by Platt, Sean
Someone who, in going to the bunker lock before the timer expired, had just shown his hand.
Garth wanted to wait until Meyer Dempsey finished his business at the lock, but Dempsey must have heard the doors open. He turned slowly, the two men facing each other like gunslingers in a standoff.
“Meyer,” Garth said, reaching for his gun.
Before Meyer could respond, there was a tremendous wrenching from outside. A long, cacophonous rattling. A bone-shattering crash of metal and glass.
Garth’s head twitched toward the yard, toward the sounds he’d so recently dismissed as an animal’s.
Meyer leapt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Day Six, Early Morning
Axis Mundi
It took Lila far too long to figure out how to put the first of the old trucks into neutral.
She’d been able to drive a car in manual for over a year, but was a New Yorker, and her opportunities to hit the open road were few and far between. Even then, you almost never needed to take a car out of autodrive, and Lila, other than for instruction, never had. And even THEN she’d only driven Dempsey cars: rich girl cars, top of the line. If they even had neutral, it would be a utility.
But these trucks were ancient. Beater vehicles, owned by blue-collar guys and kept until they fell into piles of rust, meant for hauling wood and reeking workers. They had a big stick between the front seats, and you could yank it down to take something out of gear. That’s what Piper had said, anyway, but Lila wasn’t sure Piper had ever driven a manual car much before this trip, either. If Piper knew “neutral” and “out of gear,” it was from movies.
Lila could feel the seconds ticking away. She’d lost track of Piper some time after they’d left the cover of shadows, when they’d both sprinted out into the moonlight toward the house. This was all taking too long. She saw the stick; the doors of the first truck opened without a lock. But the stick didn’t want to move, and Lila was afraid she’d break something. Or make the old truck run her over.
Lila felt dizzy, her heart beating in her ears like a tympani.
How much time had passed? She had no idea, because every minute was like a quickly passed second. It was especially disorienting because up until they’d seen her father pass the window covered in what looked like powdered sugar, time had been dragging. She’d stopped checking the time because doing so was so disheartening. She’d check it at midnight, then feel hours pass as they huddled in the trees — and find it was 12:15 the next time she checked. It was excruciatingly boring, and yet the attention needed to watch the windows through her father’s binoculars had drained all her energy.
It was dark and creepy. She’d seen the ships through the trees once, then had moved into an area with a thicker overhead canopy so she wouldn’t have to look up by mistake and see them again. It was boring and exhausting, worrying without being able to do a thing. She’d felt guilty disobeying her father’s wishes. And on top of all that, she’d been cold this high in the mountains, without even horses to keep them warm. They were tied farther up. Piper thought their movement or noises might give them away.
They’d seen Meyer walk past a window, slow and creeping, clearly having freed himself from something, someplace where he shouldn’t be.
Then they’d seen the guy with the dark hair and the mustache in the kitchen. They’d watched him go outside, then watched Meyer enter the kitchen, apparently with no idea the bad guy was there.
It had taken maybe ten seconds for Piper to tell Lila what to do. Another ten to reach the trucks when the bad guy was looking away, sure with every running step that she was about to be seen then shot. She almost had been; she’d peeked through the truck’s windows and seen the way he’d stood there, practically staring right at her. But then he’d gone away.
He’d gone inside.
Liquid seconds ticked. Lila fought panic, a strangely insistent part of her mind arguing that it was all too late anyway and that she should just give up. But eventually, the big stick between the truck’s seats came free as she tugged it, dropping into a wiggly position. She only had a moment to wonder what she was supposed to do next before the truck began to roll.
Lila jumped back, nearly clocked by the still-open door. The house had been built on a small rise — possibly built artificially, so rainwater would run away from the house rather than toward it — and the bad guys had driven through the raggedy lawn’s edge to park against it. Now she understood why Piper had said she really wouldn’t have to do much after getting the truck into neutral. She asked, How am I supposed to move a truck with the engine off? But Lila didn’t have to. With gravity’s help, the truck was moving just fine.
