Deathwatch (12 page)

Finished, he leaned down to the water and drank. He kept on drinking long after he had reached his fill, drinking until he ached.

Then, his naked body ghostly in the dark tunnel, he went back to the funnel and sat down, his feet dangling.

The Coleman lantern below on the desert seemed very bright, a hard, white, unblinking light. Occasionally he could see Madec as he moved around.

Madec, Ben said in a whisper, you’re tired. You’ve done a bang-up job today; you’ve worked hard and lied well. You deserve a good night’s rest. You
need
a good night’s rest because you’ve got a big thing to do in the morning.

Ben saw the Coleman moving under the tent awning and into the tent and then the entire tent glowed.

At last the glow faded and suddenly died.

Ben never took his eyes off the camp which, almost invisible at first with the Coleman out, slowly began to take shape again in the starlight. He saw no movement and was sure, as time passed, that Madec was still in the tent. Asleep by now, he hoped.

He had decided that it was time when he suddenly jumped up and went back into the tunnel.

Feeling around among the bird droppings, he found the last of his sotol leaves and, as he walked back to the funnel, tore it into four wide strips.

Sitting down again, he slipped the yoke over his head and strung the torn leaf to it, pushing the strips down until they hung with the slingshot and pouch.

Now it was time. He turned, his legs sliding down, his back to the stone and eased himself over the edge until he was hanging by his hands, his toes on the stone slope below. Then he let go.

H
IS SPEED
in the darkness was terrifying. Lying on his back now, he slid feet first down the steep stone funnel.

He had thought that even in the dark he would recognize the features in the stone, and would know, feeling one, where the next rough spot would be.

But his hands and skin and heels and back recognized nothing as he skidded downward, the hard rock flaying him.

Along with the terror of his speed there was the knowledge that he could not stop, could not even slow the rate at which he was moving. Worst of all he could not see where he was going. He could see only the rushing stone face opposite him and the star-pricked sky.

The slingshot yoke tinkled on the stone and the sotol brushed dryly on it, and his own body, sliding, made a dry, rushing sound, and he could feel patches of blow sand as hot as coals grinding into his skin.

His feet hit the top opening of the spout, jamming
his legs back, folding them at the knees, before skidding on down.

Then he was entirely in the spout of the funnel, his feet flat against one side, his buttocks and back against the other.

He slid in this position for ten more feet before he could stop himself.

Then he sat suspended, the friction of his feet and back the only things holding him from falling on down the long, dark, narrow spout of rock.

Leaning toward his bent knees until he could feel that the loss of pressure on his back was getting dangerous, Ben looked down between his legs.

He could make it if he wasn’t careless.

Ben had no idea how long it took him to get down to the desert but, at last, he stood in the shadow of the butte, his muscles slowly relaxing, his breathing slowing, his pain coming down from a high scream to a sharp ache.

In the moonlight the camp seemed far away and very still, nothing moving anywhere.

And suddenly Ben began to doubt himself. Standing there, only a few minutes’ easy walk to where Madec lay sleeping, was different from being up there in the tunnel. Up there the first and biggest problem had been simply to get down.

Now, with the tent and Jeep in clear view, he began to wonder whether the plan he had so carefully made on the butte was really the best thing to do.

That plan was so slow, so time-consuming and dangerous.

Wouldn’t it be simpler and less dangerous just to walk quietly over to the camp, pick the Hornet out of the scabbard on the windshield and walk into the tent, shoving the muzzle of the Hornet in Madec’s face as he woke up?

Unless Madec heard or saw him coming and was waiting in the dark, and the big gun blasted him before he even reached the Jeep.

Or wouldn’t it be a better idea to wait, hidden by that solitary slab of stone, until Madec came to the butte in the morning and, as he passed, nail him with the slingshot?

But what if Madec just happened to choose a different route?

Or, Ben thought, now that I’ve got forty-eight hours of water in my belly, why not just take off for home? Go as far as I can until the sun begins to hurt me, hide and then start out again after sunset.

Hide—where? Go—on what? Forty-five miles on sotol leaves?

No. The plan he had made on the butte was a good plan. Slow, yes, but careful. And with danger reduced to only one thing: the .358.

Moving along beside the base of the butte, Ben deliberately stepped on the flattest, grayest stones he could see and, having stepped on them, stooped and looked at where he had stepped. He knew his back was bloody from the grinding on the rock, but apparently there were no serious
gashes in his skin, for he was leaving no sign of blood on the stones, and as he went on he could almost feel the desert air drying the blood on his back, forming a layer of dried blood which seemed to pull gently at his nerve ends.

Moving slowly and keeping out of sight of the camp he followed the base of the butte around to where he could see Madec’s tent pegs and footholds in the sheer wall.

Here he turned and looked out at the slab of stone imbedded in the sand. It lay about halfway between the butte and the Jeep and completely blocked his view of the camp.

Ben found some consolation in knowing that the slab also blocked Madec’s view.

Reaching around behind his back, he tore the sotol strips loose and bundled the ends in his hands.

Ready, he started walking toward the Jeep along the path Madec had made.

Ben walked backward and stooped over, stopping frequently to look toward the Jeep and to listen, and, as he walked, brushing his tracks with the leaves as he made them. He didn’t try to brush them out entirely but only to blur them so that the prints of his bare feet didn’t lie like signals on top of the boot prints below them.

The passage between the butte and the slab took longer than he had expected. It worried him, for he had much to do, and it could only be done while Madec slept.

Reaching the slab at last, he left Madec’s path and, ignoring the tracks he was making in the deep, soft sand, went along the slab, the great gray mass of it between him and the Jeep.

Halfway along it he stopped and dropped to his knees.

It was good sand, loose, dry—and deep. There would be no problem.

