Blowback(50)

I heaved a rock out of the way and there was a blinding dusty ray of it two feet beyond my head.

The illusion of timelessness vanished in a flood of wild relief, each of my senses heightened, I heard myself begin whimpering like a child just starting to awaken from a nightmare. My hands tore at the earth in a kind of controlled frenzy, and the light grew larger, larger, I could smell clean air, I could breathe, and my head came out into the air and the light, I wedged my shoulders free, and then I lunged and scrabbled the rest of my body through the opening and down the outside wall of the slide, felt it shift and grumble under my skidding weight, and lost my balance and rolled over twice amid a clattering of rock and finally came up on my hands and knees at the edge of the slope.

Inside the mine there was a low-pitched rumbling; dust spewed out through the hole I had made, cut off again as the hole disappeared under a cascade of rock. The rumbling went on for ten seconds-and it was quiet again, I was wrapped in silence and heat and light and sweet fresh air.

A little awed, I thought: I did it, I got out.

I knelt there with the sun hot on my back, breath rasping in my throat. Then I pulled back on my knees, saw the torn and filthy fronts of my shirt and trousers, a thin cut on my left forearm matted with dirt and dried blood, the broken-nailed, bruised fingers on both hands. Reaction set in; tremors shook my body, left me weak and nauseated. The ordeal in the mine shaft seemed to recede in my memory, as if it were a surreal dream, as if it had happened only within the spaces in my mind.

What if he's still out here somewhere?

The thought came with alarming suddenness, cementing reality. I pulled my head around and pawed at the sweat blurring my eyes, got them focused on my surroundings. But there was nobody in sight; the flat and the crumbling outbuildings were still shrouded in heavy stillness, my car gleamed with bright reflections where I had parked it.

Gone, long gone.

Who, damn it? Who?

Anger seeped into me, a good sharp purging fury that enabled me to move, to function. I got to my feet, swaying, but I was going to be able to walk all right, I would not fall down again. I went down the slope, feeding on the rage, using it to pull my thoughts into logical patterns. The sunlight faded, disappeared altogether for a moment as I crossed the flat in a stumbling run; the clouds I had seen massing above the high peaks had started to flow westward.

I dragged the car door open, slid onto the sun-heated Naugahyde. And sat there fidgeting, going over it, going over it, while I stared sightlessly through the windshield. It began to come together, as I had known inside the mine it would-slowly at first and then rapidly, all of it clicking into place like bits of colored tile in a mosaic.

I knew who he was then.

Oh God yes, I Knew who he was.

The back of my neck prickled; urgency made me reach out immediately to twist the key in the ignition. Into The Pines to call Cloudman? No, it had to be the camp, I had to know if he was there now. And if he was, I had to get Harry to help me put him under citizen's arrest. Not because it had become a personal thing, I could not let myself think that way; because he had killed two men and almost made me number three, and he was capable of anything at any minute-any damned thing at all. There was just no time to waste taking myself out of it and letting the authorities handle him.

I jammed the gear lever into drive, not looking at myself in the rear-view mirror, because I did not want to see what I looked like just yet, and spun the car into a turn and took it bouncing down the wagon trail to the county road.





Eighteen




The need for urgency made me drive too fast, and my arms began to ache from fighting the wheel in and out of turns. I did not have much strength left. Far back in my mind was the thought that once I stopped functioning on tension, all the little hurts and the weakened condition of my lungs might lead to a serious collapse; but I held it away, kept my attention hard on the road and on what lay ahead.

When I came finally out of the trees on the last long incline, to where I had a clear look at the gravel circle, I saw that all the cars were parked within it- all of them. There was something else drawn up there too, off on one side: a covered U-Haul trailer. So that's how he planned to get the Daghestan out, I thought. Wait until the time was right, make sure there was nobody around, and then carry it from its hiding place to the U-Haul…

Somebody was walking along the beach toward the pier-Harry, it looked like-and he broke into a trot as soon as he saw me. I brought the car skidding into the circle, jerked on the emergency brake, and swung out before it quit rocking. Harry came running up; he stopped abruptly when he got a good look at me. His eyes widened into an incredulous stare.

“Good God,” he said, “what happened to you?”