Famine

by Graham Masterton

  While Ed was distracted, Calvin Muldoon tried to make a silent rush up the landing on tippy-toes, but Ed whipped the gun back around just in time, and levelled it at Muldoon’s head with an expression of such fierceness that the poor man was brought up short, teetering on his toes.

  ‘I warned you,’ Ed told him, harshly. Muldoon backed off, his hands raised high.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. Take it easy. I was only doing my job.’

  Della meanwhile had been trying to pick Shearson’s lock. She was hunkered down in front of it, her teeth bared in a grimace of concentration, her fingers trembling as she tried to sense the levers inside.

  Ed said, ‘Hurry up, will you? They’re going to go off and get guns of their own before we know where we are.’ Calvin Muldoon was already backing down the staircase, and Ed heard his brother call from the living area, ‘Are you all right, there, Calvin? Didn’t get yourself hurt, did you?’

  Della said nothing, but reserved her attention for the lock.

  Peter Kaiser’s door opened again, only an inch or so. There was a pause, and then Peter said, ‘Is that you Hardesty? Can you hear me?’

  ‘I can hear you,’ Ed told him.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Hardesty, but whatever it is you won’t get away with it. This house is locked up tighter than a prison.’

  ‘Let me worry about that,’ Ed called back.

  Peter thought for a moment, and then he said, ‘If you harm Senator Jones in any way – and I mean this – you’ll have every police force in the country after you.’

  ‘He won’t be harmed, unless he’s stupid,’ said Ed.

  ‘You won’t get away with it,’ Peter repeated.

  Della said, ‘Come on, you pig of a lock. Come on.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Ed exhorted her.

  Now, Calvin Muldoon was climbing back up the staircase, crouched low on knees and elbows. Ed couldn’t see too clearly through the carved wooden banisters, but he glimpsed a nickel-plated .45 automatic in Calvin’s right hand. He was frightened now. There wasn’t any doubt that the Muldoons were as well armed as the Marine Corps, and that they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot if they thought it was part of their job. He wondered if he ought to fire a warning shot along the landing, but he didn’t know how many shells were left in his pump-gun, and so he decided not to.

  Della said, ‘Done it,’ in such a quiet voice that Ed didn’t hear her. But then she pushed Shearson’s door open, and Shearson’s alarm bells went off, and amidst the shattering, blinding noise, Ed realised that she had saved their skins at the last possible moment. Holding the pump-gun in his right hand, he pushed Della through the open door with his left, and then backed in after her.

  ‘I hope you know you scared the pants off me just then,’ Ed told her, and he was so genuinely frightened that his voice sounded strangled and high. The bells kept on shrieking, so they could scarcely hear each other speak. ‘Let’s go get Shearson,’ shouted Della.

  They locked the double doors behind them, and then strode purposefully down the short corridor that led to Shearson’s bedroom. Ed kicked open the louvred door, and pounced into the room with the pump-gun held high, like something out of Starsky and Hutch. He needn’t have bothered. The huge king-sized bed with its puffy white coverlet was empty, and Shearson Jones was standing instead on the far side of the room, next to a small cocktail cabinet, dressed in a vast white nightshirt, and lighting up a Partagas cigar.

  The alarm bells were so shrill in here that Ed didn’t even attempt to speak. He simply waved the rifle at Shearson, and inclined his head towards the door.

  Shearson puffed at his cigar, and shook his head. He mouthed the words, ‘no way.’

  Della, in her bright green wrap, walked directly over to Shearson and yelled something in his ear. He stared at her for a moment, and then thoughtfully laid his cigar down in a silver ashtray. He opened a louvred wardrobe door, and tugged out pants, shirt, and a dark blue sweater that must have taken the wool of two dozen sheep. Without another word, he gave the clothes to Della, and led the way out of the bedroom.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ shouted Ed.

  ‘I told him we only had one shell left in the gun,’ Della told him. ‘I also told him what part of his anatomy was going to get hit first.’

  Ed raised his eyebrows. ‘He believes that I’d do that? I mean, maim him that way?’

  ‘No. But he believes that I would.’

  They reached the doors of Shearson’s suite, and Della quickly unlocked them. Shearson stood by, as fat and white as an apparition of Falstaflf. Della shouted at him, ‘Do what you’re told. That’s all. No jokes, no tricks, no nothing. I don’t have much of a sense of humour tonight.’

