Color Him Dead (24 page)

Drew paused for a deep breath, then unfolded the other sheet. It was Ian’s careful, unhurried script:

“Chance,” grunted Drew, wadding the two sheets. He looked at Guillard, who sat with his elbows on his knees, drooling a discolored fluid. “Am I supposed to go back with you?”

Guillard wiped his mouth and nodded.

“Tell Ian he can go to hell.”

The lawyer shrugged and stood up.

“You could stay,” said Drew. “We could hold out for a while.”

The lawyer shook his head, holding out his hands with wrists crossed.

Drew frowned, then solved the symbolism. “He’s got you tied up? How?”

The lawyer made a sweeping, Coke-bottle motion with his hands.

“A woman?” Guillard nodded.

“He’s holding your wife. No? Your daughter?”

Guillard nodded and turned away. Drew watched him shuffle through the entrance and start down the steps. He understood why Ian had not bothered to kill him; Guillard was already dead.

Spweeeng!
A bullet chipped a flagstone and whined away. Drew dropped and rolled against the wall. Four more shots chipped the stone where he’d been standing. From the angle of fire Drew knew they were up on the watch tower, the only place on the island higher than the fort. They’d climbed up there while he read Edith’s letter.

Had she known, or was she innocently used? No point in debating the difference. She was a lovely death’s head, the original black widow, and her note had been an invitation to die.

The firing continued. Unable to get to the underground room, Drew concentrated on making himself as small as possible. God, they were wasting a lot of lead; didn’t the fools know they couldn’t hit him now?

A cold thought wormed into his brain. It could be a diversion to cover an attack up the steps. He crawled along the wall and peered around the entrance. Two men were coming up the path, hunched over like rats. The first was a rifleman, the second was Doxie with his gun in his fist.
Tippy-toe, tippy-toe, come on up fellas, I’ll be waiting.

Frantically he gathered all the grass within reach and stuffed it in his belt, in his shoes, between his shirt buttons. He found a coconut-sized rock and crouched back against the wall just inside the entrance, trying to look like an innocent clump of grass. The firing stopped, and Drew heard the scraping footsteps at the entrance. A pair of khaki shorts brushed by his grassy cocoon.

“Ah don’ see him, Dox,” said a Florida accent.

“Check the underground room, fool. I’ll cover you from here.”

Doxie’s black boot heels clacked on the stones a yard away. Drew rose and smashed the rock against the back of his skull. Doxie pitched forward, but Drew caught him at the waist, placed his hand over Doxie’s, and fired the .45 at the whirling gunman. The man doubled over, hugging his stomach, but Drew had no time to watch him die. He dropped Doxie and ran forward, snatching the other’s rifle as the firing resumed from the fort. He hit the dirt rolling and didn’t stop until he bumped against the wall. Briefly he examined the heavy gun; he recognized it immediately, an old U.S. Army M-1 with that ridiculous wooden casing on the barrel. A thousand years ago he’d won a summer-camp championship with the same kind of gun. The clip was full; he could see three more on the gunman’s belt. All was cool.

He dulled the shiny barrel with dirt, wrapped it in grass, and waited until the firing from the tower died away. Then he raised himself slowly and saw two figures etched against the skyline, trying to peer into the fort. Little clay pigeons, thought Drew, grown soft and careless from kicking helpless black asses.

Over a hundred yards, he figured. Aim high and right to allow for drop and wind. He rested the gun on the wall, sighted on a khaki shirt and squeezed the trigger. Without waiting for the result, he took aim on the second man and fired. Then he dropped behind the wall and waited for the answering fire. There was none. He raised his head. One man had disappeared, the other hung over the wall like a piece of laundry hung out to dry. His arms hung down like two limp tentacles. One kill, thought Drew, maybe two.

