"The Judas Pair" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gash Jonathan)

I rose and left amid a chorus of good nights, quite like old times. The two strangers promised they'd be back about noon the next day, same place, and I promised I'd fetch my stuff.

The road to the cottage seemed endless. Worse still, it was quiet in a degree I'd never before experienced. My old car seemed very noisy. Its engine throbbed a beat out into the dark on either side of the road only to have it pulsed back to reintensify the next chug. In the center of a growing nucleus of contained deep pulsation, the motor moved on between high hedges behind its great rods of beamed headlight. A moon ducked its one eye in and out of static cloud at me. It was one of those nights where moon shadows either gather in disquieting clusters or spread across moon-bright lanes making sinister pools where the ground you have to tread is invisible.

The probing lights turned across the hedges down by the chapel. Unfortunately nobody was about, or I could have bolstered my courage by giving them a lift. With a sinking heart I swung into the path and curved to a stop outside my door. The silence, no longer held back by the throb of the great engine, rushed close and paused nearby in the darkness. I switched my door alarm off, using the key, and went in.

Even the cottage seemed worried. The electric light had a wan air about it as if it too was affected by concern. I examined the miniature hallway for marks but found no signs of intrusion. My unease persisted. I pulled the curtains to and flicked on the living-room lamps to make it seem cozier. Putting the TV on seemed a wise move until I realized that I would be deaf to the sound of anyone approaching as well as blinded by the darkness. Easy meat for whoever was watching out there.

To encourage what resolution I had left, I made a rough meal I didn't want. I hit on the idea of putting the radio on for a few moments. That way, when I eventually switched it off it might seem as though I had begun preparations for bed. With another stroke of genius I turned the hall light out and cautiously opened the front door a chink, just enough to get my arm out and insert the alarm key in the raised box on the door alcove. I usually didn't bother to set the alarm when I was indoors, but it might prove one more thing to lessen my many disadvantages. With the door safely closed and barred again I felt pleased at my inventiveness. Nobody could now pierce my perimeter, so to speak, without Geoffrey being roused at his police house. It would admittedly take some while for him to come hurtling over on his pedal-cycle, but I could hold the chap until he came.

A braver man would have decided to be bold, perhaps take a weapon and stalk the blighter out there in all that darkness. I'm not that courageous, nor that daft. Whoever was outside would see me leave from either door, while I would be treading into the unknown. Let the cops pinch him if he tried any funny stuff, I thought. They get paid for looking after us. Geoffrey had had my break-in and two chickens with fowl pest, and that had been his lot since Michaelmas. Big deal.

I've never really believed very much in all this subliminal learning stuff they talk about nowadays. You know the sort of thing—showing a one-second glimpse of a complex map in semidarkness and getting psychiatrists to see if you can remember its details twenty years later. Nor do I go in for this extrasensory perception and/or psychomotive force, spoon bending, and thought transference. Yet as I forced my food down and swilled tea, my discomfiture began to grow from an energy outside myself. It was almost as if the cottage had been reluctantly forced into the role of an unwelcome spectator to a crime about to be committed. That energy was, I became certain, generated by the watcher in the copse. Either I was acting as a sort of receiver of hate impulses or I was imagining the whole thing and he was at home laughing his head off, knowing I was bound to be getting hysterical. My plan to flush him out by the advertisement and my inquiries had backfired. He was now forewarned, and I was set up for reprisal.

Humming an octave shriller than usual, I went about my chores, finished the food, and washed up. It was important not to vary my routine. I got my bed ready in the adjoining room, leaving the bedside lamp on for about half an hour to simulate my usual reading time. Then I switched it off together with the radio, and the whole place was in darkness.

Living so far from other people—a few hundred yards seemed miles now—the cottage always had alternative lighting about: candles, a torch, two or three oil lamps. It would be safe to use the torch only if I hooded it well, say with a handkerchief or a dishcloth, and was careful to keep the beam directed downward. There was no need of it indoors, because I knew every inch of every room, but there might come an opportunity to catch him in its illumination like a plane in a searchlight. I'd get a good glimpse of him and just phone the police. Notice that my erstwhile determination and rage had now been transmuted through fear into a desire for an army of policemen to show up and enforce the established law—another instance of Lovejoy's iron will.

