Testament by David Morrell Page B

peer in among them, and reached the side of the house and there was no one.
    He breathed, trembling so much that he couldn’t continue.
    Move, he told himself. Just a little more. Do it. Go on. It’s almost over.
    He still didn’t move.
    Come on. Hurry. Check that back fence, get Claire and Sarah and get tout of here.
    It was only the prospect of them clearing that fence into safety that managed to start him going again. Halfway across the yard toward the fence he saw a shadow move. On his right. Behind the maple tree. Its dark trunk grew double; a figure dislodged from it.
    “Damn it, stop!” somebody yelled, and as he bolted insanely back toward the house, his feet slipped from under him on the slick wet grass. He fell face downward onto the sodden earth, sliding to try to stand. He fell again and heard “Damn it, stop!” again behind him and the shots sent him worming quickly on his stomach toward the shelter of the bushes.
    Three bullets ripped through the air over his head, whacking into the wood of the house.
    He heard Claire screaming in the house.
    “Shut up!” he was thinking.
    And then he was into the bushes, pivoting low to aim and fire, one two three four quick patterned shots, and then the shadow was gone and he didn’t know where to shoot anymore and the night was silent except for the patter of the rain and the shouts of people in the front yard and the sirens coming. Far away. Faint. But at least they were coming.
    Claire screamed again.
    “Don’t open the door,” he thought. But he couldn’t shout it because it might attract more gunfire to him, and then he heard the moan on his right, although he couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from so that he could shoot at it. That surprised him. That he had actually fired in the first place and was ready to do it again. Webster had been wrong after all. The sirens were closer, louder, and the moan kept on, strained, hoarse, and there was something else about it, something almost liquid as if the man had been hit in the throat.
    These bushes were a joke, he realized. They only made him feel secure without giving him any real cover. Anybody out there must have seen him crawl behind them. Why didn’t somebody riddle the bushes and kill him?
    Because nobody was out there anymore.
    The moan came again, coughing something bubbly, and he started crawling on his stomach toward the maple tree as the door behind him was opened, and he shouted, “Close that door!” He waited. “Close the damn door!” he shouted again, and whoever had it open closed it.
    Then he was crouching beside the maple tree, and he saw the man stretched out, groaning in the flower bed by the fence. The lights from the house next door showed that the man was face up, blinking, drooling something dark. His hand was stuck out toward where his gun had fallen in the grass. Then he wasn’t blinking anymore.
    The rain came gusting at him, lashing. The sirens were louder. The next thing he was running, slipping in the grass, back to the house, up the stairs and opening the door.
    “Let’s go,” he told Claire.
    “Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
    “But the sirens. We’re safe now. We’ve got help.”
    “We’re going. Webster was the only one I trusted, and sometimes I wasn’t even sure about him. The only way we’ll be safe is if we go where no one knows we are. Not the police. Not anybody.”
    He felt her staring at him in the dark.
    “Claire, I wish we had a choice. We can’t stay here. They came once. In six months they’ll come again. The only thing we can do,” and he could hardly say it and he didn’t know why but he was crying suddenly, “the only thing we can do is hide.”
    The last word came out as a sob. He wiped his eyes, lifted Sarah into his arms as the sirens pulled up shrieking in front of the house, and started with her down the back stairs into the rain.
    “I don’t want to leave,” Claire said behind him.
    It was complicated, but