The Beyonders

by Manly Wade Wellman

  XIV

  No doubt but that Struve was enjoying the situation. His broad, grained jowls bunched and creased with a mocking grin. His teeth shone, long and sharp and narrow, clamped between his hard lips.

  "You got the difference there to do the talking for you," said Gander Eye, keeping his voice steady. "I mean, that there Tommy gun."

  "You're behind the times as usual, Mr. Gander Eye Gentry," Struve chuckled at him. "This is no Tommy gun, Tommy guns are pretty much collector's items these days. For your information, this is called an Uzi. The Israeli have used them efficiently, over there in the Middle East."

  Gander Eye fixedly studied the weapon that Struve held ready against his hip. It was mostly a rectangular block of dark metal, from the end of which jutted the stub of a staring gun muzzle. The block was furnished with sights both forward and at the rear. It was set with a simple L-shaped rod that could serve for a stock. Beneath it were a pistol grip with a trigger and the downward jut of a magazine.

  "It's an Uzi," said Struve again, "but it comes to the same thing as a Tommy gun. I could rip your guts out with it while we stand here talking. Do you remember our little conversation about the dogs and the wolves?"

  "I remember," said Gander Eye, still looking at the weapon. "And as long as I got a tooth left in my head, I'm still a wolf."

  "Only just now you don't happen to have any teeth," declared Struve, still broadly grinning. "I don't see any lump in those old clothes where you might be carrying a gun."

  Struve's three companions were listening. They, too, grinned. One of them had a round face with a curly mustache, the others were lean-cheeked and looked enough alike to be brothers. All of them had hard eyes and hard mouths.

  "Dr. Hannum," said Struve, "I have to ask you to go back into your house if you want to stay out of danger. If you have a telephone there, I'm afraid it won't work. We cut the wires to Sky Notch on the way over."

  Dr. Hannum shrugged and turned to obey. He looked old and frail at that moment.

  "And you, Mr. Gentry," went on Struve, "you'd better go to your house, too. Go on inside and close your door tight. If you have a bed there, you might be well advised to crawl under it and stay. When we finish the first item on our agenda here, with the man you call James Crispin, maybe I'll come down and call you outside again. We'll have one more little talk, you and I. By then you'll have probably picked up some sense, fairly late in the game."

  The other three men listened. One watched Doc going into his house. The other two held their Uzi guns waist high, pointing them toward Gander Eye.

  "Go on home, I told you." Struve motioned with the muzzle of his own weapon. "Go there fast. And don't look back. It might make one or other of us nervous. "

  Gander Eye glared. "I'm going," he said.

  "Good. I thought you might."

  Doc had opened his own door and was half dragging his feet in. Gander Eye pointed his own steps down Main Street, walking briskly. He thought of putting his hands in his trousers pockets, but Struve might think that was an appeal to a weapon and fire a burst into Gander Eye's back.

  Behind him, Struve laughed.

  Passing the schoolyard, Gander Eye wondered what had happened to Slowly, what had become of Captain Kimber. He made haste along the street, passing the blank windows of the empty house, and on into his own yard. As he pushed his door open, he snatched a look up the street. There they stood by their dark sedan, Struve and his companions, watching Gander Eye go into his house as he had been ordered to go.

  Fury blazed in his blood. Straight to his rack of guns he strode and snatched the mauser out of its place. He dragged open a drawer. A box of cartridges was open there and he grabbed a big handful and jammed it into the right-hand pocket of his pants. He took his pistol and pocketed that as well. He hurried on through the house, darted out at the back door, and squatted behind a scrub of weeds at a point from which he could look up Main Street again.

  The sedan was in sight from there, but only one man stood beside it now, cradling his ugly gun. Gander Eye raised his head to where he could see the others sauntering across the bridge toward Crispin's cabin. He himself headed for Bull Creek at a crouching run. He saw the two ingots of gold, still lying there. Into the water he splashed and across, half floundering in the mud. On the far side he shoved in among the laurels from which the Beyonders had watched him the day before.

