The Night Crew

'Do you know anything about telephones?'

'No, but if he's just cut the wires.'

'I don't know if you can just put them back together,' Anna said. 'Even if we find out where he is, and you can get out, he could move. If you're just lying out there on the ground, messing with wires. you'd be dead. If I ran, it doesn't matter what he does once I'm out of here: he can't catch me.'

'Christ.' He ran his hand through his hair, moved, groaned.

'And if we mess with the wires, and the phones still don't work, we'll have lost the timeand we don't have any time.' She touched Pam, looking across her at Harper.

Harper broke his eyes away for a moment, then shook his head, grinned, put his hand on top of her head and mussed her hair. 'Don't worry about wrecking the car,' he said. 'Fuck the car. Put it right on the porch.'

'Okay.'

'Let me get my back against the wall with Pam. If he tries to come in, I'll light the motherfucker up.'

Anna nodded, grinned back at him, squeezed his good leg: 'It's the only way. Let's see if we can get him talking.'

Anna started, crawling to a window on the back of the house, knocking it out with a chair. The shattering of the glass should attract his attention, if he was still out there. She sat on her heels like a dog baying at the moon, and shouted: 'Steve. What do you want? What do you want?'

Nothing.

Jake had moved to the hallway between the back room and the office. He called softly, 'Nothing here.'

'Steve,' Anna shouted. 'Where are you? What do you want? Are you still there?'

The voice, not far away: 'I'm still here.'

And a second later, a shot: not the pistol any more, a loud crack, and plaster flew from the wall overhead.

'Shit,' Harper yelped. 'He's got a rifle. A big one.'

'Always gotta be killing something around here, putting them out of their misery,' the voice shouted.

He was over toward the garage, or maybe the barn, Anna thought.

'What do you want?'

'I want you dead,' the voice answered. 'But I want to mess with you for a while.'

Another shot, this time into the office.

Anna crawled past Harper, who said, 'We've gotta get better protection. Sooner of later, he'll think about shooting lower, onto the floor, and then we're in trouble. Those goddamn slugs are going halfway through the house. Maybe all the way.'

Anna said, 'Okay,' and crawled into the office. The desks were wooden. Not much help. There was another door off to the left, and she went that way.

'What do you think now, about messing with my head? What do you think now?' Judge screamed, still from the direction of the garage.

'We weren't messing with you,' Harper shouted back. 'How were we messing with you?'

'You're always messing with me, all of you,' Judge screamed back.

Anna crawled through the door and found herself in the bathroomand in the corner was a cast-iron bathtub, just what you might hope for in an old ranch house. She crawled back through the office.

'Jakethere's a big old iron tub in the bathroom.'

'That'd help,' Harper said. 'Let's see if we can move her.'

Judge was still screaming at them: 'All the time, all my life, you fuckers. Let's see what you think about it now I've got the big gun.'

'What the hell is he talking about?' Harper panted. He trailed his leg behind him as they moved Glass across the office floor and into the bathroom, wincing every time he had to pull his leg forward.

'I don't know,' Anna said. 'He's nuts.'

'Let me do this,' Harper said. He was on one knee beside Glass, and picked her up, gently, and lifted her over the side of the tub. She opened one eye and said, 'Car?'

'She's awake,' Harper grunted.

'We're trying to get you out of here,' Anna said.

She crawled to the door and shouted at Judge: 'The cops are coming. If you get out of here now, maybe you've got a chance.'

'If the cops were coming, they would have been here,' Judge screamed back. 'If I take you down, I walk. I'll drag you out in the desert somewhere, with a shovel.'

Anna turned away, said to Harper, 'I'm going, out the side of the back room,' and Harper said, 'Goddamn, Anna.'

Anna: 'Yell something at him.'

Harper pushed himself up from behind the bathtub and as Anna crawled down the hall to the back room, shouted, 'Shut the fuck up, you fuckin' moron.'

Crack. A slug pounded through the side wall of the back room, but much lower this time. Anna was sprayed with splinters of lath and plaster. The bullet missed by three feet.

'Anna?'

'Yeah, I'm okay.'

The windows on the side of the back room were double-hung, with slide latches. She turned the latch on the first one, struggled to lift the window, got it up. There was a screen on the outside, with hooks inside. She unhooked it, and pushed it open.

Harper was shouting: 'The women are both still alive in here. If you stop now, you'll just go to treatment.'

Crack.

Something wooden exploded in the office. 'Is he in the same place?' Anna called back to Harper.

'I think so. came from the same direction.'

'I'm gone.'

Anna boosted herself over the window ledge and dropped to the ground. There was a stretch of open yard in front of her, before she got into the brush. She took a breath, and sprinted across it, keeping the house between her and the spot they thought Judge might be. She passed a bush, slowed, turned, dropped to her belly.

Light poured from the house and she could hear Harper yelling, but could not make out what he was saying. And she heard Judge shouting back from the other side.

She had the gun and she thought: 'If I take him now.'

But if she tried and lost, she'd be dead, and so would Harper and Glass. She moved back a bit into the brush, turned on the flashlight and let the needle of light lead her toward the driveway. The moon was higher now and if she didn't look straight at it, she could see that lighter strip that marked the rut coming up from the road.

She turned off the flashlight: better to let her eyes adjust. A minute passed, and another, as she patiently moved toward the track. She couldn't afford to blunder into a tree, or twist an ankle.

Then Judge spoke: 'Hey.'

Close by; the hair rose on her neck. He was not within an arm's length, but within fifty feet, she thought. She couldn't hear him breathing, but she could hear the snap of twigs beneath his feet. He said it again, 'Hey.'

The gun was in her jacket pocket. She slumped onto the ground, eased her jacket up over her face. In the dark, with her dark hair, if she could keep her face covered, she'd be nearly invisible. She used to play war with her brothers, running around the house on a summer's night with guns made out of splintered boards. If you were dressed right, you could hide in a radish patch.

No radishes up here.

Then a thump, and the sound of a man's feet pounding on the hard earth, running, sprinting, but just a few feet. Again, close byto the right? Twenty feet? Did the shadow move? She pointed the pistol at the shadow. The shadow was gray, man shaped. Was it moving? It seemed to be moving toward her.

'HEY ANNA.' Not the shadow. Judge screamed at the house, and now he was off to her left, coming up on the window she'd crawled through. Would he step into the yard? How long a shot would it be? And she thought, Time.

But if she could take him out.

She pivoted on her spot, waiting. Then crack, and she saw the muzzle flash from the rifle. Seventy-five feet away, back in the brush. Jude was apparently moving around the house.

If she moved on him, while he was sitting still, he'd hear her: there was too much dry brush. She bit her lip, thinking, then turned down the road. The ground was rising beneath her, and she felt vulnerable, slinking along. Was he right there, behind her? Then the road began to fall. She stopped, drew back into the brush, and looked back toward the farmhouse. Nothing moving, nothing.