Duel (37 page)

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Authors: Richard Matheson

BOOK: Duel
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As he threw the gears into first, the head and trunk of the man appeared in the window. He shouted something but neither of them heard it over the roar of the motor.
The car jerked forward and stalled.
Les hissed in impotent fury as he jabed in the button again. The motor caught and he eased up the clutch. The tires bumped over the uneven ground. Upstairs, the man was gone from the window and Marian, her eyes fastened to the house, saw a downstairs light go on.
“
Hurry!
” she begged.
The car picked up speed and Les, shoving the gears into second, jerked the car into a tight semicircle. The tires skidded on the hard earth and, as the car headed for the lane, Les threw it into third and jerked at the knob that sent the two headlights splaying out brightly into the darkness.
Behind them, something exploded and they both jerked their shoulders forward convulsively as something gouged across the roof with a grating shriek. Les shoved the accelerator to the floor and the car leaped forward, plunging and rocking into the rutted lane.
Another shotgun blast tore open the night and half of the back window exploded in a shower of glass splinters. Again, their shoulders twitched violently and Les grunted as a sliver gouged its razor edge across the side of his neck.
His hands jerked on the wheel, the car hit a small ditch and almost veered into a bank on the left side of the lane. His fingers tightened convulsively and, with arms braced, he pulled the car back into the center of the lane, crying to Marian.
“Where is he?”
Her white face twisted around.
“I can't see him!”
His throat moved quickly as the car bucked and lurched over the holes, the headlights jerking wildly with each motion.
Get to the next town, he thought wildly, tell the sheriff, try and save that other poor devil. His foot pressed down on the pedal as the lane smoothed out. Get to the next town and—
She screamed it.
“Look out!”
He couldn't stop in time. The hood of the Ford drove splintering into the heavy gate across the lane and the car jolted to a neck-jerking halt. Marian went flailing forward against the dashboard, the side of her head snapping against the windshield. The engine stalled and both headlights smashed out in an instant.
Les shoved away from the steering wheel, knocked breathless by the impact.
“Honey,
quick,
” he gasped.
A choking sob shook in Marian's throat. “My head, my
head.
” Les sat in stunned muteness a moment, staring at her as she twisted her head around in an agony of pain, one hand pressed rigidly to her forehead.
Then he shoved open the door at his side and grabbed for her free hand. “Marian, we have to get
out
of here!”
She kept crying helplessly as he almost dragged her from the car and threw his arm around her waist to support her. Behind him, he
heard the sound of heavy boots running down the lane and saw, over his shoulder, a bright flashlight eye bobbing as it bore down on them.
Marian collapsed at the gate. Les stood there holding her, trembling impotently as the man came running up, a .45 clutched in his right hand, a flashlight in his left. Les winced at the beam flaring into his eyes.
“Back,” was all the man said, panting heavily and Les saw the barrel of the gun wave once toward the house.
“But my wife is
hurt!
” he said. “She hit her head against the windshield. You can't just put her back in a
cage
!”
“I said
get back!
” The man's shout made Les start.
“But she can't walk, she's unconscious!”
He heard a rasping breath shudder through the man's body and saw that he was stripped to the waist and shivering.
“Carry her then,” the man said.
“But—”
“Shall I blast ya where ya stand!” the man yelled in a frenzied anger.
“No. No.” Les shook nervously as he lifted up Marian's slack body. The man stepped aside and Les started back up the lane, trying to watch Marian's face and his footing at the same time.
“Honey,” he whispered. “Marian?”
Her head hung limply over his left forearm, the short blonde hair ruffling against her temples and brow as he walked. Tension kept building up in him until he felt like screaming.
“Why are you
doing
this?” he suddenly blurted out over his shoulder.
No answer, just the rhythmic slogging of the man's boots over the pocked ground.
“How can you
do
this to anyone?” Les asked brokenly. “Trapping your own kind and giving them to that—that God only knows what it is!”
“
Shut
up!” But there was more defeat than anger in the man's voice.
“Look,” Les said suddenly, impulsively, “let my wife go. Keep me here if you have to but … but let
her
go.
Please
!”
The man said nothing and Les bit his lips in frustrated anguish. He looked down at Marian with sick, frightened eyes.
“Marian,” he said, “
Marian
.” He shivered violently in the cold night air.
The house loomed up bleakly out of the flat darkness of the desert.
“For God's sake, don't put her in a cage!” he cried out desperately.
“
Get back.
” The man's voice was flat, there was nothing in it, neither promise nor emotion.
Les stiffened. If it had been just him, he would have whirled and leaped at the man, he knew it. He wouldn't, willingly, walk back past the edge of the house again, back toward the cages, toward that
thing
.
But there was Marian.
He stepped over the thrown-down shotgun on the ground and heard, behind him, the grunt of the man as he bent over and picked it up. I have to get her out of here, he thought, I
have
to!
It happened before he could do anything. He heard the man step up suddenly behind him and then felt a pinprick on his right shoulder. He caught his breath at the sudden sting and turned as quickly as he could, weighed down by Marian's dead limpness.
“What are you—”
He couldn't even finish the sentence. It seemed suddenly as if hot, numbing liquors were being hosed through his veins. An immense lassitude covered his limbs and he hardly felt it when the man took Marian from his arms.
He stumbled forward a step, the night alive with glittering pinpoints of light. The earth ran like water beneath his feet, his legs turned to rubber.
“
No
.” He said it in a lethargic grumble.
Then he toppled. And didn't even feel the impact of the ground against his falling body.
 
