felt about half-full. There had to be a better way.
Wait. There was a better way.
No, it was crazy.
No, it was the only answer.
Spinning like a propeller on the smooth pine floor, he scrambled back to his mother and grabbed her arm. “Mom, come with me,” he said.
She looked horrified. “I can’t.”
“You have to.” He tightened his grip and dragged her toward his window.
“Ow!” she hollered. “Thomas, you’re hurting me!”
He ignored her, even as he heard his father boom his name from the other room.
Once again at the window, he peeked up long enough to fire again into the night, and then he ducked down again. He was hined. “Someone has to reload. I have to reload. I promise I’ll do it faster.”
“Mom, goddammit, shut up and listen to me. All you have to do is fire out the window. Just for a few seconds.”
“I can’t.”
“And try not to hit me.”
That last part flew right by her, unnoticed. “I can’t do it, Thomas. Please don’t make me.”
He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Then don’t,” he said.
He snapped his night vision back into place, and hefted himself up and over the sill into the night.
The rate of fire outside doubled.
Chapter Twenty-four
Dom entered the sanctuary through the side door and locked it behind him. He made a beeline for the space behind the confessionals where a semiconcealed door led to the concrete stairway into the basement. As intimidating an underground space as Dom had ever seen, the cavernous basement under St. Kate’s had been blasted out of solid rock during construction back in the thirties, and as far as Dom knew, it still contained every item that had ever been deposited there. Boxes of old bulletins and stacks of broken furniture lined the walls, and in the middle, stoutly constructed metal shelves held all manner of old toys, tools, gardening equipment, and even three cases of beer that might have dated back to Prohibition. Even with the overhead lights turned on, you needed a flashlight to find anything. Over the years, Dom had considered assigning children to the task of cleaning the place up as a form of particularly aggressive penance, but always backed off in the end.
He hurried to the far side and pushed an ancient Nativity scene out of the way to gain access to the mostly blocked heavy door that would take him into Jonathan’s tunnel. A crooked picture hid the keypad, which was recessed into the concrete wall.
Dom settled himself before entering the code, knowing that he only had three shots at getting it right. He punched the 14 numbers carefully, using the ridiculous mnemonic that he’d never shared with anyone. “TRA HELEFUNT BOX” produced the numeric code, 8-7-2-4-3-5-3-3-8-6-8-2-0-9, an entirely random cipher. He pressed Enter, listened as the locks slid out of place, and then pushed the heavy panel open. Using the green glow from his cell phone, he found the light switch. Fluorescent light tubes flickered to life, revealing the passage.
Once inside, he didn’t bother to close the door on his end. Instead, he took the eight steps to the tile floor in two strides, and ran the distance to the other end, where another heavy door stood between him and the basement of the firehouse. As he entered the identical code, it occurred to him that he’d never passed through this portal without Jonathan at his side. In fact, be believed that this was the first time he’d even been in the tunnel alone. What would be the point? When the locking pin cleared, he pushed on the door to open it.
It resisted him. It felt as if something on the other side was in the way. He pushed harder, and when the door still pushed back, he gave it everything he had. The door gave way, and as it did, Dom realized what had been holding it back.
He’d forgotten about the empty oil tank that Jonathan used to ca angry look at Venice, but whatever it was had startled her, too.
He snatched his cell phone from the desk and pushed a button. “What the hell was that?” he asked. He spoke into it as if it were a walkie-talkie.
“What was what?” a voice asked.
“That bang. I heard a big bang.”
“I heard nothin’ out front,” the voice said.
“What about you, Garino?” Charlie asked.
A different voice said, “I didn’t hear anything either.”
Charlie scowled. “You seen anything unusual?”
“I’ve seen nothin’,” the first voice said. “Not even any people, for Christ sake. This is one dead town. Only thing I saw was a priest out for a night stroll.”
Venice’s heart jumped.
Charlie’s eyes narrowed as he looked straight through her. Into the radio, he said, “Garino, I want you to come in through the back and check out the downstairs.”
“What am I looking for?” Garino wasn’t being difficult; his question sounded heartfelt.
“Anything,” Charlie said. “A priest, maybe.” As he said that, he watched Venice and smiled. “And if you see one, shoot him.”
“You want me to shoot a priest?” He sounded horrified.
“A little late to worry about hell, don’t you think?” Charlie jabbed. “Let me know whatever you see.”
Thomas fell hard onto the wooden porch, and as he did, the tree line became a light show of flashing strobes. Bullets slammed all around him, pulverizing the wall and the floor and peppering him with shredded wood. Moving faster than he knew he was capable of, he rolled two times to his left and dropped from the porch onto the ground, where a long divot caused by years of rainwater erosion along the front edge of the porch provided some shelter.
“Thomas, get in here!” his mother shouted.
“Jesus, Mom, shoot!”
This was a really, really bad idea. He was in the middle of a war without a weapon, with the whole world trying to shoot him. Paralyzed by terror, he tried to figure a way to move either backward or forward without getting torn to pieces. Pressing himself into the ditch, he inchwormed backward, parallel to the porch, until he was even with where he thought the now-silent screaming man had fallen.
Suddenly the man’s gun and ammunition seemed less important. With remarkable clarity, he decided that he was fucked. The moment he raised his head, he would die.
Then he heard the rapid fire of a machine gun from behind him, and his father’s voice yelled, “Go get it, Thomas! I’ll keep their heads down.”
It was his best chance. Thomas closed his eyes, made himself as skinny as possible, and hoisted himself out of the trench onto his belly. He kept his butt low as he crawled like a frightened lizard toward the lump that was the fallen attacker.
A giant crescendo of incoming gunfire made him cringe, but the piercing impact of a bullet never came. In fact, the bad guys’ aim seemed to have worsened. His dad’s distraction was working, drawing fire away from him toward the front window.
Quickening his pace, he dug his fingers and toes into the cold hard ground, filling his sinuses with the smell of dirt and his own fear. Then there was something else, a horrific stench that brought images of rotted dog shit. The ground grew damp, and within a few feet, it became wet and slipperfinally was upon the body-and that’s clearly what it was now, with its open eyes and lolling tongue-he realized that he was lying in the man’s spilled intestines.
The horror of it hit Thomas hard. Without thought or preamble, he vomited all over both of them.
Jesus God, what had he done to this man?
