The Dark of the Sun - Smith Wilbur - Страница 55

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"Functional," he decided, speaking aloud. "But we certainly aren't

going to win any prizes for aesthetic beauty or engineering design." He

picked up his jacket and thrust his arms into the sleeves; his sweaty

upper body was cold now that the sun was almost down.

Home, gentlemen," he said, and his gendarmes scattered to their

positions inside the shelter.

The metal shelter circled the laager, squatting every twenty or thirty

paces like an old woman preparing to relieve herself. When it lifted and

moved on it left a log fire behind it. The ring of fires was completed

by dark and the shelter returned to the laager.

"Are you ready, Ruffy?" From inside the shelter Bruce called across to

where Ruffy waited.

"All set, boss." Followed by six heavily armed. gendarmes, Ruffy crossed

quickly to join Bruce and they set off to begin their all night vigil on

the bridge.

Before midnight it was cold in the corrugated iron shelter, for the wind

blew down the river and they were completely exposed to it, and there

was no cloud cover to hold the day's warmth against the earth.

The men in the shelter huddled under their gas capes and waited.

Bruce and Ruffy leaned together against the corrugated iron wall, their

shoulders almost touching, and there was sufficient light from the stars

to light the interior of the shelter and allow them to make out the

guard rails of the bridge through the open ends.

"Moon will be up in an hour," murmured Ruffy.

"Only a quarter of it, but it will give us a little more light," Bruce

concurred, and peered down into the black hole between his feet where he

had prised up one of the newly laid planks.

"How about taking a shine with the torch?" suggested Ruffy.

"No." Bruce shook his head, and passed the flashlight into his other

hand. "Not until I hear them."

"You might not hear them."

"If they swim downstream and climb up the piles, which is what I expect,

then we'll hear them all right. They'll be dripping water all over the

place," said Bruce.

"Kanaki and his boys didn't hear them," Ruffy pointed out.

"Kanaki and his boys weren't listening for it," said Bruce.

They were silent then for a while. One of the gendarmes started to snore

softly and Ruffy shot out a huge booted foot that landed in

the small of his back. The man cried out and scrambled to his knees,

looking wildly about him.

"You have nice dreams?" Ruffy asked pleasantly.

"I wasn't sleeping," the man protested. "I was thinking."

"Well, don't think so loudly," Ruffy advised him. "Sounds though you

sawing through the bridge with a cross cut." Another half hour dragged

itself by like a cripple.

"Fires are burning well," commented Ruffy, and Bruce turned his head and

glanced through the loophole in the corrugated iron behind him at the

little garden of orange flame-flowers in the darkness.

"Yes, they should last till morning." Silence again, with only the

singing of the mosquitoes and the rustle of the river as it flowed by

the piles of the bridge. Shermaine has my pistol, Bruce remembered with

a small trip in his pulse, I should have taken it back from her.

He unclipped the bayonet from the muzzle of his rifle, tested the edge

of the blade with his thumb, and slid it into the scabbard on his

web-belt. Could easily lose the rifle if we start mixing it in the dark,

he decided.

"Christ, I'm hungry," grunted Ruffy beside him.

"You're too fat," said Bruce. "The diet will do you good." And they

waited.

Bruce stared down into the hole in the floorboards. His eyes began

weaving fantasies out of the darkness, he could see vague shapes that

moved, like things seen below the sud ce of the sea. His stomach

tightened and he fought the impulse to shine his flashlight into the

hole. He closed his eyes to rest them. I will count slowly to ten, he

decided, and then look again.

Ruffy's hand closed on his upper arm; the pressure of his fingers

transmitted alarm like a current of electricity. Bruce's eyelids flew

open.

Listen," breathed Ruffy.

Bruce heard it. The stealthy drip of water on water below them.

Then something bumped the bridge, but so softly that he felt rather than

heard the jar.

"Yes," Bruce whispered back. He reached out and tapped the shoulder of

the gendarme beside him and the man's body stiffened at his

touch.

With his breath scratching his dry throat, Bruce waited until he was

sure the warning had been passed to all his men. Then he shifted the

weight of his rifle from across his knees and aimed down into the hole.

He drew in a deep breath and switched on the flashlight.

The beam shot down and he looked along it over his rifle barrel.

The square aperture in the floorboards formed a frame for the picture

that flashed into his eyes. Black bodies, naked, glossy with wetness,

weird patterns of tattoo marks, a face staring up at him, broad sloped

forehead above startlingly white eyes and flat nose. The

long gleaming blade of a panga. Clusters of humanity clinging to the

wooden piles like ticks on the legs of a beast. Legs and arms and shiny

trunks merged into a single organism, horrible as some slimy

sea-creature.

Bruce fired into it. His rifle shuddered against his shoulder and the

long orange spurts from its muzzle gave the picture a new flickering

horror. The mass of bodies heaved, and struggled like a pack of rats

trapped in a dry well. They dropped splashing into the river, swarmed up

the timber piles, twisting and writhing as the bullets hit them,

screaming, babbling over the sound of the rifle.

Bruce's weapon clicked empty and he groped for a new magazine.

Ruffy and his gendarmes were hanging over the guard rails of the bridge,

firing downwards, sweeping the piles below them with long bursts, the

flashes lighting their faces and outlining their bodies against the sky.

"They're still coming!" roared Ruffy. "Don't let them get over the

side." Out of the hole at Bruce's feet thrust the head and naked upper

body of a man. There was a panga in his hand; he slashed at

Bruce's legs, his eyes glazed in the beam of the flashlight.

Bruce jumped back and the knife missed his knees by inches. The man

wormed his way out of the hole towards Bruce. He was screaming

shrilly, a high meaningless sound. Bruce lunged with the barrel

of his empty rifle at the contorted black face. All his weight was

behind that thrust and the muzzle went into the Baluba's eye. "The

foresight and four inches of the barrel disappeared into his head,

stopping only when it hit bone. Colourless fluid from the burst eyeball

gushed from round the protruding steel.

Tugging and twisting, Bruce tried to free the rifle, but the foresight

had buried itself like the barb of a fish hook.

The Baluba had dropped his panga and was clinging to the rifle barrel

with both hands. He was wailing and rolling on his back upon the

floorboards, his head jerking every time Bruce tried to pull the muzzle

out of his head.

Beyond him the head and shoulders of another Baluba appeared through the

aperture.

Bruce dropped his rifle and gathered up the fallen panga; he jumped over

the writhing body of the first Baluba and lifted the heavy knife above

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