Mr. Murder

things that drink blood, all at night, either when the moon is full or there is no moon at all, but at night.

Instead of throwing the door open even from a safe position to one side, he steps in front of it, raises the .38, and opens fire. The door is not solid wood but a Masonite model with a foam core, and the hollow-point rounds punch big holes at point-blank range.

Jolting through his arms, the recoil of the Chief’s Special is enormously satisfying, almost a sexual experience, bringing a small measure of relief from his intense frustration and anger. He keeps squeezing the trigger until the hammer clicks on empty chambers.

No screams from the room beyond. No sounds at all as the roar of the last gunshot fades.

He throws the gun on the floor and draws the second .38 from the shoulder holster under his varsity jacket.

He kicks open the door and goes inside fast, the gun thrust out in front of him.

It’s a bedroom. Deserted.

Soaring frustration fans the flames of rage.

Returning to the pass-through, he faces the other closed door.

For a moment the sight of the Jeep flying across the porch and slamming through the front wall of the cabin brought Paige to a halt.

Although it was happening in front of her and though she had no doubt that it was real, the crash had the unreal quality of a dream. The station wagon seemed to hang in the air an impossibly long time, virtually floating across the porch, wheels spinning. It appeared almost to dissolve through the wall into the cabin, vanishing as if it had never been. The destruction was accompanied by a great deal of noise, yet somehow it was not cacophonous enough, not half as loud as it would have been if the crash had taken place in a movie. Immediately in the wake of it, the comparative quiet of the storm reclaimed the day, with only the moaning of the wind; snow fell in a soundless deluge.

The kids.

In her mind’s eye, she saw the wall bursting in on them, the hurtling Jeep right behind it.

She was running again before she realized it. Straight toward the cabin.

She held the shotgun with both hands—left hand on the fore-end slide handle, right hand around the grip and finger on the trigger guard. All she would have to do was halt, swing the bore toward the target, slip her finger to the trigger, and fire. Earlier, loading the Mossberg, she had pumped a round into the breech, so she could fit an extra shell into the magazine tube.

As she sprinted out of the woods and into the driveway, when she was no more than thirty feet from the porch steps, gunfire erupted in the house. Five rounds in quick succession. Instead of giving her pause, the shots spurred her across the driveway and shallow front yard as fast as she could move.

She slipped in the snow and fell to one knee just as she reached the foot of the porch steps. The pain wrung a soft, involuntary curse from her.

If she hadn’t stumbled, however, she would have been on the porch or all the way into the living room when Charlotte rounded the corner of the cabin. Marty and Emily appeared close behind Charlotte, running hand in hand.

He fires three times into the door on the left side of the pass-through, kicks it open, scuttles across the threshold fast and low, and finds another deserted bedroom.

Outside, a car door slams.

Marty left the driver’s door open while he got in behind the steering wheel, fumbling under the seat with one hand in search of the keys, and he didn’t even think to warn Charlotte and Emily not to slam their door until the act was done and the echo of it reverberated through the surrounding trees.

Paige hadn’t gotten into the BMW yet. She was standing at her open door, watching the house, the Mossberg raised and ready.

Where were the damn keys?

He leaned forward, crunching down, trying to feel farther back under the seat.

As Marty’s fingers closed over the keys, the Mossberg boomed. He snapped his head up as an answering shot missed Paige, passed through the open car door, and smashed into the dashboard inches from his face. A gauge shattered, showering him with shards of plastic.

“Down!” he shouted to the girls in the back seat.

Paige fired the shotgun and again drew return fire.

The Other stood in the gaping hole where the front door of the cabin had been, framed by jagged ruins, his right arm extended as he squeezed off the shot. Then he ducked back into the living room, perhaps to reload.

Though the shotgun would keep him from coming any closer, he was too far away to be greatly hurt by it, especially considering his unusual recuperative abilities. His handgun, however, packed a solid punch at that distance.

Marty jammed the key in the ignition. The engine turned over without a protest. He released the hand brake, put the BMW in gear.

Paige got in the car, pulled her door shut.

He looked over his shoulder through the rear window, reversed past the front of the cabin, and then turned into the tire tracks left by the Jeep on its kamikaze run.

“Here he comes!” Paige cried.

Still backing up, Marty glanced through the windshield and saw The Other bounding off the porch, down the steps, across the yard, a wine bottle in each hand, rag wicks in the necks, flames leaping off both. Jesus. They were burning furiously, might explode in his hands at any second, but he seemed to have no concern for his own safety, a savage and almost gleeful look on his face, as if he was born for this, nothing but this. He skidded to a stop and cocked his right arm like a quarterback ready to pass the ball to his receiver.

“Go!” Paige shouted.

Marty was already going, and he didn’t need encouragement to go faster.

Instead of turning to look through the back window, he used the rearview mirror to be sure he stayed on the driveway and didn’t angle off into any trees or ditches or jutting rocks, so he was aware of the first bottle arcing through the snow and shattering against the BMW’s front bumper. Most of the contents splashed harmlessly onto the driveway, where a patch of snow seemed to burst into flames.

The second bottle slammed into the hood, six inches from the windshield, directly in front of Paige. It shattered, the contents exploded, burning fluid washed the glass, and for a moment the only forward view they had was of seething fire.

In the back, seatbelts engaged, staying down, holding tightly to each other, the girls shrieked in terror.

Marty couldn’t do anything to reassure them except to keep backing up, as fast as he dared, hoping the fire on the hood would burn out and the heat wouldn’t cause the windshield to implode.

Halfway to the county road. Two-thirds. Accelerating. A hundred yards to go.

The blaze on the windshield was extinguished almost at once, as the thin film of gasoline on the glass was consumed, but flames continued to leap off the hood and off the fender on the passenger side. The paint had ignited.

Through fire and billowing black smoke, Marty saw The Other running toward them again, not as fast as the car but not a whole lot slower, either.

Paige fished two shotgun shells out of a pocket of her ski jacket and stuffed them into the magazine tube, replacing the rounds she had expended.

Sixty yards to the county road.

Fifty.

Forty.

Because of intervening trees and vegetation, Marty could not see downhill, and he was afraid he’d reverse into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Yet he didn’t dare slow down.

The roar of the BMW prevented him from hearing the shot. A bullet hole appeared, with a sharp snap, in the windshield below the rearview mirror, between him and Paige. An instant later a second round drilled the windshield, three inches to the right of the first, so close to Paige it was a miracle she wasn’t hit. With the second violation, a chain-reaction of millions of tiny cracks webbed across the tempered glass, rendering it milky- opaque.