Bill Pronzini: The Stalker

She swallowed, digging her teeth into her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. “What ... what are you going to do? Why can’t we both-?”

“There’s not enough time, he’ll find us before long, now go—hurry!”

“Steve ...”

“Damn it, do what I tell you, go, go!”

He shoved her away from him and she stumbled, almost falling, gaining her balance again, looking at him. “Go!” he said again, and she hesitated for an instant, but only for that long, turning abruptly and running as quickly as she was able through the muddy water, her hands clutching frantically at the reeds and cattails to maintain her footing.

He watched her for a moment to make sure she was obeying, and then he swiveled his body so that it was facing toward the cabin, Preston’s cabin, his hands digging into the soft mire of the bank, gauging times and distances in his mind, guessing fatalistically that there hadn’t been enough time, that he would run directly into the killer’s arms, banishing the fear as rapidly as it had come, thinking: Decoy, decoy, move now, move ! He scrambled up the bank, straightening into a low crouch as he gained the flat marsh ground, his eyes flashing in a wide rapid sweep through the wind-rain—and he saw the killer less than thirty yards away, running parallel to him in the opposite direction, toward the slough, saw him stop and jerk his body around as he spied his prey coming out of the gulley.

Run!

His legs churned on the wet, slippery turf, his eyes twisting frontally again, and he was gathering speed, running now in a low infantry zig-zag, changing direction, changing pace, trying to blend as best he could with the surrounding terrain. The shack was sixty yards away, fifty, and he heard the first faint, distant, popgun-loud sound behind him, absorbed immediately by the howling gale, the bullet missing badly; heard a second report, absorbed, missing closer; heard a third shot—

At almost the same instant, he felt a sharp, stinging pain in the lower part of his back, just above the left kidney. That entire side went instantaneously numb, and he lost his balance, stumbling forward, putting out his right hand instinctively as he felt himself falling. I’ve been shot! he thought with a kind of awe, and he struck the ground solidly, jarringly, sliding on the slick wet earth, sliding behind a high growth of anise less than thirty yards from the northern side of the cabin. Breath burst from his lungs, and pinwheeling lights exploded in back of his eyes, fading rapidly after that first intense burst, fading into a series of large, cinereous dots that blended together to form a screen of murky darkness ...

The limping man saw Orange fall, and a sudden premature exultancy seized hold of him. He pulled up, lowering his right arm, finger relaxing on the Magnum’s trigger. He thought: Got him, I got him, he’s dead, they’re all dead, it’s over, it’s over!

But almost immediately, the methodical caution with which and by which he had functioned throughout the whole of it returned, and he knew he had to make sure, make certain, put a bullet squarely between Orange’s eyes, no mistake. There would be enough time then to locate the woman—probably hiding where Orange had suddenly appeared, she wouldn’t get away—and when he did he would make her scream for him and then he would kill her quickly and painlessly and mercifully; he had nothing against the woman after all . . .

He began to run toward the thick, fringed clump of anise behind which Orange had disappeared.

Andrea checked her flight, looking back over her shoulder, at the exact moment Steve came up out of the gulley and began to run. She froze, watching him lurch drunkenly across the open ground toward the Preston cabin until the high greenish-brown marsh grasses along the near bank of the drainage gulley blocked her vision—watching with the sudden realization that he was trying to draw the limping man away from her so that she could get away, escape . . .

Her gaze swiveled frenetically past the sparser growth on the opposite bank and across the morass to the north, and she saw the limping man racing toward the Preston cabin, his arm extended; saw the first indistinct orange flash from the large black gun in his hand, the second, the third; saw the limping man come to an abrupt halt, peering toward the spot where she had last seen her husband.

And her immediate reaction was: He’s shot Steve, oh dear God, he’s shot Steve!

She stood immobile as the limping man began to run again, vanishing momentarily as Steve had vanished. The turbulent rainwater swirled and eddied around her legs, and she was dimly aware that one of the suede flats had been pulled loose from her foot and carried off. She didn’t know what to do. He had told her to get to the boat, get away from there and summon help, but what if he was badly hurt, maybe dying, maybe already—Oh no, no, he was all right, he had to be, he hadn’t really been shot, this whole thing was so alien, so terrifying, she couldn’t cope with it, what should she do, what should she do?

She tried to think, tried to reason, and after a moment she seemed to know the answer to her mute plea: Get help, yes, get the police, that was all she could do; she couldn’t fight the limping man, she was only a woman alone. She had to get help, bring aid quickly, Steve was all right, he hadn’t been shot, he would get away and she would bring help, she couldn’t panic now, not now, she had to do what he had told her to do.

Andrea pivoted and began to rush once again toward the storm-flayed slough.

Kilduff shook his head violently, trying to clear away the gathering darkness in back of his eyes. He had no feeling in his left arm, and he knew that it was useless; he got his right hand under his chest, palm flat on the swampy ground, and lifted himself onto his knees, still shaking his head. Gray light—rain-blurred images—took away the darkness finally, and he could see again. He struggled upward, standing unsteadily just beyond the cluster of anise, chest heaving, looking toward the Preston cabin. Transitory cover, he thought, so futile, why does a man fight for every last second, every chance for another breath, when death is imminent?

He stumbled forward in a kind of awkward, spindle-legged run, not looking back, not daring to. Ahead he could see a narrow, squat, ram shackle structure—a woodshed—with shadowed gaps like missing teeth in its visible side, where the boarding had rotted or pulled away; it sat in a bayou-like quagmire void of any growth other than a few shocks of cord grass, ten yards from the near wall of the shack. Kilduff reached it, waiting for another bullet to slam into his back, tensing his muscles, girding himself for it as he ran; but he was past the shed, almost to the cabin, when the shot finally came, missing wide right, gouging wood splinters from the wall near the set of four stairs on the cabin’s inland side. He threw himself forward reflexively, like a runner making a head-first dive into second base, skimming across and through the muddy pools, sending low wakes of spray outward on either side of him. He kept his head cradled against his good arm as he planed into the two-foot open space between the bottom of the block raised cabin and the liquidy ground. He caught his forward momentum as he passed beneath the shack, twisting sideways, crawling through the fetid muck toward a vertical plywood section which served as a siding to the set of stairs. He crawled belly-down into the shadows there, wiped some of the slime from his eyes, and peered out.

He saw the killer come running in a limping gait one step past the woodshed, saw the black gun stretched forth in one hand. The limping man skidded to a halt there, legs spread wide, neck craned forward, seeing the slug-like furrow Kilduff had left through the quagmire. He remained standing there for a moment, indecisive, and then he took two quick steps backward, leaning his body back against the side wall of the shed, blending with the dwelling, no longer discernible.