ahead of her-all of the night twisted and grotesque and charged with menace.
She looked over her shoulder again as she ran. She couldn’t see him now; there were trees behind her, tall bushes. Above the trees, the flames licked higher, shone brighter against the dark fabric of the night.
Trees ahead of her, too, a wide grove of them. She tried to make herself run faster, to get into their thick clotted shadow; something caught at her foot, pitched her forward onto her hands and knees. She barely felt the impact, felt instead a wrenching fear that she might have turned her ankle, hurt herself so that she couldn’t run anymore. Then she was up and moving again, as if nothing had happened to interrupt her night-and then there was a longer period of blankness, of lost time, and the next thing she knew she was in among the trees, dodging around their trunks and through a ground cover of ferns and high grass. Branches seemed to reach for her, to pluck at her clothing and her bare skin like dry, bony hands. She almost blundered into a half-hidden deadfall; veered away in time and stumbled on.
Her foot came down on a brittle fallen limb, and it made a cracking sound as loud as a pistol shot. A thought swam out of the numbness in her mind: Hide! He’ll catch you once you’re out in the open again. Hide!
But there was no place safe enough, nowhere that he couldn’t find her. The trees grew wide apart here, and the ground cover was not dense enough for her to burrow under or behind any of it. He would hear her. She could hear him, back there somewhere-or believed she could, even above the voice of the wind and the rasp of her breathing and the stuttering beat of her heart.
Something snagged her foot again. She almost fell, caught her balance against the bole of a tree. Sweat streamed down into her eyes; she wiped it away, trying to peer ahead. And there was more lost time, and all at once she was clear of the woods and ahead of her lay another meadow, barren, with the cliffs far off on one side and the road winding emptily on the other. Everything out there lay open, naked-no cover of any kind in any direction.
She had no choice. She plunged ahead without even slowing.
It was a long time, or what she perceived as a long time, before she looked back. And he was there, just as she had known he would be, relentless and implacable, coming after her like one of the evil creatures in a Grimm’s fairy tale.
She felt herself staggering erratically, slowing down. Her wind and her strength seemed to be giving out at the same time. I can’t run much farther, she thought, and tasted the terror, and kept running.
Out of the fear and a sudden overwhelming surge of hopelessness, another thought came to her: How can this be happening? How did it all come to this?
Dear God, Jan, how did it all come to this?…
Jan
At first he thought the air hose wouldn’t be long enough. But then he got it uncoiled and all the way up into the lantern, and he found that it was long enough, by at least a couple of feet. He paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and to listen to the shouting and banging below the trap. It seemed to be just one voice now-Seth Bonner’s. Were the others still down there with him? Or were they up to something else?
I’m going to have to go through with it, he thought.
He moved sideways to the glass wall, looked out. Two-thirds of the garage was burning now, but so far the wind hadn’t spread it any farther. He scanned the area for some sign of the other men; but his headache was worsening and now his vision had started to kick in and out of focus, especially when he tried to look at anything in the distance. If they were out there, where were they? Up to something, damn it. The thought freshened his sense of urgency, drove him away from the glass and down the stairs again to the lightroom.
He had anchored the diaphone in the doorway, using the barrel of fire sand to wedge it against the jamb with its flanged mouth pointing downward. He’d loosely connected the air line; now he tightened the connection. Straightening again, he stepped over the diaphone and lifted the heavy bulk of the compressor. Struggled with it up the stairs into the lantern.
When he set the compressor down he found himself looking at the Fresnel lens. And he felt twinges of both pain and reluctance. The vibration, even using the smallest possible volume of air, would be tremendous-enough to shatter every prism and bull’s-eye in the lens. Shatter all the glass in the lantern walls, too. And the noise, trapped in the confines of the tower… it might burst his eardrums as well as those of the men below. He had the cotton and the pillows and bedclothes for protection, but there was no guarantee he wouldn’t be deafened, or hurt by flying glass or in some other way. And what if all four weren’t inside the lighthouse when he was ready?
Too dangerous, he thought grimly. Too problematical. Keep waiting
… do it only if the situation becomes critical.
But suppose I don’t know it’s critical until too late?
Goddamn them, what are they up to?
And he thought again: Sooner or later I’m going to have to go through with it.
Mitch Novotny
Adam’s van was gone.
Mitch saw that as soon as he came out of the lighthouse, into the cold of the wind and the smoky heat of the fires. It made him angry and scared and sick to his stomach, all at the same time. Adam had run out on them, that was plain. But why? He’d been the one who’d shimmied up the pole to cut the telephone wires; he’d been doing all the shooting, giving most of the orders. And then all of a sudden he’d just up and quit on them. It didn’t make sense.
Mitch’s head was throbbing, and the oily smell of the smoke wasn’t helping it any; he couldn’t think straight. He looked over his shoulder at the lighthouse. One thing he knew-he wasn’t going back in there. Crazy Bonner yelling, pounding with his ax handle… he couldn’t take any more of it, the hell with Bonner, the hell with Ryerson. It was all crazy, none of it made any sense. And now Adam was gone… the hell with him too. And Hod, where was Hod? Gone with Adam?
I got to get out of here myself, he thought.
And all of a sudden the wind was like a hand shoving him, prodding him into a fast walk, a trot, a run-away from the lighthouse, through the gate, onto the road. He ran past the spot where Adam’s van had been, the wind pushing him into a stagger, and when he regained his balance he saw the dark shape in the grass, somebody lying there in the grass. He slowed, fighting the wind and his fear, and veered over there. He still had the six-cell flashlight in his hand, he realized then; he switched it on, shined it down.
It was Hod. Lying in the grass like a bundle of something that had been thrown away. At first, Mitch thought he was dead. But he wasn’t dead-just dead-drunk, passed out. He moaned when Mitch pulled him up by one arm, slapped his face.
“Hod, you hear me? Hod?”
No answer, just another groan.
“Come on, Hod, wake up, get on your feet. We got to get out of here!”
Hod just lay there, groaning, his eyes shut tight and his head rolling on his neck like it was busted. There was puke all over the front of him.
“Hod! I can’t carry you, goddamn it!”
Mitch slapped him again. Again. Again. It didn’t do any good. Hod wasn’t going to wake up, wouldn’t be able to walk if he did. He didn’t even know who he was.
Can’t just leave him here like this, Mitch thought. He’s my friend, been my friend a lot of years. Can’t leave him like Adam left me, that fucking Adam…
But the wind was pushing at him again, harder now, and the next thing it had him on his feet, it had him rushing down the road. Wouldn’t let him stop, wouldn’t let him look back, wouldn’t even let him think anymore.
Run, Mitch! it kept shrieking in his ears. Run, run, run!
