He knew they would remain pinned down for five or ten minutes, and maybe he should get up now, head back to the cabin, use that lead time. But there was a chance that if he outwaited them he would get another clear shot the next time they regained a little confidence. For the moment, anyway, there was no danger of losing any advantage by staying put, so he remained at the perimeter of the woods. He reloaded again. He stared down at them, exhilarated by his marksmanship but wishing he wasn't so proud of it, savagely delighted that he had brought down three of them but also ashamed of that delight.
The sky looked hard, metallic. Light snow flurries were falling.
No wind yet. Good. Wind would interfere with his shooting.
Below, Spivey's people had stopped talking. Preternatural silence returned to the mountain.
Time ticked by.
They were scared of him down there.
He dared to hope.
At the cabin, Christine found Joey standing in the living room. His face was ashen. He had heard the shooting. He knew." It's her."
"Honey, get your ski suit on, your boots. We're going out soon."
"Isn't it?" he said softly.
"We've got to be ready to leave as soon as Charlie comes."
"Isn't it her? "
"Yes," Christine said. Tears welled up in the boy's eyes, and she held him." It'll be okay. Charlie will take care of us."
She was looking into his eyes, but he was not looking into hers. He was looking through her, into a world other than this one, a place of his own, and the emptiness in his eyes sent a chill up her spine.
She had hoped that he could dress himself while she stuffed things into her backpack, but he was on the verge of catatonia, just standing there, face slack, arms slack. She grabbed his ski suit and dressed him, pulling it on over the sweater and jeans he already wore. She pulled two pair of thick socks onto his small feet, put his boots on for him, laced them up. She put his gloves and ski mask on the floor by the door, so she wouldn't forget them when it was time to leave.
As she went into the kitchen and began choosing food and other items for the backpack, Joey came with her, stood beside her. Abruptly he shook off his trance, and his face contorted with fear, and he said, "Brandy? Where's Brandy?"
"You mean Chewbacca, honey."
"Brandy. I mean Brandy!"
Shocked, Christine stopped packing, stooped beside him, put a hand to his face." Honey… don't do this… don't worry your mommy like this. You remember. I know you do. You remember… Brandy's dead."
"No." "The witch-"
"No! "
"— killed him."
He shook his head violently." No. No! Brandy!" He called desperately for his dead dog." Brandy! Braaannndeeeee!"
She held him. He struggled." Honey, please, please. "
At that moment Chewbacca padded into the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about, and the boy wrenched free of Christine, seized the dog joyfully, hugged the furry head.
"Brandy! See? It's Brandy. He's still here. You lied. Brandy's not hurt. Brandy's okay. Nothin' wrong with good old Brandy."
For a moment Christine couldn't breathe or move because pain immobilized her, not physical pain but emotional pain, deep and bitter. Joey was slipping away. She thought he had accepted Brandy's death, that all of this had been settled when she'd forced him to name the dog Chewbacca instead of Brandy Two. But now. When she spoke his name, he didn't respond or look at her, just murmured and cooed to the dog, stroked it, hugged it.
She shouted his name; still he didn't respond.
She should never have let him keep this look-alike. She should have made him take it back to the pound, should have made him choose another mutt, anything but a golden retriever.
Or maybe not. Maybe there was nothing she could have done to save his sanity. No six-year-old could be expected to hold himself together when his whole world was crumbling around him. Many adults would have cracked sooner. Although she had tried to pretend otherwise, the boy's emotional and mental problems had been inevitable.
A good psychiatrist would be able to help him. That's what she told herself. His retreat from reality wasn't permanent. She had to believe that was true. She had to believe. Or there was no point in going on from here.
She lived for Joey. He was her world, her meaning. Without him…
The worst thing was that she didn't have time to hold and cuddle and talk to him now, which was something he desperately needed and something she needed, as well. But Spivey was coming, and time was running out, so she had to ignore Joey, turn away from him when he needed her most, get control of herself, and ram things into the backpack. Her hands shook, and tears streamed down her face. She had never felt worse. Now, even if Charlie saved Joey's life, she might still lose her boy and be left with only the living but empty shell of him. But she kept on working, yanking open cupboard doors, looking for things they would need when they went into the woods.
She was filled with the blackest hatred for Spivey and the Church of the Twilight. She didn't just want to kill them. She wanted to torture them first. She wanted to make the old bitch scream and beg for mercy; the disgusting, filthy, rotten, crazy old bitch!
Softly, cooingly, Joey said, "Brandy. Brandy. Brandy," and stroked Chewbacca.
Seven minutes passed before any of Spivey's people dared rise up to test whether Charlie was still sighting down on them.
He was, and he opened fire. But though this was the opportunity he had been waiting for, he was sloppy, too tense and too eager. He jerked the trigger instead of squeezing it, threw the sights off target, and missed.
Instantly, there was return fire. He had figured they were armed, but he hadn't been absolutely sure until now. Two rifles opened up, and the fire was directed toward the upper end of the meadow. But the first rounds entered the woods fifty yards to the left of him; he heard them cracking through the trees. The next shots hit closer, maybe thirty-five yards away, still to his left, but the gunmen kept shooting, and the shots grew closer. They knew in general-though not precisely-where he was, and they were trying to elicit a reaction that would pinpoint his location.
As the shots came closer, he put his head down, pressed into the thinning shadows at the edge of the forest. He heard bullets slamming through the branches directly overhead. Scraps of bark, a spray of needles, and a couple pine cones rained down around him, and a few bits and pieces even fell on his back, but if the riflemen below were also hoping for a lucky hit, they would be disappointed. The fire slowly moved off to his right, which indicated they knew only that the shots had come from above and did not know for sure which corner of the meadow harbored their assailant.
Charlie raised his head, lifted the rifle again, brought his eye to the scope-and discovered, with a start, that their shooting had another purpose, too. It was meant to cover two Twilighters who were running pell-mell for the forest at the east end of the meadow.
"Shit! " he said, quickly trying to line up a shot on one of the two.
But they were moving fast, in spite of the drifting snow, kicking up clouds of crystalline flakes. Just as he got the cross hairs on one of them, both men plunged into the darkness between the trees and were gone.
The TWilighters down by the Jeep stopped firing.
Charlie wondered how long it would take the two in the woods to work their way up through the trees and come in behind him.
Not long. There wasn't a lot of underbrush in these forests. Five minutes. Less.
He could still do some damage, even if those remaining in the meadow did not show themselves. He brought one of the snowmobiles into the bull's-eye in his scope and pumped two rounds through the front of it, hoping to smash something vital. If he could put them on foot, he would slow them down, make the chase more fair. He targeted another snowmobile, pumped two slugs into the engine. The third machine was half hidden by the other two, offering less of a target, and he fired five times at that one, reloading the rifle as needed, and all his shooting finally made it possible for them to pinpoint him. They began blasting from below, but this time all the shots were coming within a few yards of him.