House (35 page)

Susan hesitated then set the ax on the floor.

Fear flashed down Jack's back. Not a single bone in his body agreed with anything similar to a plan that included him rushing an armed Stewart. It would be like leaping off a cliff.

But in that moment, Jack ignored the shaking in his limbs, leaped around Susan, grabbed up the ax, and rushed Stewart.

He was halfway there before Susan's cry cut through his ears. “No, Jack!”

No, Jack?
He was already committed! He had to do something! Jack responded by screaming as he threw himself forward, ax swinging down.

Oddly enough, Stewart wasn't shooting. In fact, he wasn't demonstrating any sign of concern at all, unlike the Jacks they'd just killed. Stewart wasn't a reflection of him.

At the last second, after the ax was about to complete its trajectory, Stewart moved, easily sidestepping the falling blade. Jack was pulled off balance by the heavy weapon. The butt of Stewart's shotgun slammed into his head as the ax bit through empty air.

He released the handle to catch his own fall and knew then, before the bone-jarring crunch of his knees smashing into the concrete, that whatever strength Susan was talking about came from neither boldness nor idiocy.

He hit the floor hard and felt Stewart's boot crash into his side.

“Fools,” the man spat.

“Don't!” Susan shouted, rushing forward.

The shotgun boomed. “Stay back!

Jack pushed himself to his knees, blinking to clear his head. They were restraining Susan and Stephanie, who was protesting loudly. She was silenced with a loud
smack
.

Susan screamed something, but Jack's mind was yanked back to his own predicament as Stewart grabbed him by his arm and hauled him to his feet. Shoved him to the center of the room.

They'd forced Susan and Stephanie to their knees. Blood dripped from Susan's nose. She stared at Jack with sad eyes. Stephanie's cheek was bright red. But they appeared otherwise unharmed.

Stewart forced Jack to his knees beside them.

“Wait for me,” Susan whispered.

“Shut your stinking little pie—”

Susan screamed and shot to her feet while Stewart was still standing over Jack. “Now, Jack!”

He didn't know what he was supposed to do
now
, but he dived at Stewart with as much strength as he could assemble on such short notice.

Susan had her hands on his gun when Jack's head crashed into Stewart's head. His left ear was all that came between their skulls, a piece of flesh that had never been designed to withstand such a hit.

Stewart screamed.

Jack plowed forward, threatening to topple the man. From the corner of his eye he saw Pete rushing to help.

Saw Stephanie throw herself into his path like a woman possessed. She brought her knee up into his groin with enough force to stop an elephant, screaming with Susan to maximize her effort.

Betty was screaming as well, but none of their cries mattered, because now Stewart was falling with Jack, and Susan had the gun.

She flipped it around, crammed the butt against her shoulder, and put a round into the ceiling to make sure there was no mistaking that she knew how to use the thing.

“Against the wall!” she shouted, aiming for Betty's head. Then at Pete. “Against the wall!”

Jack rolled off Stewart and came to his feet, breathing hard.

For several seconds Betty, Pete, and Stewart were too stunned by the reversal to move.

“Move,” Susan said.

They moved slowly to the wall, eyes fixed, still unsure they had actually been foiled.

“Make sure the doors are locked,” Susan said. “Jack, hurry.”

He wasn't sure what she had in mind, but he ran to the main door and secured the dead bolts.

“You'll never make it out,” Stewart said, resolve back. “You're outnumbered.”

“Shut up,” Susan said.

Jack hurried for the door that led to the back exit tunnel, eyes on Pete, who even now was fixated on Stephanie. The dead bolt was already engaged.

“Are you going to kill them?” Stephanie asked. “Maybe we should kill them. They're not real people, right?”

“That won't help us,” Susan said. “We need to—”

Rap, rap, rap.

Susan jerked her head to the door behind Jack. Knuckles sounded on the door that led to the exit.

Rap, rap, rap!

“No matter what happens,” Susan said. “Remember . . .”

The door shook, then bowed under a tremendous force. Black fog seeped into the study.

“. . . that light always pierces the darkness.”

