by Lee Goldberg
“Let me go,” Kingman yelled, struggling. “We’ve got to help them!”
“No fucking way,” Matt said, looking out at the four screaming figures, engulfed in flames, that were rolling on the ground. “There’s only one way to help them now.” He looked meaningfully at Arkady. The clown’s painted eyes met Matt’s, and in that instant, they understood each other.
“Do it,” Matt said.
Arkady lifted the AK-47 to his shoulder, sighted, and squeezed off four chattering bursts.
The screaming ended as abruptly as it had begun. Only now a new sound had taken its place: a familiar, high-pitched, grinding sound.
“The chainsaws again,” Walter said hoarsely. “But what’re they…?”
Suddenly, the mosquito whining of the saws cut out entirely.
The silence that followed was filled with a slow, splintering crack, then a stuttering groan that grew louder and louder. Matt turned to see a darkness detach itself from a greater darkness: a great pine came crashing down, flattening a section of the electrified double fence in an explosion of sparks.
Immediately, the ATV launched forward, roaring over the downed fence. Behind it, a half dozen other glowing headlights lit up like malevolent eyes, and three more ATVs shot forward to join the first, rolling over the felled tree trunk and snapping off branches as they came.
And in their wake, charging forward with a rebel yell, came dozens of howling soldiers.
“Get back!” Matt yelled. “Get back in the house! Now!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They didn’t need much encouraging. Kingman grabbed Roma by the arm and pulled her through the doorway, while three militiamen followed. In the meantime, Arkady swung his AK-47 around the corner of the tin sheeting and pulled the trigger. The weapon crackled, and a line of fire stitched across the yard into the first rank of the marauders. Three of them jerked backward with shouts of pain and flipped into the dust.
“You too—inside! You too!” Arkady shoved Matt into the house with his elbow as he reached for another clip.
“All of us,” Matt said, and reached for his arm—too late. Arkady jammed his thumb into three of the control panel’s buttons, and the metal door immediately started rumbling shut.
“Arkady!” Matt yelled.
“Is being no problem, dawg,” the juggalo said, slapping another clip into his semiautomatic. His eyes were fever bright with anticipation, and his painted skeleton teeth grinned. “Clown loco is busting a nut in their melons, no? Word is bond, G.”
And the door slammed shut.
Jesus, Matt thought, who are these people?
Matt tried to pry the door open, but there was no latch and he didn’t know how to work the inside control panel. Outside, he could hear the roar of ATVs and the clatter of bullets puncturing tin.
He ran into the armory. One of the militiamen had taken the bazooka off the wall and was hoisting it onto his shoulder. Another two had ripped the lid off a crate and were pulling out large ordnance to put into it.
“Roma, go upstairs!” As she moved toward the steps, Matt ran up to a plywood-covered window and looked through the muzzle slit.
Even though the halogens were blown out, the night was illuminated by the strobe-like flash of automatic gunfire. Matt saw soldiers swarming the yard chaotically, while in their midst stood Arkady, his painted face roaring with laughter as he wielded an AK in one hand, and—dear God, was that a meat cleaver?—in the other. Matt watched in amazement as, whooping with delight, Arkady squeezed off a round to the right, then to the left, then slung the cleaver in a wide arc that put about a foot of distance between a militiaman’s chin and his Adam’s apple.
A sudden, blinding glare of headlamps: the ATV had pulled up just a few dozen yards away, facing the window. What was Baldy up to? Matt couldn’t tell, but he knew how to find out. He squeezed four blind shots out the window slit, then sprinted past the crew that was cursing over how difficult a bazooka was to load. Might have wanted to practice that once or twice before tonight, he thought, running up the stairway and catching up to Roma at the landing halfway between the first and second floors. There, as he remembered, was another window. The two of them breathlessly peered through it, into the yard below.
The first thing Matt noticed was that Arkady was gone. He could still hear automatic fire, but now it was coming from the other side of the house. The second thing he noticed was that the blinding glare was indeed from the ATV, which Baldy had parked facing the downstairs armory window. The third thing was that Baldy, too, had invested in a bazooka, but he and his fellow militiaman had apparently put a few hours in at the range learning how to use the fucking thing.
