Outside, Henry whispered, 'They're leaving.'
'They're leaving,' whispered Matt. He and Andrew, having received a warm but brief welcome from Roger, had moved to an observation point next to a large potted plant at the edge of the patio, about thirty feet from Henry and Leonard.
'Whadda we do?' asked Andrew.
'I think she's gonna let the dog in,' said Matt. 'When she opens the door, we run up, and I shoot her, and you witness it.'
'I'm gonna witness it from here,' said Andrew, 'in case her father shoots us.'
'With what?' said Matt. 'The remote control? You gotta come with me so Jenny sees that you witnessed it.'
'He has a gun somewhere,' Andrew said. 'This is Miami.'
Matt could not argue with that. Sounding braver than he felt, he whispered, 'Come on,' and started across the patio toward the sliding-glass door. Andrew followed, reluctantly, a few feet behind.
Henry and Leonard did not see the boys immediately; they were both intently watching Anna Herk as she moved toward the door from the other side.
'Fine-looking woman,' Leonard observed.
'Shut up,' Henry observed. He raised his rifle and trained the sight on Arthur Herk, thinking about how he was going to do this. If Herk stayed in the room, sitting in front of the TV, it would be easy. But Henry had to be ready in case Herk got up and followed the women out. Henry didn't want to shoot with the women still in the room, but he would if he had to.
Anna Herk reached the patio door, unlatched it, slid it open, and called, 'Roger, c'mon, boy.' At this point, a number of things happened in extremely quick succession:
—Roger, calculating with his nine functioning brain cells that the chances were better of getting food inside the house with the humans than outside with the Enemy Toad, left his surveillance post and shot, a low-flying, furry missile, through the door opening into the family room.
—Right behind him came Matt, rushing toward the opening, holding his realistic SquirtMaster Model 9000. He had planned to yell, 'HEY, JENNY!' but he was very nervous, so it came out more like, 'HENNY!'
—Anna, seeing a shape rushing out of the night toward her yelling unintelligibly, screamed.
—Two steps behind, Jenny, hearing her mom scream, then seeing the shape, screamed.
—Arthur Herk, hearing both women screaming, dropped the remote control. Roger immediately went over to see if it was food.
—Outside in the gloom, Leonard said, 'What the fuck?'
—In about the same time that it took for Leonard to come to that conclusion, Henry, who had a gift for processing information and making decisions very rapidly, which is why he was the one with the rifle, decided that, whatever this other shooter was there to do, he, Henry, was there to shoot Arthur Herk, and he had better do it right now.
—As Henry was deciding, Matt burst through the door opening past the screaming Anna Herk and aimed his SquirtMaster Model 9000 at the screaming Jenny.
—Arthur Herk, seeing a gunman come through the door, dove forward off the sofa to the floor in front of the television, which was fortunate for Arthur, because ...
—maybe a tenth of a second later, a bullet from Henry's rifle passed directly through the middle of the airspace where Arthur's head had been and into the thirty-five-inch diagonal screen of the Herk family TV set, which imploded with a brief, brutal 'POP,' shattering, in a bright bluish flash, the image of the president of the Hair Club for Men.
—Arthur Herk, hearing the explosion, scrabbled frantically at the floor with his hands and knees and shot forward, alligator-like, out of the family room and into the hallway leading to Nina's room.
—Anna Herk, a mother instinctively and fearlessly protecting her baby, jumped on Matt's back, causing him to stagger forward into Jenny, such that the three of them collapsed to the floor in a human sandwich, with Matt in the middle and both women pounding him and screaming.
—Down the hall, Nina, hearing screams, an explosion, then more screams, opened her door and saw Arthur coming out of a crouch and hurtling down the hall toward her with the face of a crazed animal. She slammed the door, which came violently open again as Arthur burst through it. Convinced she was about to be raped, Nina leaped onto her bed and slithered out the open window, dropped onto the lawn, and, wearing only a blue nightgown, sprinted, barefoot and terrified, into the night.
—At the edge of the patio, Leonard and Henry heard a siren and, without exchanging words, began quickly and professionally to get the hell out of there.
—Thirty feet to the right, Andrew, less professionally but just as quickly, did the same.
—In Roger's dish, the toad, which did not achieve its current station in life by being easily distracted, continued to eat Roger's kibble.
Nina reached the wall first; in fact, in the darkness beneath the huge ficus tree, she ran into the wall. Emitting a sharp, high-pitched cry of pain, she stumbled backward, directly in the path of Leonard, who emerged from a thicket moving at top middle-aged-guy speed and slammed into her, causing her to cry out again as they both went down, with Leonard tripping over her and hitting the wall headfirst, hard.
Three seconds later, Henry, puffing, burst through the thicket and stopped as he saw two entangled shapes on the ground by the wall, both moaning. Crouching, Henry approached the shapes, turning the rifle around in his hands so he could use it as a club.
'Leonard?' he said. 'Leonard?'
One of the moaning shapes began, slowly, to sit up. It was not Leonard. Henry raised his rifle and braced himself, ready to strike. He was in that pose when Puggy landed on his head. Henry crumpled to the ground and dropped the rifle, which Puggy, bouncing quickly to his feet, snatched up.
