Mind Prey

the floor, moving now, breathing again, heart pounding, everything coming to a close. He flashed on Andi Manette, all those parts—and turned left off the road.
    He stopped. He felt a beat, but couldn’t identify it, listened for a second, then reached in the backseat, got the shotgun, and climbed out of the car.
    The chopper was just coming in. He looked up, to the north, and saw the machine dropping out of the sky, screaming in on him.
    He ran to Andi…
     
    T HEY HEARD HIM running across the floor, pounding down the stairs. He’d never run before. Andi sat up, looked at her daughter. “Something’s happening.”
    “Should we…?” Grace was terrified.
    “We’ve got to,” Andi said.
    Grace nodded, dropped to her knees, lifted the edge of the mattress. She took the needle and handed the nail to her mother.
    Andi fitted it to her hand, kissed her daughter on the forehead. “Don’t feel anything. Don’t think, just do it,” she said. “Just like we practiced; you get back there…”
    The first day Mail had put them in the cell, she remembered the smell of old potatoes. She hadn’t noticed the odor since—it had simply become part of the background—but she smelled it now. Potatoes, dust, urine, body sweat…The hole.
    “Kill him,” Grace rasped at her. Grace’s eyes were too large, sunken. Her skin was like paper, her lips dry. “Kill him. Kill him.”
    Mail was rattling at the door, fumbling at it. When he opened it, he was carrying a shotgun, and for just an instant, Andi thought he was going to kill them without a word, open fire before they had a chance.
    “Out,” he screamed. “Both of you, out.” His young-old face was dead white; he had a white bead of spittle at the corner of his mouth. He gestured with the gun, not pointing it at them, a sweep of his arm. “Get out here, both of you.”
    Andi had the nail by her side, and went first; she felt Grace reach out and grab the top of her tattered skirt, and pulled along behind.
    “What?” Andi started.
    “Get,” Mail snarled, looking up the stairs. He grabbed her by the skin of her throat and pulled her, stepping back, still looking over his shoulder, expecting someone to burst in, the shotgun barrel straight up.
    And she stepped straight into him and struck.
    She rammed the nail into the space below his breastbone, trying to angle it into his heart, looking at his eyes as she struck.
    And she screamed, “Grace, Grace…”
     
    T HE SHACK’S OUTSIDE door was half-open; Lucas kicked it the rest of the way, Del flattened against the outer wall, sweeping the fallen-down mudroom just inside.
    Sherrill was on the other side of the house, watching the back. Lucas went through first, through the mudroom, following the sights of the .45, his thumb-knuckle white in the lower rim of his circle of vision.
    The shack smelled of wood rot, and dim light shifted in through dirty windows. A broken-legged table crouched in the kitchen beyond the mudroom, and tracks were etched in the dirt of the floor, heading into the interior. There was an open door to the left, hung with cobwebs; another on the other side, showing a down-slanting wall: and from there, a light, and a man’s voice shouting.
    Del, just behind, slapping him on the shoulder: “Go.”
    Lucas went straight ahead, scrabbling along in a half-crouch, while Del covered the doorway. Lucas did a peek at the door, looking down the stairs, and a woman screamed, “Grace, Grace…”
     
    W HEN A NDI M ANETTE struck with the nail, Mail’s eyes widened and his mouth opened in surprise and pain, and he jerked forward, turning away. Grace struck at his right eye and missed as he turned his head, the point of the needle skidding across the bridge of his nose, burying itself an inch deep in his left eye.
    He screamed, pulled back, and Andi shouted, “Grace, run.”
    Grace ran, and Mail flailed at her and the girl was batted off her feet, lurching into the pile of tumble-down shelving on the back wall of the tiny cellar. She scrambled to her feet and tried for the stairs, and Andi saw the shotgun coming around and she pulled the nail out and struck again, felt it skid along his ribs. The shotgun stopped in its track and Mail hit her in the face with an elbow and she fell, and saw her daughter’s legs flying up the stairs. Mail fired the shotgun, a flash and a blast like thunder, straight up, into the ceiling, either by accident or simply to startle, to slow down whoever was up the stairs. He