Dark Tunnel (31 page)
Authors: Ross Macdonald
The tendons in his shoulder tore softly like damp cardboard, and the gun dropped to the ground and lay impotent. He screamed on a high monotone and bit my arm. I let go of him with my right hand and hit him on the temple with all the will left in my body. He fell forward into the grass with his face turned sideways.
The ground shook under heavy feet and Sergeant Cummings came up beside me with a late gun in his hand. He turned a flashlight on the quiet face and said:
“It’s him.”
I said, “Yes,” between gulps of air.
Above the dark-headed trees the stars began to waver and flare like torches at a celebration a long way off and I sat down in the grass because my right leg was made of rubber. My mind flew out like smoke in empty space and I rode a vertical wind through moving stars like fields of arcing fireflies. The earth was a small, forgotten thing, a withered apple for which black ants and red ants fought together. The diastole of exhaustion ended and the systole of unconsciousness closed on my head, narrowing the universe to a warm, dry tunnel where I ran lightly and easily in the friendly darkness. The terrible things had died in the dark behind. At the end of the tunnel Ruth was waiting with hair bright as sunlight and no sword in her hand.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1949 by Kenneth Millar
Renewed 1971 by Kenneth Millar
Introduction copyright © 1980 by Bill Pronzini
cover design by Mauricio Diaz
978-1-4532-9052-1
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ROSS MACDONALD
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