  Shearson made a moue amidst his four double chins.

  Gradually, Della drew the door inwards. As she did so, the alarm stopped ringing, and there was an extraordinary silence, still crowded with ghostly after-images of clangorous bells.

  They waited. Ed glanced down, and saw the sweep hand of his watch counting out more than thirty seconds. The landing outside was utterly silent, and yet the Muldoons had to be there, and maybe Peter Kaiser, too, if he’d summoned up the nerve.

  ‘We’re coming out now!’ called Della.

  There was no reply. Only silence, and darkness.

  ‘If you try to stop us. Senator Jones will be seriously wounded,’ she said. ‘Not killed, but wounded in a way which is going to cause him agony and distress for the rest of his life. Do you understand that?’

  Still no reply. Della looked back at Ed, and then at Shearson Jones, and from the expression on her face she was obviously trying to calculate the risks of taking an enormously fat senator and a nervous farmer-cum-actuary on a run for freedom that could get them all killed.

  ‘Ed,’ she said, ‘you could still stay behind. I’m not saying that Shearson would give you a particularly nice time, but it could be better than dying.’

  Ed shook his head. ‘I’m coming, and that’s all there is to it. Don’t worry about it, Della, I won’t hold you back. Just say the word and we’ll go.’

  Della looked at Shearson. ‘You hear that, my darling? You’re coming on a little trip.’

  Shearson sighed. ‘My father always told me to stay clear of women with oversized breasts,’ he replied. ‘Their sense of loyalty can always be assessed in inverse ratio to the measurement of their bazumbas.’

  Ed prodded Shearson’s fat side with the muzzle of the pump gun. It was like prodding a pillow. Shearson looked round at him, offended, but Ed gave him what Sally had always called his ‘nice alligator’ smile in return.

  ‘Are you going to tell me who you are?’ Shearson asked them. ‘Do I get to know why you’re kidnapping me? Are you Symbionese Liberation Army? Are you Israelis? Not that it really makes a great deal of difference.’

  Della ignored him. ‘I want you to step out of this door with your hands up,’ she instructed him. ‘And I’m just going to warn you that if you attempt to get away, or do anything at all except what I tell you to do, then Ed here is going to take your balls off as fast as you can say Vatican choir.’

  ‘Well, you can’t be Israelis,’ said Shearson. ‘Israelis never have such a colourful turn of phrase.’

  ‘Move!’ said Della, and pulled him towards the door.

  Shearson grinned at her as he stepped out on to the landing. ‘Whatever happens, my dear,’ he told her, ‘I’d like you to know that you were a great lay.’

  With Shearson ahead of them, Ed and Della walked out of the bedroom and along the landing. There was no sign of Peter Kaiser or of either of the Muldoon brothers. The house was so silent they could almost hear the dust falling.

  Ed looked nervously from one side to the other as he escorted Shearson down the staircase. Shearson was humming to himself under his breath, and that unsettled Ed even more. It sounded as if Shearson knew something that he and Della didn’t.

  They crossed the living ar
ea. Shearson remarked loudly, ‘I wish you’d tell me what devious political purpose this kidnap is supposed to serve.’ And almost instantly, every light in the living area was switched on, and both Muldoon brothers stepped out from passages at the side, with automatics raised in both hands.

  Later, Ed remembered what happened in such detail that he couldn’t believe it had all been over so quickly. He had thrown himself forward, right on to Shearson’s back, and toppled the senator to the floor. As he did so, he had twisted himself around and seized Shearson’s neck in the crook of his arm, wrenching it back, so that Shearson’s head protected his chest. Della had dived behind one of the sofas.

  Calvin Muldoon had dodged down beside a chair, squinted along the sights of his Colt .45, and fired twice. One shot had shattered a white porcelain lampshade base into a blast of snowy shrapnel. The second had echoed its way down one of the passages.

  There had been a second’s silence, and then Calvin’s brother had fired a wild shot that broke a window on the other side of the room. There had been another second’s silence. Neither dared to shoot again in case he hit the senator. There had been a sharp smell of gunsmoke in the air.

