The Servants of Twilight

The shouting winded him. He waited a moment, drawing several deep breaths, not wanting them to hear any weakness in his voice. Then he shouted again: "Why don't you stand up and let God stop the bullets when I shoot at you?"

No answer.

"That would prove something, wouldn't it?"

No answer.

He took several long, slow breaths.

He tried flexing his left hand, and the fingers moved, but they were still numb and stiff.

Wondering whether he had killed enough of them to make them turn back, he did a little arithmetic. He had killed two on the ridge top, one on the trail, three down in the meadow where they had huddled around the Jeep and the snowmobiles.

Six dead. Six of ten. How many did that leave in the woods below him?

Three? He thought he'd seen three others down there: another woman, Kyle, and the man who had been in front of Kyle, toward the end of the line. But wouldn't at least one of them have stayed behind with Mother Grace? Surely she wouldn't have remained alone at the cabin. And she wouldn't have been able to come up here, on such an arduous hike. Would she? Or was she there among the trees right now, only sixty or seventy yards away, crouching in the shadows like an evil old troll?

"I'm going to wait right here," he shouted.

He fished half a dozen cartridges out of a jacket pocket and, hampered by having only one good hand, reloaded the revolver.

"Sooner or later, you're going to have to move," Charlie called down to them." You'll have to stretch your muscles, or you'll cramp up." His voice sounded eerie in the snowy stillness." You'll cramp up, and you'll slowly start freezing to death."

The anesthetizing shock of being shot was beginning to wear off. His nerves began to respond, and the first dull pain crept into his shoulder and arm.

"Any time you're ready," he shouted, "let's test your faith.

Let's see if you really believe God is on your side. Any time you're ready, just stand up and let me take a shot at you, and let's see if God turns the bullets away."

He waited half a minute, until he was sure they weren't going to respond, and then he holstered his revolver and eased away from the crest. They wouldn't know he had left. They might suspect, but they couldn't be sure. They would be pinned down for half an hour, maybe longer, before they finally decided to risk continuing their ascent. At least he hoped to God they would.

He needed every minute he could get.

With the dull pain in his shoulder rapidly growing sharper, he belly-crawled all the way across the flat top of the ridge, moving like a crippled crab, and didn't stand up until he had reached the place where the land sloped down and the deer trail headed off through the trees.

When he tried to rise, he found his legs were surprisingly weak; they crumpled under him, and he dropped back to the ground, jarring his injured arm-Christ! — and felt a big black wave roaring toward him. He held his breath and closed his eyes and waited until the wave had passed, refusing to be carried away by it. The pain was not dull any longer; it was a stinging, burning, gnawing pain, as if a living creature had burrowed into his shoulder and was now eating its way out.

It was bad enough when he was perfectly still, but the slightest movement made it ten times worse. However, he couldn't just lie here.

Regardless of the pain, he had to get up, return to Christine. If he was going to die, he didn't want to be alone in these woods when his time came. Christ, that was inexcusably negative thinking, wasn't it?

Mustn't think about dying. The thought is father to the deed, right?

The pain was bad, but that didn't mean the wound was mortal. He hadn't come this far to give up so easily. There was a chance. Always a chance. He had been an optimist all his life.

He had survived two abusive, drunken parents. He had survived poverty.

He had survived the war. He would survive this, too, dammit. He crawled off the plateau, onto the deer trail. Just over the edge of the crest, he grabbed a branch on a spruce and pulled himself upright at last, leaning on the trunk of the tree for support.

He wasn't dizzy, and that was a good sign. After he had taken several deep breaths and had stood there against the tree for a minute, his legs became less rubbery. The pain from the wound did not subside, but he found that he was gradually adjusting to it; he either had to adjust or escape it by surrendering consciousness, which was a luxury he could not afford.