Vampires Overhead (23 page)

‘What d’you mean by that?’ he growled quickly.

‘Nothing much, except that I can’t quite forget what a lady-killer you were. Remember that little copper-coloured girl in Aden, Bingen. The one who wanted to see the Commanding Officer about an allowance?’

‘No, I don’t. And don’t preach, or try warning me off any preserves that are public property.’

‘Maybe public property, but the sort of public property which has plenty of little notices reading “Keep off the Grass”?’ I told him soberly.

The journey was made in a silence which threatened to develop into a squabble with very little encouragement, until we passed the houses and neared The Blue Anchor. The chickens, three and one cockerel—five were dead—we found wandering woefully about their saving enclosure without strength to revolt against the indignity of being tied leg to leg and laid in a barrow. From the cellar we carried a dozen of brandy, the same of port, a small barrel of ale, and from the burned bar I rescued several tin boxes of biscuits, and we returned to the houses.

Here we were lucky, for in one of the shops—there were four—we found unlimited supplies of tinned provisions. Busily I sorted them out, packing those I thought to be the most valuable upon the barrow, after we had removed the luckless fowls, whilst Bingen ransacked the adjoining shops, a haberdasher’s and a milliner’s. He returned with armfuls of miscellaneous articles, shirts, shorts, socks, and shaving gear for ourselves, and a great bundle, which he guarded jealously, for Janet.

‘What the devil have you got in there?’ I asked, eying the bundle curiously. ‘Remember we’ve got to push this damned barrow up that hill.’

‘Aw! Just a few fal-de-dals for the girl,’ he answered sheepishly.

With the fowls upon the packed barrow we set off slowly on our return journey, and the road was long and hot. From the crest of the hill by the valley whence she had waited our return, Janet came flying down to greet us, eying the piled barrow with excitement. She treated my reprimands for having left the proximity of the cave with smiling contempt, and Bingen, to my disgust, upheld her. I would have to see that in future she obeyed, otherwise it would not be safe to leave her alone. The three of us hauled the goods to the hilltop and ran them down into the valley with cheers. At the cottage door Janet was all eagerness to delve into the bundles, until I drew her notice to the starved fowls. With them fed, sparingly, watered, and housed in the adjoining cave, Bingen and I retired to shave and array ourselves in clean shirts, leaving Janet to probe the mysterious bundle on the barrow. What a delight that shave was! The first for days. We heaved buckets of water over each other like schoolboys, and like schoolboys we arrayed ourselves in khaki shirts and Boy Scout shorts.

‘For Gawd’s sake! We can’t go out and face the girl like this.’

I laughed almost hysterically at Bingen, knowing I too must have presented an identically comical appearance. Bingen’s legs were plump, inclined to be bandy and blackly hairy, and the top two buttons of his shorts refused all his furious attempts at a meeting. Sheepishly we went into the open, both trying desperately to be the one behind. But Janet was too busy to notice us.
w
ith Bingen’s bundle spread on the ground by the barrow she was crooning softly with delight. In turn she fondled scent-bottles, powder-puffs, brushes, a large ornate mirror, and articles of that description. Mentally I kicked myself for not having thought of them, and Bingen grinned sideways at me. But the chickens and the foodstuffs. They were the most important. But they did not please Janet so much as the fal-de-dals. At least, I thought not then.

Tea, with the two of us rigged up like pantomime Boy Scouts, and the girl fortified with perfume and face powder, was a most enjoyable meal, spoiled only for me by the ingratiating manner with which Bingen proffered biscuits and jam and such to Janet. Almost, I was pleased when a group of Vampires flying far away to the East, dim in the blue sky, sent us cautiously to the cave entrance, and brought the meal to an abrupt close. Actually I suppose, a mild sort of jealousy mingled with the fact that I felt such overtones to be out of place with the three of us alone in the country in the middle of death, made me hate the way Bingen made up to Janet, and at the first opportunity I shot a quick aside at him, to remember the warning I had given about keeping off the grass. I was taken startlingly aback when he retorted with an accusation of wanting her for myself. I remember I flushed, for suddenly I realized there was a glimmer of truth in what he whispered savagely. Janet rejoined us, peering curiously at my red face and Bingen’s grin.

Later in the evening, with a great yellow moon hanging low over the valley, and the dull rosy glow from Khaenealler’s comet diffusing over the hills, Janet nursed the cat, while Bingen and I sprawled at her feet with smoke from our cigarettes curling peacefully upwards.

We were tensed suddenly, unexpectedly, when a drunken voice bawled. The words were tossed down into the silent valley, resounding, until the world was full of hurled threats.

VIII

The Killing of the Stranger

IN THE ENSUING SILENCE
, as we stared at each other, there came a sound of pebbles slithering down into the valley, and on the crest of the hill, dimly against the starry sky, we saw a figure staggering drunkenly to and fro. A raised fist menaced us.

‘I’m acomin’ back for you two . . . I’m acomin’ back for yer, an’ you’d better watch your . . . step. I’m comin’ back. Comin’ fer the girl an’ all. I’m comin’ back.’

‘Mister Dusty Rhodes!’ I ejaculated. ‘We ought to have bumped him off while we had the chance. He’s going to be a nuisance if he hangs about round here.’

The raucous voice softened as Rhodes swayed and staggered from the hilltop, but the refrain still dropped down to us.

‘I’m comin’ back! Comin’ back!’

He must have circled drunkenly, for his voice grew stronger again, and he reappeared for a moment on another edge of the valley to loom blackly against the red glow from the comet. Again, the valley was filled with blood-curdling threats and his promise anent returning. His voice silenced jerkily as we heard him stumble and fall. He slid, obviously unexpectedly from the cursing, down a pebbled slope. Then he went swearing and staggering away into the night.

