Chapter 18 17

The incoming wires dangled loosely in the wind.Sometimes touching the house will also cause the lights to jump and flicker.Every sudden dimming of the lights reminded Joe of the flickering lights of the Dai family mansion, which made him shudder. The black owner was standing on the porch in tears. His name was Dulouis, and he was Markley's brother. Eighteen years ago, he found out that Rose was barren, and the two announced their divorce.But she came back to him in her darkest hour.Although he had remarried, had a wife and son, Louis was clearly still deeply in love with Rose. "If you really believe she's not dead, she's only on her way," said Jo grimly. "Why cry for her?"

"I'm crying for myself," Louie said, "because she left here and I have to wait days to see her again." In the room in front were two suitcases containing the child's belongings.She stood by the window, staring at the Ford. "I'm so scared," said Louie. "Rose was going to stay here with Nina, but I don't think it's safe anymore. I don't want to believe that's true, but they might be here when Nina and I go out." We were spotted by then. Several times on the way home, I always felt that there was a car that was always following me, but it didn't keep following me."

"They don't need that at all. With their equipment, they can track you from a long way off." "When you pulled into the driveway, I went out to the porch to look out. Because I thought I heard a helicopter. In this mountainous area, with such a strong wind-do you think it is reasonable?" "You'd better get her off at once," agreed Jo. Louis went to the fireplace and turned back, one hand on his forehead, as if trying to get the loss of Rose out of his mind so he could think about what to do. "I thought you and Mengsi...well, I thought you two were going to take her away. If they only find me, is it safer for her to be with you?"

"If they get to you," said Joe, "then none of us will be spared." With wires beating the house and lights flickering, Louie went to the fireplace and picked up the battery-filled octane lighter from the hearth. The girl turned to the window, opened her eyes wide and said, "No." Dulouis pressed the switch of the ignition gun, and a blue flame shot out from the nozzle.He laughed wildly and set his hair on fire, then his shirt. "Nina!" Joe yelled. The girl ran towards him. The smell of burnt hair filled the room. Louie, who was on fire, came over and blocked the front door.

Joe drew a pistol from his jeans belt and aimed it at Louie, but couldn't pull the trigger.The man in front of him was no longer Dulouis, but a prey controlled by a boy in Virginia three thousand miles away.Louie couldn't survive tonight.But Joe hesitated to fire the gun, because once Louie died, the boy must have switched to remote control for another person. The girl might be untouchable to the boy because she can use her superpowers to protect herself.So, the boy was going to use Joe - the gun in his hand - to blow the girl's head off. "That's funny," the boy said in Louie's voice.The flames burned his hair, his ears were scorched and cracked, and blisters appeared on his cheeks and forehead. "It's funny," he said, enjoying himself manipulating the Shelouis who were blocking the door.

Perhaps at the most dangerous moment, Nina will send herself into the blue space, just like she did before the 747 crashed on the grassland.Maybe bullets just go through the void she's in.But it is also possible that she is not yet recovered, unable to bear such a heavy burden, and may be exhausted and die. "Get out of the back," cried Jo, "go, go!" Nina ran towards the back of the cabin, to the door between the vestibule and the kitchen. Joe covered her from behind, the gun still aimed at the burning man, though he didn't want to use it at all. Their only hope is the boy's "playfulness".It would give them a chance to escape from the cabin and into the open.According to Rose, in this way, his remote search ability and ability to control the human brain will be rapidly lost.If he gave up the toy of Dlouis, he would be in Joe's head at once.

Throwing the lighter aside, the flames have spread from shirt to trousers, and the boy's big toy says, "Oh yeah! Oh wow!" Joe still clearly remembered the feeling of being pierced through the spine by a cold needle when he fled Dai's house in a panic the night before.The energy that invaded his body frightened him more than being hugged by this monster that was on fire. Joe retreated into the kitchen in a panic, slamming the door behind her as she went.Actually this is meaningless.Because as long as the boy gave up Louie's body, no door, no wall, no safe could hold him back.

Nina had slipped out the back door of the cabin, and Joe had followed her into the night when he heard the living room door crash. Behind the cabin is a yard with natural dirt and turf, and the air smells of fallen leaves.Beyond the mahogany picnic table and four chairs, the forest looms ahead. Nina was already running towards the woods, her two calves were moving back and forth, and her rubber-soled shoes made a clattering sound as they stepped on the solid road.She rushed through the tall and accessible grass that surrounded the forest, and disappeared among the dark pine forests. Jo feared that the little girl would be lost in the wilderness, and that the boy was in the body of the man on fire.Joe searched around among the bushes, calling out the girl's name.He stretched out a hand and pushed aside the low-hanging pine branches so as not to hurt his eyes.

Behind him, Du Yi's indistinct voice sounded, because the flame had burned his mouth.I can vaguely hear the songs sung by the children: "I'm coming, I'm coming, are you ready? I'm coming, are you ready?" The moonlight streaming through the foliage made Joe see the girl's fair windswept hair, glowing faintly, only six or eight yards ahead to his right. Joe tripped over a rotten log and stepped on something slippery.He stood firm, pushed aside the waist-high thatch that would cut people, and found that Nina had found a flattened beast path. When he caught up with the little girl, the dark forest suddenly brightened.Orange flames lit the trunk and branches.

