Gordon Williams (20 page)

“There he is!”

He reached the kitchen doorway as Tom Hedden swung the shotgun up into the window. He threw himself face first in a dive for the shelter of the wall. His shoulder hit the solid wall. He crashed to the floor then kicked himself forward.

If the other shots had been deafening, this time it seemed as if the explosion had been fired off inside his own head. It wasn’t just a noise, it was a pulverising force. When his face touched the floor he could have crashed down from a great height such was the hammering sensation.

He couldn’t tell if he had been hit. Through waves of pain and shock he heard words.

“There’s only her and the kid.”

There’s only her and the kid?

As he got to his feet he felt, for the first time, real hate. Her and the kid – Louise and Karen. They were no longer men, they were mad dogs. His hands ached for a gun. It wasn’t enough to lock them out, to fend them off. He wanted to smash back at them.

Working in a rage, he slammed shut the kitchen door,

“What happened, George?”

He didn’t waste time in telling her.

“We need the fridge! It’ll hold them.”

For a moment she stood back, not understanding the new sound in his voice.

“Hurry up! They’ll be through the window –”

He grabbed the fridge. It stood in a small recess outside the kitchen door, tall, white, gleaming. He tried to pull it across the stone floor. It moved a few inches and stuck.

“Push it over!”

Still not too sure, she put her hands on the smooth top. It was the one thing they’d bought themselves, the largest model in the showroom.

They were in the kitchen now, moving slowly in the darkness, not sure if he’d been shot.

George pushed her away and put his palms against the side of the fridge. He shoved. It was heavy, crammed from the vegetable keeper to the freezing compartment with food for Christmas. It rocked back towards him. He put his shoulder to it.

“Push! They’re going to kill us!”

She wanted to tell him that it had cost eighty pounds, that the milk bottles would break, that –

But she put her hands to its smooth side and they both pushed and this time it went forward, end on, crashing to the stone floor. George got down to ram it against the door. What else was there? The cupboard – just inside the dining-room door.

“Hold the door,” he snapped at Louise.

Glasses crashed together as he dragged the sideboard across the straw matting on the dining-room floor. The legs caught. Not caring that solid corners rapped his shins, he bent down and got his fingers underneath, lifting it, dragging it. When his back was against the wall he scrambled up on top of the fridge and climbed round, ramming the heavy sideboard into the space between the fridge and the wall, bruising his fingers as he clawed and shoved the heavy wood.

In the kitchen they’d found the light switch. One of them tried a shoulder against the kitchen door.

“They can’t get in that way,” he said to Louise. The fridge and sideboard together formed a solid wedge. “The study door! Can’t we put something in there?”

He wasn’t speaking to her. In his mind he had a clear map of the house. The kitchen was blocked – unless they got a sledge-hammer and battered down the top half of the door.

That left the study. And the two windows, in the dining-room
and the sitting-room. Once when he’d been in his tree-house four kids from another street had tried to force their way in. He could see them now, the Schneider boy in a white T-shirt, another one they called Bricktop... he’d jeered at them as he’d sat at the top of the rope ladder, jabbing the heels of his baseball boots into their heads. Then he’d pulled up the ladder and sat there, spitting down on them, laughing as he dodged the stones they threw up. He’d been able to command the tree-house. It had only one way in. But how could he command three different entrances?

“Christ, isn’t there anything heavy?”

He’d known this before. Now he
knew.
It was in his guts, in his hands. They were fighting for their lives. He cursed himself for not using the knife on that guy when he’d had him –

The guy in the study!

“Yell out which window they’re at. Stay out of sight!”

He ran through the sitting-room.

Louise got behind the wooden wall at the bottom of the stairs. They were still pounding on the kitchen door. She wanted to run away. If she dropped Karen out of the bedroom window – it wasn’t very high up, they’d fall into deep snow – they could escape. Let them have Niles.

Madness was piling on madness. If they tried to touch Karen he would hit them with –

Something crossed her mind. She could
feel
herself hitting at men with something in her hands. Something in the house, what was it?

