The Empty Copper Sea (27 page)

The terrain promised no advantage. I could not hope to run up the slope. I could get up there to the crest by churning and floundering and clawing my way up through the coarse sliding sand, as easy to shoot as a deer in deep snow. I could make good time down the slope, right down to the open beach, where I would make a pretty good target there as well. I could move laterally, but not very far. The slight concavity which hid me from the crest grew shallower to my left and was gone within twenty feet. Ten feet to my left I saw an object protruding from the sand, the end of something thrown up by a storm of long ago. It looked as if it might be wood, but it was difficult to tell in that golden-red glow. I wanted a stick, a stone, a switch-anything. It is an ancient instinct. Man is the tool user. Even as the saber-toothed tiger was disemboweling him, man was reaching for a branch to club the beast. It did not matter that nothing I could find on a beach would help me ward off the tiger or the bullet, I wanted something in hand. A tool.

Comfort of a kind.

I edged over to it. Wood. A good shape and size for grasping. Was it too short or too long?

Too short to use, too long to extricate from the sand? I worked it back and forth and pulled it free. It was the handle end of a canoe paddle. The piece was two feet long. I had grasped it near the break. On the other end, the end normally grasped, there were dead barnacles, tough, sharp, and firmly seated.

It had an incongruity like the red light that filled the beach. Canoes were summer lakes, frocks, big hats, and music coming across the water.

The initial panic had settled into a reliable flow of adrenaline. It is my fate and my flaw to have learned too long ago that this is what I am about. This is when I am alive and know it most completely. Every sense is honed by the knowledge of the imminence of death. The juices flow.

In the back of my mind I tried to tell myself that I had been turned into a murderous machine by the sight of Gretel. But it was rationalization. There was a hard joy in this acceptance of a total risk. I knew that if he got me-whoever he might be-he was going to have to be very damned good at it, and even then I was going to create some astonishment in him. I would live totally on this thin edge until it was over, and then I would either be dead for good or partially dead until the next time.

The copper sea made no sound at all. I eeled slowly upslope, angling to my right, knowing that I would be exposed to him, would be in his line of fire before I could reach the crest. I worked it slowly, peering toward the area where the bird had veered. I kept muscles poised and bunched so that in an instant I could hurl myself back and to the left, hoping to fall back into the sanctuary of the concavity near Gretel. As I came closer to the crest, I diminished the chance of regaining the concavity undamaged. On the other hand, it was easier to watch for him. Or her.

Or them. Or it. The dune was about fifty feet high, much higher than in front of the shack.

Perhaps if someone suddenly appeared to fire at me again, at shorter range, it might be better to plunge over the crest, race and roll down the shaded side, taking a chance of finding some kind of cover.

At last I was close to the crest. The wind had given it a sharp, wandering edge. I was, on about a fifty-degree slope. I dug my fingers into the sand just short of the ridge. My chin touched the sand. I was absolutely certain that somebody was waiting, alert, ready for the target to appear above the ridge, silhouetted against the slow-motion bonfire of the sky.

So I worked my legs up under me, adjusted my grip on the piece of paddle, and began to take slow, deep breaths. In the total silence of the world, mW best way to get over was to bound over, letting out a yell which would shock the rifleman into a momentary rigidity, or into panicky unaimed shots. There was the hesitation much like that remembered from childhood, standing on the edge of a roof, a reluctance to make the first commitment.

In that great stillness a monstrous breathing sound began. A great snuffling intake, and then a long breathing sign. Snuff sigh. Snuff-sigh. Snuff sigh. As though a winded dragon lay beyond the ridge, slightly to my right and far down the landward side of the dune. It was very steady and
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regular. I tried to identify that sound. It seemed, somehow, very homely and familiar. Suddenly there was a metallic clank at the end of the snuffing sound, a hesitation before the sigh.

I knew then what the sound was. It had been unfamiliar only because it was so incongruous when compared with my state of tension. There could be two of them, of course. It was still a time for caution, but a time to discard the large bad idea of bounding over the rim and down the slope, yelling and waving my paddle.