  He moved under concealing branches, stooping so as not to make them stir, and wading in the water at the creek's edge. The current ran fairly fast. The mud underfoot felt slippery; he stepped in one deep place and went in up to his knee. A fish whisked away from in front of him, a good-sized trout. From that concealed approachway he could not see Crispin's cabin or the three men headed for it. He stepped out of the stream and shoved among trees, twitching away from the prickly grasp of thorns. His shoes made marshy, squelchy sounds. He came to a place where he could see clearly but still be hidden.

  The three men had carried their Uzi guns into Crispin's yard. Struve gave the door a violent kick and it swung inward and Struve went in. The others followed. Gander Eye studied the ground just ahead of him and moved out to the very edge of the trees. A weedy expanse lay there, once somebody's vegetable garden. The view was completely open in front of him. He was about a hundred yards from Crispin's door.

  Even as he estimated this situation, a flat stutter of gunfire sounded. A moment of silence, then another, briefer, burst of noise.

  Chill crept into Gander Eye, without driving out the hot anger. So they'd done for Crispin. That first stream of bullets had mowed him down; the second had finished him as he lay. Just like that, Struve was doing what he felt like doing in Sky Notch.

  Gander Eye dropped to a knee behind a half-rotten log and sat down on his heel. Swiftly he fitted the loose sling of the Mauser in a hitch around his upper left arm, then he lowered his left elbow, planted it on the log, and tucked the rifle stock solidly against his shoulder. His thumb flicked off the safety catch. He did not have to wait for more than two seconds.

  They were coming out of the cabin again. He saw a man out in the yard, pausing there to look this way and that, Uzi gun at the ready. Gander Eye set his right eye to the telescopic sight, shifted a trifle to put the crosshairs on the image of that first man to emerge, put them right on his magnified face. He held his breath and touched his trigger.

  The Mauser rang sharply, like the crack of a whip; the stock drove against Gander Eye's tensed shoulder with the recoil. Even as Struve and the other man ran out of the cabin, the first man tumbled limply down upon his face and lay without a quiver.

  Gander Eye worked the bolt of the Mauser, set his elbow, and took aim again. But before he could fire, Struve and the other man had gone scuttling back into the cabin, shutting the door behind them.

  Gander Eye waited, watching. A black patch popped into view at a window, and the glass fell out, broken from inside. A rat-a-tat of fire, and bullets tore into the earth to Gander Eye's front like plowshares. He grinned against his rifle stock. Those mean-looking Uzi guns might be sure and sudden death close up, but they didn't have any real range. No more than a pistol, maybe. He gazed with complete satisfaction at the motionless body of the man he had shot down in the yard. But that one wasn't enough. He wanted the others, all of them.

  A steamy sigh in the woods, behind him and to his right, and he knew that sound.

  He whirled on his knee, almost losing balance. Three of them stood among the trees, a sheen on their sooty blackness like the sheen on the Uzi guns. They gave off threads of vapor. The bright panes at the fronts of their headpieces stared at him.

  "No, by God, you don't!'' he shouted aloud at them, and fired.

  He heard the impact of his steel-jacketed bullet, and saw a gush of steam from the one he had struck. It waddled and reeled quickly around and then fell, as the man by Crispin's cabin had fallen. One of its companions seemed to crumple itself into a bend as though to examine the fallen one. The other raised a cablel
ike arm and threw something at Gander Eye. No ingot of gold this time.

  He flung himself flat and rolled over and over, rising behind a pine tree. The missile struck the big log where he had rested his elbow to fire his first shot. A gust of blaze sprang up, like the sudden red rise from the coals when the bellows is turned on a forge; then it sank down. Gander Eye steadied his rifle barrel against the pine trunk and fired again.

  He almost whooped as he knew that shot, too, had gone home. A second shape was lying, prone among the trees, in a veil of steam. The third shape drew swiftly back. It was on the run—it would be on the run if it had feet, but anyway it was going. Gander Eye exulted harshly. If you were in a war, you'd better shoot and hit what you shot at. Wars were won by shooting and hitting.

  From Crispin's cabin sounded another prolonged burst. They were firing at him, and they weren't doing any good. Those ugly-looking guns they called Uzis didn't have any accuracy. Gander Eye looked that way, bringing up his rifle, but then his gaze shifted to where the sedan stood on Main Street.

