“I'll be alert,” Darius promised confidently. He waited until Zeno and Teri, padding the dusty floor in her bare feet, were gone. Then he closed the door and leaned lazily against it, arms folded across his massive chest.
“Personally speaking,” Giordino muttered, for the first time since the ride from the rains, “I prefer the accommodations at the Hotel San Quentin.” His gaze focused on Darius. “At least the roaches weren’t king size.”
Pitt grinned at Giordino’s insulting comment to Darius and scanned the room, taking in every detail of Its construction. It was small, no larger than nine by ten feet. The walls consisted of warped boards nailed crudely to warped support posts that stood facing inward at irregular intervals, in rotted and barren starkness. The room was void of any furniture and windowless; the only available light came through large horizontal cracks in the walls and a jagged hole in the roof.
“If I was to guess,” said Pitt. “I’d say this place was a deserted warehouse.”
“You’re close,” Darius volunteered. “The Germans used this building for an ordnance depot when they occupied the island in forty-two.”
Pitt pulled out a cigarette and casually lit it. To offer Darius a cigarette would have immediately put the brute on his guard. Instead, Pitt took a step backward and began tossing the lighter in the air, each time tossing it a little higher till he noticed Darius following it out of the corner of one eye. Once, twice, four times the lighter sailed into the air. On the fifth toss it fell through Pitt’s fingers and clattered on the floor. He shrugged stupidly and bent down, picking it up.
Pitt charged Darius harder than he had ever charged any halfback, any quarterback, in his Air Force academy days. Lunging forward from a football crouch, his feet dug firmly into the coarse grained wood of the floor, he thrust his head and shoulders like a battering ram, backed with every driving ounce of power his muscular legs and one hundred and ninety pounds could muster. At the instant before impact, he drove upward, catching Darius in the unprotected stomach just above the beltline. It was like running at full speed into a brick wall, and Pitt gasped at the shock: it felt as if his neck was broken.
In football terminology it was called a running block, a vicious, maiming block, and it would have put most unprepared men in a hospital bed: all others it would have left on the ground in momentary stunned helplessness — all others, that is, except Darius. The giant merely grunted, doubled over slightly from the force of the blow, and grabbed Pitt by the biceps, lifting him off the floor.
Pitt went numb. The shock and the pain that erupted from his arms and neck gave way to utter surprise that any man could not only take such a charge and remain standing but shake it off like a love tap.
Darius pushed him against the wall, slowly bending Pitt’s body, like a vertical pretzel, around an upright support post. The pain really began to come now. Pitt clenched his teeth and stared into Darius’s expressionless face, only a few inches away. His spine felt as if it would snap at any second. His vision began to fade.
Darius just stood there, eyes gleaming, and increased the pressure.
Suddenly the pressure stopped and Pitt dimly perceived Darius staring back, his lips working, fighting for breath. Mutely Darius mouthed an agonized groan and sank to his knees, weaving silently from side to side.
Giordino, blocked by Pitt’s frontal assault, was forced to stand by helplessly till Darius swung sideways, pinning Pitt to the wall. Then, without hesitation, he hurled himself across the room, his legs jackknifing open, his feet imbedded in Darius’ kidneys. He braced himself, half expecting the giant’s body to absorb most of the force from the violent blow. It didn’t work out that way. It was if a handball had struck a backstop:
Giordino rebounded off Darius with a tooth loosening jolt and crashed jarringly to the floor, badly stunned. For a moment he lay quite still, then dazedly he began struggling to his hands and knees, shaking his bead back and forth to clear the waves of blackness that threatened to engulf his conscious mind.
It was too late. Darius was the first to recover, triumph etched in every scar of his ugly face. He lunged at Giordino, the great mass of his weight crushing the smaller man beneath him. There was an evil grin on Darius’ face now, a sadistic sign of the violence yet to come. Iron hands clasped together, fingers interlocking, around Giordino’s head and squeezed — squeezed with the unrelenting pressure of a closing vise.
For what seemed like unending seconds Giordino lay inert, fighting off the shooting pain that burst in his skull from the crushing palms. Then he stirred, slowly raised his hands and grabbed Darius around the thumbs and pulled downward. For his size Giordino was strong as an ox, but he was no match for the man who towered above him. Darius, seemingly oblivious to the bone twisting pull, hunched his shoulders and exerted an even greater effort.
Pitt was still on his feet, but just barely. His back was a spreading sea of pain that flowed to every part of his body. Numbly he stared at the murderous scene on the floor. Move you stupid bastard, he screamed to himself, move fast. He clutched the wall with both hands, preparing to launch himself at Darius. Something gave behind him, and he swung around, new hope ablaze in his eyes.
A wall plank had torn loose from the support post and was dangling at a crazy angle, one end still held by rusty nails. Frantically he jerked at it, first one way then the other, until metal fatigue broke the nails and the board, about four feet long and an inch in thickness, tore free from the post. God, if only it wasn’t too late.
Pitt raised the board above his head and, drawing on the last of his ebbing strength, brought it down on the back of Darius’ neck.
Pitt would never again forget the shock of hopelessness and despair that flooded through his mind at that moment as the rotted plank shattered with all the harmless force of a piece of peanut brittle around the giant’s shoulders. Without turning, Darius let loose of Giordino’s temples, giving his victim a brief respite, and struck Pitt with a sweeping backhand blow that caught him in the stomach and sent him reeling across the room to fall limply against the doorway and melt slowly down to the floor.
Somehow, clutching the door knob, Pitt pulled himself to his feet and stood there swaying drunkenly, conscious of nothing, not even the pain, the blood that began to seep through the bandages onto his shirt, and Giordino’s face, now turning blue under the tremendous hands. One more try, he told himself, knowing it would be his last. Pitt’s mind slowed down. The forgotten words of a marine drill sergeant, he once met in a Honolulu. bar, returned and pounded into his brain. “The biggest, toughest, meanest sonovabitch in the world will always go down, and go down fast, from a good swift kick in the balls.”
Weakly, he staggered behind the crouching Darius, who was too intent on killing Giordino to notice him.
Pitt aimed and kicked Darius between the legs. His toe collided with bone and something that was rubbery and soft. Darius released Giordini's head and threw his monstrous hands upward, fingers clawing at the air. Then he rolled over on his side, twisting about the floor in silent agony.
“Welcome to the land of the walking dead,” Pitt said, lifting Giordino to a sitting position.
“Did we win?” Giordino asked in a whisper.
“Just barely. How’s your head?”
“I won’t know till I look for it.”
“Don’t worry,” Pitt grinned. “It’s still attached to your neck.”
Giordino gently probed his hairline between his fingers. “Christ, my skull feels like it has more cracks than a broken windshield.”
Pitt cast a wary look at Darius. The giant, ashen faced and breathing heavily, ‘was stretched out full length on the dusty floor, both hands clutched over his crotch.
“The party’s over,” Pitt said, helping Giordino to his feet. “Let’s disappear before Frankenstein recovers.”