attacker and started to get to his feet. As he did so, the creature suddenly sat up beside him and, opening her sizable jaws, lunged. She took a chunk from Sawyer's leg, twisting her head to take away the bulk of his calf. He screamed, and fell forward onto his hands.
Maxine had a clear shot at the beast, and took it. But her second shot was not as efficient as her first; it struck the creature's shoulder, passing through the muscle without appearing to significantly slow the animal, which threw itself on top of Sawyer as though she were attempting to mount him.
Seconds later, the Lana opened her mouth and sank her teeth into the bones of Sawyer's skull. The man's sobs ceased instantly, and what little strength his limbs had possessed fled. He hung beneath the Lana's body like a zebra's corpse from the jaws of a lion, glassy-eyed and lifeless.
Todd heard Maxine say, 'Oh Christ... oh Christ . . .'
But the horror wasn't over with yet. The creature apparently wanted to get her teeth into her wounder, because having dispatched Sawyer she let the body drop from her jaws and began to move toward the cage on which Maxine was crouched. Even in her hurt state there was no doubt that she had the physical power to get up onto the cage and attack Maxine. In fact, the wounds she had sustained didn't seem to be hurting her that much; her hybrid face carried a look that was somewhere between an animal snarl and a human smile. Maxine didn't hesitate. Taking a bead on the animal, she fired. The bullet struck the creature in the middle of her face, taking out the flat nose and the top half of the mouth.
For one long moment she seemed not to comprehend the fatal damage she had sustained. She lifted her front leg, which ended in a hand which erupted into claws, toward her face, almost as though she intended to explore the damage she had sustained. But before her corrupted limb could reach her face the creature's system closed down, and she fell forward, dead.
There had been a good deal of motion in the foliage throughout this episode; Todd had the sense that there were several other creatures watching to see how this proceeded before they showed their own faces. Now, with the death of Lana, the thicket was still. Nothing moved; nothing breathed.
The only sound Todd could hear was the very soft sound of Maxine saying
Todd was half-tempted to call down to her, to offer some word of encouragement, but he refrained from doing so. For one thing, he didn't want to admit that he'd stood as a spectator to this whole drama; second, he was afraid of distracting Maxine while she was down there. Certainly her killing of the creature had silenced its brethren in the thicket, but their silence didn't mean they'd given up their stalking. They were simply sitting in the shadows waiting for Maxine to make a mistake, when no doubt they would fall upon her in a vengeful mob.
Thus, keeping his silence, Todd watched Maxine make her way between the cages, glancing back at the house constantly, as though she was trying to find a path that would lead her back to safety but was at present only able to find one that ran parallel to the house. She was now thirty or forty yards from the cages, which was a good thing, because that meant she couldn't see what was happening on the walkway beneath them.
A minute or two after her exit, a few of Lana's family members appeared from the thicket where—as Todd had known—they'd been waiting. Now about six of them came out of hiding. They had no interest in the corpse of their sibling. It was Sawyer they wanted. Surrounding his body they began to play with the corpse like children with some gruesome toy. They tore off his clothes, and bit off his penis and balls. They followed that by biting off fingers, knuckle by knuckle, and spitting the pieces out. They seemed to take infantile pleasure in the mess they were making. Todd was horribly disgusted by the spectacle, but he kept watching until they were finished with the fingers and began to disembowel the man. Only then did he retreat from the balcony railing and go back inside.
It would not necessarily be easy for Maxine to find her way back up to the house, he realized. Many of the pathways were overgrown, and in her present, no doubt panicked, state of mind, she could easily lose her way and keep on losing it. He would have to go outside and find her.
Katya was still sleeping. The shots hadn't even stirred her. Indeed, she seemed to have scarcely moved, so profound was her slumber. Her hand was still up at her mouth, limply curled round on itself.
He kissed her, saw that this did not wake her either, and left her to her slumbers.
FIVE
Eppstadt was in the Devil's Country. A fine drizzle, almost a mist, was drooping from the bloated clouds; it came in soft waves against his face, cooling his flushed skin. If he doubted the reality of this place, its chill seemed designed to undo his doubt.
He hated the idea that what he was witnessing was real; doing so violated all his logical faculties. But what was the alternative? That he'd slipped and fallen, and was now lying at the bottom of the stairs in a semi-comatose state, imagining all this? It was a pretty solution, but as he had no way of knowing whether it was true or not, his only option was to find Joe and get the hell out of here before the place began to get even crazier than it already was. The less he knew about this country—the less its grotesqueries lodged in his psyche—the happier the rest of his life would surely be.
With that thought he began a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree scanning of the landscape, calling Joe's name as he did so. His din (even his simple presence) was enough to stir life in the bushes and trees. He felt himself watched by several species of unlikely animal, their eyes huge and luminous, their postures, and in some cases the details of their physiognomies, vaguely human, as though this twilight world had witnessed all kinds of criminal couplings.
Finally, he heard a response from Joe.
'Who's there?'
'Eppstadt.'
'Come over here. Quickly. You gotta help me.'
He followed the sound of the man's shouting. There was a small copse ahead, and Joe had clambered a few feet into a tree by means of a crude wooden ladder which had been propped against one of the trunks.
'What the hell are you doing?' Eppstadt wanted to know.
Joe simply repeated his plea: 'You gotta help me.'
'There's no time, Joe,' Eppstadt said. 'You've got to come back with me.
'For the same reason you did,' Joe said. 'I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Are you going to help me or not?'
Eppstadt had pressed his way into the midst of the thicket as he and Joe spoke, snagging his suit on the briars that grew in profusion here several times as he did so. The tableau that now came into view appalled him.
There was a man crucified among the higher branches of the tree Joe had climbed, the deed done with both rope and nails. Joe had already managed to remove a couple of the nails (spattering his arms and face with blood in the process) and was now pulling at the knotted rope with his teeth. He was desperate to get the man down from the tree, and he had reason. The branches around the man's head were bustling with birds, the Devil's Country's version of carrion-crows: bigger, crueler versions. They'd clearly made several assaults on the man's face already. There were deep gouges around the victim's sockets where the birds had gone after his eyes. Blood from the wounds poured down his face. He might have resembled Christ but for the brightness of his blonde hair, which fell in dirty curls to his shoulders.
'I need a stone!' Joe yelled down at Eppstadt.
'What for?'
'Just find me a fucking stone, will you?'
Eppstadt didn't like to take orders—especially from a waiter—but he saw the urgency of the situation, and did as he was asked, looking around until he laid his hands on a long, sharp stone, which he passed on up to Joe. From his perch on the ladder, Joe took aim at the closest of the carrion crows. It was a good throw. The stone struck the most ambitious of the flock—who had apparently decided to come in for the kill—and messily smashed open the bird's head, but its companions did not fly off, as Joe had hoped. They simply retreated up the tree a branch or two, squawking in fury and frustration, while the dead bird dropped from the perch.
