"If they had guns they'd be shooting them at the house by now. They don't sound like paragons of self-restraint."
"So?"
"Just hold off a second."
Luther treated himself to a spare deep breath, almost a sigh. Bad for the glands, to rocket-fuel himself for action and then do nothing. To fill the gap he said, "What's a paragon?''
Art looked comically taken aback. "Umm… a good example. Like an expert or a perfect expression.''
Luther chewed on this for a beat. "Why didn't you just say they was all too squirrelly not to shoot?''
"Right."
"Shit, man, nobody talks normal human anymore."
"Sorry."
"Stop apologizing. I don't need nobody watching my back who only has apologies to whip out."
"Right. Would you like to go shoot someone, so you'll get off my back?"
Luther grinned big and wide, pointing at Art. "You should see your face. Now, that's the face I need at my back."
The front door took another jarring hit. A nick-dent sprang across the inner facing for the first time.
"That gonna hold?" said Luther.
"Not if he hits it for half a goddamned hour."
"I'm gonna go around to that little window in the garage."
Another slam of wind silenced the activity outside for a moment. After a few more desultory (but no less startling) whacks and bangs from outside, the attack seemed to stop, or pause. Coffee break, perhaps.
"You're sweating like a steambath, man," Luther said. "Drink some water when you get a minute." Art was astonished by the guy's cool under fire.
The perspiration on Art's palms was hot and slick against the custom rubber Pachmayr grips on the Heckler-Koch. Luther probably thought Art was the world's biggest gun poseur. Expensive guns, fancy add-ons, target practice. All that roundy-round with Lorelle about morals versus ballistics. Luther had scratched the Bry-Guy outside with less deliberation than Art would have applied to scratching a fleabite. He envied Luther's attitude. It was practical, pragmatic, unstinting. Art realized that since Luther had pegged one intruder already, now Art was expected to ante up in an equal-share kind of blood bond. Art was transfixed near the kitchen, jerking at every sound, clutching one of his overpriced firearms, wondering if he would have to look in another person's eyes and shoot them. And, if Luther's tale held true, remember a stranger's face for the rest of his life. His pal Derek had said the same thing about the guy he supposedly shot.
Art's face grew warm and he knew he was blushing. What was next-panic farts?
The window shutter above the kitchen sink took a couple of test hits before Art heard another destructive sound, repeated banging, like metalwork, higher up. The outsiders were trying to take out the lights. Doing a good job of it, too, from the racket. The banks covering the north face of the house, from the corners, ceased to exist in a cascade of ruptured glass and broken sensors. Art knew the sounds.
If these were illusions, why not take fierce control of them? It did not matter what was real or what was not. This wasn't some abstract, theoretical situation in which he was locked and loaded, testy and nerve-racked. Very Western thinking, that, with rigid rules and structures. You should, he thought, access the head that inspires you to transform a shopping mall into a translucent glass cathedral. Apply your skill to your actual life. See what happens.
Another weighty thud, from the front door. Apparently the assailant had given up tool use and was now running against the barrier. Or maybe Luther had taken the guy out. But Art had heard no roaring report of the shotgun, talking dirty.
Luther was back in the kitchen. "I can't get the little window crank-thing to work. Can't see to shoot."
Art motioned him over. Luther squatted close, for confab.
"How about we don't do any shooting at all?"
Luther gulped in surprise. "Say what?"
"How about," said Art, "we just open the door?"
Luther rocked back on his heels, then wiped his brow, then split another huge grin, brightening. "Now, that requires balls. I like it. We'd make a great comedy team, you and me. Do road pictures. Yep, I'm for it." He motioned toward the door. "You go low, I'll stay high and cover you. Your house, your rules."
Keeping the pistol right-handed, Art quietly pulled the big bolts on the door. Blitz was still barking.
Time sped up to fast-forward as Art yanked the door. It stuck on the first try. He put one foot against the frame and almost dislocated his shoulder hurling the door wide open, getting his gun up to eye level, shouting into the incoming storm so loudly that his throat hurt.
