The Getaway

12

The cabdriver accepted Doc's tip with a grunt of surprise; he'd figured this pair for stiffs and maybe even no-pays. They were some kind of foreigners, he guessed, and they didn't know their way around yet. And he hastened to place himself at their disposal.

"Maybe you folks would like to go somewhere for a bite to eat?" he suggested. "After you, uh, get cleaned up a little I mean."

"Well-" Doc glanced at Carol. "I'm not sure just how long we'll…"

"Or I could bring you something if you don't want to go out. Sandwiches, chicken an' French fries, maybe some Chinese or Mexican food. Anything you say, beer, booze, or baloney, and no service charge. Just my cab fare and waitin' time."

"Suppose you wait a moment," Doc said. "I'll have to see about a cabin."

Fat little Golie was nervous, but then Golie almost always was; he had things to make him that way. So Doc couldn't say just what it was that made him feel uneasy. He stalled over the selection of a cabin, finally choosing one at the far end of the court. But his effort to smell out the trouble he felt, to get at the source of his hunch, was unavailing.

Leaving the office, he gave the cabdriver his cabin number and a twenty; ordered two chicken dinners, cigarettes and a carton of coffee. The cabdriver saluted and sped away, and Doc and Carol went down the long single row of cabins to the last one.

He unloeked the door, switched on the light.

Carol yanked down the shade, pirouetted, and flopped down on the bed,kicking her legs high into the air. "Boy," she breathed. "Does this ever feel good!" Then, wiggling her finger at him, "Come here you! Right this minute!"

Doc took a step toward her, then stopped short, frowning. "Listen! Do you hear anything?"

"Oh, now, Doc. Of course, I hear something. After all, we're not the only people in the court."

Doc stared at her absently, his brow furrowed with thought. Carol jumped up and put her arms around him. Leaned into him, smiling up into his face. This was to be their night together, didn't he remember? Their first night in more than four years. So would he kindly stop acting foolish and jumpy, and…

"That's it!" Doc's eyes narrowed suddenly. "Golie's family! There was none of 'em around, didn't you notice? Not even that overstuffed wife of his, and she hasn't been twenty feet away from the place since she came here. We've got to get out of here, Carol! Now!"

"G-get out? But-but…"

"He's sent them away somewhere, don't you see? He must have! And there's only one reason why he would have."

"But-" Carol looked at him incredulously. "But why? What could…"

"I don't know! It doesn't matter! It may be too late already, but…"

It was too late. There was a crunch of gravel outside. Then a polite knock on the door, and a woman's soft voice.

"Mr. Kramer? Miz Kramer?"

Doc stiffened, whipped a gun from beneath the bib of his overalls. He gripped Carol's arm, held it for a moment, then nodded to her.

"Yes?" Carol called. "Who is it, please?"

"The maid, ma'am. I brought you some towels."

Doc glanced into the bathroom, and slowly shook his head. He pointed at Carol's dress, mouthed a silent speech.

"Could you just leave them on the step, please? I'm undressed."

There was silence for a long moment, a whispering so faint that it might have been anything but a whisper. But that was the tip-off. There was someone with this maid, if it was a maid. Someone who was giving her instructions.

Doc looked around swiftly. He squeezed Carol's arm again and pointed toward the bathroom, and his lips formed the word "Window." Carol shook her head violently and tried to hang onto him; then winced and nodded whitely as he gave her arm another painful squeeze.

He raised the window silently. He heard the maid say, "I can't leave 'em outside, ma'am. Maybe your husband can come and get 'em."

"Just a moment, please," Carol called back. "He's in the bathroom right now."

Doc dropped through the window. He tiptoed along the rear of the house and around the side, and peered carefully around the corner.

Rudy! The gun in his hand jerked involuntarily. How in the hell!

He put it out of his mind; the wonderment, the sense of being unbearably put upon. Facts were facts, something to be accepted and dealt with, and the fact was that Rudy was here.

There was a woman with him-it was Fran Clinton- but she didn't appear to be armed. Gun in hand, Rudy stood to one side of her, his head turned away from Doc.