He went back to the path and, again walking backward, completely erased the footprints he had made alongside the slab, hating the time it took but knowing that he must do it and do it carefully and well.

Then, at the end of the slab farthest from Madec’s tracks, he began to dig, using his hands like a scoop and piling the sand carefully beside the hole.

After a while he tested the hole, found it too shallow, and dug some more until it was deep enough.

Standing in the hole he had dug, he reached out with the strips of leaves and erased every mark he had made around it, wishing all the time that the dry sotol leaves would not make so much noise.

Finished, he laid the strips carefully in the hole and then pulled the yoke over his head.

He untied the rubber tubes from the slingshot and then laid the slingshot and pouch, still on the yoke, down in the hole on the left side.

He was ready now and yet he hesitated, unable
to overcome the feeling of terror which suddenly struck him, making him literally sick.

He had to force himself to do it, but at last he got down in the hole and slowly rolled over until he was lying on his back in the bottom of the grave-shaped hole in the sand of the desert.

The slingshot pressed against him and was uncomfortable so he moved it away an inch and then, sitting up, began to scoop the sand in over himself, starting at his feet and working on up his legs.

When he could no longer do it sitting up, he lay back down again and pulled the warm, dry stuff in on top of himself, up his belly, across his chest, up until he felt it dry and gritty in the hairs of his beard.

He stopped then and got the two slingshot rubbers.

With his left hand he fitted one end of one of the rubbers in his left ear. When it was well in, he held it there with his left hand as he carefully scooped sand in around the left side of his head and ear. He continued scooping, moving his fingers slowly up the tube, keeping it erect, until the sand was at the level of his eyes.

Then he took the other tube in his right hand and put one end in his mouth. Holding it there with his teeth, he swung it over a little until his left hand was holding both tubes upright.

Moving his head, he got his chin down on his chest, the tubes still in his ear and mouth, so that his nose would not be clogged too badly.

Ben looked up once again at the clear, high sky. The moon had set and the stars were dimming.

Ben closed his eyes and with his right hand began to pull the sand down on his head, up around his right ear and on, the sand rolling in tiny waves of dryness across his face, covering his eyes, nose and forehead.

When he was sure that the two tubes were firmly held in place by the sand, he turned them loose with his left hand and worked his hand and arm down below the sand until it lay along his side.

With his right hand he kept on pulling the sand over him, feeling occasionally with his fingers for the tube ends.

When there was only an inch or so of the tubing above the level of the sand he stopped, suddenly panicked. If he left that much tube exposed, Madec could easily see it. On the other hand, if he piled sand right up to the tube openings, hiding all sign of them, it would not take much of a wind to start sand blowing across them.

Then sand would come down the tube in his ear and cut off his only contact with the outside world. Worse, that windblown sand could cut off his air and force him to push his head up into full view.

Fighting the panic, Ben again began moving the sand very carefully, piling it up around the tubes in a little mound. That way, he hoped, they would be hidden and at the same time the wind would not blow sand down into them.

With the tubes set, he brushed blindly and for as far as he could reach across the sand covering him, hoping he was leaving it so that Madec would not notice that it had been disturbed.

At last, putting his right arm at full length beside his body, he began working it gently downward.

When his right arm was down alongside him, he realized that there was nothing he could do about the mark it had left on the surface of the sand. He could only hope that it was a confused, indistinct sand formation which would tell Madec nothing if he happened to glance over at it on his way to the butte.

For a time—-he did not know how long—Ben was so concentrated on the small things that there was no room for the horror.

First it was the tube in his mouth. Although he had been breathing through it for some time, he suddenly began to think about it, to wonder if he could keep on breathing through it, for as many hours as it took.

It required no effort. The air came down easily and went out easily, and he had only to remember not to breathe in or out through his nose.

Next he worried that he could hear nothing through the tube in his ear. It was as though the whole world had gone dead silent.

If he could not hear, all this was useless and he might as well be buried in his grave. Hearing was his only contact with Madec.

All his senses seemed to concentrate in his left
ear, trying to force some sound to come down the tube.

And then he thought in terror, Is the tube plugged?

He fought the panic which had now taken shape and become a force he could feel coiling under him like springs that would soon release and hurl him straight up out of there.

Drawing in a deep breath, he held it for a second and then forced it whistling out of the tube.

The sound it made at the other end was sharp and distinct.

He felt the sand move as his body relaxed with pure relief.

Then he recognized this new danger and began to feel with each breath how much the sand was moving on his body.

The panic swept over him again in wave after wave of blind terror.

This is my grave. I’m in my grave. I’m buried alive.

He couldn’t control it and, as though it had no connection with him, he heard his breath whistling and gasping in the tube. When he could think at all, it was only that he was lying buried here, totally at Madec’s mercy.

The horror never again left him, but he made himself breathe shallowly, made his stomach stop the wild, panicked heaving.

Gradually, he realized that the air he was breathing was warmer. The sun must be high now, the day well along.

Where was Madec? What was he doing?

Had he already gone by? Was he now at the butte, perhaps already climbing it?

If Madec had already gone to the butte he would climb it and, when he found Ben gone, would first search the desert with his binoculars and, not finding him, would begin to search the ground for tracks.…

Ben felt the grave closing in on him again.

The sotol leaf … a green thing where nothing was green. A leaf evidently torn apart by a man’s hands.

Was it lying out there on the sand?

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

No. He had buried it.… someone was talking. There were voices.…

Far away and wordless, but voices. Like the thin sound of television at a long distance. A flat, high-pitched sound.

It was the radio in the Jeep.

The voices changed to music and then abruptly stopped, leaving Ben in silence.

It won’t be long now, Ben thought, hearing his own breath coming out of the tube.

He breathed more gently and slowly until there was only a whisper of sound.