by Alan Hyder
Later in the evening, with a great yellow moon hanging low over the valley, and the dull rosy glow from Khaenealler’s comet diffusing over the hills, Janet nursed the cat, while Bingen and I sprawled at her feet with smoke from our cigarettes curling peacefully upwards.
We were tensed suddenly, unexpectedly, when a drunken voice bawled. The words were tossed down into the silent valley, resounding, until the world was full of hurled threats.
VIII
The Killing of the Stranger
IN THE ENSUING SILENCE, as we stared at each other, there came a sound of pebbles slithering down into the valley, and on the crest of the hill, dimly against the starry sky, we saw a figure staggering drunkenly to and fro. A raised fist menaced us.
‘I’m acomin’ back for you two . . . I’m acomin’ back for yer, an’ you’d better watch your . . . step. I’m comin’ back. Comin’ fer the girl an’ all. I’m comin’ back.’
‘Mister Dusty Rhodes!’ I ejaculated. ‘We ought to have bumped him off while we had the chance. He’s going to be a nuisance if he hangs about round here.’
The raucous voice softened as Rhodes swayed and staggered from the hilltop, but the refrain still dropped down to us.
‘I’m comin’ back! Comin’ back!’
He must have circled drunkenly, for his voice grew stronger again, and he reappeared for a moment on another edge of the valley to loom blackly against the red glow from the comet. Again, the valley was filled with blood-curdling threats and his promise anent returning. His voice silenced jerkily as we heard him stumble and fall. He slid, obviously unexpectedly from the cursing, down a pebbled slope. Then he went swearing and staggering away into the night.
‘Hum! Says he’s coming back.’ Bingen grinned at me. ‘Sounded as if he was back. But it was kind of him to let us know.’
‘We really ought to go out after him and give him such a towsing he will alter his mind about coming back,’ I said sternly. ‘We ought to have done it before. Treating a bloke like Rhodes decently is making him think he’s put the wind up you. but I don’t like to go and beat him up while he’s blind drunk. Perhaps, in the morning, he’ll have forgotten all about us, and gone on his way.’
‘I’m frightened of him,’ Janet whispered. ‘I believe he’ll come back.’
‘Let him. It won’t do any harm,’ I told her reassuringly, taking her hand in mine. ‘Nothing to get nervous about so long as Bingen or I are handy.’
Janet had listened silently to Rhodes’s shouted threats and, curiously at the time I thought it, crept close to me to grasp my arm. I wondered why she did not go to Bingen. She said again:
‘I’m frightened of him. Don’t make fun of him. You mustn’t let me be alone when he is about. Oh, I believe I’ll be frightened to be alone any more, now.’
‘It’s nothing to be frightened of. He’s drunk. When he sobers up, he won’t bother us again.’ I squeezed her hand. ‘Come along, forget all about him.’
We heard no more from Dusty Rhodes that night, and I think before we turned in Janet had put him from her mind. I felt sure either Rhodes would have to be scared away from the neighbourhood, or we would get no peace until he was placed in a condition which would not allow him to be an offence to anyone except from a nasal sense. It was three days before we saw him again.
But for periodical descents of small numbers of Vampires, the days passed uneventfully. At first, I used to sally forth from the cave to slaughter them, were they in reasonably small flights, but when we found they stayed only a short while before leaving, Bingen and I used to play bezique, while Janet sewed in the barricaded cave until they decamped. That was the better, the easier way, for their bodies had to be carted over the hill and disposed of, and it was a queerly nasty job carrying these limp, chill, decapitated carcasses. It was far better to let them stay their time, squatting, humped motionlessly outside the cave, until they went away. Somehow, I received the impression they were uneasy, unsettled, as though wanting to return to their habitat, and yet did not want to leave with nourishment still to be had.
After Rhodes’s second visit, the times during which they sat about the cave entrance grew appreciably shorter. I wondered fantastic things about them. Did their food last them over long periods? Did they feed but once every month or so, like snakes? Once, we saw two lying flattened to the earth with muzzles boring into the loosened soil where we had buried their fellows. Lying so prone, I thought them dead, until Bingen hurled a stone, which twisted them in the bracken to stare coldly at us as though we disturbed meditations.
