Part 10 (1/2)

Mercer groped for a wall switch, located it, snapped it back and forth. No light came on.

”Mr Gradie?”

Again a bubbling sigh.

”Get a lamp! Quick!” he told Linda.

”Let him alone, for Christ's sake.”

”d.a.m.n it, he's pa.s.sed out and thrown up! He'll strangle in his own vomit if we don't help him!”

”He had a big flashlight in the kitchen!” Linda whirled to get it, anxious to get away.

Mercer cautiously made his way into the bedroom-treading with care, for broken gla.s.s crunched under his foot. The outside shades were drawn, and the room was swallowed in inky blackness, but he was certain he could pick out Gradie's comatose form lying across the bed. Then Linda was back with the flashlight.

Gradie was sprawled on his back, skinny legs flung onto the floor, the rest crosswise on the unmade bed. The flashlight beam s.h.i.+mmered on the spreading splotches of blood that soaked the sheets and mattress. Someone had spent a lot of time with him, using a small knife-small-bladed, for if the wounds that all but flayed him had not been shallow, he could not be yet alive.

Mercer flung the flashlight beam about the bedroom. The cluttered furnis.h.i.+ngs were overturned, smashed. He recognized the charge pattern of a shotgun blast low against one wall, spattered with bits of fur and gore. The shotgun, broken open, lay on the floor; its barrel and stock were matted with b.l.o.o.d.y fur-Gradie had used it as a club when he'd had no chance to reload. The flashlight beam probed the blackness at the base of the corner wall, where the termite-riddled floorboards had been torn away. A trail of blood crawled into the darkness beneath.

Then Mercer crouched beside Gradie, s.h.i.+ning the light into the tortured face. The eyes opened at the light-one eye was past seeing, the other stared dully. ”That you, Jon?”

”It's Jon, Mr Gradie. You take it easy-we're getting you to the hospital. Did you recognize who did this to you?”

Linda had already caught up the telephone from where it had fallen beneath an overturned nightstand. It seemed impossible that he had survived the blood loss, but Mercer had seen drunks run off after a gut-shot that would have killed a sober man from shock.

Gradie laughed horribly. ”It was the little green men. Do you think I could have told anybody about the little green men?”

”Take it easy, Mr Gradie.”

”Jon! The phone's dead!”

”Busted in the fall. Help me carry him to the truck.” Mercer prodded clumsily with a wad of torn sheets, trying to remember first-aid for bleeding. Pressure points? Where? The old man was cut to tatters.

”They're little green devils,” Gradie raved weakly. ”And they ain't no animals-they're clever as you or me. They live under the kudzu. That's what the Nip was trying to tell me when he sold me the skull. Hiding down there beneath the d.a.m.n vines, living off the roots and whatever they can scavenge. They nurture the G.o.dd.a.m.n stuff, he said, help it spread around, care for it-just like a man looks after his garden. Winter comes, they burrow down underneath the soil and hibernate.”

”Shouldn't we make a litter?”

”How? Just grab his feet.”

”Let me lie! Don't you see, Jon? Kudzu was brought over here from j.a.pan, and these d.a.m.n little devils came with it. I started to put it all together when Morny found the skull- started piecing together all the little hints and suspicions. They like it here, Jon-they're taking over all the waste lots, got more food out in the wild, multiplying like rats over here, and n.o.body knows about them.”

Gradie's hysterical voice was growing weaker. Mercer gave up trying to bandage the torn limbs. ”Just take it easy, Mr Gradie. We're getting you to a doctor.”

”Too late for a doctor. You scared them off, but they've done for me. Just like they done for old Morny. They're smart, Jon-that's what I didn't understand in time- smart as devils. They know that I was figuring on them, started spying on me, creeping in to see what I knew-then came to shut me up. They don't want n.o.body to know about them, Jon! Now they'll come after...”

Whatever else Gradie said was swallowed in the crimson froth that bubbled from his lips. The tortured body went rigid for an instant, then Mercer was cradling a dead weight in his arms. Clumsily, he felt for a pulse, realized the blood was no longer flowing in weak spurts.

”I think he's gone.”

”Oh G.o.d, Jon. The police will think we did this!”

”Not if we report it first. Come on! We'll take the truck.”

”And just leave him here?”

”He's dead. This is a murder. Best not to disturb things any more than we have.”

”Oh, G.o.d! Jon, whoever did this may still be around.”

Mercer pulled his derringer from his pocket, flicked back the safety. His chest and arms were covered with Gradie's blood, he noticed. This was not going to be pleasant when they got to the police station. Thank G.o.d the cops never patrolled this slum, or else the shotgun blasts would have brought a squad car by now.

Warily, he led the way out of the house and into the yard. Wind was whipping the leaves now, and a few spatters of rain were starting to hit the pavement. The erratic light peopled each grotesque shadow with lurking murderers, and against the rush of the wind, Mercer seemed to hear a thousand stealthy a.s.sa.s.sins.

A flash of electric blue highlighted the yard.

”Jon! Look at the truck!”

All four tires were flat. Slashed.

”Get in! We'll run on the rims!”

Another glare of heat lightning.

All about them, the kudzu erupted from a hundred hidden lairs. Mercer fired twice.

.220 Swift.

*I*

Within, there was musty darkness and the sweet-stale smell of damp earth.

Crouched at the opening, Dr Morris Kenlaw poked his head into the darkness and snuffled like a hound. His spadelike hands clawed industriously, flinging clods of dirt between his bent knees. Steadying himself with one hand, he wriggled closer to the hole in the ground and craned his neck inward.

He stuck out a muddy paw. ”Give me back the light, Brandon.” His usually overloud voice was m.u.f.fled.

Brandon handed him that big flashlight and tried to look over Kenlaw's chunky shoulder. The archeologist's blocky frame completely stoppered the opening as he hunched forward.

”Take hold of my legs!” came back his words, more m.u.f.fled still.

Shrugging, Brandon knelt down and pinioned Kenlaw's stocky legs. He had made a fair sand-lot fullback not too many years past, and his bulk was sufficient to anchor the overbalanced archeologist. Thus supported, Kenlaw crawled even farther into the tunnel. From the way his back jerked, Brandon sensed he was burrowing again, although no hunks of clay bounced forth.

Brandon pushed back his lank white hair with his forearm and looked up. His eyes were hidden behind mirror sungla.s.ses, but his pale eyebrows made quizzical lines toward Dell Warner. Dell had eased his rangy denim-clad frame onto a limestone k.n.o.b. Dan made a black-furred mound at his feet, tail thumping whenever his master looked down at him. The young farmer dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his s.h.i.+rt pocket, watching in amused interest.

”Snake going to reach out, bite his nose off,” Dell ventured, proffering the cigarettes to Brandon, selecting one himself when the other man declined.

The cool mountain breeze whisked his lighter flame, whipped the high weeds that patchworked the sloping pasture. Yellow gra.s.s and weed-cropped closely here, there a verdant blotch to mark a resorbed cow-pie. Not far above them dark pines climbed to the crest of the ridge; a good way below, the slope leveled to a neat field of growing corn. Between stretched the steep bank of wild pasture, terraced with meandering cow paths and scarred with grey juts of limestone. The early summer breeze had a cool, clean taste. It was not an afternoon to poke one's head into dank pits in the ground.