David Robbins - Madman Run

Blade pursed his lips. There she went again, playing on his guilt. He refused to let her tactic work. “After all the things that happened to us since we arrived, yes, we were justified in entering. We tried knocking, but no one answered the front door.”

“Did you ever stop to think there might be a reason? Perhaps we don’t like to be disturbed. Perhaps we want to be left to our own devices.”

“Who is this ‘we’ you keep referring to?”

“I don’t live here alone,” Endora said.

“I know,” Blade stated, rubbing a sore spot on his head.

Endora noticed the motion and appreciated its significance. “I’m sorry you were hurt. I truly am. But they thought you were trying to harm me.”

“They?”

“My husband and my brother.”

“Where are they now?”

“They had business to attend to. They’ll be here shortly.”

Blade glanced at Hickok, who nonchalantly strolled closer to the door and positioned himself so he’d spot anyone approaching. “Didn’t you hear me call out to you? I promised not to harm you.”

“How could we know whether you were speaking the truth?” Endora said. “You might have been trying to trick me.”

The argument was valid, Blade had to admit. He studied her, trying to guess how old she was and to appraise her character. Her answers were honest enough, but he suspected she was hiding something. There was a trace of—panic?—in her eyes, detectable when he asked questions about the others living in the castle. Why? What did she have to be afraid of? Or was she hiding something?

“Granted,” he said. “So I won’t hold the beating I took against your husband and brother—for now.”

“How gracious of you.”

Blade decided to slip in a query she wouldn’t be expecting. “By the way, do you happen to know who was screaming a while ago?”

The woman tensed, her hands clenched in her lap, and grinned. “Oh, that was me.”

“You?”

“Yes. I bumped into my brother and mistook him for one of you. The shock made me scream my fool head off.”

Blade didn’t believe her for a second. “That was quite a scream.”

She shrugged. “You know how it is when you’re scared to death.”

“No,” Blade said, “I’ve never been that scared.” No sooner did he finish speaking than an image of the red-eyed monster loomed in his mind, and he shook his head to dispel it.

“Then you must be very brave.”

“We all are, lady,” Hickok chimed in. “That’s why you’d best not mess with us or you’ll be eatin’ lead.”

Endora appeared shocked. “You’d threaten a woman?”

The gunfighter smirked. “Makes no nevermind to me who’s tryin’ to kill me. Anyone who does is history.”

“Are there many like him where you come from?” Endora asked Blade.

“No. He’s unique.”

“Where do you come from, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Faraway,” Blade lied. “In a small town northwest of here.”

“Which town?”

“I’d rather not say at the moment.”

“I see,” Endora said, her countenance hardening.

“And why should I politely answer your questions if you’re not going to answer any of mine?”

“You have a point,” Blade said and gave the first name that popped into his head. “We’re from Humboldt.”

“How many people live there?”

What would be a reasonable number? Blade asked himself and made a guess. “About two hundred.”

“Really? My husband will be interested in hearing that.”

“Tell me something,” Blade prompted. “I take it your great-grandfather built this place. Why? It’s not every day you see a castle in the middle of the Minnesota countryside.”

For the first time since they met, Endora laughed, her face relaxing and her hands unfolding in her lap. “Greatgrandfather Moray was a wee bit of an eccentric. Before he came to America, he lived by himself on the moors in Scotland. He’d spend every waking minute hiking over those barren wastelands, and he developed quite a passion for them. Thought of the moors as his own private preserve. One day the government went and put a new highway right through the middle of his precious tract of nothing, and it sent him into a rage. He tried to stop them in court. When that failed, he vowed to leave Scotland and never set foot on her soil again.”

She paused. “Moray came to America and drifted west. Eventually he found this isolated spot and decided to build his new home here. He had all his funds transferred to an American bank and oversaw the construction of the castle. After that he settled down to the life of a country gentleman.”

“I take it he survived the war?”

“Yes. The castle is built strong. He also foresaw the war coming and had the underground levels built to live in until the danger of radiation poisoning passed. Our family has lived here ever since.”

“And you’ve had no contact with the outside world?”

“None.”

“Why is that?”

The answer came from a totally unexpected source, courtesy of a gruff voice near the right-hand wall. “Because we don’t like outsiders, boy. That’s why.”

Taken unawares, Blade swiveled in his chair and discovered two men standing 15 feet away, one with a double-barreled shotgun trained on his chest.

The newcomers were a bizarre, desperate pair.

Holding the shotgun was the shorter man, a lean, frail figure who was a mere five feet tall. An immaculate, neatly pressed, baggy black suit hung from his frame like the oversized garments on a scarecrow. His head, in proportion to his body, was extremely large, a pumpkin on a broomstick as it were. A cruel slit of a mouth curled downward as he regarded the youths. High cheekbones and a slanting nose gave him an imperious aspect, complimented by his flashing green eyes and bushy brows, and a wild shock of black hair streaked with white crowned his cranium.

Only in one respect did the second man resemble the first. His brows were bushy, even more so, inch-wide strips of thick hairs that would have done justice to a gorilla. And in many respects he was like a huge ape.

Seven feet tall, his broad, hunched shoulders gave him a perpetually stooped aspect. His brawny hands, possessing knuckles the size of walnuts, dangled next to his knees. Ill-fitting clothes scarcely contained his enormous arms and barrel chest, and his size 18 feet were naked. Dull brown eyes regarded the trio more in curiosity than in malice.

Blade saw the shotgun wielder pivot toward the doorway.

“Don’t even think of it,” the man snapped.

Shifting, Blade saw Hickok poised to draw.

“Drop the shotgun, mister,” the gunfighter warned.

“No one dictates to Morlock in his own house,” the shorter man,snapped. “And if you go for those revolvers, I’ll blow you in half.”

Hickok smiled. “I’ve got news for you, chump. I’ll put a bullet in your brain before you can squeeze the trigger.”

“No one is that fast,” the man scoffed.

“I am,” Hickok stated.

Blade was going to admonish the gunfighter to wait when someone else intervened.

“Husband, no!” Endora cried, rising. “There’s no need for killing.

They’ve convinced me they have peaceful intentions.”

The man called Morlock glanced disdainfully at her. “And you believe them, my dear?”

“Yes, I do. Look at them. They’re just boys. They came here from Humboldt, where there are other survivors,” Endora said. “And what about their families?”

A weird reaction occurred, and Blade didn’t know what to make of it.

Morlock perceptibly stiffened at the mention of other survivors, then slowly lowered the shotgun.