He didn't want to use the gun, of course. He could no more afford a racket than Doc and Carol could. His objective and Doc's would be exactly the same-to settle their score silently and unseen in the privacy of the cabin.

Doc hefted his gun, raised the barrel level with his shoulder. He edged silently around the corner of the building.

Rudy first-with one skull-crushing blow from the gun. Then, before the woman could move or yell, a hard left hook with his free hand.

Eyes fixed on them, Doc slowly raised and lowered his foot. It came down on an up-cornered brick, one of several that had once formed the border of a flower bed. And he fell headlong.

Falling, he triggered the gun; it was all he could do now.

Instantly Rudy whirled, gun blazing, whirling the woman in front of him. But his bullets passed above Doc, and Doc's drilled through the woman and into him.

And in seconds they lay dead on the ground, one of Rudy's hands still holding her arm behind her back.

From a couple of blocks away, the cabdriver heard the racket. But he did not place it as coming from Golie's, and certainly he did not connect it with his recent fares. Then he saw Doc and Carol running down the street toward him-_and, hey! look at that old gal run, would you?_-and puzzled he stopped the cab and got out.

"Somethin' wrong, folks? Somebody givin' you some trouble?"

"Yes," Doc told him. "I'll explain it while you're driving us into the city."

"Into Diego? But what about your grub? What…"

Doc jabbed a gun into his stomach, gave him a shove toward the cab. "Do you want to go on living? Do you? Then do what I tell you!"

The driver obeyed, but sullenly. With the dragging deliberation of the very stubborn. As they reached the highway and turned toward town, he gave Doc a self-righteous glare.

"This won't get you nothin', Mac," he said. "I don't know what you're after, but this won't get you a thing."

Doc looked at him, tight-lipped. In the back seat, Carol leaned forward anxiously. "Doc-I think he's right. There's probably an alert out for us already. Golie'll spill everything now. How far can we get in this circus wagon?"

Doc asked her curtly how far they would get without it. With an alert on the air, what chance did they have of grabbing another car? "The cops won't know what we're traveling in. Or whether we're traveling in anything. Maybe we can make it to the border before they find out."

"To the border! But what…"

"You'll never do it, Mac," the driver cut in doggedly. "The best thing you can do is give yourselves up. Now-oof!"

"Like it?" Doc gave him another prod with the gun. "Want some more?"

Teeth gritted, the man shook his head.

"All right, then," Doc said mildly. "Make a left here, and head straight up Mission Valley until I tell you to turn."

The cab swung left. They sped down the curving, cliff-shadowed road, and after a time Doc spoke over his shoulder to Carol. They couldn't get through the border gates, he said. That, obviously, would be impossible. But they might be able to slip across the line at some unguarded point.

"People do it all the time," he went on. "It's not the best bet in the world, and we'll still have problems if and when we get across, but…"

"You won't make it," the driver broke in, dogged again. "Not anywhere near the gates where you'll be tryin'. I know that border, mister, and I'm telling you…"

His sentence ended in a scream. The cab swerved, and he turned pain-crazed eyes on Doc. "You t-try that again!" he gasped. "You do that again and see what happens!"

Doc promised that he wouldn't do it again. "Next time I'll shoot you. Now go right at this next turn. We're hitting crosstown to the Tijuana highway."

The cab made the turn with an angry skidding of tires. They raced up the steep road into Mission Hills, then down the long arterial street which skirts San Diego's business district. The traffic began to thicken. There was the wail of a siren-fading eerily into the distance.

Above the windshield the blurred murmuring of the radio squawk box became a crisp voice:

"Cab Seventy-nine! Cab Seventy-nine! Come in, Seventy-nine…"

The driver was elaborately disinterested. Doc glanced at the identification plate on the instrument panel, and spoke to him sharply. "That's you. Answer it!"

"What d'you want me to say?"

"Tell her you've got a couple of people on a sightseeing tour. You'll be tied up for about an hour."

"Sightseeing tour?" The driver squirmed in the seat, leaned slightly over the wheel. "She won't never go for that, mister. She'll know I got a couple of crooks headin' for Tijuana."

