the racking misbeats of his heart and listen.
'Lie down,' Trautman told him. 'Or I'll have to make you.'
'Leave me alone! Listen!'
'This is National Guard leader thirty-five. I don't figure this. There must be so many of us that the dogs have lost their sense of smell. They want us to go up into the hills instead of toward the road.'
'No, they haven't lost their sense of smell,' Teasle said, clutching himself, voice strung out with pain, to Kern. 'But we've lost a hell of a lot of distance on him while you tried to make up your mind. Do you think now you can bring yourself to give that order?'

9
As Rambo started up the slope of shale toward the mine, a bullet whacked into the rocks a few yards to his left, the rifle report echoing through the forest back there. Staring at the mine entrance, he hurried stumbling up the slope into the tunnel, shielding his face from chips of stone that two more bullets blasted off the right side of the opening. Far down the tunnel, out of reach of more bullets, he stopped exhausted, slumping against a wall, gasping. He had not been able to maintain his distance from them. His ribs. Now the Guardsmen were barely a half mile behind him, coming fast, so taken up in the hunt that they were shooting before they had a clear target. Weekend soldiers. Trained for this but not experienced, so they did not have the discipline and in the excitement might do anything. Rush in stupidly. Spray bullets down the shaft. He was right to have come here. If he had tried giving up at the stream, they would have been too quick, would have shot him. He needed a buffer between himself and them so they would not shoot before he explained.
He returned up the dark tunnel toward the light at the mouth, studying the roof. When he found where it was dangerously cracked, he pushed away the support beams, lurching back before the ceiling could cave in on him. He was not worried by the risk. If the collapse was so great that it buried the entrance and blocked off his air, he knew that they would dig him out before he died. But when he pushed away the beams, nothing happened, and he had to try the next beams ten feet farther down, and this time when he pushed, the roof did collapse, barely missing him with a crash and rumble of falling rock that made his ears ring. The passage was filled with dust and he was choking, standing back coughing, waiting for the dust to settle so he could see how much rock had fallen. A faint beam of light was radiating through the dust, and then the dust was clouding to the floor, and there was a foot of space between the barrier of rocks and the nearly demolished roof. More rocks dislodged, and the space dwindled to six inches. The reduced breeze that was coming through wafted some of the dust down the tunnel. It became colder. He slid down the wall to the damp floor, listening to the roof crack and settle, and very soon he heard the dim voices out there.
'Do you think it killed him?'
'How would you like to crawl in and find out?'
'Me?'
Some of them laughed then, and Rambo smiled.
'A cave or a mine,' another man said. His voice was loud and deliberate, and Rambo guessed that he was talking into a field radio. 'We saw him run inside, and then the place dumped in on him. You should have seen the dust. We have him for sure. Wait a minute, hold it a second.' And then as if to someone outside, 'Get your dumb ass away from the entrance. If he's still alive, he might be able to see to shoot at you.'
Rambo inched up the rockfall, his knees pressing hard on the blunt tips of stone, to peer through the space at the top. There were the sides of the entrance which framed the shale slope and the bare trees and the sky outside, and then a soldier ran into view from the left to the right, his canteen thumping on and off his hip as he ran.
'Hey, didn't you just hear me say to keep clear of the entrance?' the one man said, out-of-view on the right.
'Over there I can't hear what you're saying on the radio.'
'Well Christ.'
He might as well get this finished. 'I want Teasle,' he called through the small opening. 'I want to give myself up.'
'What?'
'Did you guys hear that?'
'Bring Teasle. I want to give myself up.' His words rumbled in the tunnel. He listened carefully to the ceiling in case it might crack and drop onto him.
'In there. It's him.'
'Hold on, he's alive in there,' the man said into the radio. 'He's talking to us.' There was a pause and then the man spoke much closer to the entrance, though still out of sight. 'What do you want in there?'
'I'm tired of saying it. I want Teasle out here and I want to give myself up.'
They were whispering now, then the man was talking into the radio, repeating the message, and Rambo wished they would hurry and get this over. He had not believed that surrendering would make him feel this empty. Now that the fight was over, he was positive that he had exaggerated his fatigue and the pain in his ribs. Surely he could have gone on longer. He had in the war. Then he shifted position and his ribs bit and he had not exaggerated.
'Hey, in there,' the man called, out-of-sight. 'Can you hear me? Teasle says he can't come up.'
'Dammit, this is what he's been waiting for, isn't it? You tell him to get the hell up here.'
'I don't know anything about it. All they said was he can't come.'
'You just told me it was Teasle. Now it's they. Have you been talking with Teasle or haven't you? I want him up here. I want his guarantee that nobody shoots me by mistake.'
'Don't you worry. If one of us shoots you, it won't be by mistake. You come out of there careful and we won't have any mistakes.'
He thought about it. 'All right, but I need help pushing away these rocks. I can't do that all by myself.'
He heard them whispering again, and then the man said, 'Your rifle and knife. Throw them out.'
'I'll even throw out my handgun. I have a revolver that you don't know about. Now I'm being honest with you. I'm not stupid enough to try fighting my way past all of you, so tell your men to keep their hands free of their triggers.'
'When I hear you throw that stuff out.'
'Coming.'
He hated to shove them through. He hated the feeling of helplessness he would have without them. Peering through the space at the top of the rockfall, looking at the bare forest and sky out there, he liked the cool breeze on his face as it came in and down the tunnel.
'I don't hear that stuff yet,' the man said out of view. 'We have tear gas.'
So. And that sonofabitch wouldn't bother himself to come up.
He was pushing the rifle through. He was just ready to let go of it when he understood. The breeze. The breeze down the tunnel. This strong it had to be going somewhere. It was blowing down to the fissure at the end, and from there it was being sucked away, sucked out another passage in the hill. Another way out, that was the only explanation. Otherwise the breeze couldn't move and circulate. Adrenalin scalded into his stomach. He had not lost yet.
'Where's the guns, I said,' the man outside told him.
Up your ass, Rambo thought. He slipped the rifle back in and heart pounding excitedly, he hurried down the darkness of the tunnel. The coals of his fire were dead, and shortly he had to grope to find where he had camped. He grabbed the fir boughs and the unburned sticks of wood and carried them down the remainder of the tunnel until, head stooped against the low ceiling, he heard the water dripping and bumped into the final wall. A new fire to guide him as far as it could. Smoke from the fir boughs to help him spot the direction of the breeze after that. Christ, maybe.

10
The pain came again, and Teasle bent forward on the bench, squinting at a dark oil stain in the wood floor. He knew he could not keep going much longer. He needed sleep. Oh how he needed it. Something from a doctor. There was no telling how much he had strained and damaged himself. Thank God this was almost over.
A little while, he told himself. That's all. Just hold on a little while more and he'll be caught.
He waited until Trautman and Kern were looking somewhere else and then fumbled to swallow two more pills.
'That box of them was full last night,' Trautman said and surprised him. 'You shouldn't be taking so many.'
'No. I upset it and lost some.'
'When was that? I didn't see.'
'When you were asleep. Before dawn.'
'You couldn't have lost that many. You shouldn't be taking them so much. Not with all the coffee.'
'I'm fine. It's a cramp.'
'Will you go to a doctor?'
'No. Not yet.'
'Then I'm calling a doctor out here.'
'Not until he's caught.'
Now Kern was walking over. Why wouldn't they leave him be? 'But he is caught,' Kern said.
'No. He's just cornered. It's not the same.'
'He might as well be caught. It's a question of time is all. What's so damn important about sitting there in needless pain until they actually put their hands on him?'
'I can't say it right. You wouldn't understand.'
'Then call a doctor,' Trautman told the radioman. 'Get a car to take him back to town.'
'I won't go, I said. I promised.'
'Who? What do you mean?'
'I promised I'd see this to the last.'
'Who?'
'Them.'
'You mean your posse? This man Orval and the rest who died?'
He didn't want to talk about it. 'Yes.'
Trautman looked at Kern and shook his head.
'I told you that you wouldn't understand,' Teasle said.
He turned to the open back of the truck, and the sun coming in was sharp on his eyes. Then he was afraid and it was dark and he was flat on his back on the floor. He remembered the boards rumbling when he hit.
'I'm warning you, don't call a doctor,' he said slowly, unable to move. 'I'm just down here resting.'

