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He stood, placing himself so that the barrel was pointed right at his heart.
“Shoot me,” he said, “not your sister. Let eet end here. Shoot me. Shoot me, Marylou.”
Gerard…this boy I’d only known for a few massively confusing hours, who’d tried to save me more than once…was now putting his life out for mine. Marylou had stopped shaking, and there were no more tears.
“Do eet,” he said simply. “Because eef you don’t, I’m going to take that gun from you.”
“No,” I yelled. “Gerard, don’t. Marylou, don’t!”
Marylou was trembling violently.
“I can do it to protect my sister and myself….”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You son of a bitch! You killed—”
And then we both did something that will never completely make sense to me. I jumped from my chair and shoved Gerard out of the way. We fell to the floor together, me clocking my head on the edge of the table in the process. We landed on Henri’s legs (and his blood and something squishy I’d prefer not to discuss). Marylou swung and reached for the trigger. I heard a click, click, click, and I was thinking, This is the end. It ends with clicks. Click, click, click, like all the switches being turned off, all the lights going off on life.
But the click, click, click was her trying to undo the safety, which Gerard must have put on. This delay gave Gerard enough time to get to his feet and punch my poor sister in the face. One blow, right to the jaw, and she went down for the second time in about fifteen minutes.
“Oh god,” I said, rushing over to check her. “Oh god. God, she’s going to be so swollen….”
Gerard wasted no time. He took the ropes that had bound him before and tied her tight.
“Open the door,” he said as he worked.
I backed up toward the front door, but he said, “Non, non, non…the cellar door. Here.”
There was a thick, rough cellar door just on the other side of the stove. I had to jump over Henri’s body and the running streams of blood to get to it. It had a plank of wood over it to bar it closed. I lifted this off.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“Your sister is infected. The best thing we can do for her is make sure she is locked up until morning. Quickly, before she wakes.”
There was no light switch, so I had to jump over Henri’s body again to get the flashlight from the counter, where it had miraculously missed being splattered. And jump again to get back to the door. That was three jumps over his corpse. That seemed bad. So many aspects of this seemed bad, but it’s amazing how quickly you can get used to a whole new set of circumstances.
The cellar was a raw old place, very small, with walls made of stones cemented together. It smelled like earth and was absolutely freezing cold. It looked like Henri mostly used it to develop film. There was a table of trays, shelves of chemicals, a clothesline of drying prints—most of them of trees and the mountains. There were also a few sacks of potatoes and onions, some bottles of wine, some homemade preserves on a different shelf, along with a few rounds of cheese in plastic containers. There were some shovels and garden implements in the corner. Henri’s life had been so pleasant, so normal until recently.
“Let me find some blankets,” I said. “And a coat.”
“Be quick,” he said.
I found an afghan on the sofa, a jacket in the hall, and took the rain slicker. I used them all to make a kind of nest for my unconscious, bound sister and helped Gerard carry her down the stairs. I tuck her in as carefully as I could as he lashed her to one of the supporting beams. I left the flashlight there, pointed up, to give her some light. Then we trudged back up the steps and shut the door, putting the beam across it.
“Is this really necessary?” I asked.
“Is what necessary?” Gerard asked. He had picked the gun back up and was examining it.
“Locking her in the basement. Can’t we just keep her up here?”
“Eet is better to keep her there. She is dangerous now. In the morning we will release her.”
It made sense. Kind of. As much sense as anything could make. I looked down at poor Henri, his crumpled body on the floor.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
Gerard looked up at me and smiled.
