In a blurred flash I saw him, his face only two feet from mine, distorted and ugly. I saw his left hand moving again, and the metallic gleam of the gun in his hand. That was what he had hit me with; when we rolled on the ground he must have hit the automatic, felt it, then reached for it and used it as a club.
And now that he had it in his hand, he thought only of the gun. A gun was the instrument he had used so many times before to kill, to murder; he knew he could kill me with the gun. And because of that, because of his dependence on guns and confidence in his automatic, he forgot that he could have killed me with his hands.
The gun was pointed slightly to my right, swinging around now toward my head, ready to blast death into my brain. Even as I moved I knew that in another second it would be ended for one of us. I lunged toward him, slamming my left hand down against the earth to hold my body from the ground, and with my body momentarily supported I threw my right hand forward, my momentum and body weight behind my swinging arm, and my hand open, the fingers pointing at the soft spot in his belly below his rib cage. The gun was pointing squarely at my head, and he must already have been tightening his finger on the trigger when my fingers sliced into the unprotected, yielding flesh, and it felt as if my hand had half buried itself in his body even as I jerked my hand aside and rolled away from the gun.
He didn't even manage to pull the trigger. The force of my stiff-fingered blow sent him toppling slowly backward from his knees, his feet bending beneath him, and I knew that his heart was rending inside him, bursting, sending a bloody explosion through his body for the last time, and that in seconds he would be dead.
And, like that, it was over.
He fell backward, one leg still cramped beneath him, and died. The gun had fallen from his fingers. I picked it up and sat there with him for a few seconds, letting my breathing get more shallow and the little tremors stop rippling through my body. The screeching gulls slowly circled down about us. Some of them lighted on the earth and hopped about with oddly comical motions.
I looked around me, then at the body on the ground, thinking that this was a strange grave for a man, and that it could have been my grave. When I left, the gulls would settle down like dirty white vultures, and this island would appear like all the others. The gulls might be curious about the man thing that didn't move, but they'd soon ignore him and continue their wheeling and screeching above and around him, and maybe walk on his stiffening body and waxen face. And then, in time, he'd become part of that slime beneath him.
The hell with him. It was no more than he deserved.
I got up, walked to where the black case lay on the ground, picked it up, and went back to George. I went through his pockets and found the silver key that fitted the lock in the black case, put it in my pocket, and started walking toward my boat, the automatic stuffed into my trousers. My knee seemed to be OK as long as I didn't twist it, put the wrong pressure on it. But my side hurt like hell and I felt as if I were one large bruise.
I spotted George's boat and turned right, walking toward where I'd left my own. I reached it, started to climb in and shove off, then glanced idly out over the water.
I'd forgotten all about them while I'd been battling with George. But there they were, slicing through the water toward me: Torelli's army.
17
THEY SAW ME. At least I could see them too. There were two boats with three people in each, which meant there were only six men after me. Hell, I probably had six cartridges in the .45, maybe seven, so all I had to do was overpower six gorillas, then shoot them. I might even have a bullet left over for the wizard. For me to accomplish all that, there'd have to be a wizard.
Of course, I didn't stand there gaping at my six pursuers while I figured all this out. By now I was running like a fiend back through the sea gulls. I had the black box in one hand and the .45 in the other, and I knew I had to get rid of the box fast. There wasn't a chance in the world that I could get away from here without Torelli's men catching me, and right now, even though I couldn't really convince myself of it, the black box was more important than I was. I could only hope those guys hadn't seen it in my hand. There was a good chance they hadn't; I had been hardly more than a blur out there once I spotted them. If they hadn't seen the box, I might be able to ditch it somewhere and swear I hadn't seen it either. Then later my ghost could come back for it.
I kept running. I knew the general direction I'd been taking, but I suddenly realized that, just in case I lived to get away from here, I'd want to know how to find the box again. I started looking around for a hiding place, but all I could see was the sea gulls. Already I was beginning to hate sea gulls.
