Грэм Мастертон - Famine

‘Hold it!’ shrieked Shearson, in an unnaturally feminine voice. ‘For God’s sake, hold it!’

The Lincoln’s trunk swung around to the left, and sideswiped the trunk of a roadside pine. Then the car screeched around in the opposite direction, its front wheels banging and shuddering over a line of rocks. Ed, gripping the wheel, saw trees, darkness, sky, and more trees, and then his whole world tilted sideways and he was hit on the bridge of the nose by something as hard as an iron bar.

A whole minute of silence passed by. Ed raised his head. His nose felt as if it had swollen three times its normal size. He looked painfully around him and saw that the limousine had dropped down an eighty foot slope, and was now resting at an angle of forty five degrees in a narrow rock-strewn gully. There was no sound but the ticking of the engine as it slowly cooled down, and the whistling of black-capped chickadees in the trees.

Beside him, Della was holding her head in her hands. The pump-gun had dropped to the floor. In back, Senator Jones suddenly started moaning, and saying, ‘My finger. God damn it, I’ve broken my finger.’

Ed said, ‘Della, are you okay?’

Della nodded dumbly. Ed turned to Senator Jones and asked, ‘Is it just your finger? Nothing else broken?’

‘Isn’t a finger enough?’ snarled Shearson.

Behind them, up on the road, the Chevy’s lights had stopped. Ed picked up the rifle, and tried to open his door. The impact of the crash had wedged it back in its frame, so he had to kick it twice with his heels before it would budge, then he climbed out into the sharp early-morning air.

Peter Kaiser and Muldoon were already on their way down the slope. It was still too dark to see clearly, but Ed caught the glint of Muldoon’s nickel-plated automatic as he came down through the trees.

‘I don’t know why you don’t give up now,’ said Shearson, from the back of the car. ‘You don’t stand a chance in hell.’

‘Just shut up,’ said Ed, and crouched his way along the length of the Lincoln’s fender. Then he lay down on the ground, on a slope of pine needles and pine cones, and positioned himself so that he could take a shot at Peter Kaiser or Muldoon as soon as they were in range.

Della slipped out of the driver’s door behind him, and wriggled her way up close.

‘Whatever you do, don’t hurt Peter Kaiser,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be a number-one plea-bargaining witness. Especially when we put some pressure on his mother.’

‘I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep us alive,’ said Ed.

Soon, Peter Kaiser and Muldoon were less than twenty feet away, and their faces were clearly visible against the black shadows of the pines. This is going to be like shooting coconuts at a fair, thought Ed, as he squinted along the rifle. The front Sight of the pump-gun appeared as a dark notch in Muldoon’s pale head.

‘Senator Jones? Are you there?’ called Peter, anxiously.

They could hear the car’s suspension squeak as Shearson moved his bulk towards the opposite window.

‘I’m all right,’ Shearson called out, hoarsely. ‘I’ve broken my damned finger, but that’s all. It’s Hardesty you’ve got to watch out for. He’s around the car somewhere, with the girl.’

There was a pause, and then Peter shouted, ‘Hardesty? You there?’

Ed looked around at Della, but Della shook her head. Don’t answer, not yet. See what they have to offer first.

‘If you can hear me, Hardesty, you’d better listen good,’ said Peter. ‘You’re guilty so far tonight of burglary, theft, criminal damage, kidnapping, and homicide. You hear that? Calvin Muldoon is dead, and you shot him. You’re holding a US senator against his will. You’re in a pretty sticky position, Hardesty, and you’d better understand it’

‘Why haven’t you called the police?’ Ed shouted back, before Della could stop him. He could see Muldoon quickly jerk his head around to see if he could make out where the voice was coming from.

Peter Kaiser took a couple of steps closer. ‘I haven’t called the police because the police are too busy with all the rioting and the looting you started off with that broadcast of yours. Apart from that, you’ve ransacked some pretty sensitive papers there. I wouldn’t like them to get into the hands of somebody who might misinterpret them.’

‘So what’s your offer?’ asked Ed. ‘You want to make a deal?’

‘The offer’s simple. I’ll let you out of here alive, as long as you let Senator Jones go free, and as long as you never mention anything about the Blight Crisis Appeal again.’

‘One more thing,’ said Ed.

‘What’s that?’

‘You take the tail off of my wife and my daughter. Because I warn you, if anything happens to them. I’ll hunt you down and take your head off.’

‘That’s all right,’ Peter nodded. ‘I can agree to that. Now, do you want to come out, with your hands where we can see them?’

Ed turned to Della again. “What do you think?’ he asked her.

Della said, ‘I don’t trust him. My reason says he’s probably on the level, but my instinct says beware.’

Ed squeezed her hand. ‘Well, I’ve always been the kind of person to follow my instinct. Let’s give them a test. Remember the old cowboy films?’

He handed her the gun to hold, and then, twisting on the needly floor of the woods, he tugged his red sweatshirt off.

‘Striptease, at a time like this?’ she asked him.

‘Just give me the gun,’ he told her.

Quickly, he wrapped the sweatshirt around the barrel of the rifle. Then, hesitantly and jerkily, he raised it up above the protective fender of the Lincoln, as if it was someone coming out of cover.

‘ There! ’ said Peter.

The silence of the woods was cracked by three pistol shots in rapid succession. Ed’s sweatshirt was flapped up into the air by one bullet, and they felt the wind of a second as it passed narrowly overhead. The third pinged off the Lincoln’s trunk.

Ed snatched down the rifle, rolled around to the slope which he had chosen as his firing position, snuggled the butt against his cheek and looked for Peter and Muldoon.

Muldoon, crouched as low as an arm-swinging baboon, was only a few feet away, running in fast to finish off the red sweatshirt. Peter was already round the other side of the limousine – presumably intent on rescuing Shearson. Della was right behind Ed, her head buried beside his thigh.

Muldoon didn’t have a chance. He was so close that Ed shouted, ‘Muldoon! Drop it!’ just to give the man a break. But Muldoon made a dive for the ground, and fired off another thunderous shot from his .45, and Ed squeezed the trigger without allowing himself to think anything else but kill him.

The shot echoed and echoed, and then there was silence again. Ed cautiously rose to his feet, and walked around the Lincoln with the pump-gun held up and his eyes alert.

Muldoon was lying on his back on the stony ground, his eyes wide open, his automatic thrown aside, his plaid cowboy shirt dark with blood.

Peter appeared, holding a revolver, but Ed swung the rifle towards him and said, ‘Drop it,’ and he did.

‘You’ve killed him,’ said Peter, in a shaky voice.

Ed nodded. ‘I didn’t want to. Believe me. But it was him or us.’

‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Peter. ‘Are you going to shoot the rest of us, too? Or what? One way or another, we’re going to have to report this to the police.’

‘The police already know,’ said Ed, quietly. ‘At least, the federal authorities do.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Della works for the FBI. The reason we broke into your office was to find evidence of what you’ve been doing with this Blight Crisis Appeal to take you to court.’