I dropped back a little and then moved laterally until I was directly above that breathing sound.

And then, instinctively holding my breath, I looked over the edge.

It was darker on the landward side of the dune. The red light that bathed the world was all shadows and wine.

There, below me, John Tuckerman shoveled the dry, loose sand. Chuff of the shovel blade into the sand, then the soft sound, like an exhalation, as he swung the sand out in an arc behind him.

As he dug, the sand slid down the slope, rivulets filling some of the space he had shoveled. The muscles of his back and shoulders and upper arms slid and bulged under the sun-scorched flab.

He worked with the metronomic energy of the demented. He was naked. It was a labor assigned in hell. From the blazing sunburn on his body, and from the look of the piles of sand he had shoveled, he had been at it all day.

He was excavating the yellow jeep. It was aimed south, parallel to the ridge. The wheels and fenders on the right side of the vehicle, in fact the whole right side of it, was still covered by the slide of brown coarse sand. There was a figure behind the steering wheel. It sat, arms in its lap, chin on its chest, looking like a crude sand sculpture made of a slightly darker shade of sand. An imperceptible movement of the air brought the faint, sweet, gassy stink of decay, and I nearly gagged as I realized that the sand was darker because it was clotted by the fluids released by the tissues. In the passenger seat a slight knob had begun to appear, in just the right place and the right size to be the back of a head.

I looked for the rifle, finally saw it about thirty feet beyond the front of the jeep, leaning against a leafless stunted bush.

He stopped shoveling. He spoke at conversational pitch, but in a strange tone of voice, a sweet wheedling tone pitched so much higher than his normal tone that he sounded almost like a woman.

"Now you shouldn't talk to me like that, Hub! I'll get you out of here and you can be on your way. Don't I always do what you want me to? Don't l?" He waited, leaning forward, seeming to listen.

"No, it wasn't like that," he said. "What she was going to do was take all the money and leave all by herself. But I made her wait, Hub. I made Krissy-bitch wait, and she's right there beside you, isn't she? And that's proof. You and she can go on off together soon as I get you dug out and get the engine started."

Again he listened.

Again he answered. "Well, goddarn it, Hub, I forgot. That's all. I knew I had something to remember and I forgot. When I covered you up so you'd be safe, I just jammed it against the dune, put you in the driver's seat, climbed on up with the shovel, and spilled enough down to do it in ten minutes, no more. That's how I didn't know it would take me this long to get you out.

You two will be fine in Mexico. They've about stopped hunting you. Now you stop complaining and let me work, will you?"

That high sweet tone of voice made the skin crawl on the back of my neck and the backs of my hands. And it was no longer a person-against-person conflict. He was a mechanical toy, and I had to get to him and turn him off. A mechanical man will walk into a wall and try to keep walking. He will fall down and his legs will still make walking motions, little gears and springs ticking as he winds down.

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Nineteen

HE was working at the rear of the jeep, and as I tried to decide on my best and safest move, more sand spilled toward him, revealing the head and shoulders of the figure sitting next to the body of Hubbard Lawless. It was as dark and silent as he. I moved to my right behind the crest, so no movement would catch his eye, and stopped when I was directly opposite the small-caliber rifle.

I timed my lunge so that it came just as he was lifting a full shovel of sand and beginning to pivot to throw it behind him. I came down the slope in giant plunging strides. The whirling shovel caught me just below the knees, whacking a leg out from under me in such a way that I landed face down on the hardpan at the bottom of the dune, losing my good canoe-paddle club in my effort to break my fall: I got up on what felt like two broken legs just as he whirled with the rifle in hand. I dived for my club, grasping it, rolling over and over toward him, heard the broken-stick sound of the shot, and felt both fire and numbness in the left cheek of my behind just before I rolled against his legs and knocked him down. He sprang up again with a rubbery monstrous agility, with a frightening strength. I'd grasped the gun barrel in my left hand, and I took a swing at him with the club as he was bounding at me, wresting the gun away from me.

There was such a slight feeling of impact that I knew I had only grazed him with the club.

He backed away from me and aimed at the middle of my forehead. I could practically see the little round hole it would make where it went in, and the shattered suety ruin it would make where it came out.

