Keith Laumer - Day Before Forever.pdf - Keith Laumer - widez2

The Day Before Forever

Prologue

Somewhere a bell was ringing. The Old Man reached out in the darkness,

fumbled across rumpled silks for the heavy velvet pull cord. He tugged it

twice, imperiously.

"Sir!" a voice responded instantly.

"Get him!"

The Old Man lay back among the scattered cushions.

He's alive, he thought. Somewhere in the city, he's alive again. . . .

It was a narrow street, without curbs or sidewalks, jammed between flat

gray walls that ran in a straight line as far as I could see. Misty light

filtered down from above on a heavy ornamental ironwork gate set in the

wall across the way. There were no people in sight, no parked cars, no

doorways, no windows. Just the wall and the gate and the street, and a

rumble through my shoes like heavy machinery grinding up boulders in the

distance.

I took a step away from the wall and the pain hit me. The top of my skull

felt like the place John Henry had picked to drive his last spike. Cold rain

was trickling down my face and a cut on my lip was leaking salty blood that

mixed with the rain. I looked at the palms of my hands; they were

crisscrossed with shallow cuts, and there was rust and grime in the cuts.

That started me trying to remember when I'd had my last tetanus shot, but

thinking just made my head hurt worse.

A few feet to the left an alley mouth cut back into the wall behind me; I

had a feeling something unpleasant might come out of it any minute now,

and a little curiosity stirred as to what might be at the other end, but it

was just a passing thought. I needed a dark hole to crawl into and hide

before I could take a lot of interest in unimportant matters like where I was

and what I was running from. I got a good grip on my head and pushed

away from the wall. The pavement rocked like a Channel steamer in a

three-quarter gale, but it stayed under me. I made the thirty feet across

the street and put a shoulder against the wall to steady it and waited for

the little whirly lights to go away. My pulse was hammering a little, but no

worse than you'd expect after the kind of weekend that could put a man out

on a strange pavement talking to himself. The chills were fading out now,

and I was starting to sweat. My coat felt tight under the arms, and the

collar was rubbing the back of my neck. I looked at my sleeve. It was stiff,

shiny cloth; no class, no style. Somebody else's coat. I breathed through

my teeth a few times to blow some of the fog out of my brain, but it didn't

seem to help. It must have been one hell of a party, but it was all gone

now, like easy money.

I checked my pockets; except for some loose threads and a pinch of lint I

was as clean as a Salvation Army lassie catching the last bus back from the

track.

The placard attached to the gate caught my eyes. Weathered block letters

spelled out:

PARK CLOSED AT SUNDOWN

BY ORDER OF COMMISSION

ENTER AT RISK OF LIFE

I looked through the gate. If it was a park, there might be a nice patch of

grass to lie down on. The line about risk of life might have called for some

looking into, but next to a nap, what was a little gamble like that? I

pushed on the iron curlicues and the gate swung in.

* * *

White marble steps led down, flanked by big urns full of black fronds. At

the bottom, a wide flagstone walk led away between clipped borders and

flowering shrubs. The dark green smell of night-blooming flowers was

strong here; I heard the soft play of water in a fountain that caught

reflections from lights strung in the hedges. Away in the distance beyond

the park other lights crossed the sky in rows like high bridges. The light

breeze made lonesome noises in the branches over me. It was a nice place,

but something in the air kept me from wanting to curl up on the grass and

compose a sonnet about it.

The walkway I was on was of patterned brick, bordered by little white

flowers that led away into the shadows of trees. I followed it, listening for

sneaky footsteps behind me. As far as I could tell, there weren't any; but

the exposed feeling up my back didn't go away.

There was something on the grass, under the trees ahead. Something pale,

with a shape that I couldn't quite make out. At first I thought it was an old

pair of pants; then it looked like a naked man lying with his upper half in

shadow. I kept on trying to make it look that way until I was ten feet from

it; at that range, I quit kidding myself. It was a man, all right; but his

upper half wasn't in shadow. It wasn't there at all. He'd been cut in two

just below the ribs.

