Off Season - Jack Ketchum [53]
“To tell you the truth,” he said. “I’m not sure I can run, either.”
“You’ll do it if you have to, Nick.”
He thought about it. “No,” he said. “I don’t want to do that. Even if we got by them we wouldn’t know where to run to.”
“The woods.”
“They know the woods. We don’t.”
“We could still hide out there. We could split up if we had to.”
“I don’t like it,” he said. “But I don’t like this, either.”
“They could burn us out pretty easy up here.”
“They could burn us out downstairs, too.”
“Yes, but there’s only one way out of here!”
“That again.”
“Yes, dammit! They could burn the house down and wait for us to come flying out the window one at a time. They could stand down there and watch us break our asses and then pick up the pieces and carry us home like toys for the kids. Down there, at least we can—”
Below them, Laura screamed. They broke for the stairs.
They heard the pounding simultaneously and it shot through them like bolts of lightning followed by unrelenting thunder. Nick felt the whole house quiver. The stairs seemed to tremble beneath him. His wounded leg forgotten, he was downstairs in an instant, pistol in his hand, with Marjie right behind him.
Outside, it seemed they were everywhere at once.
Someone was working on the back door with what was probably the axe from the woodshed. There were others at the bedroom windows. In front of him the front door seemed likely to burst open at any minute under the force of something large and powerful. Nick bet he knew who that one was. The latch held, but he wouldn’t give a cent for it holding too much longer.
One of them was edging a crowbar or something through the peephole in the kitchen window. The poker, he thought. Dan’s poker. He heard the sound of wood splintering behind him and saw the back door giving way under the axe. It would not be long now.
For an instant he searched around in confusion, trying to determine if there was any defense they could make, if there was any way out of this except to retreat back up the stairs to the attic. Again the front door crashed and trembled under a terrific blow and something told him it would not stand another. He saw a glint of steel through the deepening gash in the back door and then all indecision vanished.
“Get Laura,” he said, and ran for the stairs. “Hurry!”
He hit the landing on a run, bent low, and scurried to the mattress. He dragged it swiftly beside the doorway and left it there, careful to leave enough space so he’d be able to close the door. Then he moved the dresser. It was a two-man job to move that dresser but there was a ferocious power in him now and no pain anywhere, and all he could think was that he was damned if he would let them kill him now. His muscles strained and bunched together and the dresser’s massive claw feet screeched against the rough wooden floor. He set it in the doorway with just enough room for entry. If the women didn’t make it in time he would push the fucking thing down on the sons of bitches and bust some heads. He snatched the pistol off the floor and for the first time noticed the scythe on the wall. He grabbed it too, and then leaped to the stairway.
Marjie had Laura on her feet and moving through the living room just as the kitchen door gave way behind them and crashed against the table, and the huge bald man fell inside. The children scrambled in around him. They saw her before the big man even got to his knees. They shouted and started after her.
Marjie had the girl by one arm and her short-cropped hair and dragged her to the stairs, but it was too slow, too slow, and so she screamed at her, “Move! Move you bitch!” as she saw the children running toward them. But the girl would not move any faster and only stared around her, wide-eyed in horror. And then suddenly the children were there, blocking her path, and she remembered what the children had done to Dan and Nick and her dream of them pulling her down was unbearably vivid. The man was up off his knees and coming toward her too, arms reaching out, while the others poured