“Back away, Ursula.”
Until that instant her voice and expression had been perfectly placid. Now, though, her face darkened to a shade of tomato and a tendon stood out in her neck.
“Don’t you TOUCH HIM!” she shouted. “HE’S A CHILD!”
“Streets are full of ’em,” I said. “All stuck through with nails. One more dead kid won’t matter to anyone. Except you.”
Templeton shivered in my arms. My scalp burned, and my own legs trembled, squatting there under the worktable. My voice had so much nasty in it that I almost believed myself.
“You wouldn’t,” she said.
“Wouldn’t I? I don’t doubt you love him more than anything in the world. I understand how that feels. I felt just exactly the same about Yolanda.”
Ursula took a step back. Her breath echoed in the concrete-and-aluminum cavern of the garage. Thunder detonated outside, shook the floor.
I began to crab-walk forward, edging Templeton along with me.
“He’s innocent in this, Honeysuckle,” she said, trying to regain her calm but unable to keep the tremor out of her speech. “Please. He’s all I have. His father was already stolen from me. You can’t take him, too.”
“Don’t talk to me about what you’ve lost,” I said. “Colorado is full of folks who’ve lost loved ones, all because you couldn’t mourn in a reasonable fashion. Couldn’t you just plant a tree in his memory like a normal person?”
“This state, this nation, took my husband’s life away from him. My good man. A bunch of Georgian oligarchs stole Charlie’s life’s work—all his ideas, all his research—and this state said he wasn’t entitled to a dime. They stole his future from him, and he couldn’t bear it. So now I’m taking away their future. The president authorized a tactical nuclear strike. The entire nation of Georgia has been radioactive ash for three hours. And as for Colorado—and the rest of this hideous, money-worshipping country—they didn’t recognize my husband’s rights. They didn’t appreciate the power of his ideas. Well. They’re learning to appreciate their power now, aren’t they?”
I clubbed my head on the edge of the worktable as I came out from under it, and my eyes just about crossed. Temp could’ve lunged away, but I think he was too terrified in that moment to bolt for it. I kept the tip of the screwdriver a quarter inch beneath his right eyeball.
“I don’t understand why you sent Elder Bent’s people after me,” I said.
“Templeton told me you knew we went flying every night. He said you were going to tell the FAA about our trips in the crop duster. I wasn’t even sure I believed him, but then isn’t that how people always get caught? Someone robs a bank, then gets pulled over ’cause of a broken taillight. I didn’t think I could afford to take any chances. I hope you know I don’t have anything against you personally, Honeysuckle.”
I kept the boy between Ursula and myself, turning, putting my back to the driveway. I saw Marc lift one hand weakly, fingers curled, and heard him groan faintly. I thought if we got help soon enough, he might live. I began to retreat toward the road.
“No!” Ursula shouted. “You can’t! He can’t go outside!”
“My fanny. That’s just another lie. He isn’t taking any medicine that makes him allergic to sunlight. That was just a story you told to be sure he’d never get caught out in the rain if you weren’t around to watch him. Keep moving, Temp.”
“NO! It’s about to pour!” Ursula screamed.
“Come on,” I said. “Come on, Templeton. We’ll make a dash for it.”
We turned, and I shoved him ahead of me, down the driveway, and at that moment the world turned into a negative image of itself in a stroke of lightning followed by a shattering blast of thunder. We ran. I clutched one of his shoulders with my left hand, held the screwdriver with the other. As we crossed the road, I felt something stab me in the arm. I looked and saw a diamond-bright nail sticking out of my biceps.
I heard a mounting, rattling roar, less like a downpour, more like an avalanche, building in strength as it approached. I saw the far end of the street disappear in an advancing wall of whiteness, a flashing, bril liant curtain of falling crystals. The Flatirons danced, disappeared, and reemerged, like an image glimpsed through a kaleidoscope.
We weren’t going to make it to Elder Bent’s house. A nail struck my hand and went all the way through it, like a bullet. I yelped and let go of the screwdriver.
I still had Templeton around the neck, and I pushed him four more steps, to the rear end of Mrs. Rusted’s car. I put a hand on top of his head and shoved, driving him to his knees. I dropped beside him. A nail struck me in the small of my back, four inches of icy crystal. Another hit my upper left shoulder. I ducked under the bumper and wriggled beneath the car, hauling Templeton with me by his cape. Over the deafening, obliterating roar, I heard Ursula screaming his name.
I don’t think Templeton realized I’d lost the screwdriver until we were under the car. I was flat on my belly, squeezed so tightly between the undercarriage and the road that I had almost no mobility at all. He began to squirm. I grabbed a fistful of his cape, and it came right off him.
I lunged to grab a hold of him again and banged my head on the undercarriage. It was the second time in the last minute I’d managed to catch my skull, and this time I struck myself right along the stitches. A galaxy of black suns exploded and faded before my eyes, a map of the stars and Elder Bent’s seventh dimension visible on the far side. By the time my vision cleared, Templeton was out from under Mrs. Rusted’s Prius.
“Mom!” he screamed. I could barely hear him over the bellow of the crashing rain. The road shook like I was sprawled on the rails with a freight train thundering straight toward me.
I turned myself around to watch him sprint back for his house. Nails struck him in the back of the thigh, in one heel, in the upper back, and he was flung to his face at the foot of the drive. That’s where he was when his mother reached him.
He was trying to stand again, up on one knee. Ursula covered him with her body, curving herself over him and enclosing him in her arms. She held him down and beneath her as the full force of the rain struck at last—the obliterating August rain.
AND THAT’S ABOUT ALL I have to tell.
Templeton was transferred to a unit at Boulder Community Health. A six-inch spike pierced his right lung before his mother could get to him, but Ursula shielded him from the worst of it, and he was released to state foster care two weeks ago.