By the light of the moon

both hands.
    Before Shepherd could get a firm grip, before he could spread
his legs and wedge his shoes against the jamb, Dylan shoved him
into the living room. The kid stumbled and dropped to his hands and
knees, which proved to be a fortuitous fall, for in that instant
the gunmen opened fire.
    The woodpecker-fast rapping of submachine guns – even
noisier than they were in movies, as hard and loud as jackhammers
knocking steel chisels through high-density concrete –
shattered the stillness, shattered the kitchen windows, the
dining-room windows. More than two submachine guns, perhaps three,
maybe four. Underlying this extreme rapid fire came the
lower-pitched, more reverberant, and slower-paced reports of what
might have been a heavier-caliber rifle, something that sounded as
though it had enough punch to knock the shooter on his ass with
recoil.
    At the first rattle of gunfire, Dylan pitched forward onto the
living-room floor. He knocked Shepherd's arms out from under him,
dropping the kid off his hands and knees, flat on the
tongue-and-groove maple.
    'Where's all the ice?' Shepherd asked, as though unaware of the
ceaseless fusillades pumping into the house.
    Following the shattering of the windows, following the ringing
cascades of glass, wood splintered, plaster cracked, bullet-rapped
pipes sang plonk-plonk-plonk in the walls.
    Dylan's heart raced rabbit-fast, and he knew what small game
animals must feel like when their pastoral fields became killing
grounds on the first day of hunting season.
    The gunfire seemed to come from two directions only. Out of the
east, toward the rear of the house. And out of the south.
    If assassins were on all four sides of the structure – and
he was sure they were – then to the west and north, they were
lying low. They were too professional to establish a crossfire that
might kill them or their comrades.
    'Belly-crawl with me, Shep.' He raised his voice above the
cacophony. 'Belly-crawl, come on, let's scoot! '
    Shepherd hugged the floor, head turned toward Dylan but eyes
closed. 'Ice.'
    The living room featured two south-facing windows, and four that
presented a view to the west. The glass in the south wall had
dissolved in the first instant of the barrage, but the west windows
remained intact, untouched even by ricochets.
    'Make like a snake,' Dylan urged.
    Shep remained frozen: 'Ice, ice, ice.'
    Relentless raking volleys punched the south wall, penetrated to
the living room, chopping wooden furniture into kindling, smashing
lamps, vases. Scores of rounds punched upholstered furniture, each
with a thick flat slap that unnerved Dylan, maybe because this
might be what flesh sounded like when a bullet tore into it.
    Although his face was inches from Shep's face, Dylan shouted,
partly to be sure he was heard above the din of gunfire, partly in
the hope of stirring Shep to action, partly because he was angry
with his brother, but mostly because he seethed again with that
righteous rage he had first felt in the house on Eucalyptus Avenue,
furious about the bastards who always had their way by force, who
resorted to violence, first, second, last, and always. 'Damn it,
Shep, are you going to let them kill us the way they killed Mom?
Cut us down and leave us here to rot? Are you going to let them get
away with it again ? Are you, Shep, damn you, Shep, are
you ?'
    Lincoln Proctor had killed their mother, and these gunmen were
opposed to Proctor and to his life's work, but as far as Dylan was
concerned, Proctor and these thugs were on the same team. They just
wore different unit patches in the army of darkness.
    Stirred either by Dylan's passion and anger, or perhaps by the
delayed realization that they were besieged, Shep stopped chanting
ice. His eyes popped open. Terror had found him.
    Dylan's heart double-clutched, shifting first into neutral when
it skipped a beat or two, then shifting into higher gear, because
he thought Shep would fold them, right here and now, without Jilly,
who had reached the front hall.
    Instead, Shepherd decided to make like a snake. He polished the
floor with his belly as he squirmed from the dining room doorway
into the downstairs hall, angling across the northeast quadrant of
the living room.
    Raised on his forearms, locomoting on his elbows and on the toes
of his shoes, the kid moved so fast that Dylan had trouble keeping
up with him.
    Chips of plaster, splinters of wood, chunks of foam padding, and
other debris rained on them as they crawled.