The Language Of Cannibals

foyer toward the entrance to the ballroom. I was talking, loud and fast, as we proceeded under the great arch.

'You men may think you're fighting communism, but the fact of the matter is that the Russians are likely to give you the Order of Lenin for this little caper!'

Ah. No bullets tearing through us yet. We stopped a few feet inside the entrance and surveyed the scene. The sun was just climbing over the horizon, and light was pouring in through the huge bank of windows at the eastern end of the ballroom, to our left. Fourteen men and women, ranging in age from early twenties to middle age and most still in their pajamas and bathrobes, were standing on a paint-spattered tarpaulin, lined up against the wall directly across from us. They were being guarded by three men wearing identical green-plaid ski masks; the men were armed with automatic pistols they definitely hadn't picked up in the local Army Navy store. One man, easily identifiable from his physique as Gregory Trex, was standing next to Mary, twisting her right arm up behind her back. The gazes of all three men were on us.

They certainly looked like a death squad to me.

'If you love the United States of America, you'd damn well better listen to what I have to say before you start shooting anybody!' I continued quickly in a voice that sounded hopelessly high-pitched and squeaky in my own ears. 'You've been set up and used by the very Russians you claim to hate so much. The communists have been making fools of you. If you kill us, they're not only going to get away with it but'll be able to go on making fools of you and the whole nation. You think Jay Acton, the man who's giving you your marching orders, is a super-patriotic American. I'm telling you the son-of-a-bitch is a Russian, and a KGB agent to boot! Without realizing it, you've been acting as a goon squad for the enemies of this country. Give it up now! Don't do this thing. If you give us time, my brother and I can prove that Acton is a Russian agent. If you stop the killing now, if you turn yourselves in and cooperate with the authorities, you may be able to strike a deal. If you love your country, you'll lay down your guns and help us nail Jay Acton.'

I thought it was rather a nice speech-if not exactly instantly hypnotic, then at least strongly persuasive. However, it hadn't seemed to make much of an impression on my audience, the gunmen, who exchanged glances. It was Gregory Trex-making no effort whatsoever to disguise his voice-who spoke.

'What the hell are you talking about, dwarf? What's this bullshit about Acton giving us orders?'

Hmm. 'You're saying he doesn't? You're saying it wasn't Jay Acton who put you up to this?'

'You're fucking crazy.'

Trex sounded genuinely confused by the mention of Jay Acton, which tended to genuinely confuse me. The problem was that I didn't have time to be confused. I made an expansive gesture, putting my hands out to my sides, the purpose being to get my right hand as close as possible to the gun in Garth's waistband. Garth began to move slowly across the room, and I moved with him, resting my hand now on the butt of the gun.

Trex, still bending Mary's arm up behind her back, stayed where he was, while the other two men fanned out across the room, one stopping in the center and the other going to the opposite wall; it would make for a hell of a cross fire.

'It doesn't make any difference who gave you the orders, Gregory,' I said, tightening my grip on the gun, 'because it's obvious that somebody did. You didn't get those weapons on your own.'

'Stop there!' the gunman in the center of the room commanded.

We stopped. The figures of the three men blurred in and out of focus, and I squinted to try to keep the ghostly double images away. Sweat was now running into my good left eye, stinging it, and that didn't help at all. If Garth and I were going to die, the man I most wanted to take with us was Gregory Trex, but Trex was still holding Mary close to him. Even if I weren't suffering from double vision, I couldn't be sure of missing the woman if I fired at him.

Almost as if she had been reading my mind, Mary suddenly twisted in Trex's grip, then spat in his face. 'Let me go, Gregory! Don't be a fool! You'll never-!'

Trex abruptly released his grip on her arm, spun her around, and drove his fist into her stomach. She cried out, doubled over, and slowly sank to her knees.

