The pain snapped him back. All finished, was he? Not quite yet.
Curt drove his left knee up between Champ’s legs. The big man shuddered, squirmed, tried to shield his testicles from the second blow he knew would come — but he didn’t slacken his grip.
Again. Champ moaned. He turned his head to the left, grinding his skull harder against Curt’s jaw. But he also exposed his face. Curt locked his right hand into a judo fist, second knuckle of the middle finger protruding, and drove it with all his strength into the place that he hoped Champ’s left eye would he.
It was.
Champ screamed, twisting away and back, clawing his right hand at the injured eye. Curt teetered for a second on the edge, almost gone, then got his balance just as Champ lurched toward him, yelling, all fighting sense gone in rage and pain. With almost surgical precision. Curt used his steel-shod right foot again, but driving it this time into Champ’s crotch. The big man collapsed, going down onto his knees like a heart-shot buffalo, and Curt smashed the knife edge of his right hand in a backhand blow at the exposed neck vertebrae to crush them. He struck three inches too low, across the back of the shoulders, but the force of the blow’ knocked Champ forward, right over the edge.
Curt was dragged to his knees by the ragged knife-blade of pain between his ribs. He dragged in shallow half-breaths, choking still from that awesome bear hug. He looked over the edge.
Champ had slid head-first for the first few feet, had clutched a protrusion of rock with his right hand, had clung desperately as his body slid by into space. His fingers had held on even under the shock of the full weight of his body; now he swung over emptiness by just that one hand, his broken left arm dangling uselessly at his side.
When Curt looked over, he stared right into the fear-stricken face.
“I...” Terror thickened Champ’s voice. “Mister... please...”
Debbie moaning on the phone — please. Curt watched, unblinking, as the clawed fingers began to very gradually straighten.
“Please...”
He couldn’t do it. Curt went down gingerly on his belly, stretched an arm down, was able to close his fingers around Champ’s wrist. “Try to chin yourself,” Curt began. “Try to pull up where I can get—”
Champ’s fingers straightened, his full weight, held only by Curt’s grip, fell free and slammed Curt clown against the rough stone ledge.
Curt yelled and realized that the weight was gone. His own hand had popped open under that scourge of pain.
Champ fell backward, shoulders hunched, legs windmilling above his head, right hand clawing empty air. He made no outcry. His heavy body plummeted through the undergrowth and smashed on the jagged unseen rocks at the base of the cliff with a sickening thud.
Silence. Mutter of distant surf.
Curt struggled to his feet, leaned against the rock, face ashen. Predators? Well, he had learned something about himself then. Not in cold blood could he do it. His victory was bitter in his thoughts. As for the others...
There were no preliminary whimperings — just sudden open-throated shrieks of pain, like the ululating wails of mating panthers. Curt jerked his head around, stared horror-stricken into the shadows below. After a fall like that, the man couldn’t live, couldn’t...
Once in the desert they had been pinned down for two days by enemy air and a man in a perimeter position had been hit and had yelled for nine hours without pause, so that three men were killed trying to get to him and they finally just had left him there, screaming until he died...
Curt had to find a way down. Had to do something. But... no way down. Not for a man with broken ribs. Up, then? Impossible. One way: work obliquely along the face of the cliff toward the edge of the ravine, try to find a way off the cliff face and into the trees. Then down the gravel drive to the man dying below him.
Curt started to move, then paused. His eyes swept the clearing below, and a chill of realization ran through him. The others had not appeared! The pale glow of a kerosene lamp shone against the curtained windows he could see from there. They must have heard the body falling; they must be hearing the screams. But none of them had emerged. Even if they thought it was Curt, not their buddy Champ...
Curt shuddered again; that callous disregard was the worst thing they had done. Then he started edging his way painfully along.
Chapter 30
They were in the living room when the heavy body smashed down through the foliage to stop with an abrupt thud on the rocks. Rick came to his feet with the darkly blued .32 Colt automatic clutched in his right hand, his face very pale.
“What was that?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.
Heavy also was on his feet, rosy-cheeked face beaming. “Champ got him!” he exclaimed happily. “Champ knocked him off the cliff!”
Julio was halfway to the kitchen door when Rick called him back in a flat, almost deadly voice. “If that was Halstead falling, we’ll know when Champ comes back.”
“But what if it was Champ? What if—”
“Then we can do nothing for him anyway.”
To hell with that, thought Julio. Ever since the rape of Debbie, he seemed to have been waking by painful degrees from some sort of bad dream which had begun last April with the attack on Rockwell. A dream in which he did not what he wished, but what seemed dictated by something outside himself. Well, he was through following Rick’s lead.
He started again for the door, but behind him the safety clicked off. He looked back: the pistol was trained on him, and the look in Rick’s eyes, almost a madness, brought him back to his chair.
Then the screams started.
Julio’s lips drew back and his eyes started from his face as if he were being throttled. “That’s Champ’s voice! He is hurt, he—”
“It might be a trick.”
The gun didn’t waver. Julio sat still. Fifteen minutes passed, while the cries continued. Heavy sat on the couch like a fat white grub, eating a corned beef sandwich; Rick sat in the easy chair beside the cold potbellied stove, with his right leg over the arm of the chair so he could rest the butt of the .32 on his knee.
“Rick, please, listen to that... that noise. Champ—”
“Shut up.”
The cries continued for the next hour intermittently, as if the injured man were undergoing surgery without anesthesia. Heavy, who had made a whole loaf of bread into cheese and corned beef sandwiches before the lights had gone out, was very steadily and surely eating his way to the bottom of the stack.
Julio spoke to him suddenly. “Will you come with me? I can’t stand that sound any more.”
Heavy stared at him with piggish eyes, and then gave a great raucous belch. His cheeks were pouched with half-chewed bread; the white melting fat of the corned beef ran down his chins. Around his mouthful he managed, “Ca... do it, Jul... Ri... gotta wait...”
“Empty your mouth, for Chris’ sake, you pig!” stormed Julio.
Heavy chewed, swallowed, belched. “Rick says we gotta wait.” He shot a look over at Rick, who had Paula’s suicide note open in his lap again. “I ain’t chicken, no matter what anybody says, but I ain’t dumb, either. The Triumph’s screwed up, an’ I bet the Chevy is, too, and I ain’t about to try an’ fix ’em in the dark. So we can’t get outta here: so what’s the use of goin’ outside?”
Julio began pacing, roaming the room like a caged animal, quivering each time that another of Champ’s screams tore at his nerves. A flash of hatred almost palpable in intensity shot through him. Halstead had done that to Champ; had done something to Rick, changed him some way so they were stuck in here, while outside, Champ...