11
The blaze lit the fissure, smoke wafting down it from the breeze. For a moment Rambo hesitated, then slid his rifle between his belt and his pants, handled a torch and squeezed between the two walls, the strip of rock under his shoes wet and slippery, tilting down. He pressed his back against one wall so that his ribs would not scrape much against the other wall, and the farther in and down he went, the lower the top of the fissure came, and then the orange reflection of his torch glistening on the wet rock showed him where the roof and the walls tapered into a hole directly down. He held his torch over the hole, but the flames radiated only part of the way, and all he could see was a widening funnel down in the rock. He took out a rifle cartridge and dropped it, counting to three before it struck bottom, the echo of a faint metallic ring. Three seconds wasn't deep, so he eased one leg into the hole and then the other leg and slowly squirmed himself down. When he was in as far as his chest, his ribs wedged and he could not go down more without great pain. He stared at the fire up at the entrance to the fissure, smoke enshrouding it, irritating his nostrils, and there were noises off in the mine. Another rockfall, he thought. No. Voices, shouts that merged and rumbled down to him. Already they were coming. He drew in his chest, sweating, forcing his ribs into the hole, closed his eyes, pushed, and then he was through.
The spasm in his chest nearly made him drop. He could not let himself. He had no idea what was below him. His head still above the hole, he persisted in supporting himself by his arms and elbows on the rim while he shifted his feet down there to find a ledge or a crack. The funnel was slippery and smooth, and he let himself down a little more, but still there was no place to rest his feet. The weight of his body stretched his chest, ribs cutting. He heard the men shouting indistinctly in the mine, and eyes watering from the smoke of his fire, he was about to release his grip and drop the rest of the way anyhow, hoping there were no rocks down there to break him, when his feet touched something slender and round that felt like wood.
The upper rung of a ladder. From the mine, he thought. It must be. The guy who worked the mine must have explored here. He lowered himself gingerly onto the rung. It bent but held; he stepped gently onto the second rung, it split and he snapped through two more rungs before he stopped. The sound of his fall drummed through the chamber, startling him. When it faded, he listened for the shouts of the men but he could not hear them now, his head below the rim of the hole. Then as he relaxed, the rung that held him bent, and fearing that he would crash through to the bottom, he quickly waved his torch to see what was below. Four other rungs and then a rounded floor. When it rains, he thought, water from outside must drain down here. That's why the smooth worn rock.
He touched bottom, trembling. Looked. Followed the one exit, a wider fissure that sloped down as well. An old pick was leaning against one wall, its iron rusty, its wood dirty and warped from the damp. In the flickering torchlight, the handle of the pick cast a shadow onto the wall. He could not understand why the miner had left tools here but not in the upper tunnel. He came around a curve, water plunking somewhere, and found him. What was left of him. In the shimmer of the orange light, the skeleton was as repulsive as the first mutilated soldier he had ever seen. His mouth tasted of copper coins as he stood away from the skeleton for a moment and then took a few steps toward it. The bones were tinted orange by his light, but he was certain that their real color was gray like the silt that had gathered around them, and they were perfectly arranged. Not a bone was out of place or broken. No sign at all of why he had died. It was as if he had lain down to sleep and never wakened. Perhaps a heart attack.
Or poison gas. Rambo sniffed apprehensively, but he smelled nothing except dank water. His head was not off balance or his stomach queasy or any of the other symptoms of gas poisoning.
So what in hell could have killed this man?
He shivered again and hated the sight of this perfect set of bones and hurriedly stepped over them, eager to get away. He went farther down, and the fissure became two. Which direction? The smoke had been a bad idea. By now it had dispersed so he could not see which way it was drifting, and it had dulled his sense of smell so he could not even detect its path with that. His torch was burning low in the damp air, flickering sporadically in no particular direction. What was left to him was a kid's game, moistening his finger in his mouth, holding it at one opening, then the other. He felt the breeze slightly cool on the wet of his finger going to the right, and uncertainly he followed down, sometimes forced to squeeze through, occasionally stooping. His torch was burning lower in the damp air all the time. He came to another set of openings and wished that he had rope or string to lay out behind him so that if he became lost he would he able to find his direction back.
Sure, and wouldn't you like a flashlight too? And a compass? Why don't you go on over to the hardware store and buy them?
Why don't you forget the jokes?
The breeze seemed to the right again, and as he moved along, the passage grew more complicated. More twists and turns. More offshoots. Soon he could not remember how he had come to where he was. The skeleton seemed a long confusing distance behind him. It was strangely funny to him that the moment he considered turning around and retracing his steps, he realized he was lost and could not do that. He did not actually want to return yet, he was just considering it, but all the same he would have preferred the option of being able to go back if the breeze suddenly ended. It was extremely faint even so, and he wondered if he had missed some crack in the rock where it seeped out of the hill. God, he could wander here until he died, end up like those bones.
The murmur saved him from panic, and he thought it was them coming, but how could they find him in this maze, and then he recognized the distant sound of water rushing. Before he knew, he had increased speed toward it, at last a perceptible goal in mind, shouldering against walls, staring into the darkness beyond his light.
Then the sound was gone and he was alone again. He slowed and stopped, leaning against a wall, hopeless. There had been no sound of rushing water. He had imagined it.
But it had seemed so real. He could not believe that his imagination could trick him so completely.
Then what had happened to the sound? If it was so real, where was it?
A hidden turn, he realized. In his haste to reach the sound, he had failed to check for other entrances in the rock. Go back. Look. And as he did, he heard it once more, and found the opening, on the blind side of a curve, and slipped into it, the sound louder as he went.
It was deafening now. The flames of his torch diminishing to go out, he arrived where the fissure came onto a ledge - and below him, far down, a stream was swirling through a hole in the rock, roaring down into a channel and away under a shelf. Here. This had to be where the breeze was going.
But it wasn't. The water foamed up over the shelf and there was no space for air to be sucked through. But still he felt the breeze strong here; there had to be another exit close by. His torch hissed, and he glanced around frantic to memorize the shape of the ledge, and then he was in darkness, a darkness that was more complete and solid than any he had ever stood in, made overpowering by the cascade of water below into which he might easily fall if he did not grope his way with care. He tensed, waiting to get used to the dark. He never did get used to it. He began to lose his balance, swaying, and at last he went down on his hands and knees, crawling toward a low passage at the end of the ledge that he had seen just before his light sputtered out. To go through the hole he had to slip flat on his belly. The rock there was jagged. It tore his clothes and scraped his skin and twisted his ribs until he repeatedly groaned.
Then he screamed as well. From something more than his ribs. Because as he came blind through the hole into a chamber where he had room to lift his head, he reached out his hand to claw himself forward, and fingered mush. A drop of wet muck plopped onto his neck, and something bit his thumb, and something tiny darted up his arm. He was lying in thick scum that was soaking through his two ripped shirts streaking his belly. He heard squeaking above him, and the cardboard ruffle of wings, and Jesus Christ, it was bats, he was lying in their shit, and what were by now a half-dozen tickly things scurrying over his hands, nibbling, they were beetles, the scavengers that feasted off bat dung and sick bats fallen to the floor. They could strip a carcass clean, and they were piercing the flesh of his arms, as he wriggled insanely backward through the hole, Jesus Christ, swatting them off his hands and arms, bumping his head, wrenching his side. Jesus, rabies, a third of any bat colony was rabid. If they woke and sensed him they might attack and cover him biting while he screamed. Stop it, he told himself. You'll bring them to you. Stop screaming. Already wings were flapping. Christ, he couldn't help it, screaming, wriggling back, and then he was out on the ledge, sweeping his hands and arms, rubbing, making sure and double-sure they all were off, still feeling their many-legged tickles on his skin. They might follow, he suddenly thought, scurrying back from the low entrance to the hole, disoriented in the dark, one leg toppling off the ledge, dangling. The fright of his near fall jolted him. He lurched in the opposite direction and bumped against a wall of rock and shook, hysterically wiping the mushy dung off his hands onto the rock, pawing at the slime on his shirt to get the stuff off. His shirt. Something was in there scratching on his skin. He shoved in a hand, grabbing it, snapping its brittle back so he felt its soft wet insides on his fingers as he threw it violently toward the sound of the cascade.
Bats. A pest hole. Disease. The putrid smell of the dung stinging his nose and throat. That's how the guy who worked the mine had died. Rabies. He had been bitten unknowingly, and days later the disease came driving him out of his mind; he wandered crazily through the forest, into the tunnel, out of the tunnel, in once more and down into the fissure, in and around until he crumpled and died. The poor bastard, he must have thought it was the loneliness that was getting to him. At the start anyhow. And when he became delirious, he was too far gone to help himself. Or maybe toward the end he knew he couldn't be helped and went down into the fissure where he could die without being a danger to anyone.
Maybe nothing. What in hell do you know about it? If he had rabies, then he would have hated water, even the smell of it, the idea of it, so he would never have gone down into the dampness of the fissure. You're just imagining that it'll be you who dies that way. If they don't eat you first.
What are you talking about? The bats can't eat you. Not the kind around here.
No, but the beetles.
He was still shaking, struggling to calm himself. The breeze had been strong in the chamber. But he could not go that way. And he did not know how to return to the upper tunnel. He had to face it. This was it. He was stuck.
Except that he could not let himself believe that he was stuck. He had to fight panic and pretend there was a way out; he had to sit against the wall of rock and try to relax and maybe if he thought long enough he might actually discover an escape. But there was only one escape and he knew it: toward the breeze into the bats' den. He licked his lips and took a sip of iron-pipe tasting water from his canteen. You know you have to go in there with the bats don't you, he told himself. It's either that or sit here and starve and get sick from the damp and die.
Or kill yourself. You were trained to do that too. If things became too much.
But you know you won't. Even if you're passing out and you're positive you're going to die, there's always the chance they'll search these fissures until they stumble into here and find you unconscious.
But they won't. You know you have to follow the breeze into there with the bats. Don't you. You know that.