‘Hum! Says he’s coming back.’ Bingen grinned at me. ‘Sounded as if he was back. But it was kind of him to let us know.’

‘We really ought to go out after him and give him such a towsing he will alter his mind about coming back,’ I said sternly. ‘We ought to have done it before. Treating a bloke like Rhodes decently is making him think he’s put the wind up you.
b
ut I don’t like to go and beat him up while he’s blind drunk. Perhaps, in the morning, he’ll have forgotten all about us, and gone on his way.’

‘I’m frightened of him,’ Janet whispered. ‘I believe he’ll come back.’

‘Let him. It won’t do any harm,’ I told her reassuringly, taking her hand in mine. ‘Nothing to get nervous about so long as Bingen or I are handy.’

Janet had listened silently to Rhodes’s shouted threats and, curiously at the time I thought it, crept close to me to grasp my arm. I wondered why she did not go to Bingen. She said again:

‘I’m frightened of him. Don’t make fun of him. You mustn’t let me be alone when he is about. Oh, I believe I’ll be frightened to be alone any more, now.’

‘It’s nothing to be frightened of. He’s drunk. When he sobers up, he won’t bother us again.’ I squeezed her hand. ‘Come along, forget all about him.’

We heard no more from Dusty Rhodes that night, and I think before we turned in Janet had put him from her mind. I felt sure either Rhodes would have to be scared away from the neighbourhood, or we would get no peace until he was placed in a condition which would not allow him to be an offence to anyone except from a nasal sense. It was three days before we saw him again.

But for periodical descents of small numbers of Vampires, the days passed uneventfully. At first, I used to sally forth from the cave to slaughter them, were they in reasonably small flights, but when we found they stayed only a short while before leaving, Bingen and I used to play bezique, while Janet sewed in the barricaded cave until they decamped. That was the better, the easier way, for their bodies had to be carted over the hill and disposed of, and it was a queerly nasty job carrying these limp, chill, decapitated carcasses. It was far better to let them stay their time, squatting, humped motionlessly outside the cave, until they went away. Somehow, I received the impression they were uneasy, unsettled, as though wanting to return to their habitat, and yet did not want to leave with nourishment still to be had.

After Rhodes’s second visit, the times during which they sat about the cave entrance grew appreciably shorter. I wondered fantastic things about them. Did their food last them over long periods? Did they feed but once every month or so, like snakes? Once, we saw two lying flattened to the earth with muzzles boring into the loosened soil where we had buried their fellows. Lying so prone, I thought them dead, until Bingen hurled a stone, which twisted them in the bracken to stare coldly at us as though we disturbed meditations.

During those days preceding Rhodes’s return, Bingen and I made solitary journeys over the hills to the outskirts of the town, bringing back upon the barrow such stores as seemed of use to us. We did not leave Janet alone. Bingen tumbled across the local territorial barracks, the rifles and ammunition and, but for him, we surely must have lost the battle with Mister Rhodes.

Four rifles Bingen brought back, and half a dozen boxes of .303 cartridges.

I was pleased with them, lost no time erecting a target to blaze away with the unlimited ammunition. With the first half a dozen rounds cracked off and echoes crackling over the hills, I stood with the rifle at my shoulder. That noise would have startled all the birds for miles around! The rifle dropped to the ground. A world without birds! We had not remarked it before. It was six months before they returned. Gulls were the first we saw, drifting high in the sky like minute, wind-blown scraps of white paper. Later, we saw birds of the hedgerows, which darted to cover at our approach. Once I knew they were gone, I missed the birds even more, I think, than the beasts and the presence of humans.

Rhodes, to Janet, was a tangible fear. She was sure he would come back . . . and he did. For myself, I had almost forgotten him, but I think that Dusty Rhodes discovered the barracks and the small-arms arsenal, and visited our valley immediately afterwards.

It so happened it was my turn to stay with Janet, while Bingen went off on an exploration after more stores. The valley was rapidly assuming the appearance of some great dump, for I thought it wise to acquire all we could in case . . . Where Bingen was, I do not know. Janet, busy under my superintending, was sewing straps I had brought from the barracks into equipment which would allow me to carry, when abroad, sword, pistol, and rifle. Frog and holster were fixed into a web-belt, and I tried it on. Janet giggled at me. In khaki shorts and blue shirt with shortened sleeves, I buckled the equipment about my middle, saluted her with military precision, and asked for orders. When there came a derisive shout across the hills. It was followed quickly by the crack of a rifle-shot and the thud of a bullet slamming into the cottage door.

‘’Ere I am back again,’ Dusty swayed above the valley and yelled. ‘Come back like I says I would. I come to . . .’

But I was rushing Janet into the cottage, flinging her flat on the floor. The door slammed behind us, and the fusillade started. Dusty bombarded us drunkenly, absurdly. Shots splintered, whistled through window openings, thudded through the door, slammed uselessly into the walls. And, in between loadings, Dusty called hiccoughing challenges for me to go out and fight him.

Janet lay sideways, to stare affrightedly at me. I smiled at her and then swore foolishly.

‘For the love of Mike! Here we have been sewing equipment together so that I should always be able to go out fully armed, and now we
are
in need of that damned rifle it’s in the blasted cave!’ I said to the white-faced girl lying close on the floor beside me. ‘I wonder if that drunken maniac up there is able to see over the back of the cottage. I’ll be able to get out of the cave for the gun. Then we won’t be long.’

Holstered on my belt was the revolver. I pulled it out and broke the cylinder to stare at the six shells nestling in it. But that was useless unless Dusty came right down into the valley. I smiled at Janet, and we lay listening to the caterwauling and the shots slamming into the cottage. Short of going outside, I could not discover whether or not he overlooked the short distance to the cave.