by Dean Koontz
Now was the time.
He got to his feet, and as he did he heard movement behind him in the trees. Before he was fully erect and could turn to face the danger, Major Kelly collided with him, and they both fell down. Hard.
Falling, Kelly was surprised to see, by the weak light of the moon, that he had walked into a man wearing a potato sack over his head.
The man in the sack was so surprised he screamed.
"What the hell-" Kelly got shakily to his feet.
When he fell, the man in the bag had been trapped between Kelly and the trees. Now, he pushed up, whirled away from Kelly, and ran. He crashed headlong into a baby oak, staggered backwards, stunned by the collision.
"Hey!" Kelly said, his balance regained.
The man in the bag recoiled from the sound of the major's voice and plunged deeper into the woods. Flailing at the bushes on all sides, he tripped on a tangle of vines and fell into a cluster of milkweed plants.
"You there!" Kelly shouted.
Stumbling to his feet, slapping at his own face as if he were angry with himself, the man started to run again. He got five feet before he took a low hanging pine branch across the neck and very nearly killed himself.
"I don't understand," Kelly said.
Coughing horribly, the man in the bag pushed past the offending tree. In a few steps, he hit a thrusting outcropping of waterworn limestone and went head over heels down a small hill, out of sight.
Major Kelly stood there for several minutes, listening to the man smash and batter his way with brutal and self-destructive force farther into the barely yielding forest. Eventually, the noises grew faint, fainter still, and faded away altogether.
Confused, Kelly returned to his tent and stretched out on his sleeping bag. But he could not sleep now.
The Germans were drawing nearer by the minute, and already there were too many of his men with severe neuroses that required him to waste precious time away from the construction of the fake village. There was Angelli mooning after Nurse Pullit, and Beame daydreaming about a girl he could not have, and Hagendorf drunk and unpredictable... and now there was this striking new direction which Lieutenant Slade's madness had taken, this running around in the middle of the night wearing an old potato sack over his head... He had known, watching the man in the bag nearly kill himself in the woods, that it was Slade. But knowing did not help. He still could not explain this new streak in the lieutenant's psychosis. All it could mean was more trouble.
And they already had more trouble than they could handle.
* * *
9
Major Kelly spent all morning running from one end of the clearing to the other, checking up on the work crews and solving construction problems with a rapidity and cleverness he had never known he possessed. Nothing could stump him. It was exhilarating-and it was killing him.
Half the engineering problems should have gone to Beame, but the lieutenant was not functioning at his best level. He probably would not be all right again until he found a way to bypass Maurice and get to Nathalie. The girl really was a gorgeous little piece, Kelly thought. But how could Beame let her good looks get between him and the job at hand? Didn't he realize that death was staring them in the face and preparing to bite their heads off?
Most everyone else realized this. With the midnight deadline swiftly approaching, the other men worked harder and faster than they had ever worked in their lives. The camp, the slowly fleshing skeleton of the fake village, hummed with fear and dread. The brutal sun cut through the clouds and made the earth sizzle, but not even that could burn away the cold sweat on the backs of their necks. Beame was about the only goldbricker today.
Besides Angelli, of course. Vito was supposed to be working on the crisis that had arisen with the village school. The two-story building, which was framed completely and walled on three sides, had begun to sway slightly in the wind and threatened to collapse now that it was nearly done. Angelli should have been exploring the beams in the school roof-which only he could do quickly and surely-and should have been directing his workers toward the trouble spots he found. Instead, Angelli was up at the hospital bunker romancing Nurse Pullit. As a result, his French work crew stood idle. And the men waiting to finish the siding job on the school were also put behind schedule.
Kelly ran the whole way to the hospital, cursing Angelli's neuroses and his romantic Italian blood. When he came through the bunker door, he saw the lovebirds pressed into the corner on his right. They were giggling. Vito was trying to unhook Nurse Pullit's bra through the thin, silky fabric of her uniform.
"Vito!"
Angelli jumped back and dropped his hands from Pullit, looked as shamefaced as a small boy caught at the cookie jar. Nurse Pullit blushed and made a show of straightening the rumpled white dress.
