Theremon, crouching, was moving in a quick shuffle toward the edge of the nearest building. Siferra followed him, feeling hideously exposed. This was worse than standing naked in front of Altinol and the Fire Patroclass="underline" a thousand times worse. The next shot might come at any moment, from any direction, and she had no way to protect herself. Even when she pulled herself around the corner of the building and huddled up against Theremon in the alleyway, breathing hard, her heart pounding, she felt no assurance that she was safe.
He nodded toward a row of burned-out houses on the other side of the street. Two or three of them were intact, down near the opposite corner; and now she saw grimy shadowy faces peering out of an upstairs window of the farthest one.
“People in there. Squatters, I bet. Crazies.”
“I see them.”
“Not afraid of our Patrol neckerchiefs. Maybe the Patrol doesn’t mean anything to them, this far out of town. Or maybe they were shooting at us because we’re wearing them.”
“You think so?”
“Anything’s possible.” Theremon edged forward a little way. “What I wonder is, were they trying to hit us and is their aim really lousy, or were they just trying to scare us? If they tried to shoot at us and the best they could do was hit the highway sign, then we could try making a run for it. But if it was just a warning—”
“That’s what I suspect it was. A shot that went astray isn’t likely to have gone astray right into the highway sign. That’s too neat.”
“Probably so,” Theremon said. He scowled. “I think I’m going to let them know we’re armed. Just to discourage them from trying to send a few scouts sneaking around one of these houses and coming up on us from the rear.”
He looked down at his needler, adjusting the aperture to wide beam and maximum distance. Then he raised it and squeezed off a single shot. A bolt of red light sizzled through the air and struck the ground just in front of the building where the faces had appeared. An angry charred spot appeared on the lawn, and wisps of smoke came curling up.
Siferra asked, “Do you think they saw that?”
“Unless they’re so far gone that they aren’t capable of paying attention. But my guess is that they saw, all right. And didn’t like it much.”
The faces were back at the window.
“Stay down,” Theremon warned. “They’ve got some kind of heavy hunting rifle. I can see its snout.”
There was another whining sound, another tremendous crash.
The highway sign, shattered, fell to the ground.
“They may be crazies,” Siferra said, “but their aim is pretty damned good.”
“Too good. They were just playing with us when they fired that first shot. Laughing at us. They’re telling us that if we show our noses they’ll blow us away. They’ve got us pinned down, and they’re enjoying it.”
“Can we get out of here down the far end of this alley?”
“It’s all rubble back there. And more squatters waiting for us on the other side, for all we know.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“Set that house on fire,” Theremon said. “Burn them out. And kill them, if they’re too crazy to surrender.”
Her eyes widened. “Kill them?”
“If they give us no other option, yes, yes, I will. Do you want to get to Amgando, or would you rather spend the rest of your life hiding out here in this alleyway?”
“But you can’t just kill people, even though you—even though they—”
Her voice trailed off. She didn’t know what she was trying to say.
“Even though they’re trying to kill you, Siferra? Even though they think it’s fun to send a couple of shots whistling past your ears?”
She made no reply. She had thought she was beginning to understand the way things worked in the monstrous new world that had come into being on the evening of the eclipse; but she realized that she understood nothing, nothing at all.
Theremon had crept out toward the street a short way once again. He was aiming his needler.
The incandescent bolt of light struck the white facade of the house down the street. Instantly the wood began to turn black. Little flamelets sprang up. He drew a line of fire across the front of the building, paused a moment, fired again, tracing a second line across the first.
“Give me your gun,” he said. “Mine’s overheating.”
She passed him the weapon. He adjusted it and fired a third time. An entire section of the house’s front wall was ablaze now. Theremon was cutting through it, aiming his beam toward the interior of the building.
Not very long ago, Siferra thought, that white wooden house had belonged to someone. People had lived there, a family, proud of their house, their neighborhood—tending their lawn, watering their plants, playing with their pets, giving dinner parties for their friends, sitting on the patio sipping drinks and watching the suns move through the evening sky. Now none of that meant anything. Now Theremon was lying on his belly in an alleyway strewn with ashes and rubble across the way, efficiently and systematically setting that house on fire. Because that was the only way that he and she could get safely out of this street and continue on their way to Amgando Park.
A nightmare world, yes.
A column of smoke was rising within the house now. The whole left-hand side of its front wall was on fire.
And people were leaping from the second-story windows.
Three, four, five of them, choking, gasping. Two women, three men. They dropped down on the lawn and lay there a moment, as though dazed. Their clothes were ragged and dirty, their hair was unkempt. Crazies. They had been something else, before Nightfall, but now they were simply part of that vast horde of wild-eyed, uncouth-looking drifters whose minds had been unhinged, perhaps forever, by the sudden astounding blast of stunning light that the Stars had hurled against their unprepared senses.
“Stand up!” Theremon called to them. “Hands in the air! Now! Come on, get ’em up!” He stepped out into full view, holding both of the needle-guns. Siferra came out beside him. The house was shrouded in heavy smoke now, and within that dark cloak great frightful gusts of flame were sweeping upward on all sides of the building, blazing like scarlet banners.
Were there people still trapped inside? Who could tell? Did it matter?
“Line up, there!” Theremon ordered. “That’s it! Face to the left!” They straggled to attention. One man was a little slow, and Theremon sent a needler beam blazing past his cheek to encourage his cooperation. “Start running, now. Down the street! Faster! Faster!”
One side of the house caved in with a terrible roaring sound, exposing rooms, closets, furniture, like a doll’s house that had been cut away. Everything was on fire. The squatters were almost at the corner now. Theremon continued to shout at them, urging them on, aiming an occasional needle-bolt at their heels.
Then he turned to Siferra. “All right. Let’s get out of here!”
They holstered their needlers and went running off in the opposite direction, toward the Great Southern Highway.
“What if they had come out firing?” Siferra asked afterward, when they could see the highway entrance itself just a short distance away and were moving through the open fields that led to it. “Would you really have killed them, Theremon?”
He looked at her in a steady, severe way. “If that was the only way we could have gotten ourselves out of that alleyway? I thought I gave you my answer to that before. Of course I would. What choice would I have had? What else could I have done?”