The curtains were pale cream, a bad mistake. Anything pale is picked out by the moon's special radiance, even a stone paler than its fellows being visible at a considerable distance. Were I to pull them back from the kitchen window, the movement would be seen by even the most idle watcher. Still, it had to be risked.

I got the torch ready in my right hand and moved stealthily toward the window. Do everything slowly if you want your movements to go unnoticed, was what they used to tell us in the army. Not fast and slick, but silent and slow. Feeling a fool, I tiptoed toward the sink. By reaching across I could pull the curtain aside. There was no way to step to one side close against the wall because of the clutter in the corner. A derelict ironing board stood there with other useless impedimenta. The slightest nudge would raise the roof.

Holding my breath, I gently edged the curtain aside. The copse, set jet-black above a milky sheen of grass, seemed uncomfortably close. I hadn't realized it was so short a gap, not even pacing it out the previous day. Nothing moved. But I knew he was there. Exactly in the way I was peering out at him, so he was staring at me. Could he see the curtain? I'd moved it without squeaking its noisy runners, but there was the danger of the moonlight exposing a dark slit between pale material. I let the edges meet and exhaled noiselessly.

To my surprise I was damp with sweat. Peering eyeball-to-eyeball with a murderer was no job for a growing lad. Maybe the best course would be to telephone Old Bill. Then what if Scotland Yard arrived in force only to discover an empty copse without any trace of a lurking murderer? Imagine their annoyance when discovering they'd been summoned by a frightened idiot with a recent history of a nervous breakdown. That would be crying wolf with a vengeance. I'd have to wait until I had proof he was there.

The view from the other windows was the same quiet—too-quiet—scene. No breeze moved the trees, and shadows stayed put. I began to feel somewhat better, a little more certain of myself. No matter what he tried I was certainly a match for him. He was only one bloke. If he had a gun along with him, well I had a few too. On the other hand, if he was waiting for me to make another mistake, such as going out for a nocturnal car ride without remembering to set the alarm or something making another burglary easier, he was going to be sadly disappointed.

I waited another thirty minutes. Let him think I was sound asleep. My one bonus was my conviction he was out there. He, on the contrary, knew I was in the cottage but he had no way of knowing I was certain he was sitting on the tree stump and waiting. Sweat broke over me like a wave. What the hell was he waiting for? What point was there in watching a silent cottage when I was supposed to have retired for the night? Nothing could possibly happen until dawn when I awoke—or could it? My increasing nervousness took hold. It was ridiculous to let it, but I could not withstand the rush of adrenaline.

Shading the torch, I read the time on the wall clock. Ten minutes to twelve. A plan evolved in my mind. I would wait until dawn, when he was probably dozing, then rush outside, down the path to the lane, sprint across into my neighbor's drive, and hide deep in the laurel hedge. Of course I'd have a gun with me, maybe my Durs air weapon, which could shoot three, possibly four, spherical bullets without needing a further pumping up. With that relatively silent weapon I could prevent him leaving the copse from the far side. His bike would be useless.

This cunning plan had an undoubted risk, but there were two advantages. One was that it postponed any action at all, true Lovejoy style, so I needn't do anything dangerous just yet and maybe by dawn he would be gone. The second advantage was that in rushing out I'd set off the police alarm. He'd be trapped. All I'd have to do would be to sit tight and threaten him with the air weapon. He'd recognize it, collector that he was, with its great bulbous copper ball dangling beneath the stock. No mistake about that. Unfortunately, though, he might guess I would try a morning sprint and simply move toward my path. I wouldn't care to meet him face to face with him sitting ready and me disarrayed and running.

The front doorbell rang.

I dropped the torch from cold shock. A strange echo emitted from the walls about me, taking some seconds to die away. Fumbling along the carpet, I found the torch again and dithered, really dithered. Holding it in fear now, I peered out of the dark living room toward the door. The moon was shading the front of the cottage. Anyone could be there. My heart seemed to boom at every beat. Why does sweat come when you are cold from terror? The shelling I'd endured years ago had been nothing to this. It was somehow worse because whoever waited now at my door was in a sense unknown.

It could be Margaret. She might have sensed my fright and come to make sure I was all right. Why not telephone instead? Surely she'd do that, a far more sensible approach. Maybe she'd wanted to see for herself. I was on my way down the hall toward the door when the obvious flaw came to my mind—the cottage had been still as death. I'd been listening for the slightest sound for nearly an hour now and had not heard a thing. And the path outside was gravel. You could even hear a rabbit cross it. But not a clever, oh-so-clever, murderer. Nobody creeps up to a door, then rings the bell.

