I didn't lose consciousness. I still had the gun and loose cartridges in my jacket pocket. The Ford was down on its knees in front, its ass-end up in the air. The wheels were still spinning. There was something the matter with my left hand. I started to crawl toward the Ford and realized that my right leg was broken.
Up on the highway the spotlight pivoted and crept down through the field. It caught me, passed on, hesitated, and came back. There was a sharp crack, and a bullet plowed up the ground beside me. A rifle. It sounded like a .30-.30. I dragged myself over the uneven ground to the Ford, underneath its back wheels where I could see up to the road.
I reloaded one-handed. A thousand hours of practicing reloading one-handed had come to this: a final time in a black earth Florida field. I looked up toward the road again, and I got the spotlight with my third shot.
They turned the other cruiser around, the one I hadn't hit, and its spotlight started down through the field. I popped it before its beam reached me. Not that it made any real difference. More red lights, sirens, and spotlights were whirling up to the roadblock every second now.
To get to me in a hurry they had to come through the field. By now they knew enough not to hurry. The .30-.30 went off again, and a large charge of angry metal whanged through the body of the car over my head. The rifle would keep me pinned down while they circled around me.
Nothing for it now but the hard sell.
Nothing for it but to see that a few of them shook hands with the devil at the same time I did.
The spotlights crisscrossed each other eerily in the open field, but one of them kept the Ford bathed steadily in luminously glowing, eye-hurting brilliance. A hump in the ground kept me in shadow. I couldn't see anyone coming through the field.
I heard the ride's sharp crack again. Above my head (here was a loud ping! Suddenly I was drenched to the waist in gasoline. The .30-.30 slug had ripped out the belly of the gas tank. I swiped at my stinging eyes and shook my dripping head. I looked up just as gas from my hair splashed onto the hot exhaust.
Whoom!!
I saw a bright flare, and then I didn't see anything.
The explosion knocked me backward under the Ford. I rolled out from beneath it. I didn't even feel the broken leg or the damaged hand. I couldn't see at all. I could hear the crackle of flames. Part was the Ford. Part was me. I was afire all over.
I tried to smother the flames by rolling on the ground. It didn't help. I still had the gun. I hoped they could see me and were coming at me. I knelt up on my good leg and faced the highway, bracing the .38 in both hands. I squeezed off what was left in it, waist-high in a semicircle, blind.
I threw the empty gun as far as I could in the direction of the road.
There was a dull roaring sound in my ears. I tried to put out the fire in my hair. I could smell my own burning flesh.
The last thing I heard was myself, screaming.
XI
I was blind for six months.
I may have gone a little crazy, too. I went the whole route: baths, wetpacks, elbow cuffs, straitjackets, isolation. I stopped fighting them a while ago. They don't pay much attention to me now.
I knew what I looked like even before I could see again. I could tell from the reaction when a new patient was admitted or a new attendant came on duty. Hazel came to see me five or six times. I refused consent for her admission.
They don't know that I can see again. That I'm not crazy. They think I'm a robot. A vegetable.
I'll show them.
There's a hermetically sealed quart jar buried in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, and another in Grosmont, Colorado. There's nothing but money in both. I don't need money. All I need is a gun. One of these days I'll find the right attendant, and I'll start talking to him. It will take time to convince him, but I've got plenty of time.
Plastic surgery will take care of most of what I look like if I can get back to the sack buried beside Bunny's cabin. With a gun, I'll get back to it.
That's all I need—a gun.
I'm not staying here.
I'll be leaving before too long, and the day I do they'll never forget it.