Then she remembered. She’d held it in her hands. Something that fitted into the hands as though it had been made for hitting. She ran up the stairs. There wasn’t time to tell George.

* * *

With his knife stuck down inside his trousers on his left side and his left hand tied to the window post, his chest pulled across the window sill, Chris Cawsey had struggled and twisted for minutes, trying to get his right hand round to the knife. He’d had to squirm until his skin felt raw, forcing the belt to move round his stomach bringing the knife handle within reach of his fingers.

He had the blade under the flex, feeling cautiously to avoid his skin, when George came ducking into the study. He wanted this guy as a hostage. Or as a human shield. If he could drag him through the window...

He grabbed at the knife. It jerked through the flex. He caught the wrist that held the knife. Cawsey pulled and jerked like a fox gone mad in a gin trap. It was all George could do to hold on to his wrist. This time no words were spoken. Both knew the situation had gone beyond words. To speak to a man meant you still thought of him as a fellow human being. Once you’d made up your mind that he was your enemy words became too intimate.

Cawsey tried to drag George’s hands on to the woodwork, where slivers of raw glass tore at his skin. Cawsey pulled at the flex that held his other wrist until it felt as though it had cut deep into his flesh.

Cawsey shouted something – it might have been “Tom”, George only cared that it was a call for help. He hit Cawsey across the face with his right hand, a swiping blow meant to shut him up. He wanted this guy in the house. When he let go to smack him Cawsey managed to jerk the knife hand free. George let go altogether to hold his forearms in front of his face. Cawsey jabbed at him with the knife.

“I’ll cut your eyes out!”

George heard the words but they were only sounds. He didn’t
need to be told what Cawsey was trying to do. He took a step back, trying to watch where the knife was, hands ready to make another grab at the guy’s wrists.

In that light it was hard to tell exactly what movements were made. Cawsey made a diagonal slash at George’s hands with the knife, then he brought it down on the flex, pressing it down until he felt it sharp on the bone of his wrist. But he’d cut the flex. Too late, George saw that he was pulling himself backwards out of the window.

He went to make a grab for him but heard the others coming alone the front of the house, one of them shouting something about letting Tom Hedden have a go with the shotgun.

He moved into the wall and pressed his back against it. Christ Almighty, he could have put that guy out of action if he’d had a club or something. A big stick. A brick. Anything.

Out of the panic of events he had managed to distil an instant defensive plan, blocking the windows, using his control of the lights to put them at a disadvantage, throwing the water... but there was a huge flaw in his reasoning. Apart from slightly scalding a couple he hadn’t been able to knock any of them out. They were attackers who couldn’t lose any men. He was being forced back but they were still at full strength. So far he’d been lucky, the guy with the gun hadn’t thought of coming in a window himself, covering them with the gun.

They’d get around to that. Already there were signs somebody out there was using his brains. Setting the curtains on fire would have worked if they’d had the sense to set two other guys in through the windows at the same time. But they were learning, just as he was.

Outside, Norman Scutt suddenly saw how they could get into
the house, all of them together. The Yank wouldn’t be able to do a thing.

“Hey, Tom, you get up on the sill and go in feet first. Keep the gun pointing in, he’ll never get near you.”

“That’s it!” one of the others exclaimed. “Blow his bloody head off.”

George didn’t know what to do. He could stand against the wall and make a grab for the gun barrel. No. Hedden was a farmer, a big ox of a man. In any hand-to-hand struggle he knew who would win.

Could he get the other pan of boiling water through the kitchen quickly enough to slosh it into the bastard’s face? Christ, that would be too damn tricky, he might spill some over his own hand running through the three rooms. Drop the pan – and have nothing.

He could let them have the study, get back into the hall and lock the door on them. No. That old latch wouldn’t hold a ten-year-old child, let alone five crazy men. There was no furniture he could drag along – in any case, that door opened inwards. He saw a film scene, a man barricading a door, hammering heavy planks across it, piling furniture – and then the door opening the other way. A comedy film.