Sweat trickled from my armpits. It dripped from my forehead and stung the corners of my eyes. Should I call out, asking who was there? Not if he had the Judas guns with him, which might be used to shoot me down as soon as he located me.

I didn't dare creep closer to the door, in case he fired through. And if I crept back to the telephone for the police he'd hear the receiver go and me dialing. Would he honestly dare to break in? Panicking now, I slithered out of the hall and pulled the carpet back from over the priest hole. I needed no light to find the iron ring in its recess. Astride the flag, I hauled it upward and rested it against the armchair as I usually did. Cursing myself for a stupid unthinking fool, I clambered down the steps into the chamber. By feel alone I found the Mortimer case and extracted the duelers. The Durs air weapon might have been more useful, but I'd relied too much on having the upper hand. Positions were bitterly reversed now.

The slab lowered in place, I covered it with the carpet. Where was he now? Would he still be there at the front door, or was that a mere bluff to draw attention while he crept around the side and gained entrance there? I stood, armed but irresolute, in the living room. Waves of malevolence washed through me—all from the external source he represented. He was there outside, watching and waiting. It was all part of his game. His hate emanated toward me through the walls. I could practically touch it, feel it as a live, squirming, tangible thing. The pathetic unpreparedness of my position was apparent to him as well as to me.

Something drew me toward the kitchen window. Had he given up lurking by the front door and gone back to his place in the copse? I tried turning myself this way and that, stupidly hoping my mental receivers would act like a direction finder and tell me exactly where he was. Perhaps my fear was blunting the effect. If he was in the process of moving through the copse I might see his form. It seemed worth a try. If only it wasn't so utterly dark in the shadows from that treacherous moon.

The difficulty was holding the torch and the Mortimers. I finally settled for gripping one dueler beneath my arm and holding the torch with my left hand. Leaning across the sink, I slowly pulled the curtain aside.

For one instant I stood there, stunned by sudden activity. The glass exploded before my eyes. A horrendous crackling sound from glass splinters all about held me frozen. Behind me inside the living room a terrific thump sounded which made even the floor shudder. The curtain was snapped aside and upward, flicked as if it had been whipped by some huge force. I stared for quite three or four seconds, aghast at the immensity of this abrupt destruction, before my early training pulled me to the floor. There was blood on my face, warm and salty.

Something dripped from my chin onto my hands as I crawled on all fours back to the living room. I had lost one of the Mortimers but still held the torch. Broken glass shredded my hands and knees as I moved, a small incidental compared to the noise I was making. I rolled onto the divan to get my breath and see how much damage I'd sustained.

My face and hands were bleeding from cuts. They'd prove a handicap because they might dampen the black powder if I had to reload, but for the moment they were a detail. My handkerchief I tied around my left hand, which seemed in the gloom to look the darker of the two and was therefore probably bleeding more profusely. To my astonishment I was becoming calmer every second. The situation was not in hand but at least clearly defined. Even a dullard like me could tell black from white. The issue couldn't be clearer. He was outside shooting at me, and there was to be no quarter. Simple.

I crawled messily toward the telephone. Even as I jerked the receiver into my bandaged hand I knew it would be dead. The sod had somehow cut the wire. O.K., I told myself glibly, I'd wait until morning when the post girl would happen by and bring help. She came every day—rain, snow, hail, or blow.

Except Sunday, Lovejoy.

And tomorrow was Sunday. And my neighbors opposite drove to Walton-on-Sea every Saturday for the weekend.

Depressed by that, I set to working out the trajectory of his missile. Naturally, in my misconceived confidence I'd not drawn a plan showing the position of his stump relative to the window. That would have helped. Knowing it roughly, however, I peered through the gloom at the corner farthest from the kitchen alcove and finally found it sticking half buried in the wall. A bolt, from an arbalest.

Bows and arrows are sophisticated engines, not the simple little toys we like to imagine. An arrow from a longbow can pierce armor at a short distance, and Lovejoy at any distance you care to mention. But for real unsophisticated piercing power at short range you want that horrid weapon called the arbalest, the crossbow. Often wood, they are as often made of stone, complete with trigger beneath the stock. Their only drawback was comparative slowness of reloading. By now though he'd have it ready for a second go.

