Patrick grabbed his collar in his hand and pulled him close, felt the button at Theo’s throat pop. “Sharpen up, Teddy,” he said. There was command in his voice. Theo paled. “They’ll aim to shoot at anythin’ that moves. Theywon’t stop to ask what familyyou’vegot waitin’ at home. Won’t think of the right and wrong in it. They’ll open fire, and you’ll be dead on the ground before you can wave your white flag. And so willshe.”
Together they glanced at Nina, who was peeking through a window.
Patrick watched how Theo’s eyes seemed to stick to her. “Use the river—”
“I don’t need your instruction on my medium, Colson.”
“Do it as soon as they’re in reach,” Patrick said in undertones. “Before they have a chance to recognize her.Please.”
Finally, Theo’s gaze turned away from Nina, surprise coloring his expression to hear Patrick plead with him.
“This is the side you chose. You choseher,” Patrick said, though he hated to say it. “And you’ll watch her die or be captured tonight unless you do this.”
“They’re here,” Nina called, backing away from the window, her eyes wild now. “Patrick?”
He clapped Theo on either shoulder, so hard his teeth rattled. “If there’s any worldly way to prove yourself to her,” he said in desperation. “It’sthis.”
He watched Theo galvanize, his pupils dilating, eclipsing. The stalk of his neck cocked. A deep exhale rattled from his chest. A soldier’s last breath before the first spray of bullets.
Lord, Patrick thought.Let us survive this.
“Do it now, Theo.”
Theo went to the window. Patrick saw the way his eyes shuttered to what was in front of him, all senses honed elsewhere, to the frigid river that slunk behind the factory.
Patrick heard the calls and whistles of the soldiers beyond the door, felt the clutch of tension in the air, heard the first rolls of thunder—not from the sky, but from something closer. Something monstrous. Patrick stepped toward the boarded windows, peered through the slats.
“Be ready to run,” he told the rest. “When I say.”
Here were the soldiers, weary from their trek through the snow. Trading flasks and cigarettes that sputtered out in the wind. Bayonets slung over their shoulders as they cupped their hands around their mouths to warm them. The horses clopped sleepily, necks bent against the snow belting against them, the generals atop shouting orders. The foot soldiers broke down doors where they were bid. Three men stalked sullenly toward the factory, their eyes tracking over its dark silhouette.
Three feet from the heavy doors, they halted.
Patrick saw it in their eyes when they realized the roaring was not wind. He saw terror distort their faces as the sky seemed to fall atop them.
The freezing water fell in heavy sheets, toppling the soldiers from their horses and crushing them.
“Go!” Patrick pushed through the heavy doors.
John shot three who stirred in the snow, spitting and trying to rise. Patrick shot another as he reached for his bayonet, and their bullets were spent.
Theo held the rest hostage in the stillest water Patrick had ever seen. It blanketed them as if a spring had suddenly appeared in the middle of the main street, its surface already icing over in the cold. The bodies beneath it did not move, either too broken or already dead.
Theo’s hands were raised in front of him, his brow furrowed in intensity. The wind lashed in, but he seemed impervious to it. “Run!” he said.
Patrick took Nina’s arm, John took Polly’s, and they took off without Theo, running through the snow. The only remaining tunnel was to the south, in the farming pasture behind the loggers. It might as well have been on another continent. The terrain made them slow.
They hadn’t made it more than a few yards before a door burst open into the street and two soldiers in full regalia appeared, stomping out into the night, halting abruptly when they saw the group pounding toward them.
“Fuck,” Patrick muttered, and lifted his pistol, though there were no bullets to fire, only the hope of the con. He pulled Nina behind him as they hastened to lift their bayonets.
“Halt!” they called. “Stay where you are.”
John pulled Polly in front of him as a shield.
“Hello, boys,” Patrick said carefully, eyes flickering between them. “You can let us pass, or we can trade bullets. Which will it be?”
Behind them, cut logs rose very slowly from a mound of firewood, snow sliding gently away. Patrick didn’t look at them as they rose silently into the night, waiting over the soldiers’ heads.
