Page 139 of The Chain

Rachel turns to Pete. She looks up at the floodlight above the porch. Pete follows her gaze.

“She’s The Chain and she’s going to kill us,” Rachel says.

Pete nods.

The twins are behind a low wall. Hitting them will be difficult, so instead, he raises the .45 and shoots out the light.

70

Immediate darkness and confusion. Yelling and an arc of yellow flame from the garage as Daniel opens up with the automatic weapon.

“Hit the deck!” Pete shouts.

Rachel throws herself to the ground.

Tracer rounds fly from the barrel of the gun and hurl themselves into the space where Rachel had been seven-tenths of a second ago. The rounds miss and continue to spin on their long axes, traveling thousands of yards across the night.

Then all the guns open up at once. A .38, a nine-millimeter, and that big assault rifle again. Fire from several angles triangulates two yards above Rachel’s head.

She buries her face in the snow and screams.

None of this matters. The guns, the gunfire, the sickly-sweet smell of gunpowder. What matters is Kylie. She’s in the house somewhere and Rachel is going to get her. Pete is doing a ten-count in his head. Ten seconds on automatic will burn through the magazine on the assault rifle in the garage.

After ten seconds, he looks up. The shooters on the porch have slipped back inside. The old man has gone through his mag and is reloading.

Pete shoots three rounds into the garage to give the man something to think about and then scrambles to a new firing position. Shoot and move. Shoot and move. That’s what kept you alive in a limited-cover firefight, and the big ACP rounds would take you down with a shoulder shot at this range. Might even take you out.

He rolls into the snow to his right, crawls behind a bush, and shoots again. His whole body is aching with need for the fix, but he’ll fight it and them. “Rachel? Are you OK?” Pete says.

No answer.

He has to think of a plan. Any plan. In infantry training, they tell you that a sloppy plan executed immediately is better than a great plan executed an hour later. They’re right about that. Out here he’s going to die. He has to go in.

Maybe fifteen seconds have passed since the shooting began.

Here goes,he thinks.

“Not so fast, smart guy,” someone says, grabbing at him. He ducks a fist coming at his face and blocks a knife coming at his rib cage.

It’s the guard who’d originally found him. He’d forgotten all about that asshole. The man has grabbed his gun hand and is trying to kill him with a large hunting knife. The knife slashes at his face; Pete flinches, and the knife nicks his left cheek. Pete kicks hard into the darkness and connects with soft tissue. He frees his gun hand and shoots once.

There’s a hollow, sickening thump and then silence.

“Pete?” a voice says next to him.

“Rachel?”

“I’m going into the house,” she whispers. “Through the garage, it’s the only way.”

“What’s the plan?”

“We go inside the house, rescue the kids, and kill everybody who isn’t Kylie, Marty, or Stuart,” Rachel says.

“Sounds good to me.”

71

They enter the garage. The shooter is gone but boxes holding something flammable have caught fire and are burning furiously next to a dozen cans of paint. They can’t stay here.