The door shook violently and bowed again, this time several feet, straining against whatever held it in place.

Jack rushed for the ax. Snatched it up.

“Check the chamber,” he said again.

She did.

The door behind them—the one that led into the living room—began to rattle. It too bent. As did the third door and the fourth door.

“Light came into the darkness, but the darkness didn't understand it,” Susan said. “Look to the light. Only the light can save you from yourself.”

“What's there?” Stephanie asked, eyes darting from door to door.

“He's come,” Susan said.

But it sounded like more than one
he
. Jack couldn't help thinking that all of the undead, however many hundreds of them crowded this house of his making, had come and were pressing in on all sides, leaving no escape.

“Jack.” Stephanie was whispering, scared. Her eyes darted from door to door. “I don't know what's happening . . .”

The knuckles on the door that led to the exit tunnel rapped again.

The door to the exit tunnel blew open. Wisps of black fog roiled in, but nothing else. The other three doors stilled.

Then they came, like a pack of jackals, a dozen, two dozen Jacks, surging into the room. Half broke to the right, half to the left, forming two fronts like a forward guard.

Jack backpedaled to where Susan and Stephanie stood in the middle of the room.

Still they came, thirty, forty, crowding by the door now, glaring at him, gripping weapons, but otherwise waiting.

All with tin masks.

Except for a handful of inbreds that Jack now recognized from the hall, they were all Jacks. All him. He was facing himself, and it made his knees tremble. Stewart, Betty, and Pete were now content to look on, wearing smirks.

“Susan?”

She had the gun up, but she wasn't shooting. What good would one gun do against so many?

Stephanie held onto Jack's arm tightly. That was one good thing, he thought. Stephanie. She was here, facing no less than he. They would die together. An appropriate end to the misery that had haunted them for so long.

To a man, the Jacks' eyes were on his. Not a single one averted their stare, and for a moment, not a single one blinked.

Then the Jacks by the door parted, and Jack knew that their waiting was over.

Tin Man stepped into the room.

41
6:14 am

THE ROOM STILLED. TIN MAN WALKED toward them and stopped ten feet away at the edge of the lines formed by the Jacks.

He faced them in stoic silence. In his right hand he held the shotgun. The wounds to his arm and his forehead had soaked the bandages, but they hadn't slowed him down.

For a few seconds he just stared at them through the jagged holes in his tin mask. His breathing was hard and steady.

“The wages of sin is death,” Tin Man said. “In the end they always pay up.”

Susan made no attempt to aim the shotgun at him. The ax in Jack's hands felt small and flimsy. They didn't stand a chance.

“Drop the shotgun.”

Susan released the weapon, and it clattered to the ground.

Tin Man's eyes shifted to her, and he regarded her for a moment.

“I'm sorry, Jack,” Stephanie whispered frantically. “This is all my fault. They're all staring at me . . . I'm so sorry.”

She was seeing herself, Stephanies, not Jacks, and their stares were telling her that she was guilty.

Jack eased sideways on trembling legs, putting himself between Stephanie and White. His heart was banging in his chest. Like the banging of so many doors in this house of his heart.

“Welcome to your house,” Tin Man said. He grunted with satisfaction. “Do you like it?”

He unceremoniously lifted the shotgun. Silence sucked all but the sound of ragged breathing from the room. The Jacks stared.

“Kill her,” Tin Man said.

At first Jack didn't know what he was ordering. With the tin mask, it was hard to tell whom the man was addressing.

“Kill Susan,” White said. “Or I will kill all three of you.”

“What?”

“If you kill her, I will let you and Stephanie go. Like I let Randy go.”

“Randy?” He'd hardly thought of Randy since entering the basement. He'd been released? What about Leslie?

“Free as a bird,” Tin Man said. “Kill her.”

Jack couldn't speak. He couldn't kill Susan. And he couldn't
not
kill her and thereby kill Stephanie.

Both choices were unforgivable.

Tin Man breathed hard and slow behind the mask. Jack's mind spun through the most glaring elements of this mad moment.

