The second guy was still reacting with shock, staring as his friend pawed at the soup on his face. That one was occupied for the next few minutes, so it was the silent one I lunged at, spear out, gashing a great ragged tear along the left side of his neck. There’s an advantage to being six foot six, to having the kind of reach I possess.
But I hadn’t thought about the blood. It spurted out like somebody finding oil, as though under terrific pressure. I jumped to the side, turning toward the other one, and the spray of blood splashed onto the wall and the sofa as the dying man made a bubbling noise, arms up like a doctor drying his hands, already falling backward.
The talker was reaching for the automatic tucked into his belt. I slashed at him, and he threw his arms up, and the pieces of glass drew a pair of red lines on his right forearm. I drew back the spear and cut at him again, but he was backing quickly away, making a guttural shout.
Would the guard or guards hear that outside? I had not been able to hear the music when the door was shut, not even when I pressed my ear to the crack beside the jamb, so it should be safe. But not too many shouts, please, not too many. I lunged again, this time slicing sharp glass across the backs of his fingers as they closed on his gunbutt.
He tripped over his fallen friend, and as he toppled backward I jumped forward and landed with both socked feet on his chest. His mouth opened, his eyes looked agonized, and before I could tell myself not to, I swung my spear like a golf club across the exposed target of his throat.
God, it’s different. On PACKARD I’d done most of my own fights, being pretty good at pulling the punches and doing the falls, and the difference was like the difference on that videotape of Ross’s, between Delia West “dying” and Delia West dead. Already this small room was filling with terrible cloying smells. The things on the floor were too horrible to look at, and I had done it. I had been angry, and I had been afraid, and that’s a dangerous combination; it can make you do atrocious things.
But now both those emotions had suddenly simply vanished from my mind, burned up in the adrenaline surge. My condition was almost as desperate as it had been, my being here in the first place was still just as random and unfair, and yet neither fear nor fury was in me anymore. What I felt now was mostly sick.
I didn’t want to look at the people I’d killed, but I needed their weapons. My eyes kept squinting and I swallowed bile as I went down on one knee in the open space of the V their bodies made. First one gun, then the other, and I could concentrate now on the tools rather than the human beings.
These were both standard .45 caliber Colt automatics, not precisely like my issue back in the army, but close enough. Ours had been black, these were a foggy brushed chrome. Nor, now that I looked at them, did the word Colt appear anywhere on them; they merely each had a set of numbers and letters stamped into the left side below the safety. Third World ripoffs of the Colt design, probably a little less precise, possibly a much cheaper grade of metal that would stretch and warp from the heat after not much use at all. But enough, I hoped, to get me out of here.
Out of here. The look of them, the smell of them. If I stayed in here much longer, I’d be sick. Worse, I’d lose my strength, my resolve; I’d merely collapse in here until they came to get me.
I put one of the automatics in under my belt, butt to the left for my left hand. The other was in my right hand as I reached out to open the door.
45
The guard outside, like the two I’d just killed, was dressed in worn boots, dark trousers, and a dark cotton workshirt. His complexion was olive, his hair black and curly, and he wore a thick moustache as though it were a badge of rank, or a requirement for the job. His gun was tucked in under his belt, so when he glanced in a bored way at the door when it opened, and then saw me, with the gun in my hand pointing at him, he at first looked startled, then made as though to reach for his own weapon, then realized that was hopeless and froze.
Were there others, out of my sight? I put my left forefinger to my lips, to shush him, then patted the air downward to tell him to look more relaxed, then crooked my finger at him to say he should come join me in the room.
He didn’t want to. He stood there blinking at me, quite naturally afraid of the unknown, so the second time I made the invitation I gestured as well with the automatic, and made myself look very stern, and that had the effect. In he came, walking reluctantly, and he would have put his hands up in the air if I hadn’t repeated that down-patting motion.
I didn’t want him to see the bodies too early, and panic, so the instant he was across the threshold I took his arm and turned him to face the wall just beside the door. Even if he looked to his left now, across the doorway, the open door would block his view. With my own gun in his back I reached around and relieved him of his, then very cautiously leaned my head out through the doorway to look in both directions at what proved to be an empty hall.
All right. I searched my man — I couldn’t bring myself to search the dead ones — and came up with Marlboro cigarettes, you-can-complete-high-school-at-home matches, some change, a four-inch switchblade knife, some sort of stringed prayer beads or worry beads, a plastic card all in Arabic, and a thick wallet. I left everything else, took the knife, and relieved him of his belt, to replace my own.
The Yale-type key was in the lock on the outside of the door. Making the shush gesture again, not speaking, I stepped outside and locked him — them — in.
I was in the downstairs hall now, and as I remembered the house from my occasional visits, the dining room and kitchen were down to the right, with the front door beyond. Living room, library, and perhaps other rooms were the opposite way. The door diagonally across the hall from the safe room was the downstairs powder room, and just beyond it, toward the rear, were the main stairs up to the second floor.
I must have looked just then like a close business associate of Pancho Villa’s. I had an automatic pistol in my hand, no shoes, and two more guns tucked into a black leather belt going one and a half times around my waist. Still, I doubted I’d impress the Barq crowd by my appearance alone, so the thing to do was get out of there. I moved silently — in socks — down the hall, listening, moving with extreme caution.
There was no more twangy music. In fact, there was no sound at all. The house couldn’t possibly be empty, yet that was the way it felt. I checked before crossing the open kitchen and dining room doorways, and both rooms were empty, though well lit. Could it be this easy?
No.
At the front door I saw what my problem was going to be. The exterior lights were on, or at least some of them, not enough to attract a lot of attention from the neighbors, but sufficient to bathe the house itself in illumination. From the front door, looking out through the curtain and the glass, I could see two Barq people, one on the lawn in front and one around to the side on the slate walk between house and garage. Both were seated on folding chairs, facing the house. There would surely be two more of them as well, in the rear and on the other side, so that the whole house was under surveillance, and the fact that they were out there mostly because of Ross and Doreen rather than me didn’t help that much.