"You come with me," Kelly said, turning and stalking out of the bunker. When he had Angelli outside, marching him back to the school, he said, "This has got to stop."
The private scratched the tattoo on his chest.
"The Panzers are coming, Angelli!" Kelly shouted, spraying spittle all over the private's face. "We've no time for this sort of thing!"
"I can't be away from her for more than a few minutes at a time," Angelli said. "I can't bear it for longer."
Kelly was enraged. "Pullit is not a woman! Get that through your head!"
"She's the kind of woman I always wanted to marry," Angelli said, as if he had not heard the major. "She's witty, vivacious, and yet shy. I'd never be ashamed to introduce her as my wife."
Kelly frowned. "Vito-"
"Don't get the idea I'm only interested in her mind and personality," Vito said, nudging Kelly in the ribs as they walked toward the school. "She has fantastic legs, a nice round ass, beautiful big jugs-"
"That's just one of Lily's bras. Those aren't real jugs. Those-"
"And she has such a lovely face," Angelli said. He sighed.
"Angelli," Kelly said, with proper gravity, "you haven't-"
"I certainly haven't!" Angelli said, scandalized by the suggestion. "It isn't that I haven't wanted to. She does excite me. But she's a virgin, and I just could not take advantage... Well, I know you just caught me trying to take off her bra, but that wasn't anything serious. I wouldn't have pressured her into going the whole way. Mostly, we've just held hands. She's too innocent a woman for me to-"
Kelly put a new strength in his voice. "Nurse Pullit is not a woman. She-"
"She's almost a saint," Angelli said. "I know, sir. She is not an ordinary woman. Not at all. She's a living saint!"
Kelly gave up on Angelli. There was no reasoning with the private just now. They reached the school building, which was still swaying in the wind, and Kelly said, "I'm not going to try to explain to you the truth about Pullit. I just want you to find the trouble with this building and get it fixed. Now! Fast, Angelli. And if you run back to the hospital before you're done, I'll shoot your balls off. You won't be any good to Pullit or anyone else, ever." Wasting precious minutes...
The afternoon was both good and bad. Five new outhouses were built. But Sergeant Coombs got into a fight with a French worker. The roof and porch roof were added to the rectory. But a truck hauling prefabricated walls had engine trouble, and its shipment was delayed an hour. The church took shape, and the pews-borrowed from a chapel outside of Eisenhower-fit in perfectly. But Coombs got into a fight with another Frenchman and tipped over a mixer of precious concrete.
Major Kelly shrugged off the good reports and brooded about each scrap of bad news.
At six o'clock, as the afternoon gave way to evening, he was brooding about the concrete which Sergeant Coombs had spilled. He stood at the top of the convent steps, watching the workers swarm over the church and the rectory across the street. Men came to him with problems which he quickly solved. Occasionally, he looked eastward to see if Angelli was still guiding his French work crew.
He was watching Vito when Danny Dew drove the D-7 onto the bridge road and ro
ared down through the center of town, throwing up a wake of yellow dust. Dew stopped in front of the convent. He left the dozer running, jumped off, and came up the steps two at a time.
"What's wrong?" Kelly asked.
If a black man could look pale and drawn, Danny Dew was pale and drawn. His eyes were wide, glazed with fear. "Major... there's a rumor going around..." He was unable to put his fear into words.
"Danny? What's wrong?"
Dew leaned against the railing and shuddered, wiped the back of one hand across his mouth. "There's a rumor going around that you traded the D-7-for more help from Maurice."
"Well," Major Kelly lied, "it's only a rumor, Danny. I didn't do any such thing. I know what the dozer means to you."
"I got to have the D-7," Danny said. "Nobody can take that away from me, Kelly. I'd die. I'd wither up and die."
Kelly patted Dew's shoulder. "I know, Danny. I wouldn't pull something like that. Besides, we need the dozer. I couldn't afford to give it away." He was a bit surprised at how smoothly the lies came out, how sincere he sounded.