  Bo and Duffy had come there, and the man left on guard was threatening them with his Uzi. They stood with their hands up and the guard was telling them something, jerking his head for emphasis. His back was toward Doc's house, and as he talked and threatened, Doc leaned out at a side window.

  Doc had a rifle. Gander Eye knew that rifle well, an old Winchester with which Doc had gone hunting up to a few years back. Doc took careful, solid aim and fired. The guard by the sedan drew himself up convulsively. Then, over on his face he went. His gun rattled once, pouring bullets into the ground beside the pavement.

  Bo and Duffy shouted, or perhaps screamed, with one voice. Bo ran nimbly around the front of the sedan and knelt beside the fallen figure. Doc had vanished again, inside his window. Gander Eye hoped Doc had the sense to throw himself flat on the floor, because the door of Crispin's cabin was flying open and out came Struve and his companion. Both raised their guns and fired at Doc's house, prolonged bursts.

  Gander Eye drew and held half a breath, centered the crosshairs of his sights on Struve's body at about shoulder height, and fired, his fourth shot so far.

  His heart leaped up with murderous joy as he saw Struve go down in a heap. Struve kicked a couple of times, and then he straightened his legs out slackly, as though going to sleep. The remaining man again darted back into the cabin.

  Gander Eye restrained himself from rushing into the open and howling a war cry. Yonder lay Struve, the man who'd sworn to scare him, who'd said he was taking over Sky Notch for those Beyonders from not even God knew where, who'd talked so well and so loftily, who'd ordered Gander Eye to go home and crawl under the bed. Yonder he lay, dead or as good as dead. Gander Eye's four shots had taken down two men and two Beyonders. That was first-class shooting, even for him. But he kept himself among the trees, peering for a hint of that survivor in the cabin.

  Beside the sedan, Duffy had picked up the fallen Uzi gun. Gander Eye earnestly hoped Duffy had sense enough not to let it off, maybe pour a stream of lead into Bo, who leaned above him to look. Doc was cautiously opening his door, peering out toward where Struve lay. Doc still had his Winchester, his old hands ready to use it. He'd better be careful, too, one of Struve's trouble gang was still in the cabin, a going concern with a loaded gun of his own.

  Gander Eye fired at the closed door. He had no particular hope of hitting that sole survivor, but the bullet would rip through and give him something else to think about than shooting at Doc. The fifth bullet from the Mauser hadn't found flesh, but Gander Eye had hopes of the sixth. He slid well to the right among the foliage, waiting for an effort to blast at that place from which his shot had come.

  But there was no return fire. That man was alive in there, and he wanted to stay alive. He wasn't eager to show himself after he had seen two of his friends all dead in Crispin's front yard and a third do likewise up on the edge of Main Street. Main Street, thought Gander Eye. Bo and Duffy had pulled away out of sight somewhere, maybe to get guns themselves. Nobody else appeared in view except those three dead bodies, but the whole town must be watching by now, from places of more or less safety.

  Meanwhile, pretty soon that last living gunman might try to make some sort of a sneak to get away. That mustn't happen. Gander Eye tightened his lips and ran through the woods to where he could see how to take cover along to the far side of the cabin and behind.

  Almost at once he saw, there at his feet, the two shapes he had shot down. They lay motionless, their cable-arms limp. Wisps of foggy vapor still hung around them, like a loose tuck of fabric.

  He gazed at them, trying to comprehend them. Metal, that was what they were, but it looked like no metal he knew. It had the look of flexibility rather than hardness. And it was eroding, too, a metal that decayed like the rind of stale, fallen fruit, right before his eyes. Gander Eye stepped close to the nearest fallen form. He caught a whiff of odor, half sweet, half stinging. Maybe the five senses worked in that other universe, that other space, Crispin had described. The helmetlike top dome had a curved window in it, glass or something like glass. That window had been shattered by Gander Eye's bullet. Inside it, he saw something that was not a face.