"Wh-at?" Doc frowned. "How will she know?"

"She just will. She'll even know where we are right now. Just making the turnoff for National City."

Doc got it then. He linked the driver's seemingly senseless speech with the breathless silence of the squawk box. And savagely, his nerves worn raw, he smashed the gun barrel into the man's stubborn, doughish face.

He smashed it; he smashed it again. The driver groaned and flung himself against the door of the car. It shot open, and he went tumbling and bouncing into the street.

The door swung shut again. Doc fought the wheel of the cab, swinging it out of the path of an oncoming vehicle. There was a frozen silence from Carol; a wondering silence. Then, answering her unspoken question, the voice of the squawk-box:

"Seventy-nine? Seventy-nine-I read you, Seventy-nine…"

Doc found the switch and closed it.

He turned off the highway, sped along roughly parallel to it on a gravel county road.

He asked, "Is there a radio back there?" And Carol said there was none.

It didn't matter, of course. They both knew what would be happening now.

The county road got them around National City. Then, implacably, it veered back toward the highway.

Doc tried to get away from it. Lights turned off, he weaved the cab through a network of outlying side streets. That got them only a little farther south, and in the end they were led back to the highway. Doc stopped just short of it, his mind racing desperately to the lazy throb of the cab's motor.

Take to the fields-run for it on foot? No, no, it was too late. As impractical and impossible as trying to hook another car.

Well, then, how about-how about moving in on one of these suburbanites? Holing up with them, holding the family hostage until there was a chance to make a break for it?

No again. Not with them penned in in so small an area. Holing up would simply eliminate the almost no-chance they had now.

Doc shrugged unconsciously. He watched the intermittent flash of lights in front of them, listened to the swish-flick of the cars speeding past the intersection. And finally, since there was nothing else to do, he drove back onto the highway again.

Other cars whipped past them, and laughter, snatches of happy conversation spilled out into the night. Pleasure seekers; people in a hurry to begin their evening of wining and dining across the border, and with nothing more to fear than a hangover in the morning.

People who had earned their good time.

Doc drove slowly. For once in his life, he had no plan. He saw no way out. They could not turn back. Neither could they cross the border, through the gates or any other way.

The police had only to wait for them. To close in the net until they were snared in it.

After a time he turned off the highway again, pursuing a winding trail until it came to a dead end by the ocean. He backed up headed back in the direction from which he had come. And then he was again on the highway, moving south.

The other cars were not moving so quickly now. They shot past the cab, then a few hundred yards beyond they began to slow. And peering into the distance, Doc saw why.

So did Carol; and she spoke for the first time in minutes. Spoke with a tone that was at once angry, frightened, and a little gleeful. "Well, Doc. What do you figure on doing now?"

"Do?"

"The roadblock. What are you going to do?" Her voice broke crazily. "Just drive on into it?Just keep on going, and say yessir, I'm D-Doc McCoy, and th-this is my wife, Carol, and-a-and…"

"Shut up!" Doc cut in. "Look!"

"Don't you tell me t-to-look at what?"

"Just ahead of us there. That thing at the side of the road."

It seemed to be suspended some six feet above the roadside embankment, an illuminated oblong blob topped by a larger and shadowy blob. Then,as the cab crept toward it, the outlines of the two blobs became clearer, revealed themselves as a woman's face beneath a man's hat.

She was holding a flashlight in her hand, shining the beam into her face. Swinging loosely from her other hand was a shotgun. A rawboned giant of a woman, she wore overalls and a sheepskin coat. She stared at them-at the cab rather; flicked the beam of the flashlight across it.

Then she made a brief swinging motion with it, the light disappeared, and so did she.

Doc let out a suppressed shout. He glanced over his shoulder quickly, waited for the two cars behind him to pass.

Carol shook him fiercely. "Doc, what's the matter with you? Who-what was that?" And Doc laughed a little wildly, babbled that he couldn't believe it himself. And then he slammed the cab into low gear, cut the wheels to the right, and went roaring up over the embankment and into the field.

