Please." We're in the cellar." We have children." Please don't let us burn to death, WE HAVE CHILDREN!"
Ralph and Lois exchanged a single wide-eyed glance, then ran for the house.
Two uniformed figures, looking more like pro-football linemen than cops in their bulky Kevlar vests, charged from behind one of the cruisers, running flat-out for the porch with their riot guns held at port arms. As they crossed the dooryard on a diagonal, Charlie Pickering leaned out of his window, still laughing wildly, his gray hair zanier than ever. The volume of fire directed at him was enormous, showering him with splinters from the sides of the window and actually knocking down the rusty gutter above his head-it struck the porch with a hollow honk-but not a single bullet touched him.
How can they not be hitting him? Ralph thought as he and Lois mounted the porch toward the lime-colored flames which were now billowing through the open front door.
Christ Jesus, it's almost pointblank range, how can they possibly not be hitting him?
But he knew how... and why. Clotho had told them that both Atropos and Ed Deepneau had been surrounded by forces which were malignant yet protective. Was it not likely that those same forces were now taking care of Charlie Pickering, much as Ralph himself had taken care of Leydecker when he'd left the protection of the police-car to drag his dying colleague back to cover?
Pickering opened up on the charging State Troopers, his weapon switched to rapid-fire. He aimed low to negate the value of the vests they were wearing and swept their legs out from under them. One of them fell in a silent heap; the other crawled back the way he had come, shrieking that he was hit, he was hit, oh fuck, he was hit bad.
"Barbecue!" Pickering cried out the window in his screaming, laughing voice. "Barbecue! Barbecue. Holy cookout. Burn the bitches God's fire." God's holy fire!"
There were more screams now, seemingly from right under Ralph's feet, and when he looked down he saw a terrible thing: a medley of auras was seeping up from between the porch boards like steam, the variety of their colors muted by the scarlet blood-glow which was rising with them... and surrounding them. This blood red shape wasn't quite the same as the thunderhead which had formed above the fight between Green Boy and Orange Boy outside the Red Apple, but Ralph thought it was closely related; the only difference was that this one had been born of fear instead of anger and aggression.
"Barbecue!" Charlie Pickering was screaming, and then something about killing the devil-cunts. Suddenly Ralph hated him more than he had ever hated anyone in his life.
["Come on, Lois-let's go get that asshole."
He took her by the hand and pulled her into the burning house.
Part III THE CRIMSON KING CHAPTER 22
The porch door opened on a central hallway that ran from the front of the house to the back, and the whole length of it was now engulfed in flames. To Ralph's eyes they were a bright green, and when he and Lois passed through them, they were cool-it was like passing through gauzy membranes which had been infused with Mentholatum. The crackle of the burning house was muffled; the gunfire had become as faint and unimportant as the sound of thunder to someone who is swimming underwater... and that was what this felt like more than anything, Ralph decided-being underwater. He and Lois were unseen beings swimming through a river of fire.
He pointed to a doorway on the right and looked questioningly at Lois. She nodded. He reached for the knob and grimaced with disgust as his fingers passed right through it. just as well, of course; if he had actually been able to grab the damned thing, he would have left the top two layers of his fingers hanging off the brass knob in charbroiled strips.
["We have to go through it, Ralph."'] He looked at her assessingly, saw a great deal of fear and worry in her eyes but no panic, and nodded. They went through the door together just as the chandelier half-\way down the hall fell to the floor with an unmusical crash of glass pendants and iron chain.
There was a parlor on the other side, and what they saw there made Ralph's stomach clench in horror. Two women were propped against the wall below a large poster of Susan Day in jeans and a Western-style shirt (DON'T LET HIM CALL YOU BABY