One Endless Hour

Roadblock.

I lifted my foot from the gas pedal, but I still rolled up on it fast. A spotlight came on when they saw me. A tiny figure stood out on the road, waving me down with flapping arms. I sized it up. Two cruisers across the road, their snouts extending onto the shoulders. Three-quarters of a car's width between them in the center. Ditch on the right. Open field on the left. And in the rearview mirror the lights of the trailing cruiser gaining fast.

A roadblock you do or you don't. I mashed down on the gas and headed for the center opening between the cruisers. I just might spin one and rip my way through. The fool with the flapping arms stood right in the center of the gap. The lights picked him up solidly. Roaring down on him, I was suddenly staring through the windshield at the white, strained face of part-time deputy Jed Raymond, my only male friend in Hudson.

I hoped he'd jump. Jed was a nice kid. If he didn't, though, he'd have to take his chances, like I was taking mine. I couldn't have been more than twenty yards from him when Kaiser, my big police dog that I'd left with Jed for safekeeping, pranced out in front of Jed, head cocked and tail waving.

My brain sent me straight through, over the dog, over Jed, to try the odds with the cruisers. Instead, my hands spun the wheel, hard left. Somebody else will have to explain it to you. I missed them both, caromed broadside off the left-hand cruiser in a whining, ear-splitting wail of tortured metal, then hurtled a hundred and fifty yards down into the open field.

The front wheels dropped into a ditch and the Ford stood up on its nose. There was a loud Whump! The door flew open. I flew out, hit hard, and rolled. I didn't lose consciousness, and I still had the gun.

I started to crawl toward the Ford, and knew in the first second that my right leg was broken. Up on the highway the spotlight pivoted and crept down through the field. It caught me, passed on, hesitated, and came back. There was a sharp crack, and a bullet plowed up the ground beside me. The rifle sounded like a.30-.06.

I dragged myself over the uneven ground to the Ford and crouched beneath its elevated back wheels. I could see the road and the spotlight, and I got it with my third shot. They turned the other cruiser around-the one I hadn't smashed into-and its spotlight started down through the field. I popped it before its light reached the Ford. Not that it made much difference. More red lights, spotlights, and sirens were whirling up to the roadblock every second now.

I reloaded the Smith and Wesson again. Nothing for it now but the hard sell. Nothing but to see that a few of them shook hands with the devil at the same time I did. To get to me in a hurry they had to come through the field. By now they knew better than to be in a hurry. The.30-.06 went off again, and a large charge of angry metal whanged through the body of the Ford, just above my head. The rifle would keep me pinned down while they circled around behind me.

The spotlights were crisscrossing the field in an eerie pattern. A hump in the ground ahead of the Ford kept its underside in shadow. I couldn't see anyone coming through the field. I heard the rifle's sharp sound again, and above me there was another loud ping! Suddenly I was drenched to the waist in gasoline. The.30-.06 slug had ripped out the belly of the gas tank. I swiped at my stinging eyes and shook my dripping head. I looked up toward the road again just as gas from my hair splashed onto the hot exhaust.

Whoom!

I saw a bright flare, and then I didn't see anything. The explosion knocked me backward, out from under the car. I dragged myself away. I didn't feel the broken leg. I could hear the crackle of flames. Part was the Ford. Part was me. I was afire all over.

I rolled on the ground, trying to smother the flames. It didn't help. I still had the gun. I hoped they could see me and were coming at me. I knelt on the good leg and faced the noise up on the road. I braced the Smith and Wesson in both hands and squeezed off the whole load, blindly, waist-high in a semicircle. Then I threw the empty gun as far as I could in the direction of the road.

There was a dull roaring sound in my ears.

I tried to put out the fire in my hair.

I rolled on the ground again.

I could smell my own burning flesh.

The last thing I heard was myself, screaming.

* * *

The leg healed in six weeks.

I was in darkness a lot longer than that.

I gave them a hard time in the prison wing of the state hospital. I went the whole route: whirlpool baths, wet packs, elbow cuffs, wrist restraints, straitjackets, isolation. Then I stopped fighting them. They don't pay much attention to me now.

I didn't talk to anyone, and my hands were burned so badly they couldn't take any prints. It bugged both the state and federal lawmen that they couldn't run a tracer on Chet Arnold. During their visits I listened to a lot of questions, but I didn't supply any answers.

Even before I could see I knew how I looked. Hair gone. Eyebrows gone. Nose bulbous. Face scarred. Only my chin and throat had escaped fairly lightly. I could sense the reaction to my appearance when a new patient was admitted, or a new attendant came on duty. There was an almost tangible shrinking.

I refused permission for Hazel to visit me. She came to the hospital four or five times, and then she stopped coming and went back to her hometown in Nevada. There was no point in letting her drag herself down with me.

Because I don't talk, the attendants and the doctors think I'm crazy.

They think I'm a robot.

I'll show them.

There's a hermetically sealed jar buried in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, and another in Grosmont, Colorado. There's money in both. There's a stripped-down gun in both. I don't need the money, but I do need a gun. One of these days I'll find the right attendant, and I'll start talking to him. It will take time to convince him, but time I've got.

If I can get back to the sack buried beside Bunny's cabin, plastic surgery will take care of most of what I look like now. With a gun, I'll get back to the cabin.

That's all I need-a gun.

I'm not staying here.

I'm getting out, and the day I do they'll never forget it.

1

Spider Kern and Rafe James entered the prison wing of the state hospital together. Kern was a little man with big shoulders and hard-knuckled hands. He worked a spittle-soaked toothpick continually between his uneven teeth. His face was red and his thinning hair sandy. His key ring swung loosely at his hip where he dropped it after unlocking the heavy ward door with its wire mesh embedded in the glass. When my sight returned, one of the first things I noticed was that Kern's key ring was fastened to his studded belt by a metal clamp as well as a leather loop.

Rafe James went to the desk in the niche in the corridor that served as a ward office. James was thin, dark, and had a long face with a lantern jaw. He had mean-looking eyes and a beard so heavy he always looked unshaven. A foul-smelling pipe that never seemed to go out was as much a part of him as Spider Kern's toothpick was of the senior attendant.

James removed the inmates' folders from the old-fashioned wooden file behind the desk. Kern strutted down the ward in his short-man's swagger. He stopped in front of old Woody Adams, still a flaming queen despite his years. 'Cigarette me,' Kern ordered. The white-haired Woody simpered as he took a pack from his pajama pocket. Kern helped himself to half a dozen.

I had overheard muttering among the inmates about Kern's mooching practices. Old Woody would never become the leader in attempting to do anything about it, though. Not that I ever entered into inmate conversations. I never spoke to anyone except in monosyllables.