Kill Me Tomorrow (30 page)

But we all watched. Watched as Bludgett left the ground ten feet from the wall and sailed through space, doing the whole bit as neatly as I—no, doing it even more neatly—those giant legs propelling him as though from a catapult, laying himself back in the air, just as I had. Bigger, of course, a much huger projectile, but doing it all the same way that I had done it.

Not only I but all the hoods were watching Bludgett with total and absolutely undistracted fascination, perhaps each of them with the same thought in his head that I had in mine: would Bludgett, with his huge mass and bulk, do it? Could his weight and determination and unbelievable speed turn the trick? Would he go through? Would he commit a miracle? Was it possible?

Nope.

He had run as I had, jumped as I had, spread out in the air as I had, and at the end he even gave a little kick with his feet, just as I had.

There, the resemblance ended.

He didn't commit a miracle.

It looked more like suicide.

His feet hit the wall, and—of course—stayed against the wall. Unmoving. But the rest of him was not unmoving. Oddly, his legs did not bend or buckle, those mighty thighs and sinews holding firm. He did bend in the middle. That was what ruined him. He bent like a well-greased hinge. His great bald head flew forward in an arc like the stone at the end of a sling, and it was moving so fast one would have thought nothing short of a solid stone wall could stop it. Well, that's exactly what happened.

Bludgett's head smacked on stone with a sound which even though heard could not be believed, and for what was only an instant, but an instant that seemed a small eternity, he seemed to stay there, folded in the middle, his feet pressed against the wall, and above his toes—just a little way above his toes—his hairless head, also pressed against the wall.

Then he fell down.

He didn't even unfold, just fell down still folded.

And in all ears anywhere in the area reverberated the sound of Bludgett's head.

For me, it still reverberates, when I listen, intently, in the still of the night. Not only for me, but for all who were there at that incredible moment, and who still live, Bludgett's great bald head still goes SCHMOCK! That is about as close as English can approach the sound made there at the old King place in the small hours of that Sunday morning.

It thudded out over the valley, causing citizens to stir restlessly in their sleep, but in the Alps that sound would have echoed and reechoed, perhaps endlessly, getting fainter and fainter but never totally dying, as possibly Bludgett had done. A great SCHMOCK! and then the first echo: SCHMOCK! Followed by more echoes from near and far, SCHMOCK-Schmock! Schmock-mock-ock-ck. Bounding from peak to pinnacle, from Alp to Alp, a blood-chilling, mind-curdling ear-schmocking sound never heard on earth before.

Perhaps because I had felt most exposed, perhaps because I was obviously outnumbered—certainly, after this night of nights, not because I was any smarter than they were—I was the first to recover my wits.

Weeton was no longer a worry. Bludgett, for sure, was out of it. But before me in the brightly lighted courtyard there yet stood three hoods, all three of them transfixed, gazing aghast at the prone, still body of Bludgett, their almost-hero, eyes riveted upon him and ears still pierced by that hideous dull crackophony, that medley of a head breaking and again breaking.

There were those three. And inside the house, only three or four more. And Lucrezia.

I sure as hell wasn't going to leave while Lucrezia was still here. And if I hesitated, these guys would either shoot me or take cover in the house—and then I'd never get across that muddy plain. To Lucrezia. If I was ever going to charge, now was the time. Even logic said the time was now. They, whoever they are, say the best defense is a good offense, and I sure needed plenty of defense.

So—I charged.

Lucky Ryan saw me coming and let out a yell, yanking his gun up and toward me, and ten feet on his right Fleepo—somehow—already had his gun aimed at me. Beyond Fleepo, Ace was turning fast. I snapped a shot at Lucky and missed, let two go from the gun in my left hand and hit Fleepo. I don't know where I hit him, but when a man takes a .45 bullet you know he's hit. He went back at least ten feet, both arms flying out loosely from his sides. I squeezed off one more at Ace but he merely bent down, far down in a low squat, and the gun jumped in his hand.