It was wasteland, an expanse of eroded topsoilless rock. Ahead of them, the tall shadow of the woman beckoned, then moved away swiftly, guiding them up over a rise in the land and down into a cuplike valley.

There was a house there, a dark, deserted-looking shack. Two great forms came bounding from behind it-mastiffs-and streaked toward the cab in deadly silence. But the woman spoke, gestured to them, and they came meekly to heel. Trotted along with her as she strode past the shack, and on into the darkness beyond it.

"Doc! Do you hear me? I want to know what this is all about!"

Doc didn't answer her. It was in his mind perhaps that he had already explained fully; and all his thoughts now were on the woman and the deliverance which she represented.

About a hundred yards beyond the house, she came to a stop; turned and faced them, beckoned them forward slowly until they were almost upon her. Then she stopped them with a pushing motion of her hand and yanked open the door of the cab. "Got anything in here that you want to save, Doc? Well, pile out then. We're gettin' rid of it for good."

They piled out. Just back of the point where the woman had been standing was a broad crater, the dull gleam of moonlight on dark water.

"Gravel pit," the woman explained succinctly. "Ain't got no bottom to it that lever found. Now, we'll just give this buggy a good hard push…"

They pushed, straining, then trotting sluggishly as the cab gathered speed. Then, at a warning grunt from the woman, they came to a halt. And the cab shot over the brink of the pit, descended with a resounding splash and disappeared beneath the oily surface.

The woman turned and gripped Doc's hand. "Doc, you're a sight for sore eyes, and that's a fact. Couldn't hardly believe it was you when I got the word on the radio tonight."

"And you, needless to say, are also a sight for sore eyes," Doc murmured. "You were waiting for us down there on the highway?"

"Yep. Knew you was headin' this way. Just took a chance on you spotting me. Incidentally," her voice altered slightly, "not that I really give a whoop, but what happened between you and Rudy?"

"Well-" Doc hesitated. "You know Rudy. He never was quite right in the head and he'd gotten a lot worse. The more reasonable you tried to be with him, why…"

"Yeah, sure. Finally blew his top, huh? Well, I been expecting it for a long time." The woman shook her head wisely. "But to hell with the poor devil. Right now we got to hide you an'-and…"

She paused with rough delicacy, glancing at Carol.

Doc apologized hastily. "I'm sorry. Ma-Mrs. Santis-I'd like you to meet my wife, Carol."

It is scarcely to be wondered at that Carol's handshake had been a little limp. She had heard so much of this gaunt, craggy-faced woman for so long that she had almost come to regard her as a myth.

Ma Santis. Daughter of a criminal, wife of a criminal, mother of six criminal sons. Two of Ma's boys had died in gun battles with the police; two others-like their father-had died in the electric chair. Of the remaining two, one was in jail, and the other, Earl, was at liberty. The Santises were hill people, rebels and outlaws rather than criminals in the usual sense of the word. They never forgot a favor nor forgave an injury. They were that rare thing in the world of crime, people with a very real sense of honor. In another era, they might have been pirates or privateers or soldiers of fortune. It was their misfortune and perhaps the nation's as a whole that they had been born into a civilization which insisted upon conformity and pardoned no breakage of its laws, regardless of one's needs or motives.

The Santises were unable to conform. They would have died, and did die, rather than attempt to. And now at age sixty-four, and after more than twenty years in prison, Ma was as completely unreconstructed as she had been at fourteen.

Her son Earl was living over in the back country, she explained. Doin' enough farming to look respectable, and livin' high on the hog from cached loot. "Been so long since me or him turned a trick that people plumb forgot all about us," Ma chuckled. "So I figured we'll probably get a good goin' over here at my place, but no more'n t'any other. You just hole up where I put you until Earl shows up, an'-by the by, you was headin' for El Rey's, Doc?"

"That's right."

"Well, don't you never doubt you'll make it," Ma said firmly. "Me'n Earl, we helped plenty of friends to get there-Pat Gangloni, Red Reading, Ike Moss an' his woman. 'Course, you're maybe a little hotter'n any of them, but-come here."

