First Blood Read online

  11

  He put off going back out there as long as he could. He knew he would not be able to stand it when Teasle came touching the scissors to his head and cutting. The spray of water on him, he glanced out the shower, and Galt was suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, holding the scissors and a can of shaving cream and a straight razor. His stomach tightened. He watched frantically as Teasle pointed at a desk and chair by the bottom of the stairs, saying something to Galt that came muffled through the noise of the spray. Galt brought the chair around in front of the desk, took some newspapers from inside the desk and spread them under the chair. He was not long doing it at all. Directly Teasle came toward him in the stall, close enough for him to hear.

  'Turn off the water,' Teasle said.

  Rambo pretended not to hear.

  Teasle came farther down. 'Turn off the water,' he repeated.

  Rambo went on washing his arms and chest. The soap was a big yellow cake that smelled strongly of disinfectant. He switched to soaping his legs. It was the third time he had soaped them. Teasle nodded and walked out of sight to the left of the stall where there must have been a shut-off valve because in a second the water quit spraying. Rambo's legs and shoulders tightened, water dripping from him onto the hollow metal bottom of the stall, and then Teasle was in sight again, holding a towel.

  'There's no sense in putting this off,' Teasle said. 'You'll just catch cold.'

  Rambo had no choice. He stepped out slowly. He knew that if he didn't Teasle would reach in for him, and he didn't want Teasle touching him. He dried himself repeatedly with the towel. In the cold the towel made prickle marks on his arms. His testicles felt exposed.

  'Dry yourself anymore and you'll wear out the towel,' Teasle said.

  He went on drying himself. Teasle reached to guide him toward the chair, and Rambo side-stepped, keeping Teasle and Galt in front of him as he backed over to the chair. Without a pause everything built up in quick sequence.

  First Teasle touched the scissors to the side of his head, snipping, and Rambo tried, but could not stop himself from flinching.

  'Hold still,' Teasle said. 'You'll jerk against the scissors and maybe hurt yourself.'

  Next Teasle snipped off a large clump of hair, and Rambo's left ear was cool and unprotected in the damp basement air. 'You've got more up here than I guessed,' Teasle said and dropped the clump onto the newspaper spread out on the floor. 'Your head's going to weigh a lot less in a minute.' The newspaper was turning gray, soaking up water.

  Then Teasle snipped off more, and Rambo had to flinch again. Teasle stepped back of him, and Rambo tensed from not being able to see what was going on behind. He swung his head to see, and Teasle pressed him forward. Rambo slipped his head from under the hand.

  But Teasle snipped the scissors to his head again and Rambo flinched again, and hair caught in the swivel of the scissors, yanking sharply at his scalp. He could not bear it anymore. He surged from the chair and spun around to Teasle.

  'Get away.'

  'Sit down in that chair.'

  'You're not cutting anymore. You want my hair cut, you get a barber down here.'

  'It's after six. There aren't any barbers working now. You're not putting on that uniform until your hair is cut.'

  Then I'll stay like this.'

  'You'll sit on the chair. Galt, go up and bring Shingleton. I've made as many allowances as I can. We'll cut his hair so fast it'll be like we used sheep shears.'

  Galt looked happy to get away. Rambo listened to him unlock the door at the top of the stairs, the rattle echoing down. It was all happening even faster now. He did not want to hurt anyone, but he knew that was coming, he could feel his anger spreading out of control. Instantly a man was rushing down the stairs, Galt half a flight behind. It was the man who had been sitting by the radio in the front office. Shingleton. He seemed huge now that he was standing, his head up near the bright lights in the ceiling. The bones above his eyes and around the bottom of his face stuck out in the glare. He looked at Rambo, and Rambo felt twice as naked.

  'Trouble?' Shingleton said to Teasle. 'I hear you have trouble.'

  'No, but he does,' Teasle said. 'You and Galt sit him on the chair.'

  Shingleton came right over. Galt hesitated, then he came over too.

  'I don't know what this is all about,' Shingleton said to Rambo. 'But I'm reasonable. I'll give you a choice. Do you walk or do I carry you?'

  'I think you'd better not touch me.' He was determined to keep control. There would be just the next five minutes and the continual touch of the scissors, and then it would be over, he would be all right.

  He started toward the chair, his feet slick in the water, and behind him Shingleton said, 'Good God, where did you get all the scars on your back?'

  'In the war.' That was a weakness. He should not have answered.

  'Oh sure. Sure you did. In which army?'

  Rambo almost killed him right then.

  But Teasle took another snip at his hair and startled him. There were clumps of long hair scattered across the gray wet newspaper, some of them tangled around Rambo's bare feet. He expected Teasle to go on snipping at his head. He braced himself for it. But then Teasle brought the scissors too close to his right eye, cutting his beard, and Rambo instinctively dipped his head to the left.

  'Hold still,' Teasle said. 'Shingleton, you and Galt hold him steady.'

  Shingleton pulled his head up straight, and Rambo slammed his arm away. Teasle snipped again at his beard, catching it in the scissors, pinching his cheek.

