Matt lunges for him, but Mahajad is already lumbering down the stairs on his thick padded feet, crimson robe streaming behind him.
57
The only way out of the bell tower is the way they came in. Bruce limps terribly back through the roaring generator room and the basement, followed by unchained Jasmine and Matt.
In the elevator car, Bruce orders Matt to get his gun ready. Matt digs out the long-barreled revolver and slings his pack back into place. With the Earp gun in his hand, his legs go heavy and his breath comes short.
The elevator stops.
Bruce throws open the metal gate, his face swollen and bloody, his voice a rasp. “I’ll lay down cover if you need it. Zigzag to the front door as fast as you can. When you get outside keep going. Don’t wait for me.”
Bruce opens the wooden door and hobbles into the kitchen, gun raised.
Matt clambers past with the big revolver in one hand and Jasmine just behind him. No fire from Bruce but it seems like hours to the foyer, a dreamlike, slow-motion slog.
Once there, Matt turns to see his father following through the great room in a lopsided gait.
Then, movement near the fireplace, and on the second-floor landing.
Gunfire erupts in soft spitting bursts. Bruce crashes behind a sofa as bullets tear into the floor toward him, ripping through the chairs and walls, stitching a trail of dust on the huge Persian rug.
Matt points the heavy revolver at the disciple on the landing, who is firing a short, fat-barreled machine pistol. Matt’s gun kicks hard. Twenty feet from his target, the stair railing splinters.
But Bruce rises awkwardly from behind the couch and shoots the man twice dead center, dropping him onto the stairs.
Then two more shots at the disciple by the fireplace, who falls backpedaling as a string of his bullets pock the ceiling.
Bruce lurches into the foyer behind his son and daughter, turning as a third disciple runs in from the kitchen, firing. Bullets snap past Matt and plaster flies off the foyer wall and he points the Earp revolver. Tries his best to steady the wavering barrel. Then the big kick, and the twang of metal somewhere in the kitchen. Bullets still zapping into the foyer walls.
His father moves toward the shooter, firing but missing twice. The disciple’s next spitting burst sends Bruce to the floor.
Matt yanks off another round, then runs to his father, grabs him by his bloody coat and drags him to the front door. Turns and raises the revolver but the shooter is gone.
Jasmine is through the door and out.
Bruce has propped his back against the foyer wall, his head lolling slightly, the floor a bloody slick around him, the gun still in his hand. He’s staring past Matt, out toward the great room. Kneeling, Matt faces him, takes the shoulder of his coat to drag him outside, sees the seeping little holes in his father’s shirt and pants.
“Duck, son!”
Matt ducks and Bruce’s gun roars twice, then clicks with a sharp metallic ping. The percussion deafens Matt but he feels the weighty thud of a body hitting the floor behind him.
His sneakers slipping on the bloody tiles, Matt and Jasmine get their father to his feet. Together they stumble out, cross the porch, and wobble cumbersomely down the steps to the grass.
Where the fourth disciple steps from behind the trunk of the big oak tree, raises his fat little machine pistol and pulls the trigger.
Nothing happens.
Matt dumps his father as the disciple struggles with the bolt to clear the jam. It takes a short forever for Matt to draw the Earp revolver, its endless barrel slowly clearing his belt. But he gets it out and tries to hold it steady on the white-clad disciple.
Matt’s voice is high and his knees are shaking. “If you drop the gun I won’t shoot. Where’s Om?”
The disciple glances up, finally jacks the bolt free, which slams home with a fatal ring.
He raises the weapon and Matt blows him into the oak tree.
For a moment he looks down at himself, then up at Matt. He sags to the ground and rolls over, facing the branches high above. The tree trunk is splashed with blood.
Matt approaches slowly, not wanting to see but needing to see. The disciple is breathing fast. His eyes are open and his face caught in an expression of wonder. Matt goes around the tree and pukes mightily. When he gets back the man is still.
Woozy with nausea, Matt kneels over his father, using his pocketknife to cut pieces from his sister’s crimson dress. Jazz plugs her dad’s side and thigh wounds — small holes on the front and bigger, jagged holes out the back. Matt and his sister apply pressure. Bruce looks at them intermittently, dazed and eerily calm.
Matt looks up at the crowd drawn by the commotion, wide-eyed young people, most in the baggy white, yellow, and orange garments of the Vortex, some with their arms out and their faces to the sky, chanting.
Jasmine seems numb and detached, and when she speaks it sounds like she’s talking to herself.
“They put the purity nectar in between my toes,” she says. “Hide the needle tracks in a Purity Girl. I want more of that stuff.”
“Purity nectar? Purity Girls?”
She looks through him. “Not now, Matt.”
Some of the followers offer help. One has already called the police and an ambulance. A girl folds a jacket and puts it under Bruce’s head. Two more kneel and place their hands on his bloody body. A young man who seems to know what he’s doing takes Bruce’s wrist and times the pulse with his watch. He tells Bruce he’ll be alright: he can see Bruce’s Karma in his aura, and it is good. The others stay back on the moon-shadowed grass, young and beautiful.
Matt and Jazz keep the pressure on the wounds. The fabric plugs are soaked and sloppy. Bruce’s breathing is shallow and he tracks them with one watchful eye. Matt wishes the cops would hurry. Wonders where Mahajad has gone. Can’t believe this has happened. Is happening.
He closely studies the faces of his sister and father. Knowing Jasmine has been deeply changed. Knowing his father might not live for long. Knowing that he himself has killed a man who — in a way he only faintly understands — now belongs to him forever.
Soft chanting while the sirens wail.
58
Two weeks later, Matt sits in the Laguna Beach Police Department for the eighth time this summer. First was for his and his mother’s filing of the missing-person report for Jasmine, that distant lifetime ago. Most recently is now, yet another detailed statement regarding the events at the Vortex of Purity.
This room has become a sort of comfort to him. There are sometimes coffee and donuts. Since that night at the Vortex his mind tends to wander on its own, like a young dog off-leash, and this drab, familiar room allows for it.
Today is his third Vortex statement, and like the ones previous, it’s being filmed because Matt is a minor and the film can be used in court without him being present.
They need to talk to him again because some important things have happened since the arrest of Mahajad Om — real name, Zeke Andrujic — in North Hollywood.
Things such as Marlon Sungaard’s suicide by hanging in the Orange County Jail.
And Neldra Sungaard’s sudden laying of blame on her departed husband.
Matt’s got on his best new-used short-sleeved madras plaid from Fade in the Shade, hand-washed and ironed by his mom, as she deftly balanced herself on one crutch.
“Take it from the top, Matt,” says Furlong.
Also present are Detective McAdam, Officer Darnell, a stenographer, and DA Mike Saffalo, who will personally try Zeke Andrujic for the murder of Bonnie Stratmeyer and the kidnappings of Bonnie and Jasmine Anthony.
“The camera and tape recorder are on,” Furlong says.