He was a bright lad. No flashes, no noise, no explosions, even if they'd been audible to any neighboring houses. And I was still no nearer guessing where he might be. My assets were that I was alive, was armed, and had enough food to last out the weekend and more. But I'd need to keep awake, whereas he could doze with impunity. I felt like shouting out that he could have the wretched turnkey.

At that moment I knew I was defeated. He had me trapped. And as far as I was concerned he could move about as he pleased, even go home for a bath, knowing I would be too scared to make a run for it in case he was still at his post. How the hell had I got into this mess? I questioned myself savagely.

Half past twelve, maybe something like five hours till daylight. Then what? I still wouldn't be able to see into the copse. And I would be that much more at risk.

I sat upright on the divan in the living room. The side window was paler than the rest, showing the moon was shining from that direction. I opened the hall door wide and, keeping my head down, pulled back the kitchen alcove's curtains as far as they would go. That way I'd be as central as I could possibly be, and he'd get the Mortimer first twitch if he tried to break in.

My spirits were starting to rise when I heard a faint noise. It was practically constant, a shushing sound like a wind in trees, not sounding at all like someone moving across a gravel path or wading through tall grass. Maybe, I thought hopefully, a breeze was springing up. If it started to rain he might just go home and leave me alone.

The noise increased, hooshing like a distant crowd. Perhaps the villagers had somehow become alarmed and were coming in a group to investigate. Even as the idea came I rejected it. People were not that concerned. Worried, I forgot caution and crept toward each of the windows to listen. The sound was as loud at each. I even risked approaching the front door, then the side door, but learned nothing except that the noise was ever so slightly intensifying as moments passed.

It was several puzzling minutes before I noticed the odd appearance of the side window. Shadows from it seemed to move in an odd way I hadn't seen before. The other window, illuminated blandly by moonlight diffusing through the curtains, cast stationary shadows within the room. My sense of unknowing returned again to frighten me. I couldn't even risk trying to glance out with that arbalest outside waiting to send another bolt trying for my brain.

Then I smelled smoke.

The shushing sound was the pooled noise of a million crackles. My thatched roof had been fired, probably by means of a lighted arrow. A kid could have done it. A hundred ways to have prevented all this rose to mind, all of them now useless. I was stuck in the cottage, which was burning. Thatch and wattle-and-daub.

Madness came over me for a second. I actually ran about yelling and dashed to the kitchen window. Recklessly I pulled the curtain aside and fired into the darkness through the broken pane. I shouted derision and abuse. The copse, vaguely lit by a strangely erratic rose-colored glow, remained silent. I heard the slap of the lead ball on its way among the leaves. Maddened, I tried filling a pan with water and throwing it upward. It left a patch on the ceiling. Hopeless.

I had to think. Smoke was beginning to drift in ominous columns vertically downward. Reflected firelight from each window showed me more of the living room than I'd seen for some time. I was going to choke to death before the flames finally got me. The beams would set alight, the walls would catch fire, and the fire would extend downward until the entire cottage was ablaze. I'd heard that glass exploded in fires. There would be a cascade of glass fragments from every possible direction ricocheting about the place. Those, and the flames, but first the asphyxiating smoke would do for me.

It would have to be the door. I'd make a dash for it. He'd be there, knowing my plight. He'd let me have it as soon as I opened the door to step outside. And it would have to be the front. Going out of the side door, I'd just have farther to run to get out of my blind garden. Unless I ran toward the copse. But once in there, assuming I reached it, what then? He knew it intimately. Maybe he would even stay there, confident of his marksmanship and having me silhouetted against the fire. You couldn't ask for an easier target.

The smoke intensified. I started to cough. The walls began creaking as if anticipating their engulfment. Above, a beam crackled unpleasantly and a few flakes of ash began to drift downward. So far I couldn't see the flames, but their din was beginning to shake the cottage. Faint tremors ran through the solid paving beneath my feet. You die from asphyxiation in a fire, I'd heard somewhere, probably in pub talk. Then, dead and at the mercy of the encroaching fire, your body becomes charred and immutably fixed in the terrible "boxer's stance" of the cindered corpse. I'd seen enough of the sickening war pictures to know. Tears were in my eyes from the smoke.

"You bastard," I howled at the side door. "Murderer!"

