"I was coming to see you at Desert Range, Dad. I wanted you to help us--help me--but they wouldn't let me. I'm sorry for what I did, I--" Dan choked up. His eyes were moist and red-rimmed. "I can't tell you how ashamed I feel. I loved her, Dad. I loved her and yet I did that to her." He hung his head and his shoulders started to heave.
Chase released him and stood up. He turned slowly and looked in turn at each of the seven young men and finally at Baz. He said, "That's why you couldn't let him go, isn't it? It would have ruined your chances of becoming tin-pot dictator here, you and your"--he made an empty, dismissive gesture--"bunch of crazy thugs. Do you know you're insane, Baz?" He glanced around at them. "You're all stark bloody raving mad, did you know that? You've pumped yourselves full of poison and your brain cells have corroded. And you talk about survival of the fittest." Chase shook his head pityingly. "You're a dead man, Baz. All of you are as good as dead. Nothing can save you now."
Baz thrust the point of the blade at Chase's throat. The arteries on his forearm stood out, lumpy and blue, the skin hard and shiny where repeated punctures had formed scar tissue.
"You're fucking dead, Chase, not us!" He rocked forward and Chase felt the tip penetrate his skin. It felt like a red-hot needle. "All I have to do is keep on pushing," Baz said, "and pushing and pushing and we all stand around and watch you bleed to death like a stuck pig. I told you already to get out. That was your one and only chance. But I knew you'd be too dumb to take it."
Nick said, "We're going, we're getting out, all of us. If we go we're out of your way, which is what you want, isn't it? Why keep Dan here or any of us?"
"I don't want you," Baz said, easing back and pointing the knife at Dan. "I want him. He wants to kill me, don't you, Danny boy? The bastard tried it once." He yanked out his shirt to expose a white bubbled scar across his stomach and pelvic bone. "And nearly fucking did it."
"Don't give me another chance, Baz," Dan said, his voice hoarse and low. "Next time I will do it."
"That's why you're not going anywhere!" Baz shouted, his eyes glazed blue. "Not any of you!" He blinked and wiped his mouth, as if coming out of a trance, and pushed a hand through his disheveled hair. Then he abruptly grabbed Chase by the shoulder and heaved him violently across the room.
Nick went for him as he strode to the door and actually got a handful of Baz's shirt before three of the others pounced on him and dragged him away. One of them swung a rifle butt at Nick's head and there was a dull solid sound like the distant boom of a cannon and Nick fell to his knees.
Baz kicked at him viciously. "Stay here and fucking rot!" He glared at Chase and Dan, chest heaving. "You're here and you stay here. Cheryl and that other woman have gone and they're never coming back, understand? They can take their chances on the road." Suddenly his grin came on, as if somebody had pulled a string. "We'll let your wife and daughter stay," he told Nick. "Now that Jo's been raped I bet she's got a taste for it." He sprayed his mad grin around at the others. "One at a time or all together, huh?"
Nick struggled to rise, his eyes hooded with pain. "You go anywhere near my family and I swear I'll swing for you. I'll get you. I'll get you." He stumbled forward, arms outstretched. "You fucking miserable excuse for a human being. . . . Aaaaaggghhh!"
Baz had lashed at him with the knife and there was bright blood everywhere, pumping from a deep gash in Nick's shoulder. The front of his shirt rapidly changed color to a dark plum and hung slackly to his chest.
"Oh, yeah? What are you going to do?" Baz taunted him, waving the dripping knife blade in a circle. "Bleed to death? Yeah, great, I like it. Go on, bleed, you cunt." He continued to grin, spots of blood on his forehead and cheeks.
Chase supported Nick and helped him to a chair. He bound the wound with his handkerchief and knotted it tightly to stanch the flow. It was pointless trying to reason with Baz because there was no reason left. His was a mind on a one-way track, fixated, a mind that needed only the flimsiest excuse to slaughter them on the spot.
If there was a way out of this he couldn't think of one. It wasn't only the three of them here who were in danger, but the women too. Jen and Jo at the mercy of this drug-crazed mob, Ruth and Cheryl out there in the darkness on a lonely road . . .
He raised his eyes to where Baz was standing with the others bunched around him, each of them with a fragment of a common expression like a splintered mirror showing a single demented face. And as he looked something locked in Chase's throat. Under his hand he felt Nick's body stiffen. The double doors across the passage had silently opened and they watched a man come through with a double-bladed ax lifted high above his head and bring it down with maniacal force on the crown of Baz's head, splitting it into halves.
The scene turned red. Through the sticky fountain Chase saw other men pawing their way forward clutching knives, hatchets, steel bars, hacksaw blades, scythes and cutting and slashing indiscriminately at whatever was in their path. They were filthy, with matted hair and beards, their clothing stained and ragged. Some were putrefying, their faces and arms covered in scabs, others totally bald with skin a drab pasty white. All of them were demonical and possessed with bloodlust.
The carnage spilled into the passage as the attackers were flung back by a barrage of gunfire. At such close range the large-caliber weapons made a ghastly mess of human flesh and bone. All but three of the young men had been killed and one of these had had the side of his face scythed open, his ear hanging off like the tab of a zipper.
There were rifles on the floor among the hacked bodies, and Chase grabbed two and flung them to Nick and Dan. His Browning automatic was stuck in the belt of a corpse with its neck almost completely severed and an arm hanging by a tattered sleeve of skin.
Both double doors had been ripped off their hinges by the blast of gunfire and in the main hall Chase could see the attackers regrouping. Of the three young men still alive the one with the scythed-open face was bent over holding the flap in place, blood running freely between his fingers. These were no longer the enemy, but allies.
Chase pulled Nick to his feet under the armpit. "Can you make it?"
Nick held up the rifle. "You take this, I'll have the gun." He made a quizzical grimace. "Dicky shoulder, I'm afraid, old chap."
The floor was awash with blood. The two young men still holding rifles, one on either side of the door, were uncertain what to do next. Chase stepped forward and took charge. "We'll have to rush them," he said tersely. "If we get trapped in here we've had it. There are five of us, all armed. We should get through. Ready? Let's go!"
With that he grabbed one, then the other, and pushed them forward. They stumbled across the passage and into the hall, firing from the hip, but as Nick and Dan crowded behind Chase in close support, he ducked aside and ran toward the kitchen, yelling over his shoulder, "Back the way we came in!"
Nick steered Dan along the passage. As they reached the kitchen door the explosion of gunfire and the screams of injured men made a dreadful symphony. Dan went up first, onto the table and hauling himself weakly through the trapdoor, reaching down to give Nick what help he could while Chase got underneath and lifted him bodily from below. Chase went up and slammed the trapdoor shut. The open hatch in the end wall was clearly outlined a different shade of black in the blackness of the loft, and they stumbled toward it not caring whether they walked on the rafters or not.