Meredyth's action to stop Lauralie's bleeding to death here and now had simply been an automatic response to help the wounded animal at her feet. But now she slowed for a moment in her ministrations over the weakened, wounded Ripper, allowing the ramifications of saving Lauralie to sink in. 'I should fucking let you die. Damn you… damn child of Satan.'
A moment's hesitation more, and then Meredyth's instinct to save the young woman took root, as she yanked tightly at the bandages and tied off the porous, textured spider's web of nylon threads that acted as an effective seal, a dike and a tourniquet at once. The blood flow at the wound site ended.
Blinking, her brain getting more oxygen now, Lauralie looked up into Meredyth's mud-caked features. She painfully choked out a handful of broken words. 'Hooow'd you…clim' owt… hell?'
Meredyth realized for the first time that the girl, in her pain-induced hallucination, mistook her muddy appearance here in the dark for that of her mother's cemetery ghost, returned to drag her into eternity with her, finally a family. Lauralie then fell unconscious.
'Go ahead, die, Lauralie Blodgett. Go with your mother,' Meredyth said, and thought: Justice it isn 't, your going out so peacefully, but maybe now Mira Lourdes and the rest of your victims can rest in peace.
Meredyth lifted the bloodied rifle and went to the window with it in her hands. She called out to Lucas down below, unable to actually see him. 'I've ended it, Lucas! You can come out now! She's dead! The wicked bitch is dead! Here's the rifle!' She hurled the Remington as far as she could. It responded with a thunderous clatter down the tin roof of a shed situated below the window, and then it slid to the earth into a clump of bushes to do no more harm. Atop the shed, the night breeze twisted a black, wrought- iron windmill in the shape of a greyhound, reminding her of the two hounds Lauralie had poisoned and posed at Arthur Belkvin's feet.
Lucas emerged from the bam, riding bareback and guiding a second horse, saddled, by the reins. He lifted his war club table leg overhead in the melancholy, soft sapphire moonlight, looking like an ancient warrior, but then his club slipped from his grasp and he slowly, painfully, slid down the side of Yesyado. Meredyth screamed, seeing the blood smear down the side of his horse, the one she had gifted him with that afternoon. Somehow Lucas got back to his feet, and limping, he started toward the house, but only a handful of steps and he fell, rolled onto his back, and loosed an audible grown to the heavens.
'Oh, my God! Lucas! Hold on, Lucas! I'm calling nine- one-one now! Hold on! I'm coming!'
In the same instant, Meredyth felt three sharp blunt punctures strike her nude back at the bra line, but the blow proved weak and failed to puncture her deeply.
'Turn roun', Ma-me dear'st,' came Lauralie's chilling voice. 'Wanna see y'r eyes.'
The sharp pain in Meredyth's back did not slow her from wheeling to protect herself, throwing up her hands to block the next blow from the dead woman who'd somehow slipped back from death's hand. Short attention span, Meredyth thought, finding the prongs of the long-handled pitchfork inches from her eyes. 'Damn hellion! I should've let you bleed to death.'
Lauralie jabbed and Meredyth feinted left, grabbing the handle and wresting the garden tool from the wounded woman's faint grasp, the weeding fork falling once more to the floor between them. Gathering all remaining anemic strength, screaming, Lauralie lunged now with Lucas's bowie knife, using her weight and catapulting her body at her mother, to put her once and for all in her grave.
Meredyth dodged, stepping aside, and Lauralie's tripping over the pitchfork combining with her momentum sent her careening out the window and onto the shed below, a howling banshee scream rising back up to Meredyth, echoing off the house and into the heavens.
Meredyth looked down once again at the shed. Lauralie- still alive, her legs, arms, and extremities twitching- looked like a beetle stabbed through with a needle. She lay faceup; the wrought-iron greyhound windmill had caught her weight and had spiked her through the back. She lifted a defiant fist to Meredyth and muttered, 'See…in Hell… mow-ther…'
'I'll make that call now, bitch!' Meredyth swore, and rushed for the phones lying on the bed, finding hers and dialing 911. 'I have an emergency…need help immediately at-'
'What is the nature of your emergency?'
