“You have two seconds to give me the picture,” Iggy said irritably.
“It hit the oil, all right. It spun, hit the trees, and did a flip,” the Gasman told him. “Now it’s on its back, like a big, ugly, dead beetle.”
“Yes!” Iggy punched the air, making their branch sway. “Signs of life?”
“Uh . . . oh, yeah. Yeah, one of them just punched out a window. Now they’re climbing out. They look pretty dang mad. They’re walking, so they’re not that hurt.” The Gasman wanted the Erasers out of the picture, so he wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore. At the same time, he wasn’t sure how he would feel if they had actually died.
Then he remembered that they had taken Angel.
He decided he was probably okay with them suffering a life-threatening accident.
“Shoot.” Iggy sounded disappointed. “Any point in dropping Big Boy on them right now?”
The Gasman shook his head, remembered Iggy couldn’t see it, and said, “I don’t think so. They’re talking on walkie-talkies. Now they’re heading straight into the woods. We’d probably cause a huge forest fire or something.”
“Hmm.” Iggy frowned. “Okay. We need to regroup, come up with Phase Two. How about we hang at the old cabin for a minute?”
“Cool,” said the Gasman. “Let’s go. We’ve done enough good for one day.”
33
Eighty years ago, loggers had used a makeshift cabin nearby as a base during logging season. Abandoned for the last thirty years, it was practically in ruins. Which made it an especially good clubhouse for the flock.
“So Phase One is complete,” said Iggy, sitting in a broken plastic lawn chair. He sniffed the air. “We haven’t been here in ages.”
“Uh-uh,” said the Gasman, glancing around. “In case you’re wondering, it’s still a dump.”
“It’s always been a dump,” Iggy said. “That’s why we like it.”
“Man, I can’t get over it—that tarp full of oil so totally wiped the Hummer out,” the Gasman said. “It was kind of—scary. To really do it.”
Iggy opened the backpack and took out Big Boy, running his sensitive fingers over the clock duct-taped to the explosive package.
“We have to eliminate the Erasers,” he murmured. “So they can’t ever hurt us again.”
“So they can’t ever take Angel again,” the Gasman said, his eyes narrowing. “I say we bomb the chopper.”
Iggy nodded and stood up. “Yeah. Listen, let’s get out of here, get back home, make more plans.”
In the next instant, the faintest vibration of the floorboards made Iggy freeze. The Gasman quickly looked at him, saw Iggy’s sightless eyes flick to and fro.
“Did you hear?” the Gasman whispered, and Iggy nodded, holding up his hand. “Maybe a raccoon—”
“Not in the daytime,” Iggy barely mouthed back.
A slight scratching on the door made the Gasman’s blood turn to ice in his veins. Surely it was just an animal, a squirrel or somethi—
“Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in.” The whispered voice, serene and angelic, seemed to float through the cracks in the door like poisonous smoke. It was an Eraser’s voice, a voice that could ask you to jump off a cliff and you’d do it.
Heart pounding, the Gasman quickly scanned the room. The door. Two windows, one in the main room and a tiny one in the bathroom. He doubted he could fit through the one in the bathroom, much less Iggy.
The Eraser scratched at the door again, and the hairs on the back of the Gasman’s neck stood up. Okay, the window in here, then. He began to edge his way over to it, knowing that Iggy would be able to follow the almost imperceptible sound.
Crash! The door burst open, splintered wood flying through the air like darts.
“Eight o’clock!” the Gasman whispered, telling Iggy where the window was as his brain registered the hulking Eraser filling the doorway. His muscles tensed for the leap through the window—but its light was suddenly blocked by a huge, grinning head.
“Hey, piggy, piggy, piggy,” a second Eraser taunted through the dirt-clouded glass.