- Chapter 26 - end - Page 254

gully—the shotgun nearly brushing my head—and looked down to see the body. And grunted with surprise when he stared down into my face.

     I grabbed the shotgun, pulled hard. His grunt drew out, he fought for his balance. With one hand I held the barrel out away from me, and hooked the other around his ankles, and I brought him down.

     He toppled headfirst into the gully, and we both fell on the body. I reached for the pistol, on his right side, and he punched and kicked. The shotgun roared once into the air, and we kept grappling, and the pistol flopped out of his pocket. Onto Nonoy's chest, sticky with warm blood.

     Heavy strides were breaking the brush, coming on, closer. Orlando. I grabbed the pistol. Gaunt-face kneed me and lunged for the pistol.

     I squeezed the trigger. Nothing. I thumbed the safety—still on—Nonoy poor fool—squeezed—the gun roared and jumped—and gaunt-face's limbs shot out in convulsion, and he fell back.

     “You fucker,” Orlando said at the edge of the gully.

     I turned my head to look at him. I could see him, above me and to my right. The AK was already pointed down into the gully, and though I started to bring the pistol around, it was with painful slowness, painful deadly slowness, and while I swung the pistol up and around he had only to tip the rifle down a few degrees more, and he did, and I was looking up into the muzzle, a couple of feet away.

     His eyes met mine. A rifle hammered, a burst, and Orlando seemed to dive into the gully, a sudden and curious dive, headlong, the AK leaving his hands and sailing. His face was the first part of him to thud into the earth. He lay prostrate. Even in the night I could see dark rosettes of blood blooming on his shirt.

     I peeked over the edge of the gully, and what I saw made me push over the edge and stand, to see it better.

     The boy Alex crouched about fifty yards up the trail,