Bill Pronzini: The Stalker

His eyes were locked on the limping man, and he hurtled forward through the sloshing mud, with his lips pulled snarling back from his teeth, the weakness forgotten, running in short, quick, sliding steps, the knife rigid in front of him, ready to rip through the flesh of the enemy half-turned away from him . . .

The limping man heard him coming.

The limping man heard him and pivoted toward him, bringing the gun around, and Kilduff could see his face—startled, the eyes like two tiny phosphorous pools—see it very close, less than ten feet away now. The limping man raised the gun, dodging down and to the left, away from the shed; he pulled the trigger, and the wide black bore seemed to discharge a billowing flame outward, flame and a noise as loud as a cannon firing next to his ear, and Kilduff went blind and he went deaf in that single instant, but the bullet passed high over his right shoulder. He plunged forward, trying to turn in the direction the limping man had turned, slashing upward with the knife, missing, missing, but his numbed left shoulder struck something soft and yielding and there was a small, gasping cough and he felt himself toppling forward, falling, falling onto the yielding surface—the limping man—and he tried to use the knife and found that he couldn’t. As if in slow motion, then, they were rolling over and over, arms and legs locked, rolling through the oozing mud, and Kilduff felt it cling parasitically—acold noxious flowing entity—to his clothes and to his skin. He could smell the man’s breath, the breath of a satyr, thudding into his face in sharp staccato expulsions—Suddenly, the limping man was gone.

Kilduff felt him jerk free, as if they had been exploded apart, one whole splitting into two halves, and he rolled again, coming up onto his knees, dimly able to see the limping man again and he too was kneeling, less than two feet away, staring back at Kilduff, the two of them with their arms hanging down at their sides, the two of them still with their weapons clenched in mud-fists, kneeling in the center of the brown quagmire just beyond the woodshed, gasping, frozen immobile there like two hideous, putrescent creatures risen from the slime for one long, long moment, seeming to wait one for the other, and Kilduff thought: Andrea, oh God!

With one final terrible effort of will, he brought the knife slashing upward and buried it almost to the hilt in the limping man’s chest.

. . . And the limping man feels the knife, hot, white-hot, tearing through his flesh, and his mouth opens and air spews out in a heaving, agonized sigh. A grayness dims his vision momentarily, puts a gathering fog across the pupils of his eyes, and there is the distant sound of whining, vibrating turbines in his ears. He does not see or hear the Magnum fall from his nerveless fingers to make a soft, wet, ugly sound in the mud. He blinks once, twice, and finally the fog shreds and he is able to see Orange again, Orange releasing the handle of the knife, the muscles in his face relaxing, growing lax, his eyeballs rolling up in their sockets, falling backward, falling into the shallow brown bayou, lying still.

There is no pain; miraculously, there is no pain and the limping man looks down at the front of his slippery wet overcoat, at the mottled black and white handle of the knife protruding there, looks down at the fountain of blood bubbling out around it, his blood, covering the small exposed portion of the molten blade, painting the grip now, thick and flowing free, bright red rivers meandering down the muddied cloth; he watches them in mesmeric fascination, watches the rain dilute the brilliantine color of his blood, pale it, wash it away, watches new rivers forming, flowing red and thick again.

But there is no pain, there is only the sound of the turbines, growing louder now. He looks once again at Orange, lying still, and he thinks: He’s dead Orange is really dead this time I’ve finally killed him! He tries to smile, for the fury and the rage are gone; but he has no control over his facial muscles and his expression remains frozen, mask-like. He begins to waver, slowly, as if he has suddenly become caught in a cross-current of the wind, and the fog obliterates his vision again, thicker now, thickly gray as his blood is thickly crimson.

. It’s over vengeance is mine Blue and Red and Gray and

The pain comes all at once, a searing, flashing tidal flood, erupting throughout his body, a holocaust of pain consuming the cells, the pumping arteries, the tissue and the membranes, destroying everything in its path. He cries out once, sharply, tormentedly, and then his brain ceases to function and he topples sideways, sprawling face-downward in the cold brown sucking mud . . .

Sounds.

The wind and the rain.

His name, screaming.

Men shouting, far away, coming closer.

All vague, all dream-like.

Kilduff teeters on the edge of consciousness, close to falling, soon to fall. He seems to be drifting within himself, an aimless drifting in descending, ever-diminishing circles, as if he has somehow become trapped inside a cone-like helix that will, when he reaches its tiny beckoning bottom, hurl him into a limitless black void. His eyes are closed, and he cannot open them; the rain is cold, pleasant, soothing on his fevered skin. He lies there, waiting for the void, drifting, drifting, and then he senses a weight fall beside him, hears the anguished sounds of near-hysterical weeping. Soft hands, tender hands, familiar hands lift his head from the mud, cradle it momentarily, lower it finally onto a pillowing, familiar softness.

Andrea’s hands.

Andrea’s softness.

Andrea you’re alive, you’re all right.

Oh God, thank you, God . . .

He tries to say the words he is thinking, but his throat refuses to work. The tender hands stroke his cheeks, and he tastes the salt-warmth of falling tears on his lips, Andrea’s tears, and Andrea’s voice is saying his name again, over and over and over, pleading with him not to die . . .

Running feet, pounding across the marsh grasses, through the puddles and through the mud. Panting breaths. A man’s voice: “Jesus Christ!”

Another: “Pat, get back to the car. Radio for an ambulance.”

Another: “They’re both dead, Neal. Look at all the goddamned blood!”

The second: “What happened here? Ma’am, what happened here . . . ?”

He is nearing the bottom now, and the opening into the void has grown larger, grown wide. It waits for him, inviting, and he begins to drift faster and faster, reaching out for it, ready to embrace it. The sounds fade, diminish, until there is only a great, frightening silence.

And then he spins out of the cone-like helix, into blackness, into nothingness, into oblivion . . .

Epilogue Friday

White on white.

White images superimposed on a white background.

Bright white light.

Belly-down on white softness, cheek resting on white softness.

The odor of antiseptic.

Faces—blurred faces, strange faces.

Pain in his back.

Binding constriction of adhesive tape.

Weakness.

Remembering.

“Andrea,” he said.

“His wife,” one of the blurred faces said.

“Andrea ...”

“She’s all right,” another of the faces said. “She’s right outside.”

“. . . see her. . .”

“Not now. Rest, now.”

Faces fading. He tried to keep them in focus, but they faded and faded and finally they were gone, and the whiteness was gone and the softness and the light were gone.

He slept.

He awoke thirsty.

He was still lying on his stomach, still lying on the white softness. His vision was clear. He saw a white wall, white ceiling, whitelinoleumed floor; white nightstand and a white-uniformed nurse sitting on one of three white metal chairs, reading a magazine.