Lila stood dumbly in the truck’s vacated spot, watching it clatter and bounce down the short, shallow hill. It gathered speed, going at a good clip until it smashed into a tree at the bottom with a sound that rattled to the mountains.
Something happened in the windowed kitchen, visible as a blur in the corner of Lila’s eye.
Dad.
Before she could do something even more foolish than run toward the bad guy in the kitchen, a pair of lights popped on inside the mostly-dark house, almost at the same time.
Move, stupid! she told herself. The whole point was to attract attention.
Lila ducked to the right, toward the porch where the bad guy had been watching. She tried to tell herself it was because the other truck was still there to hide behind, but it was more likely a little girl’s unthinking need to find her daddy. Who, really, might already be dead.
As if someone had read her thoughts, Lila heard a gunshot, maybe from the kitchen.
She ducked low, squatting behind the second truck’s tailgate. The front door burst open. The two other men ran out, the blond’s hair in corkscrews. He looked lost, baffled by the wreck at the bottom of the incline. But the other — the one with the buzz cut — didn’t look lost at all. He looked like he knew exactly what was happening, angry as a kicked nest of wasps.
His head ticked toward Lila. She slunk back, hopefully out of sight. She had no idea if he’d seen her, and couldn’t peek to check. Lila was blind. And he might be coming after her. She had to stay frozen, waiting to be taken like prey.
Where is Piper?
Lila had no idea. She might have run forward when Lila did, but if that was the case, wouldn’t she have gone for the second truck?
Lila looked around the truck, toward the kitchen and away from the shaved-headed man. The door was closed, and she could see the cab’s upper half, angled up from below. Unless Piper had slipped into the truck, closed the door, and ducked into the footwell, she wasn’t here.
Lila saw movement: a blur, running at an angle toward the trees.
Dad!
She kept the cry in her mind — good because after another gunshot splintered a wooden post on the deck beside the runner, Lila realized it wasn’t her father. The bad guy was about to run right by her, and would see her clear as day if he turned his head. But she didn’t think he’d be turning; back at the kitchen door, her father was still aiming the man’s weapon at him.
Another gunshot. Another miss. But Lila didn’t think her father was trying to scare the man. She guessed he was aiming to kill.
Time dilated, everything slowed. Lila caught it in manic strobes. Snippets of chaos, weaved into the rich flood of her panicked thoughts.
The two-man crew on the truck’s other side fanning out, now pointing around the yard with flashlights they’d either grabbed on their way out or gone back inside to retrieve. She peeked out once. In the hands without flashlights, each man held a pistol.
Activity in the house behind Lila, visible as darting shapes through the windows. More men? No, it was Trevor. Trevor in the kitchen; Trevor emerging with a hammer wielded like a weapon.
But before Lila could confront that absurdity (how was a hammer any good in a gunfight?), there was a blitzkrieg shout from the doorway. Both men turned, and the shaved-head man fired. Raj emerge
d, holding what looked like a fireplace poker as if it were a sword, trying to storm the men before they could turn, but no way he’d make it.
The first man turned with plenty of time to spare. He sighted on Raj’s head (not even his chest; he was about to paint the front door with her boyfriend’s brains while she watched), the pistol arm firming. She could see the small muscles in his bare forearm flex to pull the trigger, watching Raj run at him, brave and stupid, the poker raised, his brown eyes hard even from where Lila was hiding, the man’s face turning to a scowl as he aimed.
A new sound, from behind, a gunshot with the same echoing report as the first. Lila turned to see its source and saw her father standing like a statue, his own weapon held with both hands. It was the opposite of the showy way the man had been preparing to shoot Raj: both arms strong and firm, both hands wrapping the gun’s grip. Like someone who’d trained to shoot, and knew the value of aim.
Her head darted back in time to see Raj reach his target, but the man was already falling. Shot through the chest, not the head. The bigger target — less dramatic, but far surer.
