Ling grunted again, and Sam heard, "Goddam . . ."
Sam looked again. The woman was naked, tanned so darkly that Sam wondered if she were a black. There were no white lines; she had obviously been naked for days. She seemed wild, a wild woman whose hair fell down her back and over her shoulders, full of snarls and electricity and stuck with flowers. She was young and her body was quite good, all of it except her breasts solid with smooth muscle, graceful in a primitive way. He could not see the man except for his shoulders that protruded from the sleeping bag and the back of his head.
Sam turned to Ling and failed to recognize whatever
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emotion was written on the Indian's face. "Hell of a long hike for them just to get laid." Ling only grunted and continued to gaze down. The brown woman bent over the man on the ground, her breasts swinging free and heavy. While they watched, the man's hand rose up and clasped one breast, stroking it and pinching the nipple. The woman threw her head back and her face was heavy with sensuous pleasure. And then he recognized her.
"Oh my God. Oh my God, Ling ..." "Sam?" Sam pushed his shoulders up, ready to scramble down toward the couple and Ling's fist pounded him flat again, driving his chin into the sharp pebbles that dotted the rock face.
"That bitch!" "It's her?"
"I can't believe it. It can't be her. Look at her. . . ." "Shut up. Shut your stupid mouth, Sam. They'll hear you."
"That bitch."
"Be quiet. You know him?"
The man peeled out of the sleeping bag and stood up, the light flashing off his red hair. His head swung in their direction and he sniffed the air like an animal sensing danger. But his eyes were blank; he had not seen them. "You know him?"
Sam looked closely and saw nothing familiar about the tall man, saw that he was huge, so tall that he would not be easily forgotten once seen.
"No. I don't know him. I never saw him before. I'm going down." He was on his knees and then on his feet before Ling could stop him, sliding on the baked gravel of the path, still shuttered off from them by the trees. He was unaware of the gun in his hand. He had no plan. He had forgotten everything he'd ever known about stealthy approach. He did not hear Max behind him; he was aware only of the man and the woman who stood naked, their eyes turning toward him 283
with a swiftness that seemed lazy because of the roaring in his head.
Joanne recognized him. He could see her eyes widen and the open ring of her mouth. She raised a hand toward him, the palm flattened, and then she fell sidelong, swimming in the grass, away from his line of vision.
He saw the rifle cradled in the red-haired man's arms and rejoiced that he now had a reason to shoot. The man hesitated. He lowered the .22
and swung it away, pointing down into the grass at her, and hesitating again as Sam thudded toward him. All of their movements were in slow motion. Sam was amazed that he had so much time to think, to decide. When the big man turned again toward him and raised the rifle, Sam was crouched in a shooting stance. He could see the flat green eyes, even a thread of spittle on the bastard's lip, and he chose his spot leisurely, unafraid of the barrel of the rifle pointing at his own heart. When he squeezed the .38's trigger, it gave so smoothly that it seemed inoperable.
Noise deafened him. Two reports, then a third, echoing off the rock walls around them. Still in a crouch, he prepared to pull the trigger back again and make it function, and found that his target had disappeared from his view. He swung right and left, and could not find the naked man.
But he saw Joanne and was incredulous. The gun—the registered .38—was completely foreign in her small hands. She could not shoot; she had never picked up a weapon. On her knees, she pointed it toward him with one hand and reached toward the ground with the other.
"No!" It was his own voice roaring. "Joanne! No!"
He knocked her sprawling and the gun slid out of her hand. She came up clawing and kicking, and he struggled to be free of her before the big man had a chance to fire, but she clung to his back and he could not dump her off.
"You've killed him!" Her screams became words that could be understood.
"You've killed him."
She tore at his eyes, but her hands were wet with something and slid off his face. With her hand grip gone, her scissored legs let go of him. She came at him again, and he
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wondered how he had recognized her before. She wasn't Joanne; she was some crazed animal, her mouth distorted by screaming. She hit him in the gut with her head, and tried to drive her shoulder into his genitals, but she was weakening, her screams hoarse whispers now.
