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.He didn’t break eye contact with Moloch, but he was aware of the gun in the other man’s hand.Throughout their confrontation, Shepherd’s own hand rested lazily against the folding stock of the Mossberg Persuader that hung from a leather strap on his shoulder.He had jacked a load as soon as they’d landed and his finger was inches from the trigger.Shepherd did not know what would happen if he was forced to kill Moloch.He guessed that he would have to take out Dexter too.Powell could go either way, he figured.Scarfe didn’t concern him.Scarfe just wanted to get out of this alive.Moloch considered the other man carefully, then seemed to reach a decision.“This once,” he said.Shepherd nodded, and Moloch turned to Powell.Dexter, Shepherd noticed, had notched another arrow on his bow during the standoff.Shepherd wondered if it had been meant for him.We may yet find out, he thought.“You do it, then follow,” Moloch told Powell.“Shit,” said Powell, gesturing at Dexter, “it was this asshole couldn’t kill him, and now I got to go down there?”Dexter didn’t react to the taunt.In the space of a couple of minutes, four white men had managed to get in his face, each one in a different way: Scarfe had laid a hand on him; Powell had insulted him; Shepherd had almost forced Dexter to kill him; and a retarded man with an arrow through his chest simply refused to die.Faced with so many possible targets, Dexter’s wrath had simply diffused, briefly leaving him more puzzled than angry.“Just do it,” Moloch told Powell.“And quietly.”Powell sighed theatrically and removed his gun from its holster.He rummaged in the pockets of his jacket until he found the suppressor, then attached it to the muzzle.Moloch’s insistence on silence puzzled him.There was nobody out here to hear a shot, and anyway, even if someone was outside, the wind and snow would muffle any noise.Still, Powell wasn’t about to argue with Moloch.Like Shepherd, he found Moloch’s behavior peculiar, but he wasn’t going to risk taking a bullet in order to point it out.“How will I find you when I’m done?”“There’s a path through the forest.You’ll pick it up behind the tower.Stay on it and it will lead you straight to us.For now, we move on.”When he said the words, he looked puzzled.We move on.Shepherd said nothing, but his finger found the trigger guard of the Mossberg and remained there.“We’re not waiting for Carl Lubey?” asked Scarfe.“He’s not here and I want to get off the road and out of sight,” said Moloch.“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re on a tight schedule.We’ll make for his place and take it from there.”“There’s a snowstorm blowing,” said Scarfe.“And you don’t know the island.”“You’re wrong,” said Moloch.“I know this island very well.”Scarfe shook his head in disbelief and looked to the other men for support, but they were already preparing to follow their leader.Powell, meanwhile, shot Dexter a look of disgust, then began to descend the rocks, toward the beach.Scarfe watched him go until Dexter grasped his arm.“By my reckoning, pussy,” he said, “you got no lives left.”Dexter released him and spit once into the snow by Scarfe’s foot.Scarfe shot one last look at the figure that stood among the waves before adjusting his pack on his shoulder and following Moloch, Shepherd, and Dexter across the white road that skirted the woods.He expected Moloch to stop and look at a map or check a compass, but instead he moved purposefully into the trees.Within minutes, the four men were heading for the center of the island on an old trail that wound its way through the forest.While they walked, Scarfe unfolded his map from his pocket and tried to read it, hampered by darkness and snow and wind.It was a struggle, but he eventually confirmed what he had suspected from the moment they had found the trail.It wasn’t detailed on the map.Somehow, Moloch had found an unmarked path.• • •Moloch drifted.Sometimes he was beside Dexter, moving through a white forest, the snow melting on his face and hair.At other times there was no snow, just a harsh wind and frost upon the ground, and there were other men around him, dressed in furs and hand–stitched hides.Eventually, the two worlds began to coexist, like transparencies laid one upon the other, and he was both Moloch and someone else, a man at once known and unknown [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]