Showdown.
Juan and Walter share the same fear, and it’s not a fear of death, a prospect to which they’ve adapted during their long lives. They are afraid that these alien machines will escape, that they will have no evidence that this encounter occurred, that they will therefore not be able to tell anyone about this most astonishing event in their lives, for fear of being dismissed as liars or as dupes who fell for an absurd hoax. Walter says, “Marty Bellock,” whereupon Juan says, “Exactly what I was thinking.” Marty had been an acquaintance of theirs long ago, a successful businessman who claimed to have bedded the sexiest actress of that decade, a star for whom millions lusted. The details of his story were verifiable to the extent that he and the actress had been in the same city at the same event and had booked rooms in the same hotel. He even had a photo of him and her, which was signed by her and inscribed “What a night!” However, she hadn’t given him her phone number or address, and he preserved none of her DNA that might have lent a measure of credibility to his story. Besides, he was round faced and stocky, not a Greek god to whom women were irresistibly drawn. Although everyone previously thought Marty was a man of principles, reliable and trustworthy in all matters, his insistence on the truth of this unlikely one-night stand damaged his reputation beyond repair, and no one ever again quite believed anything he said.
Consequently, when the alien machines rush forward, each on two legs, when one of them proves to have a weapon incorporated into it, when a muzzle flashes twice, and when the shots strike with laser-guided accuracy, blowing out both front tires on the F-150, Juan is motivated to stand on the accelerator. The shrieking truck surges forward on shredding tires. The robots fall onto all fours and peel off in opposite directions. One escapes. The other is clipped hard and tumbles away, casting off showers of multicolored sparks, as if it is a Fourth of July rocket that, having failed to launch, wastes its wonders in the tall, wet grass.
With no cupped hand limiting it, the powerful LED beam spreads its bright cone the length of the attic. When the second barrage of gunfire rips through the floor, crickets of pressed wood leap into the air; swallowtails of pink fiberglass insulation flutter up and then float in the silence of the aftershock.
Gog is down, but Magog is less than a mile away and coming, guided by the coordinates of the Chandra house that had been installed earlier.
Michael’s mind is processing data slower than a supercomputer would process it, but he’s coming to a wet-brain conclusion no different from that arrived at by dry-circuit silicon. The first volley of shots had shattered into the southwest corner, and the second had riddled the southeast corner, with no salvos between those two widespread points. Below the attic, the second floor of the house provides rooms on each side of a hallway. After the first fusillade, Calaphas had left one room and directly entered the room across the hall before opening fire again. Seconds are racing away. He’s on the move, seconds are racing away, and he isn’t shooting. Because he isn’t quartering the attic. He is going from corner to corner. Calaphas assumes that both instinct and some knowledge of construction will draw them into the greater safety of a corner, the presumed safety. First southwest, then southeast. Now he’s coming the length of the second floor, toward the northeast corner. They are in the northeast corner.
John in a watchful crouch. Nina still on her feet. A warped and loose and perhaps mold-eaten sheet of particleboard creaks as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other.
Michael says, “He’s right under us!” As he speaks, he grabs a fistful of the boy’s jacket and lifts him out of the crouch, almost off his feet, thrusting him away from the corner.
A rattle of wood on wood, a cracking sound: Foiled by loose flooring, Nina stumbles and cries out involuntarily.
Pivoting toward her, seeing her fall with the Tac Light firmly in hand, the sheet of particleboard now angled and overlapping the sheet adjacent, Michael is nowhere else but here, neither with Magog crossing a length of ranch fence nor drawn by horrified speculation as to what the next few seconds will bring, but only here, where the past matters not and there is no expectation of a future. There is never other time than the current moment; the suspension bridge beneath your feet is a fragile construct, as if fabricated from ropes and wooden slats, each slat a moment, your crossing begun at birth, the time of death at a point en route when a slat fails to support your weight and falls into the gorge, you with it. And the time of death is always. Now time doesn’t stop for Michael Mace, and neither does he step outside of time. Instead, he ceases thinking, commits himself to action by the guidance of another—he can’t say who—but it isn’t mere instinct. Afterward, he is unable to remember what he did, how he snatched Nina off the floor and into his arms as if she were weightless, how he strode twenty feet from the corner—in a seeming instant. Calaphas is so certain of his intuitive targeting that the crack of rifle fire comes four times, three more, three again. As the floor shakes, as debris is flung up but also spills from the bullet-pocked ceiling, Michael stands before the boy, whose eyes are shocked wide, though no wider than his own.
As the overlapping echoes of the barrage fade into an expectant and fearsome quiet, he sets Nina on her feet. He looks toward the fourth corner, as yet not assaulted, then at the floor under them, and he knows one place is no safer than another. He knows, as well, that it wasn’t the nanotech in his cells, not Shadow Michael, that gave him the extraordinary strength and reflexes to do what he just did. The inspiration for the action he took, the source of his power and adroitness, was as basic and human as it gets—love. He has led his life without committing to any woman, for fear the consequences will be deceit, betrayal, torment, and loss, of which he knew too much in childhood. But here he is. Here he is because of Shelby Shrewsberry, because their lifelong friendship required him to care about a stranger for whom Shelby had deep but unexpressed affection, and that caring has become a love Shelby didn’t live to experience. There is sadness in that, as well as guilt unearned but felt, yet there is also a new hope. Here he is, and Nina knows it, and he knows that what he feels for her is alike to what she feels for him. Now all they need to do is survive.
Before he opens fire, Calaphas hears a woman’s cry, the source immediately above him, in the northeast corner of the attic, a cry of surprise rather than pain, followed by something being dropped or someone falling. Whoever she might be, her exclamation thrills him, as though it’s the annunciation of his rebirth as the dark angel of Death, his sacred identity confirmed. He squeezes off four rounds at the ceiling, pauses but a second to enjoy the screams, which do not come, and fires six more times. Even if three bullets found three brains, they couldn’t all have died in the same instant. Ten rounds have raised not a shout or shriek of pain, not one plaint of horror. The only sounds are quick footfalls as they react to a new awareness of his strategy, avoiding corners, hoping that he lacks enough ammunition to keep harassing them back and forth through that high space until their luck runs out.
He is impatient to transcend. Perhaps his rage abated with the realization of his true immortal nature, but now it swells hot once more. If this game has one rule, it is that in all situations and circumstances, violence is the only winning course of action. The violent bear it away. The future belongs to the violent. They bear away those who choose not to kill. They bear away everything of which they disapprove, all art and music and writing and philosophy that they find displeasing, all thought that offends them. They bear away all traditions, institutions, and ultimately all civilization as it was once constituted. He knows this game. He is the master of this game, and he is infuriated that at this late hour, with one move left to clear the board, he is being frustrated.