'Christ…ahhh, ahhh…. Six, no, seven dead, an eighth dying-in desperate need of paramedics immediately.'
'Gun wound, head trauma?'
'Officer down! Gunshot to…to the body, I believe.'
'Is the shooter still a threat, ma'am? Are you in any immediate danger?'
'No, no! Damn it, she's dead. Hurry, please!'
'You're on a cell phone, ma'am. I'm Larry. Remain calm and give me your address, and stay on the line, please.'
After giving the dispatcher the address and the Brody address, Meredyth snatched up the space-aged bandaging that now must save Lucas's life. She grabbed a blanket and a robe as well, and she then raced down to where Lucas had gotten to his knees and had slumped against a tractor, his eyes glazed, in trauma, unable to coherently answer her.
As she neared him, she saw the horrible exit wound in the middle of his back, between the shoulder blades, just below the neck. She feared she didn't have enough bandages left, and cursed herself now for having wasted them on Lauralie.
She then saw that Lucas had also been hit in the right side, lower abdomen, and there was no exit wound there. She imagined the bullet having careened about inside him, exploding into various deadly shards that had likely ripped at his organs. She feared the internal blood flow would kill him, that the NASA-developed super bandage could not save him if she'd had a mile of it. He needed emergency medical attention; a team of surgeons and experts might have a chance to save his life. She shouted into the phone at the dispatcher, 'He's in shock! He's dying! Hurry!'
'Tell me your name, ma'am. Calm down and tell me your name.'
'What?'
'Your name.'
'Meredyth…Meredyth Sanger. We need an airlift for Lucas! Officer Stonecoat. He's been shot twice! He's suffering internal wounds, and he's hemorrhaging and in shock.'
'I'll relay that, Meredyth.'
'Doctor! I'm a doctor. I know what I'm talking about! Get a chopper out here, a medevac chopper! Stat!'
She looked into Lucas's eyes, rolled back in his head. He looked ready to faint, in need of medical assistance fast. He'd made it to the barn and the horses, but at what price? 'Lucas! Stay with me! Hold on!' She'd thrown the blanket over his legs, and she worked the Fresh Flesh into his back to staunch the blood flow there. She talked as she worked, telling him he was going to be okay. She didn't have enough of the bandage to reach around his wide chest, so she held it in place until the blood was absorbed into it, the absorption creating enough glue to hold the bandage. She got up, raced to the stable, and located the sports-wrap bandages used for binding the legs of horses, and returning, she dressed the back wound with the sports wrap.
'Grandfather…calls me,' muttered Lucas.
'I've called for a medevac chopper, Lucas! Hold on! Don't you go anywhere! Don't you listen to that old man either!'
He tried to get up.
She forced him to remain sitting, taking him now into the folds of the robe she had thrown on herself. She kept talking to him. 'We must look like a couple of aliens in all this mud and dirt. No telling how long our hideaway is going to be a crime scene. They'll have to process the house, the stable, the grounds, the damn rowboats, not to mention the Brody house.' She kept talking to him, trying to keep him conscious.
She heard a car drive up behind them. 'Oh, dear God…it's Janie Farnsworth… come looking for her boys. How am I going to deal with all this, Lucas, without you… without your help? You can't leave me, Lucas! I won't let you, damn it! Not now…now that we've finally discovered we can't live without one another. What the futz! It's not fair. Tell your grandfather to go back to the Great Spirit or wherever he came from! Doya-hear- me. doya? I need you in this life; I need you here.'
Lucas's glazed look signaled his slipping into some invisible place ahead of him. Again he tried to get to his feet. She struggled to keep him down as a concerned Yesyado sniffed and whinnied at the pair of them. 'Damn it,
