The Genocides

While Neil spoke, Orville moved forward, crouched, his right hand exploring the air before him, tentative as a mouse’s whisker. If Neil had not been holding Blossom, or if he had not had a gun, it would have been a simple matter of running in low and tackling. Now it was necessary, for his own sake but more especially for Blossom’s, either to disarm him or to make sure that his shot went wild.

To judge by his voice, Neil could not be far off. He swung his hand around in a slow arc, and it encountered not the gun, not Neil, but Blossom’s thigh. She did not betray her surprise by the slightest flinch. Now it would be easy to wrench the gun from Neil’s hand. Orville’s hand stretched up and to the left: it should be right about here.

The metal of the gun barrel touched Orville’s forehead. The weapon made such perfect contact that Orville could feel the hollow bore, concave within a distinct circlet of cool metal.

Neil pulled the trigger. There was a clicking sound. He pulled the trigger again. Nothing.

Days of immersion in the sap had effectually dampened the gunpowder.

Neil did not understand, then or ever, why the gun had failed him, but after another hollow click, he was aware that it had. Orville’s fist came up for his solar plexus and glanced off his rib cage. As Neil toppled backward, the hand holding the pistol struck down with full force where he supposed Orville’s head must be. The gunbutt struck against something hard. Orville made a noise.

Lucky—Neil was lucky. He struck down again and hit something soft. No noise. Orville’s body was limp at his feet. Blossom had gotten away, but he didn’t mind so much about that now.

He pulled out the axe from his gun belt, where it had been hanging, the head flat against his stomach, the handle crossing his left thigh.

“You stay away, Buddy, you hear? I still got me an axe.”

Then he jumped on Orville’s belly and his chest, but it was no good without shoes on, so he sat down on his belly and began hitting him in the face with his fists. Neil was beside himself. He laughed—oh, how he laughed!

But even so he stopped at intervals to take a few swipes at the darkness with the axe. “Whoop-pee!” he yelled. “Whooppeel”

Someone was screaming. Blossom.

The hard part was to keep Blossom from rushing right back into the thick of it. She just wouldn’t listen.

“No!” Buddy said. “You’d get yourself killed. You don’t know what to do. Listen—stop screaming and listen!” He shook her. She quieted. “I can get Orville away from him, so let me do it. Meanwhile, you go up the shaft the way we went before. Along the detour. Do you remember the way?”

“Yes.” Dully.

“You’ll do that?”

“Yes. But you’ve got to get Jeremiah away from him.”

“Then I’ll expect to see you up there. Go on now.”

Buddy picked up Alice’s rigid and festering corpse, which had been already in his hands when Orville had rushed in like a fool and spoiled everything. He lugged it a few feet in the direction of Neil’s voice, stopped, grappled the old woman’s body to his chest like a suit of armor. “Oooow,” he moaned.

“Buddy,” Neil shouted, standing, hoisting the axe, “you go away.”

But Buddy only went on making the same silly moans and groans that children make playing ghost on a summer night or in a dark attic.

“You can’t scare me,” Neil said. “I ain’t scared of the dark.”

“It isn’t me, I swear,” Buddy said calmly. “It’s Alice’s ghost. She’s coming to get you. Can’t you tell by the smell it isn’t me?”

“Ah, that’s a lot of hooey,” Neil retorted. The moaning started up again. He was uncertain whether to return to Orville or go after Buddy. “Stop it,” he yelled, “I don’t like that noise.”

He could smell it! It was the way his father had smelled when he was dying!

Buddy’s aim was good. The corpse struck Neil full-force across his body. A stiff hand grabbed at his eyes and wiped across his mouth, tearing his lip. He toppled, waving the axe wildly. The corpse made an awful screaming sound. Neil screamed too. Maybe it was just all one scream, Neil’s and the corpse’s together. Someone was trying to pull the axe away! Neil pulled back. He rolled over and over again and got to his feet. He still had the axe. He swung it.

Instead of Orville, there was someone else underneath his feet. He felt the rigid face, the long hair, the puffy arms. It was Alice. She wasn’t tied, and the gag was out of her mouth.

Someone was screaming. Neil.

He screamed all the while he hacked apart the dead woman’s body. The head came off with one stroke of the axe. He split the skull with another. Again and again he buried the axehead into her torso, but that wouldn’t seem to come apart. Once the axe slipped and struck his ankle a glancing blow. He fell over, and the dismembered body squished under him like rotten fruit. He began to tear it to pieces with his hands. When there was no more possibility that it would haunt him again, he stood up, breathing heavily, and called out, not without a certain reverence: “Blossom?”

I’m right here.

Ah, he knew she would stay behind, he knew it! “And the others?” he asked.

They’ve gone away. They told me to go away too, but I didn’t. I stayed behind.

“Why did you do that, Blossom?”

Because I love you.

“I love you too, Blossom. I always have. Since you were just a little kid.”

I know. We’ll go away together. Her voice singsonged, lulled him, rocked his tired mind like a cradle. Someplace far away where nobody can find us. Florida. We’ll live together, just the two of us, like Adam and Eve, and think of new names for all the animals. Her voice grew stronger, clearer, and more beautiful. We’ll sail on a raft down the Mississippi. Just the two of us. Night and day.

“Oh,” said Neil, overcome with this vision. He began to walk toward the beautiful strong voice. “Oh, go on.” He was walking in a circle.

I’ll be the queen and you’ll be my king, and there won’t be anybody else in the world.

His hand touched her hand. His hand trembled.

Kiss me, she said. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?

“Yes.” His lips sought her lips. “Oh yes.”

But her head, and therefore her lips, was not where one would have expected it to be. It was not attached to her neck. At last he found her head a few feet away. The lips that be kissed tasted of blood and licorice.

And for a few days, he satisfied the years’ pent-up lusts on the head of Alice Nemerov, R.N.

SIXTEEN Home Safe

Sometimes distance is the best cure, and if you want to recuperate you keep on going. Besides, if you stopped, you couldn’t be sure of starting up again. Not that they had that much choice—they had to keep going up. So they went up.

It was easier this time. Perhaps it was just the contrast between a sure thing (sure if they didn’t slip, but that sort of danger hardly stimulated their adrenals at this point) and the distinct if unacknowledged presence of death that had burdened these last few days, so that their ascent was also a resurrection.

There was only one anxiety now, and it was Buddy’s. Then even this was dissipated, for after less than an hour of climbing they had reached the level of their home base, and Maryann was waiting there. The lamp was burning so they could see again, and the sight of each other, mired as they were, bruised, bleeding, brought tears