Children of the Storm (26 page)

    Sonya turned away from them.

    Peterson had still not crested this hill; he was still down there in the ravine.

    She went quickly to the fallen coconuts and pulled away the palm boughs that half-concealed them. Each of the three fruits was as large as a cannon ball, and each looked about that deadly.

    She tried to pick up two coconuts at once.

    Couldn't do it.

    They were too big and heavy for that. She needed both hands for each of them, and she lost valuable seconds fumbling with two before she realized this.

    She dropped one of them.

    As quickly as she could, legs rubbery, she carried the other coconut to the edge of the hill, careful not to let herself be seen by Peterson, who must by now have crossed the pool below.

    She went back for the second coconut.

    She put it by the first.

    She retrieved the third, lined them up.

    Looking at it, she realized what a puny arsenal it was, and that she could hardly afford to miss him, even once. But she did not see what else she could do, at this point, except to go on with it. She hadn't the time to run all over the hilltop in search of other shaggy missiles.

    She lifted the first sphere.

    She stepped to the edge of the slope, where he would be able to see her, and she looked for him.

    He was halfway up the slippery grass incline, trying to make it on his feet and not his hands and knees.

    She raised the coconut overhead.

    He sensed her, looked up.

    He threw his hands up to protect himself, lost his balance, and fell backwards, to the bottom of the incline.

    She realized that she had lost the precious advantage of surprise, now, but she did not throw the coconut yet. She wanted to hit him when he was on the hill, so that, with a little luck, he would lose his balance again and fall to the bottom, hurting himself in the process, perhaps even breaking a leg.

    For a moment, they seemed stalemated.

    He stood by the pool, looking up.

    She stood atop the incline, looking down.

    He held the knife.

    She held the coconut.

    Then he started up again.

    He came at a run, jumping from side to side instead of making a direct line for her, covering ground in the manner he had been taught in the army, in the war.

    She waited.

    He was halfway up, his neck strained into corded ropes of muscle, his head thrust out ahead of him, bent in an odd manner to give himself the best balance and the lowest point-of-gravity.

    She threw the coconut.

    He tried to run under it.

    It struck the center of his back and bounced off him, struck hard enough to drive him down onto his stomach, dazed.

    She picked up the second missile.

    She was shaking uncontrollably, as if she had a severe fever, and she could not manage to get rid of the vision of that first direct hit, which remained behind, playing over and over again as if on some internal motion picture screen. She saw the brown ball arching… She saw it come down on his spine, saw it bounce… He crashed forward into the mud, his face driven into the mud so that he must have gotten a mouthful of it… And she could almost feel the excruciating pain which she had caused him. Having done that, having hurt him like that, even if he were less than a human being right now, she felt unspeakably sick and knew, if she survived this ordeal, here was the material for new nightmare aplenty.

    Nevertheless, she was resolved to continue this almost comic battle with coconuts and to take whatever moral punishment was her due as a result of her brutality. She had not started this private war, after all; she was an unwilling combatant.

    He lay still for long seconds.

    She wondered if he were dead or unconscious, but she knew she did not dare leave him there without being sure, for he might be hoping to trick her and then come close behind, when there was no slope for her to fight him on to her advantage.

    At last, he moved.

    He raised up on his hands.

    Shook his head.

    He looked around himself, then up at her.

    She threatened him with the coconut she held.

    He looked around him, on all sides of him, concentrating closely on the grass and mud, as if he couldn't figure out what it was-then he came up with the knife which had fallen from his hand when the coconut had hit him.

    He inspected it.

    It was in fine condition.

    Holding it out before him, not attempting to stand now, he started up the hill again, on his knees, battered by rain and wind but seemingly unaware of everything except Sonya.

    She waited another moment, gauging the distance, until she felt the time was right, then threw the coconut as hard as she could.

    It arched…

    But the wind was very strong, not strong enough to lift away so heavy an object, though forceful enough to deflect it. Because of the wind, the second missile missed him altogether.

    He grinned at her.

    He was only forty feet away now.

    The knife looked longer than a sword.

    She turned and picked up the last coconut.

    He stopped smiling when he saw it, and he concentrated on making better time on the glass hillside.

    He had no way of knowing, she discovered, that this was her last missile. He might think she had an endless supply of these and that she could, with a better aim, hold him off for a long while, or permanently injure him.

    This, however, was a psychological advantage she would not have much longer, for he would soon know that she had nothing else to use against him.

    For the most part, he kept his face to the ground, moving toward her like an insect oblivious of the world above it. Now and again, however, at fairly regular intervals, he raised his head to look at her and to gauge the angle of his ascent. She picked up the rhythm of these upward glances and, when she felt he was just about to raise his head again, she threw the coconut with all her might.

    He looked up.

    He screamed.

    It caught the side of his face.

    He went backward, head over heels, to the bottom of the rise, fell half into the water and did not get up or move.

    She waited, trembling, on the verge of throwing up but not sure if she had the time for that.

    He lay still.

    Water lapped at him.

    She thought of going down there and turning him onto his back, to see if he were dead, but the memory of what his strong hands had almost done to her in the bougainvillea arbor kept her where she was.