12
Then go on, get started, get it over with, he told himself.
But instead he sat in the dark on the ledge, listening to the roar of the water below him. He knew what the sound was doing to him, its monotonous rush dulling his ears, little by little pressing him to sleep. He shook his head to keep awake and decided to go in with the bats while he still had the energy, but he could not move; the water rushed on, dinning; and when he woke, he was by the side of the ledge again, one arm dangling. But he was groggy from the sleep, and this time the danger of falling off did not disturb him as much. He was too tired to care. It was so luxurious resting stretched out, arm over the edge emptily. Lulled by the sleep, his body had no sensation, his ribs did not even bother him anymore, numb.
You'll die here, he thought. If you don't soon move, the darkness and the noise will leave you too weak and stupid for anything.
I can't move. I've come too far. I need to rest.
You went farther longer in the war.
Yes. And that's what finished me for this.
All right, then die.
I don't want to die. I just don't have the strength.
'God damn it, go on,' he said out loud, and in the water's roar, his words were flat and echoless. 'Do it quick. Just get in there quick and charge right through where they are and the worst will be done.'
'Goddamn right,' he said, waited, then repeated himself. But if there's anything worse beyond this, I won't be able to stand it, he thought.
No. This is the worst. There can't be anything beyond this.
I believe it.
Slowly, reluctantly, he crawled in the black toward the entrance to the chamber. He paused, gathered strength, and squeezed his body in. Pretend it's tapioca pudding that you'll touch, he told himself, mustering a smile at the joke. But when his hand reached out and grasped the muck, grasped something scabby in the muck, the hand shot back reflexively. He breathed in the sulfurous stench of dung and decay. The gas would be poisonous; once he was fully in, he would have to hurry. Well, here's batshit in your eye, he told himself, pretending another joke, hung back a moment, then charged into the slime, scrambling to his feet. Already he was dizzy and nauseous from the gas. The muck rose up to his knees, and things rattled against his pantlegs as he wallowed through. The breeze went straight ahead.
No. He was wrong again. The breeze came from straight ahead. This was a different air current. The one he had been following must have blown out a different way.
He was wrong about something else too. No matter how much he wanted to hurry, he remembered that he should not. There might be drops in the floor. He had to test each part of the floor ahead of him with his feet, and with each shuffle forward, he expected not to touch more muck and crud, but open space.
The sound in the chamber was changed: before there had been squeaks and the ruffle of wings, but now he heard nothing except the liquid slush of his legs through the deep mire and the dim cascade of water droning on the other side of the entrance. The bats must have gone. He must have slept longer than he knew, until it was night and the bats had gone to hunt and feed. He slogged forward toward the breeze, sick from the stench, but at least they were gone and he relaxed a little. A drop of rotten goo pelted his nose.
He whipped it off and the hair on his neck prickled as the cavern exploded in a thousand bursts of wind and wings. From being on the ledge so long, the roar of water must have partially deafened him. The bats were here all the time, squeaking and settling as before; but his ears had been too dulled to hear them, and now the bats were everywhere, swishing past him, his hands covering his head while he shrieked.
They bumped against him, leathery wings flapping on his face, their high-pitched screeches at his ears. He hit them away, flailed his arms in the air, then covered his head, then flailed again. He wallowed forward, desperate to get out, stumbled, slid to his knees, cold slime up to his hips now, soaking onto his genitals. The bats came and came, an endless swarm of them, tumbling, churning. He reeled to his feet, hands up swatting sightless. The air was infested with them. He could not breathe. He hit out, crouched, shielding himself. They were swirling at him from the right, tapping him, flipping through his hair. He turned his back, crouched lower, his skin creeping. 'Jesus! Jesus!' He shifted to the left, slipped again and fell cheek-bone cracking against a wall. His mind was white inside from the pain of striking, and he barely had the will to straighten, swayed, clutched his swollen cheek as the bats continued swarming at him, past him, forcing him along the wall. Desperate, beaten, and half-senseless, he felt something inside expand and strain and at last rupture, nothing to do with his body, just the center of whatever it was that had kept him going this far, but it was everything. He ceased his fight with them, gave himself up to them, let them push him along, staggered with them, arms slowly sinking to his side, and in that wonderful release from fear and desperation, utterly hopeless and passive, never before so free from caring what happened to him, he came to understand what they were about. They were not attacking him. They were flying to get out. He could not control his laughter, trembling with relief. It had to be night outside. They had sensed it, the leader had given his signal, and as one, they had flushed off the cave roof toward the exit while he was in here with them, terrified that they were coming after him. You wanted a string so you could find your way? he told himself. You blind stupid asshole, you've got it. You've been fighting them, and here every second they've been showing you the way.
He climbed sharp ridges with them, felt for drops, pawed before him. Soon their squeaks and brush of wings became expected and familiar as if he and they had been meant to live in company, until they outdistanced him, a few stragglers fluttering past, and then he was alone, the only sounds the echoing scrabble of his hands and shoes on rock. The sweet cool breeze was blowing strongly on his face, and leaning his face toward it, thinking of how the bats had helped him to this direction out, he began to feel a strange affection for them, missing them now that they were gone, as if a bond had been broken between himself and them. He enjoyed breathing, clearing his nostrils and throat and lungs, erasing the taste of dung in his mouth. The touch of his hands on the rough rock was a clear unfiltered sensation, for the first time consciously real, and his heart beat fast when he climbed and touched dirt, fingering it, wonderfully pebbled and gritty. He was not outside yet. This was silt that rain had washed into a crack in the hill, but he was close he sensed, and he climbed steadily upward, in no hurry, loving the grainy feel of the silt, crawling up a beautiful hillside of it. When he sprawled at the top, he smelled the outside, savoring it: crisp leaves, wind through long grass, woodsmoke in the air. Just a few more feet. He reached carefully forward, his hand stopped by a barrier of rock. He fingered around, and the barrier was on all three sides before him. A basin. How high? It might rise up forever, him so close to being free outside yet trapped. As much as he was easy and content within himself, he did not think he had the corresponding strength to climb high.
Then forget about the climb, he told himself. Don't worry about it. Either you'll make it or you won't. Nothing you can do if the basin is high. Forget about it.
All right, he thought, stayed seated in the comfortable soft dirt and rested, accustoming himself to the change in him. He had never been so aware of things before, so with them. It was true that in the past in moments of action he had felt a little like this. He would be performing each gesture smoothly and properly -running, pivoting to aim, a gentle squeeze on the trigger, the recoil filling his body solidly, his life depending on his grace - and he would be absorbed in himself, his mind gone, just his body there in that instant, totally in tune with its operation. The native allies in the war had called it the way of Zen, the journey to arrive at the pure and frozen moment, achieved only after long arduous training and concentration and determination to be perfect. A part of movement when movement itself ceased. Their words had no exact English translation, and they said that even if there were, the moment could not be explained. The emotion was timeless, could not be described in time, could be compared to orgasm but not so defined because it had no physical center, was bodily everywhere.
But this, what he felt now, was different. There was no movement involved, and the emotion was not isolated in one eternal second. It was every second; sitting there in the soft dirt, back conforming restfully with the rock, he sorted through words in his mind and finally decided on 'good.' He had never felt so good.
He wondered if he had gone crazy. The fumes must have affected him more than he knew and this was just quiet giddiness. Or maybe, having given himself up for dead, he was just overwhelmingly glad to be alive. Having gone through that hell, maybe he had to find everything else full of pleasure.
But you won't feel it much more if you let them come across you here, he told himself, and he stood in the dark, testing the emptiness above him so as not to bump his head against a shelf. Even then, he spiked his head, jerked down, and realized that what he had struck was the end of a branch. It was a bush up there, and when he put out his hands, he touched the rim of the basin, waist high. Out. He had been out all this while, the night sky clouded, fooling him that he was yet underground.
Careful of his ribs, he drew himself up under the bush and gulped air, tasting its freshness, smelling the woody bark of the bush. Down from him, quite a distance, there was a small fire in the trees. After the total darkness of the caves, the fire was bright and rich and alive.
He tensed. Someone had spoken muffled down near the fire. Someone else moved in the rocks nearby, and there was a vivid scratching sound that he saw now was a match being struck on its folder's abrasive paper. Then the flare of the match went out and he saw the gentle glow of a cigarette.
So they were out here waiting for him. Teasle had guessed why he went down into the fissures and caves. Teasle had deployed men around the hill in case he found an exit. Well, they could not see much in the dark, and after being underground, he was at home in the dark, and as soon as he had rested more, he would slip down past them. It would be easy now. They would be thinking he was still in the caves, and he would be miles off on his road. No one had better get in his way. Christ, no. He would do anything. What he had come to feel, he would do anything to anyone to keep.

13
It was dark again, and Teasle did not understand how he had come to be in the murk of the forest. Trautman, Kern, the truck. Where were they all? What had happened to the day? Why was he stumbling so urgently through the solid shadows of the trees?
He leaned breathless against the black trunk of a tree, the pain in his chest rousing from its numbness. He was so disoriented that he was afraid. Not directionless. He knew he had to keep moving straight ahead, he had to go, somewhere ahead, but he did not understand why, how.
Trautman. He remembered this Trautman had wanted to take him to a doctor. He remembered lying on his back on the wood floor of the truck. He grasped for an explanation of how he had come from there to here. Had he struggled with Trautman not to go to the doctor? Maybe he had broken loose, had grappled from the truck across the field into the woods. Anything not to give up his vigil before it was time. To get closer to the kid. Help catch him.
But that was not right. He knew it was not right. In his condition he could not have fought off Trautman. He could not think. He had to hurry forward in spite of his chest and the terrible sense that someone was after him, or would soon be after him. The kid. Was it the kid who was after him?
The cloud cover melted, the quarter-moon shone through, lighting the trees, and all around him were the hulks of relic cars, piled atop each other, stacked against the trees, hundreds of them, broken, amputated and decayed. It was like a graveyard, grotesque, moonlight on the oval outlines, reflecting.
And soundless. Even when he moved, through leaves and crumpled fenders and broken glass, he made no noise. He was gliding. And somehow he knew it was not the kid who was after him, but someone else. But why was he afraid at the sight of the road through the ghostly carcasses? Why was he afraid of the row of Guardsmen trucks parked along the road? Christ, what was happening to him? Had he lost his mind?
No people there. Nobody near the trucks. Fear draining. A police car empty, the last in the line, nearest town. Ecstatic now, creeping from the derelicts, doorless, seats ripped, hoods raised, into the field, silent, close to the earth, toward the car.
A sudden noise disturbed him, fracturing glass that split finely in his eardrums, and he blinked. He was on his back once more. Had somebody shot him in the field? He felt his body for the wound, felt a blanket, no earth beneath him. Soft cushions. A coffin. He started, in a panic, understood. A couch. But Christ where? What was going on? He fumbled for a light, knocked a lamp, and switching it, blinked, discovering his office. But what about the forest, the wrecks of cars, the road? Christ, they had been real, he knew. He looked at his watch, but it was gone, glanced at the clock on his desk, quarter to twelve. Dark outside through the Venetian blinds. The twelve must be midnight, but the last he remembered was noon. What about the kid? What's happened?
He faltered to sit up, clutching his head to keep it from throbbing apart, but something had raised the floor of his office, tilting it high away from him. He cursed, but no words came from his mouth. He wavered uphill to the door, grabbed the knob with both hands and swung it, but the door was stuck, and he had to tug with all his might, the door jolting open, almost reeling him downhill to the couch. He threw out his arms, steadying himself like a tightrope walker, his bare feet off the soft rug of his office onto the cold tile of the corridor. It was in gloom, but the front office was lit; halfway there he had to put a hand against a wall.
'Awake, Chief?' a voice said down the corridor. 'You O.K.?'
It was too complicated to answer. He was still catching up to himself. On his back on the bright floor of the truck, blearing up at the greasy tarpaulin that was the roof. The voice from the radio: 'My God, he isn't answering. He's run deep into the mine.' The fight with Trautman to keep from being carried to the cruiser. But what about the forest, the dark-
'I said are you O.K., Chief?' the voice said louder, footsteps coming down the hall. There was an echo enveloping.
'The kid,' he managed to say. The kid's in the forest.'
'What?' The voice was directly next to him, and he looked. 'You shouldn't be walking around. Relax. You and the kid aren't in the forest anymore. He's not after you.'
It was a deputy, and Teasle was sure he ought to know him, but he could not recall. He tried. A word came to him. 'Harris?' Yes, that was it. Harris. 'Harris,' he said proudly.
'You'd better come up front, sit and have some coffee. I just was making fresh. Broke a jug carrying water from the washroom. Hope that didn't wake you.'
The washroom. Yes. Harris was echoing, and the imagined taste of coffee squirted sourly into Teasle's mouth, gagging him. The washroom. He staggered through the swinging door, sick in the urinal, Harris holding him, telling him, 'Sit down here on the floor,' but it was all right, the echoing had stopped now.
'No. My face. Water.' And as he splashed his cheeks and eyes coldly, the image flashed in him again, no longer a dream, real. 'The kid,' he said. 'The kid's in the forest by the road. In that junkyard of cars.'
'You'd better take it easy. Try and remember. The kid was trapped in a mine and he ran deep into a maze of tunnels. Here. Let me have your arm.'
He waved him off, arms down supporting himself on the sink, face dripping. 'I'm telling you the kid isn't in there now.'
'But you can't know that.'
'How did I get here? Where's Trautman?'
'Back at the truck. He sent men with you to the hospital.'
'That sonofabitch. I warned him not to. How did I get here instead of the hospital?'
'You don't remember that either? Christ, you gave them a hell of a time. You yelled and fought in the cruiser and kept grabbing the wheel to stop them from turning toward the hospital. You were shouting that if they were going to take you anyplace, they were going to take you here. Nobody was going to strap you into any bed if you could help it. So finally they got afraid they would hurt you if they fought with you anymore, and did what you said. Tell you the truth, I think they were just as glad to be rid of you, the racket you were making and all. Once when you grabbed the wheel, you almost hit a transport truck. They had you in bed here, and as soon as they left, you went out and got in a patrol car to drive yourself back, and I tried to stop you but it was no problem, you passed out behind the wheel before you could find the ignition switch. You really don't remember any of it? There was a doctor came over right away, and he checked you over, said you were in half-decent shape, except you were exhausted and you'd been taking too many pills. They're some kind of stimulant and sedative all in one, and you'd swallowed so many you were flying. Doctor said he was surprised you didn't crash even harder and sooner than you did.'
Teasle had the sink full of cold water, dunking his face in it, swabbing himself with a paper towel. 'Where's my shoes and socks? Where did you put them?'
'What for?'
'Never mind what for. Just where did you put them?'
'You're not planning to try and go back there again, are you? Why don't you sit down and relax? There's all sorts of men swarming through those caves. Nothing more you can do. They said not to worry, they'd call here the minute they found a sign of him.'
'I just told you he's not -. Where the hell are my shoes and socks, I asked you.'
Far off in the front room the phone started ringing faintly. Harris looked relieved to get away and answer it. He swung out through the door of the washroom, and the phone rang again, then again, then abruptly stopped. Teasle rinsed his mouth with cold water and spat it out milky. He did not dare swallow it in case it would make him sick again. He peered at the dirty checkered tiles on the washroom floor, thought incongruously that the janitors weren't doing their job, and swung through the door out into the corridor. Harris was standing up at the end of the hall, his body blocking off part of the light, uncomfortable about speaking.
'Well?' Teasle said.
'I don't know if I should tell you this. It's for you.'
'About the kid?' Teasle said and brightened. 'About that junkyard of cars?'
'No.'
'Well what is it then? What's the matter?'
'It's long distance - your wife.'
He did not know if it was fatigue or shock, but he had to lean against the wall. Like hearing from somebody buried. With everything that had happened because of the kid, he had gradually so managed to keep her out of his mind that now he could not remember her face. He tried but he could not. Dear God, why did he want to remember? Did he still want the pain?
'If she's going to upset you more,' Harris said, 'maybe you shouldn't talk to her. I can say you're not around.'
Anna.
'No. Plug it through to my office phone.'
'You're sure now? I can easily tell her that you're out.'
'Go on, plug it through.'

