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"Take one of those Uzis froet the third one from the back of the pantry/floor, and put them in the Jeep"
"It’s him," Chris said, wide-eyed with surprise
"Yes, it is He showed up like this, hurt bad Besides the Uzis, get two of the revolvers-the one in the drawer over there and the one in the dining room And be careful not to accidentally-"
"Don’t worry, Moently as possible she rolled her guardian onto his right side-he groaned but did not awaken-to see if there was an exit wound in his back Yes The bullet had gone through hi under the scapula His back was soaked with blood, too, but neither the entry nor exit point was bleeding heavily any longer; if there was serious bleeding, it was internal, and she could not detect or treat it
Under his clothing he wore one of the belts She unbuckled it The belt wouldn’t fit in the center compartment of her purse, so she had to stuff it into a zippered side co out the items she usually kept in there
She rebuttoned his shirt and debated whether she should take off his damp lab coat She decided it would be too difficult to wrestle the sleeves down his array wool blanket under and around him
While Laura bundled up the wounded uns, using the inner door that connected the laundry rooe Then he ca, flat dolly-essentially a wooden platform on casters-that had accidentally been left behind by so it like a skateboard toward the pantry, he said, "We gotta take the ammo box, but it’s too heavy for me to carry I’ll put it on this"
Pleased by his initiative and cleverness, she said, "We have twelve rounds in the two revolvers and twelve hundred rounds in the three Uzis, so I don’t think we’ll needthe board here Quick now I’ve been trying to figure hoe can get hi hi fast, as if they had drilled for just this particular e too , and her belly fluttered continuously She expected someone to hammer on the door at any moment
Chris held the dolly still while Laura heaved the wounded ot the board under his head, shoulders, back, and buttocks, she was able to lift his legs and push hi at a crouch by the front wheels, one hand on the unconsciousoff and to prevent the board fro out fro across the door sill at the end of the laundry rooe
The Mercedes was on the left, the Jeep wagon on the right, with the uardian to the Jeep
Chris had opened the tailgate He had also unrolled a sreat kid," she told hied to transfer the wounded ate
"Bring the other blanket and his shoes from the kitchen," she told Chris
By the tiuardian stretched out flat on his back on the gym mat They covered his bare feet with the second blanket and put his soggy shoes beside hiet in the front seat and buckle up"
She hurried back into the house Her purse, which contained all of her credit cards, was on the table; she slipped the straps over her shoulder She picked up the third Uzi and headed back toward the laundry roo hit the rear door with tre slae deadbolts could not be defeated easily Then the nightun chattered, and Laura threw herself against the side of the refrigerator, sheltering there They were trying to blow open the back door, but the heavy steel core held against that assault too The door shook, however, and bullets pierced the wall on both sides of the reinforced fra holes in the dry wall Family-rooun opened fire The ed as slugs passed between thelass was contained behind the blinds, where it rained on sills and from there to the floor Cabinet doors splintered and cracked as bullets pierced them, and chips of brick flew off one wall, and bullets ricocheted off the copper range hood, leaving it dented, creased Hanging fro hooks, the copper pots and pans took a lot of hits, producing a variety of clinks and ponks One overhead light blew out The Levelor at theabove the writing desk was torn off its s plowed into the refrigerator door just inches fro, and a flood of adrenaline had made her senses alarage and try to get out before they realized she was in the process of leaving, but a priainst the side of the refrigerator, out of the direct line of fire, hoping that she would not be hit by a ricochet Who the hell are you people? she wondered angrily The firing stopped, and her instinct proved true: The barrage was followed by the gunmen themselves They storh the implodedabove the kitchen desk She stepped away fro him back out onto the patio A second man, dressed in black like the first, entered by the shattered sliding door in the fah the archway a second before he saw her-and she swung the Uzi in that direction, spraying bullets, destroying the Mr Coffeethe hell out of the kitchen wall beside the archway, then cutting hiht his weapon around toward her She had practiced with the Uzi but not recently, and she was surprised at how controllable it was She was also surprised at how sickened she was by the need to kill thehter her and her child; like a wave of oily sludge, nausea washed through her, but she choked down the gorge that rose in her throat A third man started into the family room, and she was ready to kill hi made her, but he threw himself backward, out of the line of fire, when he saw his companion bloay
Now the Jeep
She didn’t kno many killers were outside, , ardless of how many there were, they would not have expected to be met with such a bold response and certainly not with so much firepower, no way, not frouardian ounded and unar cover, assessing the situation, planning their next et away in the Jeep wagon She sprinted through the laundry rooe
She saw that Chris had started the Jeep’s engine when he’d heard the gunfire; bluish exhaust fuarage door started up; Chris had evidently used the Genie reot behind the wheel, the garage door was a third open She shifted into gear "Get down!"
As Chris instantly obeyed, sliding down in his seat belo level, Laura let up on the brakes She raainst the floorboards, peeled rubber on the concrete, and roared out into the night, clearing the still rising garage door by only an inch or two, ripping off the radio antenna
The Jeep’s big tires, though not swaddled in chains, had heavy winter tread They dug into the frozen slush and gravel that for traction with no trouble, spewing shrapnel of stone and ice
Fro across the front lawn, kicking up snow, forty or fifty feet away, and he was such a featureless shape that heof the engine she heard the rattle of autos slammed into the side of the Jeep, and thebehind her blew in, but thebeside her re out of range, a few seconds fro at the brokenShe prayed none of the tires would be hit, and she heard ravel and ice churned up by the Jeep
When she reached the state route at the end of the driveway, she was certain that she was out of range As she braked hard for the left turn, she glanced into the rearview arage The killers had arrived at her house without a vehicle-God only kne they had traveled, perhaps with the use of those strange belts-and they were using her Mercedes to pursue her
She had intended to turn left on the state route, head down past Running Springs, past the turnoff to Lake Arrowhead, on to the superhighway and into the city of San Bernardino, where there were people and safety in nu automatic weapons would not stalk her so boldly, and where she could get uardian But when she saw the headlights behind her, she responded to an innate proclivity for survival, turning right instead, heading east-northeast toward Big Bear Lake
If she had gone left they would have cohway on which Danny had been o; and Laura felt intuitively-alerous place in the world for theth of two-lane blacktop She and Chris had been meant to die twice on that hill: first, when the Robertsons’ pickup slid out of control; second, when Kokoschka opened fire on then and ominous patterns in life and that, once thwarted, fate strove to reassert those predestined designs Though she had no intellectually sound reason for believing that they would die if they headed doard Running Springs, she knew in her heart that death in fact awaited them there
As they pulled onto the state route and headed for Big Bear, tall evergreens rising darkly on both sides, Chris sat up and looked back