Remi, Pete, Selma, and Wendy rushed up the stairs to the third floor. At the top of the stairs, Remi lay on the floor and waited. While Sam backed his way up the stairs, she fired rounds into the second-floor stairwell to make the invaders keep their heads down.

As soon as Sam had cleared the last step up to the third floor, the others pushed over a big wooden sideboard that fell heavily across the stairway like a trap door. They were out of the line of fire for the next few moments, but they could hear the heavy footsteps of the enemy below them rushing up to occupy the second floor.

Chapter 33

THE THIRD FLOOR

SAM TURNED TO PETE. “WE CAN’T KEEP FIGHTING THEM on these stairs. We’ve got to sabotage the one that leads from here to the fourth floor and then make our stand up there. It’s held to the steel I beam by bolts—six of them, I think, but you can check. Before you do anything to the stairs, get a climbing rope and tie it to something solid up there and run it down here.”

“I understand,” Pete said. They were on the third floor where Pete’s and Wendy’s bedrooms were. He hurried into his room and then the kitchen, collecting tools and equipment, and then climbed the staircase.

Remi walked past Sam and he reached out and held her. “Where’s Zoltán?”

“I closed him in our bedroom upstairs. He would have gotten killed down there. He doesn’t understand strategic withdrawal. Up there, he thinks he’s guarding something important.”

“He is,” he said. He turned to Selma. “Let’s see if the boiling water works again. Get some started in the fourth-floor kitchen.”

To Wendy he said, “Wendy, go up and bring more ammunition down. Load all the empty magazines one more time. Load the shotguns too.”

Remi was close to Sam’s shoulder as they stared hard at the big sideboard covering the stairway, waiting for it to move. “What are they doing?” she whispered.

“We hurt them badly on the last staircase. I think they’re tending to the ones who got burned and any who might have been shot. Probably evacuating them.”

“What’s our strategy now?” she asked.

“We’re buying time,” he said. “We couldn’t call the police or e-mail anyone, but somebody must be figuring out that this isn’t just the sound of those fireworks. Probably the ones closest to us don’t have phone service either, but farther away they must.”