14
He sat in the swivel chair behind his desk and lit a cigarette. Either the cigarette would clear his head or else it would cloud his head and spin him, but it was worth a try because he could not talk to her as unsteady as he was. He waited and felt better and picked up the phone.
'Hello,' he said quietly. 'Anna.'
'Will?'
'Yes.'
Her voice was thicker than he recalled, throaty, a little broken in some of the words. 'Will, are you hurt? I've been worried.'
'No.'
'It's true. Believe it or not, I have been worried.'
He drew slowly on his cigarette. There they went again, misunderstanding. 'What I meant is no, I'm not hurt.'
'Thank God.' She paused, then exhaled steadily as if she had a cigarette too. 'I haven't been watching TV or reading newspapers or anything, and then suddenly tonight I learned what was happening to you and I got scared. Are you sure you're all right?'
'Yes.' He thought about describing it all, but it would only sound like he wanted sympathy.
'Honestly, I would have called earlier if I'd only found out. I didn't want you to think I don't care what happens to you.'
'I know.' He looked at the rumpled blanket on the couch. There were so many important things to say, but he could not bring himself to do it. They did not matter to him anymore. The pause was too long. He had to say something. 'Do you have a cold? You sound like you have a cold.'
'I'm getting over one.'
'Orval's dead.'
He heard her stop breathing. 'Oh. I liked him.'
'I know. It turns out I liked him even more than I knew. And Shingleton's dead and so is that new man Galt and -'
'Please. Don't tell me anymore. I can't let myself know anymore.'
He thought about it longer, and there really was not much to say after all. The quality of her voice did not make him long for her the way he feared it might have, and at last he felt free, at the end of it. 'Are you still in California?'
She did not answer.
'I guess that's none of my business,' he said.
'It's O.K. I don't mind. Yes, I'm still in California.'
'Any troubles? Do you need any money?'
'Will?'
'What?'
'Don't. I didn't call for that.'
'Yes, but do you need any money?'
'I can't take your money.'
'You don't understand. I - I think it's going to be all right now. I mean, I feel a lot better about everything now.'
'I'm glad. I've been worrying about that too. It's not as if I want to hurt you.'
'But what I mean is I feel a lot better, and you can take some money if you need it without the idea that I'm trying to make you beholden and have you come back.'
'No.'
'Well at least let me pay for this call. Let me accept the charges.'
'I can't.'
'Then let me put it on the office bill. It won't be me paying, it'll be the town. For Christ sake, let me do something for you.'
'I can't. Please stop it. Don't make me regret calling. I was afraid this would happen and I almost didn't.'
He felt the telephone sweaty in his palm. 'You're not coming back, are you?'
'This is all wrong. I didn't want to go into this. It's not why I called.'
'But you won't be coming back.'
'Yes. I'm not coming back. I'm sorry.'
All he wanted was to hold her, not do anything but hold her. Slowly he crushed out his cigarette, lit another one. 'What time is it there?'
'Nine. I'm still confused about the time zone shift. I slept fourteen hours when I got here, getting used to the different time. For them it was eleven o'clock, and for me it was already two hours after midnight. What is it, midnight now, where you are?'
'Yes.'
'I have to go, Will.'
'So soon? Why?' Then he caught himself. 'No. Never mind. That's none of my business either.'
'Are you positive you're not hurt?'
'They've bandaged me up, but it's mostly scratches. Are you still living with your sister? Can you at least tell me that much?'
'I moved out into an apartment.'
'Why?'
'I really have to go. I'm sorry.'
'Keep me in touch with what you're doing?'
'If it'll help you. I didn't know it would be this hard. I don't know how to say this.' She sounded like she was sobbing. 'Good-bye.'
'Good-bye.'
He waited, trying to be with her as long as possible. Then she broke the connection and the dial tone was buzzing and he sat there. They had slept together four years. How could she make herself a stranger? Not easily. Her sobbing. She was right, this was hard for her too, and he was sorry.

15
It's over. Do something. Move. Get your mind on the kid where it belongs. The kid. Behind the wheel of a car. Driving fast.
He saw his shoes and socks by the file cabinet and hurriedly put them on. He took a Browning pistol from his gun case, slipped a full bullet clip into the handle and strapped on a holster, slanting it backward he noticed, the way Orval always had told him to. As he came down the hall, through the front room toward the door, Harris looked at him.
'Don't say it,' he told Harris. 'Don't say I shouldn't go back out there.'
'Fine, then I won't.'
Outside the street lights were on, and he breathed the fresh night air. A cruiser was parked at the side. He was just getting in when he glanced to the left and saw the side of town light up, flames reflecting in waves across the night clouds.
Harris was shouting on the front steps. 'The kid! He got out of the caves! They just called that he stole a police car!'
'I know that.'
'But how?'
The force of the explosions rattled the windows in the police station. WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP! A string of them from the direction of the main road into town. WHUMP, WHUMP!
'Christ almighty, what's that?' Harris said.
But Teasle already knew and he was ramming the car into gear, racing it out of the parking lot to get there in time.

