First Blood

He stalked forward, using the slope of lawn in front of the police station for cover, peering through the smoke to catch sight of the kid, not wanting a second glance at what was left of Harris spread apart on the street. Now he was between the courthouse and the station, their flames lighting him, smoke burning his eyes, heat stinging his face and skin. He stooped closer to the slope of lawn to hide himself in the light. The smoke cleared a moment, and he saw that people who lived in the two houses up from the station were out on their porches, talking, pointing. Christ, the kid might blow up their houses too. Kill them just like Harris.

He struggled to hurry toward them, watching for the kid. 'Get the hell away!' he shouted. 'Get back!'

'What?' someone up there called.

'He's near you! Run! Get away!'

'What? I can't hear you right!'

18

He huddled next to the porch on the far side of the last house and aimed at Teasle. The man and the two women on the porch were so distracted calling to Teasle that they did not see he was hiding down next to them. But when he pulled back the hammer on his rifle, they must have heard the click because there was an abrupt sound of movement on the wood up there, and a woman leaned over the rail at him, saying 'My God. Jesus God.'

That was enough warning; Teasle scurried off the sidewalk, up the lawn to the first house and the shelter of its porch. Rambo fired anyhow, not counting on a hit, but sure at least of frightening him. The woman up there screamed. He levered out his empty cartridge and aimed at the corner of the porch down there. Teasle's shoe was sticking out, lit by the flames. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. His rifle empty, no time to reload, he dropped it and drew the police revolver, but Teasle's shoe was gone now. The woman was still screaming.

'Oh, for crissake shut up, lady,' he told her, and ran to the rear corner of the house, studying the shadows of the back yard. Teasle would not risk coming around the front where the flames made him a bright easy target. He would slip into the dark at the back of the first house, and then work his way to the back of this house. Rambo drew close to the corner, staring past a bicycle and a tool shed, waiting. His forehead was cracked open from when his car had struck Teasle's, slamming his face against the police radio, and his sleeve was sticky from wiping away the blood that streamed down into his eyes. The collision had also wakened the pain in his ribs so that he did not know which hurt him worse.

He waited longer, went drowsy briefly, then alerted himself. There was no sound, but a black figure seemed to be gliding along the rear fence in among evergreen shrubs. He wiped blood from his eyes, aimed, but could not let himself fire. Not until he was certain it was Teasle. If the gliding figure was just a trick of the eyes, then shooting at it would reveal his place. It would also be wasting a bullet: he only had five in his handgun, the chamber beneath the firing pin was bare. Teasle's Browning held thirteen. Let him waste shots. He could afford to.

There was another reason he did not fire immediately at the figure: when last he had wiped blood from his eyes, they had not focused properly, seeing double, as if the blood remained. He could not distinguish now between the dark shape and the shape of the evergreens, all blurred together, and he was enduring a headache so sharp that it seemed ready to split his skull.

Why wasn't the shadow moving? Or was it moving and he could not see it? Teasle ought to have made some sound, though. Come on, make a sound, why didn't he? It was getting too late. Already sirens were wailing close. Fire sirens maybe. But maybe police. Come on, Teasle.

He heard the people from the porch in the house now, talking frightened. He sensed something, and looked behind to see if anyone was still on the porch with a gun or something that might hurt him, and Christ, there was Teasle coming up the front lawn. In his surprise Rambo fired before he knew it, Teasle crying out, careening backward down the lawn in an arc that landed him on the sidewalk, but Rambo could not puzzle out what was happening to himself, the way he was jerking back weightless, whipping to one side, striking face down in the grass. His hands were warm and wet on his chest, then directly sticky. Oh Jesus he was hit. Teasle had managed a shot and hit him. His chest was stu

He could not stand. He squirmed. A wire fence to the side of the house. Beyond it vague hulking objects in the night. The flames from the station and the courthouse surged high, illuminating them orange, but still he could not see them distinctly. He strained his eyes. His vision cleared and he saw. Seesaws, the word a hollow jingle in his head. Swings. Slides. A playground. He inched toward them on his belly, the sound of the flames down behind him like the roar of a windstorm snapping through trees.

'I'll get my gun! Where's my gun?' the man shouted inside the house.

'No. Please,' a woman said. 'Don't go out there. Stay out of it.'

'Where's my gun? Where did you put my gun? I told you to quit moving it.'

He dug his elbows into the lawn, squirming faster, reached the fence, a gate, opened it, kneed himself through. Behind him there were hollow footsteps on the wood of the backstairs.

'Where is he?' the man was saying, his voice clear outside. 'Where'd he go?'

'There!' the second woman said hysterically, the voice of the one who had seen him from the front porch. 'Over there! The gate!'

Well you bastards, Rambo thought and looked. The blazes were flaring high, and the man was standing by the tool shed, aiming a rifle. The man was too awkward aiming, but he went instantly graceful when Rambo shot him, smoothly clutching his right shoulder, spi

'Christ, I'm hit,' the man was groaning. 'He hit me. I'm hit.'

But the man did not know how lucky he was. Rambo had aimed at his chest, not his shoulder. No longer able to see to shoot straight, no longer able to hold his gun steady, his chest rapidly draining blood, he had no hope of getting away, no means of efficiently protecting himself, nothing. Except perhaps the stick of dynamite still in his pocket. The dynamite, he thought. Screw the dynamite. With the little strength remaining in him, he would not be able to lob the stick five feet.

'He hit me,' the man was groaning. 'He hit me. I'm hit.'

Well, so am I, buddy, but you don't hear me whining about it, he thought and since he could not accept merely waiting for the men in the siren cars to come for him, he began crawling again. Into a dry wading pool at the center of the playground. Into the center of the wading pool. And there his nerves tingled, stretched to life, and gradually registered his pain. Teasle's bullet had torn through his cracked ribs, and it was like lancing a giant fester, poison spewing forth. The pain grew to overwhelm him. He was scratching at his chest, clawing, ripping. He shook his head, clenched his body, so convulsed with pain that he raged to his feet up out of the wading pool, head stooped, shoulders hunched, tottering toward the fence at the edge of the playground. It was low, and he leaned over it gasping, kicked his feet in the air; in a grotesque somersault came down on the other side, expecting his back to hit ground; instead snagged thorns and leafless branches. A field of brambles. Wild raspberries. He had been here before. He did not remember when, but he had been here before. No. No, he was wrong. It was Teasle who had been here before, up in the mountains, when he had escaped into that whole slope of brambles. Yes, that was it. Teasle had gone in. Now it was the other way around. Now it was his own turn. The barbs dug him. They felt so good, helping him to rip at his pain. Teasle had escaped this way, through brambles like these. Why couldn't he?