"Don't you fucking move, you piece of-"
The person standing outside sprang so quickly, and was in Art's face so fast, that he seemed to scoot around real time. Art's gun went spinning across the floor and the next thing he knew, he was being swarmed by a mad savage painted up like a psychedelic Indian.
Who went limp on top of him when Luther reversed the shotgun and cracked him on the back of the head, a skillful, well-aimed, smart tap that negated all the incoming fury in an instant. He stepped over both of them to slam and relock the door.
"You got an ax stuck in your front door," Luther said as he stepped over the two of them to resecure the entrance. Art fought not to black out.
"Lookit this guy," said Luther, rolling over the prostrate form of the invader, who was, in fact, clad in a zebra skin. The front door had a frightening amount of exterior damage but was now resecured, the only clue on the inside face being the tiny impact blister Art had seen to appear on the otherwise smooth surface. The ax he and Luther had pried out of the door was the sort of thing woodsmen used to split rails, and Art had a pretty good estimate of where it had come from.
It's like those wild West serial adventures,
Art thought. Take out the leader and the whole tribe of savages backs off. Apparently the other outsiders had given up, or gone to beat on the immutable monument of the radar dish, or blown out to sea. Who really knew?
The guy piled in the entryway like dropped laundry was definitely a man, definitely wearing no other clothing apart from neon-logoed running shoes, no socks. He was bald and still had fresh cuts healing on his head, which was newly and indifferently shaven. Black paste raccooned his eyes and his face was striped in red paint that looked queerly familiar. Braided thongs and elephant-hide wristlet. He was wearing a coyote skull on a piece of lamp cord tied around his neck.
When Luther thumbed back the guy's eyelids, Art saw brown eyes and pupils contracted to saltshaker pinpricks like spatters of ink.
"This looks like ole Malcolm," Luther said, shaking his head.
"Spilsbury's," said Art, nearly simultaneously. He related the story of the break-in, downbeach, and the near calamity that had almost finished off his Jeep.
"Maybe he's pissed off you almost ran over him."
The feeling hit Art again, the gnawing constancy of being forced to pay for everything that happened to him. All at once.
Luther peered at the coyote skull (alas, poor Yorick), and stripped it away. "So he took all this stuff from that other house, that Pillsbury? Man, I don't know how they stayed standing in this shitstorm. That wind through the door, just now? Tried to peel my eyelids off.''
"I think they had some high-octane encouragement," said Art. "Price's tiny time pills."
"Oh, yeah. Fuck. Not counting what other shit there was to suck up. They probably didn't even feel the cold."
Blitz had left his post near the windows to sniff the unmoving form of Malcolm (or whoever this really was), then did a patrol turn of the house, then resumed his original spot.
Art considered his home's latest uninvited guest. "He's not dead, is he?"
"Naw." Luther checked the pulse at the wrist and throat. "I think we should wake him up, though. Maybe tie him up, then wake him up."
"What about his buddies outside?"
"You hear 'em banging? I say we don't worry about them until we hear 'em banging. If they were still hanging around, all them windows in a row on your beach side are too good to resist."
Somehow, the authority in Art's realm had surreptitiously settled on Luther's shoulders. But he was right, and Art suspected that Price's idea of chemical recreation did not allow for a great deal of linear logic. Art and Luther had been smart, but they had been lucky, too. It might not occur to the marauders to come back for another try.
Luther reached over and smacked Art on the shoulder. "Hey. You here or not?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm here." His entire body felt flushed and warm.
"Don't you fuckin go all girly on me now. We got him." Luther wiped away his own stress sweat. "Fuckin' zebra."
"It's not real," said Art. "Spilsbury's had a lot of decor in early Great White Hunter."
"So these dudes got too high and instituted their own back-to-nature movement, right here on the beach?"
"Maybe he can tell us. Somehow I don't think the story will really matter."
Luther rose, kneecaps cracking audibly, and checked the garage.