Pwinng!
A shot from below shattered the rock beside his arm. Rock fragments stung his cheek. Drew fired at a pith helmet half-hidden in the grass. Missed, fired again. The figure stiffened, then sprawled in the grass. He saw two more pulling back out of range. He dropped one on his first shot and was still firing at the other when his rifle clicked. He jerked out the empty clip and ran to get the others from the gunman’s belt. He was racing back to the wall when he remembered Doxie. He looked toward him, saw the long tear in the back of the white shirt and the red pool spreading around his body.

Too bad, Doxie, he thought. You should’ve taught your men to shoot straighter.

From the wall, he could see that the grassy slope was clear. The beach was far out of range. He ran to the west wall and looked down at the seaward side. Ah, the cruiser. He took aim on Captain Leo, then thought: No, not somebody I know.

He managed to drop one of the gunmen in the stern before the cruiser roared out of range. From the south wall he saw one of the outboards trying to negotiate the roaring straight. It took three shots to knock out the man at the tiller. The boat spun madly in the current. It cracked against the rocks, hung a moment, then disintegrated. A head bobbed up in the foaming water and moved swiftly out to sea. Drew took aim, then lowered his rifle. Let him go, he told himself. He won’t fight again today.

His hands were shaking; the rifle barrel was too hot to touch. He took a careful sip of water, peeled away his now-pointless camouflage, and surveyed the area. The boats stood out of range, the men were gathered on the beach. He sent two shots winging toward them and watched the scrambling rush for cover.

Save your bullets, he warned himself. You took out ten men; you’ve still got twenty against you.

Drew pondered: If I were Ian, what would I do? I think I’d save the plane for a last resort. Any flight low enough to drop explosives is going to bring the pilot within range of my gun. I’d probably lay low and depend on the triple threat of hunger, thirst, and sleeplessness to bring me down. Maybe I’d wait for a favoring wind, and fire the island again. There’s still a lot of burnable stuff around, and if it didn’t get me it would at least destroy my cover.

He got busy pulling up all the grass that remained on top of the fort. The saw-edged grass slashed his palms, the sooty dust burned his throat. When he finished his hands were bleeding and his water was gone. The sun said five o’clock.

At sunset there was a flurry of activity around the big house. In the fading light Drew watched the men hacking down a twenty-foot swathe of citronella, building a fire break across the eastern end of the island. With the first puff of wind, a dozen plumes of smoke sprouted up like mushrooms. Within ten minutes the hill was covered by flames twelve feet high. The wind blew toward the fort, and Drew choked in thick, black smoke. The fire sounded like a thousand people eating celery all at once.

By dark it had reached the burned-over area and slowed down. The big house was invisible through the smoke. Drew’s throat felt like a blackened chimney, and he could hardly force down the last of his crackers. Fatigue weighted his shoulders and he thought of Ian’s men sleeping, eating, drinking. He knew that thirst, hunger and fatigue, rather than fire and bullets, were his real enemies.

Around midnight he solved his problem of food and drink. The animals had begun to seek refuge from the fire and smoke. He used a burning faggot to blind a grizzled manicou—twin brother to a possum—and strangled the paralyzed animal with his hands. He drank the warm blood, then roasted the meat over a fire. It had a wild taste, like pressed duck.

Afterward he noticed that the rats had formed clotted, furry, squalling masses around the two bodies. He kicked the rats away and threw the bodies into the sea. They’d feed the sharks, but at least he didn’t have to see it.

He returned to the wall. Alone. That was the way it had begun, that was the way it would end. It seemed hardly worth the trouble to stay awake. His eyelids burned, scraping his eyeballs each time he blinked. The rats were bold, humped shapes along the parapet. They retreated with indignant squeaks each time he swung his stick, but each time they came back sooner, and retreated not so far. There were a hundred of them on the parapet and ten thousand more outside, driven onto this narrow neck of the island. In a way he was grateful to them; each time he dozed, he felt a tickle of whiskers and a sharp nipping pain in his hand. Then he would awaken, snap a shot into the darkness, and concentrate on staying awake….

Somebody was shaking him. “Drew, wake up. Drew!”

