The Servants of Twilight

"If it's cleared up… you've got to leave at once… without me."

" Nonsense."

"This time of year… the weather might clear for only…

a day… or even just… a few hours. You've got to… take advantage of good weather… the moment it comes… get out of the mountains… before the next storm."

"Not without you."

"Can't walk," he said.

"You haven't tried."

"Can't. Hardly… can talk."

Even the effort at conversation weakened him. His breathing grew more labored word by word.

His condition frightened her, and the notion of leaving him alone seemed heartless.

"You couldn't tend the fire here, all by yourself," she protested.

"Sure. Move me… closer to it. Within arm's reach. And pile up…

enough wood… to last a couple of days. I'll be… okay."

"You won't be able to prepare and heat your food-"

"Leave me a couple… candy bars."

" That's not enough."

He scowled at her and, for a moment, managed to put more volume in his voice, forced a steely tone: "You've got to go without me. It's the only way, dammit. It's best for you and Joey… and it's best for me, too, because I'm… not going to get out of here… without the help of a medical evacuation team."

" All right," she said." Okay."

He sagged, exhausted by that short speech. When he spoke again, his voice was not only a whisper but a quavering whisper that sometimes faded out altogether on the ends of words." When you get down… to the lake… you can send help back…

for me."

"Well, it's all moot until I find out whether the storm has let up or not," she said." I better go have a look."

As she began to get up, a man's voice called to them from the mouth of the cave, beyond the double battle of the entrance passage: "We know you're in there! You can't hide from us! We know! "

Spivey's hounds had found them.

70

Acting instinctively, not hesitating to consider the danger of her actions, Christine snatched up the loaded revolver and sprinted across the cave toward the Z-shaped passage that led outside.

"No!" Charlie said.

She ignored him, came to the first bend in the passage, turned right without checking to see if anyone was there, saw only the close rock walls and a vague spot of gray light at the next turn, beyond which lay the last straight stretch of tunnel and then the open hillside. She rushed forth with reckless abandon because that was probably the last thing Spivey's people would expect of her, but also because she couldn't possibly proceed in any other fashion; she was not entirely in control of herself. The crazy, vicious, stupid bastards had driven her out of her home, and put her on the run, had cornered her here in a hole in the ground, and now they were going to kill her baby.

The unseen man shouted again: "We know you're in there!"

She had never before in her life been hysterical, but she was hysterical now, and she knew it, couldn't help it. In fact, she didn't care that she was hysterical because it felt good, damned good, just to let go, to give in to blind rage and a savage desire to spill their blood, to make them feel some pain and fear.

With the same irrational disregard for danger that she had shown when turning the first blind corner in the passageway, she now turned the second, and ahead of her was the last stretch of the tunnel, then open air, and a figure silhouetted in the gray morning light, a man in a parka with a hood pulled up on his head. He was holding a rifle-no, a machine gun-but he was pointing it more or less at the ground, not directly ahead into the tunnel, because he wasn't expecting her to rush straight out at him and make such an easy target of herself, not in a million years, but that was just what she was doing, like a crazy kamikaze, and to hell with the consequences. She took him by surprise, and as he started to raise the muzzle of the machine gun to cover her, she fired once, twice, three times, hitting him every time, because he was so close that it was almost impossible to miss him.

The first shot jolted him, seemed to lift him off his feet, and the second shot flung him backwards, and the third shot knocked him down.

The machine gun flew out of his hands, and for a moment Christine had a hope of getting hold of it, but by the time she stepped out of the cave, that immensely desirable weapon was clattering down the rocky slope.

She saw that the snow had stopped falling, that the wind was no longer blowing, and that there were three people on the slope behind the man she had killed. One of the three, an incredibly big man, off to her left, was already diving for cover, reacting to the shots that had wasted his buddy, though that first body had just hit the ground and bounced and was not yet still. The other two Twilighters weren't as quick as the giant. A short stocky woman stood directly in front of Christine, no more than ten or twelve feet away, a perfect target, and Christine reflexively pulled off a shot, and that woman went down, too, her face exploding like a punctured balloon full of red water.