his way to the clearing’s edge and started to walk the perimeter, looking for a sign.
He didn’t have to look hard. The Ragged Man had marked the spot with one of the remaining birds. The dead pigeon was laying on the ground with its wings spread and a severed head six inches from the body, acting as a pointer, pointing to the path Judy took every morning to the beach.
Rick noticed that the red-check head didn’t match the blue-bar body and he felt a second’s sorrow for the two dead animals as he passed their remains and stepped onto the path.
He moved quickly down it, figuring that the Ragged Man was making his way to the beach. He felt eyes upon him. He turned, a turn that saved his life. Something slammed into him, knocking him down and sending the gun flying. He felt cold steel slice into his shoulder, where an instant ago his neck had been.
He rolled away from his assailant, tried to get up, but the Ragged Man grabbed him by the foot with his left hand and sliced into his leg with his right. Rick kicked at the hand holding his bleeding leg with his free leg. The Ragged Man jumped back, screaming, and both men scrambled to their feet. Rick darted his eyes around the clearing searching for the gun and found it, but the big man blocked his path. Both men were panting hard and Rick was losing blood.
The Ragged Man lunged for him, swinging the knife. Rick dodged back and, standing on his good leg, kicked the big man in the balls. The Ragged Man grunted, stepping back, temporarily disabled, staggering. Rick was too weak to deliver much force behind the kick.
The man fell, moaning, and Rick started to move in to finish him, but stopped his attack when he saw why the man had gone down. He was feigning injury to distract Rick. He had fallen toward the gun, was reaching for it as Rick turned and left the path, thrashing into the woods seconds before a bullet whizzed over his head.
The man didn’t fire a second time, because in his frenzy to put distance between him and the armed man, Rick had vanished into the thick woods.
“ I’ve got the gun now!” the man boomed into the forest.
Rick didn’t answer.
“ It’s only a matter of time before I get you.”
Rick still didn’t answer.
“ I spent two years in Vietnam tracking VC. You’re no match for me!” the Ragged Man shouted.
Rick took off his shirt and checked his shoulder. He had been lucky, the cut wasn’t deep and the blood was light, not dark. His leg was a different matter. He was pumping too much blood out of the injury for it to be a mere flesh wound. He tore the shirt into two strips and knotted them together. Then he tied it around his leg as tightly as he dared.
With the makeshift tourniquet in place, he started through the woods, not sure of his direction, but hoping he was circling back toward the clearing and away from the Ragged Man. He was going to have to live to fight another day.
“ I see you!”
A bullet slammed into a tree six inches from his head. Rick turned into the woods with renewed energy.
After two minutes of desperate flight with brush and branch whipping against his bare skin, he stopped to listen. The man didn’t appear to be following, and if what the man had said about Vietnam was true, it didn’t make any sense, because he was leaving a trail a blind man could follow.
“ I still see you.”
Rick was moving before the two quick shots were fired. He didn’t know where they landed and he didn’t turn to look. He just moved, tearing through the growth.
Another minute of full-bore flight and he stopped to rest again, grabbing a few deep breaths, then he started breaking trail. The son-of-a-bitch was going to have to be in excellent shape to keep up with him.
And as he ran, he thought, three shots fired, three shots left. Maybe two could play the game. Maybe he could get the man to use all his ammunition. New hope coursed through him as he pushed on through the woods. He was lost, but not down, and not out. He heard a car pass by and he knew the road was up ahead. He continued on, struggling through the pines, until he was on the pavement, about a quarter mile below his house.
Without stopping to rest, he started up the road. In a few minutes he would be home. He could take the Montero and drive to town, where he figured he could buy a shotgun at the sporting goods store and enough shells to finish the job. Three minutes to the car, five minutes to town, five minutes to buy the gun, five minutes back. Eighteen minutes and he would be ready to do battle again.
He was halfway home when he heard the big man’s booming laughter and a bullet slammed into his already sliced shoulder, knocking him down. He rolled and pushed himself up, fighting the pain, and made like a jack rabbit, sprinting toward home.
As he came into the driveway, he heard another shot and a distant part of his mind said, One bullet left, only one bullet left.
He reached the Montero, grabbed onto the door latch, pulled the driver’s door open. He fumbled in his pockets for the keys, found them, bent over the steering wheel, and with a hand steadier than it had a right to be, inserted the key into the ignition, but before he could crank it over a bullet flew through the front passenger’s window, slicing into his right shoulder, lancing along his back to his left, leaving a foot and a half graze along his back before it smashed out the driver’s window and lodge into the front porch.
And a lightning thought flashed through the haze. He had another gun. He reached into the bag Judy had given him and withdrew her thirty-eight. Then he opened the driver’s door and fell like a dead man onto the driveway, clutching the gun to his chest.
He lay, playing possum, for a half-minute that seemed like half a lifetime, before he heard the sound of the Ragged Man’s hard shoes scraping against the pavement. He waited until he felt the big man’s shadow cover his body.
“ Fuck you!” He rolled onto his back as he fired the pistol into the man’s right thigh.
The big man screamed and fell back, landing on his ass.
Rick forced himself up and staggered over to the man who had done so much killing.
“ I should kill you now, but I’m more afraid of you dead than alive.” Rick saw the quizzical look on the man’s face. “You don’t understand, do you?”
The man didn’t answer.
“ My plan is to take you out to sea, about a mile or so, and to toss you in while you’re still breathing. By the time you die, I’ll be long gone and you’ll be all alone. All alone with nobody around, nobody to possess. You’ll die a final death and then you’ll be nothing but shark bait.”
The man’s eyes lit up.
Rick lowered the pistol and blew off the man’s left knee cap.
The Ragged Man rolled on the ground, screaming in pain until Rick brought the butt of the pistol down on his head, knocking him out.
He checked his pulse and, satisfied the man was still alive, dragged him to the rear of the Montero. Breathing heavily, he opened the back and put up the back seat. Then calling on all of his reserves, he picked up the Ragged Man like a sack of stones and stuffed him into the back, closing the door on him with no more regard than he’d have for dead fish.
Then he drove down the hill toward the pier.
J.P. heard the car start and felt a lump build in his throat. Was Rick dead or was he leaving without him? No matter which, it wasn’t fair. He had been through too much to die naked in a bathtub.
He looked at the clock, 9:50. He had two hours and ten minutes to figure a way out of the mess he was in and he had to do it himself, all by himself, because he was alone, all alone.
He tried twisting his wrists against the rope to no avail. The Ragged Man had tied it too tight. With all his might he struggled to pull his right hand loose, but only succeeded in further bruising his already bruised and cut hands.
Then he tried stretching to see if he could reach the radio. It was a no go. He was still an easy foot shy. In frustration, he raised his bound legs and brought them down in the tub, splashing water, and he splashed again and again and again, sending the red tinged water splattering through out the bathroom. Tired, he dropped his legs and his right foot hit something in the tub.
The soap.
