Panic! (25 page)

A weapon, he had to have a weapon.

And he remembered the knifelike piece of granite.

His hand came up to touch his belt, where he had put the stone earlier—and it was gone. Damn, damn! It must have pulled free when the bullet skinned his side and he had fallen on the slope. He released a silent breath, passing his fingers over his split and puckered lips, looking around him, looking for another weapon, any weapon. His eyes touched small stones, a piece of decaying wood, an unwieldy section of rail—discarded them, moved on, restless, urgent, wanting something substantial, something heavy, something to throw, perhaps, or something sharp

and he saw the rusted splinter of steel.

It lay in the sand eight feet away from him, on open ground. Some two feet long, warped but otherwise unbent, it was a dull, cankered brown in the sunlight, its forward edge tapered into a point that appeared sharp, that appeared capable of penetrating flesh. Beside it was a long section of rail, the parent which had spawned it through metal fatigue or through impact in the collapse of decades past.

Lennox stared at the splinter, and he thought: Spear, it looks like some primitive spear, and there was a bitter irony in the association. Wasn’t what was happening here, this battle for survival, a primitive thing too—as old as man, as old as life itself?

He had to have that spear. He had to take the chance of going out there to get it. That two feet of slim oxidizing steel represented the last remaining thread of hope, the battle lance, and without it they were naked—there could be no battle.

He put his lips to Jana’s ear and breathed, “I’m going out after that piece of steel, stay here and keep down,” and then, because this was perhaps the final goodbye and there was the need, just this once, to put it into words, “I love you, Jana.”

He waited for her reply, the same three words, and when they were his he squeezed her hand and then moved out toward the splinter, the spear, lying in the sand beyond. He advanced in a humped, four-point stance, fingers splayed just ahead of his shoes, both sliding silently through the sand, his head turned to the left so that he could see the widening area around the boulder. He made a foot, another foot, coming out of the shade now, coming out of hiding, and from just beyond his vision there was a scuffling sound, leather scraping rock, pebbles tumbling, and he stopped moving and leaned forward, holding his breath, craning his neck, and twenty feet away, atop a high flat rock, the fat one, the killer, was pulling himself onto his feet, turned in profile, Death standing outlined against the bright, bright blue of the desert sky.

There was no quickening of Lennox’s heart, no tightening of his groin, none of the symptoms of fear and panic and irresolution. Time had run out, there was no more time to brace himself with the lance, there was only time for one quick attack before the fat one turned and saw him, a single offensive and nothing more.

He thought: This is the moment, this is the judgment—and lunged toward the waiting spear.

Breath whistled asthmatically between Vollyer’s lips as he straightened on top of the rock. He hunched forward, squinting, turning his body as he tried to fuse the dancing shadows below with the objects from which they sprang, cursing his eyes, screaming silently at his eyes. Sweat streamed down from his forehead, over his cheeks, and he lifted his left arm and in that moment he saw the movement, definite movement, independent of the shadows.

His body stiffened, the cords in his neck straining as he tried to focus on the source of the movement. It took shape for him, a man-shape, Lennox, Lennox, and the Remington came up in his right hand, jumping, roaring unsighted as the distorted figure ran across into the open. The bullet ricocheted off the boulder there, showering flakes of rock and dust, goddamn these eyes oh goddamn these eyes, and Lennox was bending down there in the sand, bending, two of him wavering, dancing. Vollyer dropped the Remington and the .38 slapped against his right palm and he fired and sand puffed up a foot wide, I missed him, you son-of-a-bitching eyes, I missed him, and then Lennox was coming up and moving forward, arm drawn back, something in his hand, and Vollyer squeezed the trigger again and again he missed, and Lennox’s arm pistoned frontally and the something in his fingers broke free, a blur, a thin brown blur, he threw something at me, get out of the

impact, Jesus! sudden pain, blackness behind his eyes, fire spreading out molten from his stomach, no, no, what did he throw, my belly, oh oh my belly, and the gun clatters down onto the rock at his feet, he staggers, his hands come up and encounter coarse steel, a length of steel, imbedded there and deep deep inside him, sticky wet, blood, steel, a spear, he threw a steel spear at me but that’s not right he’s a runner he’s not a fighter runners don’t fight, and Vollyer’s legs no longer support him, he falls to his knees, blind, fingers jerking desperately at the shaft penetrating the soft flesh just below his breastbone, trying vainly to pull it free

and he feels himself falling, blackness spinning all around him, dizzying within and without, his head strikes something, his arm strikes something, he is falling off the rock, and there is a solid jarring, an explosion of fresh pain that is still not as great as that in the core of his belly and the blackness becomes redness, flashing, pulsating, dissolves to blackness again and his hands flutter ineffectually at his stomach, the steel is gone now but the blood is there and the hole, the hole

dying, I’m dying, and he did it with a spear, a spear, what kind of thing is that, a goddamn spear, what kind of way is that to play the game ...

