He waded in with her, staying upstream of the rocks, using them to brace himself against the icy current. When they got to the last one, he yelled into her ear, “We’re going!” and lunged toward the far bank. The waist-high wall of water slammed into him, splashing up to blind him and spinning him around. His flailing free hand found the slippery branch of a fallen tree. He clung to it, fighting to get his footing back, and pulled them forward another yard. Then he saw that a leg-sized chunk of dead wood was tumbling downstream toward them. He managed to throw one leg over the trunk of the fallen tree, then let go of the branch to fend off the rushing log, but it swung around with his push and gave him a hard blow to the ribs.
Gasping, he worked his way along the tree, straddling it to anchor them. It ended within six feet of the far bank, but that was six feet of seething torrent, and his numb right arm was losing its grip on Marguerite.
“Get there and grab something!” he screamed at her. “I’ll hold you!” He pulled her in front of him and shoved her forward with everything he had left, lunging along downstream of her to brace her. Her hands clawed at the slick rocks of the bank, slipping and pulling several loose.
Monks got his feet under him and heaved her forward again. This time, she got both hands on a solid chunk of granite. With him pushing, she crawled up enough to wrap her arms around it. Gripping her jacket, he pulled himself up, too. On hands and knees, they scrambled to solid ground and fell flat.
Then a burst of gunfire from the opposite bank stitched across the cliff above them, showering them with shards of granite.
“Move,” he yelled, slapping at Marguerite’s legs. He yanked the pack off and clutched Mandrake in front of him, running to dive into the bank’s thick brush. Keeping cover, they clawed their way up the bank, with gunfire spraying around them.
Finally, they pulled themselves over the top and into the shelter of trees.
Monks set Mandrake on the ground and lay down beside him. The little boy’s face was pale as frost and looked crumpled, like a paper mask that had gotten soaked. But he was breathing.
Monks rolled onto his back.
“You okay?” he said to Marguerite.
She nodded slowly, like someone not yet completely awake from an intense dream.
He wormed his way behind a tree close to the bank. He could see the stream for half a mile in each direction. The rockslide they’d crossed was the only possible ford. He reckoned that the road couldn’t be more than a mile from here, over open, almost level forest. Now it came down to getting there before the maquis could cut them off.
This was a hell of a lot better chance than he had been expecting.
He scooped up Mandrake and thrust him into Marguerite’s arms.
Her eyes were shining, with water or tears.
“You’ve got to get to that road fast,” he said, turning her to face it. “I know you’re whipped, but it’s not far. Flag down a car and call the sheriffs.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked anxiously.
“Put a stopper in the bottleneck.”
He gave her a gentle push, then crawled back to his vantage point and scanned the opposite bank with the rifle’s scope, searching for signs of movement. Within a few seconds, he saw a small fir twitch, a hundred yards to the west and halfway up the bank. He trained the scope on the spot. A man wearing camouflage was sliding cautiously downhill under cover of the brush.
Monks looked for others. His peripheral vision caught a small tumble of rocks and mud, this time to the east-another man coming down the slope. The two of them were advancing in a sort of pincer movement, with the stream ford between them. He couldn’t see either of their faces, but he could see their rifles.
He judged that it would take them three or four minutes to reach the ford. Then they would be exposed. A litany of doubts started in his brain. He was not expert enough to deliberately wound. It was either fire warning shots or risk killing. He had only ever killed one man, in desperate self-defense, and he had fervently hoped never to come close to that again.
But he shoved the worries aside. They were not something he could afford right now. Then he remembered the amoral euphoria that the meth induced. He unscrewed the container, dipped in the knife, and sucked up a solid jolt.
With the rush blossoming through his brain, he took the extra ammunition clips from his belt and arranged them next to him, set the rifle’s selector switch to single shot, and clicked off the safety.
Through the scope, he watched the nearer maquis, the one to the west, stretch out his right leg and brace his boot against a tree stump, lowering himself another step downhill. His thigh made a good-sized, clear target. Monks braced his elbows on the ground. Slowly, squeezing, he touched off the round.
The rifle boomed and kicked hard against his shoulder. Above the roaring of the stream, he thought he heard a shriek. Quickly, he sighted in again. The man had his right knee pulled up to his chest, with hands clutching his ankle and blood spilling out from his boot between his fingers.
Not a great shot, but it had done the job.
He would have been easy to finish off, and Monks was thinking about it, when a burst of return fire smashed through the trees above him.
He flattened himself and wormed his way ten yards to another tree. The second maquis was hidden, but Monks remembered where he had been a few seconds ago. He flipped the selector switch to full automatic and touched the trigger again.
A half-dozen rounds burst from the barrel with blistering speed, spraying the brush on the ravine’s opposite bank like an invisible whiplash. The area remained still. Probably Monks had missed. But now that man knew he was spotted, and that might stop him from advancing.
There were other maquis, other ways they could get to Monks or around him. But a strange realization came to him, almost like being touched by something outside of himself. His fear was gone, and his fatigue had become a kind of relaxation that was casual, even pleasant-the sense of a long, hard journey almost over, just one more rough spot to go. He had done everything he could, and there was nothing left but to abandon himself to fate. He decided to stay where he was for an hour, giving Marguerite time to get to the road, and shoot anyone he saw. If he was still alive, he would try to make it there himself.
He was jerked abruptly from this comfortable state by realizing that a man had appeared across the stream.
It was Freeboot. Barefoot.
Monks shook his head hard, thinking that the meth had him hallucinating. But when he looked again, Freeboot was still there. Once again, he had materialized out of nowhere.
He was standing in full view at the rock bridge, making no attempt to hide. He carried an assault rifle in one hand, barrel angling down toward the ground. Although there was no way that he could see Monks, he was staring directly at where Monks lay.
Monks raised his rifle barrel an inch at a time. He planted his elbows again and centered the scope on Freeboot’s chest. The selector switch was still on full auto. His finger touched the trigger and slowly started to tighten.
Then stopped.
He lowered the rifle, climbed to his feet, and stepped out from behind the tree. Now Freeboot could see him.
For thirty seconds, the two men stood with gazes locked.
They had each other’s sons.
With feral quickness, Freeboot swung his rifle up, the muzzle pointing to the sky, and fired off a long, shuddering burst that spoke all the words that would never be told of rage, defeat, admiration-a challenge to the next duel.
He turned and loped back up the ravine’s bank, vanishing into the brush.
Monks turned, too, and started for the road. There was no need to stay, now.