Sarah shifted her grip on the gun, teeth bared. Raymond's head buzzed so hard he thought he'd fall over. He blinked repeatedly, as if that would wash the nightmare away.
"Put down the gun," he said.
"So you can ride into a massacre?" Sarah smiled. "I shoot her now, at least just one of you buys the farm."
"And then you and I live here in bliss."
"That's right."
His face felt numb. "There is a problem with that plan."
Sarah squeezed the crook of her elbow tighter to Mia's throat. "What's that?"
"The part where you shoot my wife."
"Everyone loses people. You get used to it."
"Yeah, you seem to have come out with flying colors," Mia said.
Sarah ground the barrel of the pistol into Mia's hair. "Shut your fucking face. You're a dead person. Dead people don't get to speak."
"How do you think you'll get him to stay when that happens? Chain him to a bed and break his legs?"
"Shut up!"
"Maybe you just make great iced tea. And know how to make ice in a place where it never freezes."
The blood fled from Sarah's mashed-together lips. She stood across the garage just in front of the door, too far to charge. The other guns were with their packs near the middle of the room; much closer, but Sarah's index finger only had to travel a fraction of an inch. Raymond edged forward.
"You stop right there." Sarah pointed the gun at him, then quickly returned it to a spot above Mia's right ear. "You don't move. You move, and I stucco the wall with her brains."
He held up his hands. "Don't shoot. I'm frozen."
It was true. What was the logic? Did she truly believe she could kill Mia and then convince him to live with her in loving harmony until the aliens burnt the whole hill to the ground? The only thing that made sense was that Sarah had gone moon-barkingly, chair-eatingly crazy, that the months of watching everyone around her die, first to the plague and then to aliens, had broken her mind completely, reducing it to a howling, mad wreck. How could he try to reason with that? How could you talk an insane person into doing something sane?
"Maybe we don't have to leave," he said. "Maybe we can all stay right here."
"So you can tie me up in my sleep? Knife me?"
"Nobody's going to knife you."
Sarah jerked her chin at Mia. "She'll talk you into it. Then you'll make your little excuses, and be sad for a while, but you'll ride away and you'll forget me."
"Jesus," Mia said. "How about we take your picture and promise to pray to it every night?"
"Enough!"
"I saved your life." Raymond was on the verge of tears. He didn't understand how that could mean so little to her, how she could justify taking whatever she wanted without the barest shred of gratitude. "Doesn't that mean anything?"
"And now I'm gonna save yours."
She sneered at Mia, fingers shifting on the grip of the pistol. Raymond's heart disintegrated, floating away like cold mist. It hit him in a hot rush, questions and conclusions he'd only be able to sort out after the fact. His wife was about to be shot by a crazy person and he was utterly helpless to stop it. Not only that, but it was his fault—he'd saved Sarah, he'd brought her back here, helped restore her health, allowed her to stay although she was a stranger with no claim whatsoever to the life between himself and Mia. It hadn't occurred to him that the mysterious relapse of Sarah's fever had been nothing but a ploy to get them to stay at the house with her, to stave off discussions of sending her off on her own. Mia'd had some suspicions, vague as they were, but he hadn't even begun to question the unknown woman in their home. He couldn't or wouldn't see the bad in a person, and now Mia would die.
Yet he couldn't have just left Sarah on the sidewalk above the beach to bleed to death, either. What should he have done? Made her leave as soon as she was able to walk? Snuck out with Mia in the middle of the night? How would he know to do these things without the foreknowledge of what was happening right now? Maybe any notion of power or control was just a laughable illusion—21st century humanity had been wiped out by a plague it could never have suspected. He and Mia had weathered that, had built themselves a new life amidst the wreckage, but now that was going to be blown away, too. It had all been a sad delusion.
Sarah pointed the gun at his legs, frowned, and pulled the trigger.
