Vampires Overhead (24 page)

‘He can’t go on like this much longer,’ I comforted Janet. ‘Apparently he’s humped a box of ammo’ up there, but he won’t be able to carry on like that for long. Drunk out there under that sun! He’ll drop right off to sleep before he knows where he is. Then I’ll go up and attend to him.’

‘Supposing he comes down?’ Janet queried fearfully.

‘He daren’t come down. He’d stagger down the slope and roll to the bottom, right into my arms. But, I hope he does. This revolver will shoot straighter than his drunken rifle at close quarters. We’ll just stay put, here on the floor, until the damn fool goes to sleep or shoots himself by mistake. There’s no need to get nervous.’

‘I’m not nervous,’ Janet smiled, and lied bravely through shivering lips. ‘I’m safe with you, I know. But what about Bingen? If he comes back, he’ll get shot.’

‘Yes! I’ll have to find some way of letting Bingen know.’

‘But he would hear the shooting.’

‘Of course he would.’ I wrinkled my brows, and continued reflectively, ‘I don’t know, though. If he’s carrying something heavy up that hill under this sun he’ll not be bothering to listen for anything. I know what it’s like. The sweat running off you and the load getting heavier and heavier. There’s a chance he might get close to Dusty before he heard a cannon going off under his ear. Bingen would be hurrying too. He doesn’t like being out by himself. No, I won’t risk it. I’ll get out and silence that gun on the hill.’

‘Perhaps Bingen might hear the shooting, after all.’

‘Yes, he might. He might come rushing right up here to see what it’s all about, and run into Dusty. Then what?’

‘Hasn’t Bingen got his rifle?’

‘I don’t know. If it isn’t in the cave, he has. I’ll get out there and see. Get my gun, too.’

‘Oh, Garry.’

‘Huh! Nothing to get nervous about. I’ll just make a dive for the cave, and be in it before Dusty knows I’m out of the cottage. Even if he sees me, he couldn’t hit me in a thousand years in the state he’s in.’

Pulling off the equipment, I handed her the revolver. It would be better for her to have it, in case Dusty shot straighter than I thought he could.

‘Here, catch hold of this.’ I gave the gun to Janet. ‘I can’t run with all that tied round my tummy. Save the revolver for Dusty, just in case he comes down.’

At the back window I stopped, with hands on the frame before pulling myself up to jump clear.

‘Listen. And try to be brave. If Mister Dusty, by some remarkable mischance, has a bit of luck and hits me with a lick, you can look after yourself with the revolver until Bingen gets back. You’ll hear when Rhodes stops shooting, and then, when you hear him sliding down the pebbles, you can step to the window, poke the pistol out, and shoot him when he’s close enough for you not to miss. That’s all right, isn’t it? You’ll do that?’

‘Don’t go!’

I laughed at her.

‘Oh, don’t be a kid. It’s all right really. Just giving you instructions against the improbable. I’ll be in the cave before Dusty sees me. I must go. Anything might happen with that lunatic up there. Look at that!’

A shot burst through the door, smashed through crockery on the table, and whined into the ceiling to bring a cloud of plaster about our heads.

‘Lay on the floor again. Be back with you in two shakes of a nanny-goat’s tail feathers.’

On the opposite wall, silver streaks of lead shone where bullets flattened upon the stone. It was time for me to be off. I shoved the makeshift sash from the opening and, as it fell outside to the ground, the shots redoubled, cracked furiously. I could imagine Dusty lying upon the sun-warmed heather, putting aside his rifle to tilt a bottle to his dry throat, watching awhile from the corner of his eye the cottage. And then his choking curse as he saw the window fall to the ground and me spring and tumble out into view, scrambling to my feet to jump the wall and dart for the cave. Dusty’s bottle dropped and I could imagine the brandy oozing away into the heather when he grabbed frantically for his rifle.

