Duel (36 page)

Read Duel Online

Authors: Richard Matheson

BOOK: Duel
6.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
A sob caught in Marian's throat. “I'm
afraid,
” she said in a thin. shuddering voice.
He was afraid too; he didn't know of what but he was terribly afraid. Chilling uneasiness crawled up his back and rippled coldly on his neck. He kept staring at the body of the man sprawled on the ground, at the
still
, white face looking up sightlessly at the darkening sky.
He jolted once as, across the yard, he heard the back door of the house being slammed shut and locked.
 
 
Silence. A great hanging pall of it that pressed down on them like lead. The man slumped motionless on the ground. Their breaths quick, labored. Their lips trembling, their eyes fastened almost hypnotically on the man.
Marian drew up one fist and dug her teeth into the knuckles. Sunlight rimmed the horizon with a scarlet ribbon. Soundlessness. Heavy soundlessness.
Soundlessness.
Sound.
Their breath stopped. They stood there, mouths open, ears straining at the sound they'd never heard before. Their bodies went rigid as they listened to—
A bumping, a slithering, a rocking flow of—
“Oh
God!
” Her voice was a gasping of breathless horror as she spun away, shaking hands flung over her eyes.
It was getting dark and he couldn't be sure of what he saw. He stood paralyzed and numb in the fetid air of the cage, staring with blood-drained face at the thing that moved across the ground toward the man's body; the thing that had shape yet not shape, that crept like a current of shimmering jellies.
A terrified gagging filled his throat. He tried to move back but he couldn't. He didn't want to see. He didn't want to hear the hideous gurgling sound like water being sucked into a great drain, the turbid bubbling that was like vats of boiling tallow.
No, his mind kept repeating, unable to accept, no, no, no, no!
Then the scream made them both jerk like boneless things and drove Marian against one of the cage walls, shaking with nauseous shock.
And the man was gone from the earth. Les stared at the place where he had been, stared at the luminous mass that pulsated there like a great mound of balloon-encased plankton undulating palely in their fluids.
He stared at it until the man had been completely eaten.
Then he turned away on deadened legs and stumbled to Marian's
side. Her shaking fingers clutched like talons at his back and he felt her tear-streaked, twisted face press into his shoulder. Unfeelingly, he slid his arms around her, his face stiff with spent horror. Vaguely, through the body-clutching horror, he felt the need to comfort her, to erase her fright.
But he couldn't. He felt as if a pair of invisible claws had reached into his chest and ripped out all his insides. There wasn't anything left, just a cold frost-edged hollow in him. And, in the hollow, a knife jabbing its razor tip each time he realized again why they were there.
 
When the scream came, Merv slammed both hands across his ears so hard it made his head ache.
He couldn't seem to cut off the sound anymore. Doors wouldn't shut tightly enough, windows wouldn't seal away the world, walls were too porous—the screams always reached him.
Maybe it was because they were really in his mind where there were no doors to lock, no windows to shut and close away the screaming of terror. Yes, maybe they were in his mind. It would explain why he still heard them in his sleep.
And, when it was over and Merv knew that the thing had gone, he trudged slowly into the kitchen and opened the door. Then, like a robot driven by remorseless gears, he went to the calendar and circled the date. Sunday, August 22nd.
The eighth man.
The pencil dropped from his slack fingers and rolled across the linoleum. Sixteen days—one man each two days for sixteen days. The mathematics of it were simple. The truth was not.
He paced the living room, passing in and out of the lamplight aura which cast a buttery glow across his exhausted features, then melted away as he moved into shadow again. Sixteen days. It seemed like sixteen years since he'd gone out into the desert to hunt for jackrabbits. Had it only been sixteen days ago?
Once again he saw the scene within his mind; it never left. Him
scuffing across late afternoon sands, shotgun cradled against his hip, head slowly turning, eyes searching beneath the brim of his hat.
Then, moving over the crest of a scrub-grown dune, stopping with a gasp, his eyes staring up at the globe which shimmered like a light immersed in water. His heartbeat jolting, every muscle tensing abruptly at the sight.
Approaching then, standing almost below the luminescent sphere that caught the lowering sun rays redly.
A gasp tearing back his lips at the circular cavity appearing on the surface of the globe. And out of the cavity floating—
He'd spun then and run, his breath whistling as he scrambled frantically up the rise again, his boot heels gouging at the sand. Topping the rise, he'd started to run in long, panic-driven strides, the gun held tautly in his right hand, banging against his leg.
Then the sound overhead—like the noise of gas escaping. Wildeyed, he'd looked up over his shoulder. A terrified cry had wrenched his face into a mask of horror.
Ten feet over his head, the bulbous glow floated.
Merv lunged forward, his legs rising high as he fled. A fetid heat blew across his back. He looked up again with terrified eyes to see the thing descending on him. Seven feet above him—six—five—
Merv Ketter skidded to his knees, twisted around, jerked up the shotgun. The silence of the desert was shattered by the blast.
A gagging scream ripped from his throat as shot sprayed off the lucent bubble like pebbles off a rubber ball. He felt some of it burrow into his shoulder and arm as he flung over to one side, the gun falling from his nerveless grip. Four feet—three—the heat surrounded him, the choking odor made the air swim before his eyes.
His arms flung up. “
NO!
”
Once he had jumped into a water hole without looking and been mired on the shallow bottom by hot slime. It felt like that now, only this time the ooze was jumping onto him. His screams were lost in the crawling sheath of gasses and his flailing limbs caught fast in glutinous
tissue. Around his terror-frozen eyes, he saw an agitating gelatine filled with gyrating spangles. Horror pressed at his skull, he felt death sucking at his life.
But he didn't die.
He inhaled and there was air even though the air was grumous with a stomach-wrenching stench. His lungs labored, he gagged as he breathed.
Then something moved in his brain.
He tried to twist and tried to scream but he couldn't. It felt like vipers threading through his brain, gnawing with poisoned teeth on tissues of his thought.
The serpents coiled and tightened.
I could
kill you now
—the words scalded like acid. The muscle cords beneath his face tensed but even they couldn't move in the putrescent glue.
And then more words had formed and were burning, were branding themselves indelibly into his mind.
You will get me food.
He was still shuddering now, standing before the calendar, staring at the penciled circles.
What else could he have done? The question pleaded like a grovelling suppliant. The being had picked his mind clean. It knew about his home, his station, his wife, his past. It told him what to do, it left no choice. He had to do it. Would anyone have let themselves die like that if they had an alternative; would
anyone?
Wouldn't anyone have promised the world itself to be freed of that horror?
Grim-faced, trembling, he went up the stairs on feeble legs, knowing there would be no sleep, but going anyway.
Slumped down on the bed, one shoe off, he stared with lifeless eyes at the floor, at the hooked rug that Elsie had made so long ago.
Yes, he'd promised to do what the being had ordered. And the being had sunk the tiny, whirring cone deep into his arm so that he could only escape by cutting open his own flesh and dying.
And then the hideous gruel had vomited him onto the desert sands
and he had lain there, mute and palsied while the being had raised slowly from the earth. And he had heard in his brain the last warning—
In two days …
And it had started, the endless, enervating round of trapping innocent people in order to preserve himself from the fate he knew awaited them.
And the horrible thing, the truly horrible thing was that he knew he would do it again. He knew he'd do anything to keep the being away from him. Even if it meant that the woman must—
His mouth tightened. His eyes shut and he sat trembling without control on the bed.
What would he do when the couple were gone? What would he do if no one else came to the station? What would he do if the police came checking on the disappearances of eleven people?
His shoulders twisted and an anguished sobbing pulsed in his throat.
Before he lay down he took a long swallow from the dwindling whiskey bottle. He lay in the darkness, a nerve-scraped coil, waiting, the small pool of heat in his stomach unable to warm the coldness and the emptiness of him.
In his arm the cone whirled.
 