16
Roaring deeper into town, swerving to pass a motorcyclist who was stopped looking back astonished, Rambo saw in his rearview mirror the street behind him flooded with fire leaping high into the trees that bordered it. The fierce red flames radiated into the cruiser. He pressed the accelerator to the floor, whipping down the main street, explosions flaring in the night behind him, bursting the pattern of the fire. Now they would have to waste time going around. Just in case, he needed to do it again. The more diversions, the more they would be confused. They would have to put off chasing him and stop to control the fire.
One of the street lights ahead was burned out. Under it the brakelights of a car flashed on, its driver opening his door to stare back at the flames. Rambo, sheered into the left lane, bearing down fast on the low headlights of a sports car. It swung into the right lane to avoid him just as he swung into his own lane too, and he continued sweeping toward it until it leapt up onto the sidewalk, snapped off a parking meter and crashed through the front display window of a furniture store. Sofas and chairs, Rambo thought. Here's to a soft landing.
Foot solidly on the throttle, he was surprised there were not more cars on the street. What kind of town was this anyhow? A few minutes after midnight and everybody was asleep. Store lights off. Nobody coming out of bars singing. Well, there was a little life in town now. There sure as hell was. The rush of the cruiser, the hefty surge of the engine, he was reminded of Saturday nights years ago racing stock cars, and he loved it all again. Himself and the car and the road. Everything was going to be fine. He was going to make it. Working unnoticed down through the hills to the highway had been easy. Creeping through the forest of junked cars into the field and up to the cruiser had been easy. The policemen from the car must have been in the hills with the rest, or else down the road to see the drivers of the lorry trucks. There had been no key in the switch, but tripping the ignition wires had been no problem, and now streaking through the red light of an intersection, the power of the motor seeming to rise up through the accelerator, flooding his body, he knew it would be only a matter of hours before he was free. He felt too good not to make it. The police would radio ahead to try and stop him, of course, but most of their units were probably behind him with the searchers, so there could not be much resistance ahead. He would make it through town and take to the side roads and hide the car. Then run overland. Maybe hitch onto a freight train. Maybe sneak into a transport. Maybe even steal a plane. Christ, there were any number of possibilities.
'Rambo.'
The voice startled him, coming from the radio.
'Rambo. Listen to me. I know you can hear me.'
The voice was familiar, years off. He could not place it.
'Listen to me.' Each word smooth, sonorous. 'My name is Sam Trautman. I was director of the school that trained you.'
Yes. Of course. Never in sight. The persistent voice over the camp's loudspeaker. Any hour. Day after day. More running, fewer meals, less sleep. The voice that never failed to signal hardship. So that was it. Teasle had brought in Trautman to help. That explained some of the tactics the searchers had been using. The bastard. Turning on his own kind.
'Rambo, I want you to stop and surrender before they kill you.'
Sure, you bastard.
'Listen to me. I know this is hard to understand, but I'm helping them because I don't want you killed. They've already begun to mobilize another force ahead of you, and there'll be another force after that, and they'll wear you down until there's nothing left of you. If I thought there was the slightest chance of your beating them, I'd gladly tell you to keep on the move. But I know you can't get away. Believe me. I know it. Please. While you still can, give up and get out of this alive. There's nothing you can do.'
Watch me.
Another chain of explosions rumbling behind him, he veered the cruiser, tire, squealing, into the empty lot of a gas station, lights off for the night. He ran from the car, kicked through the glass of the station's door, stepped inside and switched on the electricity for the pumps. Then he grabbed a crowbar and hurried outside to wrench the locks off the pumps. There were four, two hoses on each, and he squeezed them on, spewing gasoline into the street, setting their latches in place so they would not shut off when he let go. By the time he drove the car up the street and stopped, the pavement back there was flowing with gasoline. A struck match and whoosh, the night flared into day, a huge lake of fire from sidewalk to sidewalk, twenty feet high, storefronts crackling, windows shattering, heat streaking over him, singeing. He raced the cruiser away, the blaze of gasoline spreading behind him, streaming to parked cars. WHUMP, WHUMP, they exploded, rocketing. WHUMP. Their own fault. The sign on the light pole had said no parking after midnight. He thought about what would happen when the pressure in the underground gasoline tanks went low. The fire would back up into the hoses and down into the tanks and half the block would explode. That would hold them from following. It certainly would.
'Rambo,' Trautman said from the radio. 'Please. I'm asking you to stop. It's no use. There's no sense to it.'
Watch me, he thought again and shut off the radio. He was almost through the heart of town. A few minutes and he would be out the other side.

17
Teasle waited. He had the patrol car blocked across the main road through the town square, and he was leaning over the front fender onto the hood, pistol in hand. There were specks of headlights coming from the flames and the explosions. The kid might have been quicker than himself, might already have sped past and out of town, but he did not believe it. He saw as if from two angles at once - through the kid's eyes as the front of the stolen car hurtled toward the town square - from his own point of view as the headlights loomed into bright discs, the dome on the roof of the car distinct now. A siren dome, a police car, and he pulled back the injection slide on top of his gun, releasing it, aiming steadily. He had to do this just right. There would be no other chance. He had to make absolutely certain this was the kid and not a stray patrolman. The engine was revving louder. The headlights were glaring onto him. He squinted at the outline of the driver. It had been three days since he had seen the kid, but there was no misjudging the shape of his head, hair cut short in clumps. It was him. Now at last, one against one, not in the forest, but in town where he knew best, and on his terms.
The headlights blinding him, he shot one out, then the other, self-ejected cartridges clinging across the pavement. How do you like it now? He aimed, and as the kid dove below the dashboard, he fired and shattered the windshield and immediately shot out the front tires, the triple jolt from his pistol drumming his hand on the hood. The cruiser came rushing out of control, spinning, Teasle jumping out of the way as the car hit his in a crash of metal and glass that flung his car in a circle and rebounded the kid's toward the far sidewalk. A hub cap rattled down the street, a spray of gasoline spattered the pavement, and Teasle was crouched running toward the kid's car, firing repeatedly at the door, up to it, leaning inside shooting below the dashboard. But the kid was not there, just the front seat dark with blood, and Teasle dove to the road, elbows scraping, glancing furtively around, seeing underneath the car the kid's shoes running across the sidewalk into an alley.
He started after him, reached the brick wall next to the alley, and braced himself to go in firing. He did not understand the spots of blood across the concrete. He did not think any of his bullets had connected. Maybe the kid had been hurt in the crash. It was a lot of blood. Good. Slow him down. From in the alley he heard something heavy smashing against wood as if the kid were breaking in a door. How many shots left? Two at the headlights, one at the windshield, two at the tires, five at the door. That left three. Not enough.
Hurriedly he slipped out the clip from the handle, snapped in a full one, held his breath, trembling, and then in a rush went down the alley, firing one two three, empty shells winging through the air as he sprawled behind a row of garbage cans and saw the door to Ogden's Hardware open. The garbage cans were too thin to protect him from a bullet, but at least they hid him while he decided if the kid was actually in the store, or if the open door was a trick and the kid was in ambush farther down the alley. He scanned the alley and did not see the kid. He was heading for the door when the thing came flipping out in sparkles. What the - ? Dynamite, the fuse too short for him to snub it out in time, too short for him to grab the stick and throw it far enough in time. Like recoiling from a snake, he was back out of the alley, hugged against the brick wall, hands over ears, the explosion stunning him, strips of wood and metal and fiery cardboard bursting out of the alley onto the street. He stopped himself from running again to the broken door. Think it through. Think it through. The kid has to run before other people get here. He can't stay and fight. The dynamite is just to hold you back. Forget the alley. Check the front door.
He darted around the corner of the street, and the kid was long out of the store, well up the block, charging across the road into the shadows of the courthouse. The range was difficult to aim with a pistol. He tried it anyhow, dropping to one knee as if in genuflection, leaving the other knee raised, supporting an elbow on it, steadying the gun with both hands while he sighted and fired. And missed. His bullet smacked loudly into the stone wall of the courthouse. There was a pinpoint flash, the crack of a rifle by the courthouse, and a bullet rang through a mailbox next to Teasle. He thought he saw the dark form of the kid ducking around to the back of the courthouse, and he was running after him when three explosions in a row lit the courthouse into flames, debris slashing out the windows brilliantly. Christ, he's gone out of his mind, Teasle thought, running faster. This isn't just to try holding me back. He wants to blow up the whole town.
The wood inside the courthouse was old and dry. The blaze ate into the upper rooms. Running, Teasle grabbed at a muscle cramp in his side, determined not to let it slow him, pressing to go as far as he could before the little energy he had mustered gave out and collapsed his body. The fire in the courthouse was breaking, snapping, its smoke filling the street up there so that he could not see where the kid was. To the right, across the street from the courthouse, there was somebody moving on the front steps of the police station, and he guessed it was the kid, but it was Harris, out looking at the fire.
'Harris!' he shouted, urgent to get it all out at once. 'The kid! Get back! Get away!'
But his words were swallowed in the thunder of the biggest explosion yet that heaved the station and disintegrated it outward, obliterating Harris in a sweep of flame and rubble. The shock wave of the blast struck Teasle motionless. Harris. The station. It was all he had left and now it was gone, the office, his guns, the trophies, the Distinguished Service Cross; and then he thought of Harris again and cursed the kid and screamed, his new anger suddenly charging him farther up the sidewalk toward the flames. You sonofabitch, he was thinking. You didn't have to, you didn't have to.
Ahead, to the right of the sidewalk, there were two more storefronts and then the lawn of the police station, littered with burning wood. As he ran up cursing, a shot cracked into the concrete by his feet and ricocheted off. He sprawled into the gutter. The street was bright, but the rear of the station was still in shadow, and he returned the kid's shot, aiming at where he had seen the flash of the rifle back there. He shot twice more and now, when he rose, his knee gave out and he toppled across the sidewalk. His strength was finally gone. The beating he had taken in the last few days had finally caught up to him.
He lay on the sidewalk and thought of the kid. The kid was bleeding and he'd be weak too. That wasn't stopping the kid any, though. If the kid could keep on, then so could he.
But so tired, so hard to move.
Then all that about fighting the kid one-to one, nobody else in the way to get hurt, that was all a lie, was it? And Orval and Shingleton and the rest, the promise you made, that was all a lie too, was it?
You can't promise dead men. A promise like that doesn't count.
No, but you promised yourself, and that does count. If you don't move your ass, you won't be worth a poor goddamn to yourself or anyone else. You're not tired. You're afraid.
He sobbed, crawled, staggered up. The kid was to the right behind the station. But he could not escape that way because the backyard of the station ended with a high barbed-wire fence, and on the other side of the fence was a long sheer drop to the foundation of the new supermarket. The kid would not have the time or strength to climb safely over and down. He would run farther up the street, and that way there were two houses, then a playground, then a field the town owned that was thick with tall grass and wild raspberry bushes and a listing shed some children had built.
He stalked forward, using the slope of lawn in front of the police station for cover, peering through the smoke to catch sight of the kid, not wanting a second glance at what was left of Harris spread apart on the street. Now he was between the courthouse and the station, their flames lighting him, smoke burning his eyes, heat stinging his face and skin. He stooped closer to the slope of lawn to hide himself in the light. The smoke cleared a moment, and he saw that people who lived in the two houses up from the station were out on their porches, talking, pointing. Christ, the kid might blow up their houses too. Kill them just like Harris.
He struggled to hurry toward them, watching for the kid. 'Get the hell away!' he shouted. 'Get back!'
'What?' someone up there called.
'He's near you! Run! Get away!'
'What? I can't hear you right!'