I circled around him, maybe with a vague idea of finding the rest of him. Up

closer, I could see he'd been bisected by hand, not neatly, but in a

businesslike way, as if the cutter had a lot of carcasses to get out tonight

and couldn't waste too much time on fancy cleaverwork. There wasn't much

blood around; he'd been drained before being cut up. I was just getting

ready to roll him over in case he was lying on a clue, when something made

a little sound no louder than a grain of corn popping.

I moved off across turf like black Wilton, stepped in under an odor of

juniper, and stared at a lot of shadowy shapes that might have been

twenty-man gangs for all I knew, and waited for something that seemed to

be about to happen. A minute went by that way.

With no more sound than a shadow makes moving on a wall, a man

stepped into view fifteen feet from me. He put his head up and sniffed the

air like a hound. When he turned his head his eyes caught the light with a

dull shine. He stood with one shoulder high, the other twisted under the

load of a hump like a crouched monkey. His face was pockmarked, and

there were scars across his shaved skull. A lumpy strip of keloid ran from

under his left ear down under the collar of a thick sweater. Heavy thigh

muscles showed through tight pants with a camouflage pattern of diagonal

gray lozenges. There was a heavy wooden handle in his belt with a blade

that was honed to a thin finger of steel like a butcher's trimming knife. He

swung slowly; when he was facing my way, he stopped. I stood still and

tried to think like a plant. He squinted into the shadows, and then grinned,

not a pretty grin.

"Come out nice, sweetie." He had a husky bass growl that went with the

scar on his throat. "Keep the hands in sight."

I didn't move. He made a quick motion with his left hand; there was a soft

sound and a second man came out of the bushes on his left, hefting a

working length of iron pipe. This one was older, wider, with thick arms and

bowed legs and a stubbly beard shot with gray. He had little sow's eyes

that flicked past me and back.

The hunchback touched his filed blade with a finger and said, "All alone in

the park, hey? That ain't smart, palsy."

"Chill the buzz," the one with the beard said through his left nostril. "Slice

it and haul, that's the rax."

He reached inside his shirt, brought something out gripped in his fist; I got

a whiff of a volatile polyester.

The hunchback moved closer.

"You got anybody'll buy you for live meat?" he talked with a lot of mouth

movement that showed me a thick pink tongue and broken teeth. Off to my

left, somebody was generating a fair amount of noise making yardage

around to my rear. I ignored that, ignored the question.

"Better open up." The hunchback slid the knife out and held it on his palm.

I took a step out from under the tree then.

"Don't scare me to death," I told him. "I've got friends on the force."

"Talks like a Cruster," the bearded one whined. "Caw, Rutch, take the

mothering weed down and let's fade."

"Try me, baby," I threw a line at him, just to keep him interested. "I eat

your kind for breakfast."

Behind me, a stick cracked. Rutch tossed the knife on his palm, then

stepped in and feinted short. I didn't move. That meant I was slow. Beaver

hefted his pipe and took a bite out of the inside of his cheek. Rutch was

watching my hands. He didn't see any guns, so he moved in that last foot

and gave the high sign.

Behind me, the Indian fighter took a noisy step and wrapped arms around

me and leaned back. That put him where I wanted him. I used my right

shoe to rake down his shin and tramped hard on his arch. The grip slipped

an inch, which gave me room to snap-kick the hunchback below the knee.

The bone went with a crunch like a dropped plate. I gripped hands with

myself and gave the lad behind me a couple of elbows in the short ribs; he

oofed and let go and Rutch fell past me in time for me to meet Beaver

coming in with his club swung up overhead like the royal executioner

getting set to lop off a head. I caught his arm between my crossed wrists,

shifted grips, and broke his elbow. He hit on his face and squealed and the

club bounced off my back.

The one who had done the back door work was on his hands and knees,

coming up. He looked like a half-breed Chinaman, with a wide, shiny face

and lots of unhealthy-looking fat along the jaw line. I sent him back with a

knee to the chin and stood over him, breathing hard; my wind wasn't what

it should have been. I was glad none of them looked like getting up.

