Reamde

In a few minutes—not long enough, really, since he had begun to enjoy the ride—he swept around the broad leftward curve into the shadow of Baron’s Rock and felt the road angle downward beneath him as it made its plunge for the dam. It broadened, here, into a turnaround for vehicles too long and heavy to cross, and a sort of informal parking area for motorists who wanted to fish in the river or picnic on their tailgates while enjoying the view of the Rock, the river, and the stone turrets of the Schloss rising up above the trees on the other side.

Because of trees and landscaping, the view of the Schloss did not really open up until one was halfway across the dam. At that point, Chet—who was not going very fast anyway—relaxed his throttle hand and let the bike drop to an idling pace. He had noticed some things that struck him as a bit odd. The alarm bell was still ringing, but it had a flat, muffled sound, as if something had been jammed into it. Why hadn’t Dodge just shut the valve, and turned the thing off, to prevent further water damage to the building? Another thing was that there were no lights on in the place at all. Of course, since Dodge was here alone, you wouldn’t expect a lot of lights to be burning. But you’d expect at least some, especially if Dodge were scurrying around the place trying to deal with a busted sprinkler head.

But what really got his attention, and told him that something was seriously out of whack, was the smell. The smell of burnt plastic that he associated with house fires. Moreover, there was enough light now to make it obvious that milky smoke was lingering in the trees and the river valley.

So there actually had been a fire.

Why hadn’t the alarm system—the electronic one—sent out a call?

For the same reason that the power was out?

But the alarm system had battery backup that was supposed to keep running for a whole day.

Maybe the phones were out too?

Chet’s first thought was to run into the Schloss and try to find Dodge, but he’d heard too many stories of people who did that, trying to be heroes, and succumbed to smoke inhalation and died along with the people they were trying to save. He had to at least summon help before doing anything else. He brought his chopper to a stop at the Schloss end of the dam and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

NO SERVICE said the screen.

Another oddity. The Schloss had its own cell tower. The coverage here ought to be fantastic. But apparently it had gone dead too.

What could account for so much going wrong all at once?

He was pondering the question when he heard a clear gunshot.

It was some distance away, and he was pretty certain that it was a shotgun, not a rifle.

His instinct was to get the hell out of there, so he got his hand on the throttle, twisted it up, shifted into gear, let go the clutch. The rear tire started spinning in the loose dirt and dead needles that covered the pavement, and he took advantage of that to fishtail the bike’s rear end around and get it pointed back across the dam.

He was just about to let her rip and go blasting across when he noticed two figures running toward him across the turnaround. They had emerged from hiding places in the trees. Something was weird about their gait. Their legs were moving properly, but their arms weren’t pumping.

Their arms weren’t pumping, he saw, because each of them was carrying a handgun in a two-handed grip. And they were looking right at him.

To get across the dam he would have to ride directly at these guys, whoever they were, as they stood in his path. They would have plenty of time to empty their magazines at him.

He’d already done a one-eighty. He kept the momentum going and turned it into a three-sixty, which was to say that he got himself turned back around with the dam behind him and the Schloss to the front. Fleeing into the Schloss itself wasn’t going to work. Whoever these guys were, they’d already gone into the place, done whatever they wanted to do to Dodge—some old drug-running grievance?—cut the power and the phone lines, set fire to it. He needed to put some distance between himself and them. He aimed the bike, not at the Schloss, but down the road that ran past it, and wrenched the throttle to max and popped the clutch and actually stood her up on her rear wheel, doing a wheelie as he accelerated onto the road.

As he went by the Schloss he saw in his peripheral vision a shape like a lily, made out of yellow-orange light, and realized that he was staring into the muzzle of a rifle that was firing at him: a rifle with a flash arrester on the end of its barrel, channeling the flame into six equiangular jets, like petals. The rifle let loose one, two, three, four rounds, producing a hammering noise with each one, and behind him he could hear the sharp poppity-pop of those gunmen on the dam, letting loose everything they had in their magazines.