During those days preceding Rhodes’s return, Bingen and I made solitary journeys over the hills to the outskirts of the town, bringing back upon the barrow such stores as seemed of use to us. We did not leave Janet alone. Bingen tumbled across the local territorial barracks, the rifles and ammunition and, but for him, we surely must have lost the battle with Mister Rhodes.
Four rifles Bingen brought back, and half a dozen boxes of .303 cartridges.
I was pleased with them, lost no time erecting a target to blaze away with the unlimited ammunition. With the first half a dozen rounds cracked off and echoes crackling over the hills, I stood with the rifle at my shoulder. That noise would have startled all the birds for miles around! The rifle dropped to the ground. A world without birds! We had not remarked it before. It was six months before they returned. Gulls were the first we saw, drifting high in the sky like minute, wind-blown scraps of white paper. Later, we saw birds of the hedgerows, which darted to cover at our approach. Once I knew they were gone, I missed the birds even more, I think, than the beasts and the presence of humans.
Rhodes, to Janet, was a tangible fear. She was sure he would come back . . . and he did. For myself, I had almost forgotten him, but I think that Dusty Rhodes discovered the barracks and the small-arms arsenal, and visited our valley immediately afterwards.
It so happened it was my turn to stay with Janet, while Bingen went off on an exploration after more stores. The valley was rapidly assuming the appearance of some great dump, for I thought it wise to acquire all we could in case . . . Where Bingen was, I do not know. Janet, busy under my superintending, was sewing straps I had brought from the barracks into equipment which would allow me to carry, when abroad, sword, pistol, and rifle. Frog and holster were fixed into a web-belt, and I tried it on. Janet giggled at me. In khaki shorts and blue shirt with shortened sleeves, I buckled the equipment about my middle, saluted her with military precision, and asked for orders. When there came a derisive shout across the hills. It was followed quickly by the crack of a rifle-shot and the thud of a bullet slamming into the cottage door.
‘’Ere I am back again,’ Dusty swayed above the valley and yelled. ‘Come back like I says I would. I come to . . .’
But I was rushing Janet into the cottage, flinging her flat on the floor. The door slammed behind us, and the fusillade started. Dusty bombarded us drunkenly, absurdly. Shots splintered, whistled through window openings, thudded through the door, slammed uselessly into the walls. And, in between loadings, Dusty called hiccoughing challenges for me to go out and fight him.
Janet lay sideways, to stare affrightedly at me. I smiled at her and then swore foolishly.
‘For the love of Mike! Here we have been sewing equipment together so that I should always be able to go out fully armed, and now we are in need of that damned rifle it’s in the blasted cave!’ I said to the white-faced girl lying close on the floor beside me. ‘I wonder if that drunken maniac up there is able to see over the back of the cottage. I’ll be able to get out of the cave for the gun. Then we won’t be long.’
Holstered on my belt was the revolver. I pulled it out and broke the cylinder to stare at the six shells nestling in it. But that was useless unless Dusty came right down into the valley. I smiled at Janet, and we lay listening to the caterwauling and the shots slamming into the cottage. Short of going outside, I could not discover whether or not he overlooked the short distance to the cave.
‘Supposing he comes down?’ Janet queried fearfully.
‘He daren’t come down. He’d stagger down the slope and roll to the bottom, right into my arms. But, I hope he does. This revolver will shoot straighter than his drunken rifle at close quarters. We’ll just stay put, here on the floor, until the damn fool goes to sleep or shoots himself by mistake. There’s no need to get nervous.’
‘I’m not nervous,’ Janet smiled, and lied bravely through shivering lips. ‘I’m safe with you, I know. But what about Bingen? If he comes back, he’ll get shot.’
‘Yes! I’ll have to find some way of letting Bingen know.’
‘But he would hear the shooting.’
‘Of course he would.’ I wrinkled my brows, and continued reflectively, ‘I don’t know, though. If he’s carrying something heavy up that hill under this sun he’ll not be bothering to listen for anything. I know what it’s like. The sweat running off you and the load getting heavier and heavier. There’s a chance he might get close to Dusty before he heard a cannon going off under his ear. Bingen would be hurrying too. He doesn’t like being out by himself. No, I won’t risk it. I’ll get out and silence that gun on the hill.’