As Matt watched in horror, Baldy steadied the wide tube on his shoulder, peered through the sight, and pulled the trigger. There was a loud pffft, and a jag of white smoke shot from the back of the barrel like a misfiring bottle rocket. Then what looked to be a shooting star snapped from the mouth of the gun toward the house.
“Incoming!” Matt shouted to the guys below, then shoved Roma onto the stairs leading up to the second floor and threw his body on top of hers.
The explosion was cosmic.
The force of it nearly burst Matt’s eardrums, and the wall of fire that shot up from the first floor scorched his back as it rolled overhead. When it had passed, Matt peeled himself off of Roma and saw that all the wallpaper had ignited. The stairwell had vanished, and Matt and Roma were trapped in a tunnel of fire.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Coughing from the smoke, Matt and Roma struggled to their feet, deafened by the explosion, the roaring flames, and the crack and chatter of ammunition cooking in the inferno below. The heat was incredible, was coming at them from every direction.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Matt pushed her up the stairs, gritting his teeth as the hair on his arms was singed off and the skin beneath began to burn.
It wasn’t much better at the top of the stairway. There, too, the wave of fire that had rolled up from below had ignited the wallpaper and drywall. The carpet smoked, and each entrance they ran past revealed rooms filled with the crawling fog of tear gas or the disco glitter of flying glass.
All but one: the trapdoor to the attic.
Even then, Matt balked. Suddenly, the idea of being cooked alive, or shot, or gassed, seemed almost preferable to reentering that black space where he’d seen the slide show of past atrocities and glimpsed Mr. Dark’s visage in a ribbon of green flame…
And yet, when Roma grabbed hold of the retractable ladder and hauled herself up, Matt knew he had no choice.
He followed.
To be in the attic again was both better and much, much worse. It was better because the attic was not on fire (yet), though it was quickly filling with smoke and heating up. It was worse because of what was chained to the bed.
Jasha looked terrible. And not terrible in a geez-this-guy’s-got-swine-flu sort of way, but in a geez-this-guy’s-about-to-spontaneously-combust way. His pale skin was now a bruised, mottled purple, and his eyes were rolled back into his skull. His hands were clenching and unclenching, and his whole body was soaked in sweat. He writhed in agony, he groaned, he roared.
“Roma, what’s wrong with him?”
Roma didn’t answer. Rushing to his side, she pulled a key out of her pocket and began fumbling with his cuffs, crying, “Jasha, oh my Jasha!”
In a few seconds, the cuffs were off, and she grabbed his big head and pulled him upright, whispering to him urgently in a language Matt couldn’t fathom. She pressed her lips to his, and suddenly, his pupils rolled into place and his breath became more even. Seeing her for the first time, he put his huge mitts gently against her cheeks and pulled her to him in a very unbrotherly kiss.
Matt stared. What the fuck?
The attic had two windows, one behind Jasha and one behind Matt. The one behind Matt suddenly flooded with light. The hair on Matt’s neck prickled with foreboding. Shoving aside a stack of boxes, he pushed his way to
the lit window and looked out.
“Oh my God.”
Three stories below, the flood lamps of the Rahowa ATV were tilted upward toward the attic, and Baldy was once again hunching against the tube of his bazooka, eyeing the window through the sight on his scope.
“Roma! Get him—get out the window! Open the window and get him out!”
She didn’t question him—the tone of his voice, the look in his eye was enough. In seconds, she had flung the other window open and crawled out. Holding Jasha’s hand, she pulled the staggering giant after her, and when his oversized ass got stuck in the window, Matt threw his shoulder against it with all his might. That—and the shockwave of the second bazooka round hitting the other side of the house—did the trick.
Again, the cataclysmic BOOM, an unstoppable, onrushing tide of heat and light…And the three of them were flung out of the attic and onto the roof.
Both the angle and length of the Swiss-chalet-style roof were asymmetrical. The south side of the roof slanted at a gentle cant all the way down to within four feet of the ground, beneath which had been raked a big pile of leaves. The north side of the roof cut downward at a vertigo-inducing angle and then simply ended, asymmetrically, fifteen feet above the ground, with nothing between roof and holly bush but ten feet of ramshackle scaffolding that had been wrapped in canvas tarp.
