“I wasn’t sleeping,” the man protested. “I was thinking.”
“Well, don’t think so loudly,” Ruffy advised him. “Sounds though you sawing through the bridge with a cross cut.” Another half hour dragged itself by like a cripple.
“Fires are burning well,” commented Ruffy, and Bruce turned his head and glanced through the loophole in the corrugated iron behind him at the little garden of orange flame-flowers in the darkness.
“Yes, they should last till morning.” Silence again, with only the singing of the mosquitoes and the rustle of the river as it flowed by the piles of the bridge. Shermaine has my pistol, Bruce remembered with a small trip in his pulse, I should have taken it back from her.
He unclipped the bayonet from the muzzle of his rifle, tested the edge of the blade with his thumb, and slid it into the scabbard on his
web-belt. Could easily lose the rifle if we start mixing it in the dark, he decided.
“Christ, I’m hungry,” grunted Ruffy beside him.
“You’re too fat,” said Bruce. “The diet will do you good.” And they waited.
Bruce stared down into the hole in the floorboards. His eyes began weaving fantasies out of the darkness, he could see vague shapes that moved, like things seen below the sud ce of the sea. His stomach tightened and he fought the impulse to shine his flashlight into the hole. He closed his eyes to rest them. I will count slowly to ten, he decided, and then look again.
Ruffy’s hand closed on his upper arm; the pressure of his fingers transmitted alarm like a current of electricity. Bruce’s eyelids flew open.
Listen,” breathed Ruffy.
Bruce heard it. The stealthy drip of water on water below them.
Then something bumped the bridge, but so softly that he felt rather than heard the jar.
“Yes,” Bruce whispered back. He reached out and tapped the shoulder of the gendarme beside him and the man’s body stiffened at his
touch.
With his breath scratching his dry throat, Bruce waited until he was sure the warning had been passed to all his men. Then he shifted the weight of his rifle from across his knees and aimed down into the hole.
He drew in a deep breath and switched on the flashlight.
The beam shot down and he looked along it over his rifle barrel.
The square aperture in the floorboards formed a frame for the picture that flashed into his eyes. Black bodies, naked, glossy with wetness, weird patterns of tattoo marks, a face staring up at him, broad sloped forehead above startlingly white eyes and flat nose. The
long gleaming blade of a panga. Clusters of humanity clinging to the wooden piles like ticks on the legs of a beast. Legs and arms and shiny trunks merged into a single organism, horrible as some slimy sea-creature.
Bruce fired into it. His rifle shuddered against his shoulder and the long orange spurts from its muzzle gave the picture a new flickering horror. The mass of bodies heaved, and struggled like a pack of rats trapped in a dry well. They dropped splashing into the river, swarmed up the timber piles, twisting and writhing as the bullets hit them, screaming, babbling over the sound of the rifle.
Bruce’s weapon clicked empty and he groped for a new magazine.
Ruffy and his gendarmes were hanging over the guard rails of the bridge, firing downwards, sweeping the piles below them with long bursts, the flashes lighting their faces and outlining their bodies against the sky.
“They’re still coming!” roared Ruffy. “Don’t let them get over the side.” Out of the hole at Bruce’s feet thrust the head and naked upper body of a man. There was a panga in his hand; he slashed at
Bruce’s legs, his eyes glazed in the beam of the flashlight.
Bruce jumped back and the knife missed his knees by inches. The man wormed his way out of the hole towards Bruce. He was screaming
shrilly, a high meaningless sound. Bruce lunged with the barrel
of his empty rifle at the contorted black face. All his weight was behind that thrust and the muzzle went into the Baluba’s eye. “The foresight and four inches of the barrel disappeared into his head, stopping only when it hit bone. Colourless fluid from the burst eyeball gushed from round the protruding steel.
Tugging and twisting, Bruce tried to free the rifle, but the foresight had buried itself like the barb of a fish hook.
The Baluba had dropped his panga and was clinging to the rifle barrel with both hands. He was wailing and rolling on his back upon the floorboards, his head jerking every time Bruce tried to pull the muzzle out of his head.
Beyond him the head and shoulders of another Baluba appeared through the aperture.
Bruce dropped his rifle and gathered up the fallen panga; he jumped over the writhing body of the first Baluba and lifted the heavy knife above his head with both hands.
The man was jammed in the hole, powerless to protect himself. He
looked up at Bruce and his mouth fell open.
Two-handed, as though he were chopping wood, Bruce swung his whole body into the stroke. The shock jarred his shoulders and he felt blood
splatter his legs. The untempered blade snapped off at the hilt and stayed imbedded in the Baluba’s skull.
Panting heavily, Bruce straightened up and looked wildly about him. Baluba were swarming over the guard rail on one side of the bridge. The starlight glinted on their wet skins. One of his gendarmes was lying in a dark huddle, his head twisted back and his rifle still in his hands. Ruffy and the other gendarmes were still firing down over the far side.
“Ruffy!” shouted Bruce. “Behind you! They’re coming over!” and he dropped the handle of the panga and ran towards the body of the gendarme. He needed that rifle.
Before he could reach it the naked body of a Baluba rushed at him.
Bruce ducked under the sweep of the panga and grappled with him. They fell locked together, the man’s body slippery and sinuous against him, and the smell of him fetid as rancid butter.
Bruce found the pressure point below the elbow of his knife arm and dug in with his thumb. The Baluba yelled and his panga clattered on the floorboards. Bruce wrapped his arm round the man’s neck while with his free hand he reached for his bayonet.
The Baluba was clawing for Bruce’s eyes with his fingers, his nails scored the side of Bruce’s nose, but Bruce had his bayonet out now. He placed the point against the man’s chest and pressed it in.
He felt the steel scrape against the bone of a rib and the man redoubled his struggles at the sting of it. Bruce twisted the blade, working it in with his wrist, forcing the man’s head backwards with his
other arm.
The point of the bayonet scraped over the bone and found the gap between. Like taking a virgin, suddenly the resistance to its entrance was gone and it slid home full length. The Baluba’s body jerked mechanically and the bayonet twitched in Bruce’s fist.
Bruce did not even wait for the man to die. He pulled the blade out against the sucking reluctance of tissue that clung to it and scrambled to his feet in time to see Ruffy pick another Baluba from his feet and hurl him bodily over the guard rail.
Bruce snatched the rifle from the gendarme’s dead hands and stepped to the guard rail. They were coming over the side, those below shouting and pushing at the ones above.
Like shooting a row of sparrows from a fence with a shotgun, thought Bruce grimly, and with one long burst he cleared the rail.
Then he leaned out and sprayed the piles below the bridge. The rifle was empty. He reloaded with a magazine from his pocket. But it was all over. They were dropping back into the river, the piles below the bridge were clear of men, their heads bobbed away downstream.
Bruce lowered his rifle and looked about him. Three of his gendarmes were killing the man that Bruce had wounded, standing over him and grunting as they thrust down with their bayonets. The man was still wailing.