Pewtie fired back almost instantaneously. Lamar looked into the earth to preserve his gradually returning night vision, and heard the cracks and the echoes lashing out, almost like a whip snapping over his head, so many, so fast.
Oh you scared. You so scared. Not two shots, not three, but six, seven. Pray and spray, motherfucker.
A moment of silence. Then absurdly, Pewtie fired again, like a crazy man, rushing forward on the surge of adrenaline and under the roar of the shots. Lamar rose like a lion and bounded the few feet to him on an oblique angle; and if Pewtie ever saw him coming, it was too late, for he thundered fully against the man and felt the surprise and the shock disorganizing Pewtie's body, turning it to water, and Lamar was on him, crushing his thrashing body under his own.
First thing was the gun hand, which he controlled with his own left, then, slithering up to gain control, he hit the cop a hammer blow in the face because with two fingers gone, no way could he make a fist; he hit him right over the eye, and thought he felt a bone in the face break as the man screamed and with his other hand rose to ward the blows off.
It was like terrible fag sex, the two strong men pumping against each other in a rising fog of body stink and fear.
Lamar saw how it would go in a second and knew he'd win easy. He'd pound the head of the man he controlled for another ten seconds, smashing him into submission, then twist across the body to get both hands on the gun wrist and corkscrew the automatic out of his grip and pull it back and shoot the lawman with his own gun.
But Bud's hand shot up to his throat and began squeezing, the thumb driving desperately for the Adam's apple.
Lamar gagged, then threaded his hand under Bud's and gave him a knuckle thrust to the fleshy side of the neck, feeling the body beneath him go rigid in the awful pain. He hit again and thought he felt the tremor of surrender quivering through his opponent. Quick as a big cat, he pivoted and now had both hands on Bud's gun wrist, cranking it counterclockwise to rip the pistol from the grip, seeing the hands turn white as they lost their purchase. Something hit him lightly in the leg and then the gun fired, its flash blinding him gain, but it didn't matter, for the slide didn't lock back and the recoil further weakened the man's grip and now he had it. It was in his hand.
He leaned back, fiddling to get it in his hand right, and then thrust the muzzle against the man's body and pulled the trigger.
Richard heard shots. They seemed to come from out beyond, out on the prairie.
He looked around again, seeing nothingness, and then headed toward the sound. He walked in the darkness and paused for just a second, to see the farm spread behind him and before him only the darker band of the trees.
A shape suddenly appeared before him.
“Lamar?” he said, but it was only the girl, who looked at him in horror and then slipped off. He watched her disappear and wondered why she had such revulsion on her face.
He stood there for a few seconds, wondering what to do.
The world had never seemed so empty to him as it did at that moment.
Then he saw a single shot coming from ahead in the trees; by a trick of fate he had been looking exactly where the flash so briefly blossomed.
It occurred to him: Lamar may need help.
He walked toward the shot.
I have to help Lamar.
He took out his gun.
Bud felt his strength vaporizing, and with it all his will.
He had nothing left to fight with, and Lamar had hit him so hard in the face and throat he was seeing nothing but flares of light as his throbbing optic nerves shot off. But still he clung to the Beretta, knowing it held his purchase on survival.
Lamar was above him, over him, hitting him gigantic hammer blows against which he had no defense. His face swelled like a rotten grapefruit. He saw his sons before him in the strobe effect of the optic nerve and for just a second forgot where he was. Lamar's face was a savage mask, so rigid with hatred and power it seemed like something from ancient times. Lamar's dark eyes glowed and his nostrils flared and Bud could smell sweat and dirt and blood and then Lamar hit him a giant clout on the nose, breaking it, filling Bud's mind with red mist.
Lamar pivoted, and Bud felt Lamar's other hand coming onto his wrist, Lamar's weight still pinning him, and the gun was being corkscrewed from his grasp until it was only a second before he lost it.
Magazine button, he thought.
He pushed it with his thumb and felt the magazine slide out, and then he pulled the trigger, the gun firing pointlessly off toward nowhere, as Lamar then seized it and with a blast of triumph broke contact with Bud and pivoted to jam the pistol against his ribs and squeeze the trigger.
Lamar must have pulled the trigger ten times before he realized the gun wasn't going to fire. Couldn't. No magazine.
In the interim, Bud balled his fist. He hit Lamar in the throat and felt his antagonist sag back.
He rolled just a bit and grabbed his Commander from the high hip holster and tried to bring it up against Lamar, but Lamar was too fast on the recovery and with his own left hand grabbed at the pistol.
The two men began to slide through the mud down toward the stream, hopelessly locked, each desperately seeking leverage, strength, hope as they tried to control Bud's Commander. Bud's thumb was over the safety, trying to get it down, Lamar's below it, trying to keep it up.
Their faces were inches apart.
Suddenly, fast as a snake, Lamar seemed to leap out. He sunk his teeth into Bud's nose. The pain scaled the heights of his spine and he screamed, but in the same terrible second he remembered: I shot his fingers off.
With a jab his thumb lanced out against Lamar's fist, hit bandage, dug through it, and felt scab yielding to blood and heard a new scream, not his own.
Bud tore the automatic free and rammed it into Lamar, but when he pulled the trigger it would not go. Lamar had got a finger between hammer and receiver.
“You fucker, you fucker, you fucker,” Lamar was saying.
Bud got the gun free and with his thumb cranked back the hammer, but again Lamar snared his wrist.
The gun in Bud's hand was like a bayonet as each tried to gain control and drive it into the other's heart. It rose and rose, wavering this way and that, now Bud ahead, now Lamar, the two of them locked in each other's arms, squeezing and biting and batting at each other with their skulls.
Up and up the gun came until it seemed to touch Bud's chin; he felt it hard and cold and saw Lamar's merciless eyes but from somewhere some last ounce of rage unleashed a last ounce of strength.
The gun fired.
The flash erupted in Bud's face; the light was incandescent and unyielding and seemed to fill all the corners of the earth, and as the tide of brightness roared through his brain, it destroyed his vision. A thousand bits of powder and lead drove into his skin.
He fell backward, isolated in his blindness, seeing nothing, feeling nothing.
Bud was helpless.
He'd lost the gun, he was blind, his ears rang.
He's going to kill me, he thought, and waited for the next shot, almost welcoming it, for it would stop the pain that now began to throb in his head, and it would let him rest at last.
But no shot came. He blinked and groped and still saw nothing but only heard some unidentifiable sound, a rasping, a moaning, whatever.
He drove his fists into his eyes and pressed them hard, backing sightly up the bank.
He opened his eyes, waiting to die.
But ever so slowly he identified the sound. It came from a hulk just before him, sunk to the knees in the stream, hands clasped over face.
Lamar's hands came away and another flash of heat lightning crackled in the distance and Bud saw that the bullet, a hollow tip had blown through Lamar's chin upward and like a plow had gouged a furrow up what had been