"You shot him, you bastard. He saved my life. He was trying to help me—and you shot him. You filthy pervert."
He tried to hold her off him with his palms against her shoulders, but she twisted and clawed at him again. He grabbed one wrist and spun her around, pinioning her against him while she sobbed and twisted, spitting out obscenities. When he felt her sag, he let her go and she fell onto the grass, gasping for air.
"You son of a bitch. You lousy, fucking murderer." She was either unaware that she was naked, that she sprawled in front of him wantonly, or she didn't care. He turned away, prepared to deck her if she came at him again, but she stayed quiet.
He looked for the tall, red-haired man, actually sensed someone just behind him, spun around, and saw no one but Joanne.
"Where is he? Where did he go?"
She began to sob again.
"Where the hell is he?"
"Over there. He's over there. Go see what you did." He moved behind the boulder that was as high as his waist and saw the prone figure in the long grass. He did not trust it.
"Get up."
The man played possum, keeping his face buried in the turf.
"Get up you asshole!" Sam nudged the knee raised where the red-haired man had stopped crawling. "Game's over."
There was no response and Sam saw that a thin line of ants disappeared into the red hair and then emerged over the visible ear and descended into the hidden face. The guy had a lot of control—they must itch like hell. He touched the knee with his foot again, harder, and the man rose up and rolled over on his back.
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There was a red furrow along his skull, disappearing behind the right ear. The green eyes stared half-closed into the sun without blinking. The mouth smiled slightly, and the ants dampened their legs in blood that drained into a pool in the ear. The man's left arm was purple and swollen, streaked with gaping peninsulas of pus.
"What's the matter with his arm?"
She didn't answer. She seemed unable to walk, and crawled to the body on her hands and knees, and flung herself on it. He watched her breasts flatten the red, curling hairs on the body's chest and overcame a terrible compulsion to pick her up and throw her off the precipice just beyond them.
"Get dressed," he said finally. "Go put some goddamn clothes on."
Sam walked slowly back to where Max waited, ashamed that Ling had had to see what Joanne was. He could not see the sleek black head on the rock where they'd waited. When he shouted, there was no reply.
"Ling! It's over. You can come down now."
Sam called again and waited for the crackling in the trees where Max hid.
He thought first that the little gurgling sound had come from her, but the source of it was too close for that. He looked down and was surprised to see how small Ling really was, all curled up with his hands clasped around his knees, made into a ball so that he could not be seen.
Ling breathed very badly, taking in air and some liquid so that his breaths were bubbles and whistles. Sam knelt beside him and carefully pried arms and legs apart, expecting blood again, feeling that every human he came in contact with had begun to leak red fluid, burst from veins where it belonged.
He found no blood. There seemed to be no wound. He loosened the shirt buttons one at a time, letting Ling rest between, talking steadily and with some reassurance— enough so that Ling's eyes followed him without doubt.
He could not understand where the hole in Max's armpit
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had come from—from which gun. It didn't bleed externally, but it sucked in air when the Indian's chest flared, and Sam clapped his hand over it automatically, shutting out the sound. Closed, the hole was not as formidable, and Ling breathed easier.
"You're O.K., kid. You're going to be fine." Ling's eyes closed and he shook his head.
"Hardly a scratch," Sam lied.
"... scratch."
"Does it hurt?"
Ling grinned faintly. "It smarts."
"I'll get you down."
".. . bird coming."
Sam looked up, expecting to see some mythic winged creature, and remembered the helicopter. If it could find them, and if it came in time, and if Max wasn't drowning in blood quietly and efficiently, he might be able to keep his promise to Marcella. He had kept no other promises.
He carried Max, as light as a woman, all muscle slackened by shock, down into the flat. She looked at them without interest or compassion. She sat next to the corpse and held its good hand. Clothed, she resembled Joanne more—but she no longer smelled of flowers and soap; she smelled warm and musky—unhealthy, like the hookers on Pike Street who bathed less than they perfumed.
