Relentless

stack of crates.
    “They came in a car,” Waxx said. “Left it somewhere in the area— then to the house, came on foot. Soon as I realized the shoe prints are wet, I already called the sheriff to cooperate with roadblocks between here and Smokeville, and south before Titus Springs, only seven miles of road between.”
    They were nearly to the foot of the stairs. I risked exposure and followed them.
    “So they’re boxed?” Brock asked.
    “Boxed and bagged.”
    I dropped low behind the second stack of crates.
    Waxx said, “They have maybe a four-minute lead, not enough. The area, it’s quarantined, we’re coming in from both ends.”
    “Just our people or the sheriff’s, too?”
    “The sheriff is for the roadblocks only because he can set them up faster than we can. The rest is none of his business.
Our
people were killed. Nobody kills our people and gets away. Now it’s war.”
    “How many houses in those seven miles?”
    “Maybe twenty. We’ll sweep them all.”
    They were on the stairs, voices diminishing.
    “What about side roads?” Brock asked.
    “None paved. All the dirt roads are dead ends.”
    I hurried to the bottom of the stairs, staying just out of their line of sight if they should glance back.
    “Any vehicle not obviously one of ours gets stopped,” Waxx said.
    “What about Rink and the other two?”
    “We’ll haul them out later, torch the place so it looks like idiot kids did it. Right now, we need every man for the search.”
    I dared to ease into the stairwell, the better to hear them, as Brock asked, “Still have fun with them—or pop ’em on sight?”
    Stepping off the stairs into the kitchen, Waxx said, “We want them alive. Zazu has taken a special interest in them.”
    Brock had reached the top of the steps. When he switched off the lights, I ascended through the gloom, low and monkeylike in his wake, and heard him say, “Zazu? They’ll wish we’d tortured them and set them on fire.”
    He closed the door, and I was at it a moment later, listening.
    In the kitchen, Waxx said, “I have a plane standing by in Eureka to fly them south.”
    “The fog should lift soon,” Brock said. “That’ll help us.”
    A door opened … closed, and during the few seconds between, I heard a big engine fast approaching the house.
    Assuming both Waxx and Brock had left, I opened the stairhead door two inches and surveyed the kitchen.
    Through the windows, I saw them standing outside, on the back-porch steps, with a third man.
    From the east, out of the fog, the Hummer appeared. It stopped on the lawn near the three men. They boarded the vehicle, and it roared away with them.
    When I switched on the cellar lights, Penny and Milo were at the foot of the stairs, having followed me as I pursued Waxx and Brock.
    “Did you hear?” I asked.
    “Everything until they went into the kitchen and closed the door,” Penny said.
    As they climbed toward me, I said, “When they catch us, they’re going to take us to Eureka, where there’s a plane waiting to fly us south.”
    “Where south?”
    “That’s all I know.”
    In the kitchen, she asked, “You hear anything more about Zazu?”
    “No. I’m not sure I want to hear more. Anyway, they aren’t going to catch us.” I scooped Milo off the floor. “Spooky, I’m going to take you through the dining room, into the living room, to the foyer and up the stairs. Until we’re on the stairs, I want you to keep your eyes closed, all right?”
    “I can handle it, Dad.”
    “Keep your eyes closed.”
    “They’re just dead people.”
    “If you don’t keep your eyes tight shut, I’ll throw away the whatchamacallit thermonuclear saltshaker.”
    “No, don’t. We’re really, really gonna need them, the way things are going.”
    “Then keep your eyes closed.”
    “All right.”
    Penny asked, “What’s upstairs?”
    “I have a thing to do. And so do you, down here. Go through the jacket and pants pockets of Rink and Shucker.”
    “Oh, crap.”
    “You’ll like it better than what I’ll be doing upstairs. We need their ID, anything about who they are. And car keys.”
    “I guess I did vow for better or worse.”
    “The fun has only begun.” I gave her a quick kiss. “Meet us in the foyer in three minutes. We’ve got to move fast.”
    She yanked an entire roll of paper towels off a dispenser near the sink, and said to herself, “Plastic trash bags,” as she started pulling open drawers.
    “Eyes closed,” I reminded