Lennox had flung himself to the sand after releasing the steel splinter, looking up, preparing to roll toward a thick wooden tie if the hurtling shaft missed; but then he saw it strike flesh, saw the killer reel and stagger, the one gun drop, saw him topple off the rock into the sand at its base—and he allowed his body to go limp and his head to drop forward into the crook of his arms. He lay that way for a moment, finally lifted his head, and the fat one was still lying there in the sand, not moving. Lennox thought giddily: He shot at me point-blank, three or four times at point-blank range, and he missed every time and I had one primitive chance and I didn’t miss, maybe there is a God after all ...

And then Jana was there, kneeling in the sand beside him, holding his head, pressing his face between her breasts, trying to cry but finding no moisture for her tears. “I saw it all, I saw it, oh Jack, oh God, Jack, are you ... ?”

“No,” he said, “no, I’m all right.”

A sobbing, almost hysterical laugh—a release of the spiraled tension inside her—spilled from Jana’s throat. “It’s over,” she said, “we’re all right, we’re all right.”

He felt tired, he felt incredibly tired. Hunger clawed just under his breastbone, and every inch of his body ached hellishly. He wanted to lie there and sleep, he wanted to lie with his head against Jana’s warm breast and sleep for days, for weeks. His mind seemed to have gone blank, incapable in that moment of sustaining thought, and it was good that way, for just a little while; all the thinking that had to be done had already been done before this final confrontation—all the examining and understanding—and there was no need for introspection now. They had survived, they had found one another and they had found a future, and there was simply nothing else to think about in this moment.

“Jack,” Jana said, “Jack, he’s moving up there, he’s still alive.” There was a kind of sickness in her voice—but nothing more.

She released his head, and Lennox stared at the crumpled form lying a few feet away, saw it twitching in the sand. He got painfully to his knees, finally onto the enervated spikes that were his legs, and walked there cautiously, stopping to pick up a heavy rock on the way. But there was no need for caution; blood pumped in diminishing geysers from the wound in the fat man’s round, soft stomach, and clawed fingers clutched uselessly at the earth. The eyes were open, but Lennox had the feeling that they were sightless, already sightless.

He felt no more hatred, he felt no emotion of any kind toward this dying lump of flesh. Rattling, liquid sounds began in the convulsing throat, the split lips opened, moved, as if trying to form words. He knows I’m standing here, Lennox thought, he knows I’m looking at him, and blood dribbled out at the corners of the small, broken mouth as it tried again to make intelligible sounds.

Lennox knelt, not knowing exactly why he knelt, and leaned close to the mottled, contorted face. Blood filled the mouth now, thick and red, overflowing, and Lennox felt nausea ascend in the pit of his stomach, intensifying the hunger pain there. He started to rise, to turn away, and then the rattling sounds became words, almost inaudible and yet very clear, forced through the bright blood along with a final, spasmodic exhalation—words that for Lennox had no meaning at all.

The words: “Fuck the winners.”

They climbed out of the arroyo at the same point at which they had entered it, and just as they emerged, there came from the west the high-pitched scream of sirens. They stood on the flatland, and seconds later three cars came very fast along the rutted trail—two black-and-white county cruisers and an unmarked black hardtop. One of the cruisers slowed and stopped near the two bodies at the foot of the slope, and the other two machines continued along the ruts.

A chattering, whirring sound reached their ears, coming from the sky to the east, and when they looked up they saw a dark shape—a helicopter—flying just to the near side of the golden rim of the sun, like an insect moving away from a naked light bulb. They looked back to the wheel ruts as the cruiser and the black hardtop drew abreast of them, came to shuddering halts one behind the other. Doors were flung open, and men burst out and began to run toward them across the rocky flatland.

The helicopter was very close now, the sun reflecting off the transparent glass bubble beneath its rotors, coming directly overhead. The hot turbulence generated by its spinning blades was somehow soothing on Jana’s face, billowing her dust-grimed hair, the tattered remains of her clothing. It really is over, she thought with a kind of wonder, it’s finally over. And then her eyes turned to Lennox and she thought: No, it’s just beginning.

He took her hand, held it tightly, and they started toward the approaching men.

Walking now.

Walking together.