Butcher's Moon

Fifty

When the lights went out, Buenadella knew he was a dead man. A small wailing cry came out of his mouth and he wasn’t even aware of it; his eyes were wide open, staring into the darkness, trying to see the thing that was coming to run him down.

He heard the shooting, and the sound of broken glass, and he heard somebody say, “Uhh.” Who was that? Calesian?

Ernie Dulare was cursing: quietly, methodically, in a cold rage, like a man counting to ten. Quittner, his voice soft but his words fast, said, “Stay down. They’re shooting through the windows.”

“Oh, God.” Buenadella felt trapped. He couldn’t be indoors now, he had to be outside. The darkness made the walls and ceiling close in on him, press against him. Moving with unconscious familiarity across the room, he headed toward the French doors, ignoring what Quittner had said about the men outside shooting through the windows. Behind him he could hear Dulare punching vainly at the telephone. “Hello. Hello,” Dulare said, angrily, then he was heard slamming the receiver down. “They’ve cut the line.”

Of course. Buenadella had already known that. He neared the French doors, and someone grasped his arm. Someone breathing noisily through his mouth, as though he had severe sinus trouble.

Buenadella could be no more afraid. He accepted this with the calm of paralysis, saying, “Yes? Yes?”

”Dutch.” It was Calesian, his voice sounding clogged “Dutch. It’s—” The hand tugged at his arm; Calesian wanted him closer, apparently wanted to whisper to him.

Buenadella leaned forward, dazzled by the darkness, having no idea what any of this was about. He felt Calesian’s warm breath on his cheek, and turned his head, and blood gushed warmly from Calesian’s mouth. It smelled acrid and stinking; Buenadella recoiled from it, his mind filled with confused images of vomiting and slaughterhouses, and his sudden movement destroyed Calesian’s balance. Calesian fell against Buenadella’s side, nearly knocking him over. Buenadella braced himself, flailing backward with one arm for a wall or the desk or anything, and Calesian slid down Buenadella’s body and fell away onto the floor.

Dulare was saying something. Buenadella knew he should be listening, but all his attention was centered on the fact that some soft part of Calesian was still pressed against his ankle and foot.

A hand—again—on his arm; this one rougher, more urgent, shaking him. Dulare’s loud voice: “Dutch? Goddammit, man, is that you?”

“What? What?”

“Listen to me, for Christ’s sake.”

“Calesian,” Buenadella said. He was feeling around with his free hand for Dulare’s position. “He’s shot. Don’t, don’t step on him, he’s down by—”

“Screw Calesian. Do you have an emergency generator in this house, or don’t you?”

“Generator?”

“Electric generator, goddammit.”

Quittner was over by the door somehow, had apparently opened it; the sound of firing was louder from that direction now. Quittner said, as softly as ever, “Something’s happening up front.”

Buenadella tried to concentrate on the question. “Generator. No, we never needed one.”

“We do now,” Dulare said. “Do you have a flashlight in here?”

“Uh—no. In the kitchen there’s one, in a drawer there.”

”Well, if we can’t see,” Dulare said, “neither can they.”

Quittner said, “There’s light up front.”

Dulare said, “There is? Come on, Dutch.”

“Calesian,” Buenadella said helplessly. “He’s on my foot.”

“Oh, for—” There were kicking sounds, sliding sounds, and the pressure left Buenadella’s foot. Dulare’s hand felt for him, grasped his upper arm. “Come on,” he said.

Buenadella went with him. In the hall there was a faint light, they could see the doorway leading to the dining room. Dulare said, “What the hell is that?”

Quittner said, “We’d better go see.”

The three men moved cautiously down the hall, and just as they got to the dining-room doorway a man came through from the other direction: Rigno, one of Dulare’s men. “Mr. Dulare,” he said. “Is that you?” He sounded tense, and a little out of breath.

“What’s going on up there?”

“They got cars,” Rigno said. “They spread them out on the lawn, facing the house, with their headlights on. We stick an arm out the window, they shoot it off.”

Dulare, his frown evident in his voice, said, “What the hell is that for?”

Quittner said, “Because they’re coming from the back.”

Dulare, sounding unconvinced, said, “You mean a diversion?”

“No,” Quittner said. “The only light source is in front. They’ll come in from the back. We’ll be between them and the light, so they’ll be able to see us, but we won’t be able to see them.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dulare said. “We’ve got to put out those fucking headlights.”

“Mr. Dulare,” Rigno said, out of breath and apologetic, “you couldn’t stick a mouse out one of them windows without it getting its head shot off.”

“Come on,” Dulare said. He and Quittner and Rigno hurried away together, toward the front of the house.

