I keep my gun aimed at Tregan. Not that I’m going to shoot her. But every second I stall them is another second for the Fu Hao to get farther out to sea. Best case scenario.
A smile spreads across Tregan’s face, like I’ve fallen into some trap she masterminded. ‘Put your gun down, bitch,’ she says.
For a moment, I do want to blow her away. But it’d get me killed and wouldn’t help Evan. Instead, I nod and lower the AK-47, bending slightly so the strap falls from my shoulder as I ease the rifle to the floor.
‘Forty-five and backpack too,’ Damon says.
‘Don’t want any nasty little surprises,’ Evan adds.
Tregan’s eyes flick to him and she frowns before straightening her gun back at me.
I unholster my pistol and set it down. Take the backpack off slowly and let it fall onto a sofa. They haven’t noticed the razor in my pocket. Or the grenade. If I get a chance I’ll pull the pin and take us all out.
‘Step away from the guns,’ Evan commands.
Confusion pierces Tregan’s relief.
Where’d-Damon-come-from?-Why’s-Evan-sound-so-different?
‘It’s because he doesn’t need to hide the truth from you anymore,’ I say.
‘You shut your mouth,’ she snaps at me, before turning to Damon: ‘Were you in there hiding?’
He nods. ‘Came inside while you were in the bathroom. If you’d known, she would’ve known.’
I hear the chatter of choppers outside. Wonder when Nathan’s going to start shooting. Whether he’ll aim in here or at the aircraft. I hope he’s changed his mind and is down on the beach trying to figure out a jet ski. I hope he hasn’t been stabbed quietly like Tajik.
‘Whoever else you’re with, we’ll find them too,’ Damon says. ‘This is where it ends.’
‘This is where I begin.’ I close my eyes, breathing in the presence all around us, let it surge through me and channel a contented expression like I’m controlling it rather than completely in its awe. I open my eyes to stare from Evan to Damon. ‘This is where I begin, Jack.’
There’s doubt in their eyes even as they smile the same arrogant smile.
‘I would’ve given you the world,’ they say as one. ‘We could’ve ruled it together.’
A chill tingles through me. Speaking like that: it’s more coherent than the murmuring I’ve heard but it doesn’t sound any less crazy.
Tregan’s jaw hangs open. Her mind says what she can’t. Why’re-they-talking-speaking-like-that?
‘We could’ve remade humanity in our image,’ Jack says through Damon and Evan. ‘Our children would’ve been gods.’
‘Children?’ I snarl. ‘You’re insane, Jack.’
Damon laughs, echoed by Evan, and Tregan’s mind swirls.
She’s-crazy-He’s-not-Jack, Tregan thinks. Why-doesn’t-Damon-say-she’s-crazy?
Damon and Evan look at her. Gold eyes glittering coldly above reptilian smirks. In that instant Tregan knows.
You-can-hear-me-You’ve-always-been—
‘They’re all one,’ I say, drawing her gaze. ‘They’re all Jack.’
Tregan shakes her head, tightens her grip on the gun, like she wants to shoot the messenger. ‘No.’
You-bastards-I’m-gonna-No-don’t-think. Her repulsion and hatred dissolves into a peaceful vision of her Nattai meditation room’s wind chimes.
‘Tregan, what—?’ Damon manages before she swings the .38 to his head and pulls the trigger. There’s a flash, bang, the smell of gunpowder and singed hair and burned flesh as he staggers back, his AR-15 straying from me as Tregan fires at him again, this time from farther away and with no effect.
‘You bitch,’ he says, laughing, hand going to where his temple’s bleeding and scorched. ‘Ouch.’
Damon rights himself, raises his AR-15 at her.
In that second, I’m across the room, howling as I leap onto him like a wild animal. We go down together. His finger squeezes the assault rifle trigger. Plaster rains from the ceiling as I open Damon’s throat with the straight razor. The rifle stops roaring as his finger goes slack around the trigger.
Tregan’s screams fill my ears.
Beneath me, Damon’s eyes are empty. His blood’s all over me. I’ve carved a horrific smile through his airway and jugular. I push myself up off his body. Wipe my razor on my camo pants.
Evan slow claps me. I look at him. A mocking grin like we had in Samsara.
‘Another one bites the dust,’ he says. ‘Plenty more where he came from.’
I scoop up my AK-47 and .45. Tregan staggers, back to a wall, the .38 falling from her hand. Blanks-loaded-with-whole-time-Jack-Damon-this-thing-killed-Gary-all-of-them-screwed-me-used-me . . .
I can’t feel anything but pity for how much she’s suffered. All of what she was put through by Jack in all his guises, simply to consolidate his power and get me.
‘Was he—is he—are they—’ she says.
I nod and she unleashes a cry of despair.
‘Sucks to be you,’ Evan says. ‘Both of you. As soon as you step outside that door you’re dead.’
‘You’re . . . you’re dead,’ says Tregan as she ducks and yanks the AR-15 from Damon’s dead hand.
‘Don’t!’ I yell from where I’m down by the backpack and Tregan stiffens. ‘It’s not his fault.’
But-he’s-in-there.