I had slowed down to a trot by now, and ahead of me was a gnarled tree taller than most on the island. Near its top was a peculiar arrangement of three branches that I'd recognize if ever I saw it again. This was far enough; I couldn't run around carrying the stuff any longer. I put my back against the tree and paced off twenty steps, then stooped down and, with my hands, dug out a hole about two feet deep. What passed for ground out here was soft stuff, and easy to dig into. I put the box in the hole and covered it up, smoothed the ground as best I could. Buried treasure. But it was the first time I'd ever heard of treasure being buried in what my treasure was buried in.
As an afterthought I went back to the tree and scratched a small mark in its side with the metal of the automatic, then smoothed out my track as well as I could, walking backward several yards from the tree. From that point I ran off in one direction, then came back and ran off in the other direction. It may sound as if I were running off in all directions, but I was covering up my tracks and laying false trails. This brilliant maneuver accomplished, I ran all over some more, and then began considering seriously just what I was doing.
I had to get the hell out of here, but there were only three ways the hell out of here; land, sea, and air. That wasn't enough. What I needed was the fourth dimension. The land didn't stretch far enough; I could hardly make it by air; and I couldn't swim a hundred yards, much less the mile or more to shore. Anyway, I was pooped. So I had to get a boat—and the only boats were back where those six torpedoes were. There was the answer: a torpedo boat. There's something about this island, I thought. It tries a man.
I started back. I angled over to the edge of the island, skirted it in a direction that would take me around to the boats. After five minutes without running into any of the lurking hoods, I spotted George's boat. One of the torpedoes was there, his back toward me. Only one. Maybe I had a chance. I kept my eyes on him and sneaked closer. I tried to decide whether to shoot him, and maybe bring the others running, or to attempt sneaking the rest of the way up to where I could hit him on the head. While I decided this, somebody hit me on the head.
There was a little, hard hammer in each of the arteries leading into my brain, and every time my heart pumped those little hammers flew through the arteries and slammed into a soft spot on my skull. I knew it was soft because I could feel it bending in and out with each heartbeat. Consciousness came back to me and I could see the blur of pinkish light filtering through my closed eyelids. I opened them.
I couldn't get oriented for a minute. I've been sapped before, and usually I come to looking at a ceiling. This time I was looking at a whole passel of foolish birds flapping around where the ceiling should be. Birds and sky and more birds. Very odd. It would appear I had been sapped once too often.
I started to turn my head to the left to see where I was at, and something hard slammed into the side of my jaw, and I suddenly didn't give a damn where I was at. The side of my jaw started to hurt just a little more than the back of my head. I put my hand up and brushed my cheek; the swelling had already started. I ran my tongue along the inside of my teeth. The teeth were all there, so far, but I could taste blood from the cuts inside my mouth.
A rough voice behind me said, "Turn around, Scott," and like a fool I started to. Wham! Same jaw, same thing all over. People behind me were laughing. It was a fu
nny joke.
"Get up," Rough Voice said.
Get up, sure. Throw me a rope for my teeth and I'll bite my way up. But I grunted and strained and got to a sitting position. And I got a look at them. All six of them. It was horrible.
Such a stupid collection of blanks I had ever seen. They were all big muscle-brained he-men, the kind you see at the beach kicking sand, and throwing footballs where the girls can see them, and hanging from the parallel bars with one hand while scratching themselves under the arm with their other hand, and sticking out their upper teeth, and looking very natural that way. They were a sorry lot.
"Get up," Rough Voice said again.
I looked up at him, really singled him out and looked at him for the first time, and immediately wished it were the last time.
The man was not real. No, sir, he was an illusion. It was a fact that one half of his face was smaller than the other, and if that half was less ugly it was only because there was less of it. He had no hair on his head at all, and his little black eyes perched like flies over his huge, mashed nose. Stiff black hairs jutted out of his nostrils like a lost mustache.
