onto the pavement.
The other two let out eerie howls, like coyotes baying at the moon. The one with the spear ran forward a few steps and hurled his weapon. It lofted high into the air, arced smoothly, then clanged into the wall five feet above Eric.
The man with the bow was tugging his arrow back with a bead on Eric. But he never made it. Five arrows snapped at him almost simultaneously, though only two actually. hit him. One caught him in the chest, the other chipped a hunk of flesh off a rib. Two of the arrows bounced off the van while the third disappeared into the darkness of the parking lot, skidding along pavement.
The man with the bow crumpled. His fingers released the half-pulled string, catapulting the arrow ten feet ahead. He fell backwards, knocking his head against the van's bumper.
The spearman, now without a spear and too frightened to grab for the bow, took off behind the van, vanishing into the same thick darkness that had swallowed the arrow. They could hear the thwacking of his feet for a few more seconds. Then silence.
Rydell started after Philip but Eric pulled him back. 'Wait.'
Eric peered intently at the darkened parking lot, the black husks of the abandoned cars lurking like so many backs of dinosaurs trapped in a tar pit. 'Okay, Rydell and Molly, see to Philip. Tag and Season, come with me.'
They split into two groups and crab-walked across the lot. Eric motioned for Tag and Season to bracket the open door of the van. With his crossbow cocked and loaded, he dove into the yawning black door, his bow lifted toward the darkened back. His shoulder smacked into a surfboard, but otherwise the van was empty. There were crumbled cellophane wrappers from Twinkies and some empty Sugar Pops boxes, some tattered clothes, torn comic books, but otherwise nothing.
'Empty,' Eric said as he jumped out of the van.
'Philip's dead,' Rydell called.
Eric walked over to the man with Matt Southern's bow, tipped him onto his back with a nudge of his foot. Beneath the long, wild hair was a dirt-smeared face. He smelled foul, even by current disaster standards, his skin oily and broken out, his gums peppered with raw sores. The short bolt with the red plastic feathers sticking out of his chest was Eric's. Dark blood bubbled around the shaft like boiling soup. The other arrow that had wounded him had nipped its chunk of flesh from the rib and kept going. Eric leaned closer to the face for a better look. Beneath the ravaged face, a boy of seventeen or eighteen. Eric's stomach muscles bunched up, his fists balled against his legs. He remembered this feeling from Nam. The clawing in your guts when you faced your dead or wounded enemy, his limbs half ripped from his body, an eyeball hanging on his cheek by a tiny strand of nerve. The smooth face of a thirteen-year-old boy or girl. The only way you got through it was to remember your own dead buddies, not much older, screaming in agony as they tried to scoop their own intestines back into the hole in their stomach.
Eric marched over to Philip's body. He needed to see what these kids had done, to stoke his hate like a furnace until the guilt evaporated.
The blade had entered the back of Philip's neck, severing the sternomastoid muscle, and puncturing the esophagus before the knife's handle wedged into the neck. Philip's eyes were still wide with horror and surprise. Death wasn't at all the way Philip had expected it to be. Not the way he'd read about it in history books.
Molly was bending over the body of the kid who'd thrown the knife, Eric's bolt sprouting from his chest in almost the same spot as on the other kid. 'Hey, Eric! I think this one's still alive. I've got a faint pulse. Just barely.'
Tag and Season were still over by the van gathering the spent arrows.
'Jesus,' Season's voice rang out with excitement, 'it was me. My arrow. It's got blood on it. I shot the bastard too.' Her face was flushed as she held the arrow up to show the others. 'My God, I really did it. Would've skewered his fucking stomach if he hadn't moved. I goddamn did it.'
Eric walked slowly toward her. The others watched, confused about what response to have. Congratulate her? Too grotesque. Offer sympathy? She was too high, too excited for that. She was pacing in circles, waving the arrow. Once she almost tripped over the kid's leg and hauled off and kicked the corpse, 'Son of a bitch,' she growled.
