Death comes while you are struggling with your application or lack of application of the Judeo-Christian ethic. While you work out the equation which says, If I don't kill him, he will kill me, so even if I have been taught not to kill, this is an exception while you are working that out, he is blowing chunks of bone out of your skull. The quick and the dead is an: ancient allusion. They were quick and I was quick and lucky. There was some cunning involved, of course. Being able to see how I might use that tree over the water. Coming back here instead of heading off at a full run. Remembering to scuttle far away from the place where I had rolled out of sight off the plateau. Using Barry as a shield, to shock Chuck momentarily into inaction. So they were gone. Chuck and Barry. The almost-forgotten Nicky. And Persival and the two who had arrived in the plane probably all dead, from the sound of the impact. Now Haris and Ahman too, leaving only Alvor and the two women. A veritable mas
247
John MacDonald sacre. A bloodbath. Butchery. I kept the horror bottled away. There would be time to examine that later on. Right now there was the high-riding pleasure of doing some difficult thing far better than you expected to be able to do it. I had been as slow and clumsy as I dared during the exercises. How many of them had died with a feeling of disbelief, frur,tration, anger? With the ghastly toothy grin of tlie skull-head of death looking over my shoulder, I was intensely alive. I was alive in every thready little nerve fiber, every capillary. I was tuned to quickness, the world all sharp edges around me, my ears hearing every small sound in the world.
Push the luck. Keep pushing. But the women? I somehow did not think I could open fire from ambush on them, as I had on the others. Had I been as hesitant about the others, I would now be as dead as they were.
I moved along to the head of the road, discarding the nearly empty clip, mounting another. I wanted to be in better position to kin the Dodge van if Alvor should decide to hop in and make a run for the gate. I could guess that he was reasonably certain there was more than one of me. He'd heard the report to Persival about the kiting of Clinck and Barry. And he knew the airplane had gone down. Ahman and Haris lay on the thin wet skin of the last of the snow. Rivulets of water ran off the plateau.
The Green Ripper
I moved across the head of the road and took shelter on the other side. I tried to sort out the people, guess at their assignments. If Ahman and Haris had gone looking for Chuck and Barry, then Sammy was the one I had knocked down with the single slug meant for Alvor. And if they had left somebody on the gate, it would have to be Nena. It was possible Stella was still tied up, that nobody had looked for her in T-6. It was possible that Sammy was waiting for me, armed. Make it four to one, two of them women. But no special advantage to me there they were as quick and well-trained and toughened as the men had been.
I heard a sudden motion, a slipping sound, then a heavy thud and a grunt, and then a woman said, venomously, 'Sonnabitchl' I moved farther back. Sister Nena I recognized her voic~-had been coming up the road and had slipped and fallen. My luck was holding. Water was running down the road through slush and mud. She was watching her footing, but she held the weapon at the ready as she rounded the final bend. I could have shot her then. I held on her and thought of the savage slaughter of the innocent she was quite willing to undertake. I thought of the connection between her and the silvery little sphere which had been used to slay my woman.
I dug a grenade out of the pack. I did not pull the pin. I lobbed it with a slow sidearm so that it would arch over her head and fall on the roadside beyond her. The moment it was in the air, I was on my feet, weapon on the ground. The grenade hit and she spun toward the sound, and I charged her. She heard me coming, but she was caught for a frozen moment in a dilemma of choice. Run from the grenade or turn and cut me down. She ran several steps down the road, tumbled and rolled in expert fashion, and ended up in the prone firing position, getting off one wild shot before I kicked the Uzi out of her hands to turn in the air and land in the shallow wet ditch. I grabbed her, and she came up popping me under the chin with her head so hard the world was full of stars and lights. I turned and took a hard kick on the thigh that could have disabled me. Then she tripped me, somehow, and got loose and went scrambling away, running in a strange fashion on her hands and her feet with her rump high in the air. She had registered that the ring was still affixed to the grenade, and she went after it instead of the Uzi. I tried too fast a start and slipped and went down again. She snatched up the grenade, standing and turning as she did so, yanking the pin, releasing the handle. I saw her lips moving as she counted. Her face was screwed up by the intensity of thought, like a child with a puzzle.
