THE GETAWAY

"No," she said quietly. "No."

Then, on an ascending note, "No, no, n-no!"

She waited, panting, the blood ru

Sobbing painfully, she braced herself again. Tears ran down her face, and she could not brush them away. And in her agony and growing hysteria, that seemed the most unbearable thing of all.

"C-can't-can't even raise a finger," she wept. "Can't even r-raise a…"

Then, so softly that she could hardly be heard, "Ma said tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, prob'ly."

The words trickled off into silence. Her panting grew more labored. She wheezed and coughed,groaned with the jerking of her body, and her tears ran harder.

"I-can't-stand-it!" she gasped. "You hear me? _I can't stand it!_ Can't stand it, can't stand it, _c-caa-an 't stand eet, can't stand ee-yaahhhhhh_…"

She screamed and the pain of the exertion caused her to scream even louder, and that scream wrung still another from her throat. She writhed and screamed, gripped in a frenzy of pain and fury. Her head pounded against the roof and her heels dug and kicked into the floor, and her elbows churned and banged and scraped against the imprisoning sides of the hole.

Blood mingled with the tears on her face. It streamed down her back, over her arms and legs and thighs. From a hundred tiny cuts and scratches and bruises it came, coating her body; warm red blood-combining slippery with the dust of the cave.

She never knew when she broke free. Or how. Or that she had. She was still struggling, still screaming, when she got the cap off the pill bottle and upended it into her mouth.

Peevishly, she came up out of the pleasant blackness. Something was gripping her ankle, and she tried to jerk away from it. But the thing held tight. It yanked, skidding her down the hole, peeling more hide from her body. She cried out in protest, and the cry was choked off suddenly as water closed over her.

Choking and kicking, she slid out of the hole and into the pit. It was night again-or night still? And in the moonlight, she looked blurrily into the flattest eyes she had ever seen.

"I'm Earl," he gri

"Leggo!" She flung herself frantically backward. "Just leave me alone! I don't want to go anywhere! P-please, please, don't make me! Just let me s-stay where…"

She made a grab for the bushes, tried to pull herself back into the hole. Treading water, Earl gave her a hard slap in the face.

"Son of a gun," he mumbled, getting a rope around her waist, signaling to Ma and Doc. "Wasn't fortyeight hours enough for yuh?"

13

Covered by odds and ends of sacking, Doc and Carol lay in the rear of Earl's old truck and were taken joltingly back through the hills to a county road, and thence on several miles to the so-called farm where Earl lived. It was a shabby, rundown place with a grassless junk-littered yard, a cow, a few chickens, a couple of acres of fruit trees and two or three more of truck crops. Inside the weatherbeaten house, however, with its bare warped floors and boarded-up windows, there was an outsize color TV set, a huge deep freeze and refrigerator, and an enormous wood-fuel range.

Earl was obviously proud of these possessions, and Doc complimented him on them. Laconically, trying to conceal his pleasure, Santis took a large beef roast from the oven and slapped it platterless on the table. As he whacked it into great bleeding chunks, Ma set out other "vittles"-cold boiled cabbage, bread, a pot of coffee, a gallon jug of bonded whiskey-and tin cups and plates. They all sat down then, and everyone but Carol began to eat hungrily. She sat dazed and listless, her stomach turning queasily, hardly able to tolerate the sight and the smell of the food.

Ma gave her an appraising look, and reached for the whiskey jug. She filled a tin cup-pronounced tin cup-half full of the white liquid and thrust it across the table.

"Now, you drink that," she ordered. "Go on! Don't make me tell you twice."

Carol drank it. She swallowed hastily, trying to swallow back the sickness, and then a comforting fire spread through her stomach, and a little color came back into her face.

"Now, eat," Ma said. And Carol ate. And after the first few bites, the food tasted very good to her.

Both of her eyes were slightly blackened. Her mouth was puffy and bruised, and her face and hands were a mass of scratches and cuts. But no one commented on her appearance, or inquired into the why of it. Old hands in the sleazy bypaths of crime, they could pretty well guess what had happened to her.

She kept her eyes on her plate, taking no part in their conversation. As indifferent to it as though it had nothing to do with her.

Needless to say, she and Doc were still very hot. It would be impossible for them to sneak across the Mexican border, and make their way down into the interior by land. But Ma and Earl had lined up a good seaward contact-the captain of a small Portuguese fisherman who had handled similar ventures for them before.

"No one with the kind of heat you two got, o'course." Ma took a swig of whiskey, belched, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "He's stallin' now, trying to weasel out of the deal. But he'll come around in a day or so, soon's he sees it ain't getting him nowheres."

"You mean," Doc frowned warily, "you mean he knows who we are?"

Ma said sure, naturally the fellow knew. "Who else would be skippin' the country right now? But don't you worry none about it, Doc. He knows all about us Santises, and you got nothing to worry about."

"I see," Doc said. "Yes, I'm sure you're right."

Roy Santis would be getting out of prison in another year or so. That would make three of them on the loose, not to mention their manifold kinsfolk and friends. And no one who was even slightly familiar with the Santis reputation would do anything to offend them. Anyone who did, in hope of reward or in fear of punishment, would never live to brag about it.

The meal over, Earl filled a crockery jug with water and led Carol and Doc down through his gullied backyard to a haystack-size mound of manure. It was partly dugout, roofed over with boards which were in turn covered with manure. Facing away from the house, the entrance was covered with a piece of canvas which was smeared with cow dung, dried now but apparently applied when wet.

Diffidently Earl handed Doc the water jug. "Get you some grub too, if you want it, Doc. Just figured you'd want to do your eatin' at night when you could come outside."

"Of course," Doc said. "We won't want a thing now, Earl."

"Well-oh, yeah. No smokin'-guess you don't need me to tell you that. Don't believe I'd even light a match if I was you. Little smoke or fire shows a long ways off."

"I understand. There won't be any," Doc promised.

"Ever chaw? Got an extra plug with me you can have."

"Well, now, that might be all right," Doc said. "Thank you very much, Earl."

Earl went back to the house. Doc politely held the canvas door aside, and waited for Carol to precede him.

It was an hour or so before dawn. Without a word, Carol curled up on the floor and was almost immediately asleep again. Doc hunkered down against the wall and took a chew of tobacco. He had slept himself out during the past two days and nights. Now sleeping was something to be done when he could no longer stay awake; something to be conserved against the boredom of wakefulness. He chewed and spa t,carefully covering up the spittle each time. Occasionally he looked at the dark shadow that was Carol, and his eyes became brooding and thoughtful.