Children of the Storm

going to have to bear the extra weight the whole way.
        Alex seemed sturdy enough yet, or perhaps he was keeping going only on that male chauvinism that even little boys seemed possessed of, unwilling to admit that he could ever grow weary sooner than a woman.
        Then she saw that something else might also be motivating the boy to go on. He was watching the hilltop across the ravine, and he too appeared to have seen that man moving in their direction.
        Before their stalker could catch a glimpse of them, she urged Alex forward and, following with Tina cradled in her arms, hurried closer to Hawk House, conscious that their time was running out and that their chances of escape had been greatly reduced.

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    TWENTY-EIGHT
        
        He was gaining on them.
        For the past ten minutes, he had been sure that they were nearby, just ahead, not far ahead, barely beyond his range of vision, and he had been equally sure that, before the hour was out, he would at last have them in his hands.
        As he ran, he slapped his knife which bounced around inside of his trousers pocket, and he knew that, soon, he would have the opportunity to use it, according to the plan-even if the plan, since this chase had begun, was not as clear to him as it had once been. For a while, as he ran, he tried to recall exactly why this thing must be done, these lives taken, and couldn't exactly do it; parts of the story remained blank for him, not different than they had been but totally blank, as if someone had taken an eraser to his mind and obliterated a number of important things. But that hardly mattered. Just to use the knife… That was what counted, to use the knife, the sharp thing… And he knew he would have a chance for that. This certainty, like his realization that Sonya had herded the kids toward Hawk House and had not merely hidden them in the fringes of the forest, came from the same sixth sense, the same superhuman source, from the same privileged psychic pool that produced his special superiority as judge and jury over others. This he knew, and in his mind it was a sharp thing…
        Once, when he gained the brow of the third hill after a number of hard falls on the slippery slope, his bleeding palm broken open wider in one of those tumbles, and when he was running fairly hard again, he felt that he had gone right past them, past the three of them without seeing them, felt that they must have grown too weary to continue and that they had dropped down in a thick clump of brush. Yes… He felt certain… They had hidden, and he had passed right by them in his headlong rush to get them in his hands…
        This feeling became so strong, so demanding, that he slowed his pace for a bit and seriously considered doubling back on his tracks, just to make sure that such a thing, such a potentially disastrous thing, had not happened.
        But he hadn't gone back, in the end, because he recognized the source of his crazy urge to retreat.
        It was demon-sent.
        It was inspired by the forces that would like to see him lose his chance to pass his judgment and deliver his retribution. It was a cheap, a downright shoddy, attempt to detain him, to delay him from his most righteous duty.
        Realizing this truth, he plunged ahead once more, at top speed.
        Now, he came to the third and largest of the pools where the sea had rushed in between the hills and, since he was drenched to the skin anyway, he waded out into it until he could wade no farther, then dove forward and swam to the far shore where he thought, in the soft, wet earth, he could see signs of their passage.
        The fourth hill was rocky and, therefore, easily topped, a welcome change from the greased grass he'd had to lumber up before.
        At the top, sucking in air as if it were to be outlawed in an hour, he looked along the table of this hill and thought he saw, at the far end, three figures disappear over the brink.
        He touched his knife which was still in his pocket, and he ran after them, joyous, half the island behind him and half ahead, the perfectly isolated place for what he had in mind.

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    TWENTY-NINE
        
        Two hours earlier, not long after dawn, Kenneth Blenwell had spent half an hour fastening down the shutters on Hawk House, not long before Henry Dalton and Leroy Mills had performed the same chore at the other end of the island, in Seawatch. He had worn a heavy canvas