Torelli had really sent the sour cream off the top after me. To look at these six guys, you'd think Torelli had hoped to scare me to death.
"All right, Scott," said Rough Voice. "Where's the papers?"
Now we were getting down to business. I said, "What are you talking about?"
"Look, Scott, maybe you like getting slapped around. Well, I like slapping you around, see? So when I ask you questions, you answer fast and right."
This wasn't good. I thought of the black box buried not far from here, and what it would mean if these guys got it. The five others stood behind Rough Voice, looking down at me. A couple of guns were in sight and one guy had a pair of field glasses hanging from his neck by a strap. They all looked grim. I'd hold out as long as I could, but I was pretty sure that if Rough Voice really started working on me, no matter how I tried not to, I might talk. There are things you can do to a man that will make almost any man talk when he stops screaming.
"Listen," I said, "don't you get it? I don't know what's coming off."
"Where's Madison?"
That was something; they hadn't found him yet. I said, "Madison? How the hell would I know?"
Rough Voice didn't like that. His jaw muscles bulged and his mustache wiggled. He said, "The only reason you're not unconscious is because you can't talk unconscious. But I'm getting tired. You didn't come out here just for fun."
"Why not? I like birds."
Wham! I was on my way back again. The hell with it. I stayed there. But not for long. Rough Voice reached down and grabbed the front of my shirt and jerked me to a sitting position. He shook me a little, then told one of the men behind him to scout around. One of the guys took off.
"Scott, I better wise you up," Rough Voice said roughly. "I know you came out here after Madison, and after the papers. I know they was out here. And you know I know it. Tell me where they are fast and you'll live longer."
Yeah, I knew how much longer. Just long enough to let them get their hands on the papers.
I gritted my teeth and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
His big fist slammed into my stomach and every atom of air ripped out of my lungs. He grabbed me and pulled me up, and I got the fist in my stomach again. Then, blurrily, I saw his big fist coming at me. This time the sun didn't dim. It went out.
It took me quite a while this trip. I got the pinkish glow through my lids and worked for a minute or two to get them open. It was an automatic thing to do when coming out of unconsciousness, but after I got them open again I realized it hadn't been worth the trouble. Rough Voice grabbed my shirt and pulled me to my seat again.
His big hand slammed across my face, then back the other way. I was getting scrambled. But I had it figured that he wasn't trying to kill me. He only wanted me to think he was trying to kill me. Well, that's what I thought.
He said harshly, not a trace of humor in his voice now, "I'm tired messing around. I'm gonna start breaking your bones in a minute. Now get up on your feet."
I got awkwardly to my feet. My brain was clearer now; it seemed somehow easier to think on my feet. I had to figure what to tell these guys, and figure fast. They knew what I was doing here, all right—but maybe, just maybe, there was a way.
If I could convince them that Madison had got here ahead of me and left with the papers, they maybe wouldn't kill me right way, might take me ashore. They might wait till they'd checked my story. It was pretty flimsy, and it would take some doing, but at least the old think pot was starting to perk.
Then I noticed that all five guys here had turned their heads and were looking off to my left. I took a look myself.
No, things couldn't get much worse. Of course not. This was swell. The sixth guy was coming back to join the party now, and he was dragging George Madison along behind him by one foot.
18
THE SIXTH MAN walked up to us and dropped George Madison's foot. Seven people watched this with a grisly fascination, and then six people looked at me. I kept looking at George.
That foot plopping down to the ground did more toward lowering my morale than the beating I'd so far received. I looked at the foot, and it was my foot down there. That was me down there. The guy who'd brought the body had hauled it all the way, part of the time with the face dragging along the ground. The eyes were opened, but even if he'd been alive he couldn't have seen out of them. And the face was bruised and cut, the mouth hanging ajar. George didn't look good at all.
I was in pretty bad shape myself. My lips were puffed, and I could tell by the soreness on it that my tongue had been cut, probably on my teeth. At least the teeth were still there. Of course, so were George's.