The belly of the globe was warm. It undulated with a thick and vaporous heat. In the humid dimness, the being rested, its shapeless body quivering with monotonous
pulsations of sleep. The being was comfortable, it was content, coiled grotesquely like some cosmic cat before a hearth.
For two days.
 
Piercing screams woke him. He stirred fitfully and moved his lips as though to speak. But his lips were made of iron. They sagged inertly and he couldn't move them. Only a great forcing of will would raise his leaden eyelids.
The cage air fluttered and shimmered with strange convections. His eyes blinked slowly; glazed, uncomprehending eyes. His hands flopped weakly at his sides like dying fish.
It was the man in the other cage screaming. The poor devil had come out of his drugged state and was hysterical because he knew.
Les's sweat-grimed brow wrinkled slowly, evenly.
He could think.
His body was like a massive stone, unwieldy and helpless. But, behind its flint, immobile surface, his brain was just as sure.
His eyes fell shut. That made it all the more horrible. To know what was coming. To lie there helpless and know what was going to happen to him.
He thought he shuddered, but he wasn't sure. That thing, what was it? There was nothing in his knowledge to construct from, no foundation of rational acceptance to build upon. What he'd seen that night was something beyond all—
What day was it? Where was—
Marian!
It was like rolling a boulder to turn his head. Clicking filled his throat, saliva dribbled unnoticed from the corners of his mouth. Again, he forced his eyes open with a great straining of will.
Panic drove knife blades into his brain even though his face changed not at all.
Marian wasn't there.
 
 
She lay, limply drugged, on the bed. He'd laid another cool, wet cloth across her brow, across the welt on her right temple.
Now he stood silently, looking down at her. He'd just gotten back from the cages where he'd injected the screaming man again to quiet him. He wondered what was in the drug the being had given him, he wondered what it did to the man. He hoped it made him completely insensible.
It was the man's last day.
No, it's dumb imagination, he told himself suddenly. She didn't look like Elsie, she didn't look at all like Elsie.
It was his mind. He
wanted
her to look like Elsie, that was what it was. His throat twitched as he swallowed. Stupid. The word slapped dully at his brain. She
didn't
look like Elsie.
For a moment, he let his gaze move once more over the woman's body, at the smooth rise of her bust, the willowy hips, the long, wellformed legs. Marian. That was what the man had called her. Marian.
It was a nice name.
With an angry twist of his shoulders, he turned away from the bed and strode quickly from the room. What was the
matter
with him anyway? What did he think he was going to do—let her go? There had been no sense in taking her into the house the night before last, in putting her in the spare bedroom. No sense in it at all. He couldn't let himself feel sympathy for her, for anyone. If he did, he was lost. That was obvious.
As he moved down the steps, he tried to remind himself once more of the horror of being absorbed into that gelatinous mass. He tried to remember the brain-searing terror of it. But, somehow, the memory kept disappearing like a wind-blown cloud and he kept thinking instead of the woman.
Marian.
She did look like Elsie; the same color hair, the same mouth.
No!
He'd leave her in the bedroom until the drug wore off. Then he'd
put her back in the cage again.
It's me or
them
!—he argued furiously with himself. I ain't going to die like
that!
Not for anyone.
He kept arguing with himself all the way down to the station.
I must be crazy, he thought, taking her in the house like that, feeling sorry for her. I can't afford it. I
can't
. She's just two days to me, that's all, just a two-day reprieve from—
The station was empty, silent. Merv braked the truck and got out.
His boots crunched over the hot earth as he paced restlessly around the pumps. I
can't
let her go! he lashed out at himself, his face taut with fury. He shuddered then at the realization that he had been entertaining the thought for two days now.
“Why wasn't she a
man?
” he muttered to himself, fists tight and blood-drained at his sides. He raised his left arm and looked at the reddish lump. Why couldn't he tear it out of his flesh?
Why?
The car came then. A salesman's car, dusty and hot.
As Merv pumped gas in, as he checked the oil and water, he kept glancing from under his hat brim at the hot-faced little man in the linen suit and panama hat. Replace
her
. Merv wouldn't let the thought out yet he knew it was there. He found himself glancing down at the license plate.
Arizona.
His face tightened. No. No, he'd always gotten out-of-state cars, it was safer that way. I'll have to let him go, he thought miserably, I'll
have
to. I can't afford to …
But when the little man was reaching into his wallet, Merv felt his hand slide back to his back overall pocket, he felt his fingers tighten over the warm butt of the .45.
The little man stared, slack-jawed, at the big gun.
“What is this?” he asked weakly. Merv didn't tell him.
 
Night brushed its black iced fingers across the moving bubble. Earth flowed beneath its liquid coming.

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