stalagmites, her scream the shrill squeal of a million flitting bats. Startled, Dave almost took a step back, but a more basic instinct took quick control, and he stepped forward instead and punched her in the eye.
He’d meant only to shock her into silence, maybe knock her off balance a little so he could sweep in and steady her, soothe her, but his fist seemed to have the effect of something fired from a cannon, and she crumpled to the floor. Her head bounced twice on the cracked linoleum and then lolled. Dave heard footsteps and heavy breathing behind him and turned far enough around to see the boy, standing frozen in the doorway leading into the living room.
“Hello, Georgie.” Dave smiled at the boy and knelt on the floor beside the temporarily silent woman. “Don’t you worry about me and Mommy—we’re just having a little talk.”
The boy opened his mouth in an almost exact imitation of his mother, but the sound that came from his little cave was very different: a single short squeak like the hinge on a rusty gate. On the floor, the woman had come to and gotten herself up on her elbows.
“Run.” She didn’t scream it, just said it flatly, the way she might have told him to finish his broccoli.
“Hey now,” Dave said, “let’s not—”
The boy made a single clumsy move to the right, but Dave flew across the room in two giant steps and caught the kid by his slender bicep before the boy could do much more than shift his footing.
“Zach!” The woman scrambled on the floor, trying to get to her feet, but Dave had definitely done more damage than he’d intended—she got halfway up twice and fell back onto her rear end both times.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Dave said to the boy, talking quickly, wanting to get the words out before the woman could stand, wanting him to understand. “I’m here to help you. I promise I’ll save you. I swear.”
The look the boy gave him might easily have been confused for fear, but Dave recognized it for what it must really have been: awe.
He led the kid into the kitchen, to the spot on the floor where his mother still lay squirming like a flipped turtle. “We’re all going to be all right now.”
On the floor, the woman said something Dave couldn’t quite hear.
“What’s that?”
“My
Dave smiled and shook his head. “Oh, Mommy. We all three of us know that’s an outright lie.” He waggled his finger at her, still smiling. “If there was a husband,” he continued, “you wouldn’t need me here at all.”
The woman stared at him blankly for several long seconds and then turned to her son and repeated, “Run,” this time with a little more conviction.
Dave tightened his grip on the kid before he could think about obeying and frowned down at the woman. “I don’t think you understand what’s happening here,” he said.
From the way she looked back up at him, Dave wondered if maybe she really didn’t.
“It’s my birthday,” he said, shifting his gaze back and forth from mother to son, wanting to hug the both of them to his chest and weep into their hair. “Time to take my place. I’m going to make you whole.”
The woman shook her head. The boy went suddenly slack, and Dave had to look to make sure he hadn’t fainted. Except for his single squeak, the boy hadn’t made a sound. He wasn’t a mute, Dave knew. He’d heard him mumbling to himself in the back yard many times, eavesdropped as he called in to an imaginary airfield from the corner of his tree house while he pretended to pilot his way to earth, listened to him back-talking invisible foes between jump kicks and punches. He looked away from the kid. He’d talk when he was ready.
“I know you wish I could have got here sooner,” he said to the woman. “I’m sorry I couldn’t. I had things to do first. I needed to be ready.”
He let go of the boy and reached down to take the woman’s trembling hand. The flesh around her eye had already darkened and puffed. She squinted at him.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“Who—” She coughed, shook her head a little, and tried again. “Who the hell are you?” His fingers brushed against her knuckles, and she pulled her hand away as quickly as if she’d stuck it into a blazing fire.
Dave chuckled a little at this and leaned forward. He caught her fingers in his own and gave them a little squeeze. “You know who I am.”
She stared and didn’t try to pull her hand away again.
“I’m Daddy.”
Something behind him moved.
“Mom?” A soft voice, almost girly.
Dave looked over his shoulder, saw the boy backing toward the cabinets, and started to say something to him, but a sudden, stinging pain on the left side of Dave’s face cut him off. His hand darted to his cheek and came away covered in shiny red blood. The woman’s hand streaked up for another blow, but Dave caught it deftly in midair despite blurry vision and pain so agonizing he wanted to scream. She’d scratched his eyeball, but she hadn’t blinded him. Not quite. Blood slid over his lips and onto his chin. It sprayed across her face when he said, “Why would you do that?”
Her fingernails jutted from her hand like the talons of some wild animal, dripping his blood, the smallest of them broken off just above the cuticle but the rest still wickedly sharp and gleaming. He squeezed her wrist hard, heard breaking bones and squeezed even harder. The boy screamed now in a way that made it seem as if he’d been doing it all along. Dave let go of the woman long enough to punch her in the face again. This time, his fist connected with her perfect elf’s nose and drove it into her skull. Dave couldn’t hear the crunching cartilage over the boy’s continued shrieking, but he felt it. Her blood gushed across her cheek and mixed with the sprayed droplets of his own. He grabbed hold of her broken wrist again and used his other hand to reach into his cargo pocket.
He wouldn’t tolerate disrespect like that. No, sir. Not for one second. He wrapped his fingers around the rubbery grip and brought out the first of his weapons.
The woman opened her mouth.
“Rnnnnnn,” she said, both her good eye and her bad rolling into the back of her head. “Rrrnnnnn.” The word was no more articulate the second time. She coughed out a blood-tinted wad of phlegm and then screamed, “RUN!”
Behind him, Dave heard the back door slam. He ignored it. He knew where Georgie would run, and he could deal with him later.
He held the knife between her face and his own, twisted it through the air like a hypnotist trying to put her under. “I don’t know what kind of a relationship you think we’re gonna have,” he said to her, still spinning the knife, “but if you think I’ll let you act that way in front of our son, you’re dead wrong.”
She groaned and looked squarely into his eyes. “Fug you,” she said and spit into his throbbing eye.
Dave grabbed hold of her by the blouse with his free hand and lifted her to her feet. The movement momentarily sandwiched her broken wrist between the two of them, and she howled even after Dave had pushed her far enough away to relieve the pressure. Blood, spittle, and sweat dripped into a puddle on the floor between their feet.
“I was wrong about you,” Dave said. He wrapped his fist up so tightly in her shirt that two of its buttons popped off and fell into the mess on the floor. “I thought if the boy was right, you’d have to be right, too.”
He held the knife up again and contemplated the perfectly honed edge. “You’re not,” he said, looking back at her dripping face. He saw the fear in her eyes, but also the respect hiding somewhere deep behind. She was right to respect him. He’d earned it.
He pushed her to arm’s length with his clutching fist and jammed the hunting knife high into her midsection, just below her sternum. He twisted the blade once, forcefully, and then drew the knife down her abdomen to her pelvis. The mess of innards that came spilling across his hand felt warm and sticky and smelled like shit.
She hadn’t screamed again, this woman whose name Dave didn’t know, but when he pulled the knife free and stepped back from her, she
