Mackenzie eased his way along the seat toward the back. When Duggai grabbed his bicep he was ready for it and let himself go slack; Duggai yanked him out of the truck and Mackenzie took the fall harmlessly on his hip and shoulder.
The folded rectangle of plastic lay just beneath the left taillight. Starlight winked off its surface.
Duggai went back to examine Earle Dana. It was evident Earle had lost consciousness—shock, nothing more; he hadn’t been hit on the head. Duggai was doing something with his hands behind Earle’s back. After a moment Mackenzie realized what it was: Duggai was removing the wire manacles from Earle’s hands.
The wire clattered when Duggai threw it into the back of the truck. Then Duggai put his Magnum away in his belt, snugging it down. He went into a pocket and Mackenzie, sitting up slowly, watched him unfold a pocketknife.
Duggai came forward hefting the blade. “Belly down, Captain.”
Mackenzie obeyed. His own awkwardness infuriated him.
He was expecting Duggai to remove the wire from his wrists or the gag from his mouth; he froze in twanging panic when he felt the cold prick of the knife against his spine.
“I wouldn’t move,” Duggai said.
Then there was a tugging, a snagging sound of rending cloth—and suddenly Duggai was tearing the clothes off him. In horrified paralysis Mackenzie lay perfectly still while the knife ravaged his clothing and Duggai pulled shreds of cloth away from his flesh. He felt the sharp blade tug his belt tight and saw its way outward through the leather until the belt parted; then the blade was whisking down his pant legs from waistline to ankles; the sleeves were parted like halved ripe melons and fell away from his arms; and nothing that had gone before was half so icily terrifying as the whisper of the keen blade in fast strokes within millimeters of his flesh.
The boot took him completely by surprise, snapping perfunctorily into his ribs: not a brutal blow, not hard enough to damage him—a tap for attention.
“Roll over, Captain. Roll off the rags.”
He rolled onto his back and lay stark naked in the night, his hands still wired behind him, his mouth still gagged. The hulking silhouette above him moved: Duggai picked up the shreds of Mackenzie’s clothes and threw them into the camper.
Mackenzie lay stunned with disbelief and watched Duggai move toward Shirley Painter. Starlight raced along the knife blade.
Duggai destroyed their clothes methodically. He took their wristwatches and rings and shoes and pulled their socks off. He threw everything into the truck. Then he dragged them naked, one by one, about twenty feet from the truck. Mackenzie’s hands were still wired together and took a great deal of punishment as Duggai dragged him across the rocky ground by one foot.
Matter-of-fact and without much show of feeling Duggai stood above them. He folded the knife and put it away in his pocket and walked back to the truck. Mackenzie heard the door open; he didn’t hear it shut. A moment later Duggai came in sight again unzipping the long rifle case. He tossed the case into the truck and walked toward them working the bolt of the rifle. It was a big-game weapon with a large telescope screwed on top of it.
Duggai balanced the rifle in his left hand while he used his right hand to untwist the wire that bound Mackenzie’s hands together. Duggai left him and crouched by Shirley. Mackenzie rolled up on one elbow and gently rubbed his wrists. His hands had no feeling in them.
Duggai removed the wire from Shirley’s wrists and then from Jay’s; he stepped back and leveled the rifle.
Mackenzie kept trying to clear his throat.
At last Duggai spoke. “Now maybe you find out how much of a crime it is. Maybe you find out how crazy you got to be to want to live. I tell you one thing—whatever happens to you out here ain’t half as bad as what they do to a man in them hospitals. You remember this—at least I’m gonna let you die in dignity. But I’m gonna watch it happen.”
Mackenzie saw Jay try to speak. Nothing came out of his mouth.
Duggai’s rifle pivoted toward Mackenzie and he watched it bleakly. “You’re half Innun. I lived out there that time because I was Innun. Maybe you can live a while too. If you make it I’ll be waiting for you, Captain.”
It was all Duggai had to say. He walked back to the pickup. Mackenzie saw him toss the twisted pieces of wire inside and close the back of the pickup. Then Duggai got behind the wheel and the camper lurched away. It was still running without lights and the night quickly absorbed it. Sound carried back for a while but then that was gone too.
A low wind soughed in Mackenzie’s ears; there was no other sound.
He was thinking, by two in the afternoon it’ll be a hundred and thirty degrees out here.
7
For an endless lethargic time Mackenzie sat shifting his naked buttocks on the hard ground and listening to the dwindling growl and rattle of the truck until finally the night absorbed it and there was nothing.
He looked slowly at the others.
Jay Painter was sitting up. A muscle worked at the back of his jaw. His thin body was a patchwork of tangled hair.
A gust of dry air spun Shirley’s long hair around her face. She combed it away with her fingers and tossed it back with a shake of her head, an unconsciously impatient gesture. She was watching the darkness where the truck had disappeared.
Earle Dana writhed slowly, chrysalis-like, not really conscious.
Mackenzie slowly picked his way across the earth. Sharp stones made him hobble. He crouched by Earle. The man’s face, drawn with pain, was swollen on the left cheek where he’d fallen. The eye was puffy and closed, the flesh sickly dark. The leg—well, at least it wasn’t a compound fracture. No bone showed.
Jay Painter began to cough. When the coughing subsided the silence became so intense that Mackenzie heard the crack of his own knee joint as he stirred. He stood up, feeling lances of pain here and there.
Shirley spoke, her voice husky and cracked, hardly a voice at all. “He broke his leg.”
“I know.” Speaking the words made him cough.
Jay stared out into the night, brows lowered as if he were peering into strong light: with his head down and his eyes narrowed. Refusing to look at any of them. In a strange way it amused Mackenzie: they sat in deadly peril and they were reluctant to look directly at one another because of the embarrassment of nakedness. He fought down the impulse to laugh because if he began it could tip him over the edge of hysteria.
He coughed again; he felt along the ground and found a pebble. When he straightened up he put the pebble in his mouth and sucked on it in an attempt to get the saliva flowing. He kept rolling it around with his tongue.
Shirley said, “Shouldn’t we make a splint?”
Jay’s head came up. “What’s the use?” The painful grating of his voice set Mackenzie’s teeth on edge. Jay went into a fit of coughing, recovered and finally spoke again: “What does he want from us?”
“I guess he wants us dead,” Mackenzie said. He peered at the landscape, trying to decipher the dark terrain. Scrub sloped up along a series of eroded cuts toward higher ground. There was scattered vegetation: greasewood, catclaw, tufts of brittle grass, cactus in various configurations. Each bit of growth stood in lonely isolation, ten or thirty feet from its neighbors. For the most part the ground was hardpan and stones, cracked clay, alkali.
“Sam.” Jay Painter’s voice hit him like the flat of a hand. He turned.
Little pale patches of hate glowed around Jay’s nostrils. “You know a little about the desert, right? How long have we got?”