Della said, ‘I’ve never owned anything. There never seemed to be any point to it.’
Ed wound the window down. They could hear the shooting quite clearly now – sharp, argumentative bursts of machine-gun fire, countered by the deep blasts of shotguns. The night air was warm and dusty, but it was dark too, with clouds covering the moon, and it was difficult to make out what was happening up ahead. They could smell gunsmoke drifting their way on the fresh easterly wind.
In the light of his headlamps, Ed saw somebody lying in the roadway. He pulled up, opened the Wagoneer’s door, and jumped down. Della said, ‘What is it? What have you stopped for?’
Ed didn’t answer, but crouched his way forward beside the Jeep’s front wheel, and then scuttled out to where the man was sprawled out in the dust. There was blood everywhere, most of it dried in dark Rorschach prints, but some of it still wet and globular. Ed carefully eased the man over on to his back, and then he saw who it was.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said, through his teeth.
It was young Jack Marowitz, dead. He looked as if he had been hit five or six times in the chest by a machine-gun, because the front of his yellow college sweatshirt was mushy with blood. As Ed turned him over, a strange sighing noise came from his perforated lungs.
Ed heaved the body over to the side of the road, and then crouched his way back to the Jeep. The firing was much closer now, and he could hear unfamiliar voices shouting something which sounded like, ‘Get behind them! Circle around them, George! Get behind them!’
Della said, ‘What’s happening? Who was that in the road?’
Ed slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and revved up the Wagoneer’s engine. ‘Jack Marowitz, my crop adviser. One of the best in the business, as far as I was concerned.’
‘But what’s going on? Who shot him?’
‘I don’t know. It sounds like some kind of a raiding party. They’re over there on the right, most of them. At least it sounds that way, from the gunfire.’
‘Where are your people?’
Ed drove cautiously ahead for three or four hundred yards without lights. As he drove, he pointed to the fence which ran alongside the entrance road on the left-hand side. ‘That’s where Dyson was hiding himself yesterday, so I guess that’s where they are tonight. It was Willard, Jack, and one of the garage hands on guard duty until three o’clock.’
There was a brief snatch of firing, and a sudden rattling of bullets against the side of the Jeep. Ed immediately swerved off the track, and stopped the vehicle beside the protective camouflage of a clump of stunted bushes. He pushed open the driver’s door, and scrambled quickly out into the grass, followed by Della.
A shotgun banged loudly off to the left, and Della raised her head a little to see if she could pinpoint where the shot had come from.
‘Those are your people, aren’t they, with the shotguns?’ she asked.
Ed nodded. ‘It sounds like it. Did you see where they were?’
‘I think so. Down behind the fence there, about five or six uprights along. The other people are using M3A1s.’
‘You can tell just by listening?’
‘Every gun has a distinctive sound of its own. And remember I’m trained.’
Ed said, ‘How many of them do you guess there are? Six, maybe?’
‘It’s hard to tell,’ said Della. ‘More, probably, by the way they’re firing.’
Ed thought about that. Then he said, ‘In that case, I think we’d better go back and get some reinforcements. There’s no way that four of us are going to be able to hold off that many of them.’
‘I think it’s time to back off,’ said Della. ‘We don’t have any proper cover here or any spare ammunition. Can you call Willard, and see if you can get him to hear you? Tell him to make his way back to the farm.’
‘Listen,’ said Ed, ‘who’s giving the goddamned orders around here?’
‘Have you got a better idea?’ Della demanded.
There was another burst of light machine-gun fire, off on their right. The raiders were encircling them now, trying to cut off their escape back to the house.
‘If we don’t get out of here now, they’ve got us,’ said Della. ‘So what are you going to do? Call your friends, or die gallantly?’
Ed looked at her intently, trying to make out her face in the darkness. ‘If any of us come out of this famine alive,’ he said, ‘what the hell are you going to do with your life?’ Della said, ‘Call them! If we don’t run, we’re going to have to fight.’
‘I asked you a question,’ insisted Ed.
‘Do you really think I’ve got the time or the inclination to answer you? But if you must know, I’m going to give up the FBI and do what I always wanted to do. Marry, settle down, live in Bluefield, West Virginia and raise children and flowers.’
Ed said, ‘Bluefield, West Virginia?’
He was going to say something else, but he was interrupted by a fast, sharp burst of bullets. Six or seven of them struck the Jeep Wagoneer. They heard the side windows crack, and the high, squeaky hiss of a punctured tyre. Then they heard someone calling, ‘Get over that fence. George! Along the back!’
A man came running past the Jeep, doubled-up, holding a grease-gun, and panting as he ran. He came so close to Ed and Della that he almost kicked Della in the face – but he overshot them by two or three paces before his mind registered that what he had seen on the ground could have been two people. He skated to a halt on the grass, turned around, and just had time to raise his gun before Della rolled over on to her back, lifted her pump-gun, and blew his stomach into rags of bloody intestine.
‘That’s it!’ clipped Della. ‘Now, let’s get the hell out of here!’
‘Willard!’ yelled Ed. ‘Willard – we’re over here and we’re making a run for it!’
Della’s gunshot and Ed’s shouting instantly attracted a whipping, whistling swarm of machine-gun fire. They lay flat against the turf as dust sprayed up all around them, and bullets penetrated the sides of the Jeep in a hurrying series of flat-sounding clonks. Another tyre burst, and Ed snarled at Della, ‘I thought you told me that couldn’t happen?’
Ed raised his Colt .45 and strained his eyes to see what was going on in the darkness. Through the bushes, he could see most of the split-rail fence where Willard and the garage-hand were hiding themselves; and he thought he could see somebody huddled by the roadside, although it was impossible to see if the man was alive and dangerous or dead and safe.
There was a long, tight silence, broken only by the occasional whistling of the grass in the wind, and by the rustling of birds, or gophers, or impatient gunmen. Ed whispered to Della, ‘There’s no sign from Willard. Maybe they hit him.’
Della raised a cautious hand, and said, ‘Wait.’
They didn’t have to wait long. A few seconds later, they heard someone running towards them. Ed lifted his head and saw two men sprinting fast and low alongside the split-rail fence. In front, holding on to his stetson hat with one hand and his shotgun in the other, was Willard Noakes; and just behind him was Ed’s young garage-hand.
Ed fired twice into the air, to distract the raiders, and he was answered by a crackle of bullets. But then there was another sound – the snap of a rifle. It fired one ranging shot, then another; and then Willard collapsed in a jumble of arms and legs. The garage-hand bent over him, and Ed heard his voice on the wind like the voice of an anxious fledgling, saying, ‘Willard…’