Ed started to get up, but Della seized the sleeve of his T-shirt.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t stand a chance. For my sake – for your wife’s sake – just stay where you are.’
Ed slid back down on to the grass. He was sure he could hear Willard moaning. And that wasn’t just anybody, hit by a bullet and hurt. That was Willard Noakes, one of his father’s closest buddies – the man who had taught Ed just about everything he knew – the man who had listened to his problems and given him friendly advice, and never once betrayed himself or South Burlington Farm or the good straightforward state of Kansas.
You could never have said that Willard Noakes was a great man, or even a half-successful man. He was lonesome, as a rule, and unlettered, and when he wasn’t working or sleeping, he was watching television. But it took an effort of will that was almost muscular for Ed not to risk the bullets that were flying around that night and run across to tell Willard that he had always been loved, and respected, and that he wasn’t going to die alone.
There were three more rifle shots. Snap – snap – snap. The garage-hand half-rose, batting his hands at the air as if he were trying to catch moths. Then he fell into the darkness, and Ed couldn’t see him any more.
Della said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here, Ed. I mean it, darling, otherwise we’re going to be pigfeed.’
‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘The two back tyres on the Jeep are flat, but I guess I can still drive her back to the farmhouse. I just hope they haven’t shot up the engine.’
Della looked up. ‘They’re trying to surround us. I can hear one of them over there, in back of the fence. Can you hear that? Like, rustling. If we’re going to make a run for it, I think we’d better do it now.’
They waited for nearly ten seconds; their hearts galloping, their breath shallow. Then Ed touched Della’s shoulder in the darkness, and said, ‘Let’s go!’
Della scrambled up first, and threw herself into the open door of the Jeep. Ed was up next, and he had started up the motor even before he was sitting in his seat. With the driver’s door swinging wildly, the Wagoneer jounced off the rough grass verge, and bucked its way on to the road. The rear hubs grated and bumped on the hard-packed soil, and when Ed thrust his foot down on the gas, the tyres slithered out from under the rims like agonised black snakes; but they were away, and heading back towards the farm as fast as the crippled Jeep could travel.
Now, for the first time they saw the raiders they were fighting. Out of the shadows, on either side of the road, men came running out of the grassland, carrying rifles and machine-guns. They wore quilted jerkins and jeans, and most of them had scarves tied around their faces.
‘Can’t you get this damned thing to go any faster?’ fretted Della, as the Jeep ground laboriously along the track.
‘With two flat tyres? You want miracles?’
‘For God’s sake! We’d be quicker on foot.’
A hail of machine-gun bullets smashed the back windows of the Wagoneer, and showered them with broken glass. Ed pressed the gas pedal flat to the floor, but although the engine screamed, and the back wheel rims screeched on the road, he couldn’t get enough traction to take them clear of the running raiders. If the Jeep hadn’t been four-wheel-drive, they probably couldn’t have got it to go at all.
Two well-aimed rifle bullets penetrated the driver’s door, with a sound like warping tin, and one of them buried itself in the upholstery of Ed’s seat. He said, ‘That’s it. We’ve had it That’s the end.’
But Della whooped, ‘We’re losing them! Ed, look we’re losing them!’
Ed turned. They were travelling at almost twenty-five mph now, and the raiders were gradually falling behind. One or two of them had stopped already, and were raising their rifles and their machine-guns to their shoulders to give the Jeep a final scattering of fire.
‘It’s too far now,’ said Della, with relief, settling back in her seat. ‘They’ll never get the range. Not with those peashooters.’
It was then that the Jeep’s tortured transmission gave out a hideous clashing noise, and locked solid. The vehicle jolted to a stop, and wouldn’t budge, even for Ed’s frantic jugglings with the T-bar shift.
‘Out!’ Ed shouted at Della. ‘We’ve got a good start on them – we can still make it!’
They were out of the Jeep and running before any of the raiders realised what had happened. But as they pounded along the dirt track towards the dark huddle of the farmhouse buildings, they heard the sporadic crackling of M3Als behind them and the denser, sharper report of rifles. Ed – even though he was running – could feel the night air herringboned by bullets. For the first time that night, he thought, ‘God – they’ve got me now. I don’t stand a chance. I’m going to die right here, right now, as suddenly as Michael died in his car.’
He could hear Della running along beside him – her bare feet slapping on the track. He could hear his own painful gasps for breath. He closed his eyes and pelted along faster, totally intent on survival, totally intent on living and on seeing Season and Sally again.
Then – there was another fusillade of gunfire. But this wasn’t behind them. This was ahead, from the farmhouse, and from the stables. This was the bellow of shotguns and the light twig-snapping sound of handguns. His own farmhands, shooting back. The firing from the raiders broke off abruptly as they scrambled for cover, and Ed and Della found themselves running through the night in unnatural silence, as if they were trying to escape through the muffled darkness of a nightmare.
They reached the asphalt yard, and then they were stumbling up the steps of the farmhouse verandah, accompanied by an ear-splitting salvo of covering shotgun fire.
Dyson was standing by the door, and he opened it up for them as they came running along the front of the house. Then he quickly slammed it behind them, and locked it. Ed said simply, ‘Shit. Thanks, Dyson.’
Inside the farmhouse, the atmosphere was alarmed, and everybody was tight faced with tension. Even Shearson Jones had come down from his bed, and was sitting in Ed’s armchair, wrapped in a white towelling bathrobe that scarcely met over the white moon-like curve of his belly. Peter Kaiser was perched on the arm of the sofa next to Karen, with his arm around her – an affectionate gesture to which she responded by sitting up as rigidly as possible.
Dyson, following Ed and Della into the living-room, said, ‘We heard the shooting. Then we heard you go out to the front gate in the Jeep. I was trying to get the boys together – armed and ready – when we saw you coming back.’ Ed’s chest was still heaving from their last desperate run. He said, ‘Dyson, I’m glad you did. That blast of scatter-gun fire – well, that just about saved our lives.’
Dyson was carrying the light hunting rifle which he usually used for popping off shots at rabbits and rats. He went across to the window, parted the drapes, and peered studiously out into the night. The Jeep was already alight, and rolling tongues of orange flame were pouring out of its blackened carcass like a grotesque demonstration of fire-eating.
‘There’s a whole lot of them out there, Ed,’ Dyson said, quietly. ‘Twenty or thirty maybe. I counted the muzzle flashes when you were running in. There’s no way we can hold them off for very long.’
Ed said, ‘I’m not going to try to hold them off.’
‘You’re not even going to try to save yourself?’ asked Shearson Jones, in his fat, unmistakable voice. ‘What are you going to do? Let them scavenge the few supplies we have left? Lie low while they rob us?’