The Removers

Chapter Fourteen

ALL RIGHT, so it was a stupid damn business, and if I'd seen it on TV I'd have groaned and turned off the set with, perhaps, some comments on the stuffy behavior of the supposedly tough and competent private eye on the screen, walking right into it like that. All I can say is that I'd had two nights without sleep, the last one a real dilly; I wasn't at my best. Of course, we hardly ever are, in times of crisis. Unlike Olympic athletes, lucky fellows, we don't get to go into training for our major efforts, with plenty of good wholesome food and lots of sleep. We're supposed to do it on benzedrine and hard liquor if necessary, which it usually is.

Anyway, they caught me completely off guard, the way a man like me isn't ever supposed to be. I thought I had the opposition all figured out; and the time you start thinking that is the time you usually find out you're wrong. I won't say that the fact that I went to the door with my mind less on who might be out there than on my bright mental image of the kid without too many clothes on didn't have something to do with my negligence.

The sap-man was an expert. His blow was no harder than necessary, and no softer, either. I went down. The one in the coveralls kept me from hitting my face on the brick steps. I wasn't out, not completely; I was aware of the other man putting his instrument away-a cosh, it might have been called by Duke Logan, and why he came into my mind at that moment I didn't know. The two men between them dragged me into the house. They dumped me on the nearby sofa. I could see it all quite clearly although my eyes were closed. It was as if I was way out and above it somewhere, looking into the tiny toy house with its tiny toy living room and the tiny toy figures going through their minuscule motions.

"Did you have to hit him so hard?" a voice asked. "If you've killed him-"

"I don't kill them unless I'm paid to kill them," another voice said. "What did you want me to do, read his damn gas meter? What the hell's a man doing here, anyway?" It wasn't the voice of anybody I'd ever met. It went on irritably: "There was only supposed to be the girl and the dog. Keep an eye on the mutt while I look around; and on this character, too, in case he starts to-"

A third voice called, "Matt, who was it, baby?"

I was supposed to do something, and for the second time that day I couldn't do it. I didn't even know what it was, this time. I only knew that it was terribly important, that terrible things would happen if I didn't do it, but I couldn't move. I heard a door open somewhere.

"Matt, I-" Her voice changed. "Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?"

Then the door slammed shut again. Footsteps crossed the room towards it, fast, and a shoulder burst it open before she could get it locked. There was a scuffle in the other room and a man's voice called:

"Lou, for Christ's sake, come here and get the gun from the damn little wildcat before she… Ouch! You bitch!"

There was the sound of a blow and a gasp of pain. The other man had gone in to help and I was alone, but not quite alone. Something new had come into the room. It was like one of those nightmares you have as a kid, when there's something big and black in the corner, growing, spreading, and if it ever touches you, you're gone. It was there, quite still at first and then moving, and I wanted to cry out, to warn them. After all, fox all their faults, they were human beings like me. But I couldn't speak.

It flowed soundlessly towards the bedroom door, and after that the real nightmare began, with sound effects straight from hell, and the kid was in there, and I had to get to her, and I fell off the sofa trying, and passed out.

"Matt! Mart, please wake up!"

I came back from far away and opened my eyes. She came into focus in two places. The two images fused, and you've never seen anything like it. I mean, she looked like she'd been painting the house, only it wasn't paint. It brought me up sitting, even though I thought my head would kill me.

"Moira!" I gasped. "Kid-"

She said, "Oh, for God's sake don't make a federal case of it! It's just a little blood. It… it isn't mine. I'm all right."

I looked at her, and saw that she really was all right even if she looked ready to go on the warpath. The room started to revolve around me. She grabbed me as I swayed, sitting there.

"Please, baby!" she said. "Please try!'

"Try what?"

"You've got to come! He's in there. He's-" Her voice broke. "He's hurt. He's so terribly hurt! You've got to come and see if there's anything… anything you can do. Please, baby, please try to stand up!"

I tried to stand up. I made it. She helped me across the room to the bedroom door. After that, my head cleared very suddenly. I didn't even have a headache any more, or if I had, I couldn't be bothered with it.

The one nearest the door had tried to ward it off with his arm. It had sheared off the arm just below the elbow-well, that was the general impression I got, anyway-and had gone on for the throat. It had done a very thorough job there. The other one had apparently been trying to do some shooting. It hadn't bothered with the hand or the gun. It had just taken him by the neck, like the rabbit. The angle of the head indicated that a couple of vertebrae might actually be crushed or broken. There didn't seem to be any point in investigating more closely, however, since there wasn't much left between head and shoulders, anyway.