Eric had seen this kind of reaction before, had experienced it himself the first time in battle. The thrill of having survived when a buddy dies. Then the guilt at being alive, compounded if you've killed someone and get to look in their face afterwards. Then the hatred. At your friend for having died, at your enemy for having made you a killer. And finally at yourself,
Season was laughing in Eric's face as he approached her. 'You see, you pompous ass. I did it. Even with a man's bow. Maybe it wasn't a kill shot, but it was better than any of these other clowns did.'
Eric laid his crossbow on the ground, took another step toward her. She flinched back as if she thought he would strike her. Instead he opened his arms and hugged her close to him.
'What the hell are you doing?' she screeched, struggling to push him away. But his arms held her tenderly, yet tightly, and soon she stopped resisting.
'Relax,' he said, stroking the back of her head. 'We're all scared. And angry.' He looked into her eyes; she stared back, her eyes slightly dazed as if in shock. 'You're a hell of a soldier, Deely, Three months ago, most civilians probably wouldn't consider that much of a compliment. But right now, it's the highest praise you can give someone. It means you're tough, resourceful, clever. A survivor. Someone who can be counted on. Okay?'
Season stepped out of his arms, nodded, adjusted the bandanna around her forehead. 'What is it they say in the macho movies? 'Thanks, I needed that.' ' She grinned. 'Only I really mean it.'
Eric winked and spun back on the others. His voice was flat but crisp, as if nothing had happened here. 'Okay, we've wasted enough time here. We have a meeting to go to. Let's move out.'
Molly looked up. 'What about this boy? There's still a pulse.'
Eric picked up his crossbow and trotted over to the dying boy. Except that his hair was longer and darker, he looked very much like the other kid. Perhaps a year or two older. Maybe they were brothers. Cousins. Maybe the circumstances made them look alike. It didn't matter. Eric lifted his foot above the boy's neck, lowered it slowly over the throat, and pressed, leaning his weight heavily on the foot. The boy's fingers moved slightly, curled and uncurled, then nothing. 'Now he's dead,' Eric announced. 'So let's move out.'
There was a shocked silence, a stunned pause, then they all moved at once.
'Tag,' Eric called, 'bring the kid's bow and all his arrows. Rydell, grab the backpack from Philip. We'll need the books. The rest of you converge against the building. Now!'
They jumped at his voice, dashing toward the Woodbridge Medical Building as if someone had fired a burst of bullets at their feet.
Eric leaned over the dead boy, grabbed the bolt close to the chest, wedged his foot on the chest for leverage, and pulled with a slight twisting motion. It was like yankinga stubborn cork from a wine bottle. But fortunately his arrows had field tips and not hunting broadheads, which he would have had to shove all the way through the body. There was a sloshing, sucking noise from the wound, reluctant to give the arrow up. But it finally slid out, dripping blood from the tip. Eric wiped the shaft on the kid's pants, then stuck the arrow back in his quiver. He ran over to the other body and retrieved his arrow the same way, relieved that he'd sent the others ahead. They were watching him, of course, but the darkness and the distance allowed them to ignore what they chose to avoid. As he jogged across the lot to join them, he purposely glanced at Philip's clenched face. His skin tingled as if his veins were pumping sulfuric acid, and he sighed sadly as he realized yet another nightmare had been added to his growing repertoire.
'How much longer?' Tag whispered.
Eric didn't have to look at his watch. It had only been a few seconds since he'd checked it last. 'Any time now.'
'Are you sure those guys we killed back there aren't the same ones we were supposed to meet?'
'I'm sure. They were just scavengers, killing anything that moved. Just relax and get back to your post.'
Tag hesitated, but did as he was told. Eric had positioned him across the street from the jack in the Box, squatting behind an overturned Datsun 280Z. It was the kind of car Tag had always wanted to own, reading about it in the library's issues of Road amp; Track, Car amp; Driver and all the other magazines he sneaked off to read while supposedly checking inventory. Now, as he peered through the shattered windows of the upside-down car,
