First Blood

Then forget about the climb, he told himself. Don't worry about it. Either you'll make it or you won't. Nothing you can do if the basin is high. Forget about it.

All right, he thought, stayed seated in the comfortable soft dirt and rested, accustoming himself to the change in him. He had never been so aware of things before, so with them. It was true that in the past in moments of action he had felt a little like this. He would be performing each gesture smoothly and properly -ru

But this, what he felt now, was different. There was no movement involved, and the emotion was not isolated in one eternal second. It was every second; sitting there in the soft dirt, back conforming restfully with the rock, he sorted through words in his mind and finally decided on 'good.' He had never felt so good.

He wondered if he had gone crazy. The fumes must have affected him more than he knew and this was just quiet giddiness. Or maybe, having given himself up for dead, he was just overwhelmingly glad to be alive. Having gone through that hell, maybe he had to find everything else full of pleasure.

But you won't feel it much more if you let them come across you here, he told himself, and he stood in the dark, testing the emptiness above him so as not to bump his head against a shelf. Even then, he spiked his head, jerked down, and realized that what he had struck was the end of a branch. It was a bush up there, and when he put out his hands, he touched the rim of the basin, waist high. Out. He had been out all this while, the night sky clouded, fooling him that he was yet underground.

Careful of his ribs, he drew himself up under the bush and gulped air, tasting its freshness, smelling the woody bark of the bush. Down from him, quite a distance, there was a small fire in the trees. After the total darkness of the caves, the fire was bright and rich and alive.

He tensed. Someone had spoken muffled down near the fire. Someone else moved in the rocks nearby, and there was a vivid scratching sound that he saw now was a match being struck on its folder's abrasive paper. Then the flare of the match went out and he saw the gentle glow of a cigarette.

So they were out here waiting for him. Teasle had guessed why he went down into the fissures and caves. Teasle had deployed men around the hill in case he found an exit. Well, they could not see much in the dark, and after being underground, he was at home in the dark, and as soon as he had rested more, he would slip down past them. It would be easy now. They would be thinking he was still in the caves, and he would be miles off on his road. No one had better get in his way. Christ, no. He would do anything. What he had come to feel, he would do anything to anyone to keep.

13

It was dark again, and Teasle did not understand how he had come to be in the murk of the forest. Trautman, Kern, the truck. Where were they all? What had happened to the day? Why was he stumbling so urgently through the solid shadows of the trees?

He leaned breathless against the black trunk of a tree, the pain in his chest rousing from its numbness. He was so disoriented that he was afraid. Not directionless. He knew he had to keep moving straight ahead, he had to go, somewhere ahead, but he did not understand why, how.

Trautman. He remembered this Trautman had wanted to take him to a doctor. He remembered lying on his back on the wood floor of the truck. He grasped for an explanation of how he had come from there to here. Had he struggled with Trautman not to go to the doctor? Maybe he had broken loose, had grappled from the truck across the field into the woods. Anything not to give up his vigil before it was time. To get closer to the kid. Help catch him.

But that was not right. He knew it was not right. In his condition he could not have fought off Trautman. He could not think. He had to hurry forward in spite of his chest and the terrible sense that someone was after him, or would soon be after him. The kid. Was it the kid who was after him?

The cloud cover melted, the quarter-moon shone through, lighting the trees, and all around him were the hulks of relic cars, piled atop each other, stacked against the trees, hundreds of them, broken, amputated and decayed. It was like a graveyard, grotesque, moonlight on the oval outlines, reflecting.

And soundless. Even when he moved, through leaves and crumpled fenders and broken glass, he made no noise. He was gliding. And somehow he knew it was not the kid who was after him, but someone else. But why was he afraid at the sight of the road through the ghostly carcasses? Why was he afraid of the row of Guardsmen trucks parked along the road? Christ, what was happening to him? Had he lost his mind?

No people there. Nobody near the trucks. Fear draining. A police car empty, the last in the line, nearest town. Ecstatic now, creeping from the derelicts, doorless, seats ripped, hoods raised, into the field, silent, close to the earth, toward the car.

A sudden noise disturbed him, fracturing glass that split finely in his eardrums, and he blinked. He was on his back once more. Had somebody shot him in the field? He felt his body for the wound, felt a blanket, no earth beneath him. Soft cushions. A coffin. He started, in a panic, understood. A couch. But Christ where? What was going on? He fumbled for a light, knocked a lamp, and switching it, blinked, discovering his office. But what about the forest, the wrecks of cars, the road? Christ, they had been real, he knew. He looked at his watch, but it was gone, glanced at the clock on his desk, quarter to twelve. Dark outside through the Venetian blinds. The twelve must be midnight, but the last he remembered was noon. What about the kid? What's happened?

He faltered to sit up, clutching his head to keep it from throbbing apart, but something had raised the floor of his office, tilting it high away from him. He cursed, but no words came from his mouth. He wavered uphill to the door, grabbed the knob with both hands and swung it, but the door was stuck, and he had to tug with all his might, the door jolting open, almost reeling him downhill to the couch. He threw out his arms, steadying himself like a tightrope walker, his bare feet off the soft rug of his office onto the cold tile of the corridor. It was in gloom, but the front office was lit; halfway there he had to put a hand against a wall.

'Awake, Chief?' a voice said down the corridor. 'You O. K.?'

It was too complicated to answer. He was still catching up to himself. On his back on the bright floor of the truck, blearing up at the greasy tarpaulin that was the roof. The voice from the radio: 'My God, he isn't answering. He's run deep into the mine.' The fight with Trautman to keep from being carried to the cruiser. But what about the forest, the dark- 'I said are you O. K., Chief?' the voice said louder, footsteps coming down the hall. There was an echo enveloping.

'The kid,' he managed to say. The kid's in the forest.'

'What?' The voice was directly next to him, and he looked. 'You shouldn't be walking around. Relax. You and the kid aren't in the forest anymore. He's not after you.'