I must confess that I'm not an expert on really mangled bodies. We fought a secret war, one that didn't often confront us with the more gruesome effects of bombs and high-explosive shells. This was just about as messy a situation as I'd ever witnessed, and I had to gulp a couple of times to get my digestive tract operating in the right direction again. The kid paid no attention to the horrors on the floor.

"Over here," she said. "Quick!"

I went around the bed. The big dog was lying there, stretched out on his side. He was fairly gruesome, too; you can't go messing with carotids and jugulars without getting a little gory. She'd cleaned off his head, however. Apparently that was how she'd got it all over her, handling him. He tried to raise his head as we came up. The tip of his long tail moved. I'd seen him do lots of things with that silly monkey tail, but this was the first time I'd seen him wag it like a real dog. You could see that he was kind of proud of himself. He thought he'd done pretty well. He kept an eye on us, though; you could never be sure, if you were a dog, what these odd humans were going to approve of.

Moira went to her knees and took the lean gray head in her lap. The mouth opened, and I could see-and for the first time really appreciate-the long, cruel fighting Jaw and the big, white, leopard-killing teeth. The dog started licking Moira's hand. I just stood there. I mean, how do you apologize to a dog?

"Easy, Sheik, easy," Moira said. She looked up at me pleadingly. "What do you think?"

I bent down and looked him over. He'd taken at least three bullets, one far back that harm gone clear through from side to side, presumably while he was disposing of the first man, one diagonally into the chest as he turned, and one squarely into the chest, with powder burns, as he made his final charge right into the muzzle of the gun.

"What do you think?" Moira whispered. "Is there.. anything we can do for him?"

There wasn't any sense in trying to fool her. "Just one thing," I said. "You'd better go into the other room."

Her eyes widened indignantly. "Go into… you mean, leave him? What do you think I am?" She looked down, and scratched the dog gently between the long hound ears. It never took its eyes from her face. She spoke again without looking up. "Go on, damn you! What are you waiting for? Quick, before he moves and hurts himself some more!"

I did it, never mind how. She made it a little awkward, sitting there holding him, but it's something I'm good at, and I did a clean and satisfactory job. She sat there for a while longer with the head in her lap. She was crying helplessly, the tears streaming down her cheeks unheeded. Presently I went into the bathroom and started the shower running. Then I went back and picked her up and walked her in there and shoved her under the water, underwear and all. Sentiment is all very well, but she could grieve just as hard without looking like a major war casualty.

I got aspirin from the medicine cabinet, swallowed three tablets with water, and waited to make sure she'd be all right in there. After a little, some wet lingerie came flying over the frosted glass shower door, barely missing me. If she had that much strength, she'd live, and I found a sponge and mopped up what she'd tracked across the living-room rug. There wasn't anything to be done to the charnel house that had been a bedroom, short of a complete redecoration; I just closed the door on that.

When I returned to the bathroom, she was still in the shower. At the lavatory, I took care of the deficiencies in my own appearance as well as soap and water could. A razor would have been nice, and she had one, but I could find no spare blades, and I'd been married too long, once, to entrust my face to an edge that a woman had used on her legs and armpits. I went into the kitchen to start breakfast, which may seem callous, but the situation required some heavy thinking, and I don't think well on an empty stomach. I didn't figure the kid's digestion was the kind to be permanently inhibited by grief and horror, either.

Waiting for the stuff to cook, I glanced at the front page of the newspaper we'd brought inside. One column was headed Radioactivity Claims Two at Los Alamos. The paper reminded its readers that a technician had just died locally, and said investigations were being made to determine if certain installations weren't being just a bit careless with the hot stuff. I read the piece to the end and decided it wasn't a nice way to die, but then, what is? I heard Moira's voice call to me.

"Mart, where are you?"

I laid the paper aside, and went into the living room. She was standing at the door of the second bedroom- the bathroom was between the two-drying her hair. I went up to her. She was quite an intriguing sight, clean and shining. She looked at me, and down at herself, and grinned. It was a little weak, but it was a real grin.

"Well, I can't help it!" she said defensively. "All my clothes are in… in there, and I just couldn't bring myself…" Her grin faded, and her eyes were suddenly wet. "Poor Sheik. He was… so lovely, and so shy, and such a clown. and so brave, when he really understood that somebody was hurting me."

If she could talk about it, it was going to be all right. I said, "If you'll tell me what you need and where it is, I'll go in and get-"

I stopped. She wasn't listening to me. She was looking towards the front door. I turned. We hadn't heard a sound. They must have left it slightly ajar when they hauled me inside. Now it was open, and Beth was there.