self-expression. But this guy was different. He was a fanatic calmly carrying out his version of Allah’s will. Within minutes he would stroll into the main building, pretending interest in the show-your friendly lawn-care guy attracted by the crowd and the music. He’d find a good vantage point in the semi-darkness, put the bag down, whack a bullet clip into the machine pistol, lay out the extra clips in a neat line for rapid reloading, and let the gun make a statement that would ensure he’d be remembered for decades-and so would his cause. He’d open up on the crowd, screaming that God was great as bullets tore into flesh and bone, filling the air with a fine mist of gore. Within minutes the auditorium would be a slaughterhouse strewn with corpses, the floor a lake of blood. When the cops came for him he’d keep tossing grenades until he was shot dead. He’d be a martyr.
And Raphaella would be among the dead.
“Hey!” I called out.
He stopped about ten paces from me. His broad shoulders bunched. He turned slowly, his dark eyes hard and calculating.
What to say next? I scrabbled for words. Blanked. Stood like a fool, mouth open like a startled fish.
“Er, have you seen Mary?” I blurted, my heart battering my chest wall. “I… she told me this was her cabin. Number… whatever. But nobody’ll answer. See?”
Moronically, I demonstrated by rapping on the screen door. I ransacked my brain for a way to delay him, but I had run out of ideas. He took a step toward me. He still hadn’t uttered a word. Behind him in the distance I heard the opening cymbal bash of the overture for
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “They have nothing against you. They’re innocent.”
His eyes flared. His fingers tightened on the looped handles of the bag. Something came over his face-a shadow-and I could almost hear him asking himself how I knew that he was about to make the auditorium an inferno of gunfire and smoke. The dark unyielding eyes widened again. Did he realize I was the intruder who had come upon him and his followers in the forest outside Orillia, who had caused the arrest of his accomplices and the destruction of his plans?
“Think about it,” I said desperately. “You can’t do this.”
He strode determinedly toward me. The hand gripping the shovel’s handle relaxed and allowed the tool to slip through his palm until he could grasp the end of the shaft. I readied myself to shift quickly at the right second. But he fooled me. In one lightning-fast circular motion he flung the shovel. It whickered end over end across the space between us, small lumps of earth flying off the blade as it spun.
I flinched instinctively, twitching my head back and to one side a split second before I heard the sickening
He cried out and fell to his knees, desperately groping for breath. The shovel clattered to the planks. I scrabbled away from him and, struggling dizzily to my feet, stood swaying like a drunk, my vision blurred, my head ringing. Something streamed down the side of my face like hot syrup.
The terrorist fell forward onto one hand, the other clutching his crotch, choking as if the air around him had been sucked away. He turned his head, fixed his eyes on the gym bag. As if in slow motion I picked up the shovel, stumbled out of his reach. I had no doubt that if he got the tool I’d be dead in seconds.
“Don’t move,” I croaked.
Gasping and groaning, he crawled toward the bag.
“I said stop.”
Still he fought his way across the bare ground, his fingers scratching at the soil. I raised the shovel and slammed the rounded side of the blade down on the back of his head. There was the clang of a frying pan hitting a stovetop. The terrorist collapsed and lay still.
I stood beside him, panting, searching for balance. Threw aside the tool and fell to my knees. Pressed my fingers against his neck. Found a pulse. Crawled clumsily across the dirt, blood dripping off my cheek, leaving a trail. Unzipped the gym bag and pulled it open. A machine pistol similar to the one in his photo lay on a bed of full bullet clips, a cluster of grenades at each end.
I staggered back to him as if struggling through thigh-deep water, my legs continually swept from under me by the roar of surf in my ears. I leaned close, caught the faint rasp of his breathing. Heard playful music in the distance, and crashing waves. Zipped up the bag, dragged it to a tree, and dropped it behind the trunk, desperate to hide it from him. Slogged back toward the cabin platform. Lowered myself to the planks to rest, just for a minute. No. Can’t rest. Gotta find Raphaella. But I couldn’t get up. I teetered on the edge of the deck, then toppled into the waves. Plunged beneath the water and down, the tiger-striped green bottom of the lake shimmering, lit by bursts of coloured light.
PART FIVE
The essence of fanaticism is that it has almost no tolerance for any data that do not confirm its own point of view.
– Neil Postman
One
I
I WAS STARING into the face of a monster.
Dark hair, spiky and dishevelled. A shaved patch across the skull from the right temple past the ear, a vivid stitched-up slash not quite hidden by a bloodstained bandage. A black eye swollen shut, puffed cheeks bruised and discoloured. Fresh scabs on nose, left cheek, and chin, bright red against pale skin.
I handed the mirror back to the nurse. “Call Hollywood,” I croaked. “Tell them to hold off on the screen test.”
I didn’t remember much more of my semi-conscious ride in the ambulance than the banging of doors, being lifted and lowered, prodded and jabbed, but I recalled waking up briefly to tsunamis of pain rolling through my skull. Later-hours? days?-brain fogged by dope, I saw light in a window. My hands had sprouted needles attached to tubes leading aloft to plastic bladders of liquid-one clear, one dark red-suspended from a rack. A tall nurse stood beside my bed, unclipping wires from my head, removing sticky patches, pushing a machine out the door, coming back with a little white paper cup.
“Take these,” she said. “You’ll feel better.”
“Raphaella,” I mumbled.
Something squeezed my upper arm. I heard my father’s voice beside me.
“She’s fine. No one was hurt,” he soothed. “Thanks to you.”
Later, pain-wracked, I floated in a dream-like state. A small black-robed man drifted past. The odours of earth and moss wafted from the shore. Gunfire crackled in the distance. Something thick and wet was smeared on my
