The Mad and the Bad

38

Julie jumped and spun three hundred and sixty degrees. Less than a second after the shot she was already unsure whether it was gunfire. She rushed to the window and scanned the broad terrace, now bathed in sunshine, with its pink and yellow sprinkling of high-stemmed flowers. Peter was nowhere to be seen.

“Wake up!” shouted the girl, without turning round, to the sleeping architect.

Peter was coming back up the hill as fast as he could run, holding his bow and arrows tight in a loving hug. The idea of crying out did not even occur to him, for he was shocked and terrified to the highest degree. Blood streamed from his torn ear. Thompson emptied his magazine firing at the boy, and the bullets ricocheted wildly among the branches, spraying pine needles, fragments of wood, and drops of dew and sap in every direction. None hit Peter. Doubled over in pain as he was, the killer was shooting like a clod. He retched and vomited a jet of frothy blood mixed with bile onto his rifle.

“Fucking Christ!” hollered Hartog.

Thompson did not even hear him. The killer forged ahead through the branches. Pine needles lashed at him, scratching his face. His viscous pink spittle was left dangling behind him in repellent long strands. The mucus shimmered as the sun rose higher. Thompson climbed the hill like a hare. He slowed down when his rifle’s pin struck nothing. Grimacing, he searched his pockets without halting and stuck a handful of cartridges between his teeth. He detached the magazine from the rifle and reloaded it nimbly, still climbing. There was bile and blood on the cartridges he loaded into the magazine.

Julie was shaking Fuentès violently.

“Oh, leave me the fuck alone!” grumbled Fuentès.

“Wake up, for Christ’s sake!”

Fuentès sat up straight. “Z’appening?”

“It’s Peter! They’re attacking!”

Fuentès covered his eyes with his hand and sighed. Julie shook him again, near her breaking point.

“Where’s your gun?”

By this time Hartog had sized things up: Thompson racing ahead and the car stuck in the mud. He swore between gritted teeth, leant inside the Fiat, grabbed the Arminius, and stuffed a box of S amp;W.32 cartridges into the pocket of his wool jacket. Then he rushed off in the wake of his hired killer.

As Thompson was reloading, Peter covered thirty meters of open ground and reached the edge of the terrace. He raced towards the Moorish Tower, still about a hundred meters away, and began shouting at the top of his lungs. At last his eyes filled with tears.

Fuentès threw open a cabinet. In the corner, leaning straight up against the side, was his gun. He knelt down and scrabbled frantically through the jumble at the bottom. There were cans of food, old decorating and architecture magazines, and all kinds of cardboard boxes.

“Where in God’s name did I put my ammo?”

Thompson was clambering up the steep slope on all fours, shaken by fits of coughing and nausea, his rifle under his arm and his index finger in the muzzle to keep water out. Hartog caught up with him and overtook him, skidding on the wet grass.

Peter was getting close to the Moorish Tower, still yelling.

Fuentès found the box he was looking for and opened it frenziedly, spilling the contents all over the floor: Manufrance 4 x 6 °C buckshot cartridges, roughly cylindrical with a yellow head and a greenish cardboard case with an arboreal design. The man picked up his gun and began to load it. It was a four-shot model.

“You call that thing a gun!” cried Julie as she left the room and ran towards the kitchen.

“It is a gun,” noted Fuentès commonsensically.

Peter was still running towards the labyrinth. The right side of his face was covered with blood. When she saw him through the window, Julie moaned. She grabbed a carving knife.

“Come on!” she shouted to Fuentès.

The man came into the hexagonal room. He was still in shorts, barefoot, bare-chested, and locks of hair fell over his forehead to just above his eyes. He was holding his gun rather uncertainly. He came over to Julie, to the window, and saw Peter running up crying. Hartog and Thompson appeared on the far side of the terrace, about sixty meters behind the boy.

“It’s Thompson,” said Julie.

“And it’s Hartog.”

“Yes. .”

Feet firmly planted, Thompson brought his weapon up to his shoulder. Fuentès struck the window with the barrel of his gun. The pane collapsed. He fired. Hartog threw himself flat on his stomach. Thompson raised the barrel of his rifle and set off running on a diagonal.

“Watch out!” said Julie. “He’s getting out of your sight.”

