First Blood (1990) (31 page)

'No, and if you don't shut up, he'll be onto everything we do.'

'He's not anywhere around to hear. He's way over in the center of the field. Look, you know he wants it to be me. I have a right to be there at the end. You know that.'

'Yes.'

'Then stay out of what doesn't concern you.'

'I started this long before you, and I'm going to help.

There's no disgrace in taking help. Now shut up, and let's go while you still can.' 'All right, you want to help? Then help me stand. I can't do it on my own,'

'You mean it? What a mess this is going to be.'

'That's what Shingleton said.'

'What?'

'Nothing.'

Trautman had him on his feet now, and then Trautman was crawling into the brush, disappearing, and Teasle stood, his head above the brush, surveying it, thinking. Go. Go on and crawl as fast as you can. It won't make a difference what you do. I'll get to him before.

He coughed and spat something salty and shifted forward through the brush in a straight line toward the shed. It was clear that the kid had gone this way, the branches broken down in a crude trail. He kept his pace slow, not chancing the helplessness of a fall. Even so, he was surprised at how soon he reached the shed. But as he prepared to go inside, he realized instinctively that the kid was not in there. He glanced around, and as if drawn toward a magnet, he shambled swaying down another broken path toward a large mound. There. The kid was there. He knew it, could feel it. There was no doubt.

When he had been spread out on the sidewalk, someone had said he was delirious. But that had been wrong. He had not been delirious. Not then. Now. Now he was delirious, and his body seemed to be melting from him, just his mind floating over the brush toward the mound, and the night was becoming glorious day, the orange reflection of the flames growing brighter, dancing wildly. At the bottom of the mound he ceased floating and hovered transfixed, the splendorous sheen illuminating him. It was coming. He had no more time. As if his will belonged to another, he saw his arm rise up before him, his pistol aiming toward the mound.

Chapter 22

The numbness was at Rambo's shoulders now, at his navel, and steadying the gun was like aiming with two stumps of wood. He saw Teasle dispersing into triple focus down there, eyes bright, aiming, and he knew there should be no other way. No passive lapse into nothing. No lit fuse, self-disruption. But this way, the only proper way, in the last of the fight, trying his best to kill Teasle. Eyes and hands betraying him, he did not think he could hit Teasle. But he had to try. Then if he missed, Teasle would see the flash of his gun, and fire at it. And at least then I'll have died trying, he thought. He strove to squeeze his finger on the trigger, directing his aim at Teasle's center image. The barrel was wobbling, and he would never hit him. But he could not fake it. He had to try as hard as he could. He told his hand to squeeze on the trigger, but his hand would not work, and as he concentrated on it, clenching, the gun went off unintended. So careless and sloppy. He cursed himself. Not the real fight he had hoped for, and now Teasle's bullet would come when he did not deserve it. He waited. It should have come already. He squinted to clear his vision, looking down the mound where Teasle lay flat in the brush. Christ, he had hit him. God, he had not wanted that, and the numbness was so overwhelming by now that he could never light the fuse before it nulled him. So poor. So ugly and poor. Then death took him over, but it was not at all the stupefying sleep, bottomless and murky, that he had expected. It was more like what he had expected from the dynamite, but coming from his head instead of his stomach, and he could not understand why it should be like that, and it frightened him. Then since it was the total of what remained, he let it happen, went with it, erupted free through the back of his head and his skull, catapulted through the sky, through myriad spectra, onward outward, forever dazzling, brilliant, and he thought if he kept on like this for long enough he might be wrong and see God after all.

Chapter 23

Well, Teasle thought. Well. He lay back on the brush, marvelling at the stars, repeating to himself that he did not know what had hit him. He really did not. He had seen the flash of the gun and he had fallen, but he had been slow and gentle to fall, and he really did not know what had hit him, did not sense it, respond to it. He thought about Anna and then stopped that, not because the memory was painful, but because after everything she just didn't seem important anymore.

He heard someone stepping, cracking, through the brush. The kid coming, he thought. But slow, very slow to come. Well sure, he's hurt bad.

But then it was only Trautman standing there, head outlined against the sky, face and uniform lustrous from the flames, but eyes dull. 'What's it like?' Trautman said. 'Is it bad?'

'No,' he said. 'Actually it's kind of pleasant. If I don't think about what it's bringing. What was that explosion I heard? It sounded like another gas station.'

'Me. I guess it was me. I took the top of his head off with this shotgun.' 'What's it like for you?'

'Better than when I knew he was in pain.'

'Yes.'

Trautman pumped the empty shell from the shotgun, and Teasle watched its wide arc glistening through the air. He thought about Anna again, and she still did not interest him. He thought about his house he had fixed up in the hills, the cats there, and none of that interested him either. He thought about the kid, and flooded with love for him, and just a second before the empty shell would have completed its arc to the ground, he relaxed, accepted peacefully. And was dead.

The End