To Make Death Love Us (24 page)

"I hear you out
there," Will's voice came to them. "I hear you all laughing. You got out? Did you all get
out?"

The Colonel looked
at Pepino.

"Are you all safe?
You are! You are! Answer me, damn you! Where are you?" Will's voice was like a knife cutting
through the night.

There was a pause,
a failing of strength of voice, a si­lence that fell on the mountain. In that sudden silence,
they all experienced Will's sudden knowledge of his own isolation and abandonment.

"Oh no! No!" he
cried out, in a voice of deepest despair and awful knowledge. "You're going to leave me here to
die!"

With great effort,
they all helped Paulette to her feet. As one, they turned and started off on the long journey
away from the mountain that had once held their lives in the balance.

The Colonel paused.
They all seemed to listen with him for further cries from Will Carney. There were
none.

"There's a bright
life ahead for us all," said Serena, having tasted a triumph of being that surged through them
all. Will seemed to have no part in their greatness. Seemed.

"Well, we owe him
nothing!" suddenly cried the Colo­nel, as if trying to convince himself as much as them. "He lied
to us all the days we knew him, cheated us, used us, treated us badly in a hundred
ways."

The wild elation of
rescue and salvation, the triumph of impossible accomplishment seemed suddenly to be dying in
them all. Serena felt the feeling slipping away into sorrow.

"Yes," said Pepino
gently. "He did all those things, surely."

Paulette was near
tears, though why, she could not quite say. "He often said cruel, hurtful things to me," she
said, sensing a need somehow for all of them to remember the bad that Will had done them
all.

Serena felt cold
and empty. Her power seemed to have vanished with the last of her strength. Her tiny body cried
for sleep, for release. Yet Will, for all that, was like a wild animal about to attack her,
crouching just beneath the
surface of
her mind. No sleep could ever cleanse her of the stark, animalistic terror, that primal scream
she sensed in Will, back there in the cab of the truck.

Her mind said Will
could not be saved, to try it would surely kill them all. And more than anything, she wanted them
to live, now that they had all found themselves, that, each in his way, had come into his own.
Yes, life was important now, they now loved it in the deepest, everlast­ing way.

The despairing
wish, to make death love them, had vanished in one swift dangerous night.

"He hated us for
being freaks. I think he did," said the Colonel. "He abused us for what we were and
are."

Serena cried, tears
flowing across her white face.

Pepino looked back
up the road they must travel to escape.

"I guess we should
go now. It would be best."

They all understood
his meaning. They should get away before they were forced to witness the last living moment of
Will Carney, before the truck tumbled over, taking Will to certain death.

"We couldn't do
anything, anyway," said Colonel John. "We're just freaks. Maybe if we were . . ."He let the
thought trail off because he realized suddenly, as if he remembered a dream, that he didn't
believe what he said nor did any of the others. They would never
be just
freaks; after
this night, they were fabulous creatures of legend, and damn well proud of it.

"In his way, Will
is as much a freak as we are," said Pepino, stopping and turning to face the dark hulk of the
truck.

"He's one of us,"
said Paulette, crying unashamedly.

"It might work,"
began Colonel John hesitantly. "If you all got up on the tailgate to counter balance it ... well,
I might be able to crawl across the roof and smash through
the windshield with a crow bar and somehow ease him out onto the hood.
..."

"Paulette said, "I
think . . . think we could . . . maybe."

Pepino shrugged.
"It's worth a try."

Serena smiled in
the dark. "We could all surely die in the doing of it." But as she said it, she was proud of
them. Her heart filled with wonder, for they were greater than any dream she could have built for
them, greater in heart than any she had ever known.

Colonel John
laughed. "It's well known. Freaks must stick together, come hell or high water and this"—he
laughed again—"this is both."

As one, the Rubber
Man, the Fat Girl, the Midget, and the Moon Child turned in their tracks and plodded back through
the mud to the truck.

Paulette said it
for them all, said the last true thing that wedded them in their new love of living, that moved
them.

"No one should have
to die all alone," she said.

And each of them
dreamed and dreams never die.

About the author

Sovereign Falconer
is a former actor, musician, and expe­rienced painter. As a screenwriter he has been nominated
for the Academy Award, and as a novelist he has been nominated for the American Book Award, the
Edgar, the Nebula, and other awards abroad. His books are widely published in many
countries.

Jorge Luis Borges
and Salvador Dali have both done introductions for his books.

Much lauded in
Europe, where he has had literary best­sellers, he remains relatively unknown in America. Very
little is known about the author and he has never been photographed in America. Extensively
interviewed in Europe in magazines, on European TV, and in print, he has yet to grant a single
interview in America.

He divides his time
between his homes in Carmel, Los Angeles, and Amsterdam.

Attempts to locate
the author in recent years have met with no success.

He never appears in
public, does not answer his mail except via his agent, and can seemingly not be reached by
phone.

There is much
speculation as to his actual identity but very little information is available.