Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 71

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narrow sandy bed in which Johan Akkers had run down Conrad with the

green Ford truck.

David climbed out of the Pontiac and walked down to the edge of the

water.  As he stood there he saw the level creeping up perceptively

towards his feet.  It was still rising.

He looked up at the sky, and judged that the respite in the weather

would not last much longer.

He reached his decision and ran back to the Pontiac.

He reversed well back onto the highest ground and parked it off the

verge with the headlights still directed at the river edge.  Then,

standing beside the door, he stripped down to his shirt and underpants.

He pulled his belt from the loops of his trousers and buckled it about

his waist, then he tied his shoes to the belt by their laces.

Barefooted he ran to the edge of the water, and began to feel his way

slowly down the bank.  It shelved quickly and within a few paces he was

knee-deep and the current plucked at him, viciously trying to drag him

off-balance.

He posed like that, braced against the current, and waited, staring

upstream.  He saw the tree trunk coming down fast on the flood, with its

roots sticking up like beseeching arms.  It was swinging across the

current and would pass him closely.

He judged his moment and lunged for it.  Half a dozen strong strokes

carried him to it and he grasped one of the roots.  Instantly he was

whisked out of the beams of the headlight into the roaring fury of the

river.  The tree rolled and bucked, carrying him under and bringing him

up coughing and gasping.

Something struck him a glancing blow and he felt his shirt tear and the

skin beneath it rip.  Then he was under water again, swirling end over

end and clinging desperately to his log.

All about him the darkness was filled with the rush and threat of crazy

water, and he was buffeted and flogged by its raw strength, grazed and

bruised by rocks and driftwood.

Suddenly he felt the log check and bump against an obstruction, turning

and swinging out into the current again.

David was blinded with muddy water and he knew there was a limit to how

much more of this treatment he could survive.  Already he was weakening

quickly.

He could feel his mind and his movements slowing, like a battered prize

fighter in the tenth round.

He gambled it all on the obstruction which the log had encountered being

the far bank, and he released his death-grip on the root and stuck out

sideways across the current with desperate strength.

His overarm stroke ended in the trailing branches of a thorn tree

hanging over the storm waters.  Thorns tore the flesh of his palm as his

grip closed over them, and he cried out at the pain but held on.

Slowly he dragged himself out of the flood and crawled up the bank,

hacking and coughing at the water in his lungs.  Clear of the river, he

fell on his face in the mud and vomited a gush of swallowed water that

shot out of his nose and mouth.

He lay exhausted for a long while, until his coughing slowed and he

could breathe again.  His shoes had been torn from his belt by the

current.  He dragged himself to his feet and staggered forward into the

darkness.  As he ran, he held his hand to his face, pulling the broken

thorns from the flesh of his palm with his teeth.

Stars were still showing overhead and by their feeble light he made out

the road, and he began to run along it, gathering strength with each

pace.  It was very still now, with only the dripping of the trees and

the occasional far-off murmur of thunder to break the silence.

Two miles from the homestead, David made out the dark bulk of something

on the side of the road, and it was only when he was a few paces from it

that he realized it was an automobile, a late model Chevy.  It had been

abandoned, bogged down in one of the greasy mudholes, that the rains had

opened.

The doors were unlocked and David switched on the interior and parking

lights.  There was dried blood on the seat, a dark smear of it, and on

the back seat was a bundle of clothing.  David untied it quickly and

recognized immediately the coarse canvas suiting as regulation prison

garb.  He stared at it stupidly for a moment, until the impact of it

struck him.

The car was stolen, the blood probably belonging to the unfortunate

owner.  The prison garb had been exchanged for other clothing, probably

taken from the body of the owner of the Chevy.

David knew then beyond all possible doubt that Johan Akkers was at

Jabulani, and that he had arrived before the bridge over the Luzane

stream had become impassable, probably three or four hours previously.

David threw the prison suiting back into the car, and he began to run.

Johan Akkers drove the Chevy across the Luzane bridge with the rising

waters swirling over the guard rail, and with the rain teeming down in

blinding white sheets.

The muddy water shoved at the body of the car, making steering

difficult, and it seeped in under the doors, flooding the floorboards

and swirling about Akkers feet; but he reached the safety of the far

bank and raced the engine as he shot up it.  The wheels spun on the soft

mud, and the Chevy skidded and swayed drunkenly in the loose footing.

The closer he drew to Jabulani the more reckless he became in his haste.

Before his conviction and imprisonment, ARkers had been a twisted and

blighted creature, a man of deep moods and passionate temper.  Feeling

himself rejected and spurned by his fellow men he had lived in a world

of swift defensive violence, but always he had kept within the bounds of

reason.

However, during the two years that he had laboured and languished within

prison walls, his anger and his lust for vengeance had driven him over

that narrow boundary.

Vengeance had become the sole reason for his existence, and he had

rehearsed it a hundred times each day.

He had planned his prison break to give himself three days of freedom,

after that it did not matter.  Three days would be enough.

He had infected his own jaw, running a needle poisoned with his excreta

deeply into the gum.  They had taken him to the dental clinic as he had

planned.  The guard had been easily handled, and the dentist had

cooperated with a scalpel held to his throat.

Once clear of the prison, Akkers had used the scalpel, vaguely surprised

by the volume of blood that could issue from a human throat.  He had

left the dentist slumped over his steering-wheel on a plot of waste

ground and, with his white laboratory gown over his prison suit, he had

waited at a set of traffic lights.

The shiny new Chevy had pulled up for a red light and Akkers had opened

the passenger door and slid in beside the driver.

He had been a smaller man than Akkers, plump and Prosperous-looking,

with a smooth pale face and soft little hairless hands on the

steering-wheel.  He had obeyed meekly Akkers instruction to drive on.

Akkers had rolled his soft white body, clad only in vest and shorts,

into a clump of thick grass beside a disused secondary road and pulled

the grass closed over him, then he had beaten the first road block out

of the city area by forty minutes.

He stayed on the side roads, picking his way slowly eastwards.  The

infection in his jaw had ached intolerably despite the shot of

antibiotics the dentist had given him, and his crippled claw of a hand

had been awkward and clumsy on the gear lever, for the severed nerves

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