‘Sure I am, Tregan,’ Evan says. ‘Man, we had fun, didn’t we? And I mean we. Fucking you was . . . team building.’
Jack knows I won’t kill Evan. But he’s trying to make Tregan do it to get at me. Nauseous anger floods her. Gotta-kill-the-little-Has-this-thing-got-a-safety?
Tregan’s really going to fire this time.
‘It’s not his fault,’ I yell, stepping between her and Evan. ‘Like it’s not yours.’
Tregan blinks, like she’s deciding whether to just kill us both, then her face goes slack.
It’s the strongest wave yet. Evan starts screaming.
‘No! No! No!’ he yells, hands clamped to his head, like he’s being deafened. ‘No! No!’
With Evan in its thrall, I will myself to move, grab the gun I took from the zoo out of my backpack.
‘What’s that?’ he sneers, the force ebbing, his focus back on me as I raise the weapon. ‘A nerf gun?’
I squeeze the trigger. There’s a little pffft and Evan’s eyes go wide.
‘Ahhh.’ He grabs the feathers of the tranquilizer dart stuck in his neck and pulls it free. ‘That stings.’
The instructions for loading the dart with Telazol indicated one millilitre per five kilograms of body weight for spider monkeys. I’ve just hit Evan with four millilitres. It might not be enough. Or it might kill him.
There’s the crack-crack-crack of gunfire and a return burst of machine gun clatter. Out there, Nathan’s taking on the choppers. In here, Tregan raises the AR-15 at my little brother.
‘Don’t!’ I say, but I’m too far away to get between them.
‘That’s the way, Tre—’ Evan says and slumps back in the sofa with his eyes closed.
Tregan looks at me.
‘Get down!’ I scream at her. ‘Get him down!’
I grab the hissing lantern. Switch it off. Plunge the cottage into darkness. Scramble to the laundry. Through its window, I see two choppers hovering above the Maritime Museum, chewing up the building with streaks of minigun fire.
If Nathan’s in there he’s not shooting back. I hope that means he’s not giving away his position rather than something worse. I lob a smoke grenade across the lawn and it sputters and billows as I fire a full clip at the closest chopper to light up its cabin and engines with a shower of sparks. It spins away crazily. The other chopper swivels my way. Opens fire as I dive back into the house and walls explode behind me.
Gotta-help-gotta-help, Tregan thinks, feeling that Evan has a pulse as she drags him to the floor. Gotta-help-Danby-or-we’re-dead.
I scrabble to a bathroom. Reload and pop up at the corner of a window. My burst of bullets doesn’t kill the chopper but it does set the curtain ablaze. I dive away from the window behind a cast-iron tub as return spray of fire shatters glass and weatherboard.
Have-to-help-Kill-these—
‘What can I do?’ Tregan screams.
‘Stay where you are!’ I shout.
If she knows where I am she’ll give me away to them.
There’s a thumping through the side door. I crawl to the hallway and see a shadow creeping towards me. I’m about to fire—
‘Danby?’
‘Nathan!’
While the Jacks and I have been trading fire, he’s made it under the cover of the smoke.
We huddle as bullets sizzle through the roof and punch through floorboards. It’s only seconds before they hit us or Tregan or Evan. The bathroom’s ablaze and smoke’s pouring into the rest of the house.
‘Next bedroom,’ I say.
I scramble along the hallway, over plaster and woodchips and glass, and take a position beside a shattered bay window with Nathan on the other side. Through the smoke, Jacks with rifles are closing in for the kill from beside the Maritime Museum while the chopper pours its firepower into making sure we don’t escape out the front door.
Getting out of here means taking out the chopper. I look at Nathan. He knows it’s probably impossible. No choice but to try. We nod and swing our AK-47s and our muzzles flare and my ears shriek with the thunder of our combined guns. The chopper takes our hits unharmed and its pilot turns his bird our way so the miniguns are aimed right at us. There’s a blur behind the chopper. At first I think it’s a giant bat. Then I see Stannis under the wings of his ultralight. He’s holding out a clenched fist.
Whoompa!
The ultralight goes into the rotors as his grenade explodes and the chopper becomes a cloud of fire. Nathan and I drop behind the wall a moment before it’s peppered with hot shrapnel.
I don’t wait to recover. Fresh clip in, I jump up and fire at the stunned shadows out in the haze, hear screams, see a few drop, the others dive for cover.
‘Go!’ I say to Nathan and we charge into the lounge room where Tregan’s protecting Evan with Damon’s AR-15.
I run past them and throw open the windows that look out over the road and sea path.
‘Flynn’s Beach,’ I yell, knowing the ruse won’t hold up as soon as she’s running with us the other way. ‘They’re coming!’
‘Sorry. For everything.’ Tregan shakes her head. ‘You go!’
Not-going-anywhere-You-want-to-know-what-I-think-Jack-Here’s-what-I-think.
Tregan runs to the side door and fires the AR-15 wildly. There’s no time to speak or think. I haul Evan up over my shoulder, jump from the couch to the window ledge and drop us onto the soft grass below. Nathan lands beside me and for a moment the fire and smoke and noise are behind us and there’s only the dark bush and sea ahead.