Crack.
She didn't see the flash, but it sounded as though it came from the back, the way Judge had been going. Anna started down the slope in a hurry, and when the yard light dropped out of sight, she turned the flashlight on again, gave it full play out in front, and ran down the hill.
Never in her life had her legs seemed shorter, the distances longer. Twice she thought she saw the gate ahead, and passed the spot with no gate in sight. The third time, it was the gate. What about the alarm? No help for it. She'd have to trip it to get the car in anyway. To save time, she pulled the gate open as she went through, then turned and ran up the dark road toward the car.
She was breathing hard when she got to it, fumbled for the key, found it, pushed the unlock button when she was still fifty feet downhill. The taillights blinked and the interior lights came on, and a few seconds later, she was cranking the engine over.
Lights on going back up the hill? Yes. The lights might push Judge back, might confuse him, get him running. They wouldn't have long.
She swung through the gate, and started up the dark lane, scanning the sides of the road. Had to keep moving fast: if he was planning to ambush her along the way, he might be only five feet from the car when she passed.
She kept her foot down and the car bounded up the ruts, throwing her around in the seat: no seat belt, she might not have time to get it off. At the top of the rise, she hit the high beams, caught the ranch-house full in her headlights. No sign of Judge, nothing moving except herself in the car. And the car was moving fasttoo fast. She skidded around the side of the ranch, straightened it out, spotted the back porch. hammered the car right to the edge of the porch, flicked open the door.
'JAKE!' she screamed. 'JAKE!'
Nobody there. She leaned out the door to scream again, and saved herself:
Crack.
And the passenger side window exploded, showering her with splinters of glass.
Crack.
The back window went out. The gunfire was coming from out in the darkness, back toward the buildings she thought might have been chicken houses.
She jammed the car into park and threw herself across the porch, through the door into the house.
Crawled frantically to the bathroom.
Harper was there, groaning, bleeding: 'Hit me,' he moaned, 'Got me from the side.' And he looked at her. 'Ah, Jesus, what happened to you, you're bleeding.'
Anna half-rose to look in the mirror: she had several small cuts on her face, apparently from the window glass. As soon as she saw them, they started to burn. But they weren't bad, she thought. She dropped back down to Harper.
'Let me see where you're hit, let me see.'
He rolled to show her; the slug had hit him in the pelvic bone, and angled down to come out the inside of his thigh. A purple stream of blood flowed from the lower part of the wound, which he'd partially stopped with a sock.
'Lord.' Anna dug into her coat, found the HermŠs scarf she kept stuffed in the inside pocket, flipped it into a coil and bound the sock to the wound.
'Fuckin' killin' me,' Harper said.
Crack.
Apparent miss.
'We got to find some way out,' Anna said frantically. 'The car is right outside the door, but he's shooting it to pieces.'
'I don't know if I could make it out anyway,' Harper moaned. 'Do you think you could ran for it? I can probably hold him off a while longer, he just got me with a lucky shot. If you could run to someplace where the phone would work.'
'God!' Anna, trying to think. She looked over the rim of the tub at Glass, who now had both eyes open. Glass recognized her, tried to speak, her broken lips working, but nothing came out.
Crack. Another miss. How do you miss a house?
'Let me go look at the car,' she said to Harper, and she scrambled back out into the hallway, through the back room. The car was still there, engine running.
Crack.
Missed again; she frowned, wondering what he was doing. He wasn't shooting at the car. She looked back toward the room where Harper was hidden, decided. She'd have to go. If he could hold them off for ten minutes, like he said, she might be able to get back.
She decided, and scrambled back to tell Harper.
Crackand the house lights went, all at once.
'Coming for ya now, Anna,' the voice screamed.
'Come on in,' Anna shouted back. 'The cops will be here in five minutes, and then we're gonna kill you. You hear that? In five minutes, you're gonna die. Think about it, Steviefive minutes, no more Steve. Just a piece of trash they're gonna throw in a hole, and nobody'll care. Not even your parents. Your parents'll be embarrassed to be related to you.'
Crack.
'That's right, piss him off,' Harper said, and she could hear the grin in his voice.
And that pissed her off. She was bleeding herself, she had the blood of two people dying on her hands, and one of those persons was trying to laugh.
'Goddamn you, Jake,' she hissed.
'What?'
'Keep your mouth shut. No matter what you hear, keep your mouth shut, and stay here. Don't move. Don't come to help me. Okay? Number two: You shoot the next thing that comes through the bathroom door. If I decide to come through, I'll tell you. Otherwise, just shoot it down.'
'What're you going to do?'
'I'm gonna kill this sonofabitch.'
'How?'
'I don't know,' she said, her voice deadly. 'But I'm going to.'
She moved out of the bathroom into the office, groping her way in the dark. She could hear the car engine running in the backgroundand then suddenly, it stopped.
And the voice: 'I killed the guy, didn't I?'
'Get the fuck away from here,' Anna screamed. 'Get away from me.'
He wasn't coming inhe was staying outside, and the next time he spoke, his voice came through a window in the back.
'I don't see anybody. I don't see anyone.' Then from another window, maybe the bathroom window: 'Where is everybody? Everybody else dead?'
Anna pushed further into the office room, found shelter behind a desk. Couldn't see much: when it came to it, she thought, it might be whoever saw the other person first. Fifty-fifty.
But he knewthe place, and she didn't.
And now he was around in front. 'Hey Anna, come on out.'
'Get away from here,' she screamed. 'The cops are coming.'
'You were trying to run away from me, weren't you? You went down and got the car and you were all gonna run out of here, but something happened. And I know what it was. I hit the guy. I killed him. He's dead, isn't he? This is a thirty-ought-six, makes a big hole.'
His voice was working around to the side, now coming through a shot-out window behind her.
She needed a set: a movie set. And a scene.
'I'm coming in, Anna. I'm coming in. Bet you can't guess where.'
She moved to a corner of the room, pulled her knees up to her chin. She called softly, 'Jake, can you hear me? Jake, can you hear me? Are you there?'
'He's not there,' the voice said. 'Jake's dead. He's a dead motherfucker, Anna.'
'What do you want from me? What do you want? Tell me,' she screamed.
'All I wanted was the goddamn time of day, but you couldn't even give me the time of day. You'd fuck all those other people, but you wouldn't even talk to me. And you were like, you were perfect. You and me would've been perfect, but you wouldn't even talk.'
'I didn't even know you,' Anna shouted.
His voice came from a different window, pitched lower. 'I wanted to talk at the raid: you saw me at the raid, I was leading the raid, but you wouldn't even talk to me then.'
Pause: then the voice from another window.
'You saw me lead it, you wouldn't even talk to the leader. I set the whole fucking thing upafter that night at the club when I first saw you, so you could judge me in action, and you wouldn't even talk. You just made fun of me with that pig. Which is dead, by the way. I cut that pig's throat, God, it bled, it bled about a gallon.'
He was circling the house, speaking from one window, then the next, then skipping a window.