‘Perhaps Bingen might hear the shooting, after all.’
‘Yes, he might. He might come rushing right up here to see what it’s all about, and run into Dusty. Then what?’
‘Hasn’t Bingen got his rifle?’
‘I don’t know. If it isn’t in the cave, he has. I’ll get out there and see. Get my gun, too.’
‘Oh, Garry.’
‘Huh! Nothing to get nervous about. I’ll just make a dive for the cave, and be in it before Dusty knows I’m out of the cottage. Even if he sees me, he couldn’t hit me in a thousand years in the state he’s in.’
Pulling off the equipment, I handed her the revolver. It would be better for her to have it, in case Dusty shot straighter than I thought he could.
‘Here, catch hold of this.’ I gave the gun to Janet. ‘I can’t run with all that tied round my tummy. Save the revolver for Dusty, just in case he comes down.’
At the back window I stopped, with hands on the frame before pulling myself up to jump clear.
‘Listen. And try to be brave. If Mister Dusty, by some remarkable mischance, has a bit of luck and hits me with a lick, you can look after yourself with the revolver until Bingen gets back. You’ll hear when Rhodes stops shooting, and then, when you hear him sliding down the pebbles, you can step to the window, poke the pistol out, and shoot him when he’s close enough for you not to miss. That’s all right, isn’t it? You’ll do that?’
‘Don’t go!’
I laughed at her.
‘Oh, don’t be a kid. It’s all right really. Just giving you instructions against the improbable. I’ll be in the cave before Dusty sees me. I must go. Anything might happen with that lunatic up there. Look at that!’
A shot burst through the door, smashed through crockery on the table, and whined into the ceiling to bring a cloud of plaster about our heads.
‘Lay on the floor again. Be back with you in two shakes of a nanny-goat’s tail feathers.’
On the opposite wall, silver streaks of lead shone where bullets flattened upon the stone. It was time for me to be off. I shoved the makeshift sash from the opening and, as it fell outside to the ground, the shots redoubled, cracked furiously. I could imagine Dusty lying upon the sun-warmed heather, putting aside his rifle to tilt a bottle to his dry throat, watching awhile from the corner of his eye the cottage. And then his choking curse as he saw the window fall to the ground and me spring and tumble out into view, scrambling to my feet to jump the wall and dart for the cave. Dusty’s bottle dropped and I could imagine the brandy oozing away into the heather when he grabbed frantically for his rifle.
Dusty was at home with a rifle. In that short distance he got off five shots at me as I ran doubling. Then he was slamming shot after shot into the barricade, and I was recovering my breath and rummaging in the box of bandoleers of ammunition. With a pile of cartridges at my fingers, and one in the breech, I slid along the floor for a quick glance up at the hill. The showing of my head brought bullets kicking dust viciously. Haphazardly, I loosed off a couple of shots, hoping that Dusty, discovering I too had a gun, would retire gracefully, but he answered them with a regular bombardment and yells of drunken hilarity.
Down in the valley, with Dusty commanding the heights, I did not stand a chance. I must get on to his level. Edging the rifle blindly from the cave, I pulled the trigger, thinking things over.
The only thing to do was to make a dash for the end cottage, where I would stand a chance of climbing, unseen, up the hill, to stalk Dusty through the heather. I shot off five rounds rapidly, listened, counted as he returned them, and when the tenth thumped into the cliff by the cave, jumped for the open, and was running like a hare as he reloaded. A bullet tore through the leg of my shorts I found afterwards.
‘Run! Run, you son of a bitch!’ I heard him call jubilantly.
At the south end of the cottage I was screened from his view, though, idiotically, he still pumped streams of bullets into the roof and the air overhead. I wondered, rapidly climbing the ascent, how much ammunition he had carted up there with him. Along a dry water-run I crept, with dragging rifle, veering round to the other side of the hill, and when I reached the crest, crouching in the blackened heather, I smiled. Across the valley, rather lower than my point of vantage, Dusty lay, belching shots down at the cottages. He had two boxes of ammunition, and the ground about him was littered with bottles. Dusty must have spent some time preparing his siege. For a while I watched him. Spilling cartridges unconcernedly, he turned his back to take a swill from a bottle.