Unfortunately, Matt, Roma, and Jasha had piled out on the north side of the roof.
As soon as they were out, Matt heard Roma scream. He grabbed on to Jasha’s arm as the big guy started to tumble helplessly down, and—keeping the ax lifted high above so as not to accidentally decapitate his ally—pulled himself over Jasha to try to help Roma. He landed hard on his knees and threw himself forward, yelling her name and grabbing for her wrist, her ankle, her hair—anything.
In vain. His fingers brushed hers briefly, he saw her green eyes widen in terror, and then she fell off the roof.
Matt caught himself just in time at the roof’s edge, but then Jasha crashed into him from behind, and he followed Roma.
Spinning in free fall, Matt saw a series of snapshot-like images of what happened next. He saw Roma fall five feet, hit with a grunt the wooden planks of the scaffold’s top platform, then roll off that and slide down ten feet of tarp, landing, finally, face-first in a holly bush.
Which was pretty much what happened to him, but with more cursing.
It hurt. A lot. But his neck still moved, and his back still worked, and he could move his limbs (barely). Matt rolled painfully over just in time to see Jasha—who had been clutching the last row of shingles—fall onto the scaffolding, crash through the boards of its top platform, and disappear behind the tarp. Then came a deep, painful thud that he could feel in the soles of his feet as he struggled to get vertical.
That had to hurt.
But it didn’t kill him: the agonized bellowing from behind the tarp proved that the big Russian wasn’t dead, just sicker, more injured, and madder than ever.
Matt looked around, dazed, to find Roma, and did. The good news was that, by the flickering light of the flaming house, he could see that, like him, she, too, was alive, was upright, and looked to have survived with nothing worse than bruises and scratches. The bad news was that both of her arms were twisted behind her back by the skinny, red-bearded skag whose twin had bought it back at the grocery.
And there were six more guys behind him.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Red said, flashing his nicotine-stained choppers. “Shake a strange tree and a strange fruit falls! How ya’ doin’, bitch?”
Roma shrieked as he hoisted her arms up painfully behind her back and then shoved her, facedown, over a big air-conditioning unit that butted up against the tarped scaffolding.
“Who’s up for a slice of dark meat, boys?”
A cheer from the rest. Matt reached down for his ax, but just as his fingers reached the handle, a black jackboot kicked it away and a thick arm wrapped around his throat. He was jerked upright, couldn’t take a breath.
Matt hoped briefly that Jasha might come out and mop up the bastards, but the bellowing from behind the tarp proved that he was in no shape to come to the rescue. Though the sheer volume of his roaring was enough to catch Red’s attention. He jerked his head toward the scaffold and yelled, “Listen up, boys, first one to bring me that fat fuck’s head has got dibs on sloppy seconds with this one.”
Six ear-splitting whoops as the soldiers ripped hatchets and Ka-Bar knives from their belts and tore through the tarp.
“Jasha!” Roma cried. “No!”
Matt jerked forward, but the guy behind him had him in an iron choke hold. Points of light bloomed and faded before Matt’s eyes. His vision blurring, he saw Red roughly pin Roma’s face to the AC with one hand and pull at her dress with the other. Laughing at Matt’s predicament. “Long time no see, bud!” he crowed. “But fair’s fair, right? She killed my brother, and I’m gonna kill hers.”
Just for the hell of it, Matt spent the last few molecules of oxygen at his disposal croaking out, “He’s not her brother.”
Red’s brow furrowed in confusion as the six men within the scaffold began to shout in panic, and Jasha’s roaring deepened and deepened until it reverberated in Matt’s chest like a tolling bell.
“The fuck is that?” Confused, Red glanced up at the tarp, then down at the thrashing girl beneath him. “Steady, Brown Sugar.” He lifted and banged her face into the AC. Said, “Wanna hear a joke? What’s a foreign bitch like you got in common with a well-cooked sirloin? Give up?” Hoisted her dress up above her hips. “You’re both pink inside.”
Then it happened.
The roaring rose like the rage of a god. It swallowed six separate screams of panic, and then the tarp exploded in a blizzard of shredded canvas, shattered aluminum bars, a hunk of hair, a hand, a head. The entire rickety contraption of the scaffolding flew apart as from its depths charged the dark, shaggy shape of a giant Kodiak bear.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The beast was a black blur as it lunged forward, roaring, its blunt muzzle cracked open impossibly wide.
