“These aren’t guns! We can’t shoot them and keep them away!” Zeke protested, even as he followed Rector’s suggestion.

“Pretend they are. Hit them in the face and keep them blinded—make ’em easy to see!”

And then, he prayed, maybe some of the Station men or the Doornails will pick them off before they reach us and kill us both.

Three men fell to bullets before they arrived at the house’s big black door. Seven more were behind them, and they missed the lights, dodged the bullets, and reached the columned front porch. Soon the boys heard the loud thunk of someone beating on a solid wood door, knocking it hard, shoving it with shoulders and kicking it with heavy boots.

“Shit!” Zeke said. “Can’t hit ’em with the lights from here!”

“Not like this,” Rector admitted. He stood up, balanced his spotlight on the edge, and said, “But maybe like this.” And he shoved it over the side. It crashed down to the porch and through it, shattering somewhere below and showering the men with glass—but otherwise not hurting them, or so Rector thought.

Zeke followed suit, tossing his light over the side and listening for the smashing of timbers, roofing tiles, and maybe men’s heads. But his didn’t even break through the porch, and Rector grabbed him by the arm. “They don’t know the back’s fallen down. We have to get out before they get in!”

Now, with the fires and the shouting, there was plenty of light and noise to navigate by. The boys dashed back across the roof with their packs, so much lighter without those spotlights, and they half fell, half skidded down the stairs until they had dirt and dead grass beneath their feet again. At the front of the house, they heard the old door shatter.

“Where do we go now?” Zeke asked, nearly in a panic when he realized they weren’t alone down there—that men were running back and forth around them, some of them friends, some of them foes. “We’ll get shot!”

“We can’t stay here, or we’ll get shot anyway! Or burned up,” Rector added, as if the second option were a better one. “Back to the crack in the wall—they know us there.”

“But that’s where the rest of these men are going…” Zeke pointed out, and it was probably true—Rector could see that now. The ones who weren’t holed up shooting inside the hulking white mansion were making a beeline for the exit, a strategy that wasn’t altogether idiotic, in Rector’s considered opinion. So what the heck—he figured he’d join them.

“Four blocks down,” he said.

“But they won’t see us! They’ll shoot us!”