Buenadella had come this far only because Dulare had dragged him along. Now Dulare had been distracted by a more urgent problem, and Buenadella was left on his own. For half a minute or so he simply stood where he was, looking at the darkness, listening to the sounds around him: sporadic gunfire, men running, men calling to one another.

Gradually it came in on him what was happening here. This was his home, the home of a legitimate businessman. It was full of armed men, and shooting, and the bitter stink of death. Calesian’s blood was on his shirt and the side of his neck, caking there, itching, still smelling sick. His family had been driven from the house, he himself was being destroyed.

By two men. Parker and Green. Parker, and Green.

He looked up toward the ceiling, up where Green was. They should have killed him right away, yesterday afternoon. All of this business; he should be dead now.

Buenadella turned and shambled toward the stairs. There were silences around him, then little flurries of sound: shooting or voices. Then silence again. He ignored it all. made his way to the second floor, and moved down the corridor toward the guest room, where Green was lying. His big frame had always before this given an impression of controlled strength, but now his movements were loose and shuffling, as though his brain were no longer fully in contact with his body.

He reached the closed door of the guest room. This was a dark area of the house, far from front windows. He touched his palms to the door for a moment, feeling the coolness of it, then slowly turned the knob and pushed the door open.

All he could see was the rectangle of the window. He stepped in, then a figure moved in front of that lighter rectangle, and he stopped, suddenly bone-cold with fear.

A voice spoke at him from across the room: “Who is it?”

He wasn’t going to say anything, would pretend there was no one here; then he recognized the speaker. Dr. Beiny. Sagging with relief, leaning his shoulder against the doorpost, Buenadella said, “It’s me. Doctor.”

The doctor, his fright showing through an attempt at waspishness, said, “I shouldn’t be here. This isn’t fair, Mr. Buenadella, I’m not a party to this, I shouldn’t be here at all.”

“You can go,” Buenadella told him. “You can get out of here any time you want.”

“How can I leave, with all this shooting?”

Buenadella moved into the room from the doorway. “Go on now,” he said. He felt a sudden savage pleasure, a need to hurt someone. “Just explain to everybody you’re a noncombatant,” he said. “Tell them you’re a medic.”

“Mr. Buenadella, I can’t—”

“Get out of here!”

“There isn’t any way for me to—”

Buenadella closed in on him, following the sound of the voice. He reached out, his clutching fingers closed on a face, a working mouth. He slid his hand down, grasped the throat, squeezed. “I said get out of here,” he said. In the doctor’s presence, he was feeling stronger and stronger his own weakness seemed to have dissolved in the presence of this other man’s greater weakness. “Get out or I’ll kill you myself.”

“You’re—you’re—” The doctor’s hands clutched at the hand holding his throat. “My God, you’re strangling me!”

Buenadella gave him one shake, and released him. Speaking in the darkness, permitting any expression at all to cross his face because no expression could be seen, smiling broadly with his lips curling back from his teeth, he said, “Now. Get out now.”

The doctor didn’t argue. He scurried by, bumping into Buenadella on the way, stumbling into some piece of furniture, patting the wall, then making it out into the hallway. Buenadella followed, cautious but still somewhat familiar in this house, and found the door he’d opened; he closed it, felt for a key, found none. No matter.

He turned the other way, moved slowly across the room, hands out in front of himself at waist height, patting the air. Finally he found what he was looking for: the metal strip at the foot of the bed. As he moved along that to the left, there was another sound of a gunshot, seeming much closer than any of the others. He paused, frowning, listening, but heard nothing more.

He rounded the foot of the bed, stopped there, fumbled in his pockets for matches. Finding some, he lit a match and saw Green lying in bed, his head propped up on two pillows, his eyes open, looking directly at Buenadella.

“Uh!” Buenadella dropped the match and it went out. He could still feel the eyes looking at him.

Was Green capable of movement? Was he creeping this way along the bed right now, was his bony hand reaching out from the darkness? Breathing faster and faster, Buenadella tore another match from the pack, nearly dropped all the matches, managed to light the second one, and Green was there exactly as before.

Too exactly. Buenadella moved to the left, but the eyes didn’t shift.

Was he dead? Buenadella watched, and slowly the eyes blinked. When they opened again, Buenadella could see that they were looking at nothing.

“You’ll never see anything again,” Buenadella told him, and the bedroom door opened.

He turned his head, and wasn’t surprised that it was Parker, standing in the doorway, a gun in his hand. Buenadella threw the match away from himself and took two fast steps backward, trying to hide himself in the darkness of the room. He left himself framed by the rectangle of window behind him, but he didn’t know that.

“Goodbye, Buenadella,” Parker said, and Buenadella thrust up his splayed-out hands to stop the bullet.