Element: This was their last chance. Dawn was here.

Element: Tin Man was lying. He would kill them both anyway.

Element: Tin Man had always wanted them to kill Susan, so he probably
wasn't
lying.

Element: He owed Stephanie his life. He'd badly mistreated her in this last year of mourning. She didn't deserve to die. He had to save her.

Element: He could save her with one swing of the ax in his hands.

Element: He could never swing the ax in his hands at Susan!

The thoughts overlapped one another, tilting his orientation toward no clear conclusion.

“Would thirty pieces of silver help?”

Thirty pieces of silver?

“You know you can do it,” Tin Man said between breaths. “They all want you to do it. All of you.”

As if on cue, all four doors began to rattle. Then shake violently. Bent inward. More black fog.

None of the Jacks turned to look. Their eyes were on Jack.

The doors crashed open, pushed by a sea of Jacks who flowed into the room like a swarm of insects. An army of rushing Tin Man protégés who were Jack, every last one fixed upon him.

Stephanie screamed.

Jack saw beyond them, beyond the doors, where hundreds, maybe thousands of them crowded the basement hallways and rooms. The fog had given birth to a thousand Jacks.

The Jacks packed every conceivable corner, leaving a ten-foot circle at the center where Jack, Stephanie, and Susan stood.

Their tin masks and weapons clicked and clanked, and their shoes thudded, but they didn't speak. They only drilled him with their eyes through jagged holes.

“Dear God!” Stephanie whimpered. “Oh, dear God.”

Tin Man glared at Jack. Impossible to tell if he was relishing the moment or bitter.

“You know you want to kill her.”

He'd addressed Jack, but now all the Jacks answered by shifting eagerly on their feet, some bouncing as if to nod. All still drilling Jack with their stares. Their breathing quickened, and now a few couldn't restrain the odd grunt or whimper. They were desperate for him to kill Susan.

Why Susan? Why such an obsession with this one girl?

“Your heart is dark. You have to look to the light,” Susan said.

Her words seemed to agitate the Jacks even more. They swayed and jostled and clicked against one another.

“What light?” Stephanie cried.

Tin Man moved toward Stephanie. “Don't be a complete fool,” Tin Man said. “Kill her.”

Jack's eyes settled on a Jack standing perfectly still to his left. Only it wasn't a Jack. It wore a tin mask and was roughly the same size as the others, but it was dressed differently.

It was dressed like Randy.

Was Randy.

White saw Jack's shift in attention and glanced over at Randy.

“I killed Leslie,” Randy said.

Just that. Just
I killed Leslie
, as if he was at once both proud and ashamed of the fact.

Tin Man swung his shotgun to face the man and pulled the trigger. The lead took Randy in the chest and pushed him into the wall of Jacks behind before dropping him to the ground.

The energy from the sea of Jacks doubled. Their sound grew to a dull roar of banging and bouncing. They were urging Jack. Pleading with him.

He felt compelled. Irresistibly drawn to satisfy the demands of these Jacks.

Tin Man swung his gun back in line with Jack. “Kill her.”

Jack hesitated for a long moment. He spoke without fully understanding himself.

“No.”

Almost immediately the Jacks stilled, as if stunned. He said it again, to assure himself that he'd really said it.

“No.”

Silence. Breathing.

“You're a fool,” Tin Man said.

Susan took one step out between him and Stephanie, then turned her back on him and looked at Jack.

Tears wet her cheeks, but there was a softness in her eyes.

“Kill her,” Tin Man growled, angry, shaken. It was the first time Jack had seen the man lose any control. “She has to die!”

“You think one dead body will satisfy his lust for death?” Susan asked Jack. “Not unless that person has no guilt. Not unless they are blameless. Only one Son of Man can do that. Look to the light, and you'll understand. I'll show you the way. Look to the Son of Man.”

Son of Man?

Tin Man seemed to become unglued behind Susan. It made no sense. He could just pull the trigger and end all of this. Instead, he was shaking.

“Kill her,” he roared.

Susan spun to face him. “He said no!”