by Barry, Mike
“There is no one to understand,” Wulff said. “Are you the only ones in the house?”
“In the house, yes. Outside there are five on duty, some sentries, some working in the garden disguised. They will not know what has happened if we leave.”
“All right,” Wulff said, “that’s good. That can be worked with.” He bent over, picked up Montez’s gun, put it in his pocket. “Go upstairs and just stay in the house for a while. As long as the house is secure, we’ll think of something.”
“It is going to be very bad,” the younger one said. “It is going to be very bad.”
“We will take one thing at a time,” Wulff said. “We will not be concerned with the future, but only with present time and the present will become the future. Make sure the house is secure and stay up there.”
“All right,” the older guard said. He turned and went, the other followed him. Carlin heard the door click at the top of the stairs. He looked at Wulff, unbelieving. Montez groaned and turned on the floor. Wulff went over and very efficiently kicked him under the heart and Montez was still.
Carlin said, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe what you’ve done.”
“You had better.”
“I never saw—”
“You had better believe it,” Wulff said. He raised a hand, wiped a little sweat from his forehead, came in on Carlin. “It happened all right. You knew it was going to happen.”
Carlin tried to move but could not. The pain, dull for a while, was efficient, terrible. He was dead. He knew it. Deep internal hemorrhage. But he was in more contact than he had been for a long time. “Why?” he said. “Why did you do it?”
“That’s very simple,” Wulff said, looking over at Montez, then back at Carlin. “You know the answer to that one.”
“I don’t know the answer to anything.”
“Sure you do,” Wulff said and looked at Carlin up and down and Carlin felt the fear beginning; it was impossible after what he had gone through that he could feel yet more fear, and yet he did, this was something else, this was hitting him at a level that Montez for all his ingeniousness never had. “What are you doing?” Carlin said. “Why?”
“You know why I did it,” Wulff said. “You know why.”
“Yes,” Carlin said, deep in his throat. He could barely speak. “Yes I do.”
“He tortured you and you’re in bad shape and you’re going to die, Carlin. You’re going to die very soon.” Wulff reached into his pocket, took out the gun, pointed it at Carlin. “But that isn’t enough,” he said. “That’s no satisfaction at all. I don’t want you to just die and I don’t want to know that he did it to you. I want to kill you myself. It’s very important that you die by my hand.”
“You’re crazy,” Carlin said. It was not analysis but terror. He had never been so frightened in his life, even at the worst of it.
“They all say that,” Wulff said. “They all say crazy when they mean sane. But that’s all right. I wasn’t here to debate with Montez and I’m not here to debate with you either. I’m just here to kill you.”
“Why?”
“Because you killed a few good men,” Wulff said, “and you’re a death merchant and a killer who would have gotten crazier and crazier, and you’re practically the last one left, and I think I wanted you more than anyone, even more than Calabrese because I had respect for that old bastard and he really wasn’t into drugs and death, he was just into money—drugs and death were incidentals. But you’re a new breed, Carlin. With you it was shit all the way, shit and death and that’s the worst. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take that and I wanted you very badly.”
Deep in pain, deep into the sense of his own death, Carlin said anyway, “Please don’t. I’m hurt. I’m going to die. Let me die—”
“No,” Wulff said, “no, it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t feel good. Death isn’t worth anything unless it feels good, Carlin. I owe you this one.”
He pulled the trigger and Carlin saw nothing else, at the center of the single white hot flash there was a crevice into which he fell, but blind, blind forever he screamed and all the way down toward the end wondering, at the last of it, whether you went alone or whether you joined those who followed or whether, when you came right down to it, it made any difference at all.
He never heard Wulff shoot Montez.
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Copyright © 1975 by Mike Barry
All rights reserved.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4245-7
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4245-9
Cover art © 123rf.com/Kellie Folkerts