There was a ringing in my ears, and for a moment I felt confused. I waited and considered.
Snake had seen me pass by the door, and had guessed I was lurking on the other side, and had shot through the thin, clapboard wall, taking a flyer. It was only luck that had kept him from hitting me. I glanced at the spot on the mill where the bullet had exited. It was a medium sized hole, but big enough it would have done me severe damage. Way the wood splintered out from it, I guessed the shot had come from above, a landing somewhere. A. 38 from the size of that hole and the sound of the load.
I put the Marlin on the ground and got the. 38 out from under my shirt. The revolver loaded with wad?cutters would be better for close work. I felt for the lump of extra ammunition in my pants pocket. It was there. Not that I thought it had gone anywhere, but I damn sure wanted to be certain.
I crawled along the side of the building. When I came to the open doorway, I coiled my knees under me and squinted my eyes and tried to see into the dark. I suddenly found myself thinking about Bev and the kids. With difficulty, I tossed off the thought and focused on what I was doing. I didn’t want to die. I wanted Snake to die. I wanted to see my family again. I had to stay centered. I had to do this like I was delivering the mail.
It was growing darker by the moment, so my eyes were adjusting rapidly. I could see a great, rusted saw in there, about eight feet away, to the left, mounted on a metal rig and some planking. There was a lot of debris scattered about. Some barrels of wooden crates. I could actually smell Snake. Sour and rotten, like meat gone bad. I made a leap through the doorway and rolled up against the base of the saw as two shots slammed at me. One struck the ground near me as I rolled and the other touched a spark off the saw.
I scooted away from the base of the saw, which was not solid protection, but open railing and planks, and got my back against a metal barrel and pressed tight to it. Another shot slammed through the barrel and a streak of oil gushed out of it and splashed onto my left shoulder and down my pants leg.
I twisted around the side of the barrel and jerked the. 38 up in what I thought was the direction of the shots and snapped off two. I heard them whine and strike something solid and sing off that and hit something else and make a flat sound. Then I heard movement up there, then a shotgun thundered, and I knew Arnold had found an entrance and was on the scene. The shotgun slug made a hard clang of a sound as it tore through the metal roof of the mill.
“Bubba,” Arnold yelled out. “He’s above you, to the right, on a platform. Watch your ass!”
But Arnold’s brotherly warning had given Snake an opportunity to better locate. I heard him step on some squeaking lumber, scrape over something, then there was silence.
A short-lived silence. A gun barked and Arnold yelled and I rose up behind the saw without thinking and the gun barked again. A metal tip of one of the jagged saw blades went away with a brilliant display of sparks, and I fired off a couple of quick rounds in the direction of the shot and dropped back down.
“Arnold!” I said.
“Okay, okay,” Arnold said. “I took one. I’m all right. Shit. No I ain’t. My fucking hip’s on fire. Goddamn you, Snake shit! Come see me, motherfucker! Come see me!”
Snake fired another shot from above. I heard it strike the dirt floor over by Arnold with a dead thud. This time Arnold didn’t ask him to visit. I heard running above us, sagging, squeaking boards, then the dreaded silence.
I got some ammo out of my pocket and filled all the chambers in the. 38, then I came out from behind the saw and darted to the right behind a heap of crates. From there, I slid up to a wooden ladder that led to the landing. I looked up. It was awfully dark, and Snake could have been lurking anywhere, though I felt certain from the sound of the movement I had heard, he had traveled on a ways, possibly to a more pro?to a mortected position.
“Arnold?” I said.
“Yeah.”
I slipped across to where his voice was coming from. He was behind a heap of crates lying on his side. The shotgun lay beside him. One of the crates had exploded, scattering pornographic debris about like chicken feathers.
“Crates and photographs, they don’t block slugs too well,” Arnold whispered. “Actually, it wasn’t a bullet I caught, it was a chunk of wood from one of the crates.”
I bent down and touched him on the shoulder and dragged him behind a deeper stack of boxes. “Shut up and stay here,” I said. “I’ll get him.”
“I certainly hope so,” Arnold said. “I don’t think I’m up for it right this moment.”
I left him and started up the ladder, holding the. 38 before me, using one hand to take myself up. I kept watching for the face of Snake, that tattooed moon, to rise over the horizon of the wooden platform above so I could put a crater in it. But the moon didn’t rise. I sniffed. I could smell him, but it wasn’t overwhelming. I became convinced that he wasn’t right above me. But he wouldn’t have to be. He could be off to the left or the right somewhere, waiting, sighting down the barrel of the. 38.
I made the top of the landing and Snake didn’t strike. I looked to my left and saw that the landing played out into a mass of thin, sagging boards that couldn’t have supported anything heavier than a spider or a cockroach.
He had gone right, across a path of stronger boards that lay across the rafters, through a doorless doorway that led onto a kind of loft.
I crouched on the landing and figured on things. I was him, I’d be on either side of that opening, waiting in the dark.
I took a prone position on the rickety landing and borrowed a trick from Snake’s book. I lifted my. 38 and shot through the wood, two shots in succession on the left side of the doorway, about three feet up, two on the right, the same height. The wood crackled and heaved and there was a grunt, and a silhouette moved in front of the doorway and red blasts of light jumped out of both his fists and bullets sang all around me. Had I been standing, as he suspected, I’d have had more holes in me than a cheese grater.
Even as Snake realized he’d missed, he turned his back to me, and ran straight into the darkness and the darkness was split by a thud of shutters and a burst of daylight and Snake leaped into the light and fell out of sight.
I bounded up, charged for the room, and a board gave and my leg went through, scaring about ten years off my life. I got my leg out of the break, and moved on into the room. The light from outside was faded, but it was enough to show me it was Snake’s headquarters. There was a TV up there and a VCR, some personal items, and a shelf containing a smattering of bones, like a child’s collection. There were pictures of naked children nailed to the wall.
I went over to the opening made by the thrown back shutters, and looked down. Snake had made a drop of about thirty feet. I could see him limping away in the distance, holding a revolver in either hand, struggling toward the clu?oward thtch of blackgum trees and the biplane beyond.
I fired two shots at him and neither hit. I was still sharp with a rifle, but with a handgun I was so-so. I made my way back to the ladder without falling or catching my balls on a nail, went out of the mill and ran toward the blackjacks and the branch.
Snake wasn’t making great time. That jump had caused him injury. It was a wonder he wasn’t wearing his knee caps under his earlobes. Still, he was going to make the plane well ahead of me. I got to the copse of trees, and slid on my ass down the side of the creek branch, stepped in the three or four inches of water there, and climbed up on the other side.
Snake was thirty feet away, in the cockpit of the Stearman. I heard an electric starter spark up, and the prop began to spin. The plane turned slightly to the right, then suddenly made a complete circle, then made it again.