  ‘Muldoon!’ Ed had called out. ‘Muldoon – there’s nothing at all you can do.’

  ‘You just try to move and I’ll get you,’ Calvin Muldoon replied. ‘Either that, or I’ll get the woman.’

  Ed had thought about that, in one of those vivid, jumbled, instant flashes of processed information. Then, without hesitation, he had lifted the pump-gun and fired.

  The shot had blown the stuffing out of the cushions in the chair which Calvin Muldoon had been using for cover. The room had suddenly been filled with smoke, and echoes, and hundreds of floating duck feathers. Calvin Muldoon had been hit in the neck, and he had suddenly appeared with his hand held around his throat, kneeling bolt upright, his face as horrified as one of Shearson’s Kwakiutl masks. Thick red blood had been jetting out from between his fingers across the floor, spurt after spurt after spurt. His brother had shouted, ‘Calvin! Calvin, my God! Calvin!’

  Next, they were out of the door, out into the night, and running. Della was way ahead, crossing the wide front drive to the travelled stand where the cars were parked. Ed trailed fifty or sixty feet behind, trying to drag Shearson along by the sleeve of his nightshirt.

  ‘I can’t run! I can’t run!’ wheezed Shearson.

  ‘I don’t give a damn!’ Ed shouted at him. ‘Run, or I’ll blow you to big fat pieces!’

  There were three cars parked by a windbreak of red pines – Ed’s own Caprice Classic station wagon, in which he had driven up to Lake Vista with Della; a Chevy Suburban wagon which the Muldoons used to drive around the grounds; and Shearson’s rented Lincoln Continental. The chauffeur, a quiet and serious man with a permanent frown, had been put up in the guest cottage close to the main gates.

  ‘Keys!’ said Della, as Shearson and Ed caught up with her. ‘Did you remember your car keys?’

  ‘I didn’t even know I was going to have to drive tonight,’ said Ed.

  Shearson gasped, ‘No more running. Please. I beg you. No more running.’

  Della opened the Suburban’s left-hand door, and felt around for keys. ‘No damned keys,’ she said. ‘Why couldn’t they be careless for once?’

  Ed, one-handed, the pump-gun still waving at Shearson Jones, opened up the Lincoln. It smelled of leather and car-freshener. ‘No keys here, either.’

  Della looked back towards the house. Peter Kaiser appeared briefly in the open front doorway, and then disappeared again. All around them the night was windy and strewn with stars. They could hear Muldoon shouting, and Peter calling, ‘Don’t do that, you’ll choke him, for Christ’s sake!’

  Della bit her lip. ‘They’ll be after us in a minute. You wait until Peter Kaiser finds those papers are missing. Listen – get in the car.’

  ‘What’s the point? We can’t get it started.’

  ‘Just get in the car. It’s downhill all the way to the guest house. If you can give it enough of a push to start with, we can coast to the gates, and then get hold of the keys from the chauffeur.’

  Muldoon appeared in the doorway of the house now, and unexpectedly fired a shot. Ed saw the flash of the .45’s muzzle, and heard the bullet drone away into the pines.

  Shearson said, ‘You’d better make up your tiny minds, because they’re quite liable to shoot us all.’

  Ed tugged open the back door of the Lincoln. ‘Get in,’ he ordered Shearson. Shearson beamed smugly, and wedged himself inside with a great show of puffing and blowing.

  ‘I hope you realise this is all futile,’ he said, as Ed slammed the door on him.

  Della opened the passenger door. ‘Give me the gun,’ she told Ed. ‘I’ll try to give you some cover while you get us started.’

  Ed looked at her for one questioning second, and then tossed the pump-gun across the roof of the car. Della caught it in one hand, without effort, as if she’d been trained in gun-handling all her life. Even Ed couldn’t have caught it like that.

  Releasing the Lincoln’s parking brake, Ed gripped the steering wheel in one hand and the door frame in the other, and started to push. At first, the car wouldn’t move at all. He grunted, and pushed again, and it swayed forward about a half-inch. Behind him, Shearson Jones said, with mock concern, ‘You don’t want me to get out again, do you? Would that be of any help?’

  Ed gasped, ‘You stay – where you – are. I need – the ballast—’

  There was another loud shot from the house, and a bullet pinged off the Lincoln’s rear bumper. Ed shouted to Della, ‘They’re trying to hit the tyres!’

