When the prototype hit Louis an edge found a bright blue eye.
Louis bent and cursed, putting the back of his knife hand against the damaged eye for a second before he looked back up at Ward with a bloody, orbless socket.
Ward was aware of Louis lunging, and he felt a new pressure high in his chest as the blade entered.
Ward, no longer able to stand, slid down the front of the fireplace.
Louis looked at Ward and fixed him with one-eyed unbridled rage. The knife in his hand flipped to change position, the back edge of the blade resting against his forearm, preparing to finish his opponent.
Ward put his hands reflexively to his stomach, and felt something warm and substantial, and knew he was holding in part of his intestines. He could feel hot blood running down across his groin and he couldn't catch his breath.
Louis looked at Ward's wound, and said, “Don't die yet.”
Louis turned.
On the couch, Alice had drawn her legs up, holding her knees, the tote bag trapped against her. Ward couldn't hear the screams, just the odd sound of wind, like a hurricane, rushing through his mind.
Below Louis, a stunned Natasha raised herself up on one arm. Louis grabbed her hair with his bloody right hand, and looked at Ward, who was trying in vain to get to his feet.
“Watch,” Louis hollered, placing the blade pointing down at the base of her neck just behind her collarbone.
“No!” Ward yelled, his eyes locking on his wife's. They were wide open in terror, but as he watched they closed once, then opened and she smiled weakly at him. Her final expression was one of acceptance, and sadness, but there was no fear there.
And behind Natasha he saw Alice looking into her tote like a woman searching for a tube of lipstick.
“This is for Gizmo,” Louis said.
Ward was aware of the first notes of Louis's laughter.
He saw the muscles in Louis's arm tighten, but Ward managed to lunge and grab the end of the blade with his right hand, squeezing as hard as he could.
Ward felt the pressure of the blade biting into the meat and tissue, wedging into bone as Louis pushed down.
Ward looked up and met Louis's amused gaze.
He felt the blade moving down, the tip penetrating Natasha's neck, and he squeezed harder. The knife seemed to rise for an instant. Ward pulled the blade toward him. Louis gritted his teeth and snarled as he muscled the blade back to Natasha's neck.
Ward was blinded by a bright flash, and an aura around Louis's form. The killer's features evaporated. Louis released the knife. As Louis/Todd fell sideways, Ward saw a small gun in Alice's hand, a thin plume of smoke rising from its barrel.
Ward raised his hand and saw that the knife was still there, wedged fast, covered in his own blood.
Washed with a feeling of well- being as he fell backward, Ward was filled with the sensation of floating, and he realized that, even though he hadn't felt himself connecting with the floor, he was on his back looking up at the light fixture.
Sound faded, and Ward's head was filled with a continuous dull tone like that of a struck gong. As he stared at the dimming ceiling, Natasha suddenly loomed over him, a thin line on her neck oozing blood in a wide ribbon. She was crying and he could feel the pressure of her hands, first on his cheeks, and then on his violated abdomen.
He couldn't hear what she was saying, because just over her left shoulder he saw a golden circle growing, and from within it, Barney's smiling face.
Barney's hands seemed to reach through his mother's shoulder, and Ward's hands rose to take them. The child's hands were as warm and real as they had been before he died. Ward's own hands were now bloodless, the right one undamaged as Barney pulled his father up from where he was lying.
As Ward rose, he turned his head to look down on Natasha's back, her head turned down over a body he recognized as his own. The physical Ward McCarty was splayed on the floor beneath her, seemingly floating in a rapidly expanding pool of blood that looked like black water.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
Natasha stared into her husband's open eyes through a veil of warm tears. His pupils were fixed and dilated.
“Oh, Ward, don't leave me,” she called, cradling his bloodred face between her wet hands.
“Is he dead?” Alice asked.
Natasha eased Ward's head down and began giving him chest compressions. After a dozen, she put her fingers to his throat and felt a faint pulse, then nothing.
“No, he's still alive.”
Natsaha gathered her thoughts. “Alice, on top of the refrigerator-bring me the black case!”
Alice tossed the gun to the couch cushions, ran, and returned in seconds with the case in her hands. Natasha opened it with bloody hands and turned on the defibrillator, purchased after her son's death.
“Now, look under the sink and get the trash bags. In the utility room there's a roll of duct tape in the cabinet over the washing machine. Bring those to me,” Natasha ordered in as calm a voice as she could manage. “Can you do that?”
“Sure I can,” Alice said, rushing from the room.
Natasha felt the blood flowing freely from Ward's open wounds, but she had to get his heart beating, and it might, at least until he had lost so much blood that his heart was starved.
“Oh, Ward, please stay with me. Please don't leave me.”
SEVENTY-NINE
Alice found the garbage bags and rushed to the utility room. In the collection of tools in the cabinet over the washing machine, there was a large roll of gray tape, which she grabbed up and carried from the room.
When she turned the corner she ran headlong into a solid mass holding a gun. It grabbed her with its free hand.
Alice screamed.
From the den, Natasha yelled, “Alice!”
“FBI,” the man yelled.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” Alice hollered, struggling to break away.
The man released her and she ran back to the den, jumping over the body of Evelyn Gismano and handing the bags and tape to Natasha, who had pulled Ward's wet shirt up over his chest. Agent Mayes rushed into the room behind her, then froze in place as he took in the scene. Before he did anything to help, he moved from Evelyn to Louis Gismano, checking each for a pulse. Natasha glanced up and noted his presence with relief.
Taking a plastic bag, Natasha laid it over the open wound and said, “Agent Mayes, grip him under his shoulders and lift him up for me.”
The FBI man put his gun in its holster, and did what Natasha told him to do.
Alice stood back as the man and Natasha raised Ward's torso, and she watched as Natasha pressed his guts into the cavity, placed the trash bag around her husband's stomach, took the roll of tape, and, with difficulty, secured the bag in place.
“There's no cell signal,” Agent Mayes told her. “And the driveway is blocked.”
“We have to get him to the emergency room,” she said. “We can't wait for EMS or he'll bleed out.”
“My car is up the driveway.”