18
He huddled next to the porch on the far side of the last house and aimed at Teasle. The man and the two women on the porch were so distracted calling to Teasle that they did not see he was hiding down next to them. But when he pulled back the hammer on his rifle, they must have heard the click because there was an abrupt sound of movement on the wood up there, and a woman leaned over the rail at him, saying 'My God. Jesus God.'
That was enough warning; Teasle scurried off the sidewalk, up the lawn to the first house and the shelter of its porch. Rambo fired anyhow, not counting on a hit, but sure at least of frightening him. The woman up there screamed. He levered out his empty cartridge and aimed at the corner of the porch down there. Teasle's shoe was sticking out, lit by the flames. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. His rifle empty, no time to reload, he dropped it and drew the police revolver, but Teasle's shoe was gone now. The woman was still screaming.
'Oh, for crissake shut up, lady,' he told her, and ran to the rear corner of the house, studying the shadows of the back yard. Teasle would not risk coming around the front where the flames made him a bright easy target. He would slip into the dark at the back of the first house, and then work his way to the back of this house. Rambo drew close to the corner, staring past a bicycle and a tool shed, waiting. His forehead was cracked open from when his car had struck Teasle's, slamming his face against the police radio, and his sleeve was sticky from wiping away the blood that streamed down into his eyes. The collision had also wakened the pain in his ribs so that he did not know which hurt him worse.
He waited longer, went drowsy briefly, then alerted himself. There was no sound, but a black figure seemed to be gliding along the rear fence in among evergreen shrubs. He wiped blood from his eyes, aimed, but could not let himself fire. Not until he was certain it was Teasle. If the gliding figure was just a trick of the eyes, then shooting at it would reveal his place. It would also be wasting a bullet: he only had five in his handgun, the chamber beneath the firing pin was bare. Teasle's Browning held thirteen. Let him waste shots. He could afford to.
There was another reason he did not fire immediately at the figure: when last he had wiped blood from his eyes, they had not focused properly, seeing double, as if the blood remained. He could not distinguish now between the dark shape and the shape of the evergreens, all blurred together, and he was enduring a headache so sharp that it seemed ready to split his skull.
Why wasn't the shadow moving? Or was it moving and he could not see it? Teasle ought to have made some sound, though. Come on, make a sound, why didn't he? It was getting too late. Already sirens were wailing close. Fire sirens maybe. But maybe police. Come on, Teasle.
He heard the people from the porch in the house now, talking frightened. He sensed something, and looked behind to see if anyone was still on the porch with a gun or something that might hurt him, and Christ, there was Teasle coming up the front lawn. In his surprise Rambo fired before he knew it, Teasle crying out, careening backward down the lawn in an arc that landed him on the sidewalk, but Rambo could not puzzle out what was happening to himself, the way he was jerking back weightless, whipping to one side, striking face down in the grass. His hands were warm and wet on his chest, then directly sticky. Oh Jesus he was hit. Teasle had managed a shot and hit him. His chest was stunned, nerves paralyzed. Got to move. Have to get away. Sirens.
He could not stand. He squirmed. A wire fence to the side of the house. Beyond it vague hulking objects in the night. The flames from the station and the courthouse surged high, illuminating them orange, but still he could not see them distinctly. He strained his eyes. His vision cleared and he saw. Seesaws, the word a hollow jingle in his head. Swings. Slides. A playground. He inched toward them on his belly, the sound of the flames down behind him like the roar of a windstorm snapping through trees.
'I'll get my gun! Where's my gun?' the man shouted inside the house..
'No. Please,' a woman said. 'Don't go out there. Stay out of it.'
'Where's my gun? Where did you put my gun? I told you to quit moving it.'
He dug his elbows into the lawn, squirming faster, reached the fence, a gate, opened it, kneed himself through. Behind him there were hollow footsteps on the wood of the backstairs.
'Where is he?' the man was saying, his voice clear outside. 'Where'd he go?'
'There!' the second woman said hysterically, the voice of the one who had seen him from the front porch. 'Over there! The gate!'
Well you bastards, Rambo thought and looked. The blazes were flaring high, and the man was standing by the tool shed, aiming a rifle. The man was too awkward aiming, but he went instantly graceful when Rambo shot him, smoothly clutching his right shoulder, spinning easily, toppling perfectly over the bicycle next to the tool shed, and then he was awkward again as the bicycle gave way under him and the two jumbled to the ground in a tinny jangle of chain and spokes.
'Christ, I'm hit,' the man was groaning. 'He hit me. I'm hit.'
But the man did not know how lucky he was. Rambo had aimed at his chest, not his shoulder. No longer able to see to shoot straight, no longer able to hold his gun steady, his chest rapidly draining blood, he had no hope of getting away, no means of efficiently protecting himself, nothing. Except perhaps the stick of dynamite still in his pocket. The dynamite, he thought. Screw the dynamite. With the little strength remaining in him, he would not be able to lob the stick five feet.
'He hit me,' the man was groaning. 'He hit me. I'm hit.'
Well, so am I, buddy, but you don't hear me whining about it, he thought and since he could not accept merely waiting for the men in the siren cars to come for him, he began crawling again. Into a dry wading pool at the center of the playground. Into the center of the wading pool. And there his nerves tingled, stretched to life, and gradually registered his pain. Teasle's bullet had torn through his cracked ribs, and it was like lancing a giant fester, poison spewing forth. The pain grew to overwhelm him. He was scratching at his chest, clawing, ripping. He shook his head, clenched his body, so convulsed with pain that he raged to his feet up out of the wading pool, head stooped, shoulders hunched, tottering toward the fence at the edge of the playground. It was low, and he leaned over it gasping, kicked his feet in the air; in a grotesque somersault came down on the other side, expecting his back to hit ground; instead snagged thorns and leafless branches. A field of brambles. Wild raspberries. He had been here before. He did not remember when, but he had been here before. No. No, he was wrong. It was Teasle who had been here before, up in the mountains, when he had escaped into that whole slope of brambles. Yes, that was it. Teasle had gone in. Now it was the other way around. Now it was his own turn. The barbs dug him. They felt so good, helping him to rip at his pain. Teasle had escaped this way, through brambles like these. Why couldn't he?