Joe turned around and saw Dulouis, possessed, thirty feet away.Fire from head to toe, but still standing, stumbling forward among the trees.They were only twenty feet away now, and in his path the dry pine needles that lay on the ground were ablaze, and the thatch twigs were ablaze.Now there are only fifteen feet left.The stench of burnt flesh wafted in the wind, and the boy's big doll yelled with delight, but the words were indistinct. Although he held the gun in both hands, he was still shaking.But Joe pulled the trigger and fired. Two rounds...four rounds, six rounds.And at least six bullets hit the ghost.It fell back on the ground without moving, not even convulsing, and died of fire and bullets.

Dulouis was no longer a human being, only a burning corpse, a corpse that no longer had a mind to be driven and tortured by the boy. When Joe turned to face Nina, he suddenly felt a very familiar cold tingling on the back of his neck.But not as sharp as the time he was almost caught at the threshold of the Dai family mansion.The boy's power was indeed greatly weakened in the open area.But this kind of spiritual injection did not lose its effectiveness due to the reduction in power.It's still jabbing, it's penetrating. Joe screamed loudly, and the girl squeezed his hand. The cold sharp teeth loosened their mouths and left him.Spread your wings and fly away like a weaver.Jo felt dizzy for a moment, put one hand to the nape of his neck, and thought he must be bleeding.But he was unharmed and sane. Nina's touch saved him from being possessed. An eagle flew out of a high branch of a tree with a strange screech, swooped down, and struck the girl in the head.Seeing its wings beating and pecking at the top of her head, the girl screamed and covered her face with her hands, while Joe could only keep waving his arms to drive away the sudden attacker.The crazy bird flew into the air with a whistling sound.It was no ordinary bird, and it certainly wasn't frightened by the wind, or the fire that was spreading rapidly behind them. It struck again, fierce as an arrow in the moonlight, its sharp beak like a deadly dagger.It is simply impossible to shoot it with a gun due to its speed. Joe dropped the gun, knelt down and pulled the girl closer to him.Bury the girl's face on his chest.The eagle must have been pecking at her eyes, pecking continuously, until it pecked out her brain, pecked her brain, and made her lose her strange superpowers. One of the eagle's talons, grabbing the sleeve of Joe's coat, pierced through the corduroy and into the flesh of the arm.Another paw grabbed the girl's blond hair.It flapped its wings and pecked at the top of her head, angry that it could not peck her buried face.When Joe tried to chase it away, it turned on Joe's hand.The claws gripping the sleeves and hair tightened even more.It desperately pecked at the nimble bird's head, the blood-stained beak.This time it pecked at the eyebrow above his right eye, and the next time it was sure to peck him blind.Joe grabbed it by the neck, and the claws tore his sleeves and wrists, and the wings beat him in the face.It twisted its head and continued to attack him, nearly pecking his eye out.Joe pushed it away, its blood-red eyes glistening with fire. He squeezed, squeezed until the life was squeezed out of its body, until Joe felt its chest was crushed before throwing it on the road.It was not dead yet, its wings were still beating weakly, but it could no longer fly into the night sky. Jo brushed the hair off the girl's face, but she was unharmed.No pecks on the eyes, in fact, no scratches at all.A surge of pride welled up in Jo, and he stopped the hawk that attacked her. Blood dripped slowly from the tip of his injured eyebrow, along the socket of his eye to the corner of his eye, blurring his vision.Blood flowed down from his pecked cheek and scratched wrist like a small river. He found the pistol, snapped the safety off, and tucked the gun back into his belt.There was a roar of beasts outside the woods, the sound was terrifying but stopped abruptly.Then across the hillside, amidst the whistling of the wind, there was a burst of ear-piercing laughter.Yes, something is receiving. Perhaps the boy had improved a lot in the year Rose had been on the run. Maybe he has been able to control others outdoors. His mental power may be released like a stone that dissipates heat as Rose described, but it won't disappear too quickly, and he can still make a quick blow. Because of the whistling of the wind and the crackling of the blazing fire, Jo couldn't be sure for a moment which direction the laughter came from.Now the boy, in the flesh and blood of his host, was quietly approaching. Joe put his arms around the girl and they kept moving.And it was quicker to carry her through the woods than to hold her hand before he was exhausted.She was so small, so small that it surprised him.The bones are as thin as the crushed eagle. She clung to Joe, and he tried to smile at her.In the beating firelight, his flickering eyes and unnatural smile seemed not only inconsolable, but also a bit ferocious. The boy, in his new incarnation, wasn't their only threat.The strong Santa Ana mountain wind spread the fire to the mountainside. The dry pine forest, which has been dry for a long time without rain, has a trunk full of turpentine, like wood soaked in gasoline, and burst into flames when burning. A wall of fire at least three hundred feet long blocked the way back to the cabin.They also couldn't go around, because the fires on both sides were burning faster than they could hike through the jungle and over rough terrain, and the