That was the beginning, and now they were all outside, all twenty-six of them, waiting to close in, waiting to drop down like the venomous vultures they were. But they hadn’t counted on the .45 in my fist, and they hadn’t counted on the slow anger that had been building up inside me, boiling over like a black brew, filling my mind, filling my body, poisoning my liver and my bile, quickening my heart, putting a throb in my appendix, tightening the pectoral muscles on my chest, girding my loins. They hadn’t counted on the kill lust that raged through my veins. They hadn’t counted on the hammer that kept pounding one word over and over again in my skulclass="underline" kill, kill, kill!
They were all outside waiting, and I had to get them. We were inside, and they knew it, so I did the only thing any sensible person would have done under the circumstances.
I set fire to the house.
I piled rags and empty crates and furniture and fish in the basement, and then I soaked them with gasoline. I touched a match, and the flames leaped up, lapping at the wooden crossbeams, eating away at the undersides of the first-floor boards.
Melinda was close to me. I cupped her chin in one hand, and then tapped her lightly with the .45, just bruising her. We listened to the flames crackling in the basement, and I whispered, “That fish smells good.”
And then all hell broke loose, just the way I had planned it. They stormed the house, twenty-six strong. I threw open the front door and I stood there with the .45 in my mitt, and I shouted, “Come on, you rats. Come and get it!”
Three men appeared on the walk and I fired low, and I fired fast. The first man took two in the stomach, and he bent over and died. The second man took two in the stomach, and he bent over and died, too. I hit the third man in the chest, and I swore as he died peacefully.
“Agnes,” I yelled, “there’s a submachine gun in the closet. Get it! And bring the hand grenades and the mortar shells.”
“Yes, Dud,” she murmured.
I kept firing. Three down, four down, five down. I reloaded, and they kept coming up the walk and I kept cutting them down. And then Melinda came back with the ammunition. I gathered up a batch of hand grenades, stuck four of them in my mouth and pulled the pins. I grabbed two in each hand and lobbed them out on the walk and six more of the rats were blown to their reward.
I watched the bodies come down to the pavement, and I took a quick count of arms and legs. It had been seven of the rats.
“Seven and five is thirteen,” I told Melinda. “That leaves eleven more.”
Melinda did some quick arithmetic. “Twelve more,” she said.
I cut loose with the sub-machine gun. Kill, kill, my brain screamed. I swung it back and forth over the lawn, and they dropped like flies. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Nine more to go. Seventeen, eighteen, and they kept dying, and the blood ran red on the grass, and the flames licked at my back. They all ran for cover, and there was nothing to cut down, so I concentrated on a clump of weeds near the barn, shooting fast bursts into it. Pretty soon there were no more weeds, and the barn was a skeleton against the deepening dusk. I grabbed a mortar and tossed it into the yard, just for kicks. Pretty soon, there was no more barn.
Behind me, I heard Melinda scream. I whirled. Her clothes were aflame, and I seized her roughly and threw her to the floor. I almost lost my mind, and I almost forgot all about the nine guys still out there. I tore myself away from her, and I ran into the yard with two mortar shells in my mouth, the sub-machine gun in my right hand, and the .45 in my left. I shook my head, and the mortar shells flew, and three more of the rats were dead and gone. I fired a burst with the machine gun, and another two dropped. There were four or five left now, and I picked them off one by one with the .45. The yard ran red with blood, and the bodies lay like twisted sticks. I sighed heavily and walked back to the house — because the worst part still lay ahead of me.
I found her in the bedroom.
She had taken a quick sponge bath, and her body gleamed like dull ivory in the gathering darkness.
“All right, Agnes,” I said. “It’s all over.”
“What do you mean, Dud?”
“The whole mess, Agnes. Everything, from start to finish. A big hoax. A big plot to sucker Dudley Sledge. Well, no one suckers Sledge. No one.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Dud.”
“You don’t know, huh? You don’t know what I mean? I mean the phoney story about the bank job, and the ten million dollars your husband left you.”
“He did leave it to me, Dudley.”
“No, Agnes. That was all a lie. Every bit of it. I’m only sorry I had to kill twenty-six bird-watchers before I realized the truth.”
“You’re wrong, Dudley,” she said. “Dead wrong.”
“No, baby. I’m right, and that’s the pity of it because I love you, and I know what I have to do now.”
“Dudley...” she started.
“No, Agnes. Don’t try to sway me. I know you stole that ten million from the Washington Avenue Bird Watchers Society. You invented that other story because you wanted someone with a gun, someone who would keep them away from you. Well, twenty-six people have paid... and now one more has to pay.”
She clipped two earrings to her delicate ears, snapped a bracelet onto her wrist, dabbed some lipstick onto her wide mouth. She was fully dressed now, dressed the way she’d been that first time in my office, the first time I’d slugged her, the time I knew I was hopelessly in love with her.
She took a step toward me, and I raised the .45.
“Kiss me, Dudley,” she said.
I kissed her, all right. I shot her right in the stomach.
She fell to the floor, a look of incredible ecstasy in her eyes, and when I turned around I realized she wasn’t reaching for the mortar shell on the table behind me. Nor was she reaching for the sub-machine gun that rested in a corner near the table. She was reaching for the ten million bucks.
There were tears in my eyes. “I guess that’s the least I can do for you, Agnes,” I said. “It was what you wanted, even in death.”
So I took the ten million bucks, and I bought a case of Irish whiskey.