19
Teasle lay on his back on the concrete of the sidewalk, ignoring the flames, staring up fascinated at a yellow streetlight. If this were summer, he thought, there would be moths and mosquitoes flying around the bulb. Then he wondered why he had thought that. He was losing his stare, blinking now, holding both hands over the hole in his stomach. It amazed him that except for a compulsive itch in his intestines, he had no sensation. There was also a big hole in his back, he knew, but that too was just an itch. So much damage and so little pain, he thought. Almost as if his body no longer belonged to him.
He was listening to the sirens, first a few, then a cluster of them, wailing somewhere beyond the fire. Sometimes they sounded far off, sometimes just down the street. 'Just down the street,' he said to hear himself, and his voice was so distant that his mind had to be separate from his body. He moved one leg, then the other, raised his head, arched his back. Well then, at least when the bullet had gone through, it had not shattered his spine to break his back. The thing is though, he told himself, you're dying. That big a hole and this little pain, you're dying all right, and that too amazed him - that he could think about it so calmly.
He glanced away from the streetlight toward the burning courthouse, even its roof on fire, toward the police station, flames seething out every window. And I just had those inside walls painted, he thought.
Someone was beside him. Kneeling. A woman. An old woman. 'Is there anything I can do?' she gently asked.
You're some old woman, he thought. All this blood and still you made yourself come to me. 'No. No, thank you,' he said, his voice very distant. 'I don't believe there's anything you can do. Unless. Did I hit him, do you know? Is he dead?'
'He fell I think,' she said. 'I'm from the next house down. By the station. I'm not sure exactly about it all.'
'Well,' he said.
'My house is catching fire. The people in this house, someone was shot I think. Can I get you a blanket? Some water? Your lips are dry.'
'Are they? No. No, thank you.'
It was certainly fascinating, his voice far off, but hers close, unfiltered against his eardrum, and the sirens, oh the sirens, wailing louder deep inside his head. It was all reversed, him outside of himself, but everything out there within him. Fascinating. He had to tell her about it. She deserved to know. But when he looked she was gone, and it was like a ghost had been with him. What kind of sign was it that he didn't know when she had gone? The sirens. Too loud. Shrieking like knives through his brain. He raised his head and looked between the fires down toward the bottom of the town square, police cars veering around the corner down there, speeding this way up the street, flashers whipping. Six, he counted. He had never seen anything with such distinct clarity, each detail in pure focus, especially each color of the light, flashers quick intermittent red, frontbeams constant glaring yellow, men behind the windshields orange in the shimmering radiance of the flames. The vision was too powerful. It set the street spinning, and he had to close his eyes or be sick. That would be all he needed. To retch and tear his stomach more, and maybe die right there before he could discover how this would end. It was a grace that he had not already been sick. He was long overdue. Hold together. That was all he could do. If he was going to die, and he was sure that he was, he could not let it come over him just yet. Not until the end.
He heard their tires squealing, and when he looked again, they were braking with a lurch below the station, policemen jumping out before the cars were at full stop, sirens ebbing. One policeman pointed up the street toward him, and they all came running between the fires, shielding their faces from the heat, shoes scuffling on the pavement, and in among them he saw Trautman. They had their guns drawn. Trautman had a pump shotgun that he must have taken from one of the cruisers.
Now he saw Kern among them too. Kern was telling a man, running as he spoke, 'Go back to the car! Radio for an ambulance!' Kern was pointing up and down the street, tell¬ing others, 'Get these people out of here! Push them back!'
What people? He did not understand. He looked, and dozens of people had materialized. Their abrupt appear¬ance startled him. They were watching the fires. Something about their faces. They were crowding toward him, eyes aglow, bodies stiff, and he raised his hands to keep them away, irrationally afraid, about to cry, 'Not yet!' as the policemen reached him, blocking them off, encircling him.
'The kid,' he said.
'Don't talk,' Kern told him.
'I think I hit him.' He said it calmly. He concentrated, trying to imagine he was the kid. 'Yes. I hit him.'
'You need your strength. Don't talk. A doctor's coming. We would have been here sooner, but had to go around the fires on the-'
'Listen.'
'Relax. You've done everything you could. Let us handle it now.'
'But I've got to tell you where he is.'
'Here!' a woman screamed from the front lawn of the house. 'Back here! Get a doctor!'
'You eight come with me,' Kern said. 'Spread out. Half on that side of the house, half on this side. Be careful. The rest of you help scatter this crowd.'
'But he's not back there.' Too late. Kern and his men were gone.
'Not back there,' he repeated to himself. 'Kern. What's the matter with him that he can't listen?' It was just as well he had not waited for Kern to help that evening at the start of the chase, he decided. With Kern along, the posse would have been twice as confused, and the men Kern brought would have died with the others.
Trautman had not yet spoken. The few policemen who remained were trying to avoid the sight of all the blood. Not him, though.
'No, not you, Trautman. You don't mind the blood at all. You're used to it.'
Trautman did not answer, just kept staring.
One policeman said, 'Maybe Kern is right. Maybe you should try not to talk.'
'Sure, and that's what I told Orval when he was shot. But he didn't want to die quiet anymore than I do. Hey, Trautman, I did it. I said I would, didn't I? And I did.'
'What's he talking about?' the one policeman said. 'I don't get it.'
'Look at him. His eyes,' another said. 'He's gone crazy.'
Still staring, Trautman gestured for them to be quiet.
'I told you I'd outguess him, didn't I?' His voice was a victorious child's. He did not like the sound of it, but he could not stop himself. Something inside him was rushing it on, getting it all out, the secret. 'He was up there by the side of that porch, and I was the next house down beside that porch, and I could feel he was waiting for me to come. Your school trained him well, Trautman. He did exactly what he was trained to do, and that's how I outguessed him.' His wound was itchy, he scratched it, his blood pooling out, and it was more fascinating to him with every moment how he could go on talking this way. He should he gasping, squeezing out each word, he knew, and here they were coming on and on in a fluent rush like an unspooling ribbon. 'I pretended I was him. Do you see? I've been thinking about him so much it's like I know what he's doing. And just then, the two of us beside the porches, I was imagining what he would do and suddenly I could tell what he was figuring - that I wouldn't come for him on the street side where there was light from the fires, that I'd come around the back through the yard and the trees. Through the trees, Trautman. Do you see it? Your school trained him for guerrilla fighting in the hills, so he instinctively turned to the trees, and the lawn, and the bushes back there. And me, after what he did to me in the hills, I was God damned if I'd ever fight him again on his own terms. On my terms. Remember that's what I told you? My town. And if I was going to get it, I was going to be on my street near my houses with the light from my office burning. And I did it. I outguessed him, Trautman. He took my bullet in the chest.'
Still Trautman did not speak. He looked so long at it before he pointed to the gore of the stomach wound.
'This? You mean this, you're pointing at? I told you. Your school trained him well. My Christ, what reflexes.'
Off in the night, beyond the roar of the fires, there was a full roaring ca-whump that illuminated all that part of the sky. The echo from it rumbled in return over the town.
'Too soon. It went too soon,' the one deputy said in disgust.
'Too soon for what?'
Kern was coming from behind the house, scrambling down the slope of lawn to the sidewalk. 'He isn't back there.'
'I know. I tried to tell you.'
'He shot some guy in the shoulder. That's what the woman was yelling about. My men are looking for a trace of him. There's blood they're following.' He was distracted, glancing at the waves of light in the sky at the side of town.
'What is it? What was that explosion?' Teasle said.
'God, I doubt they had enough time.'
'Time for what?'
'The gas stations. He set two of them burning. We heard on the radio about the fire department over there. The pumps and main buildings are so deep in the flames that they couldn't get in to shut off the gasoline. They were going to disconnect the electricity to that whole part of town when they realized - if they stopped the pumps, the pressure would reverse the fire down into the main tanks and the entire block would go up. I called a squad of my men over to help evacuate. One of the fires was in a section of houses. God, I hope they were in time before it went, and there's another one yet to go, and how many will be dead when this is over.'
A shout from the side of the house: 'He went across a playground over here!'
'Well, don't yell so loud that he knows we're onto him!'
'Don't worry,' Teasle said. 'He's not in the playground.'
'You can't be sure of that. You've been lying here too long. He might have gone anywhere.'
'No, you have to be in his place. You have to pretend that you're him. He crawled through the playground and pushed himself over the fence there and he's in the wild raspberries, the brambles. I got away from him through brush like that, and now he's trying it, but he's wounded too bad. You can't believe the pain in his chest. There's a shed there some children built and he's crawling toward it.'
Kern frowned in question at Trautman and the two policemen. 'What's been going on with him while I was back there? What's happened?'
The one policeman shook his head queerly. 'He thinks he's the kid.'
'What?'
'He's gone crazy,' the other said.
'You two watch him. I want him quiet,' Kern said. He knelt beside him. 'Hang on for the doctor. He won't be long. I promise you.'
'It doesn't matter.'
'Try. Please.'
There were bells clanging and more sirens as two big fire engines lumbered up the square, slowing heavily to a stop beside the police cars. Firemen were jumping off, rubber-coated, running for tools to open the water hydrants, reeling out hoses.
Another shout from the side of the house: 'He went clean through the playground! There's blood all through it! There's some kind of field and bushes!'
'Don't shout, I told you!' Then, down to him on the sidewalk. 'O.K., let's find out for you. Let's see if you're right about where he is.'
'Wait.'
'He'll get away. I have to go.'
'No. Wait. You have to promise me.'
'I did. The doctor is coming. I promise it.'
'No. Something else. You have to promise me. When you find him, you have to let me be there for the end. I have a right. I've been through too much not to see the end.'
'You hate him that much?'
'I don't hate him. You don't understand. He wants it. He wants me to be there.'
'Jesus.' Kern looked astounded at Trautman and the others. 'Jesus.'
'I shot him and all at once I didn't hate him anymore. I just was sorry.'
'Well of course.'
'No, not because he shot me, too. It wouldn't have made a difference if he shot me or not. I still would have been sorry. You have to promise to let me be there at the end. I owe it to him. I have to be with him at the end.'
'Jesus.'
'Promise me.'
'All right.'
'Don't lie. I know you're thinking I'm so badly hurt that I can't be moved up to that field.'
'I'm not lying,' Kern said. 'I have to go.' He stood, motioned to his men at the side of the house, and they joined him, spread out, starting nervously up the street toward the playground and the field beyond.
Except for Trautman.
'No, not you, Trautman,' Teasle said. 'You want to stay out of it yet, don't you? But don't you think you ought to see? Don't you think you ought to be there and see how he finally maneuvers himself?'
When Trautman now spoke at last, his voice was as dry as the wood in the courthouse must have been when it caught, tinder for the fire. 'How bad are you?'
'I don't feel a thing. No. I'm wrong again. The concrete is very soft.'
'Oh.' Another full billowing ca-whump lit up the sky over there. Trautman watched it blankly. The second gas station.
'Score another point for your boy,' Teasle said. 'My yes, your school really trained him well. There's no question.'
Trautman looked at the firemen hosing the flames of the courthouse and the police station, at the jagged hole in Teasle's stomach, and his eyes flickered. He pumped his shotgun, injecting a shell into the firing chamber before he started up the lawn toward the back of the house.
'What did you do that for?' Teasle said. But he already knew. 'Wait.'
No answer. Trautman's back was receding through the reflection of the flames toward the few shadows that were left at the side of the house.
'Wait,' Teasle said, panic in his voice. 'You can't do that!' he shouted. 'That's not yours to do!'
Like Kern before him, Trautman was gone.
'Dammit wait!' Teasle shouted. He rolled on his stomach, pawing the sidewalk. 'I have to be there! It has to be me!'
He groped to his hands and knees, coughing, blood dripping from his stomach onto the sidewalk. The two policemen grabbed him, pushing him down.
'You've got to rest,' the one said. 'Take it easy.'
'Leave me alone! I mean it!'
They were struggling to control him. He was thrashing.
'I have a right! I started this!'
'Better let him go. If he tries fighting us anymore he'll rip himself wide open.'
'Look at his blood on me. How much more can he have inside him?'
Enough, Teasle was thinking. Enough. He groped again to his hands and knees, drew up one leg, then the other, concentrating to stand. He had the salt taste of blood in his mouth. I started this, Trautman, he was thinking. He's mine. Not yours. He wants it to be me.
He braced himself, rose, walked a step, then listed, contending for his balance. If he fell, he was certain he would never be able to raise himself again. He had to hold himself steady, balancing as he wove up the lawn toward the house. I know it, Trautman, he was thinking. He wants it to be me. Not you. Me.