She turned and went back to the brink of the pit; squatted there, pointing with the beam of her flashlight."You see that? Them two clumps of bushes? Now look right below them, there at them kind of shady places just under the water line."

"I see them," Doc nodded. "Caves?"

"You could call 'em that. Really ain't much more than holes.Just about big enough to crawl into and get out of sight, but that's all you need, ain't it?" Ma laughed jovially.

Doc hesitated, shooting a quick glance at Carol's taut face. "It-you think this is necessary, Ma? I mean…"

"Wouldn't have you do it if I didn't think so." There was a hint of tartness in her voice. "It ain't so bad, Doc. There's fresh air seeps in from somewhere, and it ain't really so cramped. Pat Gangloni took it, and you know Pat. Makes two fellas your size with half a man left over."

Doc forced himself to laugh at the joke. "We'll have to strip, I suppose?"

"I'd say so. Unless you want to keep on your unmentionables. They's blankets down there, an' it's kind of hot anyways."

"Fine," Doc said. "Well…"

He unbuttoned his jumper and dropped it to the ground. He sat down and began taking off his shoes and socks. Ma looked at Carol. She said, "Prob'ly need a rope," and disappeared into the darkness.

Carol remained standing, motionless, making no move to remove her clothes.

"Carol," Doc said. Then, "Carol!"

"No-no," Carol said shakily. "No, I can't! How do I know that-that…"

"You're with me. You're riding on my ticket. Now get out of those clothes!"

He stood up, stripped out of the jeans. He unbuckled the money belt and dropped it on top of the pile of clothing. He waited a moment, working up an encouraging smile, storing up warmth for his voice. Then, hand outstretched, he took a step toward Carol.

She backed desperately away from him. "N-no! No!" she gasped. "I know what you're planning! You'll get me down there and…"

"Stop it! What else can you do, anyway?"

"I know you! I'd never get back up again! She's your friend, not mine! She-y-you'd leave me down there under the ground and…"

"Well, here we are." Ma Santis was suddenly back with them. "Trouble?"

"I'm sorry," Doc said. "My wife's a little upset."

"Uu-huh," Ma drawled. "Thought she kind of sounded like she was. Me, I'm just a leetle upset myself. Figured I was goin' a long ways to do you two a favor, and now I ain't so sure. Like to get set straight before I go any farther."

Doc repeated that he was sorry. Ma shifted the shotgun under her arm, and behind her the two mastiffs suddenly came to attention. She waited, staring stonily at Carol. And as if from some great distance, Carol heard her own voice; felt her face stiffen in a conciliatory smile.

She was sorry. She hadn't meant what she said. She was very grateful to Ma. She…

She broke off, stooping to pull the voluminous black dress over her head. Almost eagerly she unfastened the money belt, made a tentative gesture of offering it to the older woman. Ma motioned laconically with the gun. "Just drop it on the pile. An' don't worry about none of it showin' up missing."

"You help yourself to as much as you want," Doc said warmly. "I mean that, Ma. We…"

Ma nodded. She knew he meant it, but she wasn't needin' nothing. "Always thought you was a hell of a guy, Doc. Heard a thing or two to the contrary, but you was always square with me an' mine. Ain't a one of us that didn't think the world of you."

"And I've felt exactly the same way about all of you, Ma."

"But," she continued. "I ain't buyin' in on no one else's fight. I ain't putting myself any further in the middle than I am already. You two got a quarrel, which I hope you ain't, you settle it somewheres else. Elsewise, I'll do the settlin' and it won't be no fun for the party that starts the trouble."

She paused, looking from one to the other, waiting for their acknowledgments of her statement. Carol's was somewhat readier than Doc's.

"Well, that's fine," Ma said mildly. "Now there's some water in them holes; prob'ly a little stale but you can drink it if you're thirsty enough. No grub, o'course. You can do without for as long as you're down there. No smokin' and no matches; ain't enough air to allow it. Well, that about does it, I guess. Want me to help you down, Doc?"

Doc shook his head. "I can make it all right, thanks. Have you any idea how long it will be, Ma?"