Raj’s momentum was too much to arrest. He saw the man crumple but was unable to stop. He managed to hold the fireplace poker away and not spear himself to death, but couldn’t avoid the pile. He tripped and fell hard, striking the grass with a shattering impact that Lila could feel in her bones.
“Lila!”
She turned, suddenly aware that at some point, her tears had fallen. “Daddy!”
Raj was scrabbling like a crab, apparently unhurt, then crawling toward the man’s gun, jarred loose. The other bad guy, the blond, was running behind a small rock wall.
“Get down!”
Meyer pushed Lila behind the truck. The shove was hard; she racked her head on the metal and fought the urge to cry out. A second later, there was a loud pop, and Lila realized she’d narrowly avoided being shot. Her father was behind her, beside her.
“What the hell are you still doing here?”
“Creating a distraction,” she managed to say.
“Jesus Christ, Lila. You almost got yourself killed.”
His chastising voice outweighed his thanks. She felt like a little girl again, called on the carpet for doing something naughty.
“Where is Piper?”
“I … I don’t know.”
Another gunshot. Dirt popped near the truck’s tire.
Another shot, then another. From somewhere else. They both peeked out to see Raj holding the dead man’s gun. To Lila’s knowledge, Raj had never fired a gun. It showed. She watched him pull the trigger a third time, and the recoil looked like it surprised the hell right out of him. There was a ding near the house, very high, as if he’d shot into the roof. He wasn’t remotely close to his target, and after another shot (also into the roof), the blond seemed to realize it.
He stood.
Meyer stood.
“Hey!”
Another shot, very loud, from above. Lila felt her ears now ringing. But her father’s shot hadn’t done more than make the man duck back.
Instead of falling back himself, Meyer ran toward Raj. He tackled him mercilessly, flattening him and seeming to say something before rising — something that, if Lila had to guess, was about Raj’s stupidity and how nobody wanted his death on their hands.
The blond, sensing an opportunity, sprung up again like a jack in the box. But he wasn’t fully upright before something hit him from behind. Lila saw her mother, looking ridiculous with a frying pan in her hands of all cartoonish things. But the pan didn’t do what it did in cartoons, and the man only spun, now aiming at Heather, who ran around the side of the house.
The blond took off after her.
Raj remained dutifully where he was, but Meyer became a blur. He crossed half the distance to the man before the runner could reach the home’s edge. He shouted again, and the man turned, apparently realizing he wasn’t going to make it.
His hands were at his side, the pistol not pointed. There was a split second where Lila thought her father might let him surrender. Instead he took two strong steps forward and, without a second’s hesitation, fired a slug through his chest.
“Get your mother,” he said. “Go!”
The way apparently clear, Lila ran, trying not to look at the dead man or consider how surely her father had dropped him. He was going to give up. But then again, he’d have done the same to his target. The world’s rules had changed, and Meyer Dempsey wasn’t a man to flinch at convictions.
Lila was halfway there when she heard a shout — another male voice, not her father’s. She turned to see the first man — the one who’d gone out onto the porch, just beyond where Raj had been tackled. He seemed to be looking for something even after the shout, but Lila could already see that he was seeking the gun.
The final man had reached it first, after her father had knocked it loose from Raj’s hand. He was holding it now, at Trevor’s head.
Lila felt her heart break. She wanted to run to her little brother, but the man had an arm wrapped around him from behind, holding Trevor like a human shield. The gun was pressed to his temple. The knife he’d been holding was gone. Trevor looked beaten, sad, terrified. His eyes were streaming — something that hurt Lila’s heart most of all.
“Drop it, Meyer!” he yelled.
Lila watched her father. He’d swung around when the man had shouted, and the gun was leveled rock steady in the bandit’s direction. She knew him well enough to know that he was calculating aim and odds. They’d crossed the country to come here, and they hadn’t turned away when they’d found the home under siege. If this man won their encounter, even if Trevor lived, they’d have lost. All in all, Meyer would prefer to win. Lila could see wheels turning, assessing the odds of pulling his trigger and landing a head-shot.