  'Christ.' He squirmed. They were too close. They were crowding him so he wanted to scream.

  'This could go on all night,' Teasle said. 'Galt, go get the shaving cream and the razor off the desk.'

  Rambo squirmed. 'You're not shaving me. You're not coming near me with that razor.'

  Then Galt was there handing it to Teasle, and Rambo watched the long blade flash in the lights, and remembered the enemy officer slicing his chest, and that was the end. He broke, grabbing the razor and standing, pushing them away. He fought the impulse to attack. Not here. Not in the goddamned police station. All he wanted was the razor away from them. But Galt, was white-faced, eyes on the razor, and he was fumbling for his gun.

  'No, Galt!' Teasle shouted. 'No guns!'

  But Galt continued fumbling for his gun, and awkwardly he had it out. He must really have been new on the job: he looked as though he could not believe he was actually raising the gun, his hand shaking, squeezing on the trigger, and Rambo slashed the razor straight across his stomach. Galt peered stupidly down at the neat deep slash across his belly, blood soaking his shirt and pouring down his pants, organs bulging out like a pumped-up inner tube through a slit in a tire. He took a finger and tried poking the organs back in, but they kept bulging out, blood soaking his pants and running out his cuffs onto the floor as he made a funny little noise in his throat and toppled across the chair, upsetting it.

  Rambo was already charging up the stairs. He had looked at Teasle and Shingleton, and the one was over by the cells, the other by the wall, and he knew they were too far apart for him to slash both of them before at least one had time to pull his handgun and fire. Even as he rounded the landing halfway up the stairs, the first shot came from behind him, whacking into the landing's concrete wall.

  The top half of the stairs was at an angle the reverse of the lower half, so he was out of their sight now, over their heads, pounding up toward the door to the main hall. He heard shouts below him and then running on the first half of the stairs. The door. He had forgotten about the door. Teasle had warned Galt about making sure to lock it. He rushed up, praying that Galt had been in too big a hurry when he came back with Shingleton, hearing 'Stop!' down behind him and a gun being cocked as he wrenched the handle and pulled at the door and sweet Jesus, it came open. He was just ducking around the corner when two shots cracked into the bright white wall across from him. He heaved on the painters' scaffold, and the thing came c
rashing down in front of the door, planks and paint cans and steel poles piling together, barring the way.

  'What's going on?' somebody said in the hall behind him, and he turned to a policeman standing surprised, staring at Rambo naked, reaching for his gun. Four quick steps and Rambo chopped the flat edge of his hand across the bridge of the guy's nose and caught the gun dropping from the guy's hand as he fell. Somebody from downstairs was pushing at the wreck of the scaffold. Rambo fired twice, hearing Teasle cry out, hoping the shots would hold back Teasle long enough for him to reach the front door.

  He made it there, firing once again at the scaffold before he burst outside naked into the hot glare of the evening sun. An old woman on the sidewalk screamed; a man slowed his car and stared. Rambo leapt down the front steps onto the sidewalk past the old woman screaming, toward a man in work clothes going by on a motorcycle. The man made the mistake of slowing down to look, because by the time he decided to speed up, Rambo had got to him and lunged him off the cycle. The man hit the street headfirst, his yellow crash helmet scraping across the pavement. Rambo swung onto the cycle, his bare hips on the hot black seat, and the cycle roared off, with him firing his last three bullets at Teasle who had just rushed out the front door of the station and then ducked back in when he saw Rambo aiming. Rambo raced the cycle down past the courthouse, weaving, zigzagging to throw off Teasle's aim. Ahead people were standing on a corner, looking, and he hoped the risk of hitting them would keep Teasle from shooting. He heard shouts behind him, shouts ahead of him from the people on the corner. One man came running off the corner to stop him, but Rambo kicked him away and then he was whipping left around the corner, and for now he was safe and he really got the cycle going.

  12

  Six bullets, Teasle counted. The kid's gun was empty. He charged outside squinting in the sun just in time to see the kid disappearing round the corner. Shingleton had his gun aimed; Teasle yanked it down.

  'Christ, don't you see all those people?'

  'I could've had him!'

  'You could've had more than him!' He ran back in the station, swinging open the front door, three bullet holes in the aluminum screen. 'Get in here! Check Galt and Preston! Phone a doctor!' He was running across the room to the two-way radio, astonished that Shingleton had tried firing. The guy was so efficient in the office, always second-guessing; now, with no routine for this kind of trouble, he was stupidly acting on impulse.

  The screen door whacked shut as Shingleton rushed in and down the hall; Teasle jabbed at a switch on the radio, talking fast into the microphone. His hands were shaking; his bowels felt full of loose hot waste. 'Ward! Where the hell are you, Ward?' he called into the radio, but Ward wasn't answering, and then at last Teasle had him, telling him what happened, figuring his tactics. 'He knows Center Road will take him out of town! He's headed west in that direction! Cut him off!'

  Shingleton came rushing around the hall corner into the front room, over to Teasle. 'Galt. He's dead. God, his guts are hanging out,' he blurted as he came. He swallowed, trying to catch his breath. 'Preston's alive. I don't know for how long. He's got blood coming out his eyes.'

