Panic!

Lennox stared at the splinter, and he thought: Spear, it looks like some primitive spear, and there was a bitter irony in the association. Wasn’t what was happening here, this battle for survival, a primitive thing too—as old as man, as old as life itself?

He had to have that spear. He had to take the chance of going out there to get it. That two feet of slim oxidizing steel represented the last remaining thread of hope, the battle lance, and without it they were naked—there could be no battle.

He put his lips to Jana’s ear and breathed, “I’m going out after that piece of steel, stay here and keep down,” and then, because this was perhaps the final goodbye and there was the need, just this once, to put it into words, “I love you, Jana.”

He waited for her reply, the same three words, and when they were his he squeezed her hand and then moved out toward the splinter, the spear, lying in the sand beyond. He advanced in a humped, four-point stance, fingers splayed just ahead of his shoes, both sliding silently through the sand, his head turned to the left so that he could see the widening area around the boulder. He made a foot, another foot, coming out of the shade now, coming out of hiding, and from just beyond his vision there was a scuffling sound, leather scraping rock, pebbles tumbling, and he stopped moving and leaned forward, holding his breath, craning his neck, and twenty feet away, atop a high flat rock, the fat one, the killer, was pulling himself onto his feet, turned in profile, Death standing outlined against the bright, bright blue of the desert sky.

There was no quickening of Lennox’s heart, no tightening of his groin, none of the symptoms of fear and panic and irresolution. Time had run out, there was no more time to brace himself with the lance, there was only time for one quick attack before the fat one turned and saw him, a single offensive and nothing more.

He thought: This is the moment, this is the judgment—and lunged toward the waiting spear.

Fourteen

Breath whistled asthmatically between Vollyer’s lips as he straightened on top of the rock. He hunched forward, squinting, turning his body as he tried to fuse the dancing shadows below with the objects from which they sprang, cursing his eyes, screaming silently at his eyes. Sweat streamed down from his forehead, over his cheeks, and he lifted his left arm and in that moment he saw the movement, definite movement, independent of the shadows.

His body stiffened, the cords in his neck straining as he tried to focus on the source of the movement. It took shape for him, a man-shape, Lennox, Lennox, and the Remington came up in his right hand, jumping, roaring unsighted as the distorted figure ran across into the open. The bullet ricocheted off the boulder there, showering flakes of rock and dust, goddamn these eyes oh goddamn these eyes, and Lennox was bending down there in the sand, bending, two of him wavering, dancing. Vollyer dropped the Remington and the .38 slapped against his right palm and he fired and sand puffed up a foot wide, I missed him, you son-of-a-bitching eyes, I missed him, and then Lennox was coming up and moving forward, arm drawn back, something in his hand, and Vollyer squeezed the trigger again and again he missed, and Lennox’s arm pistoned frontally and the something in his fingers broke free, a blur, a thin brown blur, he threw something at me, get out of the

impact, Jesus! sudden pain, blackness behind his eyes, fire spreading out molten from his stomach, no, no, what did he throw, my belly, oh oh my belly, and the gun clatters down onto the rock at his feet, he staggers, his hands come up and encounter coarse steel, a length of steel, imbedded there and deep deep inside him, sticky wet, blood, steel, a spear, he threw a steel spear at me but that’s not right he’s a runner he’s not a fighter runners don’t fight, and Vollyer’s legs no longer support him, he falls to his knees, blind, fingers jerking desperately at the shaft penetrating the soft flesh just below his breastbone, trying vainly to pull it free

and he feels himself falling, blackness spinning all around him, dizzying within and without, his head strikes something, his arm strikes something, he is falling off the rock, and there is a solid jarring, an explosion of fresh pain that is still not as great as that in the core of his belly and the blackness becomes redness, flashing, pulsating, dissolves to blackness again and his hands flutter ineffectually at his stomach, the steel is gone now but the blood is there and the hole, the hole

dying, I’m dying, and he did it with a spear, a spear, what kind of thing is that, a goddamn spear, what kind of way is that to play the game ...

Fifteen