the dim golden light. His long, slender cane was in his left hand, tip down, and he began bouncing it slowly beneath the weight of his arm.
“What’s he doing?” Antigone whispered. “He’s not really blind, is he?”
Cyrus put his finger to his lips.
“He can’t be,” Antigone said. “He walked right to Skelton’s room.” She nudged her brother. “Open the door. See what he wants.”
Cyrus looked at her. “Yeah, right,” he whispered. “You’re crazy.”
“He’s blind. He might need help.” Antigone tried to stand, but Cyrus grabbed on to her wrist. The blind man had pulled something out of his coat.
“Gun,” Cyrus said. “Gun!” He forced Antigone back onto her knees. Four short, gaping barrels — two on top of two — all big enough to fire golf balls. Pistol-gripped. Black. Ruthless. An extra handle stuck out to the side of the bundle of barrels. A small cylindrical tank was screwed into the back of the gun above the man’s grip.
Cyrus’s mind was frozen. His nails were digging into his sister’s arm. Should he yell? Should he warn Skelton?
The man tapped his rod on the ground three times. Six inches from Cyrus’s face, a shape slid past the window toward room 111. And another.
Antigone was trying to shake her arm free. Cyrus let go. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t blinking.
The blind man stepped forward, raised a heavy arm, and cracked the butt of his gun against the door to 111.
“Bones!” the man yelled. “Friend Billy! Give it up. The good doctor doesn’t take kindly to thieves.”
Cyrus gasped, finally breathing. He pushed his sister away from the window. “Call the cops. Go!”
Antigone dropped to the carpet and crawled away.
Skelton’s voice drifted through the wall. “That you, Pug? Maxi’s letting you do the talking now? Come on in. I’ll get the door.”
The floor under Cyrus’s knees shivered, a high-pitched whine vibrated the glass in front of him, and the door to 111 exploded off its hinges. The big man slammed into the nose of the truck before spinning up onto the roof of the wooden camper.
Smoke snaked out into the golden parking lot. For a moment, the world was still. The blind man’s legs kicked slowly on the asphalt. His arms were draped on the old truck’s bumper and his head lolled against its grille, blood dripping from his nose and lips. His hat was gone. His cane was shattered.
Turning his back to the window, Cyrus slid down beneath the sill.
“Yes,” Antigone said. Her eyes were on him, peering up between the beds. “An explosion. And guns. That’s what I said. The Archer Motel, room one-eleven. No, I won’t hold.”
She hung up. For a moment, Cyrus, breathless, stared into his sister’s frightened eyes, and then William Skelton’s voice roared through the wall.
“Come kill the killer!” he shouted. Something heavy crashed to the floor. “Betray the traitor. Rob the thief! Who wants to die with Billy Bones?”
Antigone dropped to the carpet beside Cyrus and lifted the curtain.
“Is he dead?” she asked. “Did Skelton kill him?” Her voice was low, but her body was shaking.
Cyrus swallowed. “I don’t know,” he said. His sister was hanging on to his leg. He could barely feel it. “I don’t know,” he said again. “Don’t know.” Stop it. He blinked, trying to clear his head. He couldn’t be like this. This was how animals became roadkill. He had to do something. Wake up. Should they get under the beds? Should they run?
“Come on now, lads!” Skelton bellowed. “I know you can take more than that. Or can’t the doctor’s puppets kill an old man?”
Cyrus pulled himself back up to the windowsill. The blind man was on the ground beneath the yellow truck’s bumper. He wasn’t dead. His left arm still held a piece of his broken cane. His right hand still gripped his gun. He raised it slowly.
There was no sound of gunfire, no exploding black powder. Each of his barrels belched a burning white sphere, corkscrewing forward, braiding flame, tracing spirals in the air like racing sparklers.
Two tall shapes leapt into view, moving quickly, smoothly, more like animals than people. One vaulted easily over the truck. The other jumped onto the top of the camper, landing in a crouch. Both were wearing tinted goggles, both were hip-firing searing white flame. Another, shorter shape stepped out from behind the truck.
Four men, each with four barrels, filled the air with swirling magnesium and sulfur. Flaming spheres, infant meteors, exploded against the doorjamb, the wall, the window, and poured through the door into 111. White fire erupted into sizzling rings. The walls shook. The window in front of Cyrus warped and wobbled as pale rivers of flame raced across its surface.
Cyrus couldn’t look away. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe in the sudden heat. He didn’t feel Antigone’s hands. He didn’t hear her screaming at him to get down. Not until she threw an arm around his neck and slammed him onto his back.
Blinking, he watched his sister sprawl across him, covering her head with her arms, trying to cover him with her body.
He watched the ceiling boil and crack. The walls surged and split, and Antigone’s shelves avalanched to the ground. The first flames crept into the room.
A high-pitched whine was building somewhere — piercing, painful. Cyrus pushed his sister off, grabbed her wrist, and tried to crawl toward the bathroom. The bathtub. They needed water. His sister’s books were burning. Her photo albums.
The noise was simple enough, big enough, fundamental enough that all the other noises became part of it.
Cyrus felt his bones ripple like rubber as he fell. His gut twisted and flipped. The closet mirror ran down into the carpet. The glass in the big picture window liquefied and collapsed, splashing on the sill.
A moment’s slice later, the sound was gone and the window had refrozen, paralyzed in its fountain before hitting the floor.
Cyrus lay gasping, gripping his sister’s tense arms, watching fire dance on the wall, listening to distant sirens.
No more shouting. No more belching guns. He pulled, crawling for water.
Antigone pulled back.
“No!” she yelled. “Up, Cy! Out!” Reaching her feet, she dragged him toward the door.
“Your stuff,” Cyrus said. He tore his hands free and stood, hunching in the smoke. “Get your stuff.”
“I will, I will,” she said. The top third of the wall was in flames. “We have to get Skelton out!”
Cyrus forced his sister away from the room’s door and pressed his eye against the peephole. The glass had dripped out.
“Are they gone?” Antigone whispered.
“Maybe,” Cyrus said.
“Just go,” Antigone said. “Go!”
Wrapping his hand in the hem of his shirt, Cyrus jerked quickly on the sizzling doorknob, and the two of them staggered into charred air. The blind man — limbs impossibly bent — lay motionless beneath the truck’s bumper. A second rag-dolled body drooped off the edge of the camper. A third was facedown behind the rear wheel.
Flames surrounded the doorway to 111 and were roaring on the walkway above. Inside 111, Cyrus’s bed was on fire, the walls were scorched and flickering, and huge pieces of the ceiling had collapsed. Beneath one cracked slab of blackened drywall, they could see the bottoms of two cowboy boots.
Without saying anything, Cyrus and Antigone jumped through the doorway, kicked through the smoldering pile, and each grabbed a leg. The shins bent easily.
Billy Bones groaned in pain. “No,” he said. “Don’t pull.”
Cyrus dropped the boot.
“Tigs, let go,” he said. “His legs are broken.”
“Not broken,” Billy said. “Not—”
