Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 74

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he sucked his teeth and chuckled happily.

Once more he ran into the kitchen, pausing to select a long

stainless-steel carving knife from the cutlery drawer before hurrying

across the yard to the gate and along the path.

In the lantern beam, Debra's footprints showed clearly in the soft earth

with his own overlaying them.  He followed them to where she had

blundered off the path, and found the mark of her body where she had

lain.

Clever bitch, he chuckled again and followed her tracks through the

forest.  She had laid an easy trail to follow, dragging a passage

through the rain-heavy grass and wiping the droplets from the stems.  To

the hunter's eye it was a clearly blazed trail.

Every few minutes he paused to throw the beam of the lantern ahead of

him amongst the trees.  He was thrilling now to the hunter's lust, the

primeval force which was the mainspring of his existence.  His earlier

set-back made the chase sweeter for him.

He went on carefully, following the wandering trail, the aimless

footprints turning haphazardly in a wide circle.

He stopped again and panned the lantern beam across the rain-laden grass

tops, and he saw something move at the extreme range of the lamp,

something pale and round.

He held it in the lantern beam, and saw the woman's pale strained face

as she moved forward slowly and hesitantly.  She went like a

sleep-walker, with arms extended ahead of her, and with shuffling

uncertain gait.

She was coming directly towards him, oblivious of the light which held

her captive in its beam.  Once she paused to hug her swollen belly and

sob with weariness and fear.

The legs of her trousers were sodden with rain water and her flimsy

shoes were already torn, and as she hobbled closer he saw that her arms

and her lips were blue and shivering with the cold.

Akkers stood quietly watching her coming towards him, like a chicken

drawn to the swaying cobra, Her long dark hair hung in damp ropes down

her shoulders, and dangled in her face.  Her thin blouse was wet also

with drops fallen from the trees, and it was plastered over the

thrusting mound of her belly.

He let her come closer, enjoying the fierce thrill of having her in his

power.  Drawing out the final consummation of his vengeance, hoarding

each moment of it like a miser.

When she was five paces from him he played the beam full in her face,

and he giggled.

She screamed, her whole face convulsing, and she whirled like a wild

animal and ran blindly.  Twenty flying paces before she ran headlong

into the stem of a morula, tree.

She fell back, collapsing to her knees and sobbed aloud, clutching at

her bruised cheek.

Then she scrambled to her feet and stood shivering, turning her head and

cocking it for the next sound.

Silently he moved around her, drawing close and he giggled again, close

behind her.

She screamed again and ran blindly, panic-stricken, witless with terror

until an ant-bear hole caught her foot and flung her down heavily to the

ground, and she lay there sobbing.

Akkers moved leisurely and silently after her, he was enjoying himself

for the first time in two years.  Like a cat he did not want to end it,

he wanted it to last a long time.

He stooped over her and whispered a filthy word, and instantly she

rolled to her feet and was up and running again, wildly, sightlessly,

through the trees.  He followed her, and in his crazed mind she became a

symbol Of all the thousand animals he had hunted and killed.

David ran barefooted in the soft earth of the road.  He ran without

feeling his bruised and torn skin, without feeling the pounding of his

heart nor the protest of his lungs.

As the road rounded the shoulder of the hill and dipped towards the

homestead he stopped abruptly, and stared panting at the lurid glow of

the arc lights that flood lit the grounds and garden of Jabulani.  It

made no sense that the floodlights should be burnin& and David felt a

fresh flood of alarm.  He sprinted on down the hill.

He ran through the empty, ransacked rooms shouting her name, but the

echoes mocked him.

When he reached the front veranda he saw something moving in the

darkness, beyond the broken screen door.

Zulu!  He ran forward.  Here, boy!  Here, boy!  Where is she?  The dog

staggered up the steps towards him, his tail wagged a perfunctory

greeting, but he was obviously hurt.  A heavy blow along the side of his

head had broken the jaw, or dislocated it, so that it hung lopsided and

grotesque.  He was still stunned, and David knelt beside him.

Where is she, Zulu?  Where is she?  The dog seemed to make an effort to

gather its scattered wits.  Where is she, boy?  She's not in the house.

Where is she?  Find her, boy, find her.  He led the labrador out into

the yard, and he followed gamely as David circled the house.  At the

back door Zulu picked up the scent on the fresh damp earth.  He started

resolutely towards the gate, and David saw the footprints in the

floodlights, Debra's and the big masculine prints which ran after them.

As Zulu crossed the yard, David turned back into his office.  The

lantern was missing from its shelf, but there was a five-cell flashlight

near the back.  He shoved it into his pocket and grabbed a handful of

shotgun shells.

Then he went quickly to the gun cabinet and unlocked it.  He snatched

the Purdey shotgun from the rack and loaded it as he ran.

Zulu was staggering along the path beyond the gates, and David hurried

after him.

Johann Akkers was no longer a human being, he had become an animal.  The

spectacle of the running quarry had roused the predator's single-minded

passion to chase and drag down and kill, yet it was seasoned with a

feline delight in torment.  He was playing with his wounded dragging

prey, running it when he could have ended it, drawing it out, postponing

the climax, the final consuming thrill of the kill.

The moment came at last, some deep atavistic sense of the ritual of the

hunt, for all sport killing has its correct ceremony, and Akkers knew it

must end now.

He came up behind the running figure and reached out to take a twist of

the thick dark hair in the crippled claw of his hand, wrapping it with a

quick movement about his wrist and jerking back her head, laying open

the long pale throat for the knife.

She turned upon him with a strength and ferocity he had not anticipated.

Her body was hard and strong and supple, and now that she could place

him she drove at him with the wild terror of a hunted thing.

He was unprepared, her attack took him off-balance, and he went over

backwards with her on top of him, and he dropped the knife and the

lantern into the grass to protect his eyes, for she was tearing at them

with long sharp nails.  He felt them rip into his nose and cheek, and

she screeched like a cat, for she was also an animal in this moment.

He freed the stiff claw from the tangle of her hair, and he drew it

back, holding her off with his right hand and he struck her.

It was like a wooden club, stiff and hard and without feeling.  A single

blow with it had stunned the labrador and broken his jaw.  It hit her

across the temple, a sound like an axe swung at a tree trunk.

It knocked all the fight out of her, and he came up on his knees,

holding her with his good hand and with the other he clubbed her

mercilessly, beat her head back and across with a steady rhythm.  In the

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