Danny began to regain control of himself. The shakes grew less severe, and some of the terror left his eyes. "You serious?"
"Danny, you know I would never-"
In the same instant, both men heard the change in the sound of the dozer's engine. It was no longer just idling. They turned as one and looked down the convent steps.
Emil Hagendorf sat in the driver's chair, holding down on the brake pedal while he pumped the accelerator. The big machine rocked and groaned beneath him. He laughed, waved at Kelly and Dew.
"Stop him!" Kelly shouted, leaping down the steps.
Emil let up on the brakes.
The bulldozer lurched forward. The steel track seemed to spin for a moment, kicking up dust and chunks of macadam.
Major Kelly jumped from the fourth step and landed feet-first on the wide band of tread. He waved his arms, trying desperately to maintain his balance. The dozer was moving even as he reached it, and he was dragged forward like a man on a horizontal escalator belt.
"Emil, stop!" he shouted.
Hagendorf looked over at him and laughed.
Kelly backpedaled, trying to keep from being tossed in front of the dozer and chewed into tiny pieces. His feet slipped on the knobbed tread as it flashed under his feet. He felt as if he were walking across a spinning sheet of ice in the center of a pitching sea.
Pulling the wheel hard to the right, Hagendorf took the dozer off the bridge road. Under the engine noise, there was no longer the clatter of steel meeting a paved surface.
Kelly did not look up to see where they were going. All of his attention was concentrated on the grinding, steel caterpillar belts. He stretched out, grabbed the roll-bar which rose behind Hagendorf, and pulled himself onto the dozer frame, away from the deadly tread.
"Welcome aboard!" Hagendorf shouted.
He was drunk.
Holding onto the roll-bar, Kelly wedged himself into the same meager niche he had occupied while inspecting the village with Danny Dew a couple of days ago. He bent down and screamed in the chief surveyor's ear. "Stop this thing, damn you!"
Hagendorf giggled. "Maybe that will stop us," he said, taking one hand from the vibrating steering wheel long enough to point to something ahead of them.
Kelly followed the extended finger. "Hagendorf, no!"
An instant later, the dozer plowed into the side of one of the single-story platform houses. The place came apart like a paper construction. The wood broke, splintered, gave way. They surged through the wall. The platform cracked and came apart under them, fodder for the ferocious tread. They drove the whole way across the room as the roof dipped slowly toward them, then crashed out through the opposite wall in a shower of pine planking, nails, and heavy beams.
Hagendorf was laughing like hell. A splinter had caught him on the left cheek bad enough to let a steady stream of blood course down his face and drip off his chin. Otherwise, he appeared unscathed.
Major Kelly did not know if he had been hurt himself, and he did not look to see. "Emil, you'll kill yourself!" he screamed.
"You killed me already!" the surveyor yelled. "You and your chaos!"
"You'll kill me!"
"Jump."
"Emil, we need this machine."
"And I need a sense of order!"
The dozer slammed straight into an outhouse. It started to climb the board wall, but then the building went down. Kelly was almost flung out of his niche. The dozer dropped squarely back onto its tread, rattling his teeth. With his left hand, he got a tighter grip on the roll-bar, squeezing it so hard that his knucklebones looked as if they would pop through his skin. The narrow outhouse crumpled into useless pieces as they drove over it.
Hagendorf angled sharply toward the river.
Toward the ravine.
He pushed down on the accelerator.
"No!" Kelly screamed.
The major let go of the roll-bar and threw himself at the chief surveyor, tore Hagendorf's right hand from the steering wheel, punched and gouged the pudgy man until he had climbed atop him. Hagendorf was sitting on the driver's chair, facing front; and Kelly was sitting on Hagendorf, facing the other way, looking directly into the smaller man's bloodshot eyes. The major used his elbow to chop at Hagendorf s left arm until the surveyor finally let go of the wheel altogether.
Unguided, the D-7 roared toward the ravine, straight for the steepest part of the bank.
Kelly hated to be brutal, but he knew the situation called for extreme measures. He punched Hagendorfs face again and again. Blood streamed out of the smaller man's nose.
