Moontrap - Don Berry (45 page)

Suddenly Monday stopped, looking over toward the
rising ground.  He gestured with his hand and squatted on his
heels. Thurston sat down beside him, pulling a handkerchief from his
vest pocket to wipe his forehead. Monday peered out at the little
promontory, and finally pointed.

"
See that little butte?" he said quietly to
Thurston.

"Yes, what about it?"

"Y'see them three big rocks up there? One by the
edge, the other two close together in the middle?"

"
Yes, yes," Thurston said impatiently.

Monday brought his finger down and rested his wrists
on his knees.

"One of 'em ain't a rock," he said.

Even as they watched a tiny figure stood up beside a
boulder and stretched his arms wide. It was like watching a theater
show from a great distance. The figure disappeared for a moment
behind the rock, then reappeared, starting to descend from the little
humped peak. Almost immediately they lost sight of him, as he merged
with the rock face in the distance.

Monday turned to Thurston, his face without
expression. Thurston met his glance for a moment.

"Well, let's go," Monday said. "We
picked up another half-hour."

Old coon's getting careless, he thought. Then he
remembered that Webb would be figuring on having a good start over
them. He would not have been able to guess they could make up so much
time by taking a steamboat downriver. He didn't know the country, and
it was costing him dear. Monday shook his head. They would catch him
now, before he had any time to fort up.

"
Let's go," he said again. sharply.
irritated. "You comin' or not?"

As the column filed past the clear space. each of
them glanced at the promontory, where just a moment ago their quarry
had stood. The silent hot sun swung over the top of the. Silently
they followed the rocky, dusty trail that zigzagged up the face of
the smaller of the two peaks. In a couple of hours the top of the
small promontory was below them and when they came to clear points
they could see that the land around was beginning to flatten out now.
They were above the terrain, and as their steps lengthened into yards
and the hot hours of afternoon passed, the horizon drew farther and
farther away, until at last they could see the Cascade peaks, tiny on
the horizon, still white-capped with snow. Hood, Rainier, Adams. Tiny
cones, almost indistinguishable, like bleached anthills across a wide
plain.

The going was steeper here, and they did not make as
good time. Most of them were not used to climbing, and once or twice
they had to stop for a few minutes. The sun swung down, and as they
neared the edge of the timber the western sky took on a reddish
tinge.

The trail came to a long meadow that stretched down
to the left, barricaded on the opposite side by a straight wall of
rock, looking almost man-made in its regularity. Monday stopped
again.

The trail itself swung out around the trees, heading
up into the open rubble of rock. Leaving the shelter of the trees, a
man would be perfectly exposed to the natural fortress of the rock
wall.

The more he looked at it the less he liked it. No, he
decided finally. That don't shine. There was a limit to the extent he
could trust his notion that Webb would be at the top; and he had
reached the limit. He backtracked, moving back into the secure
anonymity of the thick
forest.

"What's the matter?" Thurston said.

"Could be a mousetrap," Monday said.
"There's a perfect set-up over there. We best take another way."

He went back along the trail two hundred yards or so.
There was still forest above, and he wanted to stay with the cover as
long as he could. He started straight up the side of the hill, hoping
to gain a few hundred more feet of height before he had to go into
the clear. The others followed reluctantly. After fifteen minutes he
saw the clear light of the sky through the trunks of the trees, and
knew he had gone about as far with forest cover as was possible. He
stopped and waited for the others to come up with him.

"
Spread out a little," he said quietly,
"and take it easy, for christ's sake."

The others ranged themselves to either side. This
high there was not too much brush, and the relative clear gave them a
chance to move.

When they were set in a long line across the face of
the hill, Monday moved forward.

They reached the edge of the woods, where there was a
sharp dividing line between the cluttered rocky slope and the trees.
A hundred yards above them was the crest of the smaller peak,
silhouetted now against the redness of the setting sun. Monday
studied the slope, looking for some kind of cover for a dozen men.

Suddenly, at his left, one of the men darted out into
the open, slip-running across the slope to the shelter of a boulder.
Behind him a little stream of rocks slid down.

Goddamn idiot, Monday thought. Wants to skirmish a
little. Another silhouette appeared at the top of the peak, coming
around the boulder. For what seemed an eternity it stood still.

"
Get back!" Monday shouted. On either side
of him there was the crashing thunder of exploding powder.
 

Chapter Twenty

1

Half blinded from staring into the setting sun, the
old man saw nothing of the shaded slope for a moment, except the mass
of darkness that was the edge of timber, a few hundred feet down.
Then, astonishingly. a sudden line of white flowers seemed to bloom
at the forest's edge; the shock. the final echoing roar of the guns
that rolled off the mountain slope and seemed to hang in the air.

An invisible hammer smashed into his side, jerking
him around and back, off balance. His foot slipped into a tiny
crexice in the stones, and he fell to his side with the sound of the
blast still in his ears.

The side of his body was lost in a fog of numbness,
and he could feel only an enormous pressure like a great, inexorable
ram pounding against his side. As he fell, with his foot wedged in
the crack, he felt a dull, sudden sensation in his leg that was not
like pain, but like the grating of two stones together somewhere deep
inside.

He was still for a moment, his right cheek rammed
into the gravel as he fell. He blinked once, staring at the stones
that rested just before his eyes. In his mind was the sharp vision of
the white blossoms of smoke erupting suddenly from the dark bank of
trees like a row of miraculous flowers. Slowly, he began to feel the
sharp points of gravel digging into the side of his face.

Then it came; then the pain came.

