Rescue

from the raised crucifixion platform. Drawing the revolver, I moved to the exterior door in the wall. If it could be opened from my side without a key, I planned to carry Eddie through it. If it couldn’t. I’d be rappeling back up the rope with him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The door was locked, but only by an interior deadbolt. I turned the latch, and the door cracked open on its own.
    Leaving the door that way, I moved back toward the interior-entrance to the double-bungalow, where Clark or Axel or both, might be sitting inside at the telephone desk. I set up on the blind side of the door, then waited for Howard’s diversion. It didn’t take long.
    The fust explosion made the walls shake, as did the second and third. The door in front of me burst open, Clark the Clerk pausing to close it. I sapped him behind the ear with the butt of the revolver, and he sank first to his knees, then to the ground on his side. I thought it was a good sign that he wanted to close the door, that there might not be anyone else inside but the boys.
    I was through the door and past the desk when the next explosion quaked through the building, probably breaking any glass in the windows had there been any windows in the walls. As I got near the bunk room, the corridor light let me see the back of Royel Wyeth filling the doorway, roaring at the boys, demanding to know which of them was responsible for the attack on his Chinch.
    I slugged him a little harder than I had Clark, and he went down, too.
    Inside the room, I didn’t know how to turn on the lights, indeed whether there were any lights. I said, “Eddie?“
    “Here. I’m over here.“
    I rushed to him, unstrapping his hands first. “It’s me, Eddie. We’re getting out of here.“
    He hugged me as I got his ankles undone. “Denny and Paul and Billie have to come, too.“
    I felt a catch in my throat. “Them, too. Help me with them.“
    In the time it took Eddie to get one of them free, I’d gotten the other two up and on their feet. “Can everybody walk?“
    One said, “Kind of.“
    The youngest said, “I want to go home.“
    The oldest said, “Hush up, you baby.“
    I spoke to the oldest boy, whose blemish crossed his nose and left cheek on the face under the shaved head. “What’s your name?“
    “Denny.“
    “Denny, can you get these other two through a hallway and out?“
    “Yes.“
    “Good boy.“ I unslung the boom box, sliding it over his neck instead. “Wear this like so.“
    He smiled at me. “How do we get out?“
    The resiliency of a child’s spirit. I tried not to see the marks from the straps and “inquisitioning“ on the boys’ wrists and arms. “Come on.“
    I helped Eddie, Denny following close but kicking Wyeth hard in the crotch as he went by. Wyeth moaned but didn’t rise. The other boy helped the youngest, who started to cry at the fifth explosion as we got to the courtyard and stepped around Clark, whom nobody bothered to kick. I could hear shouting from inside the Compound beyond the infirmary.
    I turned to the three boys. “The explosions can’t hurt you. They’re friends. They’ll bring out all the good people on the other side of the hallway in that building. Just run through the hall, pushing this button on the boom box as soon as you get outside again.“
    Denny said, “When we get outside again.“
    “Right. A tape will come on loud, but don’t let anybody turn the thing down or off. Got it?“
    “Got it,“ said Denny. To the other two boys, “Come on.“ Then to Eddie, “See you, huh?“
    “See you, Denny.“
    They went through the door to the infirmary. I took Eddie to the door in the wall. Pushing it open, I stepped through and began moving hard. Eddie, in bare feet, couldn’t keep up. I lifted him off the ground and into my left arm just as the shouting from inside the Compound was getting closer, and I heard the tape in the boom box come on.
    The message, alternating my voice with Doris’s and Howard’s, pounded over and over again. “These boys have been tortured, and others like them crucified and killed, by Royel and Lutrice Wyeth. Go inside the courtyard and the bungalow of the Center for the Study of Sin and witness it for yourselves.“
    Running with Eddie, I was almost at the copse of trees when something thumped into the trunk of one of them, little buzzing noises tearing through the leaves. I dropped to the ground, cradling Eddie to cushion the impact, then letting go of him and