Duel (35 page)

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Authors: Richard Matheson

BOOK: Duel
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“Empty,” Les said.
“Good.”
“Some zoo.”
They walked slowly toward the next cage. “Look how
small
they are,” Marian said unhappily. “How would
he
like to be cooped up in one of them?”
She stopped walking.
“No, I'm not going to look,” she said angrily, “I don't want to see how the poor things are suffering.”
“I'll just take a look,” he said.
“You're a fiend.”
She heard him chuckle as she stood watching him walk up to the second of the cages. He looked in.
“
Marian!
” His cry made her body twitch.
“What is it?” she asked, running to him anxiously.
“
Look.
”
He stared with shocked eyes into the cage.
Her whisper trembled.
“Oh my God.”
There was a man in the cage.
 
She looked at him with unbelieving eyes, unconscious of the large drops of sweat trickling across her brow and down her temples.
The man was lying on the floor, sprawled like a broken doll across a dirty army blanket. His eyes were open but the man saw nothing. His pupils were dilated, he looked doped. His grimy hands rested limply on the thinly-strawed floor, motionless twists of flesh and bone. His mouth hung open like a yellow-toothed wound, edged with dry, cracking lips.
When Les turned, he saw that Marian was already looking at him,
her face blank, the skin drawn tautly over her paling cheeks.
“What is this?” she asked in a faint tremor of voice.
“I don't know.”
He glanced once more into the cage as if he already doubted what he'd seen. Then he was looking at Marian again. “I don't know,” he repeated, feeling the heartbeats throb heavily in his chest.
Another moment they looked at each other, their eyes stark with uncomprehending shock.
“What are we going to do?” Marian asked, almost whispering the words.
Les swallowed the hard lump in his throat. He looked into the cage again. “Hel-
lo,
” he heard himself say, “can you—”
He broke off abruptly, throat moving again. The man was comatose.
“Les, what if—”
He looked at her. And, suddenly, his scalp was crawling because Marian was looking in wordless apprehension at the next cage.
His running footsteps thudded over the dry earth, raising the dust.
“
No,
” he murmured, looking into the next cage. He felt himself shudder uncontrollably as Marian ran up to him.
“Oh my God, this is
hideous,
” she cried, staring with sick fright at the second caged man.
They both started as the man looked up at them with glazed, lifeless eyes. For a moment, his slack body lurched up a few inches and his dry lips fluttered as though he were trying to speak. A thread of saliva ran from one corner of his mouth and dribbled down across his beardblackened chin. For a moment his sweaty, dirt-lined face was a mask of impotent entreaty.
Then his head rolled to one side and his eyes rolled back.
Marian backed away from the cage, shaking hand pressed to her cheek.
“The man's
insane,
” she muttered and looked around abruptly at the silent house.
Then Les had turned too and both of them were suddenly aware of
the man in the house who had told them to go and look at his zoo.
“Les, what are we going to do?” Marian's voice shook with rising hysteria.
Les felt numb, devoured by the impact of what they'd seen. For a long moment he could only stand shivering and stare at his wife, feeling immersed in some fantastic dream.
Then his lips jammed together and the heat seemed to flood over him.
“Let's get out of here,” he snapped and grabbed her hand.
The only sound was their harsh panting and the quick step of Marian's sandals on the hard ground. The air throbbed with intense heat, smothering their breath, making perspiration break out heavily across their faces and bodies.
“Faster,” Les gasped, tugging at her hands.
Then, as they turned the edge of the house, they both recoiled with a violent contracting of muscles.
“
No!
” Marian's cry contorted her face into a twisted mask of terror.
The man stood between them and their car, a long double-barreled shotgun leveled at them.
Les didn't know why the idea flooded through his brain. But, suddenly, he realized that no one knew where he and Marian were, no one could even know where to begin searching for them. In rising panic, he thought of the man asking them where they were going, he thought of the man looking down at their California license plate.
And he heard the man, the hard, emotionless voice of the man.
“Now go on back,” the man said, “to the zoo.”
 