Fuentès made no reply. He fired a second time, and a third. After each shot he operated the forearm of the semiautomatic shotgun. The ejected head and singed cardboard case of the old cartridge would then fly up and bounce on the kitchen floor. The grass and flowers trembled twice over two or three square meters in close proximity to Hartog. The man moved in an odd fashion, crouched down and frantic, like a little spider.

“Watch out for Thompson!” cried Julie again, tugging at Fuentès’s arm.

Thompson was running doubled up and leaping from side to side. As for Peter, he was headed straight for the kitchen.

“Get that kid out of the way!” cried Fuentès.

Peter slipped and fell. Fuentès breathed a sigh of relief and pressed the trigger of the shotgun. Hartog’s silhouette flew up into the air. Like an acrobat. For a moment his feet were higher than his head. He landed in the thick grass and rolled into a ball. The corner of the Moorish Tower now hid Thompson from view.

“Ha!” went Fuentès with satisfaction.

Julie dashed out of the kitchen. Fuentès ejected his spent shell casing. Hartog squirmed in the grass. Fuentès glanced about impatiently.

“Where are my cartridges?” he demanded.

Julie was no longer there to answer. She had emerged into the open air and run to get Peter, who was weeping and squirming. He was still clutching his bow and arrows. Just as they got back to the threshold of the Moorish Tower, something caused Julie’s right foot to slip. She fell violently onto her back and heard a first shot echoing across the terrace. She got up right away and rushed with Peter through the open door. Something buried itself in the wall of the entrance with the sound of a branch snapping and then another shot rang out. Julie noticed absently that the sole of her right shoe had been completely torn off by the first. The sole of her foot was burning hot. Thompson had fired at her from the far extremity of the labyrinth. The girl had heard him breaking a window when he reached the corner of the structure. She examined Peter’s ripped ear. His skull had not been touched.

“Hurry! Go and hide! Quick!” she said, pushing him forward.

He took three steps, then turned back to Julie. He was in tears. He held his arms out to her.

“Go and hide!” screamed Julie.

She succeeded in frightening him. He scampered off down the hallway. The girl got to her feet and started running back to the kitchen.

Hartog’s shoulder was shattered, but he managed to stand. He held the Arminius in his left hand. Walking very unsteadily, he followed Thompson’s example and made for cover.

The killer had disappeared into the Moorish Tower after breaking a window. He dashed down a shadowy passageway, shouldered a door open, and came out into an interior courtyard with a stream running through it. Hugging the walls, he whirled at great speed from one side to the next. Continually pirouetting, he was like a self-parody. All his reflexes were twice as alert as usual. He crossed the open-air space like a spinning top, went through a doorway, and found himself in an empty bedroom. He gnashed his teeth and rolled his eyes. His little beard was gummy. He was drooling.

Julie entered the kitchen. Fuentès was no longer there. He had returned to the cabinet. He was reloading. He stood up straight, gun at the ready, just as Thompson materialized at the open door. Against all logic, Fuentès was taken aback to see a strange face. His finger hesitated on the trigger. Thompson dropped to one knee, below the shotgun’s line of fire, and put a round into Fuentès’s shinbone, shattering it. The former architect fell to the earthen floor and screamed in pain.

“Drop your popgun,” Thompson ordered. “Tell me where the girl and the kid are.”

Fuentès shook his head. Without taking aim, shooting from the hip, Thompson shot him in the right elbow. The joint disintegrated. Fuentès howled. His gun fell next to him on the soft earth.

“Don’t be a dolt,” said Thompson.

With his left thumb, Fuentès pressed the shotgun’s trigger. The buckshot traveled at ground level, throwing up a shower of soil and gravel and demolishing Thompson’s foot. The killer almost let go of his weapon but caught it with one hand. With the other he clung to the door casing. Miraculously, he did not fall. Flabbergasted, swaying, he contemplated his completely crushed and lacerated foot in disbelief. Bone and flesh were mangled-much was missing-and blood was pouring out like water from a tap.

“I wouldn’t have harmed you,” he said in a sad tone. “It’s just the boy, and the girl too. The girl I must kill-you wouldn’t understand.”

Convulsed with pain, Fuentès was trying with his left hand to work the slide action of his shotgun. Leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb, Thompson fired a third shot, hitting the wounded man in the stomach. At that moment Julie appeared behind the killer and plunged her carving knife into his lower back.