    She saw the knife where he had dropped it, more than halfway down the hill, its point directed at her, its red handle like a small beacon in the midst of the drab, storm-painted earth. She wondered if she could risk going that close to him so that she could get hold of the knife and deprive him of his most dangerous weapon. She remembered how fast he had run up the first section of the slope, jumping from side to side and digging his heels in like a soldier taking enemy ground during an offensive action, and she knew she would have to turn and renegotiate half the hillside while he would be chasing her… Yet, she thought, now, that he
was
unconscious, and she knew that, when he came to, even if that was while she was retrieving the knife, he would not have the wits about him to give immediate and competent chase. And if she could have the knife…

    She started over the brink of the hill and had taken four or five steps when he shuddered, thrashed about, and tried to get his hands under himself.

    Terrified, she turned, scrambled to the top again, and ran after the kids.

    They had not managed to get very far, no more than a third of the way across the flat top of the hill.

    She scooped Tina up and urged Alex to make better time than he had thus far.

    From somewhere, she did not know where, though it might have been from a terror that was greater than any she had ever known before, she found a new supply of energy. Her legs were rubbery, but they drove her on with renewed speed; her back and arms felt as if they would require major surgery to ever be right again, yet they were laced with new strength that made Tina seem less of a burden than she had before.

    The sounds of the storm seemed so loud now that she felt as if they were coming from within her head and not from the land around her; she felt as if she could buckle under the demanding explosions of the sound alone.

    At the next slope, she turned and looked back, hoping to see that they were unpursued.

    For a few seconds, it seemed that way, seemed safe. Then, she caught sight of him, weaving drunkenly between the trees but nonetheless closing the distance between them.

    

    Because the depths of the ravine between these last two hills was not so great as it had been in each of the previous geographical divisions of the island, the pool of seawater across which they had to go was not nearly so much of an obstacle as those which had come before it. Indeed, it only reached to Sonya's knees and slightly past Alex's waist. They were able to walk across the pool together, while Sonya carried the little girl, and no time was lost in making a second trip to ferry one or the other of the children to safety.

    In other ways, Nature seemed suddenly to have chosen their side. The trees grew even thicker than before, cutting the whip of the wind in half and making advancement a good deal easier. The slope of this hill was more gentle than those before it, and while it was not rocky, it was also not grassy, composed of spotted clumps of vegetation and a lot of loose sand which, while shifting under their feet, was preferable to slick grass.

    On the hilltop, they ran forward, zig-zagging more than before, to get between the closely grown trees, aware that, not far ahead, the darkness of the forest seemed to erupt into light, but not able to interpret this sight until they stumbled, exhausted, around the last of the thick palm boles and shuffled into the open lawn that ringed Hawk House.

    Sonya paused, unable to immediately accept the sight of that fine old house, for she was more willing to believe it was a fantasy, a figment of her imagination, than the actual place. She had hoped to reach here for so long, and she had prayed so desperately, that now she thought her mind might have fantasized what she wanted because, otherwise, she would never obtain it.

    But, fantasy or not, she could not afford to remain here and stare at it. The lawn was a good hundred and fifty yards across and, when they had gained the door of Hawk House, they might still be far from salvation. She had thought, earlier, but had refused to consider, that once they reached the Blenwell's place, they might find it boarded up and its inhabitants all out of earshot, in their own dry storm cellar. If that were the case, Peterson would catch them on the Blenwell doorstep and provide an especially ironic ending to the whole gruesome aff air.

    She started forward, walking fast, no longer able to run, with Alex stumbling by her side.

    The wind, here in the open, hit them so hard they went to their knees, as they had on the lawn of Seawatch-how long ago? Each time, they got up and went on.

    Tina was no longer in the mood to sleep, but clung to Sonya like a burr to wool, her head over the woman's shoulder, her face buried in her warm neck.

    It was Tina, because of her position, who first saw Peterson and, screaming directly into Sonya's ear, warned the woman a moment before he crashed into her and knocked her down, like a bowling ball upsetting the last pin on the alley floor. She landed in a painful tangle of overexerted arms and legs, every strained muscle crying out at this final indignity, whimpering helplessly to herself.

    She rolled to get away from him, for she felt he must have his knife with him and that he must already be driving it toward her back, and in the process of her panicked escape from this imagined nearness to a swift death, she lost hold of Tina.

    She spit out grass and mud, looked up.

    Peterson had passed her and was chasing Alex toward Hawk House, and he was almost on top of the boy.

    Involuntarily, Sonya screamed.

    Peterson clutched the collar of Alex's jacket and swung the boy around as if he were nothing more than a sack of potatoes. He threw him down and, as Alex tried to stand again, slapped him hard alongside the head, knocking him unconscious.

    Sonya got up.

    She was scared, but she was also furious.

    She had to stop him.

    But he was the one with a weapon.

    She looked around for Tina but could not, at first, catch sight of her. Then she saw that Peterson seemed to be running across the lawn without real direction, and she followed his intended path, where Tina sat in utter defeat, watching her assailant charge at her but unable to do anything to save herself. Though Peterson had not finished with the boy, he seemed maniacally determined to strike out at each of them first, as quickly as he could, no matter how great the risk that as he ran from one to the other, his first victim might escape.

    Sonya took a few steps toward Tina, then saw that she would never be able to reach the girl before Peterson did.

    

    As he was closing the last half of the shutters over the window where he had kept his watch, Ken Blenwell caught a quick flash of movement by the edge of the palm trees and, though he was quick to attribute it to his imagination or to the storm, he pulled the shutter open part way again and had another look.