By the Light of the Moon

No formula existed to determine how long Shepherd would take to extract himself from the tar pit of this latest obsession, but wise money would have to take short odds on a long period of distraction. He was more likely to awaken to the world around him in an hour than in two minutes.

Focusing tightly on one narrow question or area of interest was, after all, another way to insulate himself when the inflow of sensory stimuli became overwhelming. In the midst of gunfire, he couldn't choose a safe corner and turn his back to the chaos behind him, but he could flee to a symbolic corner in a dark room deep in the castle of his mind, a corner that contained nothing to consider except ice, ice, ice.

'Where's all the ice?'

'When they're done downstairs,' Jilly asked, 'what's next?'

'They blast the second floor. Maybe come up on the porch roofs to do it.'

'Maybe they come inside,' she said.

'Ice, ice, ice.'

'We've got to get him off this ice,' Jilly worried.

'That'll only happen with time and quiet.'

'We're screwed.'

'We're not screwed.'

'Screwed.'

'Not screwed.'

'You got a plan?' she demanded.

Dylan's only plan, which Jilly in fact suggested, had been to get above the gunfire. Now he realized that the gunfire would come to them wherever they went, not to mention the gunmen.

The ferocious clatter-bang downstairs, the fear of a stray bullet finding its way up the stairwell or even through the ceiling of the lower hall and the floor of the upper hall: All this made concentrating on tactics and strategy no easier than lassoing snakes. Once again, circumstances thrust upon Dylan a deeper understanding of how his brother must feel when overwhelmed by life, which in Shep's case was nearly all the time.

Okay, forget about the money he kept in a lockbox. The Beatles had been right: Money can't buy you love. Or stop a bullet.

Forget about the 9-mm pistol that he'd bought after his mother's murder. Against these assailants' artillery, the handgun might as well have been a stick.

'Ice, ice, ice.'

Jilly coaxed Shepherd to skate out of the ice and rejoin them, so he could fold them to someplace safe, but with his eyes closed and thought processes frozen, he remained resistant to sweet talk.

Time and quiet. Although they couldn't buy much time, every minute gained might be the minute during which Shep would come back to them. Deep quiet was beyond attainment during this jihad, but any reduction in the bang and clangor would help the kid find a way out of that corner of ice.

Dylan crossed the hallway and threw open the door to the guest bedroom. 'In here.'

Jilly seemed to be able to tug Shepherd along in a reasonably fast shuffle.

The impact of the fierce barrage sent shudders upward through the walls of the house. The second-floor windowpanes rattled in their frames.

Moving ahead of Jilly and Shep, Dylan hurried into the bedroom, to a walk-in closet. He switched on the light.

A cord dangled from a pull-down trapdoor in the closet ceiling. He yanked on the cord, lowering the trap.

Downstairs, the deafening volume of gunfire, which had sounded like the fiercest moment during the Nazi siege of Leningrad, as Dylan had once seen it portrayed on the History Channel, abruptly grew louder.

He wondered how many major splintering hits the wall studs could sustain before structural damage became critical and one or another corner of the house sagged.

'Ice, ice, ice.'

Arriving at the closet door with Shep, referring to the ungodly racket on the lower floor, Jilly said, 'We got a double scoop of Apocalypse now.'

'With sprinkles.' A ladder in three folded segments was mounted to the back of the trapdoor. Dylan lowered it.

'Some of Proctor's experimental subjects must've developed weird talents a lot scarier than ours.'

'What do you mean?'

'These guys don't know what we can do, but they're so wet-pants scared of what it might be, they want us seriously dead, faster than fast.'

Dylan hadn't thought about that. He didn't like thinking about it. Before them, Proctor's nanobots had evidently produced monsters. Everyone expected him and Jilly and Shep to be monsters, too.

'What?' Jilly asked disbelievingly. 'You want us to go up that freakin' ladder?'

'Yeah.'

'That's death.'

'It's the attic.'

'The attic is death, a dead end.'

'Everywhere we can go is a dead end. This is the only way we can buy some time for Shep.'

'They'll look in the attic.'

'Not right away.'

'I hate this,' she declared.

'You don't see me dancing.'

'Ice, ice, ice.'

Dylan said to Jilly, 'You go first.'

'Why me?'

'You can coax Shep from the top while I push from below.'

The gunfire ceased, but the memory of it still rang in Dylan's ears.

'They're coming.'

Jilly said, 'Crap.'

'Go.'

'Crap.'

'Up.'

'Crap.'

'Now, Jilly.'

40

The attic limited their options, put them in the position of trapped rats, offered them nothing but gloom and dust and spiders, but Jilly ascended the sloped ladder because the attic was the only place they could go.

As she climbed, her shoulder-slung purse banged against her hip and briefly got hooked on the long scissoring hinges from which the ladder was hung. She had lost the Coupe DeVille, all her luggage, her laptop, her career as a comedian, even her significant other – dear adorable green Fred – but she was damned if she'd give up her purse under any circumstances. It contained only a few dollars, breath mints, Kleenex, lipstick, compact, a hairbrush, nothing that would change her life if kept or destroy it if lost, but supposing that she miraculously survived this visit to Casa O'Conner, she looked forward to freshening her lipstick and brushing her hair because at this dire moment, anyway, having the leisure to primp a little appealed to her as a delicious luxury on a par with limousines, presidential suites in five-star hotels, and Beluga caviar.

Besides, if she had to die far too young with a brain full of nanomachines, because of a brain full of nanomachines, she wanted to leave as pretty a corpse as possible – assuming that she didn't take a head shot that left her face as distorted as a portrait by Picasso.