The bang was impossibly loud, tearing through the garage with a force as terrible as the bullet plowing through his left thigh. The impact staggered him. He banged into a toolbox and fell hard on the concrete floor. The pain hadn't yet hit. Instead, its threat waited in his nerves like the afterimage of lightning in the seconds before the thunder strikes.
"Not going anywhere now, are you?" Sarah said. She swung the gun back Mia's way. "Not once there's nothing to leave for—"
Mia darted forward, grabbing Sarah's wrist and jabbing her stiff fingers at Sarah's eyes. Sarah shouted and cringed back, hand to her eyes. Mia hammered her wrist into Sarah's forearm. The gun jarred loose. Mia punched her in the nose; Sarah yelped, stumbling back into the bikes. She tumbled down in a crash of metal.
Mia picked up the gun and pointed it at Sarah's teary face. "I don't know who the fuck you are. I'm not sorry I won't find out."
"Don't shoot!" Sarah thrust up her hands. "I'll go. I'll leave right now. I'll—"
Mia pulled the trigger. Sarah's body flew back into the toppled bike. Her arms flopped limply, elbows bent like a butchered chicken. Mia righted her aim and fired three more times, hands bucking.
"Are you okay?" Mia leapt over the boxes of food and jugs of water, kneeling beside Raymond and his blood-soaked thigh. "Don't move. I'm going to find one of those blood-tying things."
"Tourniquet."
"Don't move."
She rushed into the house. Raymond clamped his palms to the wound and tried not to faint. It hurt now, a knifing burn; the bullet had passed clean through his muscle, and blood dribbled from both holes. Mia returned with a handful of rags, a fifth of Grey Goose, and an abbreviated extension cord, stray wires poking from the end where she'd chopped it short.
"You cut that up?" Raymond said. "What if we need to plug something in out back?"
"Take off your pants."
He unbuckled and unzipped, breath hissing into his lungs as he peeled his jeans away from his leg. "You killed her."
"I fucking did."
"I mean, you killed her."
She splashed vodka over the bullet holes. He arched his back in pain as she swabbed blood. "Honey, she shot you. She was about to kill me."
"I know." He did know. He did know that. Something was wrong. Besides the hole in his leg. And the corpse sprawled over the bike. Those were obviously wrong. This wrong was a different wrong, like remembering a memory but maybe that was just something you dreamed or got told. He frowned. Mia taped the rags around his leg and he screamed. She knotted the cord around the top of his leg. The pain brought him around. "How are we going to leave?"
Mia tucked a sweaty strand behind her ear. "The alien army down there will be a strong incentive to figure that out. Drink this."
He swallowed from the bottle of water. Room temperature, but it tasted amazing; he drank half the bottle in one long chug. "I'm sorry. I should have known."
"Rest here. I'm going to check the window. Maybe we can wait another day."
She left him with his pain. He sat up, panting. He willed himself to stand. He owed it to Mia. If he couldn't move, she'd have to go without him. He grabbed hold of a shelf of oil cans and pesticides. It was his fault. If he was able to weather the fire, they could arrange a place to meet—Angels Stadium, any landmark south of LA. Leaning into the shelf, he pulled himself to his right foot, sweat popping along his hairline, pain throbbing through his thigh. They could do it. She could take a gun and he could hide in the yard and follow her after the flames were gone. From there, take a car to Arizona or New Mexico, just the two of them, and wait out the winter. Just the two of them. He stood, quive
ring.
Mia popped through the door. "We need to leave. We can walk the bikes if we have to. We just have to outpace the fire."
Raymond grabbed a five iron from a dusty bag of clubs and caned his way to Sarah's body. He knelt, grimacing, and rolled her body off the bike. She was warm and yielding. Hot blood soaked his palms. Mia crouched in front of the garage door, grabbed the handle, and rolled it up with a hollow rumble.
On the other side, a man stood in the night, short and lean and blank-faced behind his patchy beard. He raised a strange pistol to Mia's face.
24