The Chinaman and the beard were out cold, but the one called Rutch was

humping on the grass like a baby mouse in a bonfire. I went over to him

and flipped him on his back.

"Your boys are soft, and too slow for the work," I told him. I nodded at

what was on the grass. "Yours?"

He spat in the direction of my left knee and missed.

"Nice town," I said. "What's the name of it?"

His mouth worked. The stubble on his head was orange-red, and up close I

could see the pale freckles across the knob of gristle he used for a nose. A

tough redhead, in spite of the crooked back. I put a foot on his hand and

leaned on it.

"Tell it, Red. What's the racket?"

He made a move and I leaned a little harder.

"Deathers. . . . in the park. . . . tonight. . . . !" He said it in quick gasps,

like a drowning man dictating a will between waves.

"More detail, Red. I catch on slow."

"Blackies. . . ." There was a little foam at the corners of his mouth and he

was grunting softly, like a hound dreaming of rabbits. I didn't blame him for

that. A broken knee is pretty hard to bottle up. Then his eyes rolled up. I

started to turn away, half heard the sound and swung back, saw the shine

on the blade in his hand an instant before the blow low on my back and the

hot-poker pain of the knife going in.

* * *

The shock effect on the human nervous system of a stab wound varies a lot

with different subjects. Sometimes the victim falls out flat on his face

before he's lost the first ounce of blood. Other times he'll walk home, go to

bed, and quietly bleed to death, unaware that he's even been hit. With me

it was somewhere in between. I felt the blade hit bone and deflect upward,

and all the while my right hand was coming around edge-on in a flat arc

that connected with Red's superior maxillary just below the nose, a messy

spot. He fell back hard and didn't move, and I stood over him, trying to get

hold of my side with both hands. A heavy pulse was gushing down over my

hip like a spillway. I took three steps, felt my knees going, sat down hard

on the ground, still trying to hold the wound closed. I was clear-headed,

but the strength had gone out of me. I sat there listening to my pulse

hammer in my ears and thinking about trying it again just as soon as it

quieted down.

Come on, Dravek, on your feet. Back home you're supposed to be a tough

guy. . . .

I made what I thought was a move to get up and went over sideways,

slowly, like an old tree falling. I lay there with a mouthful of sod, listening

to the wind sighing in the trees, a soft gobbling sound from Rutch or one of

his boys-and another sound, like stealthy feet creeping up through the

underbrush. Or maybe it was just the bats flapping their wings in the attic.

My eyes were wide open and I could see the fat Chinaman's feet, and

beyond him a lot of black shadows. One of the shadows moved, and a man

was standing there, looking at me.

He was small, lean, spidery, dressed in tight black. He came across toward

me, through a sort of luminous mist that had sprung up suddenly. I thought

of a couple of things I wanted to say, but somebody had cut the strings

operating my talk-box. I watched him skirt the Chinaman, come over, and

stop a couple of feet from me. It was very dark now; I could barely make

out the shape of his boots against the black. I heard a sound that seemed

to be a nice easy laugh, like a guy who's just heard a mildly funny joke,

and a voice from a long way off seemed to say, "Neat, very neat. . . ."

Things got hazy then. I felt hands moving over me; the pain in my side was

like a line of fading red fire.

"Lie still," somebody said in a whispery voice. "I have to stop the bleeding."

I started to say that Red had put the point in an inch too high, that all he'd

sliced was fat and gristle, but it came out as a grunt.

"I gave you a shot of fun juice," the same voice said. It was a breathy

tenor, as soft as a fog at sea. "It was all I had."

The hands did some more things that hurt, but it was a remoter pain now.

A nice warm feeling was spreading up my side. I lay still and breathed.

"There," the voice said. "Do you suppose you could stand?"

I grunted on purpose this time and rolled over on my face. I got my knees

under me and rested on all fours, watching the trees sail past like the view

from a merry-go-round.

"We'd better hurry," the little man said. "They're close."

I said, "Yeah," and got my feet under me and climbed to my feet like a

weekend Alpinist doing the last few yards to the top of Annapurna. We

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