled, wobbled, verged on a slow-building scream. Her chest was constricted, felt as though it might burst. Fear pounded a frantic rhythm in the hollow of her throat.
“Don’t panic, for God’s sake.”
“They must have cut the telephone wires… ”
“If we panic, it’s all over. You know that as well as I do. Stay calm.”
She took several deep breaths with her mouth open wide; the last thing she needed now was to start hyperventilating. Outside she could hear shouts, whoops, lunatic laughter; she shut her ears against the sounds. And some of the constriction left her chest, the rising terror checked and then began to abate. The wild moment was over. She had her control back again.
“I’m okay,” she said, and her voice no longer trembled on the edge of a shriek. “Better now. How many of them are there?”
“Four. Novotny, Barnett, Reese, and Seth Bonner. All of them drunk.”
“Have they all got guns?”
“Reese has a rifle; he’s the one who’s been shooting. I couldn’t tell about the others.”
Reese… that evil, smirking little man. She suppressed a shiver, heard herself say, “We’ve got to protect ourselves.”
“With what?”
“Knives. Butcher knives.”
“Knives won’t be much good against four armed men.”
“They might not all be armed. Jan, we’ve got to have some kind of weapons… ”
“Okay. You’re right.”
He put his arm around her, turned her into the kitchen, bent her low under the sill of the window. Most of the glass had been ripped out of it by the rifle bullet, she saw; only a few shards, like broken snaggleteeth, remained in the frame. Fog blew in through the opening in gray wisps. Fog, and the icy wind, and the loud drunken voices of the four men out there.
“Did you pack the knives?” Jan said against her ear.
“Yes. In the carton with the pots and pans.”
They found the carton, squatted beside it, began to rummage inside. Alix found the elongated newspaper-wrapped bundle that contained the butcher and carving knives. She pulled it from the carton, started to unwrap it.
Outside, Reese’s rifle cracked again. Almost instantaneously there was a violent whooshing explosion-a thunderous roar that seemed to rock the house. And a mushrooming flash of light and flame turned the night beyond the broken window as bright as noon.