“Do it!” He ducked behind Trevor’s head, probably realizing what Lila had.
Meyer lowered his weapon. Reluctantly, he dropped it to the dirt.
“Kick it toward me! Now! No fucking around!”
Meyer did. The move was almost petulant, like a child. The weapon bounced past the man and Trevor, toward the wrecked truck. Lila watched him stand in the middle of the open, defenseless but seemingly unafraid. He was looking at Trevor rather than the man holding him. It was a look of apology.
Now that Meyer had discarded his weapon, the man’s demeanor changed. The gun moved an inch or more away from Trevor’s skin, whereas the muzzle had been branding his scalp before. His face changed, more desperate than scowling. His voice lowered.
“I didn’t want any of this.”
Meyer said nothing. The man went on, speaking to his mute audience.
“I just wanted a place to stay. I knew you had this house, and that it had a bunker. I didn’t even think you’d come here. Hell, I didn’t think you’d be able to come here. You live in New York, for shit’s sake.”
Lila watched her father’s lips form a pressed line.
“I just needed a place to hide.” He looked at his two dead henchmen in turn: the younger one past the stoop, the blond up near the home’s left side. Lila had watched both men all evening, seeing them go about their human business of walking, speaking, eating, presumably sleeping. Now they were meat. “I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”
“Is that why you kidnapped Heather?”
“Would you rather I’d killed her?”
“You could have sent her away, Garth. But you didn’t want that, did you? Because she’s a loudmouth, and I’ll bet she went on and on about how we were coming to meet her. You couldn’t get into the bunker without me.”
Garth didn’t acknowledge Meyer’s point, but his eyes seemed to.
“You could have just asked me, Garth. You could have come alone, without … ” his eyes strayed to the dead man with the shaved head, “ … reinforcements,” he finished. “I would have let you in. There’s room. Plenty of supplies.”
Now Garth looked like he might cry — a strange thing to see on t
he face of a man holding a gun to a fifteen-year-old boy’s head. He was scared more than Lila had realized. Like her father was surely scared more than he let on. Meyer would do anything to protect his family. Garth, it seemed, was obeying his human impulse to do the same for himself.
“I have to do this,” Garth said. “You won’t let me in now. I can’t leave.” His lips pressed into a frown: You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. Nobody had to like it, his look seemed to say, but that’s how it is.
“Just let him go. Let me have my son.”
He seemed to firm his resolve. “Open the bunker. Just do it.” He twitched his chin toward the open porch door, seeming to indicate where Meyer should go.
“Let him go, Garth.”
Garth’s hand shifted on Trevor’s chest. Then Trevor did something Lila remembered from their shared past, when she’d been six and he’d been four: he took the hand on his chest with both hands, yanked it up to his mouth, and bit it hard.
Garth yelled out. Trevor ducked and ran.
Garth swiveled on the spot, unsure where to point his weapon. There was a strange moment of indecision, and for a second Lila could see him trying to figure out whether to keep aiming at Trevor or take aim at her father.
Before he could do either, another gunshot thundered.
Lila blinked toward the smashed truck, not ten feet from Garth’s collapsing body.
Piper was standing beside it, a pistol in both hands and terror on her face.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Day Six, Morning
Axis Mundi
They left the bodies outside.
Piper didn’t want to think about any of it. She let Meyer do his manly thing, taking over for her and doing what had to be done. After she’d shot Garth, she’d hugged Trevor and Lila, then walked to Meyer and hugged him hardest of all. Meyer took a double brunt of meaning: affection and gratitude as intended in the kids’ hugs, but something else as well. Something Piper couldn’t articulate. Something that was more about her than Meyer. She hadn’t really cared if the kids, under the circumstances, hugged her back. But Meyer needed to, and she wouldn’t leave until he did. Fortunately, he seemed to understand, and pulled her hard to his body.
