— Arthur Herk, hearing the explosion, scrabbled frantically at the floor with his hands and knees and shot forward, alligator-like, out of the family room and into the hallway leading to Nina's room.
— Anna Herk, a mother instinctively and fearlessly protecting her baby, jumped on Matt's back, causing him to stagger forward into Jenny, such that the three of them collapsed to the floor in a human sandwich, with Matt in the middle and both women pounding him and screaming.
— Down the hall, Nina, hearing screams, an explosion, then more screams, opened her door and saw Arthur coming out of a crouch and hurtling down the hall toward her with the face of a crazed animal. She slammed the door, which came violently open again as Arthur burst through it. Convinced she was about to be raped, Nina leaped onto her bed and slithered out the open window, dropped onto the lawn, and, wearing only a blue nightgown, sprinted, barefoot and terrified, into the night.
— At the edge of the patio, Leonard and Henry heard a siren and, without exchanging words, began quickly and professionally to get the hell out of there.
— Thirty feet to the right, Andrew, less professionally but just as quickly, did the same.
— In Roger's dish, the toad, which did not achieve its current station in life by being easily distracted, continued to eat Roger's kibble.
Nina reached the wall first; in fact, in the darkness beneath the huge ficus tree, she ran into the wall. Emitting a sharp, high-pitched cry of pain, she stumbled backward, directly in the path of Leonard, who emerged from a thicket moving at top middle-aged-guy speed and slammed into her, causing her to cry out again as they both went down, with Leonard tripping over her and hitting the wall headfirst, hard.
Three seconds later, Henry, puffing, burst through the thicket and stopped as he saw two entangled shapes on the ground by the wall, both moaning. Crouching, Henry approached the shapes, turning the rifle around in his hands so he could use it as a club.
"Leonard?" he said. "Leonard?"
One of the moaning shapes began, slowly, to sit up. It was not Leonard. Henry raised his rifle and braced himself, ready to strike. He was in that pose when Puggy landed on his head. Henry crumpled to the ground and dropped the rifle, which Puggy, bouncing quickly to his feet, snatched up.
Puggy had never shot a rifle; he had never even touched a rifle. He held this one the way he had seen people hold rifles on TV, kind of looking down the barrel with one eye. He stepped back a few feet and pointed the rifle in the general direction of Henry.
If there had been more light, and if Henry hadn't had searing blasts of pain stabbing his neck and right shoulder, he might have noticed that whoever this stocky little man holding his rifle was, he still had the safety on, and he didn't have his finger inside the trigger guard. If he had been his usual self, Henry might have made a play on this guy — kick his feet out, roll sideways, come up moving, going for the gun he kept in an ankle holster.
But Henry was not his usual self, and he knew it, and could hear that the sirens were very close now, and as much as he wanted to know what was going on here, he figured his best play was to continue getting the hell out of there. Keeping his eye on Puggy, moving slowly, keeping his hands in view, he got his knees under himself, then his feet, then stood up. Puggy watched him.
"I don't want any trouble," Henry said.
"Me neither," said Puggy. Puggy never wanted trouble.
"I'm gonna get my friend here," Henry said.
"Don't touch the girl," Puggy said.
Henry thought, Girl? But he said, "No, no, I'm just gonna get my friend, OK?" He moved slowly to the wall and… shit, there was a girl. What was going on here? He grabbed Leonard's shoulder and shook it.
"C'mon," he said. "Come on, dammit!"
Leonard sat up a little, his eyes starting to focus. First he saw Henry, right over him; then he saw a girl in a nightgown, on the ground next to him; then he saw a guy with a rifle. His head hurt and there was blood in his eyes and he could hear sirens really loud.
He said: "What the fuck?"
"Come on," said Henry, yanking Leonard up, feeling a nauseating stab of pain in his shoulder. He looked one more time at the stocky man, who was still pointing the rifle vaguely in his direction. Henry knew this guy was not a pro. Henry was pretty sure he could get the rifle back — he did not want to leave the rifle — but Leonard was very shaky, and the siren had stopped, which meant the cops were here.
Henry pushed Leonard over to the wall, got his shoulder under Leonard's ass — another stab of pain — and shoved him over the wall; then he followed. He herded Leonard as quickly as he could to the rental car and shoved him into the backseat. He climbed gingerly in the front and drove out of the neighborhood, watching the rearview, thinking about how he was going to word the phone call.
three
If you asked the average seventeen-year-old male whether he would enjoy lying on the floor pressed between two attractive women, he would say, Heck yes. But it was not proving to be a sensual experience for Matt. The problem, basically, was that although he knew that he was just a fun-loving high-school student engaged in a harmless game, neither Anna Herk nor Jenny knew this. And so while he didn't want to do anything to hurt them, they had no qualms whatsoever about beating the shit out of him.
Behind him, Anna Herk, who worked out regularly at the health club, was clinging to Matt like a psychotic lamprey. She had both legs wrapped tightly around him, pinning his arms to his side; her right arm was around his throat, pretty much cutting off his air supply. She was using her left fist to pound the back of his head, and she was screaming into his left ear, and although she was not by nature an aggressive or hostile person, she was trying desperately to sound like one.
"YOU LET HER GO YOU SON OF A BITCH!" were her exact words.
Matt would have liked nothing more than to let Jenny go, because Jenny was kneeing his groin and scratching at him with fingernails that felt like X-Acto knives. But Matt could not move, because Mrs. Herk was right on top of him, pressing him down on her writhing, scratching, screaming daughter, slamming his face into the hard tile floor every time Anna pounded the back of his head; blood was spurting from his nose. He tried to explain himself, but the only sound he could force out through his constricted throat was an ambiguous "Gack." Through the darkening haze of his diminishing consciousness, Matt felt a new, hairy presence next to his right cheek. It was Roger, who, having sized up the situation and decided what needed to be done, was licking up Mart's blood.
On the street outside, Miami police officer Monica Ramirez, who heard a minimum of three Monica Lewinsky jokes per day from her endlessly self-amused male colleagues, stopped her police cruiser in front of the Herk address, which had been phoned to 911 by a neighbor. She rolled down her window and heard what sounded like a woman's screaming. Turning the cruiser into the driveway, she nosed the front bumper up against the steel security gate and pressed the accelerator gently; the security gate, as most of them did, immediately popped open.
Monica pulled into the driveway and got out of the car, as did her partner, Officer Walter Kramitz. They had been partners for two months now, and Monica could tell he was getting ready to ask her for a date, which meant she had been thinking about how she was going to gently tell him no, the truth being that he was a little too fascinated by his own arm muscles. Plus he was married.
Kramitz tried the front door, which was locked, then pushed the buzzer, then pounded on the door, yelling, "Police!"