  It was a shiny, shaggy expanse, as gray as half-melted lard, there inside. The shagginess wasn't hair; it might be like the legs of a whole lot of flies. It seemed to stir, and Gander Eye brought up his rifle. But that was no motion of life. Some sort of action worked there, an action as of swift, rotting liquefaction. Gander Eye writhed with disgust. A Beyonder couldn't endure the air of this world.

  But he couldn't waste time, standing there to study. He had something more to do. On he fared among the trees and, bearing at a slant as he went, he sped through to the woods beyond Crispin's cabin.

  That was the sloping stretch where he had seen the first of the Beyonders, on the spring day when Crispin came to Sky Notch. One of them might be waiting there now. Gander Eye kept his rifle at the ready, finger on trigger, set like a trigger himself to fire at any menace. But he saw no black shadows, heard no sighing gasps. That one Beyonder who had fled from him might be hurrying to fetch more. Gander Eye worked his way on, and through and around, to where he could see Crispin's cabin through the leaves. He thought of the best way to come up close behind it, the way Struve had come in days past. He wanted to make sure of that last man who had come to town to kill Jim Crispin.

  There were no tall trees back there at the rear. The trees had been cut down there within recent years, perhaps so that their trunks could be used to repair the cabin. But stumps had sprouted and there was a fluffy-rich scrub of young pines, at least as high as his elbow. It would give him cover to get close, though no protection if the man inside knew he was there and started spraying the greenery with bullets.

  A shot rang out somewhere, a single shot, not from the cabin. Very likely that was Doc, the capable old man working his capable old Winchester. Then came another shot, and another. Maybe Doc and Duffy were getting into it, or some of the other town fellows. They were slapping their bullets into that cabin, hoping to hit the man still laired inside.

  Gander Eye began creeping again, on all fours. He dragged his rifle with him, his arm through the sling. He heard several other guns go off, and congratulated himself that he was moving so close to the ground, away from some deadly stray chunk of lead. At last he paused, a dozen feet or so from the back door. He wondered if it was fastened inside, if he could get in. He studied a window beside it, and saw nothing.

  Had that last man been hit in there? Gander Eye found himself hoping not. He wanted to do the executioner's duty.

  As he pondered, that back door opened, a cautious inch or so. Gander Eye froze, almost flat against the ground with pine needles in front of him. A long, long time seemed to pass, while the man inside reconnoitered that overgrown back yard. Then the door sagged wider open, and the survivor of Struve's party came gingerly out, backwards.

  Gander Eye saw, at close hand and in utmost detai
l, the man's well-cut dungarees with flared bottoms and the pattern on his work shirt, the broad leather belt at his waist, the soft brown gleam of the loafers he wore. Out he came, still peering into the cabin from which he wanted to flee. His left hand clutched his Uzi gun by its metal balance.

  Gander Eye rose to his feet in a single swift motion. He brought up his rifle to his shoulder.

  "Hey," he said, as though in friendly greeting.

  The man spun around and stared. He was the one with the round face and the mustache. He hurried the Uzi into firing position.

  Gander Eye shot him in the exact center of his forehead and he slumped uncouthly down on his face, as men do when shot through the brain.

  Almost before he was down, Gander Eye had sprung forward over the body and was going into the cabin. He was in Crispin's cluttered little kitchen. There were two cans of beans on a shelf, with a stick of salami laid across them, and on another shelf a box of washing compound. Gander Eye hated to see those items of housekeeping. He went through and looked into the front room.

  Crispin lay huddled on his side, next to the empty easel from which he had taken the picture of the baptism to slash the canvas. Blood had flowed in a dim red pool around his head and shoulders. Gander Eye stepped to his side and bent down to look, and did not have to look. Crispin was dead, with a bunch of holes in his temple and another bunch in his chest, and blood beginning to clot around both wounds.

  Another shot slapped in the air outside. A bullet came tearing through the cabin, passing inches from where Gander Eye stooped and driving solidly into the logs of the opposite wall. The men out there didn't know that Gander Eye had brought down the last of Struve's party. They still meant business.

  Gander Eye stared around. On the side table lay a white dish towel. He grabbed it up and swiftly tied it by a corner to the muzzle of his rifle. Hurrying to the front door, he kicked it open. Again a bullet came questing. It ripped through the door.