Off Season - Jack Ketchum [50]
Marjie had Laura by the collar and pushed her screaming through the front door. The girl tumbled to the floor and lay there sobbing a moment and then began to crawl toward the back of the house. In the dark Marjie ran for the stove where the final pan of water sat simmering. She picked it up and the handle burned her but she felt no pain, only a fear that ground her teeth together and made her grim and silent. She stood there inside the door in a fierce eternity of waiting, resisting with all her power the urge to slam the door and race howling into the attic; resisting at the same time another urge that wanted her to dash outside and cut away at them with her own pathetic knife in some suicidal frenzy of revenge.
She saw Nick’s gun go off against the girl and saw the boy’s knife slash across his chest and then heard the crack of metal against bone as Dan’s poker crashed down on the boy’s skull. Blood poured from the boy’s mouth and eyes as he slid away. She saw Dan pull the poker free and shove Nick ahead of him toward the doorway. She stepped out to help him. She saw Dan’s eyes dart suddenly to the left as Nick fell in front of her and saw Dan open his mouth to warn her, but by then it was too late. Something hit Dan from behind and at the same instant the huge man roared beside her.
His hand closed over her wrist. She looked into his eyes and his face was terrible, his teeth all black and foul, his scent the scent of blood. His fingers curled deep into her flesh. She imagined those hands on Carla and brought the heavy pot around.
The boiling water splashed uselessly behind him, but the base of the pot caught him squarely on the ear, burning him, hitting him hard. He howled and released her, lost his balance a moment and tumbled heavily to the ground. At the same moment Nick lurched toward her. She hauled him inside and in an instant she saw that the wound across his chest was not deep. She pulled the knife out of his thigh. His face went suddenly white and he stumbled and fell to the floor.
She looked around for Dan, the bloody knife still clutched in her hand. Her eyes seemed to locate him automatically. She felt something turn hollow in the pit of her stomach as she saw him there next to the car where they had dragged him. His poker was gone, and they were all around him. He was already screaming.
The woman behind him had her teeth buried deep in his neck, her arms around him and bare breasts against him a grim mockery of a lover’s embrace. He was trying to shake her off but the children were at his legs with knives. She saw them slash the tendons behind the right knee, saw him hamstrung the way wolves brought down horses and watched him start to fall as the man in red appeared in front of him and kicked him in the stomach. He doubled over and vomited into the grass and still the woman clung to his neck, biting deeper, so that the bright-oxygenated blood poured steadily out upon the ground in front of them.
She tore the pistol from Nick’s hand and fired. The first bullet missed, and the man in red had time to move away from her. At the sound of gunfire Dan moved in her direction and for a moment their eyes met and she saw what was in them. She fired again. The second bullet passed through Dan’s right lung and the woman’s stomach and pitched them into a heap together beside the car.
Marjie stood motionless, pointing the gun and blinking. I killed him, she thought, oh my God. There was perhaps a single second of utter silence, as wild and terrible as the fighting. The look on his face froze forever in her memory. It played over and over in front of her eyes like a loop of film and culminated each time in explosion and silence, leaving her trembling. The gun was hot and massive in her hand. Her eyes brimmed with tears.
The huge man beside her began to rise in the shadows.
She slammed the door shut and, with a sob, thrust the bolt home.
Her attackers backed away slowly, stunned by the violence done to them. These people were not hunters; they had not expected guns. Somewhere in the amphibian murk of the big