fire was getting closer at the same time. Qiao stood there with Nina in his arms, and seeing the fire approaching, he suddenly became flustered.He knew he had no choice but to give up the car.They have to walk out of this mountainous area.Joe carried the girl away from the cabin, and walked along the animal path of the narrow path.Just after escaping from the fire pit, balls of fire were blown up by the wind and landed in the woods in front of them, immediately the tops of the trees in front of them also burned.Burning needles fell like bright bees.Joe worried that his or Nina's hair and clothes would burn.The fire tunnel stretched so fast that they couldn't get through it.The fire was getting bigger and bigger, forming a stream of air mixed with thick smoke, and fueled by the Santa Ana mountain wind, it was about to become a storm of fire. The trail gradually climbs up, but the slope is not steep.Joe was going faster than he expected.He was sweating and out of breath from the scorching fire, and he finally reached the ridgeline with Nina in his arms. The pistol under the belt was painful to press on Joe's stomach when he was running. If he could spare a hand, he would draw that weapon and throw it away.He was worried that his body was too weak, and he would not be able to hold her with one hand, so he gritted his teeth and endured it. As he passed the narrow crest, he followed the trail downhill.He found that the wind was weaker on this side of the ridgeline, and although the flames would cross the mountaintop, the spreading speed was so slow that he could escape the range of the fire pit and the thick smoke. He stood in the cool air, gasping for breath. Joe's adrenaline rush was now higher than his usual endurance.If it weren't for his brace for pain, he might have collapsed long before reaching the ridge.The muscles in Joe's legs ached, and the arms holding the little girl felt like a heavy weight.Just because they weren't safe yet, he had to keep walking, staggering and zigzagging, weary tears blinking from his smoky eyes.Walking steadily forward--until the snarling mutton rushed up from behind and bit Joe viciously on the back, luckily only biting the corduroy jacket.But the force of eighty or ninety pounds made him stagger and almost fell to the ground. But the dirt hung there, holding on to the jacket, creating a balance that kept Joe standing. The jacket was ripped and the coyote fell off.Joe stopped, put Nina on the ground, and turned to face the predator.He drew the pistol from his belt, thankful he hadn't dropped it earlier.Reflecting the firelight on the ridgeline, the earth faced Joe fiercely. It was like a wolf, only smaller, with ears bigger than a wolf's and a smaller nose and jaw.It showed its white teeth, and its appearance seemed to be scarier than a wolf, because the mental power of the evil boy was running around in its brain like a poisonous snake.Its bright eyes shone with yellow light. Joe pulled the trigger, but the gun didn't fire, he forgot to put the safety on.I saw the coyote sprinting towards Joe, very low, but quickly and cunningly biting his ankle. Instinctively, Joe stepped back to avoid being bitten, and pushed the safety off with his thumb. The beast circled him, foaming from its mouth.It roared and rushed up, biting Joe's right calf.Howling with pain, he turned around to shoot the damned beast.But when he turned, it turned too.Joe was furious and worried that the flesh of his calf would be ripped off, and the tearing pain, which came from the calf like a shock from a powerful electric current, made him almost faint. Suddenly, Tuliang let go, and retreated timidly, showing fear and confusion. The beast stopped attacking at this moment, it whined and looked around in confusion. Joe held the trigger with his finger, but hesitated to release his hand.It turned its head to look at the bright moonlight, and wailed again.Then it looked again at the top of the hill, where the fire was not a hundred yards from them.The wind suddenly strengthened here, and the flames shot up in the night sky.The upper wolf pricked up his ears, and when the flames rose again, he suddenly abandoned Joe and Nina, ran away from them, and disappeared into the canyon below. In this vast and empty area, the boy exhausted his abilities and was finally thwarted.He lost control of the beast.Joe could feel that there were no longer any ghosts and ghosts hovering in the forest. This wave of fire storm hit them again, and Joe dragged the bitten leg, and walked with difficulty.He couldn't hug Nina anymore, but she held his hand, and the two walked towards the dark primeval forest as quickly as possible. He hoped to find a way, tarmac, gravel, or dirt, it didn't matter, as long as it led outside.As long as they can be guided away from the fire, Nina will be safe. Just after they had gone less than two hundred yards, there was a rumbling sound behind them. Joe turned away, worried about being attacked again.He saw a herd of deer running towards them. Ten, twenty, thirty deer moved gracefully and quickly around them. Their ears stood alert, their dark eyes mirrored, and their speckled loins twitched.The hooves kicked on the ground, raising a faint cloud of dust.They snorted, neighed and walked away. Joe's heart was pounding, he calmed down his disturbed emotions, took Nina's hand, and followed the deer trails down the mountain.After walking more than ten steps, he found that the bitten calf was no longer painful, and the hand and face pecked by the eagle were no longer painful, and he was no longer bleeding.Along the way, Nina healed him just as the deer passed by.