  'Snap up! Phone an ambulance! A doctor!' Teasle jabbed another switch on the radio. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. His bowels felt warmer, looser. 'State police,' he called quickly into the microphone. 'Madison to state police. Emergency.' They didn't answer. He called louder.

  'I'm not deaf, Madison,' a man's voice crackled. 'What's your trouble?'

  'Jailbreak. One officer dead,' he told him hurriedly, hating to waste time repeating what had happened. Requesting roadblocks. The voice was instantly alert.

  Shingleton put down the phone. Teasle hadn't even heard him dial. 'The ambulance is on its way.'

  'Phone me Orval Kellerman.' Teasle jabbed another switch, calling another cruiser, ordering it after the kid.

  Shingleton had already dialed again. Thank God he was all right now. 'Kellerman's outside. I've got his wife. She won't let me talk to him.'

  Teasle took the phone. 'Mrs. Kellerman, it's Wilfred. I need Orval in a hurry.'

  'Wilfred?' Her voice was thin and brittle. 'What a surprise, Wilfred. We haven't heard from you in so long.' Why didn't she speak faster? 'We were meaning to come around and tell you how sorry we were about Anna leaving.'

  He had to cut her off. 'Mrs. Kellerman, I've got to speak to Orval. It's important.'

  'Dear, I'm awfully sorry. He's outside working with the dogs and you know I can't disturb him when he's working with the dogs.'

  'You've got to ask him to the phone. Please. Believe me it's important.'

  He heard her breathing. 'All right I'll ask him, but I can't promise he'll come in. You know how he is when he's working the dogs.'

  He heard her set the phone down, and quickly he lit a cigarette. Fifteen years he had been a policeman and he had never lost a prisoner and he had never had a partner killed. He wanted to smash the kid's face against cement.

  'What did he have to do it for?' he said to Shingleton. 'It's fucking crazy. He comes around looking for trouble, and in one afternoon he goes from vagrancy to murder. Hey, are you all right? Sit down and put your head between your knees.'

  'I've never seen a man slashed before. Galt. I had lunch with him for crissake.'

  'Doesn't matter how many times you see it. I must have watched fifty guys bayonetted in Korea, and I never kept from feeling sick. One man I knew in Louisville, twenty years on the force. He went to check out a knifing in a bar one night, and there was so much blood mixed in with the beer on the floor he had a heart attack and died trying to make it back to the cruiser.'

  He heard somebody picking up the phone on the other end. Please let it be Orval.

  'So what is it, Will? This better be as important as you say.'

  It was him. Orval had been his father's best friend, and the three of them used to go out hunting together every Saturday of the season. Then, after Teasle's father had been killed, Orval had become a second father to him. He was retired now, but he was in better shape than men half as young, and he had the best trained pack of hounds in the county.

  'Orval, we just had a jailbreak here. I don't have time to explain, but it's a kid we're after, and he's killed one of my men, and I don't think he'll stay on the roads with the state police after him. I'm positive he'll head for the mountains, and I'm hoping like hell that you're in the mood to give those dogs of yours the run of their lives.'

  13

  Rambo roared the bike down Center Road. Wind was stinging his face and chest, his eyes were watering in the wind, and he was afraid he would have to slow to see what was ahead. Cars were stopping abruptly, drivers staring out their windows at him naked on the cycle. People all along the street were turning at him, pointing. A siren started far behind him. He revved the cycle up to sixty, racing through a red light, barely able to swerve in time to miss a big oil truck lumbering across the intersection. Another siren started far to his left. There was no way a cycle could outrun police cars. But a cycle could go where police cars couldn't: the mountains.

  The street dipped sharply and then rose long uphill, and Rambo sped up it, hearing the sirens. The one on his left had swung over to join the one behind him. He hit the top of the hill so fast that the cycle left the pavement, jolting back down, forcing him to slow and catch his balance. Then he was racing again.

  He passed the YOU ARE NOW LEAVING MADISON sign, passed the ditch where he had eaten his hamburgers that afternoon. The fields of brown corn swept off on both sides, and the sirens were closer, and the mountains were off to the right. He swerved that way onto a dirt road, almost spilling when he turned sharply to miss a dairy truck. The driver leaned out his window, shouting at him.

  Now he was throwing up dust behind him, holding his speed at fifty to keep from skidding on the loose gravel. The sirens were behind him to the right, then directly behind him. They were coming too fast. If he stayed on this dirt road, he would never lose them in time to get to the
mountains; he had to leave this road for someplace they could not go. He dodged to the left through an open gate down a narrow wagon road, its ruts deep and yellow in the ground. The corn remained on both sides, the mountains were still off to the right, and he was searching for a way to get over to them. The sirens louder, he reached the end of the cornfields, turning right onto a field of wilted grass, the cycle heaving on the uneven ground, dipping and rising, whipping through the grass. But the police cars would still be able to chase him this way, and then he heard their sirens louder, yet, directly behind him again.