Les jerked out the last bar and stood there for a moment, head slumped forward on his chest, panting through clenched teeth, his body heaving with exhausted breath. Every muscle in his back and shoulders and arms ached with throbbing pain.
Then he sucked in a rasping breath. “Let's go,” he gasped.
His arms vibrated as he helped Marian clamber through the window.
“Don't make any noise.” He could hardly speak he was so tired from the combination of thirst, hunger, heat exhaustion and seemingly endless, muscle-cramped filing.
He couldn't get his leg up, he had to go through the rough-edged opening head first, pushing and squirming, feeling splinters jab into his
sweat-greased flesh. When he thudded down, the pain of impact ran jaggedly along his extended arms and, for a second, the darkness swam with needles of light.
Marian helped him up.
“Let's go,” he said again, breathlessly and they started to run across the ground toward the front of the house.
Abruptly, he grabbed her wrist and jerked her to a halt.
“Get those
sandals
off,” he ordered hoarsely. She bent over quickly and unbuckled them.
The house was dark as they hurried around the back corner of it and dashed along the side beneath the moon-reflecting windows. Marian winced as her right foot jarred down on a sharp pebble.
“Thank God,” Les gasped to himself as they reached the front of the house.
The car was still there. As they ran toward it, he felt into his back pocket and took out his wallet. His shaking fingers reached into the small change purse and felt the coolness of the extra ignition key. He was sure the other keys wouldn't be in the car.
They reached it.
“
Quick,
” he gasped and they pulled open the doors and slid in. Les suddenly realized that he was shivering in the chilly night air. He took out the key and fumbled for the ignition slot. They'd left the doors open, planning to close them when the motor started.
Les found the slot and slid in the key, then drew in a tense, shuddering breath. If the man had done anything to the motor, they were lost.
“Here goes,” he murmured and jabbed at the starter button.
The motor coughed and turned over once with a groan. Les's throat clicked convulsively, he jerked back his hand and threw an apprehensive look at the dark house.
“Oh God, won't it start?” Marian whispered, feeling her legs and arms break out in gooseflesh.
“I don't know, I hope it's just cold,” he said hurriedly. He caught
his breath, then pushed in the button again, pumping at the choke.
The motor turned again lethargically. Oh God, he
has
done something to it!—the words exploded in Les's mind. He jammed in the button feverishly, his body tense with fear. Why didn't we
push
it to the main road!—the new thought came, deepening the lines on his face.
“
Les!
”
He felt her hand clutch at his arm and, almost instinctively, his gaze jerked over to the house.
A light had flared up at a second story window.
“Oh Jesus,
start!
” he cried in a broken frenzy and pushed at the button with a rigid thumb.
The motor coughed into life and a wave of relief covered him. Simultaneously, he and Marian pulled at the doors and slammed them shut while he gunned the engine strongly to get it warm.

Other books

The Dark Shore by Susan Howatch
The Beach Cafe by Lucy Diamond
The New Wild by Holly Brasher
Shadow of Guilt by Patrick Quentin
Sabine by A.P.
Dead Heat by James Patterson
Outer Limits of Reason by Noson S. Yanofsky
The Boy Who Went to War by Giles Milton