His leg suddenly exploded into brittle shards that
speared up through his groin. He lost his breath and gasped sharply,
clenching his eyesshut without volition. He heard the thin, animal
bark of pain, and knew it was himself. He tried to raise himself on
his arms, but his arms did not move. He was heavy, a great stone
seemed to have fallen on the side of his chest with blind and massive
force, shoving him into the ground, deeper and deeper. His chest
began to throb against the crushing weight, and a steady pulsating
roar of blood sounded in his ears.

The first wave passed, and for a second he could
breathe again. He opened his eyes and found he was staring into the
blood-colored western sky. Then the pain shattered his leg again, and
the red sun swooped suddenly down to fill his field of vision with
the smoky hot color of blood and wash away all other sight. The
descending ocean of red poured over him and he let himself go, to
pass into the profound depths where sound and sight were drowned in
the softly throbbing waves of redness.

He did not know how long he floated there, drifting
deep within a pulsating cavern of redness; drowned in the
measureless, throbbing heart of some great beast that might have been
the world. He twisted and revolved slowly, moved by heaving tides he
could not comprehend, conscious only of the relentless contraction
and release of the monster heart, pulsing slowly, thick waves of
pressure beating against his mind, the thunderous roar that echoed
down the wide caverns into a blackness that hovered just beyond.

Gradually he became aware of a dizzy feeling of
rising, and the gravel that pressed at the flesh of his cheek pushed
him harshly up through the murky redness. He moved toward a thin veil
that was the surface, and passed it with the sensation of puncturing
a membrane that separated two worlds. The edges of the wound drew
away from him and he emerged into consciousness.

He discovered himself lying on his right side, head
downward on the slope. The edge of the sun was still just visible, so
he could not have been unconscious long, a minute, perhaps two. He
lifted his face from the ground, and heard the tiny, faint rattle as
pieces of gravel dropped away from his cheek. Others he could still
feel embedded in the flesh. The enormous pressure remained on his
left side, and he knew he would have to relieve that before he could
move. Slowly he turned his head to look, blinking.

He was vaguely surprised to find that nothing rested
on top of him after all. Still the sensation of throbbing weight
persisted. The side of his hunting shirt was torn at the left, and a
wet black stain spread around the edges of the rip. He could feel a
thin, oily flood moving down across his belly, a sensation vaguely
like insects crawling. From the loose hem of the shirt lying on the
ground a little rivulet of blood appeared, moving in a sluggish
stream to the edge of the leather and pouring itself into the
absorbent ground.

He put his head back on the ground for a moment. He
drew his right arm back and tried to push himself up. The effort made
a dull explosion in his side and he gasped again. Slowly he raised
his upper body, trying not to jar the explosion into existence. He
had lost the power to make his muscles act unconsciously. He had to
concentrate on each motion individually. The elbow braced, the
shoulder and back set, then tense, then moving. He thought carefully
of each step.

He came up resting on his forearm on the third try.
He looked back at his side again, puzzled, unable to believe the
weight he felt so clearly did not exist. But there was nothing except
the ragged rip in the leather and the spreading stain. He
deliberately and slowly moved his left arm, closing his eyes tightly
as the sensation of weight turned slowly to a flood of dull pain.

But there was no choice. He had to get up, no matter
what it cost. They would be coming for him. He set his teeth
together, and his lips drew back in a silent grimace. He breathed
deeply twice, and felt a new, sharper agony somewhere inside him. He
rested his left forearm on the ground and slowly let his body turn so
that he was belly down, supported on his forearms, his head hanging
low. The flood of pain from his side swept up, subsided. He tried to
inch his left leg forward, but it did not respond. Regretfully he let
the weight of his body settle on his left arm, and moved the right
leg. The motion tensed the muscles of his left side, and the dull,
throbbing explosion rumbled again. He ignored it, his eyes clenched
tightly shut, and brought his right knee up.

He found no way to avoid producing the pain again,
and with this realization it was a little easier. He would just have
to live with it. Methodically he hauled himself up until he was
sitting on his right hip, his body braced against the stiff right
arm.

He looked down at his left leg to see if he could
determine why it did not respond. The lower part was wrong. His foot
lay limply on the ground, though his knee was turned upward.

It was a weirdly disturbing sight, the angles were
all wrong, the lower part seemed have lost its relation to the upper.

He reached down with his fingertips, touching the
leather, moving slowly down the length of the leg. He found something
more solid than flesh, like a rock beneath the leather. Puzzled, he
pushed it a little harder; suddenly threw his head back as the bright
flash of pain exploded, blinding him momentarily.

When the first brilliance of agony had passed, he
reached behind his belt for the butcher knife. He inserted the point
up near the knee of his trousers and ripped down the length. He
slowed the movement of the knife as he reached the hard point, and
worked carefully to the side. The leather fell away on either side,
revealing a jagged shard of bone that protruded from his calf near
the front.

He looked down at it for a moment, then turned his
eyes to his side again. The ball had plowed into the rib cage, but
well to the side. Tenderly touching it, he could not tell how many
ribs it had smashed in passing. Every time he moved a thin, screaming
pain echoed somewhere deep inside. He could not tell exactly where it
was, and that seemed strange. It felt as though the whole side of his
chest was full of glassy splinters, and he thought it was probably
true. The heavy, half-inch lead ball erupted when it hit something
hard, and smashed bone like a hammer. Some inner part of him was
pierced by the shards of bone each time he moved, but he could not
locate the pain accurately enough to know what part.

He looked up and saw that he was only a few feet from
the boulder against which he had rested to watch the sunset. His
rifle still stood upright, resting on the butt. lt seemed uncanny
that it should not have moved, that it could have remained quietly
standing while the whole world exploded and erupted.