Jerry reached into the toolbox behind the seat and came up with a tyre iron.
He said, ‘This should do it.’
I was looking out the back, but we had gone beyond the sweep of the island. If the ghouls were still coming, I couldn’t see them. I knew that their span of attention was too feeble to keep them going in pursuit of a vanished prey… but feared that, once headed in our direction, inertia would keep them moving.
Jerry jumped out from his doorless side and stood, looking back. He had his gun in one hand and the tyre iron in the other. ‘No sign of them,’ he said. ‘I reckon we made it.’
Then a hand reached down from the top of the van.
I remembered the bang I’d heard on the roof and my mouth sprang open. I shouted, leaning past Mary. The hand hovered, tilting at the wrist, delicately groping at the air. Then it descended onto Jerry’s shoulder.
Jerry didn’t react.
He had heard me shout and must have supposed it was my hand, seeking his attention. He was still looking back along our trail. Mary screamed and the sheriff looked towards us and then he looked up, just as the hand tightened on his shoulder. His face exploded with frenzy; he dropped the tyre iron and started to lift the gun; then the ghoul heaved his big body up and hauled him onto the roof of the van.
I saw the polished toe of his boot kicking wildly.
I threw open my door and rolled out, bringing the rifle up, seeming to move in slow motion. On the top of the van they were pressed together like lovers in a terrible embrace. The ghoul loomed over Jerry; Jerry was struggling, trying to throw the creature off. I didn’t fire. In my horror, I did nothing. Jerry pressed his big revolver into the ghoul’s midrift and, as I gaped at them, he began to fire into the thing. The ghoul’s body jerked as the heavy-calibre slugs went into him. Jerry was cocking and firing the gun with terrible deliberation, fast but steady, and I saw the ghoul’s spine unpeel from his back, the bony articulation coming out from his flesh like the backbone of a fish. The spine snapped in the middle and the bloody ends twanged apart. The ghoul’s arms and legs went limp.
Jerry heaved him away and rolled from the van. The ghoul spread out across the roof, one hand hanging down on either side. His face was turned to me. He was still alive and, broken in half, trying to move.
I crossed behind the van. Jerry was sitting in the sand, panting. He was looking at his left arm. I moved towards him and we both looked at his arm and, as we did so, a red line appeared. His flesh was white, numbed by the ghoul’s inhuman grip, and on that pale background a thin thread unravelled, as if slipping from a tapestry — and a trickle of blood oozed from the broken skin.
‘Aw, hell,’ he said, very softly. ‘Aw, hell. ’
And he looked at the lighthouse, so close now and so unobtainably far.
Grey and bleak, it rose up beyond him.
Mary clung to him.
She was gasping and sobbing and heaving violently at him, almost attacking him in her despair. Jerry was trying not to touch her. He held his left arm out to the side.
He said, ‘I’ll go back.’
She was crying. ‘Jerry! Jerry! No!’
He said, ‘I’ll hold them for a while… stop as many as I can.’ He looked down at Mary, then at me. I understood. I took her by the shoulders and dragged her from him. She struggled against me, babbling incoherently, her mouth forming words that had no meaning… sounds that arose from depths far beyond language, from feelings far more ancient than speech. She struck at me. I had to change my grip. Jerry was reloading his revolver, tucking the shells into the open chamber with amazing delicacy. He snapped the cylinder closed and began fingering the bullets remaining in his belt. His lips moved; he was counting. He wanted no mistakes in that enumeration. He would have a use for the final bullet.
‘Jerry,’ I said. Words were absurdly inadequate. I said, ‘I’m sorry, Jerry. I… I’m glad I knew you.’
Mary was reaching for him, clawing for him.
And he couldn’t even kiss her goodbye.
He said, ‘Mary…’ and his voice broke. His eyes were glazed over. He shook his massive body and turned. He didn’t look back. He walked back the way we’d come with his shoulders square and I saw him raise his hand to his forehead. I knew he wished he had his Stetson as he walked back through the sunlight.
‘Mary, please… go to the lighthouse!’
She ignored me.
She didn’t even hear me. She stood on the rocks and looked back. Jerry had turned past the rim of the island. We couldn’t see him. Mary had tried to go after him and three times I’d had to stop levering at the reef and drag her back to the rocks. I handed her the rifle and she took it, holding it by the barrel, not knowing what it was. Crazed with grief and horror, her mind had slipped out of focus. Keeping one eye on her, I attacked the reef again. It was a harder job than I’d thought. The rocks didn’t roll off separately but splintered and came apart, spongy veins separating hard layers.
Jerry’s gun sounded.
It went off six times and Mary’s body jerked at every shot, just as if those bullets were slamming into her. I wondered if the sixth bullet had been for himself? But then he was firing again. He had reloaded, giving us all the time he could. He fired four more times. Then there was silence.
Mary sank down on a rock. One foot trailed in the water. I pried a black slice off and stepped back, wondering if the gap was wide enough. It wasn’t. I knelt on the slippery reef and tried to lift a huge segment of stone. It was too heavy for me I wished that Jerry had stayed to help break the reef. I heaved with all my might and the rock would not move.
Then the ghouls were coming.
Loping, bounding, skulking… in their various fashions, they came for us. One was dragging a disembodied forearm at his side. I didn’t want to know whose arm it had been. I heaved. The rock was far too heavy for me to lift, it was impossible that I should raise it and yet, ponderously, that great slab shifted. Fear had granted me strength as surely as mindless inhibition granted it to the ghouls. I rose up with the stone clasped to my breast; let it slide away, sideways, into the water. The water bubbled light green as the rock sank.
Mary screamed.
The first ghoul was on the reef, bounding from rock to rock. Blood streamed from an empty eyesocket. The other eye was fixed upon us. I backed away, reaching out for the gun, but Mary was too petrified to hand it to me; didn’t even know she had it. She was so terrified that she took a step forwards, towards the ghoul.
I snatched the rifle from her, throwing us both off balance. Mary slipped forwards and I fell back. The ghoul sprang up from the rocks, he seemed to soar over the break as I fired from my knees, awkwardly, and the recoil shoved me over the slippery stone. Flailing wildly, I dropped backwards into the warm sea.
I surfaced, kicking and gasping. I had lost the rifle. I took one automatic stroke towards the rocks, then recoiled, pushing away. The ghoul’s leap had fallen short… the gap had proved wide enough and the creature was in the water. His gory head bobbed up and down, water streaming from the open mouth, blood streaming from the open eyesocket, the other eye white and wild with terror. He was reaching for the rocks.
Mary stood there, staring down at the monster, frozen fast by her horror.