me.
Fifty feet seems to be a good distance.
I’m a little disappointed that it will end this way, but I can come back for Harry and the others later. Let them mourn Jack for a few weeks. Settle back into everyday life. Then I can surprise them with a return visit, after I’ve finished with the other thing I’ve got planned.
Jack reaches the fifty-foot mark. I line up the sights.
“Bye-bye, Lieutenant.”
I squeeze the trigger.
Jack remains standing.
It’s the gun. The gun’s aim is off.
Damn, that is one lucky lady.
Phin stops, pointing the shotgun at the house. It’s time for me to go. I hurry back into the garage, hearing the shotgun thunder behind me. The sniper is on the floor where I left him. His eyes get comically wide when he sees me.
“I thought we agreed to be quiet.”
“I’m… I’m a soldier…” he stammers. “Soldiers don’t make deals with the enemy.”
“Soldiers also die badly,” I say.
I don’t have time to savor it, but I make good on my promise and manage to jam the funnel in, along with half the bottle of drain cleaner.
His screams follow me through the maze of boxes, over to the side window. And that’s when I see Jack rush into the garage.
Maybe her luck has finally run out.
12:15 A.M.
JACK
A SHOT BURIES ITSELF into the lawn a yard ahead of me.
“She found my gun,” Phin says. “Go, I’ll cover you.”
I don’t argue with him. All around us is open land. The only cover is near the house. Phin aims the shotgun and fires, and I move as fast as I can, beelining for my front door. I feel like I’m running in slow motion, my feet in quicksand, each step harder than the last. But the thought of Alex in the house with the people I love makes me discover reserves I didn’t know I had left.
I make it to my porch without being shot, wheezing and dripping sweat. I drop the gear, pull the Desert Eagle, and go in low, keeping a two-handed grip on the weapon.
The living room is clear. I hear screaming, can’t pinpoint it.
“Harry!”
“We’re fine!” he yells from the bathroom. “Alex took off through the garage!”
I rush over to the garage door, get a quick peek at Munchel on the floor, his stomach wound leaking bloody foam. He’s the one screaming.
I look past him, see Alex heading for the side window. I fire twice, missing as she dives through.
I can’t let her get away.
I hobble between the boxes, crouching low if she decides to fire at me, sticking the barrel of my gun out the window and jerking left and right to see if she’s hiding on either side.
Alex comes up from below.
She grabs my wrist and squeezes like a vise. I keep my grip on the pistol but can’t aim it toward her. I sense, rather than see, her gun hand coming up, and I reach blindly and latch on to it, stiff-arming the barrel away from my head.
Alex tugs, dragging me out of the window, broken glass scraping against my stomach, hips, and legs. I fall on top of her, each of us trying to gain control of our weapons without letting the other do the same, my face inches from hers as we both grunt and strain.
She rolls, swarming on top of me, straddling my chest. Slowly, inexorably, her gun begins to swing toward my face. There’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’m injured, close to passing out again, and Alex is so big and so strong and so damn evil. She’s not a human being. She’s a force of nature.
Her gun bears down on my forehead.
“After I kill you,” she says, “I’m coming back for your friends and family.”
I’m not scared.
I hear a yell – a bone-chilling, animalistic yell. It’s coming from me. And then I open up my palm, letting the Desert Eagle drop, flexing my biceps and grabbing hold of Alex’s hair and yanking her head so hard I give the bitch whiplash.
Alex falls to the side, off of me, and I shove her gun hand away and get my knees under me. Then I make a fist with my left hand and hit her square in the nose.
I can feel the cartilage crack under my knuckles. Her gun goes off, shooting into the night sky well over my head. She rolls with the punch, and I scramble to my feet, ready to lunge in under the gun and rip out her heart with my bare hands.
But she doesn’t attack. She runs.
I scan the ground, find the Desert Eagle, and snatch it up, but she’s already sprinting around the corner.
“Jack!”
Phin, at the garage window, shotgun in his hand. He looks sort of fuzzy around the edges, and I feel my legs start to wobble.
“Make sure she doesn’t get back in the house,” I tell him.
Then I go after her.
12:17 A.M.
KORK
I’M STILL SEEING STARS from where Jack popped me in the nose, but I don’t let it slow me down. I run around the back of the house, adrenaline pumping, rounding the other side, sprinting straight for the Bronco. I quickly look back, see that Jack is fifty yards behind me.
She’s per sis tent. I’ll give her that.
She also has a bigger gun, and by now so does everyone in the house. I’ve got to get the hell out of here.
I slide on my belly across the hood of the truck and through the broken windshield. I wiggle myself into the driver’s seat, push the key in the ignition, and have a bad moment when the truck doesn’t turn over.
It’s the battery.
I check to my right. Jack has stopped less than thirty yards away. She’s in a shooter stance, aiming the big Desert Eagle at my head.
I kill the headlights, press the gas pedal, and crank it again.
The truck roars to life. I make a U-turn, burning rubber on the street and kicking up dirt and grass when the wheels go off the road.
I duck down right before Jack puts three shots into the driver’s-side window, peppering me with bits of glass.