In the bright light I could barely see flame lick from the gun's muzzle, but I saw it, and felt the slug slide by my neck so near it must have been no more than an eighth of an inch from the skin. Lucky's gun blasted from so close it startled me that I wasn't hit and, still running, I snapped my head around, kept my eyes and my gun on him and squeezed the trigger twice. Both bullets smacked into him, and the way they rammed him, the way he went down, I knew that sonofabitch was dead.

I swerved, tried to run toward Ace, and my feet slipped in the thick mud. I slid, went down. If I hadn't gone down that way, I'd have gone down Ace's way, and for good. Because he let go three in a row, pulling his gun down right at me for the last one—at least I thought it was right at me, but the slug went past between my arm and side, ripping through my coat but not through me.

Then I was up, running toward him, and the gun in my right hand was empty. From twenty feet away I hurled it at him and, by God, I hit him. I got him low on the leg, and it was a freak of luck that I touched him at all, but I hit him, and the shot he triggered went way the hell off to one side instead of near me or maybe in me. I triggered the Colt in my left hand and it blasted once but only once, so I threw it at him but two hits in two throws was more than a mere mortal could hope for. I missed him by two yards, but when he pointed his gun at me and squeezed the trigger, nothing happened.

Except that I reached him, ducked the hand swinging his empty gun at me, and slammed a left into his gut. It was like hitting a steel boiler. It moved him back, but it didn't knock him down or even bend him over. He caught me high on the cheekbone with a right hand, and it was a good one. It jarred me.

It also sent a little more juice into me, fired me up enough that the long hard right I swung had more steam in it, and this time when I hit his gut it was still like hitting a steel boiler, but it bent him. He made a soft sound, like a man with smoker's cough, but he was kind of atilt and his hands weren't in my way. I had time to set myself, not much time but enough, and when I brought my left hand up from near my knee and the balled fist smacked his chin, the sound alone would have told me I had him.

I did. But I got to hit him one more time. I was glad. I wanted to hit him one more time. His head snapped back in the way a head sometimes goes when the neck's going to break, but it rolled forward a little again as he sort of straightened up and then started to drop. I barely had time to get one last shot in as he went down. I got it in.

I stood there for a moment, heart pounding heavily enough to shake me. Then the blood cooled, the fever stilled, a little. I looked at Ace near my feet in the mud, then slowly turned around. Bludgett lay motionless at the wall's base. Near me was Fleepo, still breathing, froth of blood wiggling on his lips. I walked toward Lucky Ryan, but didn't go close. There was no question about him.

I started wondering about the men inside, still in the house. Bludgett had run, perhaps unaware of it, with his gun in his hand. It lay a few feet from him, a gleam of metal in the mud. I walked toward him, passing near Weeton. The lieutenant was on his stomach, side of his face in the mud, but his mouth had room for air to get in, and some was getting in. So he was alive, too.

Bludgett's long-barreled revolver was a murderous weapon. Not another Colt like the one I'd taken from him yesterday, but a .44 Magnum, the closest thing you can get to a cannon in a handgun. Solid, shocking, powerful, heavy. It matched the man. I swung out the cylinder. Every chamber full; no empties. He hadn't fired a shot.

I was in a hurry, but I took time to press a finger against Bludgett's massive neck. A pulse still beat there. Not a very vigorous pulse, but I could feel the push of his blood against my finger. Maybe it didn't make good sense, but I was glad he wasn't dead. I had, I guess, a kind of mild, warped affection for Bludgett—one more indication, I suppose, of my basic depravity.

Then I straightened up and ran—walking would have pressed even my luck too far—around behind the house again. I stayed close to the building's side. It was still bright as day. As I approached the shattered and open window, I could hear men talking. I thought:
What the hell
?

It sounded like two men, not a tape recording, but I wasn't going to make up my mind about that—not this time—until I was in the room, or had at least looked into it. The base of the window here, too, was about four feet above the ground. I moved on hands and knees to its middle, and didn't wait when I got there, didn't even let myself wonder if maybe some guy was inside with a gun pointed my way. He couldn't point it at every spot where a head might pop up, and I was getting too damned tired to worry a hell of a lot about it anyhow.

So I just stood up and leaned in a little, looking over the barrel of the Magnum, finger very tight on the trigger.

Nothing. Two men just to the left of the door, standing, talking. I heard the end of one sentence. “… over by now.”