If I was to dash toward possible safety with all guns blazing I would need guns to blaze. Spluttering and now hardly able to see as the cottage began to fill with curling belches of smoke, I dragged the carpet aside and lifted the flagstone of the priest hole. As I did the idea hit me.

For certain I was practically as good as dead. No matter which way I jumped he'd kill me. I had enough proof of his intentions to know he was going to leave me dead. There was no escape. So what if I hid in the priest hole?

I dashed back for my torch, finding it easily in the flickering window glow. The shaded light showed the cavity at which I looked anew. Could fire ever penetrate paving stones? Maybe heat could. On the other hand, how long would a cottage like mine burn? And how long would the heat take to cook me alive in there?

The sink. I raced back, filled two pans full of water at the tap, and hurried back. The smoke was making it practically impossible to see. I was coughing constantly. The carpet had to be soaked to keep the flags as cool as possible. If they were damp, though they might eventually burn, they would perhaps act as a heat barrier for a while. I poured the water over the carpet and dashed into the kitchen alcove again.

By plugging the sink and turning both taps on at full blast I might eventually manage to flood the cottage floor. I'd actually done it once by accident. I wedged a dishcloth into the overflow at the back of the sink, which was the best I could do. It broke my heart to leave the Mortimers, but since he knew I'd fired at him they were going to be evidence of my doom. Quickly filling two milk bottles with water, I grabbed a loaf and a big piece of cheese which would have to last me. I remembered the torch at the last minute.

The idea was to have the flag in place covering the priest hole with me in it and the wet carpet covering that neatly. Under a mound of ash and fallen debris there'd be little sense in searching the ground unless they knew of my priest hole, and nobody else did. But how to do it? I stood on the steps with my shoulders bracing back the flag while my fingers inched the carpet forward until it touched the floor. Then I lowered the flag by edging my way down step by step. The last step was done with the heavy paving stone actually supported by my head. Twice I had to repeat the maneuver because the carpet somehow folded inside and wedged the stone open a fraction. I couldn't risk that. I stepped down inch by inch. The stone finally clicked into place without a hitch. Now it was covered by the carpet, and above me the cottage was roaring like a furnace.

I was entombed. Ovened.

The vents showed a hazy glimpse of orange redness to either side. Fine, but there was smoke starting to drift in from the direction of the back garden. My water and food I placed for safety on the lowest shelf, where I couldn't possibly knock them over. I swiftly took stock of what I had to fight with. First, his ignorance of my priest hole. Second, the weapons I had available.

There were the powder guns, but black powder is notoriously unstable. Even the modern version such as I had got from Dick Barton could not be completely free from capricious behavior. Weapons already loaded could easily explode in heat. I'd heard of it happening. Still, if I loaded a couple of pistols and left them cased and carefully pointing along one of the vents, there might not be too much risk, and they'd be cooler. I stuffed my shirt into a vent and shielded the other with my body. I switched on the torch.

I decided on the Barratt pair although they were percussion. The sight of my bloodstained hands frightened me almost to death. I was glad I hadn't got a mirror, because my face was probably in a worse state still. Shakily, taking twice as long as usual, I loaded the pair of twin barrels and slipped valuable original Eley percussion caps over the four nipples. Half-cock. .Then I loaded the Samuel Nock pair. They were more of a danger in this growing heat, being flintlock, as the powder in the flashpan was external to the breech and so more easily ignited. For what it was worth I laid them flashpan downward in one of the vents.

The heat was greater now. Smoke was still drifting from one vent. I must find some means of creating an increased draft from one vent to the other, perhaps bringing in cooler fresh air from outside to dilute this hot dry air inside the priest hole.

Barrels. Barrels are tubes. The longest barrels I had were on the Brown Bess and the Arab jezails. Perhaps, I reasoned, if I drew in a deep breath facing one vent and blew it out down a barrel lying along the other vent I would be all right with the faint draft it was bound to create. But I'd need to take the breech plugs out. The tools were handy, which was one blessing.

As I worked I stripped naked. The heat was almost intolerable now. I used up a whole bottle of water wetting my shirt and using it to cover my head. The barrels together would reach about half way down one vent, so they'd have to be bound in sequence. I did this with an old duster soaked in my urine, binding the rag around the junction of the two barrels to make it as air tight as possible. Because the priest hole was so narrow I had to complete the job standing on the steps with one barrel already poked inside the vent's shaft and the other sticking out past my face. By the time it was done I was quivering from exhaustion.

