Andrew Klavan - The truth of the matter

“You have a cell?”

She left the room to get it. I heard her footsteps on the kitchen linoleum. A moment later, she was back with her cell phone.

“The kitchen phone is dead too,” she said.

The first tremor of fear went through me. I opened her cell. Looked at it. “No signal.”

Margaret shook her head. “That’s impossible. There’s a cell tower just up the road. I always get full bars.” She took the phone. Stared at it. Stared at me. “How is that possible?”

I didn’t want her to see the fear in my eyes, but I knew she did. My voice was hoarse and tense as I said to her: “Get the boy out of here.”

It took only a second for Margaret to understand. It was the Homelanders. It had to be. They had cut her phone lines, jammed her cell.

Now I could see the fear come into Margaret’s eyes too. She gave a quick glance at her son, a quick shake of her head. When she spoke again, she dropped her voice low, hoping the boy wouldn’t hear.

“They must already be here. Outside.”

I turned to look at the window. Nothing visible out there but darkness; night. But I knew she had to be right. Why would they have cut the phones if they weren’t here, ready to make their move?

The boy went on staring at us over the back of the couch. I sensed his worried eyes on me. I tried to look relaxed. But I dropped my voice to a whisper too.

“We probably don’t have a lot of time.”

“No time, more like,” Margaret said.

“Is there a way out from upstairs?”

She thought for a second. Then she gestured at her son. “He’s light enough to climb down the drainpipe. He’s done it before.”

“Wait till they’re in the house,” I said. “Then tell him to go into the woods and hide.”

She was already moving to the sofa. She grabbed Larry’s hand.

“Come on,” she said.

“Where we going, Mommy?” Larry piped.

“Up to the attic.”

He dragged his heels. “But I want to see the end of the movie.”

Margaret gave his arm a good stiff tug. “Don’t you argue with me, boy. Come on!”

“But Mommy…!”

“Hurry!”

With her other hand, she took Sport by the collar and pulled him along as well.

They all went up the stairs quickly.

My eyes went back to the front window. Out there in the dark, looking in at us here in the lighted house, they’d be able to see every move we made.

I went to the light switch. I turned the top light off, then moved around the room, killing whatever lights I found-including the TV still showing the DVD. There were still lights in the hall, some in the kitchen. I turned those off too. Now the house was almost as dark as the night outside.

I waited in that dark. Long minutes went by. I looked out the kitchen windows. I saw nothing. I listened. The house creaked and settled, but there was no other sound.

I began to wonder if maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe the Homelanders weren’t here after all.

After a few more minutes, I felt my way through the dark house back into the living room. I took a step toward the front window, to see if I could get another angle on the outdoors, maybe spot something on the front drive.

Before I took a second step, the door burst open and the Homelanders came charging in.

Caught There were three of them. They had machine guns with flashlights mounted on the barrels. The effect of the lights was awful, like something out of a horror movie. All I could see in the darkness of the house were the crisscrossing white beams, and the black death-dealing bores of the gun barrels, and the gunmen’s twisted grimaces and hate-filled eyes half illuminated in the outglow of the light.

The deafening crash of the door bursting in stunned me. The moving light beams dazzled me. But in the instant before they spotted my location, I managed to make my move.

I leapt away from the window and dove for the living room floor.

“There he is!” someone shouted.

There was a coughing burst of gunfire. A stuttering flash of flame. I heard glass breaking as bullets flew through the room. I heard Sport barking wildly somewhere far away. I hit the floor and rolled beneath the crisscrossing beams of light.

I rolled to my feet and ran in the direction of the dining room archway. The light beams scanned the darkness. I saw the archway-the dark shape of it in the half-lit shadows. Then the lights found me. I dove again as the gunfire exploded behind me. I felt a terrifying breath of air as a bullet whistled past my ear.

I hit the floor and somersaulted, rolling through the arch. I dodged to the side as the lights went back and forth through the darkness above me like the spotlights at some nightmare movie premiere. The beams flashed in a mirror on the dining room wall. The guns stuttered death and the mirror shattered, the light flying everywhere in a weirdly beautiful and sparkling chaos.

I got behind the wall and crouched low. I heard a Homelander bark a gruff command.

“Find the lights. I’ll find him.”

One flashlight beam broke off from the others and moved toward the dining room, where I was. The other two must’ve gone off looking for a light switch.

I crouched behind the wall, waiting. As long as the house lights were off, I had a small advantage: I could track them by their flashlights, but they couldn’t track me.

Now, though, as I crouched, waiting, my heart hammering in my chest, a wave of weakness went over me. In the first moments of the Homelanders’ invasion, a rush of adrenaline had given me new energy. But underneath that energy, I was still totally weak and exhausted from my illness and from the memory attacks. I didn’t know if I had the strength to fight now. I knew I couldn’t fight for long. Whatever I did, it was going to have to be quick.

The flashlight beam came toward the room, sweeping back and forth, trying to pick me out of the darkness. I crouched low behind the wall waiting.

The flashlight’s advance halted.

“Turn the lights on, would you!” the gunman shouted with a curse. He didn’t want to come through the archway until he could see. And yet, he started up again, kept coming forward cautiously toward the archway as I crouched there, waiting.

A voice shouted back, “I’m looking for the switch!”

The gunman stepped through the arch. Instantly, he swept the light toward me, searching me out, ready to gun me down. Because I was crouched so low, the light passed over my head. Still, the gunman spotted me in the outglow.

But by then, it was too late.

I hurled myself at him, coming in under the barrel of the gun. With all the strength I had left, I shouldered the gun barrel upward. At the same time, I struck at him low and hard. The gunman let out a gasp of pain and doubled over. His body went slack and started toppling down.

With my other hand, I grabbed the barrel of the gun. As he fell, already unconscious, I wrestled the weapon away from him, holding him up only long enough to pull the strap over his head.

Now I had the gun.

Just then, the lights went on.

There was only one Homelander in the living room. It was the fat guy with the stupid face who had been guarding the entrance to the compound. He was holding his machine gun leveled right at me, right at my head- and he was ready to fire and gun me down.

He had one problem. I was holding a machine gun too. And it was leveled at him. And my finger was also on the trigger.

“Drop it,” the fat guy growled.

“You first,” I growled back.

I moved into the living room, circling away from him, trying to get in a position where I could keep an eye on both him and the guard who had fallen unconscious in the dining room. The fat Homelander circled away from me too. We both kept our guns trained on each other.