I presumed he'd said, “I guess it must be all over by now,” something like that. Well, he was almost right. It was almost over.

The man speaking was Pete Lecci, and the guy he was talking to was the halfway-familiar man I'd gotten such a quick squint at minutes ago. I glanced around. On my right, the three big wide overstuffed chairs—empty—and the two couches at the intersection of the walls. Those were empty, too.

I didn't see Reverend Archibald.

Lecci and the other guy were eyeballing me in the true “eyeball” sense of the word. It appeared if their lids spread open any further those orbs might roll out on their cheeks. I kept the gun pointed in their general direction as I climbed through the window, after a look right and left. Still nothing.

“Where's Holyjoe?” I said.

Lecci said, “He went upstairs. To the girl.”

I started toward them, got almost up to them, before it struck me that, for Lecci—
especially
for Pete “The Letch” Lecci—such sudden and almost bountiful helpfulness was perhaps too good to be true.

It may be a fault. Sometimes, a fault. But I'll never regret that I am such a suspicious lad.

The only place the bastard could be, if he was still in the room, was behind one of those big wide chairs. I damn near muffed it anyway. I jerked my head around—but kept my gun pointed at the two men.

So when I saw the Reverend Stanley Archibald he was rising from behind his chair much as I'd risen from beneath the window sill, and his gun was already aimed at my chest, and upon his face was an expression seldom if ever seen in a pulpit, except perhaps those where the Black Mass is performed.

I moved about as fast as I've ever moved, unquestionably as fast as I had at any time during the last thirty-six hours—straight toward Lecci. I jumped at the wrinkled old creep and flipped my hand and the gun in it toward Archie and was pulling the trigger before the muzzle was even pointed at the wall behind him. I wanted to make noise, and you can bet I did. The Magnum roared in the room, making the sound of Archibald's .38 caliber revolver sound, comparatively, like a pop—a deadly pop, true. Deadly when the slug hits you. His didn't hit me.

He fired once and missed. I fired four times and missed him twice. To put it positively, I hit him twice.

And to express it simply, but accurately, it was horrible.

The first heavy .44 Magnum bullet hit him with such stunning force that even to hear the sound would tell a man it was the sound of death. The impact hurled him back toward the wall and while he was moving the second slug hit him, hit him and seemed to hammer him into the wall. He slammed the wood, his head thudded back against it. For a long slow moment he hung there, then he fell.

It was queer, crazy, freakish. But he fell on his knees. There was just a little bit of life left in him, and while he was still on his knees the Reverend Stanley Archibald's lips moved slightly, very slightly. Then his head dipped, and he simply slid forward and died.

In all the commotion, I had hardly noticed that I'd banged into Lecci and creamed him pretty good.

He was on the floor, kind of sprawled out every which way, with his shriveled lips wiggling and his dark, sunken eyes apparently unfocused completely. While he tried to figure out how he was ever going to get on his feet I looked at the other man.

He was big, maybe two hundred pounds, around six feet. A lot of chest and stomach on him. Rather pleasant, slightly heavy face, with a broad chin and sharp nose. He had a healthy head of brown hair, gray at the temples, and he was tanned, looked fit, the kind of skin you associate with steam baths and rubs and either sun or sunlamps.

I'd never seen him before. But I said, “Now I know why you looked familiar. You remind me very much of Henry Yarrow.”

He stared at me with what appeared to be near panic in his dark brown eyes. Those brown eyes rolled toward Archie's body, dragged over Lecci—looked like The Letch was going to make it now—and then stopped on the huge gun in my hand. Finally he looked at my face.

“I'm not going to shoot you,” I said irritably. I
was
irritable. “Unless you sneeze or something.”

“What … where are—the
others?”

It was entirely in the way he said it, but it really was funny. I said, “Don't worry about it. You better worry about me.”

He nodded. I think if I'd told him to spin around on one toe he would have tried to do it.

“Where is she?” I asked him.

He told me. It was a kind of tower room at the upper-left corner of the building's front, one of the towers I'd noticed when I had been outside this house for the first time an hour or two before sunrise Saturday morning.