Then I shot.
My rifle-sights were on the bottle in his hand, but the bullet hit another upon the ground by his side! Lucky for Mister Dusty Rhodes! Seven hundred yards. It was too fine a shot for one who had not cuddled a rifle into the crook of his shoulder for years. I lay still in the heather, watched Dusty jerk into firing position with the bottle flung hastily away. He stared surprisedly down the valley, and then searched the surrounding hills incredulously. I grinned viciously to myself. All in good time I’d smoke Rhodes out of his little encampment, watch him run. Then away over the hills I saw Bingen, and, even as I saw him, saw the Vampires above him.
Away to the north, Bingen was creeping along one of the pebbly water-runs with which the hills are inundated, stalking Dusty intently, all unaware that above him there dropped a small cloud of Vampires.
Dusty, set upon searching the valley to see where I had fired from; myself flat among the heather; Bingen creeping cautiously; overhead, forty or fifty Vampires dropping slowly, silently!
‘Bingen! Bingen! Look up!’ I yelled, half standing to point a warning, forgetful of Rhodes, intent upon Bingen.
Bingen heard my call, but, even as he looked up, jumped to run for the valley and the cave, the things were upon him. I watched Bingen fight them off violently. Staggering upright, slithering down a slope, shaking them off. Then he was gone from view into a dip. Presently, as I prepared to scramble over the hills to his rescue, he reappeared, and no Vampires followed. Bingen was getting over his dread of them and treating them the right way. As he approached, I turned again towards Dusty Rhodes. He was not to be seen. About the bottle-littered heather a black heap of Vampires lifted, surging upon a body struggling beneath them.
Presently Dusty staggered upright, breaking through the covering bodies, shaking, flinging the things from him. Fastened to the back of his neck a Vampire poised with outspread wings, so that it seemed he wore a fearful caricature of one of the old-fashioned German helmets crowned with an Im
perial eagle. Bingen and I ran for him. Dropping my gun, I dragged the sword from its frog, clambering breathlessly up the slippery heather. When I reached the top, Bingen was there, tearing the black, loathsome things from Rhodes’s unconscious form. Together we grabbed them by their wings, flung them to the ground, and slew them.
‘You got the trick of it, Bingen,’ I gasped with the last one hacked and killed. ‘Good for you.’
‘Aw! I got used to ’em now,’ Bingen grinned, and wiped sweat from his face. ‘Though what the hell we’re doing this for I dunno. Couple a fools we are, if anyone ever was.’
‘Your’re right at that,’ I agreed shortly, and bent over the body of our foe. ‘Phew! He reeks of brandy. As much drunk, as scared out of his life, the swine. Let’s kick the drink out of him, and, when he’s awake, beat hell into him. Then we’ll put it to him gently he’s not wanted round here at all.’
We shook and thumped Dusty into a sort of semi-consciousness, and he lay, blinking at us uncomprehendingly with red eyes, not knowing or caring who we were. But soon, under our treatment, he recovered more fully, to recollect and whimper, reach for one of his beloved bottles. I stepped upon his reaching hand and Bingen kicked the bottle away.
‘Get up! Get up, you! This is your finish. Get bumped off. You’re going to get shot, here and now, without any court-martial. Savvy that? We’re not having any drink-crazed swine barging about here with a gun.’
‘That’d be murder. You can’t get away with that. You’d get ’ung,’ Dusty whined, when at last my meaning soaked into his doped brain. He lifted himself upon one elbow and scowled up at us with bleary eyes. ‘I’ll get out of it, but don’t shoot. Anways, you daren’t shoot. You’d be ’ung.’
‘Hung? Will we? How? You going to call a copper and give us in charge after we’ve shot you?’ Bingen asked seriously, and then as the blank foolishness of it, calling a policeman in that deserted world struck us, we collapsed into laughter. Rhodes seized his opportunity. With surprising agility he sprang suddenly to his feet and was running swiftly over the hills. We laughed as Bingen called again. ‘Hi! Where you going? To fetch a policeman?’