"Johnny!" she cried, a long desperate wailing sound, full of an absolutely final despair. I was kneeling, as though in homage to my executioner. I looked back over my shoulder and saw her standing tall, teetering, on the crest of the dune, outlined against the burgundy light. He moved the sight from me to her, aiming up at her, as I threw the club at his face as hard as I could. He fired, and I turned again and saw her tumble toward us. She slid down the slope, creating a small avalanche of sand which almost covered her head when the sliding stopped.

With no thought of the gun, I went stumbling, crawling, floundering to her, and grasped her shoulders and pulled her head out of the brown sand. She made a dry spitting noise, trying to expel the sand caked in her mouth.

John Tuckerman was acting strangely. He seemed to be trying to aim the gun at us, holding it in one hand. With his other hand he was clutching at his own throat. As I leaped toward him to try to take away the rifle, he dropped it and put both hands to his throat. He was making a wet hissing sound. In what light was left I could see the sheen of the bright arterial blood which came out between his fingers and ran in a broad band down through the chest hair, down the belly, into the groin, and down both thighs.

He looked puzzled. Then he seemed to smile at me, one of those small shy smiles people use when they have committed some vulgar social blunder. A girl who had just lost her contact lens in her chicken chow mein once gave me a smile very like that.

He took two slow steps toward the jeep, then lowered himself gently to his hands and knees. He crawled a little farther, blood pumping out of the throat wound. He seemed to dwindle in size as I watched. He collapsed onto his face a yard from the jeep, with a final exhalation that made him smaller yet. There was a strange overlay of sentimentality about it. Faithful hound returns to master. I turned and hobbled back to Gretel. I had rolled her onto her back when I had pulled her face out of the sand. As I looked at her, the last of the red light went, leaving us in a darkening, gray-blue edge of night. Her face was so slack I could see what she had looked like asleep in her crib long ago. She was breathing, her respirations slow and shallow. Her pulse was heavy, steady, reassuring.

I checked my personal damage. The slug had gone at an angle through the right gluteus maximus, and it had been so undamaged in transit the exit wound was as small as the entrance
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wound. I could not get a very good look, of course. It was bleeding, but not inordinately. More of a seepage.

And it had begun to hurt. A lot. That is the big walking muscle back there. Grab yourself a handful of right buttock your own-and walk a few steps and feel what happens. A lot of clenching and unclenching goes on. I pulled my pants back up and fastened my belt. I looked around for a moment. Stillness. Stench. Hubbard Lawless and Kristin Petersen sat motionless in the jeep, heads bowed.

For a moment the world veered and tipped, and I had the ghastly conviction Hub would lift his head, give me a sandy and horrible smile, start the jeep, and go roaring down the rough track with the remaining sand spilling out.

The reserve gas can was chained and locked to the rear bracket on the jeep. I had the momentary image of myself using the shovel to break the lock, then checking the money and burying it in the sand where only I could find it.

But the lady was breathing, and the rental Dodge was one hundred million miles away. With an enormous effort, I scooped her up. I held her cradled in my arms. I began the long walk back to the car through the increasing blackness of the night, feeling the tickle of blood on the back of my right thigh, feeling the leaden ache of the wound plus the shrill yank of pain with each step.

At last I made it and stretched her out on the back seat. I drove slowly to Timber Bay, sitting in a puddle of my own blood. I went directly to the hospital and into the archway reserved for ambulances.

As I clambered slowly out, an old man in uniform was dancing around me in utter fury, slapping the pistol holstered on his belt, telling me I could not park there. I smiled and nodded and started to try to pull Gretel out of the back seat.

Then more people came. Helping hands. I did a lot of smiling and nodding, and they paid no attention to me until someone noticed that I was leaving bloody footprints on their shiny gray vinyl floor. . . .

They did not have to do much to me. Some suturing, antibiotics, observation. Keep me a few days. Find a tall enough crutch so I could take pressure off the ham muscles. It should have been routine. I had been in so many hospitals. I had been hurt so many times. But they disorient you.