  ‘That’s another fallacy,’ said Della. ‘You can’t burst a tyre with a bullet. They’re aiming for the gas tank, more likely.’

  ‘Whatever,’ panted Ed, and heaved at the Lincoln again. Gradually, with a slow gravelly crunching sound, the limousine began to creep forward. At first it wasn’t rolling at any speed at all, and Ed was worried that it would come to a stop as soon as it came to a gentle rise in the driveway. But he kept on heaving at it, and it picked up more and more momentum, until Della had to run along beside it.

  There was a crackling fusillade of pistol-shots from the house. One of them ricocheted off the Lincoln’s trunk, with a noise like a complaining seagull. Another struck the gravel close to Ed’s feet.

  ‘Peter Kaiser’s shooting as well,’ said Della. She stepped up on to the sill of the Lincoln’s open passenger door, rested the pump-gun across the roof, sighted it, and fired one loud booming shot towards the doorway of the house. Shearson, inside the car, grimaced and said, ‘Jesus.’

  ‘All right,’ said Ed, ‘let’s get the hell out of here.’

  The large black Continental bounced silently along the sloping driveway. It was eerie, travelling without an engine. There was no sound but the crunching of the tyres on the ground, the squeaking of the suspension, and Shearson’s thick panting in the back seat.

  ‘There’s the guest cottage,’ said Della, pointing to a small white-washed house set back amongst the silhouette of the trees. It was almost three o’clock in the morning now, and the sky had faded a little, to a pale shade of oyster, but the ground was still thick with the shadows of the night.

  Ed steered the Lincoln around the curve which took the driveway to the main gates. Then he applied the brake, and opened his door.

  ‘Give me two minutes,’ he said. ‘If Shearson tries anything, shoot him. Anywhere you like.’

  ‘I hope you realise that the gates are locked, and that you don’t have a key to them, either,’ smiled Shearson, fatly.

  Ed said nothing, but walked briskly across the driveway to the brick steps which led up to the guest cottage. He skirted around the shadowy wooden verandah, his feet echoing on the boards, until he came to a window with floral drapes pulled across it. He listened, and he thought he could hear the chaffeur snoring inside. He banged loudly on the window with the flat of his hand.


  The bedside light went on straight away, with almost comical speed. A voice said, ‘Who’s that? What’s happening?’

  ‘Everything’s okay,’ said Ed. ‘I just need the keys to the car. Someone locked it by mistake, and Senator Jones has left some important documents in it.’

  A long silence. Then the chauffeur said, ‘Do you know what time it is? It’s three o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Sure it’s three o’clock in the morning. But the President’s called on Senator Jones for some urgent information, and we have to have those keys. Come on, pal, just pass them out, and then you can go back to sleep.’

  Ed heard a cot creaking, and a loud sniff. ‘I’m not supposed to hand them over to anybody, you know.’

  ‘Senator Jones isn’t just anybody, and neither is the President. So will you give me the keys?’

  Up at the house, Ed heard the whistling roar of the Chevy Surburban’s engine starting up. He stepped back from the cottage window, and peered up the hill. He could make out the wagon’s lights as Peter and Muldoon circled around the front of the house in pursuit.

  ‘Will you hurry up, please?’ Ed called out. ‘Senator Jones is real impatient.’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ said the chauffeur, from behind the floral drapes. ‘I’m trying to remember if I left the keys in my uniform pants or my Levis. I did some work on the car earlier on, you know. The brakes were squealing like hogs. Do you know what it was? Dust, that’s what it was. This perishing Kansas dust, in the linings.’

  Ed stepped back again. The lights of the Muldoons’ wagon were already halfway down the hill, flickering their way through the pines. He could hear the whine of the four-wheel drive, and the crunching of the tyres on the gravel.

  He thundered on the chauffeur’s bedroom window with his clenched fist. ‘Are you going to give me those fucking keys or do I have to tear down the wall and get them myself?’

  The drapes abruptly parted. Then the sash window came rattling up. The chauffeur was standing there in pink striped pyjamas, solemn and frightened, with his hair sticking up from sleeping. He was holding out the keys like a small boy who’s been caught stealing candies.