Matt couldn’t believe his eyes.
The arm around his neck loosened.
Red staggered backward, releasing Roma to gape in shock at the shaggy monster that reared up before him to its full ten-foot height and swung a paw that looked like a catcher’s mitt outfitted with three-inch fishhooks.
All five claws caught Red’s jaw on the upsweep. His neck and head were instantly replaced by what looked like three feet of black yarn.
Red’s body flew nine feet into the air, flipped, and landed in the mud. Militiamen scattered, screaming, as pieces of his face and frontal cortex pitter-pattered down like chunky rain. Then two soldiers turned, lifted their AKs, and burned a clip wildly in the bear’s direction.
But it had moved. It was fast—really fast—for something so big. It shot forward on trunk-like legs, the hump of its back raised in a black crest, like a razorback’s. Its huge head snapped forward, engulfed the head of the first shooter, shook, and flung him—sans head—into the body of the second. When the second guy tried to scramble away on all fours, the bear came even with him and drove a paw into the middle of his body. It sounded like a stepped-on bag of pretzels.
By now, Matt was released entirely. He spun around to see the goateed hick with the black knit cap embroidered with the Confederate flag. It was the same guy who’d used him for target practice with the tactical slingshot outside the grocery. What was his name? Matt couldn’t remember. All he knew was that now the guy was much better armed: in each hand he held a gleaming .357 Magnum.
“Hi, Matt,” he said, raising both weapons toward Matt’s chest. “Bye, Matt!”
And he blew Matt away.
Both slugs hit Matt at the same time. Both felt like simultaneous sledgehammer strikes. Both pounded him off his feet and sent him flying backward.
Matt’s vision went black while he was airborne, but he could hear Roma cry out his na
me, could feel himself skid to a stop in the mud.
I’m dead, he thought. Again.
But should a dead man’s chest hurt as much as his did?
Should a dead man be drawing such painful breaths?
He opened his eyes and saw his Kevlar jacket rising and falling with two big smoking holes in its armor.
Alive!
He rolled over, got his knees under him, tried to rise.
Not happening.
He grabbed a root for support. The smooth wood slipped perfectly into the groove of his palm.
It wasn’t a root.
He knew what it was.
BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG.
A roar of fury.
Matt rose and turned. The Confederate (what was his name?) had put four fat slugs into the bear. The beast had twisted around, bellowing, but when it started forward toward the shooter, its leg gave out.
The Confederate walked toward it coolly, weapons raised. But as he came even with Roma, he swung one of the guns around and pressed the muzzle against her forehead.
“Sayonara, you goddamn chimp.”
Suddenly, Matt remembered his name.
“Keith! Hey, Keith—catch.”
Keith turned just in time to hear it whispering toward him, to see it flash through the darkness. His brow briefly wrinkled in confusion to see its outer iron edge glimmer red in the flame light thrown by the burning house.
Then the ax struck him with a thwack, exactly where Matt had aimed: square in the center of his Confederate flag. Both of his guns fell to the ground. Keith’s body followed, even as his head, like Dixie, seceded.
Things seemed to go in fast-forward for Matt after that—much faster, but also more disconnected. Matt got his ax back and then was rolling on the ground. He was rolling because someone was shooting at him. He got trampled by three people fleeing something. One of those three got too close to the Kodiak and there was a lot of screaming. Matt tripped over a severed leg, which may or may not have belonged to the screaming person. A small ATV rolled past him with a flaming bolt stuck in one tire. No one was driving the ATV, but Arkady was crouched on its hood, swinging his blood-spattered meat cleaver, laughing, his dreads flying. Then part of the house collapsed, sending out a cloud of red sparks that stung like bee stings wherever they landed. Out of nowhere, a militiaman Matt hadn’t seen whacked him from behind with a rifle butt. Matt fell, and when he rolled over, he was looking into the muzzle of the rifle. There was a crack, and the militiaman’s head snapped sideways. He keeled over. Then came Walton, the fauxhawk kid who’d never read a book, holding his smoking gun and pulling Matt to his feet. He was saying something to Matt.