"Well, I'd say tomorrow night. But you know how it is, Doc. Come see, come sah." She laughed throatily. "Oh, yeah, I knew! was forgettin' something. Sleepin' pills. Can't tell you where they are exactly, but just feel around an' you'll find 'em."

"Oh, fine. I was just going to ask about them. Now, if you'll just give me a little light for a moment, Ma…"

Ma squatted again, beamed the flashlight down the wall of the pit. Doc studied it, gave her shoulder a pat of thanks, and poised himself on the brink.

"Good night," he said, and shooting a smile at Carol, "and a very good night to you, my dear."

Then he jumped, stiff-legged.

There was an audible grunt as he struck the water.

He went under, and he came up. And then, getting a grip on the bushes, he pushed himself under again.

And stayed under.

"Now, there," Ma said quietly, "there is one hell of a guy. Just in case you didn't know it."

"I know it," Carol said.

She took the rope that Ma handed her, took a turn around her waist with it. Bellying down on the ground, she got her legs over the edge of the pit and squirmed slowly backward. She paused there, halfsuspended in space, breathing very rapidly. Then she looked up and gave Ma the nod to lower her.

"Got somethin' on your mind." Ma held her where she was for a moment. "Maybe you better unload it while you can."

"I-nothing, I guess. I was just going to ask about the sleeping pills. I mean, why you and Doc seem to take it for granted that we'll need them."

"Why?" Ma frowned incredulously. "Hey, you ain't been around much, have you, honey?"

"Well-I used to think so."

"Uh-huh," Ma said. "Mmm-hum. Well, I'll tell you somethin' about them pills. Don't you doubt that you'll need 'em. An' don't wait to take 'em until you do. You gulp you down some right to begin with, an' when them wears off…"

She tugged upward on the rope, then slacked off on it. Carol swung off of the brink, and moved slowly down toward the water.

"Yes?" she called, shivering as her feet touched the water. "When they begin to wear off?"

"Take some more," Ma said.

The hole lay on a slant, and for its first two or three feet it was largely filled with water, making it all but impossible to breathe until one had navigated it.

Carol came through it at a frantic scramble; continued to scramble forward with eyes closed, breath held, until her head butted against the rock at the end of the hole. And then gratefully, gasping in the air, she let herself go prone.

Strangely, it was not absolutely dark. Wherever the faint seepage of air came from, there was an equally faint seepage of light, if only the relative light of the night outside, to relieve the blackness of this hidden cave.

It was like being in a coffin, she thought. A dimly lit, well-ventilated coffin. It wasn't uncomfortable; not yet at least. Merely confining. As long as one was content to remain in it, and did not try to get out…

Abruptly, she cut off the thought.

Fumbling in the dimness, running her hands up to the end of the hole, she encountered the oval canvascovered surface of a water canteen. She shook it, felt the swish and swing of the liquid inside. She laid it down again and continued to fumble until she found a small tightly capped bottle. She got the cap off and sniffed the contents. Taking out one of the capsules, she pinched it and touched her tongue to it.

Mildly bitter; a faintly salty taste. She dropped it back into the bottle and screwed the lid back on.

She didn't need that stuff. She wasn't going to take anything that made her any more helpless than she was already. Ma had told her, in so many words, that she had nothing to fear. She and Doc were both under Ma's protection, until they struck out on their own again. But just the same, she wasn't knocking herself out with goof balls. Ma might be absolutely on the square. She might be. But Doc could outsmart someone like her, without even halfway trying. And if he decided to have things his own way, and if he thought it was safe-well, never mind. But no sleeping pills for her.

If they were sleeping pills.

Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought proeess, she arrived at a conviction-a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in underor over-protectiveness, in a distrust of parental authority which becomes all authority. It can later, with maturity-a flexible concept-be laughed away, dispelled by determined clear thinking. Or it can be encouraged by self-abusive resentment and brooding self-pity. It can grow ever greater until the original authority becomes intolerable, and a change becomes imperative. Not to a radical one in thinking; that would be too troublesome, too painful. The change is simply to authority in another guise which, in time, and under any great stress, must be distrusted and resented even more than the first.