'Enough of this bullshit!' the man in the center of the room shouted, and abruptly stripped off his mask. It was the Vietnam vet with the ponytail I'd seen at the art exhibition Friday evening. 'We don't need masks! We came here to clean out this nest of communist faggots, so let's get on with it!'

The other two gunmen slowly removed their masks. Trex leered at me, bloodlust gleaming in his milky green eyes. His mouth was half open, and saliva glistened on his small, gapped teeth. I hadn't seen the third gunman before.

It was time, and I began to slowly pull the gun from Garth's waistband. I knew I had no chance of killing all three men before they killed Garth and me, but I was damned well determined to kill Trex.

A balding, middle-aged man abruptly stepped away from the wall and moved toward Trex. 'Listen, you-!'

'Don't!' I shouted-too late.

The man with the ponytail leveled his automatic pistol on the other man's stomach, pulled the trigger. The bullets caught the middle-aged man in the stomach and torso, ripping him open and hurling him backward. Blood spurted, misted in the air, sprayed over the rest of the shocked, screaming members of the Community of Conciliation.

I grabbed the Colt from Garth's waistband at almost the precise moment when my brother lunged forward, hit the floor, and rolled at the legs of the ponytailed gunman. I crouched down, squinted, and squeezed off a shot at the blurred figure that was Gregory Trex. I heard him scream, saw him grab at his right shoulder as he spun around and fell to the floor. I cursed my poor markmanship and knew there was no time for a second shot. I leaped to my left, hit the floor, and rolled as a hail of bullets tore through the space where I had just been standing. I had no plan; there was absolutely no cover in the stripped ballroom, and there was no way I could make it out through the archway into the foyer before I was riddled with bullets. It was all instinct now, reflex; I knew I was going to die and was simply determined to elude death until the last possible moment. I was sorry I hadn't had time to say a proper goodbye to my brother.

Then, mixed with the cacophony of screams and automatic weapons fire, there was another sound-the higher-pitched chatter of another, heavier automatic weapon, muffled somewhat, as if the fire was coming from outside the mansion. An instant later there erupted a booming cascade of sound like an explosion of glass, as if the bank of windows at the east end was collapsing. The Colt slipped from my grasp. I stopped rolling, curled up in an instinctive attempt to make myself as small a target as possible; I clamped my arms over my head and waited for bullets to rip into me.

And then the gunfire stopped abruptly, leaving in its wake an echo that reverberated throughout the huge chamber, a hideous counterpoint to the continued screaming of the Community members. Hands gripped my shoulders, and I recognized the touch of my brother.

'Mongo! Mongo, are you hit?!'

I opened my left eye, found myself looking into Garth's face through a film of blood that I knew was coming from the reopened gash over my right eye. But the wound didn't hurt. My head didn't hurt; nothing hurt. Astonishment at finding the Frederickson brothers still alive seemed to be working like a powerful general anesthesia. I wiped the blood away with my shirt sleeve, sat up.

'No,' I said. 'You?'

'No.'

'What the hell happened?'

'We've got a visitor, brother,' Garth said in a tone of voice that I thought sounded somewhat cryptic.

'Who?'

'See for yourself,' he replied, and moved to one side.

I took Garth's hand and hauled myself to my feet, looked out over the room, and squinted in an effort to focus my vision. The dawn light streaming in through the open space where the windows had been was mixed now with swirling dust and gunsmoke that danced and spun and drifted on the gentle breezes flowing into the ballroom from off the Hudson. A figure moved in the backlit dust and smoke, but I couldn't see who it was. Off to my right, Mary and other Community members were attending to the men and women who had been wounded. The Vietnam veteran with the ponytail was missing not only his ponytail but the half of his head to which it had been attached; he was quite dead, lying in a spreading pool of blood in the center of the room. The third gunman was dead also. Of the death squad members, only Gregory Trex remained alive- thanks to me. The pig-faced young man with the bandaged nose and forehead was writhing on the floor, yelping in pain, clawing at his bullet-ravaged right shoulder.