Hagendorf kept trying to reach around the major and grab the untended steering wheel. He did not trade blow for blow, but concentrated only on regaining control of the bulldozer.
"Give up, dammit!" Kelly shouted.
The chief surveyor would not give up. Even though Kelly had him pinned to the seat, he struggled forward, blinking back tears and blowing bloody bubbles out of both nostrils.
Behind him, Kelly knew, the ravine was drawing closer. Any moment, they might plunge over the edge...
He punched Hagendorf in the mouth. And again. The pudgy man's lips split open. In an impossible, curious slow motion, a single tooth slid out of Hagendorfs mouth, rolled over his ruined lower lip. It came to rest on his round chin, pasted there by a sticky film of blood.
"Please, Emil! Please, give up!"
Hagendorf shook his head. No.
The dozer jolted over something. For a second, Kelly was sure they had plummeted over the ravine wall. Then the dozer rumbled on.
The major struck Hagendorf again, battering him around the ears now. And, at last, the chief surveyor slumped back against the brace behind the seat, unconscious.
Thank God. Thank you, Emil.
Kelly reached behind and grabbed the wheel. Using that to steady himself, he managed to turn around and-at the same time-keep the unconscious man from sliding off the dozer. When he had the wheel in both hands, he used his buttocks to pin the surveyor in place, then looked up.
The ravine was no more than ten yards away.
He stomped on the brake pedal.
Trying to rear up, the bulldozer lurched like a wounded horse in a bad cowboy movie and almost threw them off.
Kelly held on for both of them. He wheeled the machine away from the gorge and braked again.
They came to a shuddering, clanking halt parallel to the drop-off, two feet from the edge of the precipice. Below, the river gushed between its banks, dark and somewhat evil now that the angle of the sun denied it light.
Kelly looked once at the foaming water and the jagged rocks, looked once at the twenty-four inches of earth which separated him from death-then promptly turned his attention elsewhere. He looked back the way they had come, saw the ruined platform house and the demolished outhouse. Both would have to be rebuilt... Neither was a particularly difficult piece of work, yet he felt this was the last setback they coul
d endure. Each minute counted -but thanks to Emil Hagendorfs wild ride, each minute would not count for enough.
Kelly looked at his watch. Almost seven o'clock. The Germans would be here in five hours. Maybe sooner.
It could not be done.
Nevertheless, you had to pretend you were going to hang on, even if you were a character in a fairy tale about death. If you stopped pretending, you were sure to die.
He climbed down from the dozer, already composing a list of jobs that might be speeded up in order to obtain workers for the rebuilding of the two structures which Hagendorf had knocked down.
"My big D!" Danny Dew shouted, running toward the dozer. "My big D was hurt!"
Major Kelly ignored Dew. He walked back toward the platform house which Emil Hagendorf had driven through. It was a jumble of broken beams and splintered boards.
Two dozen of his own men and forty or fifty Frenchmen had gathered at the wreckage and were spiritedly discussing Hagendorf's wild ride. Now, they crowded around Kelly, jabbering excitedly.
The major gave them the cold eye, then the tight lips, then the very serious frown-all to no avail. Finally, he just screamed at the top of his voice, "Shut up! Shut up!" When the laughing and jabbering ceased, he said, "What in the name of God are you idiots doing here? Why aren't you working? Why are you wasting time? What are you laughing about? This is serious!" He felt as if his insides were all rising into his skull and would soon explode out of the top of his head. And he was almost looking forward to that. "We have less than five goddamned hours! Move your asses! I'll kill any son of a bitch who isn't back to work in one minute!"
There must have been something particularly ferocious in his voice. Although he was known as a man with no talent for discipline, the workers stared at him for a brief moment, then turned and ran.
Too soon, the sunset came in a glorious splash of orange and red. The red deepened into purple.
Night fell. Kelly could almost hear the crash.
It was 9:30 before any workers were available for the reconstruction of the platform house and the outhouse which Hagendorf had knocked down. Even then, Kelly could find only four of his own men and six Frenchmen who had finished their other chores.