Dusty was at home with a rifle. In that short distance he got off five shots at me as I ran doubling. Then he was slamming shot after shot into the barricade, and I was recovering my breath and rummaging in the box of bandoleers of ammunition. With a pile of cartridges at my fingers, and one in the breech, I slid along the floor for a quick glance up at the hill. The showing of my head brought bullets kicking dust viciously. Haphazardly, I loosed off a couple of shots, hoping that Dusty, discovering I too had a gun, would retire gracefully, but he answered them with a regular bombardment and yells of drunken hilarity.

Down in the valley, with Dusty commanding the heights, I did not stand a chance. I must get on to his level. Edging the rifle blindly from the cave, I pulled the trigger, thinking things over.

The only thing to do was to make a dash for the end cottage, where I would stand a chance of climbing, unseen, up the hill, to stalk Dusty through the heather. I shot off five rounds rapidly, listened, counted as he returned them, and when the tenth thumped into the cliff by the cave, jumped for the open, and was running like a hare as he reloaded. A bullet tore through the leg of my shorts I found afterwards.

‘Run! Run, you son of a bitch!’ I heard him call jubilantly.

At the south end of the cottage I was screened from his view, though, idiotically, he still pumped streams of bullets into the roof and the air overhead. I wondered, rapidly climbing the ascent, how much ammunition he had carted up there with him. Along a dry water-run I crept, with dragging rifle, veering round to the other side of the hill, and when I reached the crest, crouching in the blackened heather, I smiled. Across the valley, rather lower than my point of vantage, Dusty lay, belching shots down at the cottages. He had two boxes of ammunition, and the ground about him was littered with bottles. Dusty must have spent some time preparing his siege. For a while I watched him. Spilling cartridges unconcernedly, he turned his back to take a swill from a bottle.

Then I shot.

My rifle-sights were on the bottle in his hand, but the bullet hit another upon the ground by his side! Lucky for Mister Dusty Rhodes! Seven hundred yards. It was too fine a shot for one who had not cuddled a rifle into the crook of his shoulder for years. I lay still in the heather, watched Dusty jerk into firing position with the bottle flung hastily away. He stared surprisedly down the valley, and then searched the surrounding hills incredulously. I grinned viciously to myself. All in good time I’d smoke Rhodes out of his little encampment, watch him run. Then away over the hills I saw Bingen, and, even as I saw him, saw the Vampires above him.

Away to the north, Bingen was creeping along one of the pebbly water-runs with which the hills are inundated, stalking Dusty intently, all unaware that above him there dropped a small cloud of Vampires.

Dusty, set upon searching the valley to see where I had fired from; myself flat among the heather; Bingen creeping cautiously; overhead, forty or fifty Vampires dropping slowly, silently!

‘Bingen! Bingen! Look up!’ I yelled, half standing to point a warning, forgetful of Rhodes, intent upon Bingen.

Bingen heard my call, but, even as he looked up, jumped to run for the valley and the cave, the things were upon him. I watched Bingen fight them off violently. Staggering upright, slithering down a slope, shaking them off. Then he was gone from view into a dip. Presently, as I prepared to scramble over the hills to his rescue, he reappeared, and no Vampires followed. Bingen was getting over his dread of them and treating them the right way. As he approached, I turned again towards Dusty Rhodes. He was not to be seen. About the bottle-littered heather a black heap of Vampires lifted, surging upon a body struggling beneath them.

Presently Dusty staggered upright, breaking through the covering bodies, shaking, flinging the things from him. Fastened to the back of his neck a Vampire poised with outspread wings, so that it seemed he wore a fearful caricature of one of the old-fashioned German helmets crowned with an Imperial eagle. Bingen and I ran for him. Dropping my gun, I dragged the sword from its frog, clambering breathlessly up the slippery heather. When I reached the top, Bingen was there, tearing the black, loathsome things from Rhodes’s unconscious form. Together we grabbed them by their wings, flung them to the ground, and slew them.

‘You got the trick of it, Bingen,’ I gasped with the last one hacked and killed. ‘Good for you.’