I tried my idea of blowing but the heat was beginning to defeat me. The air entering my lungs was already searingly hot. From above, my head came frantic gushing sounds, creakings, and occasional ponderous crashes, which terrified me more than anything. The walls would be burning now, and the beams would be tumbling through the living-room ceiling. Twice I heard loud reports as the glass windows went. It must be an inferno. I was worn out and dying from heat. Too clever by far, I'd got myself into the reverse of the usual position. I was safe from smoke and being cooked in an oven. If only I could bring air in.

I forced myself to think as the blaze above my head reached a crescendo. What could make air move? Propellers, windmills, waterwheels? A fan. A jet engine. A ship's screw. A paddle device. What had they used in prisoner-of-war camps when digging those tunnels? Bellows, conveyors of buckets, paddle engines? Bellows.

Below me, on the shelf near my precious bottle of water, was the air gun. I had a pump for it, but at what rate did it actually pump air? It usually needed about four minutes to fill the gun's copper globe going full pelt, and that was tiring enough. I took the implement and gave a couple of trial puffs. The force was considerable, as it indeed would need to be, seeing that the eventual ball pressure was enough to propel a fourteen-bore lead sphere some thousand yards or so. I clasped it to me and put the screw nozzle against the open gun breech projecting from the vent. With some difficulty I began pumping. Almost immediately I felt a marvelous gentle breeze against my back from the opposite vent, but there came an unpleasant inrush of smoke with it. I would need to blow air out in the opposite direction. There might be less smoke that side.

The barrels were easy to swap over as the vents were of a height. I simply slotted them in, having to mend the junction on the way across. That way around it was easier to use the pump, because I found I could use the wall as a support and one of the shelves as a fulcrum for my elbow. This time I was rewarded by the cool air on my shoulders without very much smoke. I guessed that a faint breeze must be blowing the fire and smoke in the direction I was facing.

There was a certain amount of squeaking from the air pump, and its leather bellows flapped noisily, but in the cacophony from the fire above nothing I was doing could possibly be distinguished from the other noise. My only worry was if he saw a steady current of air somehow piercing the slanting smoke from somewhere in the grass. The shifting firelight would help.

As minutes went by I improved on the system. Once it became obvious the system was working, I started settling down to a less frantic rate. I might, I reasoned, have to do this forever. You see fires still burning days after they've started, don't you? I counted my rate at about twenty pumps a minute. By stuffing my shirt into the vent around the jezail barrel I improved the motion still further by preventing any back draft. All incoming air was from the opposite side. Occasional gusts of smoke frightened me now and again, but they weren't too bad.

I tried pausing for two consecutive beats to listen. Was there shouting from above? I dreamed—Was it a dream?—I heard a big vehicle revving, followed crazily by a sound of splashing of water. But the bastard might be trying to pretend the firemen had arrived. Twice I was near screaming for help. Drenched and demented, I resisted and pumped on, haunted by the memory of the stables which had burned down behind the old rectory. Submerged by the low evening mist, horses and stables were found as just ashes a full day later. And worse still I had no way out whether it was friends or foe on the other side, except through the flames.

For some daft reason it seemed vital to suppress hopes of people like Margaret and Tinker Dill, those smug bastards in comfort somewhere who were believing I wasn't dying. The smarmy pigs, all of them. I sobbed and sobbed, pumping crazily on amid the lunatic noise.

One really monumental crash interrupted me about an hour or two after my life-supporting system had been started. That would be the central longitudinal beam, I thought. The whole cottage was down now, with the exception of maybe part of a wall here and there.

After that, nothing but the faint shushing roar, the ponderous crumblings and tremors all about me, and the steady slap-click-pat-hiss of the ancient bellows pump wafting beautiful cool air over my shoulders and out through the old barrels.

Nothing but my arms moving, the pump handle slippery from sweat and spurts of blood as a cut reopened briefly. Nothing but leaning one way for a hundred pumps and another way for another hundred to ease my tiredness, nothing but the hiss of outgoing and the gentle coolness of incoming air. The question of survival receded. I became an automaton.

There was nothing in my mind, no thought, no reasoning, no plans, virtually no consciousness, nothing but to continue pumping forever and ever and ever and ever.

Chapter 16