20
In agony, Rambo crawled through the brambles toward the shed. The firelight extended weakly onto it, and he saw how one wall leaned inward, the roof on an angle, but he could not see in through the half-open door, stark black in there. He crawled, but he seemed to be taking a very long while to go a short space, and then he found he was just doing the motions of a crawl, not getting anywhere. He worked harder, slowly managing some distance toward the shed.
But when he came to the black entrance, he refused. In there it was too much like the hole where he had been held prisoner in the war, dark, compressed, constricting. It reminded him strangely of the shower stall Teasle had made him go into, and of the cell Teasle had wanted to lock him in. They had been brightly lit, that was true, but the repulsion had been the same. Everything he was running from, he thought, and how could he have been so tired as to consider making a fight from in there.
A fight was out of the question now anyway. He had seen too many men die from bullet wounds not to know that he was bleeding to death. The pain continued in his chest, in his head, sharply accented by each pump of his heart, but his legs were cold and numb from the loss of blood, that was why he had trouble crawling, and his fingers were senseless, his hands, nerve extremities gradually shutting off. He did not have much life to go. At least he still had the choice of where it would leave him. Not in there, as in the caves. He was determined never to experience that again. No, in the open. Where he could see the sky unhampered, and smell the night air's unrestricted flow.
He groped to the right of the shed, burrowing awkwardly farther into the brush. The correct spot. That was the necessary thing. Someplace comfortable and friendly. Proper to him. Soothing. He needed to find it before it was too late. A shallow, body-long trough seemed promising, but when he lay face up in it, the trough was too much like a grave. Plenty of time to lie in his grave. Someplace else he needed, just the opposite, high, boundless, his last moments for a taste of it.
Crawling, he peered forward through the brush, and there was a gentle rise ahead, and when he reached the top it was a mound, slopes of brush down every side, the dome a clearing of drooped autumn grass. Not as high as he had wanted. Still it was above the field, and stretching back on top of the grass was pleasant, as if on a straw-stuffed blanket. He peered up at the glorious orange patterns that the flames projected onto the night clouds. At ease. This was the place.
At any rate his mind was at ease. But his pain quickened, racking him, and in contrast, the numbness crept to his knees, his elbows. Soon it would creep to his chest, cancelling the pain, and where after that? His head? Or would he be gone before then?
Well. He had better think if there was anything more to do, anything important he had forgotten. He stiffened in pain. No, there didn't seem anything more to do.
What about God?
The idea embarrassed him. It was only in moments of absolute fear that he had ever thought about God and prayed to him, always embarrassed because he did not believe and felt so hypocritical when he prayed out of fear, as if in spite of his disbelief there might be a God after all, God who could be fooled by a hypocrite. When he was a child, then he believed. He certainly did believe when he was a child. How did it go, the nightly Act of Contrition? The words came hesitantly, unfamiliarly to him. Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for - For what?
For everything that happened the last few days. Sorry that it all had to happen. But it all did have to happen. He regretted it, but he knew if this were Monday again, he would go through the next days the same as he had up to now, just as he knew Teasle would. There was no avoiding any of it. If their fight had been for pride, it had also been for something more important.
Like what?
Like what a lot of horseshit, he told himself: freedom and rights. He had not set out to prove a principle. He had set out to show a fight to anyone who pushed him anymore, and that was quite different - not ethical, but personal, emotional. He had killed a great many people, and he could pretend their deaths were necessary because they were all a part of what was pushing him, making it impossible for someone like him to get along. But he did not totally believe it. He had enjoyed the fight too much, enjoyed too much the risk and the excitement. Perhaps the war had conditioned him, he thought. Perhaps he had become so used to action that he could not ease off.
No, that was not quite true either. If he had really wanted to control himself, he could have. He simply had not wanted to control himself. To live his way, he had been determined to fight anyone who interfered. So all right then, in a way he had fought for a principle. But it was not that simple, because he had also been proud and delighted to show how good he was at fighting. He was the wrong man to be shoved, oh yes he was, and now he was dying and nobody wanted to die, and all that he was thinking about principles was a lot of crap to justify it. To think that he would do everything again the same was just a trick to convince himself that what was happening right now could not have been avoided. Christ, it was right now, and he could not do one damn thing about it, and neither principles nor pride had any matter in the face of what was to come. What he should have done was cherish more smiling girls and drink more icy water and taste more summer melons. And that was a lot of horseshit too, what he should have done, and all that about God was merely complicating what he had shortly decided: if the numbness creeping up his thighs and forearms was an easy way to die, it was also poor. And helpless. Passively defeating. The one choice left to him was how to die, and it was not going to be like a holed-up wounded animal, a quiet, pathetic, gradually senseless deterioration. At once. In a great burst of feeling.
Since his first sight of tribesmen mutilating a body in the jungle, he had been afraid of what would happen to his own body when he died. As if his body still would have some nerve responses, he had imagined with chilling repulsion what it would be like having the blood drained from his veins, embalming fluid pumped in, his central organs removed, his chest cavity treated with preservatives. He had imagined what it would be like having the undertaker sew his lips together and his eye lids down and he had been sickened. Death - strange that death should not bother him so much as what would happen to him after. Well, they could not do all that to him if there was nothing of him to have it done to. At least this way, doing it to himself, there was the chance of pleasure.
He took the final stick of dynamite from his pocket, opened the softly-packed box of fuses and exploders, slipped one set of them into the stick, then arranged the stick between his pants and his stomach. He hesitated to light the fuse. This damn business about God, complicating things. It was suicide he was about, and that could send him to hell forever. If he believed. But he did not, and he had lived with the idea of suicide for a long while, in the war carrying the poison capsule his commander had given him to prevent being captured, tortured. Then when he had been captured, he had not had time to swallow it. Now, though, he would light the fuse.
But what if there was God? Well, if God was, He could not fault him for being true to his disbelief. One intense sensation yet reserved for him. No pain. Too instantaneous for pain. Just one bright dissolving flash. At least that would be something. The numbness up to his groin now, he prepared to light the fuse. Then, with one last bleary glance across the field to the playground, he saw in the firelight the double-focused image of a man in a Beret uniform stalking low and carefully through the cover of the swings and slides. He carried a rifle. Or a shotgun. Rambo's eyes could no longer tell him which. But he could make out it was a Beret uniform and he new that it was Trautman. It could be no one else. And behind Trautman, stumbling across the playground, clutching his stomach, came Teasle, it had to be him, lurching against a rectangular maze of climbing bars, and Rambo understood then there was a better way.

21
Teasle clung to the bars, resting, then pushed himself away, staggering toward the fence. He had been frantic that Trautman would get into the field before him, but now everything was going to be fine - Trautman was just a few steps ahead of him, crouched beside a bench, studying the thick brush of the field. Just a few steps ahead of him. He reached out and grabbed the bench to stop from falling, stood against it, breathing hoarsely.
Without a glance away from the field, Trautman told him, 'Get down. He'll see you for sure.'
'I would, but I'd never stand again.'
'So what would be the need? You can't do any good the way you are. Stay out of it. You're killing yourself.'
'Lie down and let you finish it for me? Screw. I'm dying anyhow.'
Trautman looked at him then.
Kern was nearby, out of sight, yelling, 'Christ, get the hell down! He has perfect cover and I'm not risking any men to go in! I sent for gasoline! He likes to play with fire, we'll burn him out!'
Yes, that's your style, Kern, he thought. He grabbed at the itch in his stomach, holding himself wetly in, and shuffled clumsily forward, propping himself against the fence.
'Get the hell down!' Kern yelled again.
Screw. Burn him out, will you, Kern? That's the kind of idea I expected from you, he thought. And you can bet that before the fire gets to him, he'll come through here shooting to take a few of your men with him. There's only one way to do this, and that's for somebody like me who doesn't have a hope anyhow to go in and take him. You haven't lost enough men yet, or you'd know that.
'What the hell was that?' Kern shouted, and Teasle realized that what he had been thinking he had said out loud. That startled him, and he had to get over the fence while he still was able. There was blood here on the fence. The kid's. Good. He would be going over where the kid had. His blood dripping on the kid's, he gathered himself and toppled over the fence. He guessed that he struck the ground hard, but his brain did not register the impact.
In a quick rush, Trautman came from the bench, vaulted the fence and landed in a neat crouch in a clump of brush beside him.
'Stay out of here,' Teasle told him.
'No, and if you don't shut up, he'll be onto everything we do.'
'He's not anywhere around to hear. He's way over in the center of the field. Look, you know he wants it to be me. I have a right to be there at the end. You know that.'
'Yes.'
'Then stay out of what doesn't concern you.'
'I started this long before you, and I'm going to help.
There's no disgrace in taking help. Now shut up, and let's go while you still can.'
'All right, you want to help? Then help me stand. I can't do it on my own,'
'You mean it? What a mess this is going to be.'
'That's what Shingleton said.'
'What?'
'Nothing.'
Trautman had him on his feet now, and then Trautman was crawling into the brush, disappearing, and Teasle stood, his head above the brush, surveying it, thinking. Go. Go on and crawl as fast as you can. It won't make a difference what you do. I'll get to him before.
He coughed and spat something salty and shifted forward through the brush in a straight line toward the shed. It was clear that the kid had gone this way, the branches broken down in a crude trail. He kept his pace slow, not chancing the helplessness of a fall. Even so, he was surprised at how soon he reached the shed. But as he prepared to go inside, he realized instinctively that the kid was not in there. He glanced around, and as if drawn toward a magnet, he shambled swaying down another broken path toward a large mound. There. The kid was there. He knew it, could feel it. There was no doubt.
When he had been spread out on the sidewalk, someone had said he was delirious. But that had been wrong. He had not been delirious. Not then. Now. Now he was delirious, and his body seemed to be melting from him, just his mind floating over the brush toward the mound, and the night was becoming glorious day, the orange reflection of the flames growing brighter, dancing wildly. At the bottom of the mound he ceased floating and hovered transfixed, the splendorous sheen illuminating him. It was coming. He had no more time. As if his will belonged to another, he saw his arm rise up before him, his pistol aiming toward the mound.

22
The numbness was at Rambo's shoulders now, at his navel, and steadying the gun was like aiming with two stumps of wood. He saw Teasle dispersing into triple focus down there, eyes bright, aiming, and he knew there should be no other way. No passive lapse into nothing. No lit fuse, self-disruption. But this way, the only proper way, in the last of the fight, trying his best to kill Teasle. Eyes and hands betraying him, he did not think he could hit Teasle. But he had to try. Then if he missed, Teasle would see the flash of his gun, and fire at it. And at least then I'll have died trying, he thought. He strove to squeeze his finger on the trigger, directing his aim at Teasle's center image. The barrel was wobbling, and he would never hit him. But he could not fake it. He had to try as hard as he could. He told his hand to squeeze on the trigger, but his hand would not work, and as he concentrated on it, clenching, the gun went off unintended. So careless and sloppy. He cursed himself. Not the real fight he had hoped for, and now Teasle's bullet would come when he did not deserve it. He waited. It should have come already. He squinted to clear his vision, looking down the mound where Teasle lay flat in the brush. Christ, he had hit him. God, he had not wanted that, and the numbness was so overwhelming by now that he could never light the fuse before it nulled him. So poor. So ugly and poor. Then death took him over, but it was not at all the stupefying sleep, bottomless and murky, that he had expected. It was more like what he had expected from the dynamite, but coming from his head instead of his stomach, and he could not understand why it should be like that, and it frightened him. Then since it was the total of what remained, he let it happen, went with it, erupted free through the back of his head and his skull, catapulted through the sky, through myriad spectra, onward outward, forever dazzling, brilliant, and he thought if he kept on like this for long enough he might be wrong and see God after all.

23
Well, Teasle thought. Well. He lay back on the brush, marvelling at the stars, repeating to himself that he did not know what had hit him. He really did not. He had seen the flash of the gun and he had fallen, but he had been slow and gentle to fall, and he really did not know what had hit him, did not sense it, respond to it. He thought about Anna and then stopped that, not because the memory was painful, but because after everything she just didn't seem important anymore.
He heard someone stepping, cracking, through the brush. The kid coming, he thought. But slow, very slow to come. Well sure, he's hurt bad.
But then it was only Trautman standing there, head outlined against the sky, face and uniform lustrous from the flames, but eyes dull. 'What's it like?' Trautman said. 'Is it bad?'
'No,' he said. 'Actually it's kind of pleasant. If I don't think about what it's bringing. What was that explosion I heard? It sounded like another gas station.'
'Me. I guess it was me. I took the top of his head off with this shotgun.'
'What's it like for you?'
'Better than when I knew he was in pain.'
'Yes.'
Trautman pumped the empty shell from the shotgun, and Teasle watched its wide arc glistening through the air. He thought about Anna again, and she still did not interest him. He thought about his house he had fixed up in the hills, the cats there, and none of that interested him either. He thought about the kid, and flooded with love for him, and just a second before the empty shell would have completed its arc to the ground, he relaxed, accepted peacefully. And was dead.

~ end ~