After he'd locked the couple in one of the cages, Merv Ketter walked slowly back to the house, the heavy shotgun pulling down his right arm. He'd felt no pleasure in the act, only a draining relief that had, for a moment, loosened the tightness in his body. But, already, the tightness was returning. It never went away for more than the few minutes it took him to trap another person and cage him.
If anything, the tightness was worse now. This was the first time he'd ever put a woman in one of his cages. The knowledge twisted a cold knot of despair in his chest. A woman—he'd put a
woman
in his cage. His chest shuddered with harsh breath as he ascended the rickety steps of the back porch.
Then, as the screen door slapped shut behind him, his long mouth tightened. Well, what was he supposed to do? He slammed the shotgun down on the yellow oil-clothed surface of the kitchen table, another forced breath wracking his chest. What else could I do—he argued with himself. His boots clacked sharply across the worn linoleum as he walked to the quiet, sunlanced living room.
Dust rose from the old arm chair as he dropped down heavily, spiritlessly. What
was
he supposed to do? He'd had no choice.
For the thousandth time, he looked down at his left forearm, at the slight reddish bulge just under the elbow joint. Inside his flesh, the tiny metal cone was still humming delicately. He knew it without listening. It never stopped.
He slumped back exhaustedly with a groan and lay his head on the high back of the chair. His eyes stared dully across the room, through the long slanting bar of sunlight quivering with dust motes. At the mantelpiece.
The Mauser rifle—he stared at it. The Luger, the bazooka shell, the hand grenade, all of them still active. Vaguely, through his tormented brain, curled the idea of putting the Luger to his temple, holding the Mauser against his side, even of pulling out the pin and holding the grenade against his stomach.
War hero.
The phrase scraped cruelly at his mind. It had long lost its meaning, its comfort. Once, it had meant something to him to be a medaled warrior, ribboned, lauded, admired.
Then Elsie had died, then the battles and the pride were gone. He was alone in the desert with his trophies and with nothing else.
And then one day he'd gone into the desert to hunt.
His eyes shut, his leathery throat moved convulsively. What was the
use of thinking, of regretting? The will to live was still in him. Maybe it was a stupid, a pointless will but it was there just the same; he couldn't rid himself of it. Not after two men were gone, not after five, no, not even after seven men were gone.
The dirt-filled nails dug remorselessly into his palms until they broke the skin. But a woman, a
woman.
The thought knifed at him. He'd never planned on caging a woman.
One tight fist drove down in futile rage on his leg. He couldn't help it. Sure, he'd seen the California plate. But he wasn't going to do it. Then the woman had asked for water and he suddenly had known that he had no choice, he
had
to do it.
There were only two men left.
And he'd found out that the couple was going to New York and the tension had come and gone, loosened and tightened in a spastic rhythm as he knew, in his very flesh, that he was going to tell them to come and look at his zoo.
I should have given them an injection, he thought. They might start screaming. It didn't matter about the man, he was used to men screaming. But a woman …
Merv Ketter opened his eyes and stared with hopeless eyes at the mantelpiece, at the picture of his dead wife, at the weapons which had been his glory and now were meaningless—steel and wood without worth, without substance.
Hero.
The word made his stomach turn.
 
The glutinous pulsing slowed, paused a moment's fraction, then began again, filling the inner shell with its hissing, spumous sound. A flaccid wave of agitation rippled down along the rows of muscle coils. The being stirred. It was time.
Thought. The shapeless, gauzelike airbubble, coalesced; surrounded. The being moved, an undulation, a gelatinous worming within the shimmering bubble. A bumping, a slithering, a rocking flow of viscous tissues.
Thought again—a wave directing. The hiss of entering atmosphere, the soundless swinging of metal. Open. Shutting with a click. Sunset blood edged the horizon. A slow and noiseless sinking in the air, a colorless balloon filled with something formless, something alive.
Earth, cooling. The being touched it, settled. It moved across the ground and every living thing fled its scouring approach. In its ropy wake, the ground was left a green and yellow iridescence.
 
“Look out.”
Marian's sudden whisper almost made him drop the nail file. He jerked back his hand, his sweat-grimed cheek twitching and drew back quickly into the shadows. The sun was almost down.
“Is he coming this way?” Marian asked, her voice husky with dryness.
“I don't know.” He stood tensely, watching the overalled man approach, hearing the fast crunch of his boot heels on the baked ground. He tried to swallow but all the moisture in him had been blotted up by the afternoon heat and only a futile clicking sounded in his throat. He was thinking about the man seeing the deeply filed slit in the window bar.
The man in the Stetson walked quickly, his face blank and hard, his hands swinging in tense little arcs at his sides.
“What's he going to do?” Marian's voice rasped nervously, her physical discomfort forgotten in the sudden return of fear.
Les only shook his head. All afternoon he'd been asking himself the same question. After they'd been locked up, after the man had gone back to his house, during the first terrifying minutes and for the rest of the time when Marian had found the nail file in the pocket of her shorts and shapeless panic had gained the form of hoping for escape. All during that time the question had plagued him endlessly.
What was the man going to do with them?
But it wasn't their cage the man was headed for. A loosening of relief made them both go slack. The man hadn't even looked toward the cage they were in. He seemed to avoid looking toward it.
Then the man had passed out of their sight and they heard the sound of him unlocking one of the cages. The squeaking rasp of the rusty door hinges made Les's stomach muscles draw taut.
The man appeared again.
Marian caught her breath. They both stared at the unconscious man being dragged across the ground, his heels raking narrow gouges in the dust.
After a few feet, the man let go of the limp arms and the body fell with a heavy thud. The man in the overalls looked behind him then, his head jerking around suddenly. They saw his throat move with a convulsive swallow. The man's eyes moved quickly, looking in all directions.
“What's he
looking
for?” Marian asked in a shaking whisper.
“Marian, I don't
know
.”
“He's
leaving
him there!” She almost whimpered the word.
Their eyes filled with confused fear, they watched the overalled man move for the house again, his long legs pumping rapidly, his head moving jerkily as he looked from side to side. Dear God, what is he looking for?—Les thought in rising dread.
The man suddenly twitched in mid-stride and clutched at his left arm. Then, abruptly, he broke into a frightened run and leaped up the porch steps two at a time. The screen door slapped shut behind him with a loud report and then everything was deadly still.

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