Panic!

Brackeen looked up at the cactus for the other, swinging the Magnum over, and he saw the sunlight glinting again and there was, all at once, white agony in his chest and he toppled backward with thunder detonating in his ears and he was looking up at the bright, hot sky, jarred into thinking now, trying to understand. Roll over, get up, but his limbs would not obey the command of his brain; he wanted to touch his chest, he knew that there would be a hole there, that thick, warm blood would be there, that he had been shot and that he was badly wounded and yet, with all of it, he was strangely calm, the feeling of detachment still lingered. The pain spread malignantly through his body, numbing his mind now in a dark gray haze; but the sky was still hot, so blue and hot the morning sky, what did he shoot me with? Not a rifle, what he was carrying was too small for a rifle—a handgun, then? Sure, with a scope sight, I should have known, but you can’t figure all the angles, you’ve got to do the best you can and sometimes that’s not good enough, but the important thing is doing your duty, the important thing is not crapping out—listen, I did it, didn’t I? I did it, Coretti, I faced their guns and I didn’t panic and I didn’t freeze up, oh Marge, there’s so much I have to make up to you, to both of us, and the one who had shot him ran up and extended the scope-sighted handgun and blew away the side of Brackeen’s head.

Nine

When they heard the oncoming car, Jana and Lennox checked their headlong flight, looking back. Shattered hope re-formed and re-cemented as they recognized the vehicle, saw it skid off the wheel ruts in a spume of dust and veer straight at the nearest of the two killers, saw the driver’s door fly open and the big uniformed officer tumble out, saw the near one on the slope fall to his knees, heard the hollow, cracking sound of gunshots and the savage whine of bullets striking metal; they were, all at once, awed and breathless spectators, divorced from the unfolding drama, clinging to one another, held spellbound by the abrupt and inexplicable turn of events.

Jana felt the bunched muscles of Lennox’s arm and shoulder, and his blood stained her fingers where they were caught in the front of his shirt. I love him, she thought, as she had thought lying in his arms last night, as she had thought waking in his arms this morning. It isn’t possible, it isn’t reasonable, but I love him. Part of it is a reaction to what happened between us, part of it is gratitude for giving me the courage to face myself and for helping me to understand the truth—and yet, it’s more than that, it’s deeper than that, it means much more than the wild, giddy infatuation I had with Don. I need him, he needs me, we can help each other, we can learn from each other, we can lean on each other. We can’t die now, we simply can’t die now ...

She held him more tightly, careful of the wound in his side that her gently probing fingers told her was only superficial, watching the figures moving beyond through the shimmer of gathering heat, the thoughts spinning and sustaining her, blotting out the fear. She watched the one man get to his feet and begin to run up the incline, saw the second one scurrying higher above him. Then the officer stepped out to the front of the cruiser and a brief wisp of smoke spiraled out and up from his extended right hand and the near one jerked and fell amid the booming echo of the gunshot. Jana’s heart seemed to hurl itself at the walls of her chest, we’re going to be all right! and then she saw the officer reel and fall, heard a louder reverberation, and exultation instantaneously dissolved into returning horror.

“No,” she said, “oh no, no, no!”

The remaining pursuer broke away from the cactus behind which he had taken refuge, from behind which he had fired, and began to stumble down the grade. Lennox said, “Jesus!” and spun Jana around and they were running again, running with panic again. She forced her legs to keep working, her slender body screaming against the renewed demands of it, and her mind chanted in a frenzied cadence, Hope, no hope, hope, no hope, because all of this was a hideous fluctuation, as if God could not make up His mind, as if He were ridden with indecision as to the outcome, and that made it so much more terrible, so much more of a nightmare ...

Ten