He looked up into a face so dark that for a moment he thought Leta had risen from the sea. But in the pale shadowless light of approaching dawn he saw that it was Edith. She was no beauty now; smoke blackened her face; the eyebrows were singed away, the copper hair charred on the ends. Her skirt hung in streaked tatters and her blouse was sprinkled with burrs.

It occurred to him that she might be a diversion to cover an attempt to rush the fort. He looked over the ledge. The wind had died and the smoke plumed upward from a hundred smouldering clumps of grass, hiding his view of the rest of the island.

“Where are they?” he croaked.

“Ian is sleeping in the house with three men. Captain Leo is patrolling the seaward side with two more. One of the outboards is stationed in the channel with five men aboard. The rest have gone back to guard Diamond.”

“Does he think he can take me with nine men?”

“He plans to wait you out. He’s lost eleven men—”

“Ten.”

“Eleven. The man you slashed with the cutlass died. Ian figures you’ll have to come down for water if the smoke doesn’t get you.”

Drew smiled grimly. “He’s wrong. I can always drink blood.”

“He says you’ll have to sleep.”

“I went sixty hours without sleep when I escaped from prison. I can still get a half-dozen of his men.” He caressed the stock of the rifle. “Go back and tell him that. Tell him I’ll be shooting at him this time.”

She rested her elbows on the parapet and looked out over the smoking island. “He didn’t send me. I … sneaked out and crawled through the fire.”

“Why?”

Her voice was scarcely audible. “Just … to be with you.”

“You can’t do anything here but die.”

“All right. Then I die.” She whirled to face him, her chin held high. “Don’t you want to see it? Isn’t that why you came to the island?”

He spoke in a gentle tone. “You’d better go back to Ian.”

She shook her head. “I’ve burned my bridges, Drew. When they started shooting at you I tried to run out and stop them, but Ian caught me. He said if I pulled one more stupid trick he was through with me. He doesn’t make empty threats, Drew. He won’t let me come back.”

Drew stared at her as the words penetrated his fogged brain; he had a sudden, giddy feeling of having solved one of life’s mysteries. It was so damn …
silly,
the whole idea of revenge. Life took its own revenge; it sank its teeth into you and never let go. He could never have inflicted half the punishment Edith had inflicted on herself.

He shook his head sadly. “It’s funny. After ten years there’s no need to kill you at all. It’s settled. We just stand here and die.”

“Don’t you care?”

“I’m too tired to care.”

She drew a deep, tremulous breath and put her head in her hands. “You don’t believe what I wrote about confessing?”

“I believe it.”

She looked up, surprised. “You do?”

He nodded. “It explains that phony background Ian gave you after your amnesia. He was afraid you still might try to give yourself up.”

“And the rest of it? You believe that I wanted to free you from the very first but I didn’t have the guts?”

“I believe it.”

“And that when you came to the island, I didn’t remember you at all. But even so I fell in love with you—”

“That’s enough, Edith.”

“—and that I love you now, and that’s why I came up here—”

“Shut up!” He drew a deep breath. “Don’t say that word to me, Edith. Remember how it was before? You said you loved me and a week later you shot your husband and framed me. It’s the same now; whatever you say is absolutely true when you say it. The next day it’s forgotten. My God, you could solemnly promise to write out a new confession and go to the authorities tomorrow—”

“I would. I
will.
”

“Sure. Until you changed your mind.”

She looked down and twisted the one remaining button on her blouse. “I know what kind of girl I was, a selfish bitch. I’m not any more.” She looked up at him. “I’m not asking for love or any affection at all. I just want … you to say you forgive me.”

“For what?”

“For what I did ten years ago. Do you forgive me?”

He saw the pleading in her eyes, and his jaws ached from the tight set of his teeth. He knew that if he said yes it would be a rejection of his only remaining purpose in life. He wanted her out of his sight, he wanted to die in peace and maintain the fiction of himself as a man who refused to be trapped a second time—