He could not take his hand from Max's axillary; if he kept it there, he could form a barrier of his own flesh, sealing the air out, forbidding the wound to suck and flatten the lung. She watched him listlessly.
"Sam?"
He turned to stare at her, surprised that she had remembered his name.
"What?"
"He's dead." So is Danny. You're not very concerned over Danny, are Danny's dead." It was not a question, and it was not a ement. "Is Danny dead?" That was not really a question ier, because her voice dropped, and her eyes slid out of
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"Does it matter?"
"Don't tell Danny."
"Don't tell him what? How could I tell him anything?"
"Just don't tell him."
She's crazy, he thought.
"Are you mad at me?"
There was no way to give an answer with dignity. He stopped his ears to her and watched Ling's face, gray green under the dark first layer of skin. Sam thought he heard the rotors buppering a long way off, and he watched the clouds, willing the helicopter to find them.
Sam was not sure how long they waited. He watched to see if Max still breathed, and he concentrated on willing the brown chest to rise and fall. She moved somewhere behind him. He heard her pacing the grass shelf. She wasn't a threat; her gun rested where he'd flung it, lost in the weeds. The dead man's weapon was beneath his leg; she could not lift her red-haired lover and roll him off it. She talked to herself, nonsense words, from which Sam could draw nothing. He preferred not to look at her.
Her movement stopped and he heard her whisper so faintly that he barely heard her. He held his palm tighter over Max's wound.
Something touched his shoulder, a light touch he easily shrugged off. And then it touched again.
"Go away, Joanne. Just go away."
He heard her say something, sounding far back in the meadow, the sound all out of sync because of the altitude. He spoke again without turning to look at her. "Please stay away. Just be quiet and leave me alone."
The rifle butt caught him just at the base of his skull and threw him sideways, tearing his hand from Ling's wound. Sam looked up, prepared to knock her away from them again, not yet connected to the pain in his head. And saw. . .
The green eyes were wide open and the dead man towered over him, his face a twisted mask of rage and blood.
Sam rolled away from Max, felt thundering noise in his
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own head, and focused on the man above him. One arm hung dead, and he realized his attacker could not shoot; there was a fogging, a blindness in the eyes.
The rifle butt swung down at him again, and he ducked and rolled away, closer to the edge of the precipice. Too close. He detected a lack of balance in the giant, but the rifle swung again and thudded against his shoulder. He grabbed it with both hands before it could be pulled back, and put his weight behind it.
The red-headed man seemed about to fall heavily on top of him and he braced for the impact, and then saw that the big man was going over him. The bloody face was above his for a second and then gone. His attacker made no cry as his face and useful arm slid into the rocks above the ravine, as the purple arm was crushed under him, no last roar of protest or fear as he slid slowly and then faster down the meadow's lip and disappeared into the air beyond it. It seemed an inordinately long time before Sam heard the sharp clatter of the .22 on the rocks below, and then a heavier, hollow thud.
He did not look down. His head still jangled with pain and dizziness as he fought to find a handhold to stop himself from going over too. He caught something and held on. He pulled up a little, found another safe thickness of weeds, and used them like rope to crawl farther from the edge. He remembered now that if he could not get back to Max, Max would have no air.
Sam's head began to clear, and he saw that Max still •reathed very lightly, and that his eyelids still fluttered. The 01g man had not been dead, only an ox felled with a
nning blow—but he was sure as hell dead now. Sam sealed Ling's wound again, even knowing it had been uncovered too long.
He watched Joanne now because he did not trust her. She een her lover creep up on him, and she had made no to'warn Sam. If he let her get behind them, she might try to kill him herself.
man !emeci n°t to be aware of anyone beyond the dead low. She paced along the ravine's edge, trying to find
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some way to climb down—testing here and there and only pulling away when her movements sent showers of rocks plummeting down.
"Come away from there. You'll fall."
She didn't answer him. When she found no way down, she stretched herself along the edge on her stomach, and held out one arm—crazily, as if she could somehow grasp her dead lover and pull him up to her.