on the outline of the man down the hall.
He heard a crash from somewhere in another part of the building and then a man was screaming in Chinese.
The swing trap.
When he looked again, the shadowy figure at the end of the hall was gone.
Maybe he was on the floor and crawling forward?
The Boy waited and watched.
A low rumble and then a loud crash in another hall told the Boy someone found the collapsing-wall trap. He heard no scream or cry for help this time.
There wouldn’t be. The wall should have fallen on the intruder’s head. He was either unconscious or dead.
But I don’t know that for sure.
There were nine and now three were down. That made six.
Maybe.
The shadow detached itself from the wall again and moved right into the sight at the end of the Boy’s rifle.
Without even thinking the Boy fired, flinging the man backward and out of sight.
Blue gun smoke mixed with the dust and heavy heat.
Five.
On the second floor, the Boy moved fast and he knew they could hear him below.
Good. They’ll think they have me trapped. Maybe they will become careless.
He thought of Jin on the roof.
The traps here on the second floor were deadfalls, sure to break a leg or pierce a man through with the stakes he would fall on below.
He took up his place behind the barricade at the far end of the second floor.
He listened, willing himself to slow his ragged breathing.
Almost there.
You would say,
Both.
One of the Chinese climbed through an open window behind the Boy as he watched the dark corridor. The Boy didn’t hear the intruder until the man softly brushed against something just as he hoisted his body through the window.
The Boy set his rifle down and whirled with his tomahawk out. The man climbing through the window rolled just as the Boy raised the axe and struck. The head of the tomahawk buried itself in rotting wood and crumbling drywall.
The man cried out in Chinese and an instant later, far off, as the Boy dragged the axe out of the wall, he could hear running feet at the far end of the second floor. The sound, hollow on the rotting wood and disintegrating carpet, beat out an urgent approaching staccato.
The man in the room had his knife out, waving it back and forth between the two of them. He was smaller than the Boy and there was fear in his eyes.
The Boy rushed him, slamming his body into the man. They fell to the ground slick with sweat as the Boy pinned the man’s knife hand with the flat of his tomahawk, leaning hard into the Chinese with the bony, withered side of himself.
The man cursed, almost whining.
The pounding footsteps coming up the hall disappeared in a crashing wave of snapping boards as the floor fell out beneath them. There was a brief cry and a sickening bone-snapping sound, loud and clear.
The Boy slammed his head into the face of the man beneath him and a spray of blood erupted from the smashed face. Instinctively, hands moved to cover the broken nose.
The Boy rose, his tomahawk swinging back above his shoulder, then his head, and a second later slammed the axe down through the man’s sternum. There was an
He rose and returned to the barricade. Down the dark hallway a Chinese was looking into the dusty hole that was the floor. He could hear a man crying below.
“Three,” muttered the Boy and fired at the man staring down into the hole.
“Two.”
SHAO FAN STOOD at the far end of the second floor.
Chiang lay dead halfway down the hall.
His last hunter watched out the window.
I know he’s here. They’re both here, the savage and the girl. But how many more traps?
He heard a soft whistle from outside, above the crash of the sea. Shao Fan looked out the window onto the wild yard of lush overgrowth that bordered the cliff.
The two scouts waved, smiling, and between them was the transgressor Jin. She was bound and gagged, her eyes wide with terror and tears. She knew Shao Fan. Knew his business. Knew what must come next.
‘Forget this savage,’ thought Shao Fan, and ordered his man to withdraw. They lowered themselves through the window with the rope they always carried.
No sense in risking the traps we didn’t find on the way in.
It was a good idea to send the scouts up the cliff and onto the roof from the beach. ‘It has probably saved our lives,’ thought Shao Fan as he started a fire in the second-floor hallway.
We’ll burn this place down with the savage inside. Protocol indicates we can dispose of the savage in any way we choose.
Usually it was a savage female, which they preferred to drown. But just this once, since it was a wily male, the characters on the report could read, “Burned in a fire.”
FOR A LONG time the Boy waited behind the third-floor barricade.
They’re afraid to come up after us. Good, maybe they will go away now.
In time he smelled the smoke, and when he listened hard, he could hear the crackle of flames catching the old carpets and tattered drapes and broken furniture and dry wood.
Fire!
He raced back to the third-floor stairwell leading to the roof and rapped on it heavily.
“Jin, it’s me!”
Nothing.
The smoke came in gray puffs up through the floor beneath his feet. The snapping crackle of the fire was growing.
We’ll be caught if I don’t get her down off the roof!
“Jin, open up it’s me!”
He didn’t ask again as he reared back and slammed into the rusty metal door. It banged open in a wide arc. In the bright sunlight the Boy turned around and around searching for Jin on the debris-cluttered rooftop. He raced to one edge as black smoke crawled up from the other side.
Below he could see Jin in the bottom of the empty pool. She was bound and gagged, her eyes pleading with him. She looked left and right trying to tell him something. A moment before he heard the report from the rifles, he saw the Chinese hiding in the worn-out bushes and in the shadows of the old lobby. All at once bullets thudded about him into the crumbling concrete of the building. The Boy fired and then flung himself to the rooftop as bullets raced off into the sky above.
Lying on the roof, the Boy broke the breech of the rifle, pulled out the spent shell, and pushed another into its place. He crawled several feet to a new position and popped up behind the parapet.
A shaven-headed Chinese was pulling Jin by her hair up the steps of the empty pool.
A bullet smacked into the concrete wall of the roof, sending shards up to cut the face of the Boy. Other Chinese were taking aim.