I couldn't get to her. She was moving backward quite rapidly, up the hill. She held her arm back, ready to throw. Whichever way I went, she would lead me, and she was nearing her count. I feinted
The Green Ripper one way to draw the throw and ran the other way. Just as she tried to throw it underhand, both feet went out from under her and she sat down hard in the slush. She had thrown it and I couldn't see it anywhere. She had a dazed look. I saw it suddenly, coming down. The fall had made her throw it straight up in the air. It hit behind her and bounced off stone, almost as high as her head, before it went off. I weaved my way over to the other ditch, crossed it, and held onto a small tree. It was a good time for Alvor to have happened along, had he only known it. I found my weapon and picked it up, checked it out. I wondered if I was going to be sick. I knew I was not going to look at what was left of Sister Nena. Not now.
How much luck remained to me? I had needed it more with Nena than with any of the others. Her timing had been perfect. A very accurate count. She was planning on an air burst right in my face.
I had the feeling that this had been a warning to me. This is the way They had used up the very last of my luck. All at once. Good-bye, John Wayne. I went around the side of the plateau, around the end, through very difficult country, staying well below the level of the plateau, moving as quietly as I could. Chuck's complicated wristwatch said it was ten o'clock. I had thought it was at least three in the afternoon. I had lived through more bad hours than the watch would admit. Cover and concealment. The day was overcast, and the misty rain be gan. I had muddied my face. I worked my way up the slope behind the warehouse, walking my forearms along, digging with the toes, watching everything, listening to the dripping eaves, the rain, the silence. It seemed strange to me that I had never heard any birds up here. There should be birds.
Now what would I do if I were old Alvor Brother Alvor with the broad meaty shoulders, the square gray face? Why, I would set up in a good place. I would set up on a high place. I would, by God, set up on a roof, not necessarily the highest roof around, but one where I could lie doggo, and then pop up suddenly and blow the fisherman to fishbait bits. I looked around very carefully. I backed down the slope and came up in a new place and looked around some more.
Finally I had an idea where I might find him. Persival's motor home had one of those ladders that go up to a depression on top that forms a luggage receptacle, with a little chrome fence around it for the tie-downs. It was a handy place for Alvor. He could have climbed the ladder out of sight of the road area. Yes, it would be a very wise choice. But how to check it out and remain alive? I moved again, back down the slope and up again to where I could come out behind one of the little cementblock structures, out of his sight if he were on top of the motor home. I was beginning to get very ragged in the nerve department. I was certain my
The Green Ripper luck was gone, and so it took just about all I had to stand up and move in close to the wall of the little building. I leaned against it, feeling sweat run out of an armpit and tickle my ribs as it ran down. My hands were shaky. Sammy was waiting in one direc lion to blow me apart' Stella in another,~and Alvor on the high ground. find of the saga Twilight of the great John Wayne day.
I did not want to leave the shelter of my nice solid little building. It can get to be like when you were a kid, standing on a high place. Wait too long and you can't jump.
Check the weapon. Breathe deeply. Where had all that zest gone? Who stole the gusto? It went when somebody blew the head off Sister Nena.
One way to go at it I put an eye around the corner of the building. The motor home was right there, about forty feet away. A hide of very thin alloy with an enamel coating. If he was elsewhere, I would be taking the risk of letting him know I was close. But that was acceptable.
I leaned against the building, aimed, let it go on full automatic, cartridge cases dancing away, slugs smacking into the metal, punching holes, making creases in the roundness, making a lot of metallic banging, screech of ricochets, quackety roar of the very rapid cycle of fire. There was an answering roar and something leaped off the roof, out of the depression, and down on the other side of the incongrnous vehicle. Have fun on the road. Drive me to Yellowstone. Plug in the water, the electric, and the phone, and adjust the TV aerial.
I had to make my run. But I had a spot right in the middle of my back, right where Sammy or Stella was going to drive it home. I had used the ne~ct-to-the-last clip to drive Alvor off the roof, and I put in the last clip when I went hunting him. The silence after all that great rackety clatter was astonishing. I braced my back against the motor home, snapping my head from side to side, wondering if he were already runningout across the plateau.
I eased myself down and looked under the vehicle. No feet. I stood up and felt a faint movement of the whole vehicle, not unlike the slight movement of a heavy boat when somebody steps aboard. Okay, so he had eased the door open and gone in. It
