Valhalla by Newton Thornburg Read Free Book Online Page B

from the bend, far beyond the range of his rifle. And he knew that a warning shot from so far away would barely be heard, probably not even be understood as such. So he did the only thing he could think of, which was to run, to head back for the bend as rapidly as he could get there. Leaving his backpack on theporch, he sprinted down the lane and into the woods, cutting sharply left this time, so he could reach the creek sooner and possibly have a shot at the blacks before they finished their predations and left.
    The going was rough and he stumbled a number of times, once ripping his pants and bloodying his knee. But within four or five minutes he reached the creek and the rough path that ran alongside it. He was still a good half mile from the bend and blocked from its view by a hill jutting into the course of the creek. And it was this hill he sprinted for, this long low extension of rock and cedar, because he knew that it would give him the vantage point he needed, the shot he wanted.
    Reaching the hill, he scrambled, half-crawling, half-running, up its rocky flank until he gained the top. His heart was leaping in his chest and he was gulping air, sobbing as much as breathing as he crashed to one knee, raising the rifle and sighting through its scope at the bend. But what he saw now was different, close up and different. Eve was lying as before, only naked except for her shirt, which was unbuttoned and pulled back. The young black man in the ski outfit was still standing over her, but he was pulling up his pants now, belting them. And he was saying something. He was laughing and smiling. Stone put the crosshairs on him, high on his chest, but the youth suddenly raised his hand and blew a kiss down at Eve, and for some reason the gesture froze Stone’s finger on the trigger. In his mind he saw the groundhog splattering out of the tree and he thought of the black taking a kindred mass of steel into his body, just as he finished blowing a kiss. And Stone told himself to wait, just a moment or two, wait until the man tried something more, wait until he raised his hand against her or the others. Then Stone rememberedthe second youth and he swiveled the scope onto him, finding him squatted on his heels like an African or a hillbilly, finished with the luggage now, just sitting there, smoking a cigarette. The black looked so incredibly calm and patient, so somehow childlike, even with a rifle slung across his knees, that Stone found he could not fire at him either, not yet anyway. He swung the rifle back onto the first one then, just as the youth bent over and picked up the twenty-two pistol Stone had left with Eddie. Immediately Stone’s body jumped taut, all his being coiling with his finger around the trigger, ready now to squeeze, to kill. But the black only tucked the pistol into his belt and moved away from Eve, gesturing for his partner to follow. And they started off, taking the path that had brought Stone and the others to the bend earlier. The one with the rifle also carried a suitcase, one of Eve’s. The other walked free.
    As Stone followed them with the crosshairs, he kept telling himself that they probably had killed Jagger and Eddie, and that he had to shoot them, now, this second, while he still had a chance. Over and over he silently screamed this ultimatum at himself. But nothing happened. His finger, his being, continued to tremble against the steel of the trigger, and could go no farther. Staring at them through the scope, like a sweating voyeur through a peephole, he watched them amble out of sight. Then, putting the rifle down, he uttered a cry that even in his own ears sounded in no way human: a cry, he thought, that a chicken might make in death.
    He went back down the hill the same way he had come up it, but more slowly now, with the rifle feeling like a log in his hand and the binoculars a boulder lashed about hisneck. When he reached the bottom, he started around the hill on the creek path, not even