on. The bikes drove by, left to right, one by one. The riders were all dressed in black. They all had bows slung across their backs. They all had quivers full of arrows. They all had weird one-eyed night-vision goggles strapped to their heads. Some of them were blipping their engines. Some of them were up out of their saddles, raring to go.
They all rode away.
For a second Shorty wondered who had bet on the west.
Patty tried the door.
It opened.
Chapter 36
Patty pulled the door all the way open, and stood staring out, from one inch inside the threshold. The outside air was soft and sweet. The sky was dark as iron.
“This is crazy,” she said. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay here. I feel safe here.”
“We aren’t safe here,” Shorty said. “We’re sitting ducks here.”
“We’re sitting ducks everywhere. They have night vision.”
“There are only six of them.”
“Nine,” Patty said. “You think the assholes are going to be impartial?”
“We can’t stay here.”
Patty said nothing. She put her hand out the door. She opened her fingers. She felt the air. She pushed it and cupped it, like swimming.
“We’ll go to Florida,” Shorty said. “We’ll have a windsurfer business. Maybe jet skis, too. We’ll sell T-shirts. That’s where the money is. Patty and Shorty’s Aquatic Emporium. We could have a fancy design.”
Patty looked back at him.
“Jet skis need servicing,” she said.
“I’ll hire a mechanic,” he said. “Regular as clockwork. I promise.”
She paused a beat.
“OK,” she said. “Let’s go to Florida.”
They took nothing except the flashlights. They hustled out between the dead Honda and a pick-up parked next door. They tracked around room twelve, and came back on the blind side, along the back wall, to where they guessed their bathroom was. They pressed their backs against the siding. West was dead ahead. A faint gray acre of grass, and then a wall of trees, low and black beyond it. They listened hard, and they looked for lights. They heard nothing, and they saw nothing.
They held hands and set out walking. Fast, but not running. They slipped and stumbled. Soon they were out in the open. Shorty imagined weird one-eyed night-vision goggles turning in his direction. Zooming in, and focusing. Patty thought, if they see you early, they might just track you for a spell. They fixed their eyes on the dark horizon. The wall of trees. They hustled on toward it. Closer and closer. Faster and faster. They ran the last fifty yards.
They slipped between the first trunks and stopped dead, bent over, breathing hard, gasping, for air, from relief, with primitive joy at having survived. Some kind of ancient victory. Making them stronger. They stood up again. They listened. They heard nothing. They moved deeper into the woods. On and on. Slow going, because of vines and low stuff around their ankles, and because of stepping left, and stepping right, around all the trees. Plus it was dark. They didn’t risk the flashlights. Not yet. Because of the night vision. They figured it would be like setting themselves on fire.
Five minutes later Patty said, “Are we still heading west?”
Shorty said, “I think so.”
“We should turn south now.”
“Why?”
“We were out in the open an awful long time. They could have been watching from a distance. They saw us heading west, so now they think we’re going to continue heading west.”
“Do they?”
“Because unconsciously people project spatial things in straight lines.”
“Do they?”
“So we need to turn off one way or the other. North or south. They can project us west all they want. We’ll never show up. I like south better. If we find a road, it’s a straight shot to town.”
“OK, we should make a left turn.”
“If we’re really heading west right now.”
“I’m pretty sure,” Shorty said.
So Patty turned what she hoped was exactly ninety degrees. She checked it carefully. She was shoulder-on to Shorty. She was sideways on to the way they had just been walking. She set out in the new direction. Shorty followed. On and on. The same slow progress. Grabby vines, and whip-like saplings. Sometimes fallen boughs, propped diagonally across their path. Which meant a detour, and a long look back, to make sure they hadn’t gotten turned around.
Way far in the distance they heard a bike. Maybe a mile away. A short trip. It started up, it rode a minute, and it shut down again. The faintest sound. Repositioning, maybe. For what? On what basis? Patty stopped walking, and Shorty bumped into her.
She said,