By the light of the moon

his eyes closed
and thought processes frozen, he remained resistant to sweet
talk.
    Time and quiet. Although they couldn't buy much time, every
minute gained might be the minute during which Shep would come back
to them. Deep quiet was beyond attainment during this jihad, but
any reduction in the bang and clangor would help the kid find a way
out of that corner of ice.
    Dylan crossed the hallway and threw open the door to the guest
bedroom. 'In here.'
    Jilly seemed to be able to tug Shepherd along in a reasonably
fast shuffle.
    The impact of the fierce barrage sent shudders upward through
the walls of the house. The second-floor windowpanes rattled in
their frames.
    Moving ahead of Jilly and Shep, Dylan hurried into the bedroom,
to a walk-in closet. He switched on the light.
    A cord dangled from a pull-down trapdoor in the closet ceiling.
He yanked on the cord, lowering the trap.
    Downstairs, the deafening volume of gunfire, which had sounded
like the fiercest moment during the Nazi siege of Leningrad, as
Dylan had once seen it portrayed on the History Channel, abruptly
grew louder.
    He wondered how many major splintering hits the wall studs could
sustain before structural damage became critical and one or another
corner of the house sagged.
    'Ice, ice, ice.'
    Arriving at the closet door with Shep, referring to the ungodly
racket on the lower floor, Jilly said, 'We got a double scoop of
Apocalypse now.'
    'With sprinkles.' A ladder in three folded segments was mounted
to the back of the trapdoor. Dylan lowered it.
    'Some of Proctor's experimental subjects must've developed weird
talents a lot scarier than ours.'
    'What do you mean?'
    'These guys don't know what we can do, but they're so wet-pants
scared of what it might be, they want us seriously dead,
faster than fast.'
    Dylan hadn't thought about that. He didn't like thinking
about it. Before them, Proctor's nanobots had evidently produced
monsters. Everyone expected him and Jilly and Shep to be monsters,
too.
    'What?' Jilly asked disbelievingly. 'You want us to go up that
freakin' ladder?'
    'Yeah.'
    'That's death.'
    'It's the attic.'
    'The attic is death, a dead end.'
    'Everywhere we can go is a dead end. This is the only way we can
buy some time for Shep.'
    'They'll look in the attic.'
    'Not right away.'
    'I hate this,' she declared.
    'You don't see me dancing.'
    'Ice, ice, ice.'
    Dylan said to Jilly, 'You go first.'
    'Why me?'
    'You can coax Shep from the top while I push from below.'
    The gunfire ceased, but the memory of it still rang in Dylan's
ears.
    'They're coming.'
    Jilly said, 'Crap.'
    'Go.'
    'Crap.'
    'Up.'
    'Crap.'
    'Now, Jilly.'

40
    The attic limited their options, put them in the
position of trapped rats, offered them nothing but gloom and dust
and spiders, but Jilly ascended the sloped ladder because the attic
was the only place they could go.
    As she climbed, her shoulder-slung purse banged against her hip
and briefly got hooked on the long scissoring hinges from which the
ladder was hung. She had lost the Coupe DeVille, all her luggage,
her laptop, her career as a comedian, even her significant other
– dear adorable green Fred – but she was damned if
she'd give up her purse under any circumstances. It contained only
a few dollars, breath mints, Kleenex, lipstick, compact, a
hairbrush, nothing that would change her life if kept or destroy it
if lost, but supposing that she miraculously survived this visit to
Casa O'Conner, she looked forward to freshening her lipstick and
brushing her hair because at this dire moment, anyway, having the
leisure to primp a little appealed to her as a delicious luxury on
a par with limousines, presidential suites in five-star hotels, and
Beluga caviar.
    Besides, if she had to die far too young with a brain full of
nanomachines, because of a brain full of nanomachines, she
wanted to leave as pretty a corpse as possible – assuming
that she didn't take a head shot that left her face as distorted as
a portrait by Picasso.
    Negative Jackson, vortex of pessimism, reached the top of the
ladder and discovered that the attic was high enough to allow her
to stand. Through a few screened vents in the eaves, filtered
sunlight penetrated this high redoubt, but with insufficient power
to banish many shadows. Raw rafters, board walls, and a plywood
floor enclosed a double score of cardboard boxes, three old trunks,
assorted junk, and considerable empty space.
    The hot, dry air smelled faintly of ancient roofing tar