There was only one hope. They’d have to retreat upstairs, give them the bottom of the house. Maybe he could hold them off from the landing, throw heavy stuff down on them. He thought of himself throwing chairs and beds – it would take too long. Five of them could easily rush the stairs while he was looking for stuff to throw.

It looked as though he’d have to try and jump the guy with the gun as he came through the window. Already he was being helped
up on to the sill, the others getting behind him so that he could get his feet on to the ledge.

Again he saw Knapman being blown backwards in the snow. The moment he took hold of that barrel it would be his arms against the other man’s.

“Louise,” he called through the hall. “Lock yourself in Karen’s room.”

There was no answer.

He didn’t blame her for running away. That was his first thought. But how? The kitchen door was blocked against an army. They’d have seen her climbing out of a window.

Unless one of them was already in the house!

He slammed the study door behind him as he dashed for the sitting-room. Whatever happened he’d make one of the bastards regret the day he was born.

Even as he ran he tried to think what he could use to hit the guy. It would have to be a chair, the small one at the table by the sittingroom window.

“George, I found the –”

She was coming towards him, moving so fast he thought there must be somebody behind.

“I’ll get him –”

“George, it’s Roger’s Christmas present, don’t you remember?”

“JESUS CHRIST, LOUISE, WE’RE BEING MURDERED AND YOU –”

He tried to knock whatever it was out of her hand. The sheer lunacy of Christmas presents at a time like this! She went on talking. He could have struck her to the ground.

“What’re you doing? You wanted something heavy.”

She shoved it in his chest, his hands feeling paper wrapped round something hard. And long. THE BASEBALL BAT!

“Louise, I –”

He didn’t wait. Back into the study. Hands on the clean swell of wood. Just the right weight. Feeling for the handle. Feeling a great swell of anger and revenge coming up from his guts.

Tom Hedden had one leg dangling over the inside sill, the shotgun cradled in the crook of his right arm, finger on the triggers, his other knee pushing against wood to get through. They were shoving him from behind, shoving too hard.

George stood a few feet away. He could see the long shape of the gun barrels. He had to swing from the side, keeping out of direct line with the barrels. He had to hit the gun, knock it down. Anything else and he’d be dead – it needed a two-handed blow and to get one delivered he’d have to step away from the wall.

He waited. Let him get the other leg in. He’d have to duck to manoeuvre his head under the window spar. That was the time, when he was more or less stretched out, almost on his back. Christ, hit him now, don’t wait, you’ll wait too long, he’ll be in, you can’t time it that well. But he held on.

“We’m got you,” somebody said. Hedden cursed and grunted with the effort. Then he had his left hand through, taking a grip, beginning to pull himself forward, backside sliding across the rough edges of splinters and framework. He did not care if he hurt himself, he had come to kill Henry Niles and nothing was going to stop him, neither the Yank nor Norman Scutt. He didn’t care about Norman’s talking, all this business about going to gaol, about killing folk. Henry Niles was the one he wanted. That’s why he wouldn’t let anyone else have the gun, he wanted it for Niles, to shoot him himself, like a dog worrying sheep, blow his dirty murdering heart out.

George raised the baseball bat. He shivered, though he didn’t feel cold. Then he stepped away from the wall and swung the bat.

It was a good feeling. The smooth handle fitted his hands perfectly. When it hit the barrel of the shotgun there was a clean impact. The gun smacked against Tom Hedden’s knees. George Magruder moved round a step, raising the bat, swinging it backhand at the man’s chest, knowing he had to keep hitting him or be shot.

Tom Hedden fought to free himself from the grip of the window framework. He could see the man, the Yank, swinging the bat. He pulled the trigger.

His elbow was caught against the centre-post of the window. When the shotgun went off it was aimed at his boots.

Above the awful boom of the gun George heard the terrible scream. He knew he had not been hit. He swung the bat sideways into Tom Hedden’s stomach. Raised it again, hammered it down again. Again and again.

Only when the man was limp did he make a grab for the gun. It came easily into his hands. Tom Hedden lay on his back, legs dangling into the room, head fallen backwards, face staring up at Norman Scutt and Bert Voizey and Phillip Riddaway.