Rough Voice stepped closer to me. Nothing had been said yet, but I'd have a hell of a time convincing these guys now that Madison had run away with the papers.
Rough Voice said softly, "You didn't know where Madison was, huh? He just fell down and hurt himself, didn't he? Well, Scott, I think I'll break your right arm first."
"Wait a minute." I took a breath. "All right, I came out here after Madison, sure. We'd had trouble before—you know about it—and I was carrying a little hate for him." I didn't know how much of this they'd swallow, but at least I was still on my feet. I went on: "When I got out here, it must have been just a minute or two after Madison. He was probably watching me from shore. We had a beef, and—well, he lost."
"Sure," Rough Voice said. "He had a forty-five, but he didn't feel like shooting you."
"We . . . talked first. Argued. He got too close and I took his gun away."
Rough Voice laughed. It was an ugly laugh. "Took it away," he said. He reached under his coat and pulled out a gun. It was another .45 automatic. He worked the slide, putting a cartridge under the hammer, and then he pointed the gun at me.
Man, I wanted away from there. I was actually becoming obsessed with the idea of getting away from there.
Rough Voice said, "Why don't you take this gun away, Scott? You must be good at it." He was having a jolly time.
"Hey," one of the guys behind him said. "Lookit."
Everybody looked out where he pointed, and we all saw the boat at about the same time. It was a long, white job cutting through that flat ocean toward us. I had been hoping it would be the Marines.
The boat veered away from us about fifty yards from the island. I could see two people in it, and I could barely make out the faces pointed toward us. The conversation stopped while we gawked. The boat went past us for a couple of hundred yards, then started turning around and heading back.
Rough Voice said, "We better get in off the shore. No sense letting people see what's going on." He looked at me. "You know what's gonna happen if you don't start spilling your guts?"
"Yeah. You'll spill my guts."
He knocked me down.
I didn't feel nearly as tough as I sounded. And I certainl
y hadn't meant to sound that tough. He didn't knock me out, but he knocked me dizzy. He hauled me up again and grabbed the front of my shirt again. He bunched it up in his hand and the cloth ripped. He had a little skin in there, too. He looked as if he were really going to start working me over now, and I started to raise my hands, shaking my head to get the dizziness away.
"Hey!" one of the goons yelled. "Lookit!"
Rough Voice kept hanging onto my shirt and me, but he turned his head. We all did. The boat was roaring at us, then up close it turned away. Something was ripping along several yards behind it. I shook my head again. Something was wrong with my eyes. Must have been that last blow that did it, but I could have sworn it was a woman bouncing along behind the boat. I was reasonably sure it was a woman, even as dizzy as I was, because she didn't have anything on, and it's usually pretty easy to identify people as women when they don't have anything on. And this naked woman was bobbing along behind the boat getting closer and closer to us in a long, splashing arc, and she was on water skis.
She zoomed in practically to the shore, zipping along on top of the water, and as she swished past us and away she smiled and waved, apparently very happy indeed.
"Lookit," the same goon said. "Ooooh, lookit. She's nekkid."
I hardly heard him. I was staring at María Carmen's rapidly dwindling behind.
The boat turned and started back and all the rest of it seemed to happen automatically. I didn't even think about it. All the torpedoes were staring bug-eyed at what I'd just been staring at, even Rough Voice. He still gripped my shirt with one hand, and he held the automatic chest-high in the other. That hand gripping my shirt would make slugging him a little difficult, so I did the next best thing, which turned out to be a whole lot better.
I took a long step forward, close to him, and I slammed my right knee with all my strength up between his thighs, right where it would be, by all right-thinking people, called a foul. I fouled him, all right. I fouled him good, and as he gasped and gagged and started crumpling I grabbed the automatic in my right hand and threw hand and gun and all against his temple.
Darling, It's Death Page 13
