'Improvise what?'
'Self-defense. If there's not a real snake or a rubber snake around, there's always a bucket or something.'
'I know you better now, Mr. Thomas, than I did yesterday, but in my judgment you remain in some ways a peculiar young man.'
'Thank you, sir.'
The attache case contained two loaded magazines for each pistol. Romanovich jammed a magazine in each weapon, put the spare magazines in his pants pockets.
The case also contained a shoulder holster, but he didn't want it. Holding the pistols, he put his hands in his coat pockets. They were deep pockets.
When he took his hands out of his pockets, the guns were no longer in them. The coat had been so well made that it hardly sagged with its burdens.
He looked at the window, checked his watch, and said, 'You would not think it was just twenty past three.'
Behind the white gravecloth of churning snow, the dead-gray face of the day awaited imminent burial.
After closing the attache case and tucking it under the bed, he said, 'I sincerely hope that he is merely misguided.'
'Who, sir?'
'John Heineman. I hope he is not mad. Mad scientists are not only dangerous, they are tedious, and I have no patience for tedious people.'
To avoid interfering with the work of the brothers in the two stairwells, we rode down to the basement in the elevator. There was no elevator music. That was nice.
When all the children were in their rooms and the stairwells were secured, the monks would call the two elevators to the second floor. They would use the mother superior's key to shut them down at that position.
If anything nefarious got into a shaft from the top or the bottom, the elevator cab itself would blockade access to the second floor.
The ceiling of each cab featured an escape panel. The brothers had already secured those panels from the inside, so nothing on the roof of the cab could enter by that route.
They seemed to have thought of everything, but they were human, and therefore they had definitely not thought of everything. If we were capable of thinking of everything, we would still be living in Eden, rent-free with all-you-can-eat buffets and infinitely better daytime TV programming.
In the basement, we went to the boiler room. The gas fire-rings were hissing, and the pumps were rumbling, and there was a general happy atmosphere of Western mechanical genius about the place.
To reach John's Mew, we could venture out into the blizzard and strive through deep drifts to the new abbey, risking encounter with an uberskeleton sans the armor of an SUV. For adventure, that route had many things to recommend it: challenging weather, terror, air so cold it would clear your head if it didn't freeze the mucus in your sinus passages, and an opportunity to make snow angels.
The service tunnels offered an avenue without weather and with no wind shriek to cover the rattling approach of the plug-uglies. If perhaps those boneyards, however many there might be, had all gone topside, to prowl around the school in anticipation of nightfall, we would have an easy sprint to the basement of the new abbey.
I took the special wrench from the hook beside the crawl-through entrance to the service passageway, and we knelt at the steel access panel. We listened.
After half a minute, I asked, 'You hear anything?'
When another half minute had passed, he said, 'Nothing.'
As I put the wrench to the first of the four bolts and started to turn it, I thought I heard a soft scraping noise against the farther side of the panel.
I paused, listened, and after a while said, 'Did you hear something?'
'Nothing, Mr. Thomas,' said Romanovich.
Following another half-minute of attentive listening, I rapped one knuckle against the access panel.
From beyond exploded a frenzied clitter-clatter full of rage and need and cold desire, and the eerie keening that accompanied all the frantic tap-dancing seemed to arise from three or four voices.
After tightening the bolt that I had begun to loosen, I returned the special wrench to the hook.
As we rode the elevator up to the ground floor, Romanovich said, 'I regret that Mrs. Romanovich is not here.'
'For some reason, sir, I wouldn't have thought there was a Mrs. Romanovich.'
'Oh, yes, Mr. Thomas. We have been married for twenty blissful years. We share many interests. If she were here, she would so enjoy this.'
CHAPTER 49
IF ANY EXITS FROM THE SCHOOL WERE BEING monitored by skeletal sentinels, the front door, the garage doors, and the mud-room door adjacent the kitchen would be the most likely places for them to concentrate their attention.
Romanovich and I agreed to depart the building by a window in Sister Angela's office, which was the point farthest removed from the three doors that most invited the enemy's attention. Although the mother superior was not present, her desk lamp glowed.
Indicating the posters of George Washington, Flannery O'Connor, and Harper Lee, I said, 'The sister has a riddle, sir. What shared quality does she most admire in those three people?'
He didn't have to ask who the women were. 'Fortitude,' he said. ' Washington obviously had it. Ms. O'Connor suffered from lupus but refused to let it defeat her. And Ms. Lee needed fortitude to live in that place at that time, publish that book, and deal with the bigots who were angered by her portrait of them.'
'Two of them being writers, you had a librarian's advantage.'
When I switched off the lamp and opened the drapes, Romanovich said, 'It is still a total whiteout. We will be disoriented and lost ten steps from the school.'
'Not with my psychic magnetism, sir.'
'Do they still include prizes in boxes of Cracker Jack?''
With a twinge of guilt, I opened a couple of Sister Angela's desk drawers, found a pair of scissors, and cut off six feet of drapery cord. I wrapped one end around my gloved right hand.
'When we're outside, I'll give you the other end, sir. Then we won't be separated even if we're snow- blind.'
'I do not understand, Mr. Thomas. Are you saying that the cord will act as some kind of dowsing rod leading us to the abbey?'
'No, sir. The cord just keeps us together. If I concentrate on a person that I need to find, and drive or walk around awhile, I'll almost always be drawn to him by my psychic magnetism. I'm going to be thinking about Brother John Heineman, who is in the Mew.'
'How interesting. The most interesting part, to me, is the adverb almost.'
'Well, I'm the first to admit that I don't live rent-free in Eden.'
'And what does that mean when you admit it, Mr. Thomas?'
'I'm not perfect, sir.'
After making sure that my hood was firmly fastened under my chin, I raised the bottom half of the double-hung window, went out into the roar and rush of the storm, and scanned the day for signs of cemetery escapees. If I'd seen any shambling bones, I would have been in big trouble, because visibility was down to an arm's length.
Romanovich followed me and closed the window behind us. We were not able to lock it, but our warrior monks and nuns could not guard the entire building, anyway; they were even now retreating to the second floor, to defend that more limited position.
I watched the Russian tie the loose end of the cord to his wrist. The tether between us was about four and a half feet long.
Only six steps from the school, I became disoriented. I had no clue which direction would bring us to the
