An easier decision if I’d come alone: but if I’d come alone I couldn’t have mended the gasket.
At eleven-forty Sam said gloomily that he was having to fix the water pump as well. It was sticking.
‘How long?’
‘Another twenty minutes.’
We stared at each other in dismay.
‘Go on then,’ I said in the end. There was nothing else to do.
I left the cab and walked restlessly a short way back along the road, fearing every second to see Matt’s headlights and wondering how best to deal with him if we had to. I was all for stealing from him what wasn’t his, but not for damaging his skin. He, however, would have no such inhibitions. There would certainly be blood. Not fair to make it Sam’s.
At two minutes past midnight he called out that he had finished, and I walked quickly back to join him. He was pouring water into the radiator, and screwed on the cap as I came up.
‘It should be OK now,’ he said. His hands were covered in grease and his big body hung tiredly from the shoulders. ‘Which way do we go?’
‘On.’
He nodded with a wide slicing grin. ‘I figured you’d say that. Well, I guess that’s OK by me.’
He swung up into the cab and I climbed in beside him. The engine started sweetly at first try, and switching on his headlights, he released the brake and eased away along the road.
‘If anyone catches us here from now on,’ I said, ‘duck.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Tell you something,’ he said comfortably. ‘I swing a mean left hook.’
‘The chap we’d be taking on goes for the head. But with a club of some sort in his fist.’
‘Nice guys you play with,’ he said. ‘I’ll remember that.’
We covered the remaining distance at a good speed and in silence. The horsebox crept round the last corner and its headlights flickered over the farm ahead. I put my hand on Sam’s arm, and he braked to a halt a short way from the yard.
‘Switch off, would you? Lights too,’ I said, and jumped quickly down from the cab to wait a few precious seconds until my eyes and ears got used to silence and dark.
No lights in the house. No sound anywhere except the ultra-faint ringing vibrations of limitless air. The calves and hens were asleep. The horses were quiet. I banged on the cab door and Sam switched his headlights on again before climbing down to join me. The bright shafts lit up the back of the house and wouldn’t shine straight into the horses’ eyes when I led them from the barn. Over on the shadowy side of the yard the open doors of the shed where Matt had kept his car yawned in a deep black square. The jumbled rubbish dump just in front of us threw surrealistic shadows across the dusty ground, and its smell of decay brushed by our noses.
Sam swept it all with a practised glance. ‘Not much of a place.’ His voice was as low as a whisper.
‘No... If you’ll unclip the ramp, I’ll go fetch the horses. One at a time, I think.’
‘OK.’ He was breathing faster and his big hands were clenched. Not used to it, after all.
I hurried down towards the barn. It wasn’t far; about forty yards. Now that we were totally committed my mind raced with urgency to be done, to be away, to be safely through Kingman before Matt came back. He could have been on the road behind us, be rushing at this moment across the desert to the farm...
What happened next happened very fast, in one terrifying cataclysmic blur.
There was an urgent shout behind me.
‘Gene!’
I turned, whirling. There were two sets of headlights where there should have been one.
Matt.
The voice again, yelling. ‘Gene! Look out.’ And a figure running down the yard towards me.
Then there was a roar behind me and I turned again and was met full in the eyes by the blinding glare of two more headlights, much closer. Much closer.
Moving.
I was dazzled and off balance and I’d never have got clear. The running figure threw himself at me in a rugger tackle with outstretched arms and knocked me over out of the way, and the roaring car crashed solidly into the flying body and left it crumpled and smashed and lying on top of my legs.
The car which had hit him turned in a wide sweep at the end of the yard and started back. The headlights lined themselves up like twin suns on their target and with a fraction of my mind I thought it ironic that now when I’d decided not to, I was going to die.
Half sitting, half kneeling, I jerked out the Luger and pumped all of its eight bullets towards the windscreen. I couldn’t see to aim straight... my eyes were hurting from the glare... Not that bullets would do any good... the angle was wrong... they’d miss the driver... By the time I fired the last one the left headlight was six feet away. I uselessly set my teeth against the mangling, tearing, pulping collision... and in the last tenth of a second the straight line wavered... the smooth side of the front wing hit the back of my shoulder, the front wheel ran over a fold of my shirt, and the rear wheel gave me a clear inch.
Almost before I realized it had missed me, the car crashed head on into one of the buildings at my back with a jolting screech of wood and metal. The bodywork crumpled and cracked. The stabbing lights went black. The engine stopped. Air hissed fiercely out of a punctured tyre.
Gasping, dreading what I would find, I leaned over the heavy figure lying on my legs. There were more running footsteps in the yard, and I looked up hopelessly, unable to do any more. I’d used all the bullets... none left.
‘You’re alive!’ The voice came from the level of my ear, the man kneeling. Sam Hengelman. I looked at him in a daze.
‘I thought...’ I said, with no breath, ‘... this was you.’
He shook his head. ‘No...’
He helped me raise and turn the man who’d saved me; and with sickness and unbearable regret I saw his face.
It was Walt.
We laid him on his back, in the dust.
‘Look in the car,’ I said.
Sam lumbered silently to his feet and went away. I heard his footsteps stop and then start back.
Walt opened his eyes, I leaned over him, lifting his hand, feeling with surging hope for his pulse.
‘Gene?’ his voice mumbled.
‘Yes.’
‘He didn’t come.’
‘Didn’t...?’
‘Came to help you...’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Walt...’
His eyes slid aimlessly away from my face.
‘Christ,’ he said distinctly. ‘This is it. This is... really... it.’
‘Walt...’ His hand was warm in mine, but it didn’t move.
‘Sod it,’ he said. ‘I wanted... I wanted...’
His voice stopped. There was no pulse. No heartbeat. Nothing. Nothing at all.
I put gently down on the ground the warm hand with the rounded fingertips, and stretched out my own, and shut his eyes. It should have been me lying there, not Walt. I shook with sudden impotent fury that it wasn’t me, that Walt had taken what I’d wanted, stolen my death... It would have mattered so little if it had been me. It wouldn’t have mattered at all.
Walt... Walt...
Sam Hengelman said, ‘Is he dead?’
I nodded without looking up.
‘There’s a young guy in the car,’ he said. ‘He’s dead too.’
I got slowly, achingly, to my feet, and went to look. The car was a blue Ford convertible, and the young guy was Matt.
Without caring, automatically, I took in that the car had smashed the right-hand door of the garage shed and ploughed into the wall behind it. Most of the windscreen was scattered in splintered fragments all over the inside of the car, but in one corner, where some still clung to the frame, there was a finger-sized hole.
Matt was lying over the steering wheel, his arms dangling, his eyes open. The skull above the left eyebrow was pierced and crumpled inwards, and there was blood and hair on the chromium upright which had held the windscreen. I didn’t touch him. After a while I went back to Walt.