"They sprung the damned door again.''
Art stood up, shaking less now, his movements more controllable. "I'll see if I can get it to stay shut. Where's the dog?"
Luther shielded his eyes with his palm against the glare from the hallway emergency lights. "Looks like he's sleeping on duty. Near the window. Listen, you want me to bend that door back, y'know, give it a little more gorilla power?''
"No, take five while you've got it. I'll fix it."
"Your house. Fair enough." Luther cracked a plastic bottle of water from the deactivated fridge and began to chug it down.
***
It took fifteen seconds, give or take, for Art to work his way over to the triangular rent in the garage door. The whole thing would have to be replaced. The spit-and-baling-wire method was not even working, right now. This was the thought in his head when he heard the shotgun go off, inside the house.
For a fraction of a moment, it was louder than the storm.
Then, suddenly, it wasn't noisy enough.
Art sprang back into the house, skidding on the floor and seeing a hole in the kitchen wall the size of half a dinner plate, like a big bite edged with fresh blood. Luther was splayed atop the intruder- Malcolm?-his wide-legged fall dumping him half out of the kitchen.
Art thought of World War II movies, of guys throwing themselves on top of live grenades. Blitz was barking, braced, holding back, snarling wetly for added threat.
Luther emitted a horrible braying sound, that of an animal in the iron jaws of a trap, tearing loose one of its own limbs to get free. He lolled over and grabbed the hole in the wall, trying to upright himself, using just his upper-body leverage. The rest of him was not working. Art was still standing eight feet away with his mouth hanging open. The crotch of Luther's pants was shredded and oily with dark blood that had been inside of him, just a second ago.
"Mother fucker." he gasped. "Foxed me."
Malcolm (or whoever it turned out to be for real) had rolled, captured the Benelli, which had been left leaning against the foyer wall, and pulled the trigger once as Luther tried to stop him. Now the man in fake zebra hide was on his back, his face distended in a frozen wax scream, eyes bugged, wearing the last expression he would ever display. No breathing, no pulse, not anymore. Luther had managed to break his neck while most of his own left thigh was being vaporized by double-ought buckshot.
It no longer mattered who Malcolm really was.
Art tried to tend his new ally, but the white towels from the kitchen drawer turned sodden crimson too quickly.
"Ya can't put pressure," Luther said between clenched, shallow breaths. "I think that cocksucker got my artery down there. Shit!" Art grabbed his phone, the response of a person who has finally acknowledged the situation has gotten out of hand. Nothing. Cellular, ditto. Emergency evacuation by the navy, no way.
"Suzanne!" Art screamed toward the back of the house. "Get your ass out here and help me!"
No movement from the bedroom.
Luther went
gauuuu
and wrenched upward in an excruciating spasm. "I can't feel my hands.'' He was sitting in an enormous pool of blood that Art could see spreading, even in the dark. He was shaking now, vibrating with shock trauma. "Art?"
"I'm right here." He yelled for Suzanne again. No good.
"It ain't working," said Luther. "I'm sorry." Now his teeth were outlined in blood.
"You did everything right. No apologies. I don't want anybody at my back that just has apologies to whip out."
Luther almost smiled at that, but could not force it past the pain, and his imminent system shutdown. "No, I mean… I'm sorry about Price. I never shoulda listened to his bullshit, played along, you know?"
"To hell with him," said Art. "What can I do?"
"Can't do nothin'." He coughed up a phlegmy rattle from deep in his chest, unable to keep his head up. "This is gonna sound… stupid."
"Anything."
Luther was able to roll one eye to meet Art's gaze. "I want you to kiss me," he said. "Kiss me and send me on my way."
Another grenade, another shotgun blast, erupted inside Art's brain. Say what1\par "Hurry. You ain't all that bad-lookin, y'know?"
Luther convulsed again, hard enough to lift his nerve-dead legs, then slap them down on the red-moist floor. Art was certain that was it. But Luther's eye still transfixed him.