I tried to hop, but fell. But with my arms free I was able to drag myself, and the chair, forward. I scrambled across the kitchen's linoleum floor, reached the broadloom with upgraded underpadding in the hall. There wasn't time to try to force myself back into a sitting position, regain my equilibrium, and take another run at hopping. I just kept dragging myself, trying to push with my toes. The rug burned against my elbows as I neared the front door, and if my knees could have screamed they would have. I could see the deadbolt, set in the unlocked position. Only a few more feet. Just a few more.
I reached the door, and, lying on my side with the chair still attached to my body, I reached up and turned the bolt.
"It's locked!" I screamed to Sarah.
"Good!" she screamed back.
"Can you get to the phone?"
"I'll try!" There was the sound of her chair sliding across the floor in short bursts.
I shifted my head over toward the edge of the door, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening outdoors through the narrow floor-to-ceiling pane of glass. The sun had crested the horizon, and I could see clearly what was happening.
Stefanie's Beetle still sat in the middle of the yard. Benedetto's BMW was parked at the curb, Greenway and Carpington, their hands still cuffed behind them, leaning up against it. From my vantage point, I couldn't quite see Sarah's Camry, or Rick's car behind it. Greenway and Carpington were watching something take place in the vicinity of Rick's car, and it scared Carpington enough that he turned and began running down Chancery Park, toward Lilac. Greenway was shouting, shaking his head no, ordering Rick to do something. It looked like he was yelling "Let him out!"
I was guessing that, by now, Quincy was wide awake.
Now Rick came into view, still waving around his switchblade. He grabbed Greenway by the shoulder and started hustling him in the direction of the front door. He grabbed the handle and pushed as though he expected it would open. When it didn't, he shouted, "Open this fucking door!" He slapped it with the palm of his hand.
"I'm almost there!" Sarah called. "But I can't get my hands free!"
"Open it! Walker! Open this door!"
He kicked at it twice, but it didn't budge. Then he kicked at the glass, but it only cracked slightly. "You're dead!" he screamed. "When I get in there you're dead!"
And he disappeared.
He was running around the house, looking for other ways in. I heard him try the garage doors, but they were locked as well. A few seconds went by and then Sarah screamed, "He's here!" She would have meant the sliding glass doors, but I knew they were locked, too. Would he try to smash them in?
Even from my position at the front of the house, I could hear Rick screaming at the top of his lungs and banging the knife against the glass. "I'm going to cut out your fucking hearts!"
"Oh God!" Sarah said.
"What?"
"The ladder! He's going up the ladder!"
Oh no. The ladder I'd left leaned up against the back of the house so that I could regularly caulk around our bedroom window. And I was betting that our bedroom window was open. We usually left it that way, to allow fresh air in at night while we slept. With that knife, he'd be through the screen in seconds.
"Zack! He's at our window! He's going in!"
I tried to shift around the floor, the chair legs digging sideways into the carpet. I thought about how Sarah would hear him kill me before her. From where I lay, I could see the stairs to the second floor, and of course he'd spot me first on the way down. Sarah would have to listen to me scream as he cut me open. I wondered if there was a way I could face the end with anything resembling dignity. If I could keep from screaming, would it make Sarah's last few moments any less terrifying? At that moment, that was all I could think to give to her, to let her die knowing that I had not suffered that severely. That while not painless, it had not gone on long. It wasn't much of a birthday present, but it was all I had to give.
"He's in! He's in!"
She didn't have to tell me. Rick's entrance into our bedroom had been announced with a crash. Our dresser is under the window, and in coming through it, Rick had sent a lamp to the floor.
I heard him cackle. "Your hearts!" he screamed. "I'm gonna fucking eat them!"
And I thought about Paul and Angie, about how sorry I was to have done this to them, to have allowed their parents to be taken away from them, much too soon, and in such an ugly fashion. Would my dad take them in, or maybe Sarah's parents? Or would Angie turn into an adult overnight, look after Paul herself, tell her grandparents that she could handle this on her own? It would be like her to try, I thought. She was tough, and proud, and she'd feel honor bound to look after her little brother all by herself.
Rick was out of the bedroom and running down the hall. I saw his shadow fall across the top of the stairs.
This was it.
"Sarah," I said. Not a scream. I just wanted to say her name. And to make one final apology: "I'm sorry."
Rick came flying down the stairs. I don't mean he was running quickly, taking the steps two or three at a time. He was airborne.
His head was thrust out well ahead of his body. His arms were outstretched, the knife forging out ahead of him in his right hand. His feet were off the ground. If he'd worn a cape, it would have been flowing and rippling in the breeze behind him.