‘Aw! I got used to ’em now,’ Bingen grinned, and wiped sweat from his face. ‘Though what the hell we’re doing this for I dunno. Couple a fools we are, if anyone ever was.’

‘Your’re right at that,’ I agreed shortly, and bent over the body of our foe. ‘Phew! He reeks of brandy. As much drunk, as scared out of his life, the swine. Let’s kick the drink out of him, and, when he’s awake, beat hell into him. Then we’ll put it to him gently he’s not wanted round here at all.’

We shook and thumped Dusty into a sort of semi-consciousness, and he lay, blinking at us uncomprehendingly with red eyes, not knowing or caring who we were. But soon, under our treatment, he recovered more fully, to recollect and whimper, reach for one of his beloved bottles. I stepped upon his reaching hand and Bingen kicked the bottle away.

‘Get up! Get up, you! This is your finish. Get bumped off. You’re going to get shot, here and now, without any court-martial. Savvy that? We’re not having any drink-crazed swine barging about here with a gun.’

‘That’d be murder. You can’t get away with that. You’d get ’ung,’ Dusty whined, when at last my meaning soaked into his doped brain. He lifted himself upon one elbow and scowled up at us with bleary eyes. ‘I’ll get out of it, but don’t shoot. Anways, you daren’t shoot. You’d be ’ung.’

‘Hung? Will we? How? You going to call a copper and give us in charge after we’ve shot you?’ Bingen asked seriously, and then as the blank foolishness of it, calling a policeman in that deserted world struck us, we collapsed into laughter. Rhodes seized his opportunity. With surprising agility he sprang suddenly to his feet and was running swiftly over the hills. We laughed as Bingen called again. ‘Hi! Where you going? To fetch a policeman?’

Dusty Rhodes went over the bracken like a deer and, big man as he was, I don’t think his flying feet bent the blackened fronds.

‘It’s better like that,’ I said. ‘We couldn’t have shot him.’

‘Couldn’t we?’ queried Bingen. ‘Why not? He tried to do you in, didn’t he? Anyway, I’ll send a reminder after him to let him know what’s waiting for him if he comes back.’

Coolly, as though preparing for a shoot at Bisley, Bingen dropped to the ground, arranged his legs comfortably, and took a couple of sighting shots. Then he went into action. With rapid fire he hummed bullets after the luckless Dusty, who dodged now as he fled with fear spurring his feet. Into the ground before him, behind, above his shrinking head and, I honestly believe, between his very legs, Bingen pumped bullets after the diminishing figure, while I held cartridge clips ready for him to reload. How on earth Bingen managed not to hit him, I do not know, but if Mister Dusty Rhodes wasn’t scared out of his life, I wasn’t weak from laughing. Janet, now knowing that tragedy had developed into farce, called to us.

‘Stop! Oh, please stop!’ She came down in the valley, running towards us with upstretched arms. She called again: ‘Don’t shoot him! Please! Let him go.’

‘It’s all right. He’s gone. Don’t worry about Bingen shooting. He saved Dusty’s life, and now he is helping him on his way.’

‘Saved his life, huh!’ Bingen grinned up at me from the ground. Dusty had disappeared over the hills and far away. Bingen got slowly up and stretched himself. ‘Saved his life! I dunno about that. If he isn’t just about dead with fright when he stops running, I never tried to shoot his socks off.’

I laughed at him and called down to Janet.

‘We’ll be down in a minute. Stay there! Bingen, let’s get the bodies of these things together and burn them.’

‘Good idea. You know, Garry, I believe I’ve got over my fear of them. Over there, just now, when I found I could shake them off and throw them. I got confidence. Don’t think they’ll worry me any more.’

‘Of course they won’t. I gathered you’d tumbled to them, when I saw you come up smiling just now. Good man! We’ll take Dusty’s rifle and his ammunition back with us, and I’ll use his brandy to set these things on fire. Gosh! The brandy that fellow must have tucked away. This business gave him a chance to get what he wanted.’