Thrashing it-and herself-Carol wondered why she feared Doc as she did-how she could fear him and be unable to trust him. And yet love him as she could never love another.

Even now, despite her fear and distrust, she would have given anything to have him with her.

He was always, or virtually always, so calm and self-assured. He always knew just what to do, and how to do it. He could be breaking apart inside and you'd never know it from the way he acted. He'd be just as pleasant and polite as if he didn't have a care in the world. You had to be careful with someone like that. You could never know what he was thinking. But…

She sighed uxoriously, squirming a little. Doc McCoy-one hell of a guy, Ma had called him. And that had seemed to say it all.

There just wasn't anyone else in the world like Doc, and there never would be.

She toyed with the bottle of pills. Then, turning on her side, she tapped on the wall with it. He couldn't be too far away from her, just a few feet through this coldly sweating roek. If she could make him hear her, and if he would reply to it-well, it would be nice. Each would be comforted, she persuaded herself, to know that the other was all right.

She tapped and listened. Tapped and listened. She frowned, with a kind of angry nervousness. Then, brightening, she turned and tapped on the opposite wall. Perhaps he was there, on that side. After all, he just about had to be, didn't he? He had to be on one side or the other.

She tapped and listened. Tapped and listened.

The silence between tappings pressed in around her. It became an aching thing, a void crying to be filled. It was unbearable, and since the unbearable cannot be borne, her imagination, that friendly enemy, stepped in.

Quite clearly, she heard Doc's answering taps. Well, not clearly perhaps-the imagination does have its limitations-but she did hear them.

She tapped and he-it-tapped. The signals went back and forth. A great relief spread through her; and then, on its heels, overlaying it, an increasing restlessness and irritation.

What was the point in just tapping, in just making a meaningless noise? Now, if she could send him a message. Ask him, tell him to-to…

But maybe he'd already thought of that. And thought it was impossible. And maybe it was.

She pushed herself back against the wall, then measured the space to the opposite wall. There seemed to be enough room, for two people, that is. It could get to be a tight squeeze, of course; you couldn't continue it indefinitely. But just for a little while, an hour or so, it would be fine.

The overhead space? Well. She placed her palms against the roof of the hole, gave a start at its nearness to her. In the dimness it had seemed much farther away. She pushed on it, not realizing that she was pushing. And suddenly she pounded on it with her fists.

She stopped that very quickly, and lay very still for a few minutes until the wild pounding of her heart had stopped. Then, pushing herself with heels and elbows, she began to scoot toward the entrance.

Water touched her feet. She jerked them away from it. She let them slide into it again, and remain there for a moment. And then with resentful resignation she withdrew them. For obviously she couldn't leave this place, go back out into the pit. Someone might see her. For all she knew, the place might be swarming with cops by this time. At any rate, the water was very deep-bottomless, Ma had said-and she could swim very little. If she should be unable to find the hole Doc was in, or if she was unable to get into it or get back into this one…

Perhaps they had planned it that way. They hoped and expected that she would try to leave, knowing that she would drown if she did.

But, anyway, leaving was out of the question. She had to stay here until she was got out, as-her pendulum mind swinging back again-she assured herself she would be. Doc would get her out. After all, she was his wife and they'd been through a lot together, and she'd done a lot for him. And-and-if he'd really wanted to get rid of her, he'd had plenty of chances before this.

He'd get her out all right, as soon as it was safe.

Ma would make him.

It was just a little roomier, down here near the entrance to the hole. The roof was just a little higher. She measured the distance with her upstretched palms, thinking that there was almost room enough to sit up. And no sooner had the thought entered her mind than she knew she must sit up.

She had to. She could not remain prone, or lie halfpropped up on her elbows another minute.

Tucking her chin against her chest, she raised herself experimentally. Six inches, afoot, a foot and a half, a-the stone pressed against her head. She shoved against it stubbornly, then with a suppressed "Ouch!" she dropped back to the floor.

She rested for a moment, then tried again. A kind of sideways try this time, with her knees pulled upward. That got her up a little farther, though not nearly far enough. But it did-or seemed to-show her how the trick could be done.

