pain and terror.
“Easy, boy. Easy. Good dog.”
Williams slowly lifted the end of the leash toward the only suitable tie spot: a protruding pin on the door hinge of the cave. Suddenly the dog, feeling the gentle tug on his neck, whirled with a screech of fury and slashed out at Williams. The man went down with a howl, dropping the leash, and in a second the dog was gone, a black shape hurtling away into the cornfields.
“Son of a bitch bit me!” Williams cried, holding his leg.
Shurte rushed over and directed his flashlight at the fallen trooper. The pants were torn and blood welled from a gash in his thigh.
“Jesus, Williams,” Shurte said, shaking his head. “And to think he did that with only half a jaw.”
Sixty-Seven
“I can’t see!” said Brast loudly from somewhere behind him. “I can’t see!”
“Cool it,” Larssen replied. He looked around, scouring the ground with his own set of goggles. They had all lost their goggles in the attack. He saw one of the sets lying in a puddle of water, one of its lenses broken. The other set was nowhere to be found. Was he the only one still able to see? It seemed so.
“Help me find my goggles!” Brast cried.
“They’re out of commission.”
“No,
“Brast? Cole’s hurt. Pull yourself together.”
Larssen took off his shirt and tore it into strips, doing his best to ignore the chill dampness of the cave. He looked around for something that would do as a splint but saw nothing usable. Better to bind the arm to the torso and leave it at that. The important thing now was to get the hell out of there. Larssen wasn’t particularly frightened—he’d never had quite the right imaginative equipment for fear—but he perfectly understood the seriousness of their situation. Whoever attacked them, it was someone who
Hazen had only been half right. The killer was in the cave, but it sure as hell wasn’t McFelty—or anyone connected with Lavender, for that matter. This was something a lot weirder and deeper than that.
He forced himself back to the problem at hand. “Cole?” he asked.
“Yes?” Cole’s voice was weak and he could see the man was sweating. Shock.
“I don’t have anything to splint your arm with, so I’m going to immobilize it by tying it to your chest.”
Cole nodded.
“It’s going to hurt.”
Cole nodded again.
Larssen tied two of the strips into loops and hung them around Cole’s neck to form a sling, and then, as gently as possible, took hold of his arm and slid it in. Cole winced, cried out.
“What was that?” Brast shouted in a panic. “Is
“It’s nothing. Just stay calm, keep quiet, and do what I tell you.” Larssen tried to make his voice sound reassuring. He would almost rather have ended up with Hazen. The sheriff might be an asshole, but nobody could accuse him of cowardice.
Larssen tore another couple of strips from the shirt and tied them around Cole’s torso, binding up and immobilizing the broken arm. The broken bones grated against each other, and Cole winced. He was sweating profusely now, and shaking.
“Can you stand up?”
Cole nodded, rose, staggered. Larssen steadied him.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so,” he grunted.
“You’re not going, are you?” cried out Brast, groping for Larssen in the darkness.
“We’re all going.”
“But what about my goggles?”
“As I said, they’re broken.”
“Let me see them.”
With a hiss of irritation Larssen picked them out of the water and handed them to Brast. The man felt them frantically, tried to turn them on. There was a spark and a hiss. He hurled them away, his voice high and panicky. “Sweet Jesus, how are we ever going to get out of—”
Larssen reached out and grabbed a fistful of Brast’s shirt, gave it a good screw. “Brast?”
