Testament by David Morrell Page A

back door.
    How much did she weigh? She was so heavy that after struggling to carry her down the stairs he could barely walk a straight line with her. In the dark of the kitchen, he jolted against the sharp corner of the stove and had to set her down, holding himself and wincing, and Claire wasn’t with him. She must have stayed upstairs. He had thought when she slapped him that she would be okay now, but he was wrong.
    No, he wasn’t wrong. She was a shadow coming in the dark.
    “What if more of them are outside in the back?” she asked.
    But he had thought of that, and there was only one way to find out. He had to go out first himself. He tightened the knapsack on his back. He unlocked the door and gripped the doorknob. The pistol was awkward and heavy in his hand.
    And again Webster’s voice returned to him. This isn’t like in your books. It’s for real. If you go out on your own after these guys, you’ll find that writing about shooting a man is a hell of a lot different from having the guts to line up those sights and pull that trigger.
    He couldn’t turn the doorknob.
    Have to.
    Can’t.

25
     
    The scream outside in front settled everything. It unmistakably died. In the expanding silence, he imagined his attackers rushing toward the front door. His stomach on fire, hands trembling, he wrenched open the back door, told Claire, “Lock it behind me,” threw open the screen door and dove off the back porch into the bushes by the side.
    They slashed his face. He landed, twisting his hurt shoulder wet in the mud, the rain drenching him, and he thought too late that somebody might be hiding in these bushes. The idea sent him rolling against the wall of the house, straining to see in the rain and the dark if anybody was there.
    No one that he could make out.
    He searched, crawling through the mud under the bushes. Webster had been right. He didn’t know what he was doing. He had written about things like this and imagined himself in situations like this often enough, and here he was making too much noise, breathing too heavily, too loudly. He was snapping branches, scratching them together, slipping awkwardly in the mud, and anybody around could tell easily where he was.
    That finally gave him confidence. He was so bad at this that he should have been dead by now.
    Unless they were here and waiting for Claire and Sarah to come out as well.
    Can’t think about that.
    He dimly saw the long stretch of his backyard, good cover for them everywhere, the trees, the bushes, the swing set for Sarah, and beyond everything the white back fence and the gloom of the neighbor’s yard behind it. The shotguns ought to have wakened the people in the house back there. Lights should have been on. He could see the reflection from lights in the houses on both sides of his, glistening off the rain-misted grass in their backyards. But none over there, and he thought maybe the people were away.
    Or maybe Kess’s men were in there holding them. Because of me.
    Can’t think about that either. Get moving.
    He crept out of the bushes and crossed in the rain to the bushes on the other side of the back steps. His shoulder was in unmanageable pain now, and he had to shift the pistol to his left hand. It wasn’t important that he was a poor shot with his left hand. If he came upon somebody in these bushes, he would never have a chance to get a shot off anyhow. The idea of him stalking anybody was a joke—he didn’t know the first thing about it, whether to slip into these bushes or work along their edge or what. He’d only been fooling himself.
    He decided to try the edge, and his only reason for going on was simply now to make himself a target, to make sure the yard was safe for Claire and Sarah. Again something tugged at his mind, and he turned, seeing no one. The rain increased, rushing hard, drenching him, his clothes clinging coldly to him while he trembled. He turned back to the bushes and crouched, wiping the rain from his eyes to