She was very lithe and limber, more so now than ever after the arduous thinning-down of their crosscountry journey. So she sucked her stomach in, drew her knees flat against it, and pressed her chin down against them. And thus, in a kind of flat ball, she flung herself upward and forward.

Her head struck the roof with a stunning bump, then skidded along it gratingly, leaving a thin trail of hair and scalp. She would have stopped with the first painful impact, but the momentum of her body arced her onward. And then at last she was sitting up. Or rather, sitting. Bent forward as she was, it would have been far from accurate to say that she was sitting up.

The roof pressed upon her neck and shoulders. Her head was forced downward. Her widespread legs were flattened against the floor and, to support herself, she had her hands placed between them. She raised one of them to brush at her face, but the strain was so intolerable that she hastily put it back in use as a brace.

She rested, breathing heavily, finding it difficult to breathe at all in that constricting position; thinking, Well, at least I know I can do it now. I can sit up if I want to. Then, as the awkward pose became agonizing, she tried to lie down again. And was held almost motionless exactly as she was.

She couldn't accept the fact. It was too terrible. Now, surely, she thought, if I got into this, I can get out of it. If I can sit up, then I can s-I can lie down again.

"Of course I can," she spoke, grunted, aloud. "Why not, anyway?"

There was, of course, every reason why not. It was impossible to draw her legs up, as she had in the first instance. Almost impossible to move them at all. As for balling herself up-well, she already was; even more than she had been originally. But now there was no give in the ball. Her body was like an overburdened spring, so heavily laden that it can only go down farther and never up.

"No," she said quietly. "No."

Then, on an ascending note, "No, no, n-no!"

She waited, panting, the blood running to her head and her hair tumbled over her eyes. Her wrists throbbed, and her elbows ached with sugary pain. And suddenly they doubled under her and her torso lurched downward, and a tortured scream burbled from her lips.

Sobbing painfully, she braced herself again. Tears ran down her face, and she could not brush them away. And in her agony and growing hysteria, that seemed the most unbearable thing of all.

"C-can't-can't even raise a finger," she wept. "Can't even r-raise a…"

Then, so softly that she could hardly be heard, "Ma said tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, prob'ly."

The words trickled off into silence. Her panting grew more labored. She wheezed and coughed,groaned with the jerking of her body, and her tears ran harder.

"I-can't-stand-it!" she gasped. "You hear me? _I can't stand it!_ Can't stand it, can't stand it, _c-caa-an 't stand eet, can't stand ee-yaahhhhhh_…"

She screamed and the pain of the exertion caused her to scream even louder, and that scream wrung still another from her throat. She writhed and screamed, gripped in a frenzy of pain and fury. Her head pounded against the roof and her heels dug and kicked into the floor, and her elbows churned and banged and scraped against the imprisoning sides of the hole.

Blood mingled with the tears on her face. It streamed down her back, over her arms and legs and thighs. From a hundred tiny cuts and scratches and bruises it came, coating her body; warm red blood-combining slippery with the dust of the cave.

She never knew when she broke free. Or how. Or that she had. She was still struggling, still screaming, when she got the cap off the pill bottle and upended it into her mouth.

Peevishly, she came up out of the pleasant blackness. Something was gripping her ankle, and she tried to jerk away from it. But the thing held tight. It yanked, skidding her down the hole, peeling more hide from her body. She cried out in protest, and the cry was choked off suddenly as water closed over her.

Choking and kicking, she slid out of the hole and into the pit. It was night again-or night still? And in the moonlight, she looked blurrily into the flattest eyes she had ever seen.

"I'm Earl," he grinned, showing twisted teeth. "Just hold tight now, an' I'll getcha…"

"Leggo!" She flung herself frantically backward. "Just leave me alone! I don't want to go anywhere! P-please, please, don't make me! Just let me s-stay where…"

She made a grab for the bushes, tried to pull herself back into the hole. Treading water, Earl gave her a hard slap in the face.

"Son of a gun